NKOTB #2 in a boyband vote/mentioned/Mark interview/mentions...

Hello!

Just a few short news from the world of NKOTB and/or Mark W.... Sorry if th=
is is off topic for some...

First... Happy birthday to Joe a bit late... ;-) The baby boy is growing o=
lder and we follow... ;-) I'm starting to feel old....

Okay... Now Ylex a radion station in Finland held a vote of which is the mo=
st wanted boy band song of all times and the results were:

Take That with Babe as number 3
NKOTB with Step By Step number 2
BSB with Everybody (Backstreet's Back) as number 1.

Way to go NKOTB :-)

I can't remember the rest of the top 10 though....

Today's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer mentioned NKOTB as well... Buff=
y and Spike were in bed and she said something like
"Your place is nicely decorated.... But those NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK posters=
are getting old". I can't remember the exact words
but it was something like that... :-) YAY....

Now to Mark... My friend brought a huge pile of mags with her from UK and t=
here were a few that included Mark stuff as well...

Now (UK magazine) from the premiere of the Italian Job. A picture of Mark a=
nd he said something like "If it was up to me I'd take the
first flight back to CA today but I'll have to stick here at least until to=
morrow." Explaining that he missed his daughter Ella Rae so
much. (I don't have the magazine with me here so I can't tell you his exact=
words.)

The latest issue (1/2004) of Seiska (a Finnish mag) had a very short mentio=
n of Mark saying that he had broken up the engagement
with his girlfriend Rhea Durham just a few months after their daughter was =
born. Their relationship had been on the rocks for some
time and the next step marriage seemed too big. (Now don't kill me if this =
isn't true, it was from their gossip column. I'm just writing
what they have in the mag.)

And the last bit is from Cosmopolitan (issue October 2003). I believe this =
the UK version as it's got the UK website everywhere... It
also mentions Donnie very briefly...

Why do men...?
...decide to settle down?
Mark Wahlberg tells Cosmo: "so they can wake up every day with the same wom=
an"

Mark Wahlberg has crammed a lot into his 32 years. Jail, a drug habit, endl=
ess partying and women. But now the Hollywood star has
turned his life around. Here, he tells Martyn Palmer how father hood and lo=
ve have helped him leav his wild days behind.

Mark Wahlberg is all grown-up. Whereas, once, he blasted out rap music, pos=
ed provocatively in his Calvin Kleins and hung out wiht
the wild boys, these days he's listening to Buddhist chants, playing a roun=
d of golf and fretting about impending fatherhood.

Well, to be fair, it's not impending fatherhood that's troubling him; more =
living with a woman... When I met Wahlberg, his girlfriend's -
model and former Cosmo cover girl Rhea Durham - hormones were running riot,=
as she awaited the birth of a baby girl. Pregnancy
may have been a shock to Rhea's system, but it has proved to be quite a jol=
t to her partner's, too.

"I'm going to enjoy fatherhood - definitely," he says. "But it's the first =
time I've lived with a woman, never mind a pregnant woman, so
there's a lot to deal with. A lot of emotion, a lot of hormones. Man, those=
hormones! It's pretty wild."

"I'm excited because I'm bringing somebody into the world who's going to lo=
ve me for me, and I'm going to be able to provide in a way
that my parents couldn't during my childhood - that's a huge responsibility=
. But I'm ready for that. I'm from a big family and I've always
wanted to be a dad."

At 32, Wahlberg has lived a life of incredible high and some pretty despera=
te lows, including a 45-day stint in prison when he was 16,
for assaulting a shopkeeper.

After he'd served his time and was back on the drugs-drenched streets of Do=
rchester, the tough suburb of Boston where he was born -
one of nine kids crammed into a three-bedroom apartment - his expectations =
weren't very high. "To be honest, there were times when I
didn't think I'd really make it to see 30. It was bad."

Today, he sits in front of me as a "poster boy for redemption", which is ex=
actly how his friend Gary Gray, who directed Wahlberg in
his new film The Italian Job describes him. Sitting in his five-star Manhat=
tan hotel suite, in a cool grey suit and white shirt, Wahlberg
looks right at home. And so he should. These days, he is an A-list star, fr=
iends with George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio, with a
string of box-office hits to his name - Boogie Nights, Three Kings, A Perfe=
ct Storm, Planet of the Apes.

He has more money in the bank than he ever could have imagined. "I do have =
a lot of money. Certainly a lot more than I used to, I
grew up with nothing," he notes nonchalantly. In fact he gives a fair bit o=
f it away - funding youth centers on the very same streets he
grew up, helping to finance a Catholic drop-in center for kids.

Many of his childhood friends are "dead or doing time", and it's something =
of a mini miracle that Wahlberg himself didn't end up the
same way. "Every day was "wake uo, go out, hustle, make money, steal, sell =
drugs, rob people, do drugs." By normal standards, I
should have been locked up, and they should have thrown away the key," he s=
aid once.

Now he admits prison probably did do him some good. "I did all kinds of stu=
pid stuff. I'm certainly not proud of my past and my
childhood, but I have learned from my experiences. I think it had a serious=
effect on how I became a man, the person I am today.
Prison can do wonders for some people, not for everybody, but for some."

When he came out of prison, his older brother, Donnie, 34, was just about t=
o hit the big time in boy band, New Kids On The Block.
And it was Donnie who convinced his record company to give his baby brother=
a chance with some of his own rap songs. Renamed
Marky Mark, and riding on the coat tails of New Kids' success he found hims=
elf topping the charts with his debut album, Music For
The People.

A fresh start

Good-looking, usually prancing about on a stage stripped down to his boxers=
- and showing off a very buffed-up body, Marky Mark was
the bit of rough to countre-balance the New Kids' clean-cut image. He was a=
forerunner for Eminem, And, as the group's star began to
wane, Mark's was on the up. He cashed in with those memorable Calvin Klein =
ads, which saw his muscled frame on advertising
hoardings all over the world.

And suddenly he found himself on the receiving end of a lot of attention fr=
om young women who were flocking to see him perform - and
disrobe.

At first it was hard to resist the charms of some very attractive women wil=
ling to provide one-night stands. "I mean, I was a young kid -
I'd just got out of jail and, at first, women couldn't even talk to me. I w=
asn't getting too many girls in my neighborhood. And if you did
get them, you didn't want 'em anyway, because everybody else had them. It w=
as that kind of place - same girls, same bars, same
people.

"And then, suddenly, women - really beautiful women - seemed to be interest=
ed in me, so I was quite taken by that for a short time.
Then I realized they didn't really want me, they wanted the fame and the im=
age. That was cool for a while, but I want somebody who
wants me for me."

When his second album, You Gotta Believe, was released, the American tabloi=
ds dragged up the stories of his jail sentence and
sales suffered.

It looked as though Wahlberg had enjoyed his five minutes of fame and would=
now retreat back into obscurity, admittedly a lot richer
than when he first came out of it. But he was to prove sceptics wrong. And =
in some style...

Plenty scoffed when it was time for his film debut, opposite Danny DeVito, =
in Renaissance Man. He certainly knew it was going to be
hard to be taken seirously.

"I realized it was going to be pretty close to impossible. I went from bein=
g a musician of little credibility to being a model. So then they
say, "OK, look at me, I want to be a serious actor" - everyone laughed in m=
y face."

This probably motivated him even more, because time and time again he prove=
d them wrong. He was chaming as an army recruit in
Renaissance Man, seriously scary as the boyfriend from hell in Fear, and qu=
ite wonderful as the naive, but seriously well-endowed
young man who drifts into porn, in the excellent Boogie Nights.

Wahlberg, a devout Catholic, agonised before taking that particular role, p=
laying porn star Dirk Diggler. "I almost didn't do Boogie
Nights because I thought, "The guys from the "hood are going to freak, and =
that's not good". But then I thought, "Why do I care about
what these guys are to think?"".

"And because of my religion, I did think about it. But I knew it was much m=
ore than pornography and sex and drugs. It was a very
moving story about people who were very human - and there's no telling why =
they made the decisions they did. I am very religious so I
hope God is either a movie fan or has a good sense of humor."

He still finds it hard to live down Dirk Diggler's briefly glimpsed, but on=
ce-seen-never-forgotten, manhood; although confesses that the
make-up department had helped make it, er, larger than life.

"It was a prosthetic. Although no one seemed to believe that. I still get f=
ollowed to the bathroom a lot. Actually, I have it in my safe at
home. It's my prized possession - you never know when it's going to come in=
handy. If things don't work out, I could always auction it
to the highest bidder..."

Moving on up

Relocated to Hollywood - home is now a five-bedroom house in Beverly Hills,=
Wahlberg built on the reputation earned in Boogie Nights
with Three Kings, a crime caper set to the backdrop of the first Gulf War.

Now, in The Italian Job, with actress Charlize Theron, the heist movie is i=
nspired by, rather than a remake of, the 1960s cult British
movie starring Michael Caine. Apart from the fact that the gang of expert t=
hieves, led by Charlie Croker (Wahlberg), pull off a gold
robbery in Italy, and use some souped up Minis in a fabulous car chase - ju=
st like the 1969 original, there are not a lot of similarities.
This is popcorn entertainment - not very challenging - but a lot of fun, an=
d Wahlberg and Theron are highly watchable.

"It was an amazing group of people, and we all got along really well. Movie=
s are supposed to be hard work, especially if you want
them to come out good. You are supposed to suffer for your craft and all of=
that bullshit, but it was just fun."

"Working with Charlize was a delight - she fits right in. And she had more =
testosterone than all of the guys. I mean, behind the wheel
of one of those Minis, she's crazy. I got car-sick being in the passenger s=
eat with her. Really. I have a weak stomach and she was
throwing it around all over the place. She was definitely the most aggressi=
ve behind the wheel. She's a guy's girl."

Two years ago, Wahlberg begain dating Rhea Durham, 24, who moved into his h=
ome earlier this year.

Partying, he says, is now in the past. "I don't go out anymore. I gave that=
up a while ago. I gave up the nightclubs for the country
clubs," he laughs. "I'd rather play golf. I want to wake up in the morning =
and feel good. I want to wake up every morning with the same
woman. There's nothing worse than waking up with a strange woman. It's fun =
for a while, but it's not good."

"I thank God I'm healthy and that I made it through alive. I've had some fu=
n, don't get me wrong, but I had to make sure I changed my
lifestyle before we decided to have a baby."

"Being a father is a huge responsibility. But I didn't just jump into it. I=
was slowly working towards it and thrying to grow up, because I
don't want to get into anything until I'm ready. And believe me, I'm ready.=
I make sure I'm prepared for everything I do in life, and that I
know as much as possible."

Times have changed, obviously. Even the soundtrack to his life is no longer=
head-banging, pulsating beat of rap - it just winds him up
too much. These days, it's all much calmer.

"I don't sing anymore, except in the shower," he says. "And if I listen to =
rap, I want to kick somebody's ass. So I listen to a lot of
mellow stuff - a lot of reggate, soft rock. And, right now, I'm preparing f=
or a role and I'm listening to Bob Thurman, actress Uma
Thurman's dad - he's a professor at Columbia University and has all these t=
apes about Tibetan Buddhism. I've been listening to that."

"And I get the same sort of therapy from playing golf. I do. I have so much=
patience - you learn etiquette, and it's a good thing. I'm a lot
more patient, more calm. A lot more focused, and a lot more..."
He stops and begins to laugh. "What am I saying?" Perhaps, I suggest, his w=
ild days are over? "Yeah, I guess that must be it."

The Italian Job is currently on general release

And that's all from me... Sorry for clogging up your mailboxes...

I hope you enjoyed reading the article...

Love,

Päivi