something smells funny

Continuing with my nostalgic mood, there are certain smells that I can vividly remember to tie in with my past. Experts say that the sense of smell is the strongest sense that humans can relate to in terms of memory. I can agree with that. Its a direct correlation between the past and physical memory. Certain things just smell like...well home...

1.) Apple crisp via my mom

A lot can be said about mothers home cooking. Everyone had a mother, and despite her cooking prowess or failures, a mom is usually known for a certain dish that is memorable. My mom, to me is memorable for her apple crisp. You can have apple pie, cobbler and apple what not all you damn want, but my mom is the end all be all of apple crisp. It definitely helps that my mom's apple dish stems from the fact that we grew, and still do grow our own apples. That store bought apple byproduct crap just cant hold a candle to home grown loving. The mix of granny smith and gravestine apples slowly cooking in a mix of cinnamon, sugar, other spices and a tasty crumbly crust would make a stern man swoon. I've gone as far as driving 30 miles for a pizza here in AZ, but I would easily drive the 740+ miles or the circumference of the planet for one spoonful of my mom's apple crisp.

2.) Hospital sanitarium

As much as I would like to anally clean my home, and I try to do, The cleansing smell of a sanitised hospital ward smells eerily good to me. I like the pristine conditions that a hospital provides. Unfortunately, as with the times that I have been in a hospital, most times that you are there, whether it be visiting or as a patient, it is masked by the fact that if you are in a hospital, it's usually is a bad time. Not that I wish for my home to smell 100 % hygienic, but there is some sort of comforting feeling for me to smell clean.

3.) Noxious car odors

Everyone loves that new car smell. The first time I truly smelt it was when I was 8 and my parents bought themselves a new 1984 Honda civic. Every time I smell a new car smell in it's destructively chemically new car goodness, I say to myself.."Hey, it smells like my parent's new Honda." Self explanatory.

4.) Sea salt

Whenever I drive home, I look forward to reaching Los Banos, which is within 60 miles of over the river and through the woods of reaching home. At that time, the San Joaquin valley and the eastern deserts give way to the offshore breeze of the pacific. Your skin feels the moisture and is no longer starved for lubrication and your nose smells the change in the air. I know I'm home. It's one of the most comforting feelings I can think of. The air is cold charged, but it still wraps around you like a childhood blanket. I always turn off my air conditioning there and embrace the home air.

5.) My Dad

It's proven in animals that certain scents of pheromones will identify a family member from outside sources. Such is that with my Dad. His scent is one that only myself or my mother can identify with. It's musky and somewhat sweaty and sweet. Hinted with flavors of old spice and toiled soil and plants, it is my father. Others outside our intimate circle may find it repulsing and dirty, but I do not, it smells like my father, and for that, I wouldn't change it for anything.

6.) Sao Jorge...Saint George cheese

Sorry, its a Portuguese thing. To most of the other people in the world, cheese from Sao Jorge smells like the business end of a NFL sock. It may very well taste the same if you are not of the adventurous side. Going into a Portuguese market in Newark, California and buying a pound of the smelly dairy goodness is a rite of passage for me. I love the cheese, and embrace it's stench with open arms. There is a saying wherein it goes something like, if you're buying Portuguese cheese and it smells that bad...it must be from Sao Jorge.

7.) Baseball leather

I spent many a year and many of baseball gloves playing little league back home in Cali in various teams. We played from late spring to early fall, but that fresh leather mitt smell was always the same. The smell of the mitt was a solidifying agent to all that was going on around during the baseball season...the late afternoon games on the field, the camaraderie with your teammates, the ice cream truck coming by at 5 pm, the coolers full of sodas awaiting you win or loss and of the age of your innocence in general. Its true that they say that of kids of all ages, baseball is America's pasttime. With one whiff of a glove, it all comes back.

8.) Pigeon dandruff

My Dad raises pigeons...there, I said it. Apparently its a rite of passage for men from Portugal coming off the boat to raise pigeons. Some to eat, and some for show. My dad raises then to eat. He breeds king pigeons, which are about or bigger than a chicken. A bit gamey and tough, but hell, if you stew them enough, it tastes better than a shoe. I'll eat it, but I've never been a dark meat man. Anyways, when I was a kid growing up, I used to play with my Dad's birds. Occasionally I'd bring them outside and let them loose on the grass ( they are too fat and stupid to know how to fly ), and have my way with them. Eventually I was able to make a good amount of them tame. Somehow I usually picked the ones that Dad didn't eat as my pets..or Dad didn't eat them because they were my pets. Either way, the birds always had a certain smell about them. It was musty, with a certain spice to them. Like if you hadn't washed your bed pillow for a while. It was warm and dominating seeing that you were holding a live creature that didn't know if it was to live the next day.

I'm sure there are more, wet slow rains, damp warm oak trees, salt flats, spring nectarine blossoms, pine trees, rose blooms, the incense of a catholic church's frankincense, your hair after a summer's day of swimming lessons, but that encompasses all I can muster at this time.

10 songs that shaped my youth

I think I really started listening to music on the radio about 7th grade, with most of my media beforehand coming from TV and movies. For most of Jr. High at McKinley, it was radio, but towards the end I started to branch out and actually buy cassettes and later on CD's. High school I was a mix tape fiend. Buying, compiling, recording and playing them over and over again. Once I had access to a car, well it was all over then because I was mobile and able to crank my tunes on the road. Today however, I sat down and thought of how much music influences my life, past and present. I tried to nail down 10 songs, from my childhood to my 18th birthday that had the most impact on my life. Henceforth, I present them here, with a written description, and I have also uploaded all 10 to the mp3 player below for you to hear. They will play, and I will write about them in my personal chronological order when they became important to me, not in actual discography dating.

1. Duran Duran, A view to a Kill-1985

I think this may have been my first actual recorded song. How I got it was as stupid as the song itself. My folks had a illegal HBO box on their TV...you know the kind where you had to turn a dial and tune in Tokyo?? Well, when it did work, we got the fledgling HBO network. One day, as a spry 8 yr old, I was watching the James Bond flick- A view to a Kill. Not only was I introduced to Mr. Christopher Walken (so cool), but James Bond himself ( not as cool, but ok). The only recordable media was a handheld tapedeck player/recorder, probably circa 1970-something. I would pop in a unknown tape, press record, and hold the damn thing to the tv speaker to record not only the song, but the movie itself. Little did I know that the tape I was recording on was my Dad's recording of all his brothers & sisters singing Portuguese songs as a gift to my grandparents on their 50th anniversary...oops.

2. LL Cool J, I'm Bad-1988

I still use this song at the gym for motivation, and always will. My buddy Ryan and I went down the rap route while others went mainstream rock. Ryan also went to karate class, so we would spar with each other in his living room. He only ad one set of pads, so we would alternate wadding up socks for gloves and punch the heck out of each other. It would usually end up resulting in a trashed room, bruises, sweat, and a whole lot of stupid laughter upon a errant ball shot. We would go ballistic on each other during certain lines of the song. We knew the lyrics were coming and we individually braced ourselves for the upcoming onslaught each time. Ryan's was- "Kamikaze! Take a look at what I've done! Used to rock in my basement, now I'm number one."

I was " I'll treat you like a stepchild, so tell mommy bye bye! So all you other MC's, I'll never get whipped, when I retire I'll be worshipped like an old battleship!"

Amazing how the undertones of each line can directly relate to what or where we are in life now.

3. Depeche Mode, Blasphemous Rumors 1992

I fell from grace, and my religion about when I first listened to this song. I was going to the catholic church at Mt. Carmel for all my youth and I hated it. I hated it because I was made to believe in something that I not only didn't understand, but had no interest in learning about. Now days I am more open to the topics of religion and faith, and will freely talk about any of them. I do not actively practice a faith now. At the time, I was starting out in high school and was entering my rebellious stage. I would either sneak out of Sunday mass, feign oversleeping or sickness until it came to a point where I'm sure, my parents just stopped making me go. They would still ask me after that if I wanted to go, and more times than not, I would say no. I also started questioning the ideas of faith and death with this song. I had not experienced death up close, so I had no concept of how faith would interact during that situation. I had no idea of how soon it would hit home.

4. Alphaville, Forever young 1991

My first experience with this song co-insided with my first rememberable death and funeral. During the fall of 1991, my cousin Sonya was killed in a drunk driving rollover accident after riding in the back of a car without her seatbelt on, driven by a 16 yr old boy leaving a house party in the surrounding hills. Going highway speeds down a one lane curved road should be explanation enough of what happened.

I remember walking into the funeral home with my parents to see a packed house. Family, friends, neighboors all packed the pews. There was a mob of people up by her casket, mostly of her friends. The director ushered them aside to make way for us family members. In a flash, there she was. It was odd. She looked alive and I expected her to open her eyes. I noticed that her forehead looked odd. From all the family members kissing and crying over her, her makeup was slowly coming off, revealing the blackened trauma that killer her.

Despite that, I walked away numb and sat in the side pews next to her. In the background the chapel was playing a tape of her favorite songs. This song came on and I tuned in. By the first chorus, I understood, and then broke down. I tend to still become misty on this song, or I change it.

5. The Cure, Pictures of You 1992

I borrowed this tape compilation, "All Mixed Up" from my cousin Tina during the summer of 1992 and it took constant persistence and nagging for me to give it back to her. I was obviously starting to notice girls at that time, and this song seemed fitting to my numerous minute long infatuations of girls walking down the halls of my high school, or at the park, or driving around in Ryan's car during that summer. Yet I had yet to actually make a girlfriend out of any of them, let alone talk to one with confidence. It would take a long time, about 6 more years before I actually called someone a girlfriend. Until then, those "pictures of you" varied from Sears catalogues, yearbooks or prom pictures.

6. Stone Temple Pilots, Plush 1993

Enter the rebellion years. Doug and Ryan were graduating high school and I was entering my senior year. Doug had a mustang and a drum set. In both places we turned the volume up to full strength and belted our lungs out. We didn't know what the hell the song was about, but it sounded rockin and loud, sexual and manly, so we abused the hell out of this song. That and we sang it very well too. We were thrust into the grunge genre. Flannel tops, jeans and a degenerative malaise that accompanied the music. It was dirty and different, and we liked it. You get Doug and I in the same room, car or bar when this song comes on, go grab your earplugs because its going to get loud.

7. U2, Until the end of the World 1993

This song, if not the entire "Achtung Baby" album, may very well be my number one favorite song ever. All the aspects of the song appealed to me. The beats, the guitars, the effects, the lyrics. It wasn't a happy song, but it didn't sound depressing at the same time. You were just entwined in the song itself. Everytime I hear this song, its as if the sound reaches in my head and grabs my squishy brain. I'm thankful that my music was progressing from tapes to CDs at this point because I burned out that tape a very, very long time ago by always playing it in the car. There isn't really a single story to this song. The album was almost always playing in the car when I drove somewhere or in my stereo at home. I first started hearing this album in the summer of 1991, but it took 2 years for me to fully appreciate it. My most vivid memory would have to be tagging along with Ryan to his piano lesson in San Mateo in his white Honda just so I could stay in the car and listen to it for the 45 minutes or so while he was inside. I just sat there in the alley that Saturday morning and listened to music, singing my head off.

8. Journey, Faithfully, 1994.

My first heartbreak and the start of hating Journey. I was midway through my senior year in high school. It was Christmas time and I had been talking to a girl named Sarah Fisher for a month or so. She was about 5 ft tall with a D size rack. She was acquaintances with my friend Sue and I had asked her to the winter formal dance. We went out once to catch a movie-The Pelican Brief, and afterwards we drove around and ended up at a rest stop on Skyline that overlooked the reservoirs and cities below at night. I had my first kiss there. During Christmas break we talked daily on the phone and hanged out often. On New Year's Day, I went over to her house before my family showed up at mine for the day's party. We made out for a few hours and got pretty heavy, but no sex. All the time, she had Journey playing on loop on the stereo.

Less than a week later she told me she was done with me, but would still let me take her to winter formal. Turns out she was notorious in her circle of friends (or dwindling circle), that included my crush Sue, for moving in on a guy just to squash any hopes of her friend dating a guy first. After I left high school, I found out that she was stuck working at a baskin robbins up the road and got pregnant within a year of graduation. Hope she got knocked up to this song...bitch.

9. Pearl Jam, Release Me 1994.

Unlike other people, family included, I love to just go and drive. My favorite time to drive is late at night when there is nobody on the roads. I would get off of work at my godfather's ice cream store at about 10pm and just drive around for an hour listening to music. I'd take the long way home, the out of the way ways, the highways, the forest roads. I'd go get a donut or taco bell. I'd drive by family member's houses and see if any lights were on. I'd just drive. It gave me a escape to drive...a "release".I'd usually drive around with a mix tape of slow, not too intense songs, and this would be the best one. There are obviously a lot of undertones regarding the title itself, ranging from a release from my parents, from work, from a girl or life in general. Today it still is the best song that I can sing. I still cue it up once in a while when I drive home from work at 4 in the morning.

10. Catherine Wheel, Fripp 1994

This is the only song I don't wish was on here. Don't get me wrong, I like the song. Its very relaxing and mellow, and usually helps me relax after a long day with a bottle of wine. I need the bottle of wine to get rid of the memory along with the song. In the summer of 1994 my parents took me to see the town in the Azores islands where my father was born and raised. I wanted nothing to do with it at the time. I went with them because I thought I was made to go. I was done with high school, in the best shape of my life, and was "training" for a potential swimming career at ASU as I took a semester off before starting college in January of 1995.

My father wished to show me around the town, the island, the buildings and farms where he walked, played, worked and raised his family. I however could have cared less at the time. When we walked around town, I walked separate from them. I didn't like eating with them, nor much at all talk. A lot of the time I spent listening to my walkman in the hotel room. This, out of all the other songs, I listened to the most.

It was a stupid, stupid, disrespectful and regretful act. One of which I beat myself up on to this day. I can never go back there with them again for they are too old to travel that far. It's a part of myself that I ignored to learn about, that because of my shitty attitude, will be lost to me forever. All I can try to do is try to make up for lost time now.

the ups and downs of a week

Man, this week has had its ups and downs to the point of absurdity. I've been camping, gotten sick camping, sunburnt, came back and got pretty tipsy on NFL's opening weekend with Smitty, made good money all week, finally made myself do some overdue clothes shopping, had a cousin almost die, have a grandmother almost die and is still in the hospital, had another cousin get engaged, partied hard again last sunday with a bunch of different people at the bars, had my bank send me the affidavit i need to sign for them to process my fraud claims only to get it in the mail 3 days before it needed to be turned in ( praise jeezy for priority mail), have all my stocks take a shit today after the market fell (monday) and finally was able to properly affix my grapevines in the back on a rigged trellis system. I'm tired. I opened today and made an astonishing $30. Loves my day shifts I tell ya. Easy night tonite...dinner, laundry, a monday night game and bed.

I work a double tomorrow, which should be a blast. A double shift going into a opening shift on Weds. My boss is out of town again for his quarterly trip to Thailand for debauchery reasons. That means for the next 3 weeks we are all working like dogs.

I'll say this much, I won't be going out to party on Sunday this week. I'm staying home, sleeping in and taking a break. Besides, there are no massively interesting games this weekend. I'll see how this next week goes.

ho ho already?

You all better hurry up...only 94 days until Christmas. Seems like every year I start my Christmas shopping earlier and earlier. This year is no exception. I will be shopping a bit more on the cheap side however, and the shopping list is significantly smaller in terms of people. That is once again, gone the way of the Christmas party in terms of why should I go out of my way to give a gift to someone that I only hear or see from when they think they are getting something out of it. I know it defeats the general premise of Christmas by not acting nice to others like that, but seriously, if you aren't around all year, why should I go out of my way for you? Maybe I'll get you a fruitcake.

I did see a Christmas Ad today, which was kinda scary. It was for a local news station, advertising auditions for their 2008 Christmas angel campaign, looking for a poster child for their ads. There's only one last step left before the holiday rush...I expect Walmart and most big stores to start putting up their Christmas aisles within the next 2 weeks.

There are things to look forward to however-well besides the football season kicking off already...going home for Christmas to see family, winter weather, the cold crisp chill in the air, the Christmas spirit.

Just because you see sunlight doesn't mean the storm is over.

As you know, my well needed getaway to California was called off because I couldn't get all my time off that I asked. Understood, but still disappointed.

Instead, Chris and I hammered out a quick camp trip to northeast Arizona, somewhere we haven't camped before. The intent was to find a new spot to replace our old standby that has gotten overused and trashed from others. So, I worked that Friday,Saturday and Sunday nights and stayed up after work to make a 6am departure time. Hello redbull and caffeine. Still, something still felt wrong about the trip.

You know that feeling, that even though you still are doing it, something in the back of your head feels above and beyond the feeling that you didn't intend on doing this and may pay the price for it?

To add an an additional omen to go along with my mechanical, physical and financial bad karma this past week, I show up from work to pull into the driveway to see that the main line of the irrigation system had burst and was spewing water out into the streets. Wonderful, which means that my plants won't get water for 6 days and I'll have to dig up a corner of my yard on returning to fix the pipe. I turn off that section of the system and throw a huge rock on top to stifle the jet steam into the street, pack the truck and meet up with Chris to leave the valley.

Initially, the trip went according to plan, with no hangups or delays, with good weather and good attitudes.

After a few hours driving up to the north country, we arrived at our turnoff to see the area socked in with a really eerie fog. It was 8am, with about 50 ft of visibility in front of you if you were lucky. You could tell the area got dumped on with storms over the past few days as predicted from the numerous deep pools and puddles around peoples RV's. Everyone was just rousing from a miserable sleep. One little girl wandered out in the fog in her PJs, eyes blackened from lack of sleep, we thought we were arriving into a Romero zombie flick.

By the time we got to the area we wished to investigate after driving through the organized campgrounds full of Labor day campers, the sun broke through and the dirt roads were empty.

We picked a good site and started to setup camp. The first day was good. Beers went down easy, laughter was loud, surprisingly my cell phone worked, and sleep was wonderful.

Day two, three and four went progressively south. I started to get sick with a cold on day two, which culminated on the third night with sore throat, congestion, cough, sweats and chills in my universe consisting of a 6x8 tent with a stinky dog, an equally stinky self as I slept on my camp mattress doped up on the only medications I had- a few advils washed down with vodka and fruit juice.

The good news was that the weather stayed calm and not very cold, and as per my usual traits, my body processes sicknesses quick and spits them out faster, so by day 4, I was recovering, and today, day 5, all I had left was a stuffy nose and chapped lips. Still though, it was a major buzzkill.

At least we found a new area to explore, had some good discussions, saw some nice sights and made it home in one piece. I was eager to get home though, unpack and rest.