Remember military heroes.
Here is my column from The Oklahoman, originally published on Memorial Day.
It’s Memorial Day, and people everywhere are firing up grills and enjoying an extra day off work. But the day is for more than eating hot dogs and opening the pool for the season. It’s a day to remember those who have died serving our nation in the military.
Since 2003, more than 80 Oklahomans have died serving our nation in the Middle East. I don’t know many military families, but my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones. And I say “thank you” for your sacrifice.
In my small family, almost everyone served in the military. I was born in Anchorage, Alaska, where both my parents were stationed in the Air Force.
My grandfather Wilburn “Bud” Warlick signed on with the Navy when he was 16 (he lied about his age). About 10 years later, by then a seasoned soldier, Grandpa and Grandma (Edna Mae Warlick) were newlyweds stationed at Pearl Harbor. The morning of the attacks, Dec. 7, 1941, they awoke to ear-shattering explosions. Grandpa quickly dressed and dashed outside to see what was happening.
What he saw was the horror of dozens of Japanese airplanes bombing the ships docked in Pearl Harbor.
In short order, Navy buses came through the housing areas, picking up all the military personnel and putting them on the surviving ships to get them out of harm’s way. And so it was that Grandpa walked out the door one beautiful Sunday morning, and Grandma did not see or hear from him for nine long months.
Finally, a letter came from him, letting Grandma know he had survived. He couldn’t say where he was, but he did tell her to “go to Marshall’s furniture store and buy a new couch.” Since there was no such store on Oahu, Grandma deduced that he was in the Marshall Islands, which turned out to be true.
Thankfully, Grandpa made it through the war, and six years later, my mom was born. Twenty-five years after that, I was born. A few years ago, my mother took an emotional pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor several years ago. She floated a lei off the bow of the Arizona, amid the stacks of ghost ships never raised and seamen who never saw their wives and children again.
I hope that Memorial Day is a reminder to you to think every day about and appreciate our country’s heroes, whether fallen or not. Grandpa and Grandma have been gone from this earth for many years now but I thank them for their sacrifices just as I thank all those serving our country now.
Will he, will he rock you?
AP- Adam Lambert won’t rule out a stint as the new frontman of Queen, but don’t let that fool you into thinking the “American Idol” runner-up will make his living on the classic rock station. The legendary band has expressed interest in employing his formidable vocal skills, and Lambert is a big fan of the group once fronted by the late Freddie Mercury.
But the 27-year-old California native said Tuesday that he’d feel torn about joining the band.
“That’s a tough question because, honestly, how do you say no to being in Queen?” said Lambert, sporting his trademark dark nail polish and blue-streaked hair. “I mean, that’s unbelievable. But at the same time, I do have my own thing to do right now, and that’s my goal. So if I could, I would try to do both. That’s the honest question. I would try to do both. I would love to perform with them anytime they wanted me to but I also have my record to do. So, we’ll see.”
Lambert, a former theater actor, has ambitious plans for his post-“Idol” debut album.
“My record will be kind of a rock-pop-electronic-dance thing,” he said. “I don’t know how to describe it. I think it’s gonna take on a life of its own, as far as genre goes.”
The album is in the very early stages and Lambert aims to co-write much of the material.
On “Idol,” Lambert was the resident glam rocker, staging elaborate, over-the-top performances and daring to don goth-inspired outfits (with guyliner) on an otherwise family-style show.
“There’s a way to take the glam rock of the ‘70s and the classic rock of the ‘70s and kind of modernize it. … I want it to be produced in a very very current, almost futuristic, way. So we’re going to come up with something really fresh,” he said.
The musical mix will include “sexy, dance-y, vibe-y” numbers and more emotional songs that “appeal to people that are going through a hard time or don’t believe in themselves,” he said.
“I want to communicate the liberation that is being comfortable in your own skin and that is being your own person,” said Lambert, who has largely kept his personal life under wraps. “And the spirit of being different, and how strong that can make you feel.”
Any dream collaborators?
“Madonna would be amazing,” he gushes. “I’d love to work with Madonna — I think she’s a genius. She has great ideas. Lady GaGa is brilliant. She’s got her finger on the pulse. She’s the hot thing right now. Katy Perry’s amazing, absolutely amazing.”
Octo-dad Gibson comes clean
Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva arrive to the "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" screening on, in Los Angeles.
More drama from a parent of 8…. this time it’s Mel Gibson! He and girlfriend, Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva, are expecting a baby–his eighth. Gibson, only six-weeks since his wife, Robyn, filed for divorce, confirmed Grigorieva’s pregnancy on Monday’s “Tonight” show with Jay Leno.
Teased by Leno about having so many children, Gibson said, “I guess I’m Octomel now.”
Jon + Kate + 8 = ???
Jon and Kate Plus 8 premiered last night pulling in a whopping 9.8 million viewers and you could cut the tension between the couple with a chainsaw. It was the most depressing thing I’ve watched in a long time. Will they stay together? We still don’t know. Apparently, neither do they.
In a nutshell, for the few of you out there who haven’t watched the show, Jon and Kate are the parents of 5-year-old sextuplets and 9-year-old twins. The TLC “reality” show follows their lives as they deal with raising their enormous brood.
Internet rumors say the couple gets paid $25,000 per episode by TLC in addition to the money Kate brings in by traveling all over promoting her book and speaking.
And in case you haven’t noticed the tabloids at all the grocery and convenience stores, rumors are flying that Jon had an affair with a 23-year-old school teacher and that Kate is carrying on with her bodyguard. True? Who knows. They both deny any cheating but during last night’s premier, it was obvious that the two are on a one-way non-stop rollercoaster ride to the big “D.”
Jon looked horrible and could barely make eye contact with the camera, much less his wife. His eyes were red with bags under them. He looked bloated and sunburned.
Kate seemed to be working really hard at keeping her anger buried deep inside. The show was ostensibly about the sextuplets’ fifth birthday but the real meat of the episode was the question of will they or won’t they… stay together… as friends… for the kids’ sake… for the money the show brings in…
Kate, sporting fresh tri-colored highlights in her strange, reverse-mullet side-banged spikey-backed hairdo, wearing a big fake smile throughout the birthday party, laughed too loud, made too many dumb jokes and basically tried to put a happy face on a really sad situation. “I did not sign up for the public scrutiny of everything,” When the birthday party got underway, Jon, who had spent the entire episode apparently locked in his bedroom avoiding the cameras and his wife, rolled up in his flashy white sports car, looking very Hollywood with his expensive Ray Bans. He and Kate barely spoke a word to each other and basically never looked at each other.
When the family posed for a group photo, Kate’s heartbreaking voiceover said it all: that she was afraid this would be their last family photo together.
Meanwhile, paparazzi lurk around every corner, licking their chops at the magazine covers they’re shooting.
Here are some of my observations about Jon and Kate and their relationship.
Kate has a bad habit of being way too controlling of Jon and the way he deals with the kids. She is a neat-freak and doesn’t seem to care whom she alienates in her quest to control situations. BUT, I don’t think she is as evil as many other bloggers and commentators play her up to be. She has her own insecurities that make her act the way she does.
I think she has a real complex about certain things such as her intelligence and her importance. She is constantly belittling Jon for his choices of words, grammar, etc. I think this stems from her desire to be viewed as extremely intelligent. And her attempts to be in control of everything seem like ways she makes herself feel more important. Or maybe, she just thinks nobody is quite as smart as she is and that she deserves to be in charge of everything… I’m no psychologist.
Jon may be sick of the way his wife treats him but after having watched the show for two years, it seems obvious to me that he just rolls over and lets her treat him however she wants. He never stands up for himself. Now, it seems like he’s completely over the whole situation. He hates being on television, hates the cameras constantly in his face, resents his controlling wife, is tired of having to be responsible for so many people and wishes he could go back to being just your average IT guy with 8 kids.
But now, the two seem addicted to the spoils of being stars. The money, the attention, the fans, the swag, the vacations, you name it.
The good news is that I think the show could go on forever whether they are together or not. With TLC’s bizarre lineup of shows featuring little people, families with way too many kids, mystery diseases and women who didn’t know they were pregnant, a show featuring a divorced couple juggling 8 kids would fit right in.
But the viewers might not be so happy. It’s been a show that people could safely watch with their children, complete with cute kid characters, lots of good family scenes sprinkled with some moral and biblical messages. If Jon and Kate split up, will parents be as happy letting their children tune in?
And, in the long run, is continuing the show really the best thing for the 8? Those kids don’t know life without cameras in their faces.
Jon and Kate say that they only have their children’s best interests at heart. Would the kids be better off with poorer parents but freedom from paparazzi hounds? And could the marriage have survived if camera crews weren’t constantly shooting their marital problems in high definition?
Jo Bros cause Mexico riot
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru has called out riot police to control hundreds of young girls swarming the hotel where the Jonas Brothers are staying. Thousands of other fans have lined up for the group’s world tour premiere.
The boy band is performing two concerts in Lima because a Mexico concert was postponed due to the swine flu epidemic. The first Lima concert sold out in hours and 60,000 people are expected for each show on Monday and Tuesday.
Police blocked off traffic on Sunday as more than 1,000 fans met Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas at the oceanfront Marriot Hotel. Dozens of girls slept in a park outside the hotel to be close to their idols.
“What a great way to start off our new world tour,” the group posted on its Web site on Monday.
A Prom to Remember
Kayla couldn’t stop looking in the three-way lighted makeup mirror on the table in front of her. Her hair was curled and swept into a fancy up-do and she was wearing makeup — a rarity for the 13-year-old blonde. But it was a special day for Kayla. She was getting ready for prom.
Christian, 12, couldn’t lift his head to look in a mirror and admire his tuxedo T-shirt and the top hat his mom placed on his head, but everyone told him how handsome he looked and his big smile told them he knew it. Regina Shatz, his mother, stayed right by his side. “I’m his date,” she joked.
Kayla and Christian were two of the 30 kids ages 10 to 18 at The Children’s Center treated to a special prom May 7.
“I think it’s just so much fun watching them get ready, just getting pampered. They love that feeling of being taken care of and being pretty,” said Heather Williams, Special Education Teacher.
For these kids, prom is something they might not have otherwise had a chance to experience. They all have severe medical and physical disabilities and need the intensive care provided to them at The Children’s Center. Kayla has cerebral palsy, a result of being born prematurely at 25 weeks gestation, weighing only 1 lb., 7 oz. She can’t talk and moves around in a motorized wheelchair but she is bright, outgoing and laughs easily.
Christian was born with muscular dystrophy. For the first ten years of his life, it was just him and his single mother. Eventually, Christian got too big for Shatz to care for. She couldn’t lift him to bathe and dress him. He has lived at The Children’s Center for a year and three months.
“It’s awesome,” Shatz said. “This prom is something I never thought Chris could participate in. This place is a good thing in every possible way.”
At The Children’s Center, staff members share a credo: “We don’t focus on what they can’t do. We focus on what they can do.”
This was the fourth prom The Children’s Center has held for it’s residents.
The children were dressed up and pampered by hairstylists and make up artists. Corsages were slipped around wrists, pinned to dresses or clipped to wheelchairs. The girls wore bright feather boas and the boys wore top hats. Then, one by one, they were wheeled into the prom, where they were greeted like celebrities with flashing cameras and cheers. A large classroom at The Children’s Center was decorated for the theme “A Walk Down Broadway” with scenes of the New York City skyline built by a group of Yukon High School students.
“Besides having fun, the students got to practice their social, cognitive and communications skills, all the things they work on in class and in therapies. They actively used the skills in a different setting when they interacted with the students from Yukon High School,” said Mindy Cash, special education teacher.
The Yukon students were assigned as “buddies” to the children and as the prom got started, the students led their buddies around to the various interactive booths set up to stimulate the kids. The kids tried on wigs, clothes and oversized sunglasses at a dress up station and watched themselves on a big screen TV in a “movie set.” Other stations were geared toward stimulating the kids’ senses.
But the party really got started when it was time to dance. The buddies wheeled their kids around the room, dancing them around to “The Chicken Dance,” “The Locomotion,” a lady’s choice dance to “At Last” and each child took a turn finding out how low they could go in “Limbo Rock.”
“Just to get to experience something that kids their age are getting to experience. Kids their age are going to dances so for them to get to have that experience is really neat,” Williams said.
After the dancing, a prom king and queen were announced — Kayla, the queen and Billy, 17, the king.
We have prison rodeo, they have prison dance team.
Here’s something completely different. The 1500+ prison inmates at Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu, Phillipines participate in a dance rehabilitation program, as do at least 7 other Phillipines prisons. What a concept! Can you imagine if we implemented a program like this in American prisons? YouTube has many videos of these guys dancing to songs that vary from “Soulja Boy” to “Thriller” to “I Need a Hero.”
Apparently, they perform for audiences of family and community members. At one performance, the announcer introduced “I Need A Hero” as a tribute to the peace makers throughout history.
“To highlight the art of dance as a non-violent approach to rehabilitation and to emphasize that the inmates, too, have learned to love peace as a lifestyle…”
W&M breaks simultaneous ‘Thriller’ dance record
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — In what the organizer jokingly calls a case of his “Michael Jackson obsession gone wrong,” a group of College of William & Mary students has won the world record for most people to dance to the singer’s “Thriller” simultaneously in one place.
AP- In what the organizer jokin
The 242-person routine was organized by longtime Jackson fan Kevin Dua, who was notified Friday by Guinness World Records of the accomplishment. The previous record was 147 people in an event held last summer at a British secondary school.
Dua, 21, spent the better part of the school year orchestrating the event, which was held April 19 at the college in Williamsburg, in eastern Virginia.
“I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was 5 years old. It was something I grew up around,” Dua said Friday in a telephone interview.
Dua also was inspired by Thrill the World, an event held each October in which groups of “Thriller” fans gather around the world to recreate the 1983 video, a horror-film spoof featuring Jackson dancing among a troupe of zombies. Last year’s event included more than 4,100 dancers in 10 nations, according to the Thrill the World event Web site.
Dua recruited about nine friends to serve as trainers and to lead participants in the 6-minute dance routine. The event was thoroughly documented to Guinness specifications, including numerous still photos and video from multiple angles so “they were officially able to examine whether everyone was performing the entire dance routine correctly. Everyone did.”
Except for the group leaders, all dancers learned their steps in about two hours, Dua said.
Dua, an Alexandria, Va., native who is graduating this weekend with a history degree, said the best part of the event was that it gave a diverse group of people — most of them weren’t even born when “Thriller” debuted — the opportunity to share an experience and have some fun.
He plans to donate his official Guinness certificate to the college.
Life after Idol
The morning after being voted off America’s most popular reality show, Milwaukee’s Danny Gokey was already planning his next steps — and they don’t involve his music.
“During this competition, I have not really put my hands into Sophia’s Heart Foundation,” the 29-year-old “American Idol” finalist said in a telephone conference with reporters Thursday. “Right off the bat, I’m gonna call my team, we’re gonna start having meetings. I want to define our goals.
“This foundation means so much to me — it is the legacy of my wife and myself here on the Earth,” he said. “I have a lot of open doors, and I’m going to walk through those doors.”
Gokey set up the foundation — www.sophiasheart.org — last year in memory of his wife, Sophia, who died last summer during heart surgery. His goal for the organization is broad, and he sees his music and even a possible line of eyeglasses as supporting the group.
While Gokey has yet to sign a record deal, radio programming professionals suggest he could find success as an adult contemporary artist. So far, though, he’s not concentrating on commercial success.
In the conference call Thursday, in which reporters were interested in his opinions on “Idol’s” final two, Adam Lambert and Kris Allen, and on reliving the screech that ended his performance of “Dream On” last week, Gokey emphasized the foundation as the focus of his future.
“The dream that I have inside my music is to revolutionize the culture, to change people’s hearts,” he said. “I see … opening up concerts with possibly following the story of a young kid, whose father was maybe killed in a gang and his mother is a drug addict and kind of watching his life … and how Sophia’s Heart Foundation has impacted that kid.
“I want to entertain people, but at the same time … I want them to come out of their zone for a bit, and out of their problems, and have a perspective of looking at someone else’s problems and watching people overcoming.”
But what kind of music is Danny Gokey’s music?
After all, his fans know him mainly from the songs he sang within the genres that formed each week’s lineup on “Idol.”
“I want to mix a very soulful album with nice beats, like nice R&B beats, beats that get people’s heads moving, and mix it with a hint of a Latin vibe,” he said. “I was with my wife for 12 years, and she was Puerto Rican, and I’m so into salsa and merengue and all the Spanish music. And I want to mix it in one arena — that’s what I want to do.”
At first glance, the devoutly Christian singer might seem a prime candidate to launch a career in contemporary Christian music. But after making the first group of finalists in Fox’s singing competition, he seemed to put the kibosh on that.
“I can just be a Christian who sings mainstream music instead of having to be a Christian who has to somehow just sing Christian music,” he said.
So where does Gokey’s style take him in the music business?
After the infamous “final note” on Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” and with his nice-guy image, he’s not likely to become a hard-rocker. And at 29, he’s a bit old to reach the teen audience.
But the folks who program Milwaukee’s music stations see a few places where Gokey could work his way up the charts, with airplay driving music sales.
“I have no doubt that at the time Danny releases his music, a pop song, I feel like it would definitely end up on our playlist,” said Tony Lorino, music director at WMYX-FM, which plays the adult contemporary format Gokey’s likely to find a home in.
Lennon Exhibit Opens
AP- A new John Lennon exhibit is particularly emotional for his widow, Yoko Ono. Besides Lennon’s guitars, letters and other personal effects, it also includes a paper bag containing the bloody clothes from the night he was shot to death.
Ono received the items from the medical examiner in December 1980, when the former Beatle was gunned down in New York City at age 40.
“It was hard to include,” Ono said. “And I thought it might be criticized as well.”
But ultimately, Ono thought it was important to let people see the effects of gun violence.
The Lennon items are part of a new exhibit that will launch Tuesday at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex. “John Lennon: The New York Years” includes Lennon’s famous New York City T-shirt, his upright piano from his Dakota apartment, and a posthumous 1981 Grammy Award for the couple’s album “Double Fantasy.”
“I know it’s a kind of a sad and very poignant kind of paradox I think that he loved this place so much and this is where he was killed,” she said in an interview after a news conference for the exhibit.
There are also letters documenting Lennon’s long-fought battle against deportation in the early 1970s, both from the government and supporters. Glass cases also contain a dozen or so handwritten lyrics.
Ono says Lennon’s death still haunts her nearly 30 years later: “I still get affected by it.”
“If it (his death) was a slow a process we could have talked about it or something,” she added, holding back tears.
The exhibit will be on display throughout 2009.
