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Nikki M. Mascali
Yesterday morning, I left my house unnaturally early for a Wednesday to head to 98.5 KRZ to cover the Spotlight Lounge event, which gives listeners a chance to sit in on an intimate mini-show with a national recording artist, and then have a meet and greet. This month’s band was Thriving Ivory, who then went on to play Tink’s in Scranton last night.
After the band played, and fans were getting ready to head to the room where the meet and greet would happen, one fan asked for singer Clayton Stroope’s empty water bottle.
Everyone kind of chuckled and gave the guy a weird look — including me — as Stroope rolled the bottle down the table. The guy said he’d sell it on eBay after he had the band sign it.
As I stood there taking pictures of some of the fans with the band for our Web site, the water bottle got me thinking. So much so that I felt bad about thinking the guy was weird. Haven’t we all got stories like that?
Here’s mine:
March 9, 1991. The F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre. I was 13. Thanks to my older brother, I had grown up on hair metal, but there I was, sitting in the front row with my best friend, my brother and his girlfriend at the time for someone I was uber-obsessed with: Vanilla Ice.
I’ll wait.
I was so excited to be at the show, and even more so to be there in the front row. I can still see Vanilla Ice’s silver pants as he hopped around on stage performing songs from his “To the Extreme” CD as me, my best friend and the shrieking girls surrounding us sang along word-for-word.
Into those silver pants, the “rapper” had a white towel tucked to wipe the beads of sweat from his face. At the end of the show, most of which is a blur to me now 18 years later (egads!), he tossed that white towel up into the air and everyone clamored for it.
My best friend and I leapt up as high as we could and … snagged it.
I cannot even explain how excited we were! It wasn’t that one of us got it and the other didn’t — it was both of ours.
After my brother took us home, she and I put on “Havin’ a Roni” (our favorite song from “To the Extreme”) and ceremoniously cut the towel in half. That towel hung on my wall for eons, right next to one of the many pictures of Bret Michaels from Poison.
We all know what happened to Vanilla Ice, but back in 1991, all I know is that I knew his entire CD by heart — it was completely different from the other music I was listening to at that time.
And you best believe I can still sing “Ice Ice Baby” in its entirety and do the beat boxes from “Havin’ a Roni.”
All you have to do is ask — but I refuse to do it sporting silver pants.
About the Author
Nikki M. Mascali began her career at the Weekender as an intern in 2005 - and holds the honor of being the oldest intern the paper ever had. She received her degree in journalism from Luzerne County Community College in 2007 and joined the Weekender staff full-time in 2006 as staff writer/designer before becoming associate editor in 2010. In March 2011, she was named editor.
Nikki has interviewed everyone from Gene Simmons to Richard Simmons, and her articles have run the gamut from local and national theater to music and in-depth reports on the radio industry and negativity in NEPA.
Nikki enjoys writing, quoting movies, traveling and being a diehard foodie - which is why she pens our weekly food and drink column, "Dish."
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