Save the Night: I'll Holler at Menudo

Oh, no. Oh, yes I am. I'm about to straight up tell you about how I went to the Menudo show at the House of Blues and it was the most fucked up thing ever.

Firstly, you are wondering how I ended up at the Menudo show at the House of Blues, and I am simply going to answer that sometimes strange things happen and on a Thursday night you suddenly find yourself with you gay neighbor, 300 12 year old girls, their parents and Johnny Wright.

So, this is not so much a Menudo show as it as a Bandamonium show, which is like an explosion of b-level boy-bands. HEAVEN. No, seriously, even by my standards of cheesiness this is a stretch. But then something happens that is so awesome, so blog-worthy, so worth having hauled my migraine ridden ass out of bed on a Thursday for, that it all becomes worthwhile.

I suffer through the first two bands. The first is two yahoos named James and Mark who sing sensitive teenage acoustic rock. Next is BEAT FACTORY, who don't so much sing as they do dance, but they dance like there's no tomorrow (tm Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson). It's a little bit painful, but nothing this girl can't handle.

And then ... Menudo. The lights dim, the music starts, the pre-pubescent girls begin to go crazy and Menudo comes out to do their very first number of the night wearing ...

Leather zip-up S&M gimp masks.

I did not just make that up.

It's SO FUCKED UP. These twelve year old girls are going CRAZY over these teenage Mexican boys who are basically dressed up like they're about to kidnap a bunch of the girls in a creepy cargo van and then nail them inside wooden boxes and keep them in the basement for the next five years. I only wish that in that moment I had had the presence of mind to look around at the girls' parents and see if any of them were as horrified at this inappropriateness as I was, or if they just thought that this was par for the course. But I didn't look around to see that, because I was too busy being struck down by the vision in front of me of young girls rushing after Latino dominator gimps.

Oh.My.God.

Sadly, though, I am so numb to this type of insanity that I eventually eased up and started to enjoy the Menudo show. I actually enjoy the song "Save the Night," which you can buy in iTunes. At one point, I actually find myself thinking, "Hey, that sixteen year old Latino kid is going to grow up to be quite the heart breaker..."

And then the unfortunate happens. My mind wanders or whatever and I lose track of what's going on, and when I look back up, a boy who looks like he may generously be around eleven years old is singing to me about what goes on "In the middle of the night."

Oh, NO NO NO NO NO NO. Inappropriateness alert! NO NO NO NO NO! Oh, no. Now I just feel dirty. Ew. I mean, at that age, what's supposed to be going on in the middle of the night for that boy is "I wonder what this sticky stuff in my bed is and where it came from." What should NOT be happening at his age is pelvic thrusting on stage as he describes a more vivid vision of "in the middle of the night."

It was all so wrong.

Yet so very, very right.

"Save the night..."

Oh, I will, Jose. I will.