Saturday, December 09, 2006

Below Reality

Last night, my wife and I went to see Brian Littrell. Yes, that Brian Littrell, the former Backstreet Boy. He's on a short Christmas concert tour with Rebecca St. James and her brothers right now. It started Thursday night in Abilene, came to Waco for Friday night, then up to somewhere in Illinois tonight and then off to Virginia to wrap it up. All small towns.

Anyway, my wife was a big fan of the Backstreet Boys when she was younger (to her credit, she was no poseur: she was into Dashboard Confessional and Good Charlotte even before she went on Warped Tour). The concert was at Victorious Life Church, off I-35. I was impressed with Mr. Littrell's entertaining ability and even more impressed when he quasi-parodied his old songs--and none of the girls in the audience caught on. That's quality parody skills.

Well, the highlight of the night happened while I and about 50 girls under 25 (my wife included) waited expectantly in the 12° weather outside the bus hoping to catch a glimpse as he boarded. Instead, as they all looked toward the door from the church (I, for some reason, was looking at the bus itself), a white car pulled up around the bus, stopped, Mr. Littrell got out and ran up to about 3 feet from me. I glanced over at him and thought "How many roadies do these people have?" Then he called out "Hey y'all! God bless you and merry Christmas!" before running back to his getaway car and driving off into the Arctic Central Texan night. They were all disappointed, but I, yes I the kid who learned the guitar to all the Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, and Weezer songs he could, stood next to Brian Littrell for a few seconds, the object of much jealousy from former teeny boppers.

It was all very surreal.

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