Zine Symposium today, and a slight introduction to music

I'm hoping a few people make their way to this site today after visiting the zine symposium at Portland State. Here goes nothing. My cookies are in the over, so that I have something at the table other than an old Optimus Prime toy, my zine, and my chemistry book (the book has become something of a comfort blanket: think Linus from Peanuts + studying.) So I hope you took a cookie and acquired a zine for what I'm thinking will be about a dollar, and left happy. I'm going to put up an absorbadent, probably meaning two, pictures on here after the symposium, if Morgan is willing to help me. Again, I'm terribly sorry about the shitty website, but I don't know how to do much more, but am going to learn. But anyway (Blues Traveler said that), I think it's time to tell a silly story...

So my first cd was Boyz II Men. I was having a conversation about this the other day, specifically focused on how the hell that was my first cd. My 5th grade self was not deeply into R&B or harmony for that matter. I think the only music I knew at that point was Queen's Greatest Hits volume 2, fading memories of New Kids songs, Disney, and a whole ton of Neil Young songs.



That year I had bought a huge boombox at circuit city. It was fabulous and off brand (Sanjo I believe) and lasted a good 12 years, may it rest in peace. However, I didn't know what music to buy. I didn't have that many friends and no older siblings to guide my music listening.

On Christmas day, I excitedly ran downstairs, ecstatic to see what was under the tree. I found a package that would over the years be felt many many too many times: a cd case. I ripped into the wrapping paper and then into the then mysterious plastic shrink wrap to find out what was indeed inside. I ran upstairs and stuck it in my boom box, which I carried down on my shoulder like I'd seen people doing on TV. This was going to be awesome. I was ready to hear a guitar, but what to my wondering ears do I hear: smooth harmonies and some fabulous Philadelphia R&B meets boy band.

I can't lie, I liked it, I listened to it over and over again, until I got a Green Day cd, and even then it took a while for that first album to work its way out of rotation. The question that stuck in my brain was how did that cd become my first album. My dad doesn't listen to R&B and neither does my mother. They most certainly didn't listen to modern pop radio or watch VH1. My dad claims I asked for the cd, which isn't true because I had never heard of Boyz II Men, so I called my mother, who claims that a friend of the family who was living with us at the time, told my parents that Boyz II Men was what all the cool kids were listening to. Not Nirvana, not Soundgarden, or anything else with guitars and rock: Boyz II Men.

So this post is in honor of that cd and the fact that my first slow dance ever at a rec center on the Isle of Palms in South Carolina with a girls who's name I never learned to forget, and who I ran away from the rest of the night after my friend decided to walk up behind us and start yelling "Go Bobby, it's your birthday" was to the sounds of "I'll Make Love to You" (except not performed in Korea) by none other than Boyz II Men.



It must have effected my music taste somehow, but that's a subject for another time, I mean they did give me a great appreciation for the Beatles. The cookies are done and I need to attend to my hygiene before I leave for the symposium. Hope I meet you there and don't come off as some overweight jerk who spent his morning eating cookie dough and thinking about 5th grade.