My Weekend In Boston for NKOTB ~ House of Blues!!

New Kids on the Block got together for a one-night only concert to benefit Toys for Tots at the House of Blues Boston. Jillian, Glenna, Rodelyn and I had been talking about going up the night before so that we could be rested (haha) before having to stand on line for hours before the concert. So we found a hotel room across the street from the HOB called the Hotel Buckminster. Since it’s not baseball season, Fenway is also across the street, the upscale hotel was affordable, if we had more people.

So we brought in 4 other girls, then a 5^th, but we went back down to being the “8 is Enough” crew. Although as it turned out, Mother Nature had other plans, and we wound up being 7 in the hotel room. Most of the girls were coming from New Jersey, and we figured they could meet at mine and Jillian’s apartment in Connecticut on their way up to Boston so we only had to take 2 cars. Delia had to work later, so she, Rodelyn, and Vanessa ended up driving to Boston a few hours after Glenna and Eileen had met us here and we hit the road.

The road trip highlights included Glenna singing her order at Dunkin Donuts, dirty mad libs and some music video making to Funky Funky Christmas.

There was also a quick pit stop at a rest area in Massachusetts, where we took some silly pictures and I gave my car some "Full Service" before arriving in Boston!

When we got into Massachusetts, we headed to Norwood Memorial Airport where the New Kids were rehearsing. We waved to some of the girls we met at the Franklin Park Zoo (see earlier entry) and pulled into the next driveway on the right to flip around, almost hitting the truck behind me, so I let it pass and then headed to the parking lot. We pulled up to the girls and before we were able to ask them where to park, they told us that was Jon behind us! So we proceed to freak out.

They told us to park in the lot behind where they had been waiting. The girls said they didn’t know where he was going, but probably coming to rehearse. So we waved as he came back, but they weren’t opening the gate for him right away. We all stayed across the street to respect his space.

We can hear them rehearsing Coming Home, Full Service, Single and One Song. We were testing ourselves in the cold to see how long our shifts had to be outside the HOB the next day.

(GLENNA & I WANNA FLY DW AIR!)

Then Donnie makes an appearance and we all rush over to the gate. Donnie waves and starting talking with us from behind the gate. He says he doesn’t have the security code and can’t come out and we can’t get in. Glenna’s phone rings, it’s Rodeyln, but she doesn’t answer it because we are otherwise occupied. Her ringtone is Funk Funky Christmas and Donnie laughs, bobs his head along with the music. Then he says something about smelling funky and Glenna asks to smell his armpit. He at first puts up a fight, but then she wins. He raises his arm and she takes a deep breath soaking up the Donnie aroma.

He says he’ll go check with the other guys if we can come into the hangar, but rehearsal is over so it would be just to hang out. We don’t think that’s a problem. Rodelyn, Delia and Vanessa show up and we tell them what’s going on. Danny snuck out, we didn’t know it was his car leaving. Then Jon’s truck pulls out, we give him room, and he beeps his horn to say goodbye. Next comes Jordan’s Cadillac. He rolls his window down and waves to us, but we are on the wrong side of the car. Jordan looks at Delia and says, you want a kiss don’t you? And she says yeah and gives him her cheek. He then leaves. Some girl comes out of the hangar and tells us that Donnie said to meet him at the diner next door. So we all go and order food while we wait for him. My French fries were the best part part of the diner—that and they played the New Kids Christmas album. When we find out Donnie isn’t coming, the diner owner, Taso calls him a lying sack of shit.

So we head to the hotel, snow still has not arrived. I have some issues with the rotaries, again. The only thing about Boston that I do not like. We found the hotel parking garage, after front desk guy named Joel, directs us there over the phone from a few blocks away. It’s a little sketchy, but the hotel is nice. We check in and call the other girls to tell them the room number. I am super excited that the view is Fenway Fahkin’ Park!!!! (oh and the back of the House of Blues). We get settled in.

We call down for a cot because we were supposed to have a queen sized bed and two double beds, but there are 3 double beds. The guy doesn’t believe us and wanted to charge us, so he comes upstairs to measure, and agrees to give us the cot for no extra charge. Then the fun begins. We take some cute pictures with the Santa hats on that I wrote our twitter names on. Joe tweets just before 10 o’clock “My flight was cancelled, my only option is a morning flight L holding on to hope”. Our theory is that Joe has just landed safely and decided to tease us.

Delia gets ready to go to Rob’s party. We want to check out where exactly the House of Blues front door is, so Jillian offers that we walk with Delia to Cask N Flagon where Rob will be, so that we can take her coat back for her. So we check out the scene and then decide to have a drink at the bar and to spy on the party. We see Jimmy Marsh come in, he waves to us and Rodeyln gets wasted off 2 drinks.

At midnight, the snow starts flying and that’s when we decide to leave. So back at the hotel, Rodeyln and Glenna put on a show to Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas. Hilarity ensues as Rodelyn and Glenna bust some moves, including Rod hitting her head against the wall and Glenna putting Rod’s Santa hat on her, continuing the video. Glenna also put Vanessa’s boots on her hands and pretended to be a reindeer.

Jillian missed the best part of the hotel room hilarity because she was in the shower. We set up the cot, which Glenna has agreed to sleep on. She cracks a joke that it will probably fold up on her in the middle of the night. Glenna was laying on the cot and the rest of us were sitting around talking, when all of a sudden, the head end of the cot collapses and the foot side of the cot goes straight up in the air, putting Glenna in an L shape. We bust out laughing and no on can find a camera to take a picture of this moment! Glenna pushes the mattress off the cot and wheels the metal frame back to the door.

Then we decided to people watch because it was getting slippery out and they were leaving the bars drunk.People were slippin’ and slidin’ through the city streets of Beantown getting down to the Christmas beat!!! A few people took face plants as they were running across the street. Some guy smashed snow in 2 girls faces, it didn’t seem to phase them. There was someone having a difficult time pushing their friend in a wheel chair and Glenna asked if they had snow tires. We then all wondered if Jon had snow tires and chains on his wheel chair!! The an elf ran past the 6^th floor window!!!

So then we are just hanging out when @Shayminn (Kevin) calls. He’s just gotten out of work and we invite him over. So we wait and wait and then as we decide to call it a night, he calls to say that he is at the hotel.So we tell him the room number and he comes upstairs. He talks Boston to us, more hilarity ensues, you fahkin’ donkies!! We take some pictures with him. Glenna says it's going I'm showing fresh rhymes I'm throwing it's snowing outside but we ho-ho-hoing and asks Kevin to throw a fresh rhyme. He made fun of her pea sized head.

So after a lot of laughter, we decide to try and get a few hours of sleep.

(we wake up to a white out!)

In the morning Glenna, Jillian and I go downstairs to bring some of the continental breakfast up to the other girls. Glenna takes a ride on the luggage rack.

The bagels taste like they’ve been in the basement. The other girls go downstairs and get some food as well.  PS we all sound like we got wasted and smoked a few cartons of ciggys because we have no voices from all the laughter. At 9:30 Vanessa went for a smoke & we asked her to check out the HOB. She was “happy to report no crack heads waiting on line at HOB! LOL WOOO!”

Rodelyn and I switched the name on the hotel reservation and talked with the parking garage guy about the rates for the day. Then we headed to the T to go shopping for boots for Eileen. Shaymin wouldn’t drive us so we had to navigate the T, which wasn’t an easy task.

We have a nice chat with the T line customer service agent about how to get to the Prudential Center from Kenmore Square. I notice a banner of Jonathan Papelbpon, and I take a picture with it. The guy tells me I should unzip my coat to make it look like I was flashing him because of the look on his face. Being on 3 hours of sleep, and having completely lost my mind, I agree to it.

After getting off and on the T line a few times thinking we were on the wrong train, we finally make it to the Prudential Center, which has big gold balls. We try to find a good spot to take a group photo with the balls, but never worked—instead we found Santa. Glenna was caressing his beard as Rodelyn was feeling her up.  We walk through Copley Square to go to Marshalls, taking our own turn slippin’ and slidin’ through the city streets. We hop back on the T and get lunch.

Word was that the guys would be at HOB at 3pm so we raced back to the hotel room with McDonald’s scarf it down and felt really gross. While catching up on tweets, I saw a DM from 40 minutes earlier that said get to HOB now. Vanessa was downstairs smoking and asked her to head there to see what was going on. She called to say that Donnie was outside. We quickly throw boots and coats on and race down there. We get there in time to see Donnie heading into the HOB.

Jillian says that she’ll wait in the line that’s started to form while some of us go upstairs to get into our warm clothing and get ready for the night. So here is what happened from her point of view:

“Eileen agrees to wait with me. We start talking with the girls around us to figure out who the VIP people are and why didn’t we know about it. So then we hear screaming, and see Donnie.  So we head over there while trying to get Melissa and Glenna on the phone. Donnie sees Delia and Rodeyln and gives them big hugs, but his handlers are starting to rush him through the crowd so Eileen and I take a picture with him together. I am trying to get Melissa in time for Donnie to at least talk to her. They come running back, but I call them halfway there and say that he’s gone into Fenway Park. Melissa tells me that her boots are soaking wet and so are her pants legs so they turn around. Donnie comes back out of Fenway and I call Melissa, but he ducks back into the HOB and I tell them never mind.”

So Glenna and I are back at the hotel, pissed off as all hell that the Donnie girls missed Donnie!!! I pull my boots off, which were soaked, and soaked through 2 pairs of thick socks as well. We decide to try putting them in the dryer. At one point we go to see how the boots were doing and we found one on the floor and one busting out of the dryer. Apparently they thought they were done and were making a break for it. That lightens the mood and gets us a bit out of our funk. We sat around and talked waiting for everything to dry.Finally we decide to throw my jeans and socks in while I use the hair dryer on my boots. We bag up everything that has to go to the HOB including the bells, signs, gloves & hats and toys. We make our way back down around 6pm to relieve Jillian and Eileen on the line. They go into the HOB restaurant to warm up and Jillian gets fascinated with the way the bartender said Cheddah. They join us on the line after a bit and to warm up we break out Eileen’s phone and sing along to New Kids songs.

Finally the doors open at 7:30pm and some of the girls go in through the floor level while Eileen, Jillian and I head to the Mezzanine level. We can’t see a thing because of the obnoxious VIP people blocking the way.Eileen plays up her bad knees to get a chair with a good view. Jillian chats up the security lady (oh la la) over and over again to see if we can stand with Eileen. Finally we get over there, although we missed seeing Jimmy Marsh, Rob Lewis and Ernie and the Automatics L. From what we hear, Ernie and company weren’t all that great to look at anyway.

Here is the set list:

1. One Song
2. Step by Step
3. Single
4. Coming Home - First Ever Live Performance
5. Dirty Dancing
6. Full Service - w/ Johnny Gill and Ricky Bell of New Edition
7. Merry Christmas Intro
8. Funky Funky Christmas
9. Last Night I Saw Santa
10. Chestnuts Roasting
11. Oh Holy Night
12. This One’s for the Children
13. Toys for Tots Check Presentation
14. Tonight
15. Right Stuff
16. Hangin’ Tough

Some of the best parts of the concert were:

1. ~Jon signing Step 5!!!!!!!!!! (officially securing his place as #1 back in my heart) http://www.youtube.com/user/FutureMrsJonKnight#p/u/5/24WdDztGiPk
2. ~Joey missing a whole verse of Single, he says because he is so excited to be back, Donnie jokes that he’s mad because it was his part that was skipped
3. ~Coming Home live, tears are flowing http://www.youtube.com/user/FutureMrsJonKnight#p/u/4/mCmcXgzKlGA
4. ~Full Service—surprise guests New Edition come out signing http://www.youtube.com/user/FutureMrsJonKnight#p/u/1/hnkbnyqVoZc
5. ~Joe’s gold jacket—‘nuff said!! (see photo)
6. ~Jordan came out as Santa and danced like a crazy fool to Donnie singing Last Night I Saw Santa, Donnie stands on the piano, but doesn’t do anything up there.
7. ~Joe asks the crowd in his daddy voice if we’ve been good little boys and girls because Santa’s coming. He then asks Jordan to sing his favorite Christmas song
8. ~Oh Holy Joey!! Best rendition of "Oh Holy Night" EVER!!! After his do-over of course. ~Joe “Jesus you did not give me the right note tonight”
9. ~Donnie comes out and says he wants a do-over too. He asks the band to play the last few lines of Last Night I Saw Santa Claus, hops up on the piano and then jumps off as the music ends. http://www.youtube.com/user/FutureMrsJonKnight#p/u/3/3KsygkSGc0k
10. ~NKOTB presented a check to the Marines for $60,000 which was the total sales from the concert and the after party, 5 truck loads of toys were also collected
11. ~Joe joked that he hoped Jordan hit the right note for Tonight, but Jordan hadn’t been paying attention to Joe’s mistake and didn’t get why we were all laughing, Joe explained it to him
12. ~The guys surround Jon and put a Santa hat on his head, he immediately takes it off
13. ~Mistletoe magic Here are 2 links to the 10+ minutes of the Magic courtesy of Jessenk98 on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqJAa8GYmCA & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFN4bZ-xzwM
14. ~They jumped around in their normal end of concert circle, but Jon hopped on one foot because of the surgery!

There was a low point however, luckily only the one:

1. ~Missing Jimmy Marsh, Rob Lewis and Ernie and the Automatics b/c the tall, obnoxious VIP people were in the way. I cried because I couldn’t see anything and felt we would have been better off watching other’s Ustream feed. Jillian mentioned that she didn’t want to go to the afterparty and instead wanted to head right home because she was disappointed (but thank goodness for Eileen and her bad knees!!)

BELOW ARE SOME PICTURES FROM THE SHOW:

(SHOW TIME!!!!)

(STEP BY STEP ~ JON SANG STEP 5!!)

(ULTRA COOL JOE MAC!!)

(JORDAN SINGING "FULL SERVICE" WITH NEW EDITION)

(FUNKY, FUNKY CHRISTMAS ~ JM IN HIS GOLD JACKET!)

(JORDAN DRESSES AT SANTA!)

(JOEY TALKING TO US LIKE WE'RE 2YRS OLD!!)

(JORDAN SINGING "THE CHRISTMAS SONG")

(OH HOLY JOEY ~ "OH HOLY NIGHT")

(CHECK PRESENTATION)

(THE KNIGHT BROTHERS)

(JOEY CRACKING JOKES WITH JORDAN ABOUT DO-OVERS)

(DONNIE & ROB LEWIS)

(DANNY, JON, JORDAN)

(PUTTING A SANTA HAT ON JON)

(DONNIE IS A CERTIFIED JON GIRL!!)

(DANNY'S TURN IN "MISTLETOE MAGIC" ~ HE KISSES HIS GIRLS!)

(DONNIE TO JOE ~ "I'VE GOT YOUR WIFE ON THE PHONE!)

(JORDAN DOESN'T WANNA BE TIGER WOODS IN THE AM!)

(JORDAN AND DONNIE)

(JON KNIGHT)

(AT THE END OF SINGING "TONIGHT")

(SHAKING SOME HANDS!)

(TAKE A BOW BOYS!!)

(EILEEN, ME, & JILL AFTER THE SHOW!!)

After the show, I headed downstairs to meet up with Heather, Audra, Jenn and Jodi. It was so awesome to meet some of the other girls that I will be cruising with in May. They were exactly how I pictured them to be.  I also ran into @Shayminn (Kevin) before heading back to the hotel to meet up with everyone else.

NKOTB AFTERPARTY:

Morons that we are, we decided not to wear coats to the after party, thinking that we wouldn’t have to wait on line to get in, but we did. We froze our butts off waiting to get in to what turned out to be an I Got It party, Boston style. Donnie was the only New Kid to show up at the afterparty! We danced and had a good time. Donnie sang I Got It, Rise N Grind and a song from The Block. http://www.youtube.com/user/FutureMrsJonKnight#p/u/2/jhRiuwSnMQM

(ME AND MY GIRLS AFTER THE PARTY!!)

So then we go to leave and call the cab company, but they tell us we have to hail a cab, they can’t send one.  So walk half a block to the corner and try with many others, to hail a cab. It’s freakin’ freezing out and we aren’t having any luck. So then Jillian goes back up to where the club is and sees a cab so she hails it. She tries calling for me a few times and then screams “Rodelyn”. We all go running over and so does a drunk, skinny punk who tries to throw Glenna out of the way and attempts to steal the cab. The cab driver tells the sissy man that it’s our cab and he can’t get in.

So the 6 of us cram into the car, which bottoms out on every turn. The cabbie says he grew up in Dorchester with the Wahlberg boys. He had never heard the term blockhead before and is quite amused.The girls who he was supposed to pick up call him and he tells them that since they didn’t answer when he called, he took another fare. Meanwhile Glenna, Rodelyn and Delia are laughing hysterically and Jillian is trying to Shhhh them, which only makes them laugh more.

The cabbie misses the turn, can’t figure out how he did that and tells us he’s only gonna charge us $10, and makes his way back over the Charles River and back to the hotel.

3AM: Glenna, Jillian, Eileen and I load up the car and reluctantly leave BostonL. The car ride is fairly uneventful except for when my car had a mind of it’s own and drove over the rumble strip on the side of the highway waking Glenna and Eileen. We get back to Danbury just before 6AM, stop at Dunkin Donuts and then go back to our apartment. Glenna and Eileen clear their cars of about 3 inches of snow (not the 18 the weather guy was calling for) and they head back to New Jersey and Long Island. Jillian and I head upstairs, say goodnight and nap for a few hours before work. (Yes we both had to work the day after the show!!) *sarcasm* yay for 3 hrs of sleep and going to work!!)

Our favorite phrase of the weekend: FAHKIN’ RETAHDED!

All in all the weekend was FAHKIN’ AWESOME!! I wish it never had to end!!!

*PHOTO'S ARE TAKEN BY ME, JILLIAN, GLENNA, EILEEN, & RODELYN!!)