ivy

OMG. That old fooldar will get you every time. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. All men have feminist qualities. Just look at them. None of them match those big muscled guys, whom I find icky anyway. This is a hoot and a half. Iseeme

I agree with Scarlett, FearofH2O and ldyjocelyn especially this part. I have found a few of the comments this last week to be off the wall and distasteful IMO. I have absolutely no way of relating to them when I'm usually full of empathy for the feelings of others. This time zero, zilch, zip. In fact, I've been wondering what the hell I'm doing here in this fandom and if I fit in. I'm keeping this very general and non-descriptive so it does not focus specifically on what other fans have said, but am trying to explain my emotional reactions which are based on what I've read the last week. Many may feel that Clay fell off of pedestal but my reaction is about the fans and my expectations, and the fandom fell hard this week. I don't often rely on others outside of my family but this is one of the times I let my guard down and expected something more/better from others that did not materialize. I think I read too many posts over the years that said, I will always love him no matter what but the tabloids knocked us down with glee with only one little kick. They thrive on controversy and taking the must mundane thing and twisting it to sensationalize and to get a reaction. We're not faithful. In my eyes, we failed a test.

Maybe I'm a little different but if someone laughed hysterically at my choices, I would say goodnight and leave. I would probably also be crying. But for me it would be easier to leave than to sit there and take it. Then I would avoid those people for awhile, even if they were family. That is my less painful route. I'm not trying to give anyone advice. Maybe you are tougher than I am. I would also not answer the phone for awhile even if it was one of my sons calling. Last year my husband and I were with a family member whose wife threw a temper tantrum on the phone with her father in front of us. I won't go into details but I was appalled at how she treated her father because he would not give into her wishes. We left the room. I later told the family member that as close as we are to them, she had better never do that to us or we would pick up and leave.

justclay12 - Thank you for telling me about what you have seen on the internet with regards to the crazies. I was making a guess. I would love to have more time to do more on the internet but between work, family and reading the Clay boards there isn't much time. On one hand, it is good to know that this isn't just directed at Clay. On the other hand, it is scary that there are so many whackos out there with nothing better to do than trash others.

In checking various boards, what I've found is that most fans have been pleasantly surprised by the reactions of their co-workers and relatives. Some were dreading hearing the same old crap from the same old people. What most, who have written about it, have found is despite the firestorm in the media there appears to be more acceptance of Clay with the news that he may about to become a father. In many cases, it is almost like people read the headline only and basically know the daddy part and either don't know the rest of the story or they don't care about the rest of the story. I hope that trend continues. I did read some vicious posts at AOL but you know what, those jerks probably go after every celebrity. I even read that there are some vicious hater boards directed towards Rachel Ray. I can understand people not liking someone but the internet hate is out of control. My perception is that a lot of us are focused on Clay and it seems like he gets most of the ridicule. I'm not so sure that is true. I think there are a lot of idiots/creeps out there going after many other celebrities too. It is encouraged by the late night talk shows, comics, owners of major media, editors, in short those trying to make a buck by walking on the bodies of others alive or dead. They want hits/ratings/money and it does not matter how they get it.

To answer your question, it is pure sleaze. I watched part of it one time to get a feel for the show. It was one gossip story after the other told in the most salacious way. No comparison to LKL on CNN. I felt what I saw that day was almost criminal and I felt sorry for the celebrities.

Give us a review of it. Please. Dancermom2 gave one at CH but I would love to hear more.

Yep. This is what I've been trying to say too. I'm usually a very sympathetic/empathic person, but I think this fandom wore me out a long time ago with a lot of the whining and negativity from some. Most of the time I can see both sides of a situation, but in this instance, I have nothing but acceptance for Clay's private life, and think is bizarre for others to have such strong negative feelings about this subject. JIMO.

Bravo djs111. Bravo. Bravo. Clay owes me nothing. I've always said this but I guess I must mean it, because other than being once again surprised at the extreme feelings of fans in regards to Clay, I don't care about the story. I'm not trying to be flippant about the feelings of others. I just cannot relate to anger, disappointment and so on. There is a huge wall there for me. I'm ready to move on without even knowing the ending to this story.

My message to any judgmental idiots in the fandom is I hope the door hits you on your way out. Be gone. Don't come back. All this hasn't really touched me. Clay is just a celebrity who has a private life. It is his public, performing life that I am interested in - his career. Don't much care about the rest. As someone else said, I don't get hating or not liking someone like Jaymes when none of us really know her. I guess that is about all I have to say on the subject. Shrug. Life goes on. Now onto more important things. I'm loving the AOL sessions.

Great idea playbiller. I never joined the OFCB but I think positive posts and talking around those with agendas is the way to go. Here is another post about the VH1 stuff from clanaic24 at ChP: I skipped DWTS for the last 3 weeks for various reasons but am watching tonight and I love how they give love to their contestants. They were all teary eyed at letting the 3rd place couple go tonight. How sweet. I guess I'm "talking" a lot tonight. I've been head's down at work and worked almost all night the other night. I should be working tonight but just can't do it. I'll get up early - maybe - and get back to it.

I read a little bit here most every day but haven't posted lately. I too am staying away from the angst. I was down for one day and now I think what will be will be. I'm a fan and I want success not only for Clay but for ME. There are things we can do. Roseviolet at CH suggesting voting for Clay's video as a wildcard at VH1. Apparently, Bo's fans got him on the countdown by doing this. http://www.vh1.com/shows/series/top_20_countdown/vote.jhtml Claymazing at ChP suggested making your own playlist at aol and playing Clay's songs there too. http://music.aol.com/song/on-my-way-here/10852957. I did this last night and tonight, and it was fun for me. If enough of us do this we can get a couple of songs at least high up on that chart. Haven't created my own playlist but will try that soon. I found a new Hot AC station in my area and I'm going to try and request the song. I don't know much about them but tried it today. For myself, I'm not going to look at numbers but enjoy the music and hope for the best but not hang my hat on an anticipated outcome. I'm going for my happiness and will do this as I have time. If I become too obsessed, it will take the fun out of it for me.

I never saw that before. I would buy a few apples off of that young man.

playbiller - I've been missing my sisters today. You gave me a good laugh. I bought Clay's CD for them but now that I'm ready to mail them their copies, I can't find the CDs. Sigh. I guess I'll have to go out and buy more. Where the heck would I have put them!

One of my old favorite topics. I've forgotten how many times you can dial a number in an hour on average. But 100,000 people dialing 100 times in an hour is 10,000,000 votes for that hour. Hitting redial is faster then pressing the buttons each time yourself. I think you can get more calls in during the hour if you use dialidol and have them dial automatically for you.

I used to work in the development group for the Network Operations Center at AT&T. We put in the systems that monitored the land lines. Think NASA's control center on TV when spaceships are launched. It looked liked that with tables full of computer equipment and people in front of PCs, monitoring huge 3 x 4 foot (or 4 x 5 foot) screens at the front of the room. It was located in Bedminster NJ. I was there a few times as we did installations on weekends. We would fly out Saturday morning getting there before 7am or 8am and return late Sunday. [We stayed up all night Saturday night testing the install and returned home without stopping to rest at a hotel. I remember one trip driving to the Newark airport to return home long after dark late Sunday, and watching the planes as ribbons of lights in the sky taking off from the airport. It was amazing. you could see the lights moving up into the sky for miles almost perfectly aligned behind each other.] There are probably pictures on the internet somewhere too. I can't recall if the columns were 4 screens high or not with several in each row. For some reason, the number 45 sticks in my mind but that may be too many. On those screens we would show graphs and data flows. You could zoom in or out and switch to different cities and different views of the equipment shown in a graphical format. You could troubleshoot failed equipment and other problems. I did some searching. You can see a picture here: http://www.corp.att.com/history/nethistory/management.html I was thinking there were 45 screens but here is an excerpt from that article: Here is another article with a picture of how the new system looks now. In my day it was much the same but probably smaller. Scroll down to in search of a company's soul: http://www.ou.edu/class/prestech/articles/...fingCenters.htm The land lines can be thought of as roads carrying traffic (phone calls) criss crossing across the country. Some have less traffic than others. When something fails, calls are blocked and cannot get through. If there are too many calls they cannot get through and calls are lost or rerouted. That night millions of calls were attempted. We used to reroute calls when there were problems or excessive calls. In those days (early 90s), if you were calling from say Cincinnati to Columbus, suppose there was a problem on the main line between Cincinnati and Columbus, we would reroute to get through. You would not know it, but the call could be routed through any point even as far away as NYC or LA. There were at least 3 major companies who lost thousands of calls that night. There was even an article about it several months later with some high-level statistics. There was even an article about some Church receiving a ton of calls for Clay. The bathtub theory is correct. I tried the entire time myself and did not get one call through. What is funny is that many fans checked Ruben's lines that night when they could not get through thus recording votes for Ruben. Ruben is a nice guy. It all worked out in the end. Nothing can ever be proved. They had the data in the databases had they had chosen to pull it out at least AT&T had it. I don't know about the other companies. I imagine it is long gone by now. I haven't thought about this for a couple of years now.

I can relate to most of what you said. I kind dropped out and didn't listen to radio for many years so missed all the songs on ATDW. Because of that most were new to me. And for me too, it is the entertainer, with his huge talent and great sense of humor that attract me. I have never downloaded a picture though I have appreciated a few of them. I've never been fixated on him as someone attainable. He reminds me of the young men I grew up with and those I know now with their faith, family values and even their sense of humor. It is the entertainer, I continue to appreciate and whose career I follow. It is not his faith or his charity work that interest me though I think both make him more interesting. Since I never put him on a pedestal, he doesn't have one to fall off of. I truly cannot stand many of the artists today with their potty mouths, insult humor and how they badly they treat others. The same is true of TV. I'm sure there are good artists and shows but I don't watch much because of the crap, so don't know when the good shows are on any more.

No you don't have to be a member of AOL to listen to the music. I had a terrible time figuring out my setup in order to get AOL and Clear Channel to work but finally got it to work. I posted what I did at chexxxy's in the help forum. I'll check back later, if someone wants me to post the same information here, I'll go find it and bring it over. Or if someone wants to bring my post over that is fine too.

This is true. There are many factors that come into play. I also agree that people should stop posting long back and forth dialogues with the haters. What I have noticed that works best, depending on the site and the moderators, is to ignore, to post positive posts again without responding, or to note that the posters have an agenda. Think about the politicians. They often appear to be answering a question but change the subject. The haters, if they are fans of someone else don't like that fact to be commented upon. It can be a short comment, after checking their other posts, that notes the person is a huge fan of someone else and again not responding to any accusations. It is surprising how something like, "Well xx, I see that you are a YYY fan. Enough said." says everything about the agenda of the poster without getting into a fight to defend Clay. This puts the attention on the poster instead of on the nasty things they are saying about Clay. And if they post questions again, don't give them a response because that is what they want. After all, these are strangers. What do we owe them. They want nothing more than to start a fight and to keep the nasty stuff in the forefront.

I agree with Ansamcw in that it is better when people can express themselves with respect and not get too negative. I have some of the same feelings about CH. That said, I also think that boards should be honest about themselves and not condemn other boards out of hand or because of gossip. All boards have good and bad. That is where the honesty comes into play. I may get upset with different fan boards from time to time especially with the ones where you can't talk to each other more directly but then I step away for a time so I can remain positive. Being able to communicate is one of the advantages of being on this board. There is only one board that I don't consider a fan board and I read many of their posts before coming to that conclusion. That particular board does not accept Clay for who he says he is and they mock him as if they were not fans. That's all I'm going to say about that. To get back on topic, I've found that the boards where you can ask someone to clarify what they said, discuss the differences, and possibly end up still disagreeing seem to be the more respectful and positive boards, not only towards Clay but with regard to other fans. I've been on a couple of boards where you supposedly can't talk about other boards or fans, unless it is one deemed not worthy, but they still make a show of not talking about the boards on the boards. Go figure. I loved the interview tonight. Clay looked gorgeous and the interview was good.

I'm another one who was clueless about the tension and still am to tell you the truth. I'm not being snotty but won't be scrolling back to search for the details. I hope it is not serious. I like being here for the same reasons so your post resonated with me. I see no reason to talk about Clay, his family, his friends and people who work for BAF. Faye's first career was singing. There are pictures of her with Clay on stage and in various costumes. Why should she stop now? It does give me a chuckle when people speculate about those around Clay, assigning them motives for not being around all the time, then later they show up at some event with official tags showing they are still part of the team. People grow up, get married, move on with their lives. Their worlds don't center around Clay but it doesn't mean they have forgotten him. I was on one board with private threads about BAF & Fran and I never cared to read much of what was posted. It doesn't interest me and I don't see the point since it is so remote from all of us, even those who speculate that they know something. Give me a break. I don't think I could ever be convinced that fans on the periphery even of BAF know much more than the average fan. Now I'm probably getting into territory that I laugh at and doubt and rarely comment on, but I can never imagine Clay getting close to any fan after the behavior he has witnessed with people trying to get his attention and that of his employees by running across the venue, screaming their names during intermission or before a show. Or how about the stories about fans being drunk at M&Gs and trying for his attention. It makes my skin crawl and it makes me cringe but not as a fan because I don't ascribe their behavior to me but as someone wanting to enjoy an event, and not appreciating the screaming and those trying to get attention. And as for fans, even pretty ones, getting close to Clay, he has every reason to not go for that. He would always suspect they were there for the celebrity and not the real person and he would probably be right. If times were different, I would not mind meeting him in a working situation but I don't want to be jumbled in with other fans and am so turned off I don't even want to go to the SD. But this is just me and my feelings. I don't expect others to feel the same way. I heard that David Morse's play is closing. James Earl Jones and Philicia Rashad are excellent. I think I'll try for that show when I'm in NYC next. I saw the movie on TV but never cared for it. Maybe the play will be better as I generally prefer dramas to musicals. I'm actually surprised at how much I loved Spamalot.

My husband slept late this morning. I made the family pancakes to go along with the snow day. When he got up, I put his pancakes on while he went out to get the paper. He came back and told me it had not been delivered. I said are you sure it isn't buried in the snow. He kept insisting that since there was no sign of any footprints, it could not possibly be there. It was snowing so hard, I thought it could have been buried and disagreed. About an hour later he went back out to the porch to look through the snow and found it. I've never been in a blizzard before. We had several white outs this morning. We are supposed to get 16 inches before it is over.

Now this is funny. I usually buy three; one to keep unwrapped, one for my car/office and one for home. I used to take them back and forth between car, office and home but got tired of that quickly. So now I buy one to keep in the car. My sisters like Clay so I also pick up one for each of them. They are so cute. They don't follow his career, but watch his TV appearances and hate the slams by the media and stupid comics. I love my sisters. It is now a tradition and they already let me know they are expecting a copy of his new CD from me.

Perhaps their shady comments reflect more on them than Clay. There is one comment that I'm particularly steamed about but I'm going to take a deep breath and try to let it go. Have a safe trip ansa. It is sure fun to see that giraffe picture again.

I wanted to word what you said but only intended quote part of it for reference. I couldn't decide what to leave out so kept it all. I may not have liked Jerome telling me to pass the word along to other fans, but I would not have taken it personally or even thought I was being punished. I'm not responsible for the rest of the fandom and if given the chance would quietly have said that to Jerome in a nice, maybe joking way. If you haven't voted in the following poll, please consider doing that. It ends today. It is important to a couple of fans who really want to see Clay win this particular poll. If you don't like polls, fine don't vote. If you are more neutral, how about helping out some other fans to whom this poll is important? It may not be important in the scheme of things but it caught the attention of a few fans so I voted to support them. http://americanidolamericanidol.blogspot.c...y-aiken-vs.html