The First Echo

Someday, when I'm asked the question "What was the first song you ever downloaded from the Internet?" I will have my answer ready (it's the first track listed below). I remember it the way a mother would remember her toddler's first spoken word.

I first started making mix CDs back in the fall of 1999 from a corner dorm room on the fifth floor of Boston University's Warren Towers. This was during the heyday Napster, before iPods or iAnythings had infiltrated the student body. Thanks to several dormmates whose CD burners I took advantage of, I was able to set aside the tape cassettes containing tunes I'd record off the radio (the 90s, so primitive) and put together improved compilations with better audio quality (MP3s, who knew?) and without snippets from those gabbing radio DJs who would always talk over the opening of a song (so annoying). With the help of my friend Christina, who had always relied on me for new tunage, I named this series of mixes Burnt, …

What is Elisabeth Shue doing right now?

Fun fact: She won the Best Actress Award for Adventures in Babysitting...at the Paris Film Festival in 1987.

Seriously.

H.P.M.

Much like Kathy Griffin, I have a daydream in which I get booked to be a guest on Oprah in order to promote and talk about my book, The First Echo: Memoirs of a Pop Culture Junkie.

And after reading the foreword in Ms. Griffin's current book, I was slightly disappointed to find out that she opens her memoirs the same way I would begin mine. Hers is a more desperate plea of a love letter to visit those Harpo Studios, sit on that Chicago stage, and shoot the shit with Gayle. My opening would be a more detailed envisioning, from the outfit Oprah would wear (something purple) to the spontaneously combusting housewives in the audience who just can't hold it together because it's Oprah. Muthaf**king. Winfrey. Oh, and then there's the introduction O would give me, announcing my name in her trademark vowel stretching: "Please welcome Hikoooooooo!" We sit, she gushes, and then she tells me to stick around for the surprise celebrity guest who's a fan of my book - a…

"But everyone's a vacant heart, when will love move in?
It's in the news that we all lose when love ain't moving in.
I only have these empty rooms, and they're all filled with space,
And I can't seem to find much love in this place,
And the doors that close behind leave me standing cold outside..."

- "Vacant Heart" by Frankmusik

After witnessing the stress, heartache and overall relationship drama several of my closest friends have gone through in the past year (2009, you've been quite the banner year for breakups), it's easy to subscribe to the Why Bother? school of thought. Why bother entering a relationship when it will only end in tears, disappointment and destroyed trust? Why bother being with someone who will eventually let you down and shatter every expectation you had ever had? Why bother taking the risk? Why gamble with your emotions?

All of these questions only imply a sense of hopelessness, which can lead to cynicism, which can only…

Two in one week. Here and here.