Don’t hold this against me, but I am about to reveal the most normal, least nerdy phenomenon I have ever been a part of. But you must have sympathy for me: The New Kids on the Block were brilliantly designed to attack a chemical in the brains of little girls. They might well have been robots constructed and programmed by the evil genius producer Maurice Starr. Whatever their origins or motives, NKOTB consumed my life when I was nine. Donnie Wahlberg was my ultimate favorite New Kid. See, he was the tough one, Joey was the youngest one, Jonathan was the sensitive one, Danny was the ugly one, and Jordan was the fifth one. To me, the others were just filler. I had eyes only for Donnie. Using the little cardboard picture stand on the back, I would sometimes stand my giant Donnie button up on my third-grade desk and stare at him all day. Standing against a grey Glamour Shots canvas backdrop wearing a jean jacket and a massive gold peace sign necklace, his face wore a look that seemed to call; “C’mon with me, Girl. I’ll make all your dreams come true”. Then in red ink, Donnie (or some pimply-faced record company monkey) had written an inscrutable message. Above a peace sign and what I assume was his signature, he wrote: “Peace Out on the Strength”. I studied this inscription for hours, thinking it might hold the key to Donnie’s soul. I dreamed of the day when I would be able to crack the code, to fully understand what deep and troubled things went on in Donnie’s mind. Now my late-twenties malaise is compounded by the fact that not only am I not currently living with Donnie in the My Little Pony Paradise Estate, but also that his message turns out to be as meaningful as “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine”. I may also never recover from seeing Donnie as the shivering maniac who shoots Bruce Willis at the beginning of The Sixth Sense. I think the New Kids should have been placed into cryogenic freezing chambers in 1991 so that they could be thawed out now, as their fans hit 30 and could really use a distraction from trying to choose a career while paying off their student loans.
