You are my fire.

I heard Savage Garden on the radio last week on the way to work and I was so shocked that when I got to work, I walked in and announced to the room what I had heard and it was like *crickets*. Nobody remembered them...or they were too cool to come out and admit to knowing who I was talking about. I wasn't cool enough to pretend I didn't like the song I had heard on the radio. It was "I Knew I Loved You". Anybody remember that song? I sang along. As 90s pop bands went, I liked them. And, as it happens, I looked it up on youtube and watched the video for the song and who should be in it but Kirsten Dunst? The video is full of over-acted, emotional sappiness with long stares that are actually kind of creepy considering this is supposed to be a stranger. But, anyway, if you don't analyze it, it's still a nice 90s throwback song. And, of course, when you watch one 90s pop video, it begins an uncontrollable stream of Youtube recommendations for you to watch more, which brought me to this here gem.



I dream of the day when I can walk into LAX with four friends, all of us dressed in white and begin a spontaneous synchronized dance like these fellas at 1:34 of the video. That's going on the bucket list for sure. In all honesty, I would have been one of the screaming (not crying, I was not that far gone) girls at the end of this video for sure because I had it bad for the Backstreet Boys at this point in my life and their celebrity-dom. It ended not too long after this video was made when I got my hand grabbed by them as they went by in St. Louis and I snapped a picture of (the blond one) Nick Carter's ear and he turned and gave me a mean look (as anyone who just had a flash go off thisclose to their eyeball would do) and when that picture was developed, it was so real and unflattering and teenage boy-ish, that my entire image of them changed and I realized that they were just dudes, and not even all that attractive when you had a full 5x7 of their giant cheek pores + zits and earlobe.

The teenybopper in me dropped dead when I saw that photograph, but I still appreciate their music, not because it was all that spectacular, but because I think every girl needs that group/band/singer that she goes insane over when she's about 14 or so. It's part of teenagedom. You have to go embarrassingly nuts over some cute face when you're that age. I don't think I could ever really become one of those true hater-types who makes jokes about Justin Bieber or whoever-the-next-teenage-dreamboat guy will be because those teenage fans are whole-heartedly and sincerely into it and I find it endearing in an ear-piercing and horrific sort of way. When I see them crying on tv during a performance that you can't hear over the screaming, I can just smile and nod. I kind of admire their young sincerity, as scary as it seems when they're screeching, waving 'marry me' signs, or crying uncontrollably when they think he looked right at them. Because it's a pretty brief phase. They'll get a waaaaay too close picture of him, or they'll find something else that interests them more than teenage-boy pop music, or they'll just grow up, and suddenly, the door will slam shut on that phase....For that group of girls. But there's always another group coming up through the ranks that's going to need a Nick Carter or a Justin Bieber. It's like a little circle of life.

I think I had more of a plan and a flow that I was going to be heading down tonight on this entry, but it's clearly been lost down memory lane of 1990s videos. I certainly hadn't set out on the 'let's re-live my teenybopper years' road, but whatever. Here we are. There it goes.

Oh, but I DID get my Christmas tree down over the weekend.