1.28.15 Adam News and Info, Paris Reviews

Thanks Junior. Thanks to everyone for coming out today. Thanks to everyone that helped organize this fund raiser and the toy drive. I’m still not sure who the Stunnas are and what they do exactly but thanks to them as well.

First of all - according to the agenda I’m scheduled to talk for a half an hour. I’m certain if that were the case everyone would be shuffling over to the Pink Elephant by 5 after and open a tab and continue to watch the game. So I’ll try not to bore you to death.

So hello my name is Eber Lambert. The only reason I am up here is that my ex-wife and I raised two sons: Adam Lambert the singer trying to break into the top 40 and Neil Lambert the politically outraged writer trying to break into media. We did all this in a bizarre corner of the world known as North County Suburban San Diego.

Now one thing I’m well aware of is that many of you are saying to yourself not only who the hell is this guy. But who the hell is Adam Lambert. Which is understandable. I still am surprised at the variation in responses by the general public.

During jury duty selection last summer, I was up for the role of prospective juror #5. I was answering the list of questions they give you which included identifying family members and occupations. I said I have two sons, one an entertainer in LA and one unemployed in NYC. The lawyer made me clarify that the description entertainer in this case meant singer. The Judge interrupted and asked if I was Adam Lambert’s dad which surprised not only me but the poor defense lawyer doing the questioning who clearly had absolutely no clue who Adam Lambert was.

So it goes from the extreme of me being incredulously recognized at the gas station as a result of my amassed total of 38secs on national television to people saying whats American Idol?

But most people at least know about American Idol. Though if you are like I was a little over a year ago, you might not know what it is. When Adam called me in sept 08 and told me he had to quit his job to go on American Idol my response was “youre gonna quit your job to go on a game show?”.

My prime time TV viewing tappered off to nearly zero somewhere around 2001. He explained that it was the biggest show on TV and that if he did well he would start making money 9 months later. To which I responded …”How exactly do you plan to live without income for 9 months?” As you can imagine as father-son phone conversations go, this one went down hill quickly. But it all worked out.

But if Adam wasn’t my son, its safe to say I would be among those of you out there looking at each other saying who the hell is this guy and I certainly wouldn’t be the guy up here explaining to you why I’m the guy up here.

Theres some of you that may not have heard about Adam until the recent fiasco with the American Music Awards. And if you are not up on what happened at the AMAs a few weeks ago allow me to give you a brief run down.

Apparently in addition to the Grammys, the Billboard music awards, the People Choice Awards and the MTV music awards there is a need for something called the American Music awards. And after 3hours of primetime televised performances, most with suggestive, occasionally bleeped out lyrics, accompanied by racy and scantily clad choreography, crotch grabbing, all sorts of variants of dry humping, smashing whiskey bottles on a piano, throwing a mic stand thru a plate glass window then lighting another piano on fire, it’s a family show.

Adam closed the show with a performance that included Adam briefly pulling a male dancers face into his crotch , fondling several female dancers and french kissing his male bass player. As you might expect this created a minor media firestorm for the next few weeks.

Popular music and choreography has been focusing on sex for along time, describing it in detail, alluding to it, euphemizing it and simulating sex for 40 years but apparently televising a man pulling another mans head to his crotch for a few seconds and kissing another man is a serious transgression in the sordid world of pop music.

Kids might be watching people say. There was an FCC obscenity complaint filed by a conservative east coast religious group. ABC cancelled scheduled appearances of Adam on several other shows.

It amazes me in 2009 how much concern we have to exposing kids to sex and sexuality even in its reasonably benign forms.
Even in positive forms. That’s not to say any of what happened at the AMAs was either benign or particularly positively displayed. Or for that matter in particularly good taste. Everyone has an opinion here.

Yet violence in its various forms, most far from benign, has long been accepted on prime time television, movies and video games. Eight of the top ten video games are rated as very violent. If Adam had pulled out a toy gun and simulated blowing the dancer away, there wouldn’t have been so much as a peep in the media the next day.

Some would respond that violence on TV and in video games doesn’t make kids violent or accepting of violence – a dubious argument considering the millions of advertising dollars spent drilling jingles and corporate catch phrases into our subconscious- but if that is true,if violence on TV doesnt have a major negative affect , then whats the big deal with kids seeing sex and sexuality portrayed on TV?

Just to assure you I’m not going off on a rant, this does tie directly into the event here tonight. When Junior first approached me about speaking here. He explained that the event was made up of various SD sports groups , all culturally diverse organizations, and connected with the Toys for Kids drive from the Gay Lesbian Center/Imperial Court. All brought together with the goal : Bring some holiday cheer to less fortunate kids and raise money for a charter school serving for kids from Low Income families. He didn’t even have to guilt me that much. How can you say no to supporting something like this? Here I thought when he showed up at the front door he was going to b**** about me always stealing his parking spot. I agreed and he gave me the flyer. Version 1 of about 7 I think. Junior is nothing if not prolific.

But then a couple days later he called explaining that the school was concern about an affiliation with the Gay Lesbian Center and that may cause problems with the board.. The school was fine with the donation but not the affiliation. So the next version of the flyer had to have all mention of the gay and lesbian center removed.

This is where our society is right now. Here you have a Gay & Lesbian organization doing some very cool charitable efforts. Contributing to the community in the most positive way imaginable. Supporting schools. You cannot get more community oriented than that. Many associated with the Gay and Lesbian organization are parents themselves. But the stigma still exists.

My hope is that as we go into 2010 and leave this decade we don’t have a name for yet… what is it the ones? The 0’es, the ands?? Whatever we decide to call it, hopefully going forward we’ll see this latest version of instituted bigotry continue to fade away.

And fortunately another school came along, Memorial Prep School in Barrio Logan, they welcome the support of the Gay Lesbian Center and all of the other organizations represented here tonight. And the kids at Memorial will benefit in more ways than one.

So Junior wanted me to talk a little about raising Adam and Neil. This brings us to another irony. Here I am talking about my kids to the members of SD American Football league the SD Tennis Federation and SD Hoops league when the only family members ever interested in sports were me and a yellow lab named Maggie.

Maggie was a huge fan of tennis balls. I use to play basketball at work a few days a week back in the 80s but only because I was usually needed in to even the teams.

But I tried to get the kids involved in the suburban sports scene. T-Ball, Soccer. I believe even to this day I am the only parent coach on record at the Poway Kids Indoor Soccer facility that can boast back to back 0-11 seasons. I was the bad news bears coach for a group of 7and 8year olds. All the other teams had played together for months, I had all the new kids, a couple with coke bottle glasses and inhalers, one who had recently lit his family garage on fire, basically we were Team Ritalin.

This was about 20 years ago so I’m guessing by now a couple of my best players are now either nonathletic geeks in well paying desk jobs or coming up for parole somewhere. Perhaps both.

Adam made a noble attempt at sports. He understood the concept of Tball but was always happiest when sitting on the bench. Same with soccer. Although my memory of Adam playing soccer is limit to him and another kid checking out a catapillar while the rest of the kicking cluster had the ball 30 yards down field. That and his only career goal at indoor soccer where he kicked the ball and the 40lb girl playing goalie holding the ball into the net.

It counted in our house.

At the end of each introductory season I would ask him if he had fun and if he wanted to do it again. The answer was always a pleasant no not really and no. Fortunately at age 9 he discovered the sport of musical theatre.

Neil lasted a few more seasons at Tball/league and soccer. But by age of 8 gave up organized sports for Video games and Piano lessons where he accelled at both . So sports to him became regularly kicking my ass at Madden Football on Playstation. He also join the theatre group and it really became our regular family Saturday social event.

Watching sports on TV was left to me and the dog enduring a miserable existence as life long Raider fans. Although even the dog gave up on the Raiders when they signed Jeff George.

But I guess that is our jobs as parents. To expose our kids to team sports or whatever group activities and see what takes. There is that delicate balance between pushing them enough to get them across the threshold of being good enough to enjoy it and pushing them too hard, too much and creating a problem. That’s the tough part. Finding that balance.

You go to any T-ball or youth soccer game in north county and you’ll see at least one parent thats pushing way too hard. But you’ll also see hundreds doing it right. Kids building self esteem and learning teamwork and discipline. And that’s whats youth sports is all about.

The other thing that Junior asked me to touch on, and I get asked this a lot from friends, is about being the parent of a gay child. I think this is another thing that’s in transition in our society. You hear about parents freaking out when their kids come out. Some parents need various amounts of time to adjust.

I think as time goes on and there more exposure and acceptance of the gay and lesbian community, and healthy relationships. This will continue to be less of a stigma for parents. My ex Wife and I were fortunate to have a couple of gay friends that we could consult with on how to navigate the coming out process. This was our issue. We really didn’t know if we were suppose to approach him or just give him space and let him tell us when he was ready. We were told the latter.

Teenage years are angst ridden as it is, throw in the additional struggle with ones sexuality, and non supportive/understanding parents and it can be down right evil. So thats my advice to parents talk to your gay friends, if you don’t have any find some, go to places like the Gay&Lesbian center which I think my ex-wife did at one point. But also trust your instincts. Realize its ok. That its all about love. And love is never a bad thing. Especially in this world.

Any parents of kids that are coming out as hard right conservative Republicans. I got nothing. You have my complete and total sympathy. I hear there been some success with deprogramming centers but its hit and miss…Its tragic really.

By the time Adam was around 14 I was pretty sure he was going to be batting left - just trying to stay with tonights sports theme. Actually I confirmed this when I discovered he was going to some gay porn sites on the family computer. That history icon can be a double edge sword.

When I told Leila, she thought maybe he might have just been curious until I explained to her that there isnt a heterosexual 14yo male on the planet that would surf thru gay porn for 2 hours. Especially with a sea of hetero porn just a few mouse clicks away.

So I delicately explained to Adam that it was ok to be curious but to be careful that his little brother didn’t find out and showed him how to clear the history. Neil and Adam were in the final few years of all out brotherly warfare and did not get along at all. I spent much of the mid 90s breaking up fights around the house. I figured an 11 year old totally outsized by his older brother with the gay bomb suddenly added to his arsenal could get pretty ugly.

A few years later Neil matured and understood and we all patiently waited together for Adam to come out. When he finally did come out at 19 I got big kudos from him for the Porn incident which I had all but forgotten but clearly he hadnt. And although he still went thru his struggle with sexuality, there was this never again spoken assurance that whereever he ended up, I would be ok with it.

With Neil it wasn’t sexuality, it was navigating through struggles with peer pressure and drug and alcohol use. On this one as a parent you toe the line of being credible and understanding and setting limits vs just being a dick, punishing and lecturing. Then going downstairs and having a beer or a few glasses of wine and shrugging off the hypocrisy.The trick here was not to bulls*** him. Kids can always see through bulls***.

For me Neil’s issues were much harder than Adams sexuality. Adam in High School was a piece of cake when it came to drugs since his clique was mostly Morman girls from the Chorus and Drama club. Although thank god for his orientation because some of those morman girls were got pretty wild their senior year.

And this comes back to the sports thing. And whether its sports, or art and drama clubs, music groups or whatever the group activity outside the classroom is. There needs to be a positive peer team function to build socialization and acceptance, tolerance and understanding of other people.

And this why its really scary that school budgets are pinched for whatever the reason and that these programs are getting cut.
Last summer when Adam was on tour , he had fans sending him clothes and jewelry, some of this stuff was pretty expensive. Fortunately he hooked up with an organization called Donorschoose.org whose charter is to raise funds and get donations to sustain art programs in underfunded schools. He was really excited about that and his fans latched on to it as well and in a few months raised a quarter million for the organization. I know he’s very proud of that.

I think sports in schools is going to be in the same boat soon but fortunately there is a lot of independent sports organizations available for families. Unfortunately not for all families.

When Junior told me that the folks here tonight were going to be from Sports organizations and the Gay Lesbian Center. At first I thought it was an odd combination. But when I thought about it I thought that actually it’s a natural pairing. Sports in our culture has always been on the leading edge of civil rights.

In the early days of baseball and football, this is where bigotry against certain religions and nationalities were diminished, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans segregated in cities came together is sports. In the 50s and 60s pro sports integrated African American and Hispanic players and later Asian players. I read somewhere that there are currently 1700 players and field coaching personnel in the NFL. Which means just from the population that there is easily 100-150 gay men in the NFL if not much more. Yet no openly gay players exist. You could do the same math with the NBA or MLB.

Because as you all know, in sports it doesn’t matter what race or ethnicity you are, your religion, your orientation usually not even your gender, you just need to show up and bring it. That’s all that matters. Play the game.

So I think and hope in the next few years we’ll see pro sports once again be a pace setter in civil rights. This would be pretty cool.

And it would take some of the burden off of the open gay pop singers in the world.

Before Junior yanks me off the stage I just want to put in a quick plug for any creative writers or poets in the crowd. I want to plug an open mic that I have down at Rebeccas on the third tues of every month at 7-9 and for those who like flash fiction – 3 minute short stories read by the author I recommend checking out DimeStories.org run by my highly significant other Amy Wallen who also hosts a prose open mic the first Friday of every month at the Ruby Room in Hillcrest.

Thank you for listening and thanks for supporting the kids and Memorial prep.

Eber Lambert posted the FULL TEXT of his speech here:
www.adamofficial.com/us/blog/true-north-tavern-12132009