Coming to Terms With Your Favorite Song

April 9 -- Awards season is virtually over, with the exception of one or two more relatively insignificant, trophy-tossing events.

There are the Daytime Emmys (big for soap fans) and the MTV Movie Awards. But if you find MTV categories like "best screen kiss" and "best villain" to be compelling, than I assume you'd also be interested in another version of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here starring the likes of Mindy Cohn from The Facts of Life and Anson "Potsie" Williams from Happy Days.

In the weeks following the Oscars, the only things entertainment-related that I've come to learn are the following: The late Michael Jeter was underrated as an actor; Lisa Marie Presley clearly has as many issues as her late father; and Russell Crowe has to be stricken from my special list of dirty-looking bachelors who I'll never get a shot at, but could go for if the situation arose.

Thus, I will either enthrall or burden you with another one of my musical experiences.

Everyone Has a Favorite SongEven now, in 2003, not everyone has cable, not everyone has the Internet. But everyone has a favorite song, a quintessential tune that means more to you than any other because it's the one that brings us back to a favorite moment in the past. A particularly meaningful song provides the background melody when we fall in love.

When you're young, you have your "mostest favorite song in the whole wide world" and now, once in a blue moon, when you hear it on the radio, it never fails to grab you, and you just have to say, "Oh my God! I used to love this! Turn it up."

My heart-stopper was always the Patti Austin/James Ingram duet "How Do You Keep the Music Playing." It was the theme song to the Burt Reynolds/Goldie Hawn film Best Friends.

When I saw the movie and heard the song, I immediately rushed out for the soundtrack and listened to it a million times. I swore it would be the song that I would play at every significant moment in my life — when I graduated school, lost my virginity, married, gave birth, and celebrated my 50th wedding anniversary.