OMG! NKOTB!

It is a chilly, wet Friday morning in New York, and I've just walked the only four blocks in Midtown without a Duane Reade drugstore, feeling the persistent drizzle seep into my coat, when I hear the first screams.

I'm about a block away from the plaza at Rockefeller Center where the Today show does its outdoor shoots, and despite the rain, the 45-degree temperatures and the general crappiness, the crowd ringing the set is four or five deep nearly all the way around. A reunion of a mega-selling band is afoot, and the excitement is palpable.

The New Kids on the Block are back together, and neither rain nor cold nor the fact that it's only a couple minutes after 8 a.m. will deter the group's fans. Who are surprisingly numerous.

Having finally spotted a Duane Reade and secured an umbrella, I wade into the crowd. A woman who I figure is in her late 20s walks past me wearing a New Kids T-shirt. Across the way, a group of women, one of whom has a plate-sized NKOTB button affixed to her chest, starts singing "You Got It (The Right Stuff)," complete with "Oh-oh-OH-oh-ohs." Someone next to them holds up a sign pleading, "Marry Me Jordan."

About 8:30 a.m., Danny, Donnie, Jordan, Joey and Jon -- all of whom are at least 35 now -- make their way outside. The Today team conducts an interview with the reunited band, I gather. I can't really see them through the sea of umbrellas and waving arms, and I certainly can't hear them. Mostly what I hear is this:

"WHOOOOOO!!!!"

"JOORRRRDANNNN!!!"

"I LOVE YOU, JOEY!!"

"Donnie is soooo hot!!" (This last one is just conversation between two people, so it's not in all caps.)

Here's the interview:

Now I'm getting confused. When Hangin' Tough broke out in 1988 and '89, I was in high school. I was also a guy, so I was never really the group's target audience. Further, I was deep into a 120 Minutes phase and recently discovered a great modern-rock station, so to the extent that I paid any attention to them at all, it was to mock them.

So I'm not getting all the adulation. Some of this has to be a put-on, right? (I'm pretty sure the woman in front of me yelling "Aww, sookie sookie now" is goofing on it, at least a little bit.) There are some people who are clearly on their way to work who've stopped by just for a laugh, right?

Not so much where I'm standing. I overhear two women talking about the girl with the New Kids shirt, so I ask whether they're here ironically or sincerely. "Oh no, we're serious," one of them says. "People at work think we're ridiculous."

A few minutes later, I overhear another woman (the crowd, I should point out, is probably 70 to 80 percent female) saying, "I'm 31 years old, but I feel like I'm 14 again." So I stop and ask -- what's the appeal?

"It takes you back to when we were 14 and 15," says the woman, who along with several friends had taken a train from suburban Philadelphia that morning to see the kids. "It makes you feel young again."

"They're still our heartthrobs," her friend offers.

"Oh, and they're hotter than ever," the first woman agrees (bad reporter: I didn't get their names). "They're hotter now than they were when we were 14 or 15 years old."

"And you know, they're responsible and they have jobs," a third member of the group adds.

I then ask them the question that's been circulating around the Zap2it office: Why would Donnie Wahlberg, who you may remember was the "hard" new kid and now has a very respectable acting career, want to revisit this chapter of his life?

"I think curiosity -- to see if they could come back and still make us 30-year-olds [swoon]," one of them says. "And here we are."

The discussion turns to the New Kids' relative hotness once again (Joey: not as dreamy as when they were kids, Donnie and Jordan more so) when the group comes back out for more photos and general milling around. The last piece of audio on my recorder goes something like this:

"Oh no -- I'm still callin' for Joey. ... Joey's still hot ... I think he could come out singing 'Please Don't Go Girl' ... when they brought back ... [the group re-emerges] WHOOOO!!!"

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