This took me forever to post, mostly because it still feels so surreal. I figured this and some of my other experiences warranted me cracking open a new blogspot, so here goes nothing. I'm also going to try to cover some of the things that Erin and Kristie didn't, to minimize redundancy. You should also note that I'm a novelist and not a short story writer for a reason =)
I should begin by saying that The Dark Knight has somehow always eluded me. I met Jon in a hotel in Jacksonville back in the day (because back in the day when your mom was a travel agent it led to some pretty convenient inside information), Joe at MGM studios and then again in Boston, Donnie in Boston and Atlanta, and Danny in Atlanta. I had experiences during the reunion with the aforementioned brothas and even had my share of 5*s. I think in the 5* the most I ever said to Jordan was a very nervous "hi." I don't really have a theory as to why this is. Erin and Nikki will tell you that I'm not terribly shy with our guys (with Donnie in particular I tend to lack any sort of filter whatsoever.) But for some reason I never really had much of a chance to interact with Jordan.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
A Knightly Quest
So when he announced he was bringing Jordan Idol to Nashville, I knew I had to be there. I did my twitter and internet research, coerced Erin into making the 8 hour drive with me (free gas and a couple of Twix bars), and batted my best puppy eyes at the husband. The plan was set. I bought a new GPS (because we killed the old one chasing Donnie's ass around Cincinnati this summer), named her Betty (because if you Remember Betty, it's all good!), bought some other critical supplies...
....decorated the car....
and we were off.
The whole ride there, we're frantically spamming Jordan trying on Twitter to get him to follow us. We had some solid clues, but not enough to guarantee we would find him. Really, the only thing we had going for us was my Block-dar and a couple of tweets from Aaron Pearce. We got to the hotel around 3 in the morning, made a sleep-deprivation-induced video and crashed.
In the morning we met up with Kristie, who we met on Twitter back before Full Service started and who also made the trips to Cincinnati and Texas. We knew that Jordan was going to "find us" and, decorated vehicle aside, we wanted to do something to make ourselves stand out. So I altered the American Idol copyright-infringement that @kat_785 originally stole, and Erin made some shirts. We didn't stop to consider that Nashville is apparently a very friendly town and people on the street would be stopping to ask us about our shirts. Including the doorman at the Hermitage, a bartender at our hotel, and a creepy old lady that tried to touch Kristie's boob. As a stalking tip-bartenders at the hotel are awesome sources of information. It was rather unfortunate that our bartender didn't know who Jordan was however she did tell us that Van Halen had just checked into our hotel and we could stalk them if we wanted to.
So we set off walking around downtown Nashville. I want to say a big thanks to everyone who was RTing our picture to Jordan, Jason, and Aaron that morning. Although it didn't end up helping Jordan find us exactly, by the time we did meet up with him, he had seen the picture. Jason had seen it, too, and thought we were lying when we said we were only going to be in Nashville for one day (Erin and I both work for school systems here in NC and we had to work the next day.)After an hour and walking all over creation and being harassed (and in Kristie's case damn near molested)for our shirts, we started to get pretty discouraged, but I kept the faith! All the signs pointed to KEEP SEARCHING!! We walked by a hotel and they were playing the soundtrack to Wicked (Defying Gravity), then at various points throughout our trek we each had a ladybug land on us, and my Blockdar-which Nikki and Erin will tell you tends to be spot on-was still feeling good. We also had random strangers on the street trying to help us find him! Like when Jason tweeted they were going to eat lunch somewhere with WiFi and a business man on his lunch break told us about a pizza place with Wi-Fi around the corner.
The walking around town thing was getting old though, so we decided to make our way to Music row, thinking that he must be somewhere in that area. Plus we all wanted to check out the Naked People statue we'd heard so much about. So we got in the JordanMobile and asked Betty to lead us to music row.
Once we got there we sat in the car for a while. We had cell phones that needed charging from the incessant spamming of Jordan, Jason, and Aaron we'd been doing all morning. We tried to come up with an idea of what to do next. Erin suggested we get out of the car and search on foot so that our shirts were visible, but I wasn't ready to do that yet. We'd walked our asses off downtown, and I didn't think it would help. (again, the Block-dar was on POINT!)
Suddenly, Jason tweeted that they had to go to Target. Without a second thought, we punched Target into the GPS. I said a quick prayer and picked the closest Target to where we were, sitting in Music Row. And we took off like a bat[man] outta hell. There was a lot of cursing involved. This was the ONLY time we ran into traffic the whole trip. AND on top of that, the Target I'd picked wasn't coming up on Kristie's iPhone GPS, so we weren't sure if it existed!
As we drove we plotted out a strategy. I wanted us to split up and searched the store. It was a big ass Target, and I figured if we all stayed together, we'd miss him for sure. Erin wanted us to stay together so that we'd be more visible in our shirts. We were still talking strategy when we bolted out of the car and headed toward the front doors. The debate became pointless as Kristie looked in the window and gasped "They're right THERE! They're in the Starbucks!!" Giggly, girly screeching ensued as we all took a deep breath and, slow motion action movie style walked in the automatic doors.
Jordan had just sat down at a table with his drink and pastry and Jason was at the counter. When he spotted us, Jordan ducked behind a column, trying to hide from us. The dimples were blazing. The rumahs are true: the man is 100 times hotter in person without makeup than he is on stage. It is possible.
Once he got over "finding" us and shoved Jason for tweeting about Target, we sat down and started to talk about Jordan Idol and his vision for it. He then told us that even though we weren't going to be able to make the actual Jordan Idol we were still going to have to sing to him. In my infinite inability to censor myself I said "here? in Target?" He laughed...THAT laugh. *sigh*
After that we talked about a million different things. Life, what we do for work, swine flu, the holidays, why he can't ReTweet properly, etc. For over an hour, the world around us seemed to disappear. It was me, Erin, Kristie, Jordan and Jason. Not Jordan Knight, just Jordan. It was so bizarre, you guys. I felt like I'd known the man for years, which I guess, to a certain extent I have-as much as any of us know him-but it really just felt like a bunch of friends sitting around talking. It was so casual that at one point we all had our phones out tweeting. It was so ridiculously NORMAL. Kristie mentioned to Jordan that if he wanted to meet Van Halen he could come by our hotel. Jason told me I looked familiar and we talked about Waffle House in Atlanta and I showed him my picture with Donnie with him in the background and so we talked about the insanity that is Donnie Wahlberg for a few minutes.
Of course then he sent out the twitpic that rocked Nashville, and started following us and my blackberry crashed. LOL. We hung out a bit more, and he said he'd possibly find us again later that night since we were going to miss the actual Jordan Idol experience and we hadn't gotten to meet Aaron. Then he bought some chapstick, walked us out to the JordanMobile so he could see it for himself, and we parted ways.
We sat in the car and freaked out for a few minutes. I called my Mom (who had previously gotten to talk to Jordan on the phone in Target and embarrassed the shit out of me like only your mother can do-I'm a second generation blockhead. She is the "Jordan girl".) and then we went to find a place with free Wi-Fi and get a bite to eat back in Music row. We tried at that point to respond to all the tweets we couldn't respond to while we were with Jordan and Jason.
I don't think any of us thought we would actually see Jordan again that night. We did! We got to check out the studio where he was recording (we did NOT get to hear him record, although I've heard that's the rumor). We got to meet Aaron, Kendrick, Ted, and Grant. They were all SO nice to us. We hung out with Jason for a bit while Jordan was working, then hung out with both of them and Aaron. Come to find out Aaron and I lived about a mile apart in Florida before I moved to North Carolina and he moved to Tennessee. We bonded a bit over the insanity that is traffic on I-4. I didn't find out until the next weekend that Kendrick and I are both GATORS!!!
At this point it was around 12:30 Central time and we had to hit the road. Erin had to teach the next day and I had a big presentation the following night. We didn't want to say goodbye, but we had to, and we felt like we were bordering on wearing out our welcome at that point anyway, because they'd already been so generous with their time and attention. So we said goodbye to everyone, got more hugs from Jordan (damn good hugs might I add) and headed for the door. We thanked him to the point of embarrassment, and told him at the very least we would see him in May on the cruise, but that we hoped to see him sooner. Then we hit the road.
A certain tattooed person with questionable mental health issues aside, I've met very few people who have had more NKOTB-related luck than I have. I know a lot of people (including some of my closest friends) were pissed albeit happy for me, Kristie, and Erin, when we had the ultimate music fanatic fantasy come true on a mild October Monday when we decided to go to Nashville on a whim for less than 24 hours on the off chance of running into Jordan Knight. I really do wish that everyone could have been there with me. But I also know that if everyone had, it certainly wouldn't have been the same. Thanks to everyone who made an effort to help make this happen for us. I love these men more than they'll ever know. They've inspired my career, my life, my sense of self-worth, and my goals for the future. This was the ultimate experience, and I know it never would have happened without my Sistahs!
My only regret is this: I totally chickened out on the opportunity to sing for MY Jordan Idol. Oh well, there's always...Atlanta????
Chills, woman!! I love it!!
ReplyDelete