The First Echo

My @HuffingtonPost debut. (I guess they'll let anyone contribute these days.) #troyesivan A photo posted by Hiko Mitsuzuka (@thefirstecho) on Aug 22, 2016 at 11:11am PDT
I guess I can now add "Huffington Post contributor" to my bio.

My piece on Troye Sivan enjoyed some popularity on the interwebs this week -- 956 likes and 345 retweets as of this posting...

You can catch it here.

@TheFirstEcho

Meet BriannaJoy.

She's 18, married to her high school sweetheart, 19-year-old Jaelin, and loves to vlog about her life experiences.

Stuff like...what it's like to wake up next to her man every day:


Or...moving to Chicago -- and then leaving after one day because of a scary run-in with a mentally unstable person on the L train (I dare you to get through the whole video):


And when she's not vlogging about scary city life from the confines of gorgeous, remodeled kitchens with her baby-faced husband, she's discussing finer things like: back-to-school dating advice (because she knows men so well after dating one of them), make-up tutorials, and cooking Chrissy Teigen-inspired meals.

Here's the thing: I understand how easy it would be to go off on this adorable couple because of their jawdropping naiveté and sheltered life in general (FYI, the above video is trending on Reddit for all the wrong reasons), but a part of me does acknowledge that they are publishing their a…

While browsing the AMC Theaters website the other day, I caught this comment from a moviewatcher named @junia365:

"Just watch Jason Bourne. Don't listen to the critics, it was exactly what a Bourne movie should be!"
Her exclamation is one of many that falls under the same "fuck the critics" sentiment that has been running rampant recently. (If you're familiar with the petitioned shutdown of Rotten Tomatoes by Suicide Squad fans, then you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, click here...Mom.) This critique on critics is more visible (and louder) than ever, thanks to people like @junia365 who have multiple platforms at their disposal to voice their opinion.

Movie critics, since the dawn of time, tend to get a bad rap. They're often targets of ridicule, easy to make fun of. They're usually seen as snobs who poo-poo anything the masses find enjoyable. You can't help imagining a bald guy in glasses with a bushy mustache, wearing a dec…

Another much-needed vacation calls for another much-needed playlist.

Consider this one a special edition, a collection curated by yours truly to accentuate my upcoming trip to the East Coast -- six days in New York, followed by four days in Cape Cod.

Dinner reservations have been made. New swim trunks have been purchased. And suntan lotion has been restocked. August 27 can't come any sooner.

In the meantime, go ahead and click play:

@TheFirstEcho

*Updated 8/19/16 with a response from Ms. Spencer herself.

Looks like it. The Oscar winner was an extra on the set of the video for Alanis Morissette's "Everything" back in 2004.

She appears at the 1:22 mark (on the left, as seen above).

And oh yeah, some guy by the name of Ryan Reynolds was supposed to show up at the end (when he and Alanis were an item back in the early 00s), but it looks like they recast -- and reshot -- the video to include the guy who played Greg (Chris William Martin), the cute med student who had a fling with Felicity...on Felicity.

Fun fact: the actor also appears in the video for Alanis's fantastic cover of "Crazy."

@TheFirstEcho

I'm more than halfway through Goldy Moldavsky's breezy satirical novel, Kill The Boy Band (about four teenaged girls who kidnap a member of a One Direction-esque band -- and things go horribly wrong), and I just came across this fun monologue delivered by the narrator, directed at a hipster hotel bartender:

"Don't you have a Kickstarter to fund or something? I don't have to sit here and listen to you. You don't know anything. You think you're so cool with your beard and your dollar-store philosophies about boy bands and life? You think you have anything to say about the experience of the modern American teenage girl? You have no fucking clue what it's like to be me or my friends. You don't know what we're capable of. So why don't you kindly fuck off!"

Methinks the author had a few things to get off her chest, and this was clearly her version of "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" aimed directly at a …

At the beginning of 2016, I wrote a piece for Bello called "The Inevitable Rise of Troye Sivan," praising a bold and refreshing new talent in the pop arena and predicting his destined claim to mainstream fame.

For those of you who still have no clue as to whom I'm talking about, Troye Sivan started out as a YouTuber from Australia, gaining immense popularity among the GenZ set. His excellent, emotional electro-R&B debut album, Blue Neighborhood, was released shortly before Christmas last year, and Rolling Stone immediately called this talented 21-year-old "one of 10 new artists you need to know."

Before the release of that album, Troye had released an EP of tunes (2014's TRXYE) and a trilogy of music videos called "Blue Neighborhood," highlighting three standout tracks: "WILD,""FOOLS," and "TALK ME DOWN." Each beautifully directed piece chronicles a childhood friendship that turns into a forbidden and tragic roma…

Superhero Movie Fatigue -- or SMF for those of you currently suffering through it -- is nothing new.

People, namely critics, pop culture pundits, and anyone with some semblance of intelligence and taste, have been complaining about the relentless onslaught of comic-book movie franchises for a while now. And if the recent, lukewarm reception for Suicide Squad is any indication, people aren't afraid to be vocal about it anymore.

And God knows, many have written about Hollywood's unhealthy obsession with franchises and the current state of how the industry is operating, especially at movie studios. (Hint: you can thank foreign countries, especially China, for America's current cinematic output.) See here:

Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
And Exhibit C.

Frankly, for all I care, Marvel and DC could lay out their planned movie schedules from now until I'm sitting in a nursing home shitting myself while having apple sauce shoved down my gagging throat. As of now, in August of 2016, I sim…