I Will Not Say Goodbye
I am a gluton for punishment! Perhaps it was Mother’s Day yesterday. Maybe it was the Danny Gokey concert last week. I dunno. I think about Mike daily and usually it’s just remembering his face. Or the look in his eye….or something. It’s usually not “painful”…at least it’s not anymore. Those days during the first year? Yeah. That was tough.
Today was a little different. 
Recently, I discovered that my huge data storage drive was failing. For the past week I have been trying to recover precious files – basically pictures from Michaela’s birth to about January 2009 – anything that was on Mike’s computer, all of his music, his writings, everything…our tax returns. You name it. It was on this storage drive and last week I couldn’t access it. I took it to a local place and they were unable to recover anything. Finally I caved in and sent the drive to a data recovery place and today learned that IF they can do a full recovery, it will cost me $2400. The drive is in apparently pretty bad shape so today I have been dealing with these feelings that were spilling over from the weekend of just missing Mike to despair in wondering if I was losing some precious memories because I was too stupid to not back it up with redundant drives.
It begs the question…how do you put a price on your memories? As choked up about the cost I will incur in trying to salvage anything from this, I was frantically searching today for any pictures that could have been on that drive but I miraculously found elsewhere. I am happy to say that I did find some. And when I did, I was compelled to put them together in a video. The video below is a tough watch. It features the song “I Will Not Say Goodbye” by Danny Gokey – a song that he introduced the other night as the song that was written for his late wife, Sophia. This is the song that I asked him about.
I just returned from a trip to Las Vegas (which in about 2 years or so will probably be the home of Adam Lambert once his Idol star has faded). Upon walking through the airport, yesterday I was looking at magazine covers, etc and found that Adam graced the cover of Entertainment Weekly. He was also pictured on a few other covers of some other magazines and I found it very curious as to why he was on them and not the other Idol contestants? I just find it odd that in a competition, there is blatant favoritism of one contestant over another in the media. Media bias??? Mmmm… maybe. I mean, really could the media be biased? NAH!! Of course, we’ve had Simon, Paula, Randy and Kara yapping their chops to the media about how wonderful Adam is. How he’ll take the the title. He is the most wonderful contestant ever. Right? Is he really?
Gee…guest artist Katy Perry seems to think so. Is this display by an established star in hopes of swaying votes for one contestant fair? Should it be allowed? This worship is reminiscent of the adulation that was poured on to Obama last year. It’s a blind following that seems so eerily similar in its scope and display of jumping on a popularity bandwagon. Well, gosh..this is only American Idol, after all. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not going to bring the world peace or provide a cure for the common cold but there seems to be a strange belief that maybe it just might! I dunno…there’s been theories and accusations about the validity of Idol’s voting procedures and how whether one contestant is “pimped” more than the other and I usually am the first to deny that it exists because this show is one of my guilty pleasures. I just have to believe that it’s got integrity!! But after this season I am not so sure. I mean, if Adam Lambert was the Rock God the judges said he is, then why all the special stuff – dramatic entrances on stage, special blue lighting, singing last, magazine covers, etc. I mean, couldn’t he just win it on talent alone? How can the other guys compete with that?Well, they CAN’T. And that makes for a dull, predictable finale next week and a sullied reputation for Idol in my eyes.
