Michael Phelps' mom: My son has great values

Phelps spoke heat shrink tubing with http://www.sz-yunlin.com/enindex.asp CNN's Larry King about her new book, a recent tabloid report detailing her son's partying ways and the infamous bong photo.
The following is an edited version of the transcript.
Larry King: You have this terrific new book coming. If I do say so myself, it's inspiring. Yet (Thursday's) lead story in the "New York Daily News" gate crasher column -- I don't know who writes that -- "tsk, tsk," it says, "Michael Phelps, partying your face off in public is not the way to reclaim your good guy image. The Olympian was been laying relatively low since his bong smoking scandal in January was out in full force Tuesday night at New York City hot spot Marquis" -- I think is the name -- "Michael was definitely having a good time, an eyewitness tells us, drinking straight from a bottle of Grey Goose. When the DJ started playing MIA's 'Paper Planes,' he got up started dancing like a loon and kept on yelling 'shots.' Phelps definitely had enough alcohol on hand for several four round. He ordered four bottles of Vodka."
Is this tough for a mother? How do you react?
Debbie Phelps: It's one thing that I learn at a very early age is I don't get caught up in gossip columns. I know my son. He has great values, lots of integrity. That's what I think about that.
King: Did you talk to him about this?
Phelps: I always talk to Michael. I talk to Michael every day. We talked about training today and things of that nature.
King: But it would be normal to say, what happened, wouldn't it? I would say that to my son.
Phelps: We give support. We give guidance. We give an ear to listen. And, again, I don't get caught up in gossip.
King: Therefore, you don't believe it? I just want to establish what your feelings are.
Phelps: I don't get caught up in gossip, Mr. King.
King: What about something that wasn't gossip, the picture with the bong thing. It was a picture.
Phelps: It's a picture, that's true. But, you know, a picture can say many things. It has many words. It has many meanings. It has many visualizations that you want to think. It depends on the person who is looking at that picture.
You know, as a mom, I support all three of my children. I believe that no matter who you are in this country, in this world, there are obstacles that get into your life. I call them speed bumps in school sometimes. I heard someone say lightning bolts. That's another term for that.
But, you know, how do we grow? How do we learn? You raise a child through 18. You send them off to college. You give them the roots. You give them the foundation to be a strong, young man, a strong lady. Life throws curve balls to you sometimes. How do you handle that curve ball?
King: Michael is 23. That's an adult. He's an adult.
Phelps: A young adult.
King: Young adult. So one could say it's his life. He chooses to lead it. As our parent, we do our best to guide them, but 23 is 23. Do you view him still as a kid?
Phelps: I view my 31-year-old daughter as a kid sometimes. You know, I look at each of my children independently and individually of themselves. They have many strong values, strong points, professionalism. I'm just very proud of all three of them and everything they've done.
King: Do you think these kind of stories -- and you don't pay attention to them -- hurt your book?
Phelps: I was asked many times and told many times, "Debbie, you need to write a book some day." As an educator, I'm thinking, I would really like to do that. It became a personal goal of mine to be able to publish a book, not knowing exactly what it was going to be.
Was it going to be my life? Was it going to be parenting? Was it going to be swimming? Was it just going to be motivational and inspirational? When I take a look at the book I was able to write, I have great pride in that book because it shows other people, every woman, but not even women -- men can read this book also -- the inspiration and motivation of life.
King: The question is, "Do you think these kind of stories might hurt the chance of people buying the book, which is what you want?"
Phelps: People are going to have to make that decision.
King: Do you think it might?
Phelps: Life is life. I do want to say, though, in reference to the Beijing Olympics, we, as a family, I think, made a great impression on the world, on the United States. My son has great love for me. It's a great bonding relationship. Families are very important.
King: Is he still a role model, do you think?
Phelps: You know, when I think of the word role model, I'll go back to me being a little girl. It was my mom and my dad. They were my role models when I was growing up. When I hear that role model in a sentence with my son, what I think about with Michael is what he does with and for children. It might be things people don't even know of -- his association with the Boys and Girls Club. For years, he has done that (and) his association with Make A Wish.
He touches kids' lives. So if an individual, wherever they may be, may select my son as a role model, I say that my son has strong values. I say he's a human being. And I say that from obstacles that get in people's ways -- we all have them, Mr. King, and you know that -- what do you learn from them and how do you rise above the occasion?

New Kids on the Block take fans back

Twenty years ago, when the New Kids heat shrink tubing on The Block were wearing their hair almost as high as their fame, the music business was a vastly different animal. There was no "American Idol." No such thing as a download, legal or otherwise. People collected posters, not ringtones.
But it appears something has carried over from that distant era. Something loud, something jumpy, something ready to roar: Blockheads (or to those not familiar with boy band lingo, fans of New Kids on the Block).
As a "look who's laughing now" to those who thought reuniting for a new album and tour was a ridiculous idea, the group's past heat shrink tubing followers came out in droves last year to see Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood give some new choreography a whirl at concert venues around the world.
"I think a special thing happened out there on the road," Wahlberg said. "I think the fans came back not quite knowing what to expect but determined to have a great time. And we came back not quite knowing what to expect [but] determined to have a great time and determined to put on a great show. And I think we all got there and became teenagers again. It was pretty cool."So cool that the band has announced a whole new set of North American concert dates they're calling the "Full Service" tour. The 34-stop trek kicks off in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 28 and winds up in Houston, Texas, on July 18. Tickets go on sale Friday.
But before the tour, New Kids on the Block will hit the high seas -- along with boatloads of Blockheads -- for a three-day concert cruise in the Bahamas in mid-May.
"The cruise is the one area where we've completely lost our minds," Wahlberg said. "We're going to have to answer to thousands of fans on the boat. It's going to be insane."
But perhaps not as insane as things might've been if this were still the '80s. The band members -- now 40ish, and all but one of them fathers -- concede that heat shrink tubing they've mellowed considerably, and so has their 30-something female fan base.
"We didn't just go completely bonkers and stop being adults," Wahlberg said of the 2008 tour. "The fans didn't hang out in front of the hotel, singing songs for 20 hours straight. They just got hotel rooms and hung out in the lobby and met us for drinks at the bar."
Cheers to that.
New Kids on the Block recently hung out with CNN and talked about surprising the skeptics, the boy-band stigma and how the music business has changed in the 15 years since they disbanded. The following is an edited version of the interview.
CNN: What's the biggest change you've noticed in the music business?
Joey McIntyre: The music business has changed incredibly. There used to be 50 record companies. Now there's only three, and it's just getting smaller and smaller. But then again, you have the Internet, so anybody who has music can get it out there.
Jordan Knight: We also come from an era where getting on stage and performing, really honing the craft of performing on stage, was important. So lucky for us we have that background, and even though record sales are down, concert ticket sales are up, and that favors us, because that's what we mainly like to do. We like to perform.
CNN: When you left the spotlight, bands like 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys moved in and flourished. Was it difficult heat shrink tubing for you to watch them take the torch and run with it?
Donnie Wahlberg: I found no bother in other boy bands taking the spotlight for a number of reasons: A, I was not interested in that spotlight myself. B, it was their time. C, we weren't even in a band anymore. I was doing other things ...
McIntyre: It sounds like a comedy skit where we're furious over it!
Wahlberg: Yeah, like "Damn it! Why are they being so successful?"
McIntyre: "We've got to find a way to ruin it!"
Wahlberg: When we came out, there was MTV, and that was it. And there wasn't room for another band like us. ... And when we went away, the music business changed. Suddenly, there were all these different avenues and outlets. ... So you heat shrink tubing could have three, four, five boy bands, and they could all be very successful. And that was more fascinating to me than anything else.
Anybody who was as successful as those guys were -- be it Backstreet or 'N Sync -- it takes so much hard work to be successful. I can only respect [that]. We had a backlash on us, so to come out as a boy band after us and to have the perseverance to succeed and overcome a lot of doors that were closed from people hating on us ... they deserve credit for that. And we deserve credit now for coming back and overcoming hurdles that are there now for us.
CNN: What are the biggest hurdles?
Wahlberg: The whole concept of us coming back, honestly, was met with skepticism by a lot of people. ... All the record heat shrink tubing companies thought when (other boy bands) were thriving, that was the time that we should come back. But it was their time; it wasn't our time. ...
The fact that 90 percent of the people who discussed this with us thought it was crazy or thought we'd do a barnstorming tour at best, that in itself is a hurdle, because we had to walk away. We had to all make a commitment to do this. We all had things in our lives that we were doing, that we were committed to. ...
But we believed, and fortunately the fans believed and came back heat shrink tubing in bigger numbers than we ever imagined and made a lot of people look wrong. It even surprised us.
CNN: Boy bands traditionally get a bit of a hard rap, don't they? You're often dismissed as overly choreographed, a little bit cheesy.
Wahlberg: I think it's easy to criticize things that you maybe don't quite know the story on. But the reality is, we're in the music business. John Mayer might be able to play the guitar better than any of us ... but heat shrink tubing we all signed record contracts. We've all made a decision to make our career in this business. So to scoff at people because they do something different or don't do what you would do is silly.
Fortunately, we haven't really found that this time around. I think people have come to understand that maybe we're a little bit different ... a little bit more of a grass-roots band than people ever gave us credit for. We weren't picked out of thousands of people. It was a very real story, how we came together.
CNN: Which one of you has changed the most?
Knight: I don't think any of us heat shrink tubing have really changed. We've matured; we've mellowed a bit. We have more wisdom, but personality-wise, we're all the same and it's good to see. And that's what made us in the past, and that's what makes us now.