step by step, ooh baby

really want ya in my wo-o-o-rld.

when the spice girls reunited, i got excited for about five minutes and reminisced about receiving their first CD for my hawaiian-themed 12th birthday, where my friends and i danced to 'wannabe' on park benches for awhile before returning to the game of water balloon volleyball my mom had set up.

but the recent news that NKOTB is reuniting is ROCKING MY WORLD. new kids on the block was my first favorite band EVER.

i was 5.

my friend heather and i competed to see who could get their moms to buy them the newest and coolest NKOTB merch. i had the shirts and the socks, but i was seethingly jealous of her sleeping bag, emblazoned with jordan's face, because all i had was a cheetos sleeping bag left over from my dad's days at frito-lay, which led to girls calling me 'crunchy' at every birthday party. (fuck you, gelissa munoz.)

NKOTB laid the ground for all my musical obsessions that would come thereafter: walking into my 9th-grade bedroom was like walking into a backstreet boys shrine (i had posters of nick and brian on the ceiling above my bed, so i could look at their faces as i fell asleep while listening to 'millennium' on my discman), and my freshman year of college my friend jenna and i went on an east coast tour extravaganza to see 311 in three states, implementing a complex transportation plan involving a combination of buses, trains, subways, and taxis so we wouldn't have to stay in any hotels.

but i can never forget my roots and my very first concert, where i fell asleep with my head on my mom's lap before the new kids even got onstage. after all, it was 9pm: way past my bedtime.

so, NKOTB reunion tour 2008: who's with me???

i WILL quit you

"Readers owe nothing to publishers"
By Robert Niles
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/080128niles/

this article is perhaps the best i've read to sum up my feelings regarding the relationship between a newspaper and its readership. actually, it pretty much sums up my feelings toward any industry that isn't willing to get with the program and update their business model to cooperate with modern technology.

here is the truth: gone are the days when people get up in the morning, grab the morning paper, and flip the pages as they sip their coffee. reality is people stumbling wearily into work and wasting the first hour they're there clicking through their email, google news, or RSS feeds. people don't walk up and down the aisles of best buy browsing CDs; they get their music through the click of a mouse button. and people definitely don't write letters anymore; they facebook. we live in a computerized age, and as much as the old guard gripes about it, it's only going to amplify as time goes on.

which is why it seems like punishment when newspapers inundate their online readers with the flash ads and surveys niles mentions, most of which take forever to load and some of which necessitate CIA-level intelligence to figure out how to click out of. often i've thought to myself, "I'M reading YOUR newspaper," (ostensibly the goal they're trying to achieve), "WHY are you pissing me off??"

i think the same thing whenever i hear of record labels suing another 18-year-old kid who downloaded a 50 cent song onto his computer, or the recent decision of the wall street journal to keep the majority of their online content "premium," aka only for people who pay for it. customers are obviously interested in the content, but the industries seem intent on withholding it. what they don't realize is there will always be someone younger, hipper, and more technologically savvy to figure out how to get what he or she wants for free while their older, more staid counterpart sputters about how everything comes at a price.

the wall street journal claims they will revisit their decision in the future, but for now, the vast majority of their content can't be accessed without a newsstand visit or a credit card. even though rupert murdoch himself has stated the increased traffic of a free website would generate enough advertising revenue to more than make up for the loss of subscription income, this new york times article quotes dow jones executives stating a locked website "creates an elite audience of high-income business-oriented readers whom advertisers pay a premium to reach."

such reasoning seems a little suspect for a newspaper whose current projects include a move from the financial district to midtown, the addition of a sports page, and the creation of a glossy magazine insert helmed by an editor whose previous experience includes vogue and tatler.

all efforts to distance the paper from its wall street roots and incorporate a more diverse audience, comprised of people, i presume, who currently think, why read the wall street journal when i can read the new york times for free?

shut up!

so, most of the time, working in a broadway rehearsal building is really awesome. when i came out of my bathroom stall the other day, sutton foster was waiting outside to take my toilet, and not two seconds later, i almost ran into kate winslet as she was rushing her little boy to the "loo." (incidentally, they were here rehearsing & checking out - respectively - the musical version of "shrek." whether this show will actually be picked up is still up in the air, but if the fact that they paid for 4 weeks of studio time JUST to showcase is any indication of how much money people are willing to put into it, i'm going to guess it will fare just fine.)

and yet, the more time i spend in this building, the more i begin to realize something: actors are really fucking annoying.

granted, some of this annoyance can probably be attributed to our space. in order to make our studios as performer-friendly as possible, the floors are made of very thin, flexible materials. this makes it both easier on the dancers' knees and easier to drive us banana sandwich. up until a few months ago, our office was on the 10th floor, where we would feel small tremors whenever a big dance show was below us, but now we are on the 5th, currently surrounded by "passing strange" on the 4th floor (drum and bass: THUMP THUMP THUMP) and "in the heights" on the 6th (latin hip-hop and merengue: ay-ay-ay OH-WEE-OHHHH).

the 5th floor also puts us face to face with the actors: they go in and out of the dressing rooms throughout the day, and 12-2pm is a dramatic clusterfuck in the green room, where actors jump in front of me and steal the microwave i was just about to re-heat my leftovers in.

but here's what gets to me: THEY ARE ALWAYS SINGING. these people literally just belted their lungs out for 3 hours straight, and even on their lunch break they insist on performing vocal gymnastics christina aguilera-style at full volume in the hallways outside our office.

i discussed this the other night with my dad's best friend, who was in town and offered me a free meal and broadway show (who am i to refuse?) and he said, "well, but they're just doing their job. the rehearsal studio is their office."

to which i replied, "yes, but do YOU work on spreadsheets while you're on your coffee break?" didn't think so.

jumping on the blog-wagon

my previous experience with blogging begins and ends with livejournal, where i wrote about my day and weird dreams i had for all the world -- or at least my "LJ world," comprising approx. 25 of my e-peeps -- to see.

i DO love the livejournal communities feature, especially the "newyorkers" community, where i can ask any question about the city that i want and get an answer within 30 minutes (pure sweetness), but i've decided to abandon LJ for bloggier pastures.

so i guess i'll give blogger a try. i am mostly doing this because my roommate, stephanie, started a blog, and the second she did, i started sending her 10 links a day over g-chat to articles i thought were interesting, begging her to write about them, and was continually disappointed every time she responded, "yeah, maybe." although she kindly offered me a producer/co-host spot on her blog, i decided, to hell with it. i'll start my own...