I'm sorry, Sully.

And Facebook wants them to be even more so.

Just to make it all clear before I start… I’m not talking opera, or Mozart or even Dave Matthews Band. This is a post about a New Kids on the Block show. Non-believers can scoot away right now and I’ll see you later in the week.

Everyone else still with me? Good. Let’s start…

We got to the Susquehanna Bank Center about a half hour before the opening act was scheduled to hit the stage. There were actually tailgating parties. I realized 3 things: 1) NKOTB music sounds funny being blasted out of a car; 2) The lot looked like a bunch of Moms gathered outside a soccer field while their kidlets played, but with booze and 3) There are far too many minivans and SUVs in the world.

I thought I’d never see NKOTB merchandise for sale, NEW, again. We had plenty of time to pick a non-muddy spot in the center of the lawn. Target sells plain stadium seats for $7.99 each that really helped the comfort factor. We also bought an “emergency blanket” for about $2.00 to put below our towels to keep from getting wet. Good investment.

The show wasn’t sold out, so soon Event Staff came out with stacks of tickets to sit in the pavilion. Word soon leaked out that this was happening and soon the staff were swarmed. You’d have thought Oprah had shown up herself.

We passed on the seats, since our camp was set up.

The opening act was a dance troupe called the Jabbawockees. They danced to a bunch of popular songs. They were okay, but they had to know we weren’t much interested. We were focused on one group and one group only.

By this time I was literally bouncing with excitement. I’m still not a fan of their matching suits but I gotta say it worked for them.

They had a great mix of their old stuff (which really brought out the screams of glee) and their new stuff. One of those songs is called “Dirty Dancing” and they prefaced the song with the legendary clip of Patrick Swayze saying, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” We all squealed at the clip. That’s called “knowing your audience.”

I was afraid to bring our new, awesome camera, so I brought the point and shoot. I took dozens of horrible pictures, but some turned out okay. Jonathan (my fave, if you care) is behind that burst of light on the left. Then there’s Jordan, Danny (in track suit) and Donnie (baseball cap). Joe’s not in the pic, but he was at the far right. The dancing chicks are behind them.

Part of the stage power died not once, but TWICE. The first time, this happened, all the lights, audio and video screens died out for a good five minutes. The second time, it happened in the middle of Donnie’s 40-year-old voice singing “Cover Girl.” That time it was just the lights and videos that went down.

All of that gave Donnie the opportunity to freestyle a song.

“I ain’t going nowhere ’til they FIX THIS SHIT!
We ain’t going nowhere ’til they FIX THIS SHIT!
I don’t know who broke it but FIX THIS SHIT!”

And it went on and on and now I have a new song to sing at work when my computer decides to die. But hearing a venue full of women in their 30s screaming “FIX THIS SHIT!” was hysterical.

Once the power came back on, he started the song from the top again and all was good.

Then he sang “Stay With Me, Baby” which always made me smile with its bad reggae beat and Donnie’s horrible accent. Loved it to pieces.

Actually, everybody (with the exception of the venue staff who congregated behind me and mocked the entire show…very professional, guys. Someday you’ll be old too.) enjoyed everything.

I am SO glad I spent the money to go. For me, it was an evening without war and recession and job worries. Where I could be 17 again and just enjoy my guys one more time.

Closing observations:

• They sang a lot more than I remember them doing. There were audio tracks behind them but there was NO doubt that these guys were singing.
• They didn’t dance like they used to. No biggie, I can’t dance like I did 20 years ago either. But they had female backup dancers that did most of their old routines while they sang. That was a nice touch.
• Donnie, Donnie, Donnie. You were never my favorite (too “bad boy” for my squeaky clean late-teens taste) but you were last night. It’s about time the group had a true front man.
• I probably couldn’t even squeeze one bewb into the NKOTB shirts I owned when I was 16. Many ladies there managed to squeeze both bewbs AND a muffin top into 20-year-old tee shirts. Not a great look.
• One lady there created a sundress out of the NKOTB sheet set from 20 years ago. It was REALLY cute, if a bit over the top.
• NKOTB still spans all economic strata. I saw blue-collar girls next to ladies with designer sunglasses and mani/pedis.
• The collective screams of women in their 30s sound the same as the collective screams of girls in their teens.
• WM is truly an awesome guy. He came along and actually stood for half of the show while I bounced around like Tigger on crack.

I wore my new t-shirt to bed last night. I’m still wearing my dopey grin this afternoon.

1. What bugs truly freak you out?
Spiders. I hate the huge hairy looking ones. Granted, in this area of NJ I only see the skinny leggy kind, but I’d still run far and fast if I saw a hairy one. There has only been one good spider in my life, by the way.

2. Which Bugs Bunny cartoon do you remember most fondly?
As a single episode, I’ll always remember Rabbit of Seville. However, I most enjoyed the series of cartoons where Bugs tries to help his nephew with school work and makes it all up, inserting rabbits in key points in history.

3. What bugs you most about your life online?
That so many people in my real life read my blog (and my Facebook, which pulls in these entries as notes) that I can’t really vent or be honest anymore for fear I’ll hurt someone.

I’d also like to get BlogHer ads on here, but I’m always on a waiting list. I just think I’m not approved for them because I’m not a Mommy Blog. Que sera, sera, I suppose, but it seems anymore that the blogosphere is meant for 1) Moms and 2) The 20 or so people involved with the creation of Blogger, WordPress & Typepad.

I don’t want my blog to make me famous. I just want it to grow year to year. And in this Mommy Blogger world it’s not. I suppose I’ll just call this a blog “recession” and work through.

4. Which of your favorite websites seems often to be especially buggy?
I have a lot of problems with TMZ.com getting stuck on an ad and not loading the page. Yes, I read TMZ. It’s evil, but fun.

5. When were you last too sick to get out of bed?
Not since I was a kid and had someone to tell me to stay in bed. These days I have to get up to call out of work, so I’m never in bed all day.

***
Hey, guess what I’m doing tomorrow night!

I’M GOING TO THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK CONCERT!
Hope it stops raining, as we have lawn “seats”. Yes, we. WM is coming along. He’s a keeper.:)

Click the video if you want to watch it in High Quality. If you want the old (read: good) stuff, start at about 2:33 into the performance.

Donnie is hot. There, I said it.

Observations:

1. What is up with the matching outfits? They didn’t even do that back in the day.
2. Donnie completely fell back into his character. The baseball cap, the untucked shirt, the flirtatious pulling up of the shirt…very cute.
3. Poor Jon still can’t dance. But at least he didn’t have a panic attack and die. I wonder what meds they have him on.
4. I cracked up at the hootchie-soccer-mama backup dancers. I don’t think a-one of them is a day under 30.
5. I had some of the merchandise the women in the audience were sporting.
6. This is the best song they did, I suppose because it was written for their voices now. They don’t sound as good when they sing their older stuff.

Now, tickets go on sale tomorrow for their concert in Atlantic City. Tickets are $85/$125. Shit. This is not the time for me to be dropping $125 on a boy-band (man-band?) ticket. And I’ve sworn off the credit cards until they’re all paid. Maybe if my stimulus check was already here.

So as the New Kids realized they can’t do all the old dance moves like they used to and wisely re-choreographed some songs, I have to realize that I’m an adult now in a crappy economy and an uncertain time and I’m going to have to wisely let the party go on without me.

edited at 9:51 on Saturday 5/17 (Jordan’s birthday. Shut up.) to add Tickets are sold out.