I just sat down with some popcorn and soda to watch one of my favorite movies, Almost Famous. As I watched the movie many times before, I never realized how relevant it was to answering some of the questions regarding some of the confused feelings that I had been experiencing in my life.
The movie is about a fifteen year old boy named William, who was assigned to write an article for Rolling Stone magazine. It evolves into his reflection on the relationship between the two universes, fan and celebrity. As he finds himself amongst a famous rock band, Still Water, he experiences life from a whole different perspective.
He meets Penny Lane, a popular “band aid.” When he asks her if she has any regular friends, she responds, “Famous people are more interesting.” As Penny discovers that the lifestyles of the rich and famous could not provide her with the one thing that she craved most, love, she returns home to what William refers to as “the real world.”
Toward the end of the movie, the jet plane carrying William and the members of Still Water starts to take a dive toward the ground. William reminds them of the importance of the fan. As they were always too caught up in what was superficial, they were too busy to reflect on the more important things in life, love and peoples’ feelings.
As the movie comes to a close, one of the groupies speaks about people not understanding what it is like to be a true fan; to love a band or a piece of music so much that it hurts.
As I turned in to bed that night, I thought about the things that were most important in my life. As I closed my eyes feeling happy and content, I again found myself dreaming.
I was almost famous once in a romantic encounter with Jason Castro. I bet you are wondering how that saucy dream ends. Well, it doesn’t. It is always open ended, maybe to keep the dream alive, maybe for hope of a dream coming true, or maybe to always make sure that I open my eyes to reality. I have children who need their mother and a husband who needs his wife as much as she needs them, along with the dream.
Anna Maria College
1995—AMCAT and me
Bryce and Me—1996 Senior Ball
1996 Graduation
1998 Graduation
My Family
Ethan 2004
Faith 2007
Ethan and Faith 2010
Christmas 2010
Easter 2011
Spring 2011
Chapter 15
Facebook
Although I consider myself to be a pretty level headed person, not going beyond the limits of the obsessive fan, I do tend to go on websites every now and then to get updates on my favorite ‘Idols’ while waiting for an upcoming CD. In keeping the excitement alive and impatiently waiting for Jason to release his new CD, I was surfing the web looking for any information I could possibly get on new release dates.
While quickly scanning through articles I noticed something on Jason having a girlfriend. I couldn’t help but click on it to see what that was all about. There were several posts from fans reactions to the possibility of him having this girlfriend. One woman had commented on them looking cute together and how she was happy for him. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but even though we say that we are happy for them because we want to be and we always mean well, are we really that happy for them? Fans never really want to hear about their favorite celebrity being involved with someone. The truth is, we actually all like to think of ourselves as his or her boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes we even refer to them as our boyfriend or girlfriend. Come on my friends, any talk of a significant other just ruins the fantasy for us. Yes, in reality, he is allowed to have a personal life but do we really need to know about it or hear about it for that matter? Just keeping it real, my friends. Just keeping it real.
Anyway, I have always had my reservations about becoming a Facebook member. I decided to join because I was intrigued by this: “Sign up for Facebook to connect with Jason Castro.”
Although many good experiences such as connecting with old friends, and horrific experiences like the end of my friendship with my former best friend Maria, have come from my Facebook interactions, this was my initial reason for joining. I thought to myself, Could it really be that easy? I seriously doubted it but I was determined to prove a point.
I joined Facebook just shy of getting taken over by a new season of American Idol. You got it, season eight. From early auditions, I was already of fan of twenty-nine year old Danny Gokey.
One of my first Facebook interactions was with my sister-in-law, Erica, who asked me if I had been watching (what a silly question), who had referred to having her first “love of her life” Idol crush. At the time, she did not know his name but when she mentioned theater, I remembered his name was Adam.
As I had several friend requests from past friends who had immediately found me, I still needed to research my initial reason for joining Facebook. I typed Jason Castro’s name in the search bar and found myself on a page amongst 35,000 other fans and thought that’s just what I figured. There was not even an “add as a friend” option but only a “become a fan” option. Furthermore, as I wrote on his wall, remembering that I did not want to overstep that fine line into the irrational fan zone, my post contained only four words, “Is this really you?”
Again, I do not believe that Jason Castro is really reading 35,000 posts and responding to them individually and in reality, how could he? Just like a fan letter he posts a generic message every now and then to ‘all’ of his fans to update us on his plans and future career. Although it is good to be in the circle of upcoming events, always looking for an opportunity for a Jason fix, there is no true connection or interaction on a personal level. I do enjoy some of the cute videos and of course the “date nights,” short videos from wherever Jason is to say hi to his many fans. At least he is making an honest effort in keeping his fan base alive.
I loved reading the posts on my friends’ walls every Tuesday and Wednesday night about Idol performances and results shows. Either I would smile, laugh or even get a little frustrated about the comments on the most loved and the most hated contestants. I would only find myself chiming in when I agreed or could find humor in a situation, not being a person who likes argument and confrontation.
Facebook also has a cool tool for taking different AI quizzes or even casting votes for your Idol favorites. There was always a lot of love for Danny Gokey. One of my friends even once posted that she was going to “fight Paula for her new ‘boyfriend’ Danny Gokey.” There were also many Kris Allen crushes and a lot of very mixed emotions about over the top performances by Adam Lambert.
My friend Bonnie was clearly an Adam Lambert fan. I sent her a message that read, “I’m guessing you are an Adam fan?” I felt like I could really relate to her when she emailed me back and said that “Adam Lambert made her heart flutter.” Although I had no real connections or Idol crushes this year, I had known from past and even still present experience what it is like to have an Idol crush and where it can sometimes take you.
At the end of it all, though, when push came to shove, people started getting downright nasty about the contestants they didn’t like as opposed to the ones that they did. There was a lot of sadness after the Danny Gokey elimination and I remember getting really agitated after one post read “Kris Allen is better than Danny Gokey because he plays instruments.” There was even more so of an explosion before and after the Adam Lambert vs. Kris Allen finale.
As I was a fan of all of the top three guys, despite musical style, if it was a singing competition and only a singing competition, Adam Lambert should have walked away with the title. Looking at this year’s Idol from a singing standpoint, I started to get angry with some of the comments like, “Go Kris, kick the screaming drag queen’s ass!” and, “Hey Adam, Mary Kay called, she wants her make-up back.” I realize that not everybody wants to jump aboard the Adam train when it comes to black nail polish and guy liner, but I was just hoping that wasn’t what people were voting on.
Although I would buy a Danny Gokey or Kris All
en CD because I prefer that type of music over rock, I don’t believe that it was fair to take away from Adam his amazing vocal ability to sing them all under a table. It showed complete ignorance.
That night my post read, “Congratulations Kris, although when the winner expresses that the title should have gone to his opponent, that is really saying something. It is too bad that society is so caught up in sexual preference. I saw the same thing happen to Clay Aiken 5 years ago.” Moments after my post, my Facebook page exploded. I guess you would not think that I am a person who does not like confrontation, but I did not know I was not entitled to my opinion.
I was so fired up that night that I wrote a short article which I tried to submit to several papers including the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, Boston Metro, New York Times and Hartford Courant. The article read as follows:
Does Allowing Idol Contestants to Play
Instruments Distract Voters
“This is a singing competition,” a phrase used by Simon Cowell many times in the past. But is Simon mellowing as the years increase?
Presently, in Season Eight of American Idol, the talented Kristen McNamara was overlooked for having poor choice of attire as the judges filled a wild card vacancy with Meghan Joy who was an embarrassment to the reputation of the show in more ways than one.
In reality, I think it is fair to say that the general public does not vote purely on vocal talent.
In Season Two, the well-known battle of Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, Simon commented more than once about America clearly voting on vocal ability seeing as neither one “looked” the part. As many people disagreed with the results of the Season Two Finale, could it have really come down to the publics’ choice of what was easier on the eyes, a man who sweat more on stage in five minutes than someone who just ran a marathon or a contestant whom caused redirection for many by his possible sexual preference?
Did Season Three’s Fantasia Barrino really have the winning voice or did she just have a better personality than Latoya London?
Was Season Five’s Chris Daughtry voted off simply because he was a rocker, or was it because he was lacking in the personality department altogether?
What about power vocalist Carly Smithson? Could it be that too many people were distracted by the mural of a tattoo on her arm to notice that she could deliver instant goosebumps the minute she hit that high note?
Season Seven of American Idol began a new trend when contestants were allowed to play instruments on the show.
While discussing American Idol on a Facebook page, I was recently taken by surprise when a friend commented that Kris Allen was better than Danny Gokey because he played two instruments.
Is he also a better vocalist than Adam Lambert? Although playing an instrument makes an artist well rounded, does it necessarily make them a better vocalist?
Would Brooke White, the nanny who won our hearts, have made it to the number five spot on her vocal ability alone? Would Jason
Castro, one of my personal favorites, have made it to the number four spot without his acoustic guitar, dreamy eyes and trademark dreads?
In truth, personality does shine through in an artists’ ability to play a musical instrument… but is it a personality contest? Could an instrument be a distraction or sometimes compensating for the actual vocal piece?
Voting for an American Idol contestant is also that of personal preference more than who is actually the best… or maybe people just differ on the idea of what the best is? A lot of fans will cast a vote for their favorites fully knowing that they are not necessarily the best vocalist, but because they prefer a certain type of music and, for example, would not vote for a rocker or an R&B artist no matter how good they are because they would not buy their CD.
So should they ban contestants from playing musical instruments on the show?
In reality, I don’t think it would make a difference. Our society is so distracted by, “lookism”, personality (or lack of), and of course the “gay factor”, why not add instruments to the mix too….but it is a singing competition….right Simon?
Unfortunately, most of these papers already have writers that cover the entertainment field.
Shortly after the big stir up, I decided to become a fan of more pages on Facebook other than Jason Castro. My pages included Clay Aiken, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, American Idol, Smallville, The Office and of course Fenway Park…Go Sox!
The only other post I ever sent Jason Castro was on March 25th which simply stated “Happy Birthday Jason. Take a step back today and relax with family and friends. Surround yourself with the people who matter the most.”
Updates on my favorite television shows and celebrities are better than nothing.
Chapter 16
If You’re Not a Celebrity…Who Cares?
As I once sought after stardom in the past, brought back alive through American Idol and its contestants, I began to write about my dreams and passions of singing and relating to these rising stars from this reality show. I figured I am a talented writer, how hard can it be to get a book published if you have both the talent for writing and a great idea?
I began submitting query letters to agents, a couple at a time, in November of 2008. Eight months later, I was lucky to get a lot of positive feedback, but still nobody quite believing in my idea enough to sign me on.
Ironically, one agent had given me hope through an inspiring rejection letter. She had gone on to say that even though that she was passing on my promising work, that persistence leads to success and that every no is closer to a yes. Even though at that point I was discouraged over the number of rejection letters filling my “rejection” folder, luckily, persistence is one of my finer qualities, most of the time. It gave me enough motivation to keep going with it. Soon after that,
I got another rejection letter advising me to be more proactive and instead of a proposal stating what I would like to do, to start putting those words into actions. It was at that time that I decided to write another letter to Ellen.
I went to her online site, as I did the first time I sent a letter. Somehow after I had composed what I had wanted to say, it would not let me send it through. I then stumbled onto a website called Verotal Solutions. This was a website with addresses for writing fan letters to your favorite celebrities. I looked up Ellen DeGeneres, Clay Aiken and Paula Abdul in hopes that through letters, one of these stars would hear my voice. As for Jason, I still decided not to send him a fan letter based on my previous Clay heartbreak. My letters read as follows:
Dear Ellen,
I wrote to you in June of 2008 with great hope for a response. Unfortunately, I did not have great luck in connecting with you. Through my letter I was seeking answers to unknown questions regarding celebrity status and fandom and looking to fulfill and keep my dreams alive. I did not find success in a hopeful response but my letter to you and the excitement of awaiting a response led me to follow through with fulfilling another dream, finishing a book that I began writing in 2003.
In my book, Reaching Out to the Stars: American Idol Dreams, I grapple with the reality of the relationship between celebrities and their fans. This book focuses on my own personal experience of being a fan, many times as a child and now as an adult, my present obsession with the hit reality television show American Idol and its popular contestants.
My book features my personal fan letters to my “idol obsession” along with my past letter to you in search for reason to why we as fans get so caught up in celebrities of choice, for example, my own guilty pleasure of the American Idol experience.
As I am excited about my work and happy to say that my manuscript is being reviewed by a literary agency, I am hoping that you would support my project as well upon representation and possible publication.
As I have always admired you as my favorite television host, you have also been an inspiration to me, in making the dreams of ordinary people come alive.
Dear Clay,
>
Although I refuse to call myself a Claymate, I have been a huge fan of yours since 2003. I have sent you three fan letters, this being my fourth. As I never asked for a response, thinking it to be somewhat irrational, a little piece of me was sad when I did not get one.
As I started to grapple with the reality of the relationship between celebrities and their fans, I began to get frustrated. As my mind was filled with unanswered questions, my thoughts began to overflow onto paper. One page developed into a book called Reaching Out to the Stars: American Idol Dreams.
As you were my inspiration for beginning to write this book, I was inspired to finish it after the close of American Idol (Season Seven) as I became a devoted fan of, yet, another Idol contestant.
Reaching Out to the Stars Page 10