THE FORMULA

From the archives

This ran in The Stranger on November 10, 2008. I think it was my attempt at writing something weird and funny about a subject no one cared about. I got paid $158. Four years later, The Stranger panned my first novel.

Reunions involve tough choices. New Kids on the Block, newly unified under their original banner, have yet to make the choice of their adult careers. Shall they be old New Kids, or new New Kids? Old New Kids would adhere to the spirit of ‘89, re-enacting that innocent time before grunge and gangsta rap evicted them from the garden of bubblegum. A true reunion—New Kids Classic—would see the original fad five cheerfully don their ripped stonewashed denim and red leather v-necks and black leather porkpies, willingly re-gel and re-shellac their boy-hive hairdos, gladly wax their chest hair and dab on the latex acne. No one seems to miss the scowling adults of the rebranded NKOTB. Supply and demand favors the New Kids when they were still as sparkling, whistle-clean as a freshly scrubbed toilet bowl. America craves nostalgia.

In this current economic climate, it would be irresponsible to discuss New Kids on the Block without mentioning Lou Pearlman. Pearlman was a mere shifty Florida businessman until a chance encounter with “Hangin’ Tough”-era New Kids sparked his imagination. Within five years, he’d established himself as the Fagin of the early 90’s boy-band craze, transforming Orlando into a mini-Motown of tidy-bowl boy pop. It was his Trans Continental Management that gave the world ‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys, and Aaron Carter, indirectly establishing New Kids as vanguards of a much larger trend. Unfortunately, such organizations require vast sums of cash to fuel their legions of choreographers, producers, stylists, photographers, and talent scouts, and Pearlman funded his particular organization through a massive stock swindle. Last year, he was convicted, sentenced to a quarter century in the clink, and fined $200,000,000. Seen in the light of the subprime meltdown, it is easy to view Pearlman’s bands, and perhaps all of boy-bandom, as yet another pernicious form of consumer fraud.

New Kids predate this mess, making them the stable Goldman Sachs to Backstreet’s Freddie Mac and ‘N Sync’s Fannie Mae. And yet it was from NKOTB that Pearlman allegedly derived his magic formula for Y-chromosome pop megastardom. Gauged by units moved, it is a durable recipe: Take a Wild Guy, a Shy Guy, a Sweet Guy, a Heartthrob, and an ‘Ethnic,’ add a generous fatty zone of management and trainers, cross your fingers, and presto! You’ve sold 70 million albums!