7/4

Wow. He ran for president! LINK

MSNBC: Letourneau's former 6th grade lover speaks In this ‘Today’ exclusive, Vili Fualaau talks to Matt Lauer about his relationship with the woman who was convicted of raping him Today show Updated: 11:35 a.m. ET Aug. 5, 2004 Former school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau is a free woman now after serving seven years for child rape. Now, her victim and former lover, Vili Fualaau, breaks his silence. In an exclusive interview, Letourneau's former 6th grade student and father of two of her children, talked to “Today” host Matt Lauer about what he thinks about their relationship and her release from prison. Vili Fualaau: “I've been waiting for a long time for this to happen – for her to come out. And now that I – now that she is out now, you know, I'm really excited to see her.” Matt Lauer: “There's a no contact order in effect. A lawyer on your behalf took actions to initiate, which you had to do, to remove that no contact order. So is that for the ease of Mary visiting the kids so that it won't be awkward? You won't have to leave the house when she comes over or is that because you want to now say, ‘Let's see if we can make it?’” Fualaau: “That's it. I want to see … who she is and if she's still the same person that I fell in love with. And I want to see if she feels the same way for me.” Lauer: “Do you want your children to be there for the first meeting? Is that maybe a little buffer zone?” Fualaau: “Well, I kind of want to … do it alone. And then, later we'll bring the kids in the picture.” Will there be a relationship? Lauer: “How long do you think it'll take, once you do get to see her, how long do you think it'll take for you to decide whether this has a chance to work or not?” Fualaau: “I'm hoping by the end of this month.” Lauer: “So in other words if you see her at the end of this month, you're going to give it two weeks? You're going to give it … two months? I mean do you think you'll know kind of quickly if you two have grown apart and there's no chance for getting back together?” Fualaau: “I mean we left on awkward terms. So…” Lauer: “That's a…” Fualaau: “I mean I can still remember that … night. You know that we were spotted at in front of her friend's house and taken and separated. I can still remember that night like [the] back of my hand.” Lauer: “And that was the last time you saw her?” Fualaau: “Yeah. In fact I can remember word for word and – what we did and what we were doing.” Lauer: “What were the last words you said to her?” Fualaau: “What was the last word that I said to her? ‘I love you.’” Lauer: “And she said?” Fualaau: “And she said ‘shut up,’ I'm not leaving.” What Mary Kay saw in Vili Lauer: “When this started you were 12, she was 32. What your memories of Mary Kay Letourneau back when you were 12 or 13-years-old? What was she like?” 'What was she like? She was beautiful. I thought she was really gorgeous. I mean that was all I thought about her before anything happened.' Fualaau: “What was she like? She was beautiful. I thought she was really gorgeous. I mean that was all I thought about her before anything happened. And it things just turned out [that] we fell in love.” Lauer: “You know, Vili, that some people say, ‘He was 12-years-old, she was 32, how could they fall in love? What did they have in common?’ How do you answer that?’” Fualaau: “I ask myself that at the same time – the same thing all the time. You know, I was 12, she was 32. When I look back at the situation, I'm just like, what did she see in me? She's older than I am. She's a teacher and she's married – has a good life.” Lauer: “Four kids.” Fualaau: “And she has four kids of her own. And I’m 12. I barely even know what my future is.” Lauer: “Or who I am?” Fualaau: “Or, yeah, or who I am. And I ask myself that all the time. And I always just think, I’m not really that good looking – what's the deal here? Why does she love me or why does she say she's in love with me? And things like that.” Lauer: “She said basically you were old beyond your years, wise beyond your years – very strong, very smart and that there was an instant attraction. Is that the way you remember? That kind of instant attraction?” Fualaau: “I wouldn't say it was like that.” Lauer: “What did you two talk about? I mean when you were alone together, which was hard.” Fualaau: “Right.” Lauer: “It was hard for you two to be alone together. She was your teacher.” Fualaau: “She was my teacher.” Lauer: “What kinds of things did you talk about?” • Fualaau on being a father Aug 5: Vili Fualaau, the father of two children with his former teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, talks with "Today" host Matt Lauer about being a father of two young girls. Fualaau: “Basically we talked about anything and everything. I'm not the only person that's ever felt the feeling I felt. I mean there are a lot of people that's been in love before [and] knows what it feels like. And the people that are still in love, you know, for a long time, [like] the people that are married their whole life. And love is very strong in their marriage. It's that feeling where [you] just know. It's not like you have to work at it.” Lauer: “There was just the chemistry?” Fualaau: “It's just there and it belongs to you.” Lauer: “She went to jail for the relationship [and] she got out. And then, of course, you two got back together again. What was the hardest part for you when she went off to prison?” Fualaau: “Hardest part was being separated without choice.” Lauer: “I think you’ve described it some ways as a conspiracy against love?” Fualaau: “Yeah.” Lauer: “Was it ever?” Fualaau: “I believe sometimes, maybe it was like a punishment from God – the whole adultery thing. And also a test to see, you know, if we still love each other after seven years.” Adjusting to being a father Lauer: “Some people have told me, Vili, that over the last seven years, if it hadn't been for your kids, things might have turned out very differently for you? That you went through some very difficult times. And that your daughters were kind of what got you through it. What have they meant to you over these past seven years?” Fualaau: “At first it was really hard for me to believe I was a father – I still wanted to live out my childhood, which I've tried. But I still couldn't because it just couldn't happen.” Lauer: “You were 14 when Audrey was born, right?” Fualaau: “Right.” Lauer: “And then 15 and a half, 16 when Alexis was born?” Fualaau: “Yes.” Lauer: “That's a tough adjustment. I mean how did you deal with it?” Fualaau: “At home I write little poems about my life and how I lived it out, what gave me that strive just to keep pushing forward and every time I fall how to pick myself up. And what I did to do those kind of things.” Lauer: “Tell me about a couple of times when you fell. I mean did you have tough times when you thought, "I'm not going to make it through this." Fualaau: “Yes. I've been there more than I can count. It's just been crazy. I mean just seven years of being alone.” Dating other girls Lauer: “What do you say to people, Vili, who think it's hard to believe this is a love story? You know that there's something built into some people that say it can't work. You know I think there are probably some people who want to grab you by the coat and shake you and say, ‘Vili, it can't work, you were 12-years-old.’” Fualaau: “I've heard that so many times. There [are] people like telling me all, ‘Vili, you're very young. You're a handsome guy. There are a lot of other girls out there. Don't dwell in this relationship because it's making you sad. I hate to see you sad like this. "So, try other relationships. And try to make yourself happy.’ And I have and other relationships haven't made me happy.” Lauer: “Has it affected the way you view other women?” Fualaau: “Yes, it has.” Lauer: “In what way?” Fualaau: “Every girl or woman that I've gone out with, I've always compared Mary to them. Can they stand up to who Mary was?” Lauer: “And if they're teenagers, that's like comparing a girl to a woman which has got to be a little difficult for you. Although some people would say that's what you should be after. You should go after a girl.” Fualaau: “Right. Well, I wanted to be in love on many different levels. You know I wanted to bond with them on many different levels. And I couldn't do that with any other girl, because I constantly thought about Mary or they would constantly remind me about Mary. They would bring up the subject, ‘So how did it all start?’” Lauer: “You'd be on like the second date and they'd say, "Tell me about Mary Kay?" Fualaau: “Yeah. It [would] be like that. And sometimes it would like irritate me because I wanted to start something new. I want to see if it could work. But I guess, you know, it's just inevitable not to work.” Lauer: “You have no doubt, even as a 12 and 13-year-old, you had no doubt that this was the relationship that for you, was forever.” Fualaau: “I didn't think it would. I never really thought I could ever fall in love that young. I didn't know what the feeling was. But I could explain the feeling from [an] adrenaline rush, to the feeling that flow through my body, and the words that come out of my mouth, sometimes they sound kind of corny. But [at] same time, I didn't really care, because it was from my heart, and it's what was true. Or, what is still true.” Lauer: “You are 21-years-old now. You have two daughters, seven and five. And you've been through a lot. Was it worth it?” Fualaau: “Was it worth it? I don't know yet. There's still more to come. We have to hear her side, and whether she still loves me. So, there's still a lot more to come.”

nice download. perfect for mixing in with some Eno or other ambient.

cheers!

August 4, 2004 PUBLIC LIVES Onstage, Almost Anonymous, Despite the Name By SABRINA TAVERNISE LES PAUL began playing the guitar professionally in 1930, the same year the Chrysler Building was completed, and quickly plucked his way into musical history. A restless inventor and innovator, he was an early developer of the electric guitar, and is widely credited with creating multitrack recording, the groundbreaking technique of synchronizing separate recordings to make them sound as if they were recorded together. But Mr. Paul, who turned 89 in June, is also part of New York City culture. Every Monday, he performs two sets at the Iridium Jazz Club in Midtown. He has played weekly shows since the early 1980's, strumming old songs like "How High the Moon" and "Over the Rainbow" for audiences that are often too young to know him or the ways he made all the new songs possible. "It's probably selfish, but my whole life, what keeps me going are the people I play for," he said with his characteristic twang. "The goal is to make the people happy." Before a recent set, Mr. Paul, in a turtleneck and gray slacks, sat in the darkened club tuning an electric guitar propped on a stool. His fingers, thick like a farmer's, moved slowly on the neck, his concentration so intense that he seemed not to notice when a technician approached. He looked up with a shy, lopsided smile. Born Lester William Polfuss in 1915 to German-American parents in Waukesha, Wis., Mr. Paul says he was 5 when he persuaded a man playing the harmonica on the street to give up his instrument. Mr. Paul's mother insisted on boiling it first to sterilize it, a step that gave the harmonica a bluesy sound, he said. As a teenager, he played guitar one summer for a country music band. A few months later, a band member invited him to St. Louis to play, and Mr. Paul went off to seek his musical fortune. He arrived in New York in 1937, and began playing on an NBC radio show with Fred Waring's orchestra. He lived in an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he set up an illegal radio station and began experimenting with recording. It was a watershed era for jazz and swing in New York City, and Mr. Paul was part of it, playing with musicians like Bobby Hackett and Artie Shaw. He tasted pizza for the first time in Corona. "It seemed like the whole world was in New York, and we were in the midst of it," he said. He experimented with guitars in the late 1940's, when other innovators like Leo Fender were also developing designs for solid-body electric guitars. Mr. Paul said he had proposed a solid-body design to the Gibson company, but his idea had not been taken seriously. "They thought it was a joke," he said. All the same, Gibson named a solid-body model after Mr. Paul in the early 1950's, and it is still selling today. Though he was not the first to come up with the solid-body design, his playing and experiments with recording placed the guitar on center stage in music of the late 1950's and 60's, said John Teagle, co-author of "Fender Amps: The First 50 Years." Mr. Paul also created special effects like echo and recording at half speed. "He set the stage for a lot of electric guitar players, replacing saxophones with guitars as lead instruments," Mr. Teagle said. "He was brilliant." Shortly after World War II, Mr. Paul was given one of the first tape recorders in America, and he proceeded to develop multitrack recording. The technique profoundly influenced musicians for decades and helped push songs he recorded with his wife, Mary Ford, to the top of the pop charts in the 1950's. The music "didn't sound like a saxophone, like a piano, like a guitar," Mr. Paul said. "It sounded like all those things,'' he said. "Like an orchestra from another planet." (Ms. Ford died in 1977, and Mr. Paul has four grown children, including two sons who are musicians and sound engineers.) PLAYING has become harder over the years. Mr. Paul's right arm required extensive surgery after he was injured in a car crash in Oklahoma in the late 1940's. In later decades, arthritis slowly stiffened the fingers on both hands. By the 60's, he was no longer playing, though he did win a Grammy Award with Chet Atkins in 1977 for their country music album, "Chester and Lester." But when a doctor advised Mr. Paul to start performing again in the 1980's as a tonic, he took the challenge. He began traveling from his home in Mahwah, N.J., to New York to play once a week at the music club Fat Tuesday's. At first the task seemed daunting; he had to learn to play all over again. "Here I am saying, 'What am I going to do when I walk on the stage with no hands?' " he recalled. "I can't play anything like I got on my hit records. I can't play any of those unusual sounds." But his audiences, he said, did not seem to mind. "The people enjoyed it, and they applauded," he said. "It just went on from there." Those audiences have changed since the 1950's. More foreigners come to hear him, and few listeners seem to know just who he is. "You never know who you're playing for," he said. "Someone might come in out of the rain. Someone might have stayed an extra night in New York." Mr. Paul, in typical fashion, prefers to see that in a positive light. "It's a great challenge to entertain a person who's never heard of you."

NY Times August 2, 2004 TV REVIEW | 'GROWING UP GOTTI' John Gotti's Daughter Glares at Reality By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Whenever a notorious crime boss goes to trial, the public is faced with the old mobster versus movie script conundrum: do mafia dons model themselves on fictional characters from "The Godfather" and "Goodfellas," or do screenwriters just copy the transcripts of F.B.I. wiretaps? A new reality show on A&E begs a similar question: who came first, Victoria Gotti or Carmela Soprano? "People make a lot of stupid assumptions about me when they hear my last name," the daughter of John J. Gotti, the boss of the Gambino crime family who died in prison two years ago, says in an introductory voice-over, "like I run the mob or that I'm connected.'' Actually, most people assume she has made the most of her father's infamy; the show, "Growing Up Gotti," is just the latest in a series of Victoria Gotti mobsploitation moves. Ms. Gotti, whose ex-husband, Carmine Agnello, is in jail for racketeering and tax evasion, is hardly a tragic figure. An improbable Mediterranean blonde (she looks like Donatella Versace and dresses like Jessica Rabbit), Ms. Gotti has turned her father's crime family connections into her own thing: a Cosa Mia. Ms. Gotti has a gossip column in "The Star," has published three novels and is hoping to start her own magazine, Red Carpet, in which celebrities skip the middleman and write about their own lives. In 1996 she was included in Esquire magazine's annual list of "Women We Love." "Growing Up Gotti," is a Mob Princess version of "The Osbournes." It focuses on Ms. Gotti's life raising three loutish teenage boys on a sprawling, deliciously vulgar Long Island estate. When the camera pans the mansion's gazebos and fountains (more Neopolitan than Neoclassical) the music switches to an imitation of the "Godfather" theme. The house is filled with marble, leopard-skin throw pillows and oil portraits and framed photographs of John Gotti. (When Mona Gold, a real estate agent, comes to the house, she examines a framed picture and says politely, "He put the D in Dapper.") Ms. Gotti is a Carmela kind of domestic diva. "Don't even start," she hollers at one of her sons in the deep, flat voice perfected by the wife of the HBO crime boss Tony Soprano. Her boys all look and sound the same - like Anthony Jr. on the Sopranos - so viewers may find it hard to tell them apart. It would be easier if she could just refer to them the way Larry, the doltish Vermonter on "Newhart," used to introduce his two brothers named Darryl: this is my son Carmine, and this is my other son Carmine. The theme song, however, is perfect: Nancy Sinatra's old hit "These Boots Are Made for Walking." "Growing Up Gotti," is a one-joke novelty item, but it is at times quite funny and Ms. Gotti is an oddly compelling figure. She plays along with the mobster-mom conceit: after a bad blind date, she jokingly tells the suitor's driver, "I'll give you a thousand dollars if you take him to a ditch somewhere and roll him in." But Ms. Gotti also has a way of taking herself and the tiniest slight so seriously that she commands attention. Ms. Gotti, with a straight face, told an Associated Press reporter that she found "The Sopranos" offensive and does not watch the show. "Forget the mob stuff, it's the way the women walk around cracking gum and talking about trivial nonsense," she told the reporter. "Italian women are stunning and cultured, and they're smart.'' It seems they are also quite blunt: Ms. Gotti takes one look at Ms. Gold's décolletage and asks if her breasts are real, though she uses a more colloquial expression. In the first episode, Ms. Gotti agrees to consult a celebrity matchmaker for her column in "The Star." She is irritated when the matchmaker suggests she date a bald man, but reluctantly agrees for the sake of the story (this is the business she has chosen). When the man teasingly suggests over dinner that she is perhaps a bit spoiled, she is genuinely offended. When he tells her that she could be even more attractive by not flaunting "your attributes" so much, viewers cannot help rooting for her as she flares the Gotti family temper and storms out. "You're the kind of guy, you're kind of sure of yourself," she hisses at him, "though I don't know why." When she gets home, she hurls his bouquet of roses out the front door. Carmela or Victoria? Donatella Versace or Mercedes Ruehl in "Married to the Mob"? "Growing Up Gotti" masterfully blurs the lines.

um...she was good with children?

exactly.

After reading the Post article, I can understand the nervous bit.

The NY Post isn't the best place for news, but check this out: MARY KAY'S SECRET PRISON NOTES By GREGG OLSEN August 1, 2004 -- Seattle teacher temptress Mary Kay Letourneau teased and taunted her schoolboy lover from behind bars, sending letters to him and his family boasting of a steamy sex romp with a prison guard and her flirtations with lesbian inmates. The revelations of the bombshell letters, obtained by The Post, come only days before the blond-haired felon is due to be released after almost seven years in prison for her forbidden love affair with her 12-year-old student Vili Fualaau. Some of the more than three dozen letters were smuggled out of the Washington Corrections Center for Women in baby bottles. The former teacher, 42, also managed to sneak out at least five audio tapes to Fualaau - now 21 and the father of two children with Letourneau - that she recorded in a hushed voice under her bedcovers at night. The letters and tapes are alternately tender and violent, romantic and hateful. "I just want to be out and with you - and left alone," she writes. "To go to concerts by the sea again and hold my babies and lay in the sun ... and hear the quiet of the night and ... make love to that one person." But when she found out that Fualaau was dating other women while she was locked up, she gave him an earful in a letter sent to his older brother, Fuave. "F--- HIM, if he doesn't have more class than that ... I don't expect him to forget that he has a penis [he needs to remind her it's mine] but there are other ways ... he may as well spit in his babies' faces - and tell them 'Mommy's dead' too ... it's just not right." As a registered Level 3 sex offender, Letourneau will be subject to routine polygraphs and drug testing when she's released Wednesday. She's forbidden from making any contact with Fualaau and to date any man with minor children. Violating any of these conditions could send her back to prison. She plans to settle in an undisclosed Seattle neighborhood and begin piecing her life together again. Anne Bremner, a Seattle lawyer who spoke with the disgraced teacher in prison last week, told The Post that Letourneau is considering working as an advocate for incarcerated mothers. She'd like to re-establish closer ties with her six children, including four by her marriage to her former husband, Steve, who's since remarried and divorced - Steven, now 19; Mary Claire, 17; Nick, 12; and Jackie, 10. "She's been reflecting on her children and how they've suffered throughout this ordeal," the source said. "She wants to make things right." Letourneau's relationship with Fualaau began in 1996, when she was 34, married with four children - and the sixth-grade teacher of the 12-year-old Fualaau. After serving six months in jail when the couple's relationship was first discovered, Letourneau was locked up again when the two were found together in a parked car, violating a condition of her probation. It was this same lifetime no-contact order that Letourneau violated again and again by sending letters to Fualaau. As punishment, she was sent to segregated lockdown in the "hole" for more time than any other inmate in the institution's recent history. The only person with the ability to lift that order is Fualaau - and while he told The Post last month that he's been "imagining and thinking about what our life would be like together for a long time," he's never made an effort to approach the court - prompting furious screeds from Letourneau. "Today I heard you weren't going to court tomorrow," she said in one letter. "Why not? Did you give up? ... F--- you. Some f--king warrior. I'm fighting ... until I f--king die." When the lashing-out didn't work, Letourneau tried other approaches, promising Fualaau more sex and a new car if he would only tell the judge that he forced himself on her. Just before the bitter outburst above, she had been playing on Fualaau's emotions with breathy updates on her pregnancy with their second child, Georgia (now known as Alexis), who was born behind bars in October 1998. "I miss you too much ... Each day my body changes. My breasts are so full and round and feminine. My hair is so long ... I know I look better [than] the prettiest you've ever seen me ... My tummy is growing every day and she [our dear one] is so strong and beautiful looking - PERFECT ... If they take her from me, I will die. She's all I have." Her daughter, of course, was taken from her when she was born. Alexis, now 5, and sister Audrey, 7, have been raised by Fualaau's mom, Soona. None of these setbacks got in the way of Letourneau's grand plan, though. "We will be married," she wrote to him. "We will buy a house with our money ..." Later, in another letter: "What I see in our married world: A huge movie library ... a special library with all of the greatest pieces of art in writing ... classics [for me to read to you ... and you can stare at my legs and dream, like the first days] ... A garden where wild flowers spring up at surprising times of the year ... maybe we'll want to plant a tree each year on an anniversary ... foreign trees that represent the countries that we visit ... an olive tree after we visit Greece ... palm trees when we visit distant tropical homes ... " Signing off, she wrote "I LOVE YOU ... Big loves Big kisses Big f--ks Big sounds Big squeeze Big sigh Big missing you ... so so much. Hold on ... take me away." Yet despite the many letters and recordings, Fualaau never once replied to her. In one of the audio tapes, she says: "You are the smartest person in the world, and I'm the second smartest." Letourneau was crafty enough to realize the value of her scandalous story. "People pay big money for my autograph now," she wrote to Vili's brother, Fauve, "and new pictures are worth thousands. Don't throw away the end of my letter. You might be able to cash in on it somewhere." Letourneau described Karen Taylor, her lesbian "protector" in prison, in a letter smuggled to Vili as having "[broad] shoulders and the biggest t-tties you've ever seen in your life. They should be in the Guenus [sic] book." "I'm one of those that needs to be protected from the flaming gays here - there [sic] all over me - testing me ... girls are always fighting over each other. There's bets on who's gonna 'turn me out.'" Two former inmates who knew Letourneau in prison claim she did end up having two lesbian relationships behind bars. Aside from the lesbian games, Letourneau boasted of at least one steamy romp with a male correction officer. "I fell into some crazy spell here, and I let this guy totally come on to me," she wrote to Fuave. "I let him even touch me ... more happened that you don't need to hear about. "He's 23 years old, funny and smart and wild and strong," she continued. "I loved the way he talked about my body and all of me ... he's a f--king sexaholic and was having a fit we were having so much fun ... He was sitting on my back legs behind my butt once and giving me a back massage - then I felt this kiss on the side of my neck." Gregg Olsen is the author of "If Loving You is Wrong: The True Story of Mary Kay Letoureau," reissued last month by St. Martins Press.

I DID quote an entire AP story. And of course Dan, you realise that this ruins your credibility in both the Dan's A to Z AND the BABE thread.

Why am I not surprised that Dan gets this totally ass backward?

Cute little girl as an avatar and now this!

I wonder if dentists give free quotes? They just charge you for the visit. I got a free consultation on a possible root canal a few months ago.

Can you share?

I remember when I was in my 20's, I'd go for long periods without seeing the dentist and I'd have dreams about my teeth falling out. Just what you want to hear, eh?

WTF! A root canal? A cap?

Down for a few hours...horrible, horrible. How many dead? Did Alexander Haig assume command?

Down for a few hours...horrible, horrible.

:eye:

you must be upset with you're speling going of like that. How's this:

Whew...that was rough. I wonder if my health insurance cover's the side effects of the big O going down.

HEY!!!! I am no democrat!!! I know. It would be quite insulting.... Yet so amusing...

I thought this was going to be about record needles.

What's your point here?