The New Kids on the cruise

Talk about rocking the boat! The New Kids on the Block embark on a summer cruise each year with their biggest fans.  And last year, POP TV cameras came along and filmed a docuseries called Rock This Boat: New Kids on the Block. 

The guys are back on board for another season of the show which returns 8:30 p.m. June 1st on POP TV.

I wrote a story about the new season and interviewed Danny Wood who lives in North Miami.

What's not in the interview: I totally geeked out in learning that he grew up in Dorchester's Pope's Hill neighborhood which is not far from my old neighborhood of Lower Mills in Dorchester where I lived for 10 years.  I really think everyone has a connection to Dorchester, fondly called DOT among locals.

This isn't my first NKOTB story.

In 2008 when the band reunited, I wrote a feature for my old paper The Boston Globe on how fans (mostly women in their 30s and 40s) were increasingly showing up at the childhood home of Jordan and Jonathan Knight (also in Dorchester) to take photos and tours of their old bedrooms.

The family had sold the house at 10 Melville Ave. to the Salvation Army which gladly allowed the impromptu tours.

Here's a photo gallery that ran with that story. 

Photos above on the Carnival Victory ship from POP TV.

Catching up with Tangela

Fifteen years ago when I was a general assignment reporter at The Miami Herald, I wrote several stories about the death of Vera Lawrence, a Miami secretary who died while receiving silicone injections to her butt. During the reporting and followup court hearings, I connected with her daughter Tangela Sears.

I lost touch her as life took me to Boston for 10 years and then back to Miami.

Yet Tangela kept popping up on my radar whenever I read about another gun violence story or tuned into the local Sunday morning shows such as WPLG's This Week in South Florida where she advocated for safer streets and discussed issues in the community.

I'm glad she remembered me when I reached out to her a few weeks ago. I wanted to see how she was doing and I wanted to catch up with her to write a followup story on how she deals with the losses in her life. (Her son was fatally shot last year in Tallahassee.)   She also told me her about her new support group Parents of Murdered Kids that helps other moms navigate the legal system for their childrens' cases.

Famous South Florida homes

From the UFO-shaped house just outside Fort Lauderdale to the waterfront two-story house used for MTV's The Real World: Miami season, there are a lot of residential properties that became newsworthy and part of pop culture in South Florida and beyond.

That includes Madonna's former home in Miami's Coconut Grove where she shot several photos for her 1992 Sex book and Gianni Versace's former estate in Miami Beach where he was fatally shot in 1997.

I produced a photo gallery and shot some photos of the more infamous homes in the tropics.  At the top left is the spaceship house in Davie.  It was owned by the 

See if you recognize any of these spots.

A screen grab from The MTV Real World House on Rivo Alto Island in Miami Beach where Flora, Mike, Joe, Sarah, Cynthia and ahem Dan lived for six months in 1996.

The Elian Gonzalez house in Miami's Little Havana. If you look closely on the right side of the gate, there's a framed photo of Elian's mother Elizabeth Broton who drowned in trying to make the voyage from Cuba to Florida in 1999.

A Providence Throwback

It's hard to believe that it's been two years since I published my fifth novel Looking for Providence.

While I currently edit/revise my sixth novel to be called Six Neckties (an updated blog post to come soon), I thought it would be a fun flashback to post this video of me chatting about the Providence book at Boston's Channel 7, WHDH.  I was giddy (I think I was blushing throughout the interview) at the NBC affiliate that afternoon in downtown Boston.

The Voice

Scott Chapin likes to work in his wife's closet. It's the most audio-friendly place in his Fort Lauderdale beach condo to do his job - voicing news promos and teases for WSVN Channel 7 in Miami and sister station WHDH in Boston (and other Fox affiliates.)

I hung out with Scott in his closet/work space for a profile I wrote about him for the Sun Sentinel.

He started at WSVN in 1989 and had a short retirement in 2010.

Here is one of his older news promos from 1993 and a more recent one.