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Backstreet's back.


About a month ago, a (fake) open letter addressed to the members of One Direction from none other than Mr. Joey Fatone made its way around the Internet. It addressed the band's recent decision to take a little breather, and the more than likely repercussions of such an action.

Don't act like you don't care about this, because we all do and we need to deal with it.

I don't know who the members of One Direction are, but my heart bleeds for their fans nonetheless. Below is an excerpt from the letter:

"Best case scenario, you’ll do a 6-week stint in Minions: The Musical! on Broadway before you bounce around different hosting jobs on channels like Spike and TruTv.  Do you know what Chris Kirkpatrick is doing? Because I don’t. He’s completely unreachable. He might be managing a Best Buy in Sacramento, he might be dead. No one knows. Louis, I’m looking at you."

As I mentioned above, I don't know who Louis is, but to be fair I actually really like Minions and feel that would be a fantastic opportunity for any human being. However, I must admit being struck with dread when I saw Chris Kirkpatrick's name. Because who DOES know what he's doing?

If you, like me, are a woman-girl (or man-boy) trapped in a physical and mental state of arrested development, the contents of this letter opened old wounds from 'N Sync's soul-crushing breakup in 2002. Do you remember this? Do you remember pulling apart the school locker shrine you had dedicated to your favorite band member, crying bitter tears not only because the goddamn tape you kept picking at wouldn't come off—causing your janky done-at-home manicure to chip—and because you had unnecessarily fucked up your favorite issue of People magazine by tearing out the pages with your beloved's picture on it, but because you knew you would never hear another album of perfectly synchronated pop songsthat all kind of had the same melody and harmony and lyricsperformed by these wonderful creatures? No? That's because it's a repressed memory and it's my duty to finally dig out the scar tissue. 

Everybody had their favorite band member, and dayumn were some people possessive ("Can't we both like JC? I don't want Justin." (HA! Famous last words.)). Teeny boppers were also on some Twilight shit, because once someone settled on their fella they were paired FOR LIFE, and neither Heaven nor Earth could come betwixt the two.

Which is why 'N Sync's split was such a big deal. It was a betrayal of epic proportions. Unless, of course, you were a Backstreet Boys kind of homie, in which case none of this applied to you. What a lot of people don't know—hell, I didn't even know—is that the Backstreet Boys are still together to this day. Backstreet can't be back, because they never left. There was a two-year hiatus from 2002-2004, and a brief departure by Kevin Richardson in 2006, but they boys are holding strong. They're singing songs and being awesome having existed as members of a boy band for the past twenty-two years. There's even a cruise happening in 2016.

What I'm trying to get at is, I'm turning thirty next July, guys. If any of you want to make it memorable, I'm pretty sure the experience would be similar to this:


Kait gets the credit for this post's theme. I originally had been like, "I'm going to write about robes blowing in the wind," and she originally had been like, "Uh no don't."


"You look like you belong on the cover of Tiger Beat."


And thus a theme was born.

J. Crew tank, Forever 21 robe, Uniqlo jeans.


"EVERYBODY, ROCK YOUR BODY."


"Oh shit, someone's watching."


"Oh well too bad."


"BECAUSE . . . BACKSTREET'S BACK, ALRIGHT!"



And that's about it. So remember, guys:

Just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page.