Clay Aiken - In The News

Move over Taylor Hicks, there’s a new kid in town — and he has ties to Smyrna.

Phil Stacey, the son of Gary and Adrell Stacey of Smyrna, recently earned one of the coveted top 24 positions on season six of Fox TV’s popular “American Idol.”

He’ll take the stage against 11 other finalists tonight in an effort to win viewers’ support en route to possible musical stardom. The show has already launched the careers of Hicks, who was last year’s winner, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, among others.

“We’ve been excited about this all along,” said Gary Stacey, who is pastor of Hendersonville Church of God. “One hundred and some thousand kids tried out and he ended up in the top 24. This has been an absolutely amazing journey.”

Getting to this point hasn’t been easy for the one-time Smyrna resident.

A sailor in the Navy, and he and his family are stationed in Jacksonville, Fla. Four months ago when Phil decided to try out for Idol he left his pregnant wife to make the trip. Since his wife, Kendra, wasn’t due to deliver the couple’s second daughter for three more weeks, Phil thought he had plenty of time to fly to Memphis, try out for the show, then make it home.

He was wrong.

After his plane landed in Memphis, his wife went into labor. Four hours later, he had a new daughter.

Phil’s mother, Adrell, a nurse at StoneCrest Medical Center in Smyrna, takes issue with the way her son has been portrayed throughout this situation, and wants to set the record straight.

“I want people to know he didn’t leave Kendra in labor,” she explained. “The way they showed it on television made it look like that’s exactly what he did. I actually flew to Florida to stay with Kendra while Phil was trying out.

“We spent that day shopping and having lunch on the beach. I told her that since I’m a nurse, tell me if she goes into labor. At about midnight she walked in and said she had been in labor for an hour. The baby came four hours later, and I got to cut the umbilical cord.

“Phil never would have left her if he knew this would happen. If they had told him, ‘If you go, you will win but your wife will give birth while you’re away.’ He would have told them to keep it. He’s a family man. He should have had plenty of time to get home, she just happened to give birth in the 72 hours he was gone. Kendra told him to stay and try out.”

Gary was with Phil in Memphis when he got the news, and he said the realization he had missed the birth had a huge impact on his son’s audition.

“The news really tore him up,” Gary said. “It really affected his performance, and it was just not up to his ability.”

That’s assuming there was an ability to begin with?

The elementary school that Clay Aiken attended in Raleigh will be holding a winter carnival next weekend. As part of the event, the school will be auctioning off some items donated by the American Idol singing star who grew up in Raleigh.

Douglas Elementary School’s Winter Carnival will take place on Saturday, February 24th from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm.

The fundraiser is sponsored by the Douglas PTA and benefitting the school, the Winter Carnival features a variety of family fun events, games, performances and a silent auction.

Items up for bid include gift baskets, original artwork, goods and services, autographs from local celebrities and sports stars - and very special items donated by Douglas alumnus Clay Aiken.

Douglas Elementary School is located at 600 Ortega Drive in North Raleigh. Call 919.881.4894 for directions or visit their web site: at:
http://douglas.wcpss.net ::

Carnivals are such fun! Have you ever been to one? What was your favorite part about it? Was Clay Aiken there?

Clay Aiken apparently thinks the tabloids do such a lousy job creating what he describes as “fabricated tales and pics involving his sex life” that he’s inviting Claymates and the rest of his fans to come up with their own lurid tales through a “Build-Your-Own-Scandal” contest on his blog.

“Come up with the most outlandish story you can that places me (either alone or with others close to me) in a really juicy, tawdry, scandalous, shameful story,” the former American Idol 2 runner-up wrote on his blog, according to MSNBC. “Then, use any photos, videos, audio clips of me that you can find along with your favorite multimedia enhancing/’doctoring’ program (like a Photoshop or a sound/video editor) to create your ‘evidence’! Maybe you have ‘pictures’ of me being ‘abducted by oversized turnips’ or ‘video’ of me ‘dancing with a three-legged gorilla.’ Be creative!”

Aiken goes on to write that in past weeks, “tabloids and gossip mongers have had their hands full coming up with new and exciting ’scandals’” for him to be a part of.

Tabloids suck.

Clay Aiken has had just about enough of the gossip rags. The “American Idol” runner-up is reportedly so incensed about what he says are fabricated tales and photos involving his sex life that he’s invited his ‘Claymates’ to do a little creative writing about him.

“It seems over the past few weeks, the tabloids and gossip mongers have had their hands full coming up with new and exciting ’scandals’ for me to be a part of. Yet, for all of their efforts to be on the ‘cutting edge’ and the forefront of bull—- journalism, it seems that some of them may be running out of ideas and resorting to recycling and re-hashing some of their older tall tales,” Aiken recently wrote on his blog. “With this in mind, we thought maybe we would try to give them a finger… er… a hand.”

Gossip rags shouldn’t be bought. Go on a boycott against tabloids!

Raleigh resident and American Idol singing sensation Clay Aiken will be appearing on a Jimmy Kimmel ABC Valentine’s Day special, according to Aiken’s website ClayAiken.com.

The special holiday show will air on Valentine’s Day February 14th on ABC and the local ABC affiliate is WTVD-Channel 11.

Kimmel and Aiken seem to enjoy a good relationship and unlike other talk show hosts, Kimmel does not press for answers to questions that Aiken has stated that he does not wish to answer publicly.

On his last show, it was evident that Kimmel enjoyed having Aiken on the program and joked with him throughout the segment.

Kimmel also had two female fans of Clay Aiken in the audience followed with cameras as they went to a tattoo shop to have Aiken’s autograph tattooed on their bodies.

The two girls were introduced to Aiken and showed him their tattoos and he seemed impressed although stunned that anyone would actually have his name tattooed permanently on their bodies.

Kimmel will now have Aiken on the program twice in just a few months as Aiken continues to be a very welcome and popular guest on the late night talk show circuit including the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Aiken is also scheduled to appear on Good Morning America on February 1st to promote UNICEF, which helps children around the world.

Anyone seen this Jimmy Kimmel show before?