the most expensive shirt i own is a New Kids on The Block shirt
I realised that I don't have an icon fabulous enough to express the extreme level of gay that was achieved by my actions on Monday night. This needs to be rectified >.>
Holy crow, I went to a show that was not only the gayest (in the good fabulous way) concert I've ever been to (please note that Pansy Division is one of my most favored bands of all time and I've gone to several dozen Queercore shows in my life) but it made me so unexpectedly happy I want to throw rainbows and glitter everywhere.
Monday samekh, her sister, and I went to a boy band concert. Not just any boy band concert, but the ultimate one in the category - an NKOTBSB concert. Just in case you're not up on the state of pop music, NKOTBSB is what you get when you combine the super groups New Kids on The Block and the Backstreet Boys to produce one mega group of epic talent and pure showmanship. We went for the lulz; we were won over by how damn good everything was.
Confession time: I have never been a boy band fan. (Unless you count the original boy band juggernaut that was The Beatles) I was too young to know who the New Kids on The Block were for the majority of their fame. I remember having New Kids on Thee Block patches as party favors at my sixth birthday party, but not knowing what it was for. In second grade an older cousin gave me a New Kids on The Block shirt that she didn't want and a classmate gave me an interview cassette of theirs that had come with a doll but her mom said she couldn't keep the cassette. That's when I started looking around and realising that everyone else knew who these guys were so I best get educated. By the end of second grade I could name them all, found out that my pal Victoria had a poster of the t-shirt I had, was always tempted to cut the rat tail off my other friend's Danny doll, came to the conclusion that the girls in my class were using flawed logic when they proclaimed that Joey was their favorite because he was the one who was closest to our age, and I had a favorite of my own - the bad boy of the group, Donnie Wahlberg.
But that was it. I never owned any of their albums, I only knew their hits because of background saturation, and the only song of theirs that I ever knew by heart, "This One's For The Children", was because our teacher made us sing it for a recital in third grade. I was raised on punk rock and my brothers all looked at me oddly when I started listening to bands like Counting Crows.
The Backstreet Boys showed up when I was starting high school, but in my school they were eclipsed by the other cultural phenomenon that broke that year - South Park. Once again I was ignorant of the boy band phenomenon going on around me. Until I got a job at the record shop and was faced with it every day. There I saw intense rivalries play out between fans of the Backstreet Boys and fans of NSYNC. I couldn't figure out why at first (to me they were both just pop groups with goofy tee shirts) and then several factors brought me around to favoring the Backstreet Boys. The main one being that my boss was a fan.
The guy who owned the shop had two young daughters who loved the Backstreet Boys. To this day I can't tell you if they decided this on their own or, after having listened to both albums put forth by the competing boy bands he declared the Backstreet Boys to be far superior and only got that CD for his daughters. ("Your choice is fish!") I wouldn't put it past him. The man was a music snob (as all record store owners are required to be) and he'd have to listen to the CD on infinite loop. I'm fairly certain that's a parenting tactic I will one day use. And the thing is he was a genuine fan of the group. He enjoyed taking his daughters to the concerts and he would play their albums when his daughters were in the store. I grew to enjoy Millennium so I was more than happy to buy a copy of it for my younger sister when she asked for one. Cause you know what? It wasn't that fucking annoying No Strings Attached album that came out and destroyed the music industry. (It's true! Look at the steady decline of CD sales and and massive increase in piracy that followed that album's release. It's Lou Pearlman's revenge.) Plus the resident bad boy in the Backstreet Boys was AJ McLean. Nuff said. (Did NSYNC even have a bad boy stereotype?) And that was pretty much it. My sister has never been a big music person so she never really got into the Backstreet Boys, she just liked some of their songs so I wasn't exposed to the album at home and at the store soon the daughters were being told they liked Hilary Duff.
So 2002 rolls around and I sit down to watch the mini-series, Band of Brothers. It's freaking epic and by the end of the first part I was in love (by the beginning of part ten I was cursing Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston for their acting as they played the slashiest couple I couldn't slash because this was based on actual guys who weren't as into each other as Damian and Ron apparently were and that would be weird dammit!) and I would eventually make everyone I knew sit down and watch it's epicness with me. Among all the sheer talent in that production was an actor who stood out. He was portraying Sgt. Lipton and his name was Donnie Wahlberg. That was the start of my ridiculous fangirling of Donnie's acting career. And it is ridiculous fangirling since I absolutely hate the Saw series, yet I've seen every one of the Saw films that Donnie was featured in. In the back of my mind I remembered that he was my favorite member of New Kids on The Block and that it was pretty funny that years later he became one of my favorite actors. It was this same thinking that led me listen to Donnie's attempts at a solo career. My sides are still hurting from laughing so hard. I kept cracking up while I was searching youtube for a video with decent audio (as there is no actual video) and I doubt the song will ever not be funny to me. The song is far too saccharine sweet for the style he's going for. Thank God he stuck with acting.
Anyway, the show was amazing. Was a little weirded out that they opened with a Coldplay song, but the staging, choreography, and seamless transitions between groups more than made up for it. At one point in the show each boy band member took a walk through the audience to a set platform. While Donnie was on his all the women around him kept smacking him on the ass. It was a little disturbing. Near the end of the show they brought out a surprise guest group to perform - Naughty by Nature! I was not expecting that combination at all. (Though a simple google search reveals that I should have) But it was awesome and prompted me to purchase what is now the most expensive shirt I own (it edged out my custom version of this shirt by about 5 dollars. Their prices have gone down a bit since 2007.) a black t-shirt that says "Naughty Kids on The Block" as modeled here by Joey McIntyre and Vin Rock. It is awesome ^.^
And Joey is also responsible for one of the best parts of the whole night. After Naughty By Nature was on the guys from the group took turns introducing each other. Like AJ introduced Donnie who turned around and introduced AJ. And each pairing had a funny few words about how awesome they think the other is and how they love working with them. (Donnie and AJ are apparently long lost twins. I agree.) So Joey slings an arm around the shoulders of Brian from Backstreet Boys and proceeds to say something like "This has been fantastic and it's been building and building up and I think that now, it's official, I think now we can officially call this a Bromance." All color and all cheer immediately left Brian's face. He was ashen. And he looked like he was doing his level best to control himself and not punch Joey in the face. Why on earth would he have that reaction? Well Brian is a Jesus freak. Not in the cool way that Moby's a big fan of J.C., but in in the really obnoxious way where if he'd seen that I had worn THIS shirt to the show, he would proclaim that I would burn in hell for all eternity. Because dude, girls kissing? Gross. And I completely believe that Joey just sprung that on him with no prior warning just to see how upset he could make Brian.
All this leaves me with a major problem though. I'm 27. I'm too old to become a boy band fan dammit! Even if that boy band is the ultra persuasive force that is NKOTBSB.
Holy crow, I went to a show that was not only the gayest (in the good fabulous way) concert I've ever been to (please note that Pansy Division is one of my most favored bands of all time and I've gone to several dozen Queercore shows in my life) but it made me so unexpectedly happy I want to throw rainbows and glitter everywhere.
Monday samekh, her sister, and I went to a boy band concert. Not just any boy band concert, but the ultimate one in the category - an NKOTBSB concert. Just in case you're not up on the state of pop music, NKOTBSB is what you get when you combine the super groups New Kids on The Block and the Backstreet Boys to produce one mega group of epic talent and pure showmanship. We went for the lulz; we were won over by how damn good everything was.
Confession time: I have never been a boy band fan. (Unless you count the original boy band juggernaut that was The Beatles) I was too young to know who the New Kids on The Block were for the majority of their fame. I remember having New Kids on Thee Block patches as party favors at my sixth birthday party, but not knowing what it was for. In second grade an older cousin gave me a New Kids on The Block shirt that she didn't want and a classmate gave me an interview cassette of theirs that had come with a doll but her mom said she couldn't keep the cassette. That's when I started looking around and realising that everyone else knew who these guys were so I best get educated. By the end of second grade I could name them all, found out that my pal Victoria had a poster of the t-shirt I had, was always tempted to cut the rat tail off my other friend's Danny doll, came to the conclusion that the girls in my class were using flawed logic when they proclaimed that Joey was their favorite because he was the one who was closest to our age, and I had a favorite of my own - the bad boy of the group, Donnie Wahlberg.
But that was it. I never owned any of their albums, I only knew their hits because of background saturation, and the only song of theirs that I ever knew by heart, "This One's For The Children", was because our teacher made us sing it for a recital in third grade. I was raised on punk rock and my brothers all looked at me oddly when I started listening to bands like Counting Crows.
The Backstreet Boys showed up when I was starting high school, but in my school they were eclipsed by the other cultural phenomenon that broke that year - South Park. Once again I was ignorant of the boy band phenomenon going on around me. Until I got a job at the record shop and was faced with it every day. There I saw intense rivalries play out between fans of the Backstreet Boys and fans of NSYNC. I couldn't figure out why at first (to me they were both just pop groups with goofy tee shirts) and then several factors brought me around to favoring the Backstreet Boys. The main one being that my boss was a fan.
The guy who owned the shop had two young daughters who loved the Backstreet Boys. To this day I can't tell you if they decided this on their own or, after having listened to both albums put forth by the competing boy bands he declared the Backstreet Boys to be far superior and only got that CD for his daughters. ("Your choice is fish!") I wouldn't put it past him. The man was a music snob (as all record store owners are required to be) and he'd have to listen to the CD on infinite loop. I'm fairly certain that's a parenting tactic I will one day use. And the thing is he was a genuine fan of the group. He enjoyed taking his daughters to the concerts and he would play their albums when his daughters were in the store. I grew to enjoy Millennium so I was more than happy to buy a copy of it for my younger sister when she asked for one. Cause you know what? It wasn't that fucking annoying No Strings Attached album that came out and destroyed the music industry. (It's true! Look at the steady decline of CD sales and and massive increase in piracy that followed that album's release. It's Lou Pearlman's revenge.) Plus the resident bad boy in the Backstreet Boys was AJ McLean. Nuff said. (Did NSYNC even have a bad boy stereotype?) And that was pretty much it. My sister has never been a big music person so she never really got into the Backstreet Boys, she just liked some of their songs so I wasn't exposed to the album at home and at the store soon the daughters were being told they liked Hilary Duff.
So 2002 rolls around and I sit down to watch the mini-series, Band of Brothers. It's freaking epic and by the end of the first part I was in love (by the beginning of part ten I was cursing Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston for their acting as they played the slashiest couple I couldn't slash because this was based on actual guys who weren't as into each other as Damian and Ron apparently were and that would be weird dammit!) and I would eventually make everyone I knew sit down and watch it's epicness with me. Among all the sheer talent in that production was an actor who stood out. He was portraying Sgt. Lipton and his name was Donnie Wahlberg. That was the start of my ridiculous fangirling of Donnie's acting career. And it is ridiculous fangirling since I absolutely hate the Saw series, yet I've seen every one of the Saw films that Donnie was featured in. In the back of my mind I remembered that he was my favorite member of New Kids on The Block and that it was pretty funny that years later he became one of my favorite actors. It was this same thinking that led me listen to Donnie's attempts at a solo career. My sides are still hurting from laughing so hard. I kept cracking up while I was searching youtube for a video with decent audio (as there is no actual video) and I doubt the song will ever not be funny to me. The song is far too saccharine sweet for the style he's going for. Thank God he stuck with acting.
Anyway, the show was amazing. Was a little weirded out that they opened with a Coldplay song, but the staging, choreography, and seamless transitions between groups more than made up for it. At one point in the show each boy band member took a walk through the audience to a set platform. While Donnie was on his all the women around him kept smacking him on the ass. It was a little disturbing. Near the end of the show they brought out a surprise guest group to perform - Naughty by Nature! I was not expecting that combination at all. (Though a simple google search reveals that I should have) But it was awesome and prompted me to purchase what is now the most expensive shirt I own (it edged out my custom version of this shirt by about 5 dollars. Their prices have gone down a bit since 2007.) a black t-shirt that says "Naughty Kids on The Block" as modeled here by Joey McIntyre and Vin Rock. It is awesome ^.^
And Joey is also responsible for one of the best parts of the whole night. After Naughty By Nature was on the guys from the group took turns introducing each other. Like AJ introduced Donnie who turned around and introduced AJ. And each pairing had a funny few words about how awesome they think the other is and how they love working with them. (Donnie and AJ are apparently long lost twins. I agree.) So Joey slings an arm around the shoulders of Brian from Backstreet Boys and proceeds to say something like "This has been fantastic and it's been building and building up and I think that now, it's official, I think now we can officially call this a Bromance." All color and all cheer immediately left Brian's face. He was ashen. And he looked like he was doing his level best to control himself and not punch Joey in the face. Why on earth would he have that reaction? Well Brian is a Jesus freak. Not in the cool way that Moby's a big fan of J.C., but in in the really obnoxious way where if he'd seen that I had worn THIS shirt to the show, he would proclaim that I would burn in hell for all eternity. Because dude, girls kissing? Gross. And I completely believe that Joey just sprung that on him with no prior warning just to see how upset he could make Brian.
All this leaves me with a major problem though. I'm 27. I'm too old to become a boy band fan dammit! Even if that boy band is the ultra persuasive force that is NKOTBSB.