Cue the sick bastards

When was the last time you saw or heard a reference to these toolboxes?

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's been a while. Well, I wish I could say the same.

Sunday night a tent was set up down the street outside some bar called the Supper Club that I never noticed before. Weird, but not that weird considering what else you run into out here -- one of my roommates last weekend saw a man laying face down on the sidewalk, not moving. What did my roommate do? Step right over him, no call to the cops or anything... anyway, that's beside the point.

Monday morning on my way to work, there are a couple more tents outside the bar I never noticed until the night before. This morning, a couple more. So I take a look at the poster on the outside wall of the bar. Yep, you guessed it, tonight the MMMM Bop triplets themselves are performing, if you want to call it that.

"Seriously? Hanson?" I thought to myself while getting on the subway. After momentary bewilderment it was out of my head for the rest of the day.

Then, as I am getting off the train this evening I turn a corner and there is a line wrapping around the block to go to this little hole-in-the-wall bar that I had not noticed for more than a year until just 48 hours ago. Needless to say, my first thought upon seeing that was: "What is wrong with with these people?"

Well, a lot as it turns out.

Sure, as expected, the line was mostly made up of little girls. However, intermingling with these teenie-boppers was about a dozen of the creepiest looking old men I have ever seen.

Clearly not chaperoning anybody, these dudes were hard core pederasses... no doubt about it. One guy was wearing a jean jacket with "HANSON" written across the back in bright pink letters. Another had pinned to his pants one of those over-sized buttons -- you know, the New Kids on the Block variety worn by fourth-grade girls back in 1991. Another one of these freaks was wearing what looked like a homemade t-shirt with ironed-on faces of those three then-kids on the front.

Mustaches, shifty eyes, fanny packs, the whole shebang. All these guys were missing was a neon sign fixed above their heads flashing the words "I Love Little Boys."

I wanted to walk up to each of them, one by one, and scream into their faces, through a bullhorn: "Step away from the children!"

What were these parents thinking standing in line there, in many cases, right between their kid(s) and one of these turds? I would assume something along the lines of "good Lord what have I done to deserve this?" and "good Lord what have I done to deserve this?"

One thing is for certain... things sure are looking up for Hanson these days.