Greetings and salutations!

First, just let me tell you how thrilled I am to be a part of the Eye On Soaps team. Katrina (webmaster/owner, EOS) and I have become e-mail pals these last couple of years, and she recently asked if I’d like to contribute to the site. Let me tell you, I was thoroughly honored by her offer (and am not saying that to suck up). After a brief Sally Field moment, I immediately e-mailed back and accepted. I’m totally stoked at the idea of joining such a great staff of writers, made even greater by the fact that they do this because they want to, not for financial gain. How pure is that?

Now, to give you an idea about my intentions for this column, I chose to call it "Confessions of a Media ‘Ho" for several reasons (and, yes, the choice of "‘Ho" was an intentional shout-out to Sage, whose witty and insightful writings initially led me to "Eye On Soaps." I don’t recall how I found him, but it was shortly after he started his column, and I instantly became a fan. I gravitated to the rest of the site from there and was hooked.). I’ve been watching GH since 1984, just as Blackie (John Stamos) was putting the band together, Quartermaine relative Celia Putnam (Sherilyn Wolter) was having some serious marriage problems, and Robert Scorpio (Tristan Rogers) was falling in love with his wife, Holly (Emma Samms).

I was so seriously addicted to GH that I began scheduling my college classes around its airing time (3pm, EST) and even skipped an occasional class that clashed with GH. In 1985, I bought my first VCR so I’d never miss an episode. Yes, I had it bad, but back then, the show was usually very good.

In ‘86 I began my career in publishing and my daily viewing of GH continued. In early ‘88, I was home sick with the flu one week and decided to check out AMC. Shazam. I was expanding my addiction. (Storylines at the time included the Stuart and Cindy - David Canary and Cindy Wheeler -  love story, Skye’s - Robin Christopher - involvement with an anti-AIDS organization, a variety of things in the life of young Julie Chandler - Lauren Holly!, and the rape of Natalie Hunter - Kate Collins.)  Now I had to set up the VCR to tape a three-hour block, from 1 to 4pm (remember, the technology was rather young then), so I would fast-forward through OLTL after watching AMC. You may ask, well, why not just watch all three? Pfft, said I, I’d NEVER watch three soaps a day! Not me! (I ate those words when PC - Port Charles - debuted, but that ended up being only a six year addiction, though I wasn’t broken of it by choice, sniff.)

Fast-forward a few years in my real life, and I’ve moved up to a one-bedroom apartment. That’s a big deal here in New York, where laughably-small rooms are called "studio apartments" (think of Elizabeth’s tiny art studio on GH from a couple of years ago and you’ll get the picture) and are really, really overpriced. Anyway, I was lucky enough to find a reasonable apartment with room for TWO TV sets and TWO VCRs, both set to tape my soaps on a daily basis. Why both? Well, in case the cable went out in one room and not the other, silly! (And, trust me, there were days when I was glad to have back-up, before the days of SoapNet.) Nowadays, SoapNet is all too often my saving grace, particularly when you lose chunks of your show due to incredibly important breaking news such as Bush nominates Rice to replace Powell (a no-brainer), or the local news division decides it’s vital to update you  ad nauseum on the weather conditions (hello, commuters are generally NOT watching television while they work - that’s what VCRs and TiVO are for - so who exactly is getting these vital weather updates? Not people who need them!), etc., etc. (I’ll rant on this another time, I promise!)

Does this convince you that I’m a media ‘ho? Wait, there’s more: celebrity encounters with the likes of Susan Lucci, Michael E. Knight, Cady McClain, Senait Ashenafi (ex-Keesha Ward, GH), Ruth Warrick, and a few more. Good stories all, which I promise to share with you. I also plan to provide commentary on what’s going on, storyline-wise, with both GH and AMC, and occasionally reminisce about great (or not-so-great) times past. Just typing some of these names and storyline references has made me smile. I hope to do the same for all of you.