New Kids on the Block weekend, part 2

Jason is in Kansas for work this week, and every single time I have talked to him I have brought up New Kids on the Block. I swear I am not mentally ill (well, maybe a little in the picture--that was when we were getting ready to leave for the concert). I'm just a very happy fan.

You might recall that I had been wanting to go to that concert since the dates were announced in May. I told Jason over and over, to the point where I thought I was being annoying and ought to give it a rest, that I wanted him to get me tickets for my birthday. After August came and went with no tickets, I asked him why he hadn't gotten them for me. He said he thought I didn't want to go anymore because I had stopped talking about it. Um, no.

Of course, I had to pester him to get me my Journey diamond necklace for Christmas two years ago by saying I wanted it every single time the commercial came on until he finally took me to the store to pick it out. Why are men so slow to pick up on such obvious things? I figured out and ordered what he wanted for his birthday a month ago and it has been hidden in our spare room ever since. Further evidence that men are unobservant: the box is sitting out in plain sight. He hasn't noticed.

So anyway, the ball was back in my court for making the arrangements to go to the New Kids on the Block concert, but I could never get Jason to commit to being available. I would have loved to go with a group of girls, but I don't have any female friends in Massachusetts (sad but true) and I figured my mother wouldn't want to go. The week of the concert came, and I realized after spending some quality time with Ticketmaster that the only seats they had available were in the nosebleeds off to the side of and sort of behind the stage. No thanks. I expanded my search to Craigslist and eBay, and ended up finding a pair of face-value balcony tickets on eBay. I won them the morning of the concert and was on pins and needles all day messaging the eBay person about how I was going to get the tickets from her. My PayPal account wasn't working so I had to pay her in cash--luckily she agreed to that plan. We finally swapped cell phone numbers and I met up with her at a bar near the Garden an hour before the concert started. I was in ecstasy--I couldn't believe I had actually pulled it off!

I never thought I would be the kind of person who gets so out of control as to cry over a music group, like women did for the Beatles (as seen throughout this clip) or that one girl did for Sanjaya on American Idol. I have to admit, however, that when the video intro started, I was shaking with excitement and screaming my lungs out. When they rose up on the platform, I had tears in my eyes and wanted to jump up and down. I didn't. I do have some restraint.

Hey, at least I don't get that way about Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers. (Gag.)

I was on cloud 9 after the concert and didn't want the New Kids love to end there. So on Sunday we went shopping and I bought four of their albums: Hangin' Tough, Step By Step, Greatest Hits, and The Block (plus NSync's greatest hits album for good measure). I can't tell you how thrilled I was to find Hangin' Tough and Step By Step on CD. I had the Hangin' Tough album on tape back in the day, but I listened to it in my boombox (that I got in fifth grade!) until the two simultaneously destructed sometime during high school. That was a sad day.

I have been listening to my CDs nonstop. Their newest, The Block, is such a good album that you really have to hear it to believe it. Their music has matured with their fans--The Block is a CD for sexually active women who enjoy having a good time going out to party ("Single" and "Dirty Dancing") and staying in to, you know, party ("Click Click Click," "Stare At You" and "Lights, Camera, Action")--or at least make out. Needless to say, it's excruciating being husband-less this week, because I want to have all my favorite men in the same place.

I'm sure that with all of the songs they've heard in the past few days the cats are now huge NKOTB fans, too. All we have to do is win over Jason! You may have picked up on his dislike, nay, his disdain, for my darling New Kids. At the Garden, one of the seating attendants commented that Jason was only the second man he had seen all night. There were more than two dudes there, but he was definitely out of his element. He's not a fan of pop music, and his dream concert is Bad Religion (which I would gladly attend with him).

Despite his loathing for all things pop, he "suffered through" the New Kids concert with me (his words, said loudly while sitting on a T car full of concert-goers). He also said he would have rather stayed home and watched John McCain in the debate (we're an Obama household).

This is why I love him--he'll do something he detests to make me happy. I think I'll keep him.

I'm also keeping my New Kids albums. He might want to stay in Kansas.