The FCA Forum Team

[Ansamcw]

So I guess I have to start us off...

My homeboard is the Clackhouse where I am known as SAMTAYCAI.

Samtaycai came from the first syllable of my three daughters names....Samantha, Taylor and Caitlin. When I started in this fandom, 2 years ago, my identity was pretty much tied up to being a mom. Now, thanks to this fandom I finally found something I enjoyed and I would like to develop into a career, webdesign.

Finding Clay Aiken is only the second site I designed...and thanks to Angela for trusting me with her baby. Now I have a wonderful outlet for my creativity and love of organizing information. I am still new at this so there may be lots of kinks that need to get ironed out. So bear with me as we start this board...hopefully we won't make too many mistakes in running it. Any suggestions and comments are welcome, just PM me or post on the suggestions forum.

On this forum I decided to use Ansamcw as my SN...Ansa is a special nickname I had with my high school and college girlfriends no one else in the family uses it. Being part of this fandom makes me feel like I'm in high school and college again when there was an adventure at every turn and life was full of possibilities...so I decided to take that name on...now I am not just sam, tay, and cai's mom... I'm my own person.

Clay...I saw him first on Group two ..wasn't really impressed...thought Ruben and Kim deserved to go ahead. Then on the wildcard show...I was amazed by his performance. That night I went on the boards and found BOLT...my first home. It wasn't enough...that same night I got the crazy idea to type Clay Aiken on Kazaa and lo and behold there were about 10 songs under his name...the demo songs. I downloaded them and that's when I knew....this was one major talent in the making. I wasn't familiar with the songs...they were not even the genre I preferred, but I downloaded all the original versions and I knew he sang each song better than the original artists...I was hooked. From that moment I was following Clay's career, downloading all the clack, listening to all the cellcert and replacing my soaps and TV with time on the boards.

There is one thing I haven't experienced in this fandom...seeing Clay live. This coming tour, I may get the chance to see him in Toronto, AT LAST ..Thanks for coming to Canada Clay...I just hope I can survive my frst concert experience and not expire from the excitement....

Okay this became a novella...no need to write this much in your intro...that is one thing you will learn about me...I am very wordy *g*.

So I am really looking forward to getting to know all of you! ok...go and post already!

[KAndre]

sees Ansa swimming around, figures the water must be nice...

Girl, why didn't you TELL me it was cold in here!

Ahem. Along with Ansamcw, my original homeboard is the Clackhouse, but I live here now, where I am known as KAndre61. Hey, originality isn't listed anywhere in the job description, so there! Watches with interest as the admins scramble to correct that.

There is no interesting story behind my screenname; however, give me a week or so and I'll have Ansa make up something cool.

I am a shy flower, hiding my light under a bushel...hey, stop kicking me! OK, I'm not actually shy. Or modest. But I am really opinionated. And bossy. But love independent people. (Of course, if they independently come around to my way of thinking, ooo la la! Or better yet, drag me around to theirs. I think I'm capable of seeing both sides of an issue. Really.) And am not intimidating. And am working on a passing acquaintance with grammar and spelling. I can occasionally be wordy. Occasionally.

How did I start in this fandom? I started out at TWoP. I've been Just Tuned In for about 4 or 5 years now. I started in the Trading Spaces forum. Heh. (the moss wall. The broken glass fireplace. Hildi. Oh Hildi.) Then this little summer show called "American Idol" started. Flipping through channels, I heard songs I loved being butchered. And a few good singers. And the most delightfully bitchy men (Simon, and then Shack). Had fun in the forums. Looked forward to seeing Simon in season 2. Watched Keith with my family. Was entertained. Watched Keith #2 stride out and announce "I'm the American Idol". Waited for Simon to crush his pretentions. Got the snot shocked out of me. Decided he was a ringer. Thought the show would really be interesting this year. Knew he would make it through and so didn't watch again until the first show of the top 12. Had no idea he was a wild card. Didn't really look at the forums but loved Shack's recaps. And that's how the addiction that is Clay sucked my butt in. Been in the Clay Nation ever since. How did I get hard-core? Saw the original clack (OMG OMG What is that move!) Went to play on Ticketbastard for the AI2 Tour in Houston - managed to get front row tickets like two days before the concert (never again, huh?). Was persuaded by people I had only communicated with on the internet to host other internet people at my house. Went to the concert. The genesis of the evil Houston posse. Experienced the Aiken live. At that moment, my life made a sharp turn into new territory. And I loved it. It has been a hell of a ride so far, and I'm taking this pony as far as I can. But in the end, it all boils down to: Damn, that man sings pretty. Anything else is just icing on the cake. But oh, the icing is soooo good! Good friends, interesting places, learning tons and tons of stuff...this is the best cult-like obsession I could ever imagine! And I don't have play the tambourine! I don't, do I?

Ansa is much, MUCH wordier than me. Really. No, really. I am always clear, brief and concise. This post was RUTHLESSLY trimmed down. There are only a couple of sticks left. OK, stopping now. Really. No, really. Right now.

[ShelleyC]

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! ;-)

[Skatejoy]

puts on feather boa and flip flops of doom

oh, and crawls out from underneath the rock of "no internet" (yikes!)

Hello one and all. I'm SkateJoy - same as I've been everywhere (I'm not exactly an international woman of mystery). My home board is Best of Clay. I was originally part of the People's Republic of Clay on TWoP (waves to Shack) and upon eviction went to the Clackhouse.

I'm SkateJoy because (prior to my life going through upheaval last year) I was an avid skater. And it brought me joy. Gag barf.

I love Clay from "take" and have followed his career since then. I've been to too many concerts to count and have been inspired to do many things both crazy (camping out for Clay) and exciting (travel, meet new people, take up photography). I've been trying to move that emphasis from crazy to exciting and put things back in balance in my life lately. I've also been trying to refind the joy of the fandom. I'm hoping that the summer concerts will help kickstart that. I've been enjoying reading his blog, because it reads like an old friend's.

In the fandom I guess I kind of focus on photography (shh, don't tell anyone) and tickets. Yes, I'm planning on exploring both on this board.

So, thanks to couchtomato and ansa for asking me to be a mod. I question their sanity, but I thank them. I think this will be a fun ride.