ClayManiacs

Quickie:
Your strength is truly heroic. Still, it's fine to ask others for a hand.

Overview:
Someone from quite far away will be happy to shorten the distance between you now. All you have to do is issue -- or accept -- an invitation. Before you do, though, be sure you're ready for an extended visit.

Daily Extended Forecast:
It's time to appreciate what is yours. Take a trip with your partner into the beautiful world that surrounds your comfortable life. It's probably much more harmonious than even you imagined it to be. At work, your generous, trusting nature attracts all the right people today. This is the perfect time to express your opinions to a large audience. Tonight, learning something about another country is on the agenda. Foreign laws and customs fascinate you.

Daily Love and Relationships:
Daily Flirt:
Isn't it your turn to be happy yet? Think about travel to faraway places, a new romance, a good honest laugh. If you're craving something new, today's the day to give it a try.

Daily Couples:
Exotic locales seem more entertaining than another dinner at home. Compromise with a new restaurant and a foreign film.

Daily Singles:
Take a risk -- call up that relative stranger, wear something daring or plant a big kiss when it's least expected. It'll pay off in more ways than one.

Daily Career and Finance:
See if you can get a day off next week to rest up and recover from all the extra work you've been taking on lately. A good boss knows their employees need a little downtime, especially after turning in a star performance.

Clay Aiken has yet another item about to hit the shelves. You knew about the holiday album and the book, but did you know about the calendar? Yup, it's coming out at the end of October. I'm assuming it will feature twelve different poses by the spiky-haired tenor. What will they think of next? And yes, he will be touring with a full orchestra to support the new holiday album.

On the Road With Clay and Other Thoughts

By Bonnie Lini Markowski

Congratulations Clay. Your first solo concert tour was a triumph. I read the good reviews, saw the numbers, witnessed the amazing sell-outs. But for me, this triumph was solidified when I looked behind me from my second row seat at the Big E. To my amazement, what I saw was the audience filling not only the arena, but spilling out onto the lawns on either side, hundreds deep, overflowing onto the streets and lining the rooftops of nearby buildings. I felt proud. So proud of our boy! It was a bittersweet moment. Looking at that crowd, then back at the empty stage anticipating your entrance, I felt a bit sentimental. In an instant, the events of the past ten weeks flashed through my mind. Now, I travel that road again and invite you to join me.

Can anyone help me? I thought I read something here about wrapping christmas presents for charity. Now I can't find the thread. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thanks, mary

Someone from quite far away will be happy to shorten the distance between you now. All you have to do is issue -- or accept -- an invitation. Before you do, though, be sure you're ready for an extended visit.

Tonight, learning something about another country is on the agenda. Foreign laws and customs fascinate you.

Think about travel to faraway places, a new romance, a good honest laugh. If you're craving something new, today's the day to give it a try.

Exotic locales seem more entertaining than another dinner at home. Compromise with a new restaurant and a foreign film.

Crazy for Clay

Clay Nation, rejoice.

It's going to be all Clay Aiken all the time as the singer readies a new album, a book and a primetime Christmas special, plus all sorts of promotional stops along the way.

Nov. 16 will be Clay-day, with the relesase of his still-untitled holiday album and memoir titled "Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life."

To support the CD and book, Aiken will appear Nov. 15 on "Larry King Live," Dec. 6 on "The Tonight Show" and Dec. 8 on "The Today Show." His one-hour Christmas special also airs Dec. 8 on NBC.

It's going to be a very special Clay Christmas.

Kimberley, Kelly, Ruben, and Clay are all finding their own post-Idol niches, so they are no longer competing with each other. That said, I think Clay's niche may be larger and more complex than the others', as his ambitions and talents seem at this point uncontainable. Already there is a book, a Christmas album, and more television appearances in his immediate future, and more concerts in which to renew his love affair with live audiences.

For the long-term future, I feel safe forecasting success of varying degrees for these brightest of the Idol alumni. Maybe it's partly wishful thinking, but I could easily see Clay Aiken becoming a beloved American institution, idolized for a humanity that goes beyond Idol talent.

The American Idol Live Tour - led by Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo - sold about 58% of its tickets and met with much less enthusiasm than previous editions featuring Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini or Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken.

"Sometimes these franchises just run their course," Waddell says. "What you're dealing with are acts that never really toured at all, and all of sudden you put them out in an arena. That's asking a lot."

October 8, 2004
 
Forget the lectures on voter apathy among young people. It's absolutely ludicrous -- and definitely not true.

I am voting. All my friends are voting. Everyone I know is voting.

In fact, 65 million people voted in May -- most of them younger than 30.

Too bad it wasn't in the American presidential primaries, but instead for the American Idol.

For anyone counting ballots, Fantasia Barrino was elected.

But we needed more of the electoral process. So we went to the polls, aka phone lines, again and voted for the funniest standup idiot in Last Comic Standing.

Now, we wait breathless each week to see who will be voted -- not into the White House in November -- but off the island on Survivor.

No. There's not voter apathy. Our desire to choose is just being directed to a really pathetic place -- reality TV.

"I just don't get it," says 26-year-old Lindsay Hadley, a designer, art director and principal with Hetrick Communications. "If they have time to vote for that, surely they have time to vote for the American president."

(snip)

So, if we paid half as much attention to what our darling candidates for president were saying as what Clay Aiken was singing -- or if we had Simon Cowell critique their debates -- maybe, just maybe, we'd vote.

I could easily see Clay Aiken becoming a beloved American institution, idolized for a humanity that goes beyond Idol talent.