I guess it's my turn now? I can't say that mine will be any shorter than Ansa's or KAndre's.
Okay... my name is ShelleyC. That's my real name. I am not very original. The boards I currently post at are The Best of Clay (my current home board) and The Clackhouse.
Who am I? I am a single Canadian girl who was raised in Ottawa, has lived in Toronto for 4 years now, spells certain words with a "u", works in the television business and wishes she could figure out how to get a green card so she could move to the US and escape the dreaded Canadian winters.
History on how I became an online fan? Well, I didn't watch AI1 because I saw a commercial with Simon tearing a strip off some poor delusional tone deaf person and thought, "Why on earth would I watch this crap?" Same reason I don't watch Fear Factor - I hate watching people humiliate themselves (I do enjoy a little schaudenfreude from time to time though). However, my sister convinced me that the show was excellent and made me watch AI2. So, as much as she can't understand my massive crush on Clay, she only has herself to blame!
I wasn't one of the people who noticed him much during the auditions. I was only half paying attention to the show until the top 12 began. Then I sort of was half and half rooting between Clay & Ruben. I think it was around Billy Joel week when I really started to go "Ooooooh, who IS that guy? He's cute!" Then I bought the AI2 Love Songs CD one day during a bout of shopping therapy at the mall and when I heard "On The Wings of Love", I stopped dead in my tracks and was hooked on the voice for life. I immediately got on the internet and looked everywhere for everything I could find about Clay. I found ClaytonAiken.com first and ended up ordering LWLHD just before it sold out (and I will not be selling my original on Ebay!) and then I found the TWOP thread (I'd been a member of TWOP since 2001, but I'd never posted in the forums). I was complaining loudly on Clay's TWOP performers thread around finale time because I'm Canadian and I couldn't vote for Clay and somebody invited me to join them in the PROC thread in the Idol Entertainment section. That person saved me from going crazy and renting a car to drive to Niagara Falls, NY just to get to an American phone line so I could vote for Clay on finale night. Instead, I sent an absolute stranger $30US via Paypal so they would text message $30 worth of votes for Clay. That's when I knew I had it bad for Clay. The rest is history.
If everything works out, I'll be accompanying Ansa to her first ever Clay concert in Toronto this summer. I'm almost as excited about that as she is! I've been to a few more concerts than Ansa (I think about 13 - although I think that is pretty modest considering what some fans have done! *g*) This fandom has allowed me the opportunity to travel and meet some great people that I never would've met otherwise. I've had almost as much fun hanging with my new friends as I have had following Clay's career and I look forward to hanging with them more this summer.
I'm glad couchtomato invited me to be a mod on this board. I hope it's a place where we can all have fun and talk about a guy that I personally think is cute, funny, smart, sweet and can sing good too. I might have a bit of a crush on him.
See? I think mine might be longer (or at least "ramblier"). I've made you both look concise and to the point! ;-)