Chapter 14

OK, we are up to the end of the summer of 2007. Many interesting things happened the last four months of the year, and one of the more discouraging things that happened was getting a "cease and desist" email from Brian Avnet, Josh's manager, on Septmeber 24th, 2007. This was particularly disturbing to me, after what had transpired in the summer: Lynne Malone posting as Scooby, her friend Sue invading the Pub with extreme nastiness and vulgarity, and my continued frustrations with getting banned from FOJG. I actually thought that Brian's email to me, before I clicked on it to read it, would be an APOLOGY to me for the horrible behavior of his employee Lynne and perhaps even an offer to be reinstated in FOJG--- or at least have my money refunded. To my horror, his email to me was the exact opposite of that!! Here is a thread containing Brian's email and my response to him:

EMAIL FROM BRIAN AVNET

I can't begin to describe how upset and disheartened I was by Brian's email....

But, the last few months of 2007 were VERY exciting in the Pub and good things happened, thanks to JOSH!! His new CD NOEL was released in October and sales were phenomenal... it was SO much fun to track the excitement building every week. By the end of the year, NOEL had sold over 3.7 million copies and became the number one soundscan seller of the year! Josh also became the number one artist of 2007!

Of course, I remained outspoken, and was very upset at WB with their incompetent way of handling almost EVERYTHING to do with NOEL's release and promotion. It's almost as if they didn't even WANT it to succeed! I wasn't the only one speaking up. When NOEL was released, Target stores had a special edition with a DVD, and fans in FOJG were up in arms over not even being able to FIND the CD/DVD in the stores. Fans on Josh's boards were continually upset over not getting any information, or the wrong information, from Josh's management about the different versions of NOEL available thru Josh's website. It was completely SAD to watch. It's like Josh's management and WB didn't give a damn about letting Josh's fans get timely information or about promoting the CD properly in the stores. In the meantime, Lynne Malone continued to "send me messages" at the main page of her MySpace page-- it was obvious she was reading at the Pub all the time, and getting angry at me for speaking up. Here is a thread I started about her sending me a "message":

LYNNE MALONE SENDS ME A MESSAGE

When Target's sales ads came out promoting Christmas CD's, NOEL wasn't even IN IT! It was really unbelievable. And it made me SO angry! Josh was being IGNORED once again by his own record company! Of course, since the CD is one of the most beautiful albums EVER produced, the word-of-mouth spread like wildfire. Another thing I was so frustrated about was that the media constantly credited Oprah with the huge success of NOEL, which was completely preposterous. Sure, her show probably helped sales some, but sales were already a complete phenomenon BEFORE he even went on her show! Also, she has featured other singers' Christmas albums on her show in the past, but their CD's never became the number one seller of the year, staying number one on the Billboard Chart for five consecutive weeks (surpassing Elvis's record!), like NOEL did, so when the media kept saying Josh's sales were due to Oprah, it really pissed me off! The REAL reason that Josh sold all those CD's is because of his INCREDIBLE VOICE, his AMAZING TALENT, the BRILLIANT arrangements of the songs (by Josh and David Foster), and the beautiful and sensitive way that Josh sang the songs. It is truly a MASTERPIECE!

But... alas....the end of the year became very discouraging for me. I suppose I was reflecting on everything that happened during the year, and realized that nothing had really gotten any better for me, as I had hoped. I was still banned from everything Josh, and Nay and her band of thugs were still in power over Josh's "fandom". A post by Nay, just two weeks before Christmas, was especially infuriating. It was completely rude and insulting to all of Josh's fans (in my opinion) and I was SO appalled by it that I started a thread about it here:

Message to SuperNay on December 10th

One of the WORST things to happen to me during the holidays had to do with FOJG again. Going into the holidays, I was still fighting to find out why my last account was deleted, even though I never even posted with that account. I had actually gotten a couple of responses from Wyatt at one point, saying he would look into things for me, but he apparently turned on me (probably lied to about me), and he said the reason my account was deleted was because I posted "illegal video footage", which was a damn LIE. I never did any such thing in the Pub, nor anywhere else. I put in several tickets to the support people at FOJG, but they were always put on "hold" and then never answered. In mid-November the new FOJG year was announced and GRAND promises were made to the fans all about how great the club was going to be, with lots of special things and even "direct access to Josh". (Anyone who is a member of FOJG now knows what a terrible year this last year has been there, with virtually no contests or new content posted there of any kind.) On November 22, 2007, I was thrilled to get an EMAIL from FOJG to my email address that I had used to sign up with my FIRST account in 2003. The email invited me to renew my membership! I believed that Wyatt had FINALLY done something to help me, and my account had been restored! I was celebrating! Look here:

THREAD ABOUT FOJG

Scroll down to post number 20 to see my email to Wyatt. My happiness was shortlived however. They took my payment for my membership, but I never could login with that account. My complaint tickets went unanswered. They had invited me to rejoin, took my money, and, I suppose, then had a big laugh over seeing me hurt again, when I realized that nothing had changed.

I tried to forget about it and move on. It was, after all, the holidays. And Josh was doing great and we were all enjoying many great TV appearances with Josh singing songs from NOEL. And I knew that he would soon be posting a holiday message to his fans... or at least a New Year's message. Christmas came and went and I was so sure he would post by the end of the year. When other fans expressed disappointment, I encouraged them to not give up on Josh, because he had always posted every year to his fans for either Christmas or New Years.  

But no post from Josh came.. January 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th....no post... and I continued to reflect on everything that had happened to me. I began to wonder why I was such a fool to continue trying to be optimistic and have hope and I even began to wonder why I was running a fan forum for Josh Groban.

By Jan 6th, I was so fed up with everything "Josh" I was about 98% certain that I was giving up the forum. I had lost all my enthusiasm for running the Pub, and one of the worst things to me was that Josh never posted that annual holiday message to his fans. I made this post late in the evening on Jan 6th:

My GOODBYE POST thread

At that time, as bad as I felt things were, I had no idea that soon things would get much worse... more horrifying than I ever could have imagined. Soon my cyberbullying nightmare would begin, led by Sue Witkin. As you read thru that thread note the people who posted words of kindness to me on January 7th and 8th. Beth, Keesha, PuppyMom, Andrea, IcedVanilla(Journey), GinGin ..... they would ALL eventually turn on me and join and support Sue. And to this day, I still don't know why. I don't know what I did to any of those people to make them want to go to the "dark side", and I probably will never understand it for as long as I live....

Late in the evening on January 7th, I received a cruel PM in MySpace from someone named "Ugly Betty", telling me I needed to go away. This person was so heartless that she said this in one of her PM's to me:

I do feel a little guilty, I know I shouldn't get so much joy seeing you so sad and mad most of the time, but I secretly like it.

I saved the entire PM exchange between me and Ugly Betty in this thread:

UGLY BETTY PM EXCHANGE

On January 7th, I had given up, and had even asked some close friends if they would like to take over ownership of the Pub for me.

Then an amazing thing happened.....Josh posted a beautiful message to his fans in the wee hours of the morning on January 8th!! I was stunned! A happy holidays message on January 8th?? LOL!! My faith in Josh was restored... he did care about his fans. I was so thrilled! And his post, combined with wonderful encouragement from my friends, made me decide to continue on with the Pub, and believe that 2008 would be the year in which things would finally improve-- for me, for Josh's fans, for FOJG, ...and I believed that the Pub would just get better.

How wrong I was.... how very very wrong.... because my enemies were about to begin their campaign to completely destroy me and the Pub........