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Last Friday night I had a little girls night in the pool with my friends Kristin and Becky (with Travis crashing later in the evening). Becky's birthday was on Sunday and she had gotten NKOTBSB (New Kids on the Block/Backstreet Boys) tickets for the night of her birthday. I commented that I wished I had gotten tickets to which Becky said, come with us and we'll find tickets! So that was the plan.
Now I have a long history with New Kids on the Block. It goes back to age 8 in the third grade. Obsessed might not be a strong enough word to describe how I felt about NKOTB. I had tshirts and buttons and dolls and fashion plates and even a sheets and comforter set (to this day I cannot believe my parents actually bought these). My best friend in third grade, Kristin (a different one :)), and I dressed in our NKOTB "ensembles" every Tuesday. Down to the earrings we matched (except for my Donnie stuff and her Joey stuff).
I remember when my mom surprised me with the "Remix" album one Friday after school at my friend Lindsey's house. I was so excited I dropped it and broke the tape box.
In fourth grade my mom and my friend Meredith's mom got us tickets to the show in Oklahoma City. I don't remember a lot about the show, but we had really high seats, so they were itty bitty. Nonetheless they were fabulous.
My freshman year of college during Christmas break my best friend Crystal and I decided we were old (you know we were the ripe, old age of eighteen). We found an old NKOTB concert video and proceeded to sing the entire thing over and over. We then went to Hastings and bought a few used cds.
At the end of college some friends came up from Austin and we came up with an "Austin Soundtrack" and Hangin' Tough was on that (I'm sure there were more reasons, but I don't quite remember them).
Overall New Kids on the Block were a large part of my childhood and kind of define our generation. And onto Backstreet Boys. That was high school. I hear those songs and think about Heather's house and boyfriends and tanning at Tropical Tans and TRL and Haley. All kinds of fun memories.
So that is my NKOTBSB history. Now onto the concert!
Becky and Leah picked me up around 4:30 and to Tulsa we went. I had skipped lunch so stopping for food was must. Becky asked what we wanted and I said "this may sound silly, but can we get McDonald's because the first time I saw NKOTB we got McDonald's and it was the first time I ever had fries and sweet and sour sauce." So we did!
I made a NKOTB/BSB birthday mix CD for Becky since it was her birthday and it started with this:
We rocked out to the classics to Tulsa. I learned something new about my friend Becky that day: she has a bit of road rage. :) We had to go to Owasso first to pick up there tickets and then headed to BOK. We attempted to park and ended up a little close for Becky's big ol' car, so this is how she got out:
The next step was to find me a ticket, since I didn't have one. We ended up buying a pair and then sold the other one:
Not the best seat in the world, but for not having a ticket until 10 minutes before the show I would say we did quite well! I also made friends with (aka got molested by) a lovely drunk lady next to me. When the show started it didn't matter though.
There was some band that opened the show. We missed them. Oh well. I made it to my seat and there was a video commercial with Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch from Glee. I didn't think much of it until I heard the first notes of "Sway." To say I freaked out might be an understatement. Matthew Morrison was opening. He is a beautiful, beautiful man with a beautiful voice and beautiful dance abilities. I was great at this point WITHOUT NKOTBSB. If you remember correctly he was mentioned here as one of my celebrity crushes. He was AMAZING. He's a singer, actor and dancer and his last song was called Keep on Dancing and was dedicated to his three idols: Gene Kelly, Patrick Swayze and Michael Jackson. The end of the song was a dance break where he did a Gene Kelly routine, the famous last dance from Dirty Dancing and all of MJ's classic moves. It was FABULOUS. I really could have stopped the concert there and been good, ah, but it didn't. Here is MM:
And the real show started. To say it was fabulous, wonderful, amazing, breathtaking and all of those words would be an understatement. All nine guys came out (Kevin from BSB didn't want to play...oh well). From a technical standpoint it was amazing. They performed together and then NKOTB performed, then the lights went out and BSB came out, then the lights went out and NKOTB was back. It was fabulous. The transitions were flawless. The lighting was amazing. My tech nerdness totally came out and I loved it.
So back to the men. Oh the men. I don't really care if most of the members of NKOTB are over 40, all I can say is: DAMN. Let's just say the concert was aimed towards their original fans (anywhere from age 22-40ish). There was a lot of, shall we say "sexual content" (pelvis thrusting, hips gyrating, crotch grabbing, cameras on previously mentioned crotches). It was, well, in a word: FABULOUS.
Donnie was my favorite. As I grew up and realized he was the "bad boy" I thought maybe I should have liked Jordan or Joey because they were the "cute" ones, but Donnie was it for me. Can I just say Donnie Wahlberg is the sexiest man on the planet? Yeah he is. Even Becky, who was die hard for Joey, admitted the sexiness of the Donnie.
They did all the fabulous songs from my childhood and we all danced and sang. One thing that was a bit different was the "bedazzled" nature of the clothing. I'm pretty sure several bedazzlers were killed in the making of the tour. The last song NKOTB did was Hangin' Tough (I could talk about all the songs, but I'll spare you). They came out in bedazzled Celtics jerseys (oh THAT's why I've always loved the Celtics, now I remember...I may even turn into a Red Sox fan for this). Then BSB came out in bedazzled Orlando Magic jerseys. It was amazing and I really can't say enough wonderful things about it.
At the end of the show we got back in the car (gushing about the sexiness of Donnie Wahlberg...who cares if he is almost 42, and yes after 20+ years I remembered his birthday without looking it up...wow). We then decided we needed to find the after party (because my friends that went in Dallas either ended up at the after party with Mr. Wahlberg or on his tour bus). So we drove around Tulsa looking and ended up back at the back of BOK where the buses were. Then a couple of vans pulled out and I saw a red and white trucker hat. I KNEW it was Donnie (my psychic connection from when I was eight came out, I guess). We tried to back out to follow them (yeah, we're nuts), but we lost them.
Then Twitter came into play and I started following them all and found out that he had gone to the airport to head out because he was filming the second season of Blue Bloods early the next morning. :( We were sad.
We headed back to Norman talking the entire way about the fabulous time we had just had. It was a fabulous, fabulous time and Becky is my new most favorite person in the world for making me go!
Now the goods, here are some pics from the show:
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| precious Joey |
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| Jordan singing |
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| Please, don't go, girl...you will ruin my whole world |
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| and the sexy, sexy man himself |
PS
The name for this post because one of my friends asked me how they aged and I said "like a fine, fine wine" (maybe I should have said a fine, fine, sexy wine!).
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