Nostalgia

Yesterday was an amazing day. It started with a cookie party at my friend's house. We brought our dough and cooked and decorated our cookies there, sampled each others' treats, and ordered pizza. We watched I'll Be Home For Christmas, which was a great walk down memory lane and a preview of what was to come. In it, arrogant Jonathan Taylor Thomas (a teenage heart-throb I never really got interested in, but in hindsight he wasn't a bad actor and it'd be nice to see him on the screen again) screws over the wrong people and

they glue a Santa suit on him and leave him in the desert on the day he's supposed to take his girlfriend (Jessica Biel) home for Christmas. This movie was made in 1998 and it screams the late-90s; it is because of this that I enjoyed it so much. I or someone in my family wore every piece of clothing Jessica Biel wears in that movie, and although I maybe should have cringed at the styles I sort of missed them.

In the evening, I had plans with my sister. As part of her Christmas gift, I bought tickets for us to see O-Town at Skully's. When we were younger, we were O-town enthusiasts due to seeing them form on Making the Band. I thought Jacob Underwood was one of the cutest guys alive, and Sabrina had a thing for Dan Miller. When their CD was released, we pre-ordered it, and on its release date my mom punished me for having an attitude by taking away my privilege to listen to the new album. I was incredibly pissed until I realized she couldn't prevent me from hearing Sabrina listen to it. At a school dance when I was in 8th grade, Sabrina and I requested the DJ play Liquid Dreams, and when he actually played it was screamed at the top of our lungs and rushed out to the dance floor to dance, even though we typically didn't dance at the dances.

The concert was definitely a trip down memory lane for us, and I figured if that was all it was, it was worth going to. I didn't expect to be so impressed with them. The band reunited by choice, and they aren't under management the way they were before, so they're much happier about their circumstances, and it shows in their performance. They were having a great time on stage, and it made watching them a lot of fun. In addition, they're all extremely talented vocalists. They used tracks for their music and had a few choreographed routines, but it wasn't a boy band performance the way I imagined it might be. There was much more singing than dancing, and they weren't just singing along to their own vocals. They were truly singing every line (with the help with the very enthusiastic

female crowd). Each member got a chance in the spotlight, which was nice because it seemed like before Trevor and Erik sort of got pushed into the background.

We both had the expectation of just laughing a bit to ourselves at how silly we were for loving this band so much, but instead it rekindled our appreciation and made us want to seek out more from them. The band entered and exited directly behind us through the balcony to the stage, and Sabrina said after she brushed Jacob, "My ten-year-old self would be so jealous right not." I think her 25-year-old self is secretly pretty impressed too.

Here is O-Town singing Silent Night before their breakup in 2001.