Hanson fan-demonium

Hundreds line up early outside Planet Hollywood for look at the singing siblings from Oklahoma

Kathleen Merryman; The News Tribune

Taxis made them scream. Delivery vans made them scream. Tour buses made them scream.

From 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, they lined the sidewalk in front of Seattle's Planet Hollywood, 400 to 500 teen and preteen girls, dreaming of screaming at Hanson.

Isaac, Taylor and Zac, the Hanson brothers, were in Seattle for an 8 p.m. concert tonight at KeyArena. Monday, they agreed to meet the press, and as many fans as the fire marshal would allow into Planet Hollywood.

Timing was everything.

"We got in line at 6 a.m. We were the first to get here," said Jenine Geary, 13, who'd come from Sumner with her friend, Meredith McMahon, 14, and their 6-by-6-foot banner, featuring a glitzy felt-and-sequins "Planet Hanson" centerpiece surrounded by Hanson logos.

"It took forever. We burned our hands," said Geary, who doesn't want to see a glue gun again for a while.

It was worth it, the girls agreed, to make something nice for the band that has made them so happy.

"They make you feel happy, and they make you dance," Geary said.

"They look like they'd be really good friends, and they're really great singers," said McMahon, whose favorite Hanson song is "Madeline."

"Our hope is to get it to them so they can put it up in their garage," the teens said.

That had better be a three-car garage, judging by the quilts and portraits, banners and posters the girls (no, there were no boys there) brought.

Carly Rogers of Mountlake Terrace and her friend, Kellie Palsha of Brier, worked for six months on a quilt featuring the band's name and symbols that any fan knows are meaningful to the boys - Peanuts' Lucy, who has her own song, and Sesame Street's Animal, because Zac is such a wild and crazy kid.

"We made it all by hand, without any help," said Rogers. "We worked so hard on it."

Their friend, Heather Cudnik, 17, looked remarkably un-Hansonfan, with her pierced eyebrows, her hair shaved in some spots and dyed magenta in others. She is, she said, a Marilyn Manson fan, and likes to look the part. But she had a wonderfully subtle pencil portrait of the three wholesome boys from Tulsa.

"I stayed up most of last night doing it," she said. "I just wanted to support them for my friends."

Dianna Conley, 14, of Renton, spent eight hours building a 4-foot-tall Hanson hat on her bike helmet in hopes of meeting the band in person through radio station KISS 106.1. The hat started with KISS 106.1 lips, then zoomed up to a Planet Hollywood globe, and topped out with a mounted portrait of the band.

"My mom helped me make it because I wanted to meet Hanson," she said, pointing to her mom and dad, Doris and Bob Conley, who drove her to Seattle before rush hour and enjoyed the scene on the sidewalk all day.

They couldn't have asked for a nicer band, they said.

"Their music doesn't have any bad words. It's happy-go-lucky and it makes me feel good," said Dianna Conley, who likes Zac best.

Leah Hansen, 15, of Woodinville, had duct-taped pictures of Hanson all over her jeans, and decorated her shirt with KISS 106.1 logos. Her fingernails were blue - Zac's favorite color.

She's always liked their music. Liking the band took longer.

"I thought they were all girls at first," Hansen said of the boys, who range from 12 to 17 years old and all have long, blond hair. "When I got used to them being boys, I thought they were kind of cute."

Not that she'd want to date any of them.

"They'd be gone a lot," she said. "There'd be no point. You couldn't have a real relationship."

After the long wait, after all that screaming, the girls who had waited longest got inside for the press conference.

Dianna Conley's tall, tall hat won her a breathtaking, adrenaline-intensive, face-to-face meeting with Hanson.