The First Echo

It's an election year, and you know what that means: An uptick in Facebook un-friending! Like any presidential race that has occurred during the age of social media, people's true colors come out to play, and political debates rage on through never-ending comment threads. This leads to the inevitable dissolving of "friendships" across the global platform that is Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar baby. But other than a low tolerance for your political tirades, there are other reasons why I seriously considered taking a (temporary) break from Facebook, which has over the years become a tiresome hub of unwarranted opinions, presumptuous posts, and blatant reminders that your life isn't as fabulous as you yourself have let on. By now, it's become blatantly obvious why anyone below the age of 20 has fled for greener pastures like Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram: Facebook has become a forum full of parents and childless adults who use it as a soapbox (and

For those of you who complain that times have become a little too politically correct, your head is about to burst from the trailer for this remake to 1987's Adventures in Babysitting , a highly sanitized version of the PG-13-rated teen comedy that was possibly Elisabeth Shue's best work, a chance to see a closeted Anthony Rapp ogle an issue of Playboy , and a platform for a homophobic running joke about Thor. Instead of one babysitter, we now get two. Instead of an international crime ring of car thieves, we get two bumbling crooks who look like Home Alone villain rejects. Instead of a smoky blues club in which our heroine has to improvise a song, we get a "rap battle" that probably makes 8 Mile look like a Sesame Street sketch. All this...and no sign of any brushes with the Lords of Hell on a Chicago L train. Why? Because this blatant attempt to cash in on parents' nostalgia for the 80s is being broadcast on the Disney Channel. Go ahead and cringe:

12 years later, Michael Gray's "The Weekend" is still a great song to kick off your Friday morning and get you pumped up for 48 hours of pure, unadulterated leisure time. And the video is also an opportunity to ogle a bunch of underwear models pretending to be office gals who work hard for the money: @TheFirstEcho