Mixtape

Continuing on the theme of my few but painful failings and second to sucking at being sick is sucking at making mixtapes. Yeah, mixtapes. That's what we called them in my youth. Now the youths call them playlists. Same diff. It's a bunch of songs you hand picked to mean something or other to the someone or other the mixtape is intended for. Problem is mixtapes are excruciatingly difficult for this someone to put together. Thankfully I'm not working with the dual tape decks of yore but still.

Rewind:
I'm going to pin this colossal failing of mine — the failure to properly mix — on my junior year prom date. He was pretty into me, as far as a teenager who looks like Vanilla Ice can be into another teenager who looks like the most depressed human alive but is really just super faux goth. He had really dark arm hair.

I dumped him. I probably wasn't very smooth about it. I probably wasn't very nice either. This boy cried much to my surprise and made me a mixtape to get me back. (Get me back in the sense that he wanted to desperately reunite, not exact revenge on me, as far as I can tell.)

I remember being kinda pumped someone had gone to the trouble of making me a mixtape. (Mixtapes were the RAGE when I was a teen faux goth.) I remember playing this mixtape for the first time at my girlfriend's house.

First song: 
Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U"
Wow, heavy dude. I must have really done a number on this kid.

Second song:
Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Weird. I guess he recorded it twice. Cool.

Third song:

Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Uh...what?

Yeah, you're seeing a theme here, right? Two sides of that cassette tape with the same song over and over again. I was FREAKED OUT. I mean, we made out a couple times but nothing to warrant this depth of loss, this chasm of feelings. This kid ruined the mixtape; and the mixtape let it happen.

Fast forward: 

This past week, a funny thing happened when I heard these words come out of my own damn mouth, "I'm going to make you a mix." 

Come on brain. Work better with mouth hole.

Now shit, I could easily just not make the mixtape. The someone for whom it's intended probably wouldn't even remember. But damn if I didn't say I was going to do something, I'm going to damn well do it. 

Pause/Play (Fuck! Rewind, Rewind!):

So now here I am. Trying to figure out how the hell to make a mixtape, or playlist for the youths in the room. Let's put aside the hard work of finding the songs —I'm already resigned to the fact this mixtape will supremely suck and I'm okay with that. 

Am I at all worried about being critiqued for my selection of songs? Hell no. I'm about 20 years out from caring what anyone listens to and how that will/won't affect how we'll get along or what my song selection says about me. What I'm staying up at night over is this: 

How in high holy hell do I deliver a mixtape in 2013? 

CD? Do the youths even know what to do with a CD? Do I even have the software to burn a CD? Fuck if I know. Is a thumbdrive too 90s? Too corporate? Should I put a PowerPoint on that thumbdrive just because? Apparently you can share a playlist via email or Spotify. Like it's so caaaaaaasual of me to make this mixtape that I can just shoot it over in an email. You're a jerk, iTunes. 

It seems impersonal not to deliver something tangible to show the sweat and tears that are inevitably going into the making of this mixtape. But shit, I might get lazy or just procrastinate until the very last second this mixtape is due. And then email it or Spotify it or Cloud it or Google Whatever it into the stratosphere and over to the someone for which it was promised. 

Stay tuned for further developments. I can guarantee Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U" will not be on it. Or will it. . . 

Stop.