It's taken me forever to get this written. Cause I'm lazy. End of discussion. Some of the details may have become fuzzy, but you get the gist.

OK, so after the soundcheck (I called Kaitlyn on my celly and let her listen in to the whole thing. One of the few times that I was blessing ghetto wireless and their unlimited minutes), me and Shana head back to the car, I'm 15 shades of giddy and excited (and would continue to be for about a solid 72 hours. No joke, I was getting on peoples nerves), and we go to Tara's for a little while cause it was her bambino's birthday and she was having a small dinner for him, but I had flat out told her: "love you, love your kid to death... love Nick Carter more. Sorry." Which, to some people might seem a scoach... um, rude, but anyone who knows me at ALL knows good and well that not hell, highwater or 4 year olds birthday party is keeping me from the first BSB tour in 5 years. But as a nice compromise we stopped by for a bit right after the soundcheck and stayed until we were sure to miss the opening acts. I didn't need to see them.

On the way back to the theater Bree texts me to tell me that she and Dallas got engaged! Awww... See, Backstreet day was going great for everyone!

We get back to the theater and that Kaci Brown girl is still on singing that "Unbelievable" song, wearing this fugly ass blue wifebeater/ orange camo-cargo-capri combo (look, it's fashion police alliteration! I LOVE alliteration!), but the song was OK. Me and Shana had used the majority of her set to pick up BSB tour paraphernalia. I really wanted the baseball cap, but even in my Nick induced frenzy I know that $25 is too much money for a hat I will NEVER wear. There wasn't enough to this hat to justify the price tag. It was pretty much just a red and black trucker hat with a BSB logo patch stuck on the front. Nope, I'll pass. Anyways, so Kaci brown has one more song after "Unbelievable" where she gets up and dances and tries to be sexy, at that point I wanted to tell her that 1: she's like, 12, she shouldn't be doing "sexy" and 2: This is a BSB concert, you're wasting all your "sexy" on an audience chock full of vaginas. Seriously.

Allright, Backstreet. Whoo hoo! In between the sets there was just so much growing energy, it was awesome. At the risk of sounding absurdly cheesy, you could seriously cut the anticipation with a knife. Everyone was just so excited to be there. The audience was basically made of of die hard fans, so there was the comaraderie there. Good times. So the boys come out, all smoke and seizure inducing lights and bust out into "The Call" like they were (and pardon the lame pun, it's unintentional) never gone, but at the same time thirilled to be back. Who wouldn't want to be in front of ADORING fans who clearly missed the shit out of you? Plus, paycheck? Yay!. After The Call they went into "My Beautiful Woman" (FYI, I always thought the title of that would be better without the "my". Just flows better, a little less cheesy too, don't ya think? Anyways...), which was, in a word? HOT! The choreography was smoking, which you don't hear me say too terribly often about BSB dancing (with the exception of synchronized chair dancing, hat dancing and the choreography for "Get Another Boyfriend".) Shana and I stand by the fact that that song would be better if they had gone with the original version that was "leaked" onto the internet, it had more bass and little more of a ghetto hip-hop kinda feel which honestly made it more... I don't know what the right word is... lusty? But they traded that in for a more rock-n-roll kinda sound, more electric guitar, less thumping bass. But still, a good song none the less. And Nick telling me I've got him "acting like a fool"? Oh yeah baby!

I don't really remember the order of the rest of the songs (it was 2 months ago. Sue me.) But they sang Siberia (which, dispite featuring one of the most velveta-riffic lines I have ever heard, is still one of my faves on the album), which climaxed in a blizzard of big old fake snowflakes at the end. A nice effect I guess, but it still made me giggle. You know... cause I'm a smart ass. And while they sang "I Just Want You To Know" they showed the video onscreen, which is just awesome. If for some unknown reason you haven't seen it you need to scurry over to MTV.com or something and watch it. Hil.Ar.Ious. And when they sang "All I Have To Give" They pulled out the hat dancing!! YES! Oh it was 1997 all over again in my head! Oh and "Weird World"! Such a great song. Especially the part about not letting 'them' "take away your beautiful smile", which I firmly believe is a shout out to me directly from Nick about my impressive oral hygiene skills. What... why are you laughing? Yeah, well, fuck off, you're just jealous of both my chompers, and my close personal relationship with Mr. Carter.

The concert was fantastic. Afterwards me and Shana hooked back up with Kaitlyn and Rebecca for a few minutes to take some pictures and say goodbyes and nice to meet yous. Then Shana and I headed straight to the walgreens with 24hour 1 hour developing and dropped off her film and ordered a few prints from my digital camera. While we waited we went to eat at TGIFridays, where the combination of being both sickeningly giddy and extremely tired made me behave in a hyperactive weirdo kinda way, but hey, you hang out with me, those are the risks you take. After scarfing down some food for the first time since lunch, we headed to my house. It was about 2 in the morning when we finally got there, and I hadn't even bothered to pack for the next day (this is typical Kai behavior. If you've travelled with me, you're used to it. feel free to ask Shana all about it.).

We get up and finally hit the open road around 10:00am. Just me and Shana, tunes blaring, whiping through the desert at 115MPH. No, seriously, 115. You see our rented Dodge Stratus started to act a little strangely around 118, so we thought it better not to press it that hard, but it was perfectly fine at 115. Some people were getting kind antsy and not fully trusting my wicked awesome 2 lane highway passing skills, which was NOT APPRECIATED! God, just because you see an 18 wheeler coming straight for us does not in anyway mean that I am not going to get out of the way before impact. Have you ever died in the car with me? No. So sit back and enjoy the ride.

Anyways, we get into Vegas in the mid-afternoon. Shana and I had both left our soundcheck bracelets on from the day before in the hopes of using them to sneak into the Vegas soundcheck. But, I guess the BSB saw us coming cause when we went to the arena to investigate the probability of our plan, we found that today's soundcheck bracelets were a different color. Damn. So, defeated, we headed over to the quickly dwindling fan club meet-and-eat. Most of the other weird worlders had come and gone while we were still on the road, but there were a few people there that we got to meet, so that was cool. It's always fun to be able to put a face with the screen names you talk to all the time. After that we headed back to the Luxor (where we were staying) to get some num-nums and head back to the room. Shana takes a nap and I go down to the casino to lose my money. I hate Vegas. Seriously. I never EVER win ANYTHING there. I go the little Indian casinos here at home, I generally walk out with at least what I walked in with, but in Vegas I just get violated by the One Armed Bandit (why do they still call them that? Most slots don't even have arms anymore. Well, maybe it's because "push button bandit" sounds kinda gay. Eh.)

After again waiting what we felt was sufficient enough time to miss the opening acts Shan and I head back over to Mandalay Bay. Just so you know, the little tram that runs from the Luxor to Mandalay Bay? Yeah, it's like a 12 mile hike from the M.B. Entertainment Center. Seriously, there should have been gatoraide and a finish line. When we get to the Arena, Kaci Brown is still again singing that same song. We managed to walk in at the exact moment we had the day before. And she was still wearing that ugly ass outfit. Bah. In between the sets there was a big screen where you could text a message to the boys, so Shana sent one, and it was rediculously awesome to see our names up there! Plus a lot of the fan clubbers were sending messages too, and since I knew some of them now it was kinda cool to see theirs too. Fun fun.

Before the BSB set actually started there was a slide show featuring the pivotal mid-90's Backstreet classic "We've Got It Going On", which is more or less the prepubescent Backstreet equivalent of "Hanging Tough", but it was great, in a room full of fans, all of us singing along and some of us (OK, mostly me) doing the bad video choreography. I hate that song, but again, big giant group of people making asses of themselves to bad 90's pop? That's just fan-bloody-tastic. Shana was a little weirded out, since she wasn't a big fan in the 90's like me, so she just kinda stared at us all, half amused, half frightened.

I didn't think I'd be all that excited about seeing the same show I'd just seen 24 hours ago, but... I was wrong. If anything I was more excited. See, the day before I was very concerned with taking it all in, and making sure I got pictures of... everything. So at this show, I had already done all that, I still took a few pictures, but mostly I just rocked out in a way that left me sore the next day.

Ah, the next day. When the dream of following BSB to Canada had withered and died in the harsh light of 7:00am, that's when we got up after having crashed in a hardcore comatose sort of way after the concert. See, Shana had to be at work at 2:30pm. And allegedly this drive was supposed to take 6 hours. We knew I could make it in a little over 5, but we wanted to allow a little cushioning in case we hit Sunday traffic around the Hoover Dam. But it was insanely smooth sailing. Or, high speed mildly competitive sailing, depending on who you ask. And due to me doing my best impression of Mario Andretti, we actually made it home in 4.5 hours. I. ROCK! No seriously, I do.

I was a little sad that my Backstreet stalk-a-thon weekend was over and it was time to go back to reality and be a grownup and not see Nick Carter every night. Boo. Hiss. I really had a blast though. If you have a band that you just love and adore, I highly suggest snatching up your best friend and following them across the country, even if it's only for a weekend. Later days.
past / present