Category: reminisce

Thoughts about the good old days… memories.

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in front of God and everyone

I remember those panties like yesterday.
Today I woke up at 5am and, despite laying quietly in bed for another 15min, couldn’t make myself fall back to sleep. Since getting back from Taiwan I’ve once again been lucky and experienced no “jetlag,” but I can’t help but think my early-morning pep is somehow related to the 15hr time-change I went through this weekend. I already decided that if it happens again tomorrow I’m going to make the best of it and go spray the yard for crabgrass before work. Intro paragraph over.

Whooosh!! (Sound of the blog being sucked through a hole in time, back into the year 1990.)

As a new relatively new teenager, I can remember walking from my house to my then-girlfriend’s house, she lived about a half-mile away (if you cut through some backyards, crossed a ditch, and walked through the woods). I used to love that walk because I knew we were going to make out when I got there. If her parents were home, we’d “go for a walk” and end up off in the woods somewhere rolling in pine needles. If her parents weren’t home we’d just watch TV on the couch when we came up to breath. It was exhilarating, nothing in my life yet could compare to it. I fondly recall swigging a couple gulps of mouthwash prior to leaving my house, maybe a squeeze of toothpaste too for good measure, and trying to swish it around in my mouth for the whole walk to her house. The thought being I’d be minty-fresh upon getting there. To this day I can recall walking under the smothering Florida heat while my cheeks burned, begging me to spit out the Scope.

We had different places to go, but our main objective was to get as far away from civilization as possible. I mean, if any items of clothing were going to get removed, we wanted to be as far out of sight as possible. We’d follow firebreaks or worn trails into the woods for ten minutes or so and then track off into the brush, blazing our own trail to a nice secluded spot. We’d hit the dirty dusty prickly ground as if it were a featherbed, lips instantly locked and hands instinctively roaming. Something about being outside made it all the more exciting, two semi-clothed, hormone-filled kids wrestling in the underbrush. Usually we’d head for nice “hidden” areas, a small copse of trees or grass-rimmed depression we could slip out of sight into. A couple times though, I can remember deliberately walking extremely far out into an open field of knee-high grass and going through our whole routine standing up in front of God and everyone. I mean, where we were there was no one around for miles – but to stand in an open field with the sun beaming down on you as pull her shirt through arms stretched high above her head is, at fourteen, otherworldly.

Whooosh!!

Two big weekends coming up. This weekend we’re headed south to Mt. Whitney, where we’ll attempt to summit the tallest peak in the “lower 48” states. I’m actually pumped because we’re taking both Friday and Monday off work, and camping on a Friday and Monday instead of working on a Friday and Monday just sounds so much better. We’ll spend Friday night camping at about 8000ft in a bid to acclimate our bodies to the higher elevations before moving up to the ~14000ft mark to summit. Should be a great time, and I think with the extra days I may be able to set a pace that will see me to the top and back – providing I don’t get sick. The following weekend I’m off to Houston for a customer visit, and instead of flying home will be meeting Sharaun and Ben in Portland (they’ll have road-tripped their way up earlier in the day). Then we’re headed for a weekend of hiking, camping, and possibly fishing at Smith Rock. I’ve never been to Whitney or Smith Rock, so I’m really excited to see, camp, and hike both.

Then that’s that then. Dave out.

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poop ship destroyer

Chain gang.
I don’t know, for some reason I’m feeling that need to “caveman out” lately. Y’know, to spend a day at home in the dark accomplishing absolutely nothing. Wake up early, never get properly dressed, make breakfast without a shirt on and rip CDs all day. Just fundamentally waste a day, for no other reason than I can. In this day and age we’re afforded a lot more luxuries than our ancestors. Back then, one day not hunter-gatherering meant one day not feeding the tribe. Today, to me, one day not working, or not doing anything for that matter, really has a net effect of nil. I can afford it see, my tribe can afford it, the world can afford it. So get off my back already, I’m busy, doing nothing.

Another ripping project flashback, I’m now listening to Ween’s “The Stallion Pt. 3” from their Pure Guava LP. (Readers note: I snobbishly use the abbreviation “LP” and word “album” to describe those things most commonly now referred to generically as “CDs.” This is a music-purist and elitist thing, sorry to be such a prick.) Anyway, when we first heard this album we were sure it was a damn joke or something. I mean, gradeschool beats, crappy guitar, and laughable lyrics made the whole thing seem so tongue-in-cheek. However, since we were way into the comedy of stupid – we bit hard. So much so that as 9th graders we each shelled out $10 bucks for tickets to see Gene and Dean Ween play live at some dive in a Melbourne, FL strip-mall. I mean, if you count the twenty-twin-twin we paid a little more per person, but whatever. Live Ween is sublime to a gaggle of stoned 15 and 16 year-olds. And when they busted into that “Purple Rain” cover right after “Flies On My Dick,” sheer genius. Thanks for the memories Ween. I mean, we called Joey’s big brown Oldsmobile the “Poop Ship Destroyer” for years.

You feel gyp’d? Too bad, Dave out.

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purposely building in huge air pockets

Sounded good in theory..
Late and not in a writing mood. Listening to the new Devendra Banhart album, minimal but meaty.

Know what I remember?

Towing Joey on my bike. We’d ride around the neighborhood in the summer, he used to call me the “expert tower” because I knew just how to hit the bumps and take the turns so as to make them most comfortable to him. We both had long hair and we never crashed.

Stealing bananas off a tree overhanging the fence on the corner lot so we could make “banandine” from a recipe in the Anarchist Cookbook. Peeled ten bananas, scraped the peels and baked the remnants. Got a lot of black ash and never did try to smoke it.

Digging a hole in Chad’s backyard so we could fill it with gas and light it on fire, then jump over it with homemade nunchucks we’d fashioned from a dog chain and hacksawn closet rod. Late night while camping out, in a tent, in the backyard. Yeah, it was the same night we snuck over to Mary Jo’s to watch Matt make out with Krissy.

Being told I had to go home and change my Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy shirt. Some girl in the lunchline told on me, “there’s nekkid chicks on there!” We compromised and I wore it inside out the rest of the day. Worked out immensely better for me because it practically forced me to tell the story to everyone I saw.

Purposely building huge air pockets into our clay pieces in art class, in hopes they’d explode like bombs in the kiln and ruin some chump’s real effort. If she wouldn’t have stressed how important it was to rid the clay off all bubbles at risk of it exploding, we’d’ve never known.

Spending the night at Justin’s house and watching a GWAR movie called “Phallus in Wonderland.” Where it came from, how he got it, I have no idea. The same night we put an old Booker T and the MGs album on the turntable and checked the homemade moonshine we were making in his closet. Foul and rotten, we ended up throwing it out.

Taking down my Garbage Pail Kids and Garfield posters in favor of underwear models clipped from the pages of the JC Penny catalog. Anything with chicks would do, really. Swimwear, Surfer magazine ads, Sunday newspaper inserts, whatever. It didn’t matter.

Lying about having had my first kiss, until I actually had my first kiss.

Listening to a friend tell me he’d tried to commit suicide that weekend, but got too scared with the gun in his mouth. We all lied for attention back then, but I never had the nerve to follow up on this one later on. To this day I don’t know if it ever really happened.

Ordering something called “Inda Kind” from the back pages of a High Times magazine. “A legal high.” Rolled up in some Zig-Zags, I’d imagine we smoked three or four cigarettes filled with this fruity crap in some vain attempt to get “stoned,” whatever that meant. Got some killer headaches, but that’s about it. Threw that waste of $30 out.

Taking a break from writing to search the internet and see if someone could still buy “Inda Kind.” Ending up reading about fake week for 20mins and coming back to the page with a blank mind. Re-reading what I’d written and realizing all those things happened between 7th and 8th grade… wow.

Noticing it’s midnight and calling it quits. Dave out.

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tethered to their haggard bodies

Trendy.
The dismal drive home from my folks’ place… six long hours of cows, brown grass, and barbed-wire fence. I asked Sharaun to drive because I knew this is the only chance I’ll get to write today – barreling homeward down the highway. She’s a pretty good driver, but must be a really poor colorer (’cause she can’t stay in the lines for crap). Intro paragraph: over.

It was a good weekend away, just the two of us. Even though the drive there and back is long and empty, it’s a good chance to sing along to some tunes, talk, and share a #2, animal style, with the other Southern California road warriors. I get pretty liberal with the music choices on the long trip, since it’d just be one six-hour fight if I tried to keep only my ears happy the whole time. Really, it’s my chance to “get with it,” and be relevant with what tunes I know. I mean, where else I’m I gonna learn that Usher has like three “songs” in the top ten right now? Certainly not on my own, that’s for sure. So I let the tonal indiscretion slide, and sorta benefit by at least being able to say “yeah, I’ve heard this song… it blows hard.”

We headed down south Friday night, getting a late start because Sharaun was busy at work preparing sub-plans for her absence today. It’s cool, I hung around the classroom and practiced my rope-skipping skills, which, I might add, are severely terrible. Saturday we all rode out to Los Olivos and did the art gallery thing. We thought maybe we could find some paintings for our house, but it seems local Santa Barbara artists are obsessed with brown-hill landscapes dotted with cows or horses. It’s either that, semi-nude native American women – again riding horses. So, we passed on it. Not that there’s not some talented hill-and-squaw painting artists down there, but it’s just not right for our crib.

After hitting the galleries we took a trip to the Chumash reservation casino. Casinos are always a mixed-bag for me. I enjoy gambling, and there’s something about the draw of a casino that I like. But there’s also a really depressing side to the whole thing. To see these old women rooted in front of a slot machine, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It makes me sad, especially since so many of them have those little “frequent gambling” cards – where you just store money on them and insert them into the slot on the front of the machines. They’ve got them tethered to their haggard bodies with stretchy cords, clipped to their lapels or blouses – like some life-giving umbilical cord to the mechanical entertainment that sucks them dry. Between the “greatest generation” chipping away at their social security pull for pull, and the white-trash couples in neon spandex and oversized Eminem t-shirts – casinos can be a real bummer. Anyway, we dropped $10 each and called it quits. Too bad I’m always too intimidated to actually sit down at the blackjack tables, I know how to play.

Sunday was my buddy Shaine’s wedding, and the whole reason for the trip (although spending Father’s day with dad was a worthy aside). Shaine was my best friend in the 5th grade, my first real best friend I’d say. It was really surreal to be at his wedding nearly 15 years later. Taking place aboard a yacht on Marina del Rey, the whole affair was awesome. And being that he was getting hitched into an Armenian family – there was plenty of Armenian dancing and music. It was a total blast, and I always love watching people of other cultures. The customs and dancing and music, all fascinating and enjoyable. Anyway, it seems like he found a great one in his new wife – and were really happy to be able to be there. Not only that, I got to listen to Death Cab’s “405” and “Los Angeles” while I was actually in LA and on the 405. Neat.

I guess I’m outta here, don’t wanna burn out the writing in me – I still have to do another one of these tonight, for Tuesday. Because we all know, if I don’t write at night – I don’t write. And I’ve been told lately that my blog sucks and that I need to work on being funny on demand more. So yeah, I’ll give that a go.

Until then, Dave out.

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my illustrious career history

Oh man, those were the days... check out that hair!
Basketball, in high-def, a non-party party at Anthony’s. Got new tires on the truck today, six-hundred dollars of rubbery goodness. Shaine’s post about yesterday’s entry being my 200th got me thinking, it’s halfway through June now and the there’s only a couple more months before I mark a solid year of doing this site.

Sounds like I’ll have a rather long overseas trip this August, spending about three weeks in Taiwan and China both. More customer visits, speaking at some seminars, and then heading to Shanghai to train our “offshore” team members. I need to train ’em good, but not too good since I wanna maintain some job security. I’m excited about going again, mainly because I love the experience – but I’m bummed that Sharaun’s birthday falls right smack in the middle of the trip. We’ve talked about maybe using my sky miles to fly her out for a while, to hang out and experience the APAC (Asia-Pacific geography for those not in into abbreviation). I think I’ll have some spurts of down time that we could use to see some of the island I’ve yet had the chance to check out. Who knows.

I was thinking back on my illustrious career history, trying, nay, stretching, for something to write about. Anyway, it all started when I got my very first job as a sandwich artist at Subway. I was barely sixteen. We locked people in the walk-in freezer, ate all the food we wanted, and set fire to the joint twice. From there I moved on to Arby’s, where I worked as a cashier and fast-food jockey. We stole 10lbs bags of curly fries. I quit the job at Arby’s to take a position as a “go boy” for a local CPA office. I made copies, did data entry, fetched files, took out the trash, etc. I worked there for over a year, moonlighting over the summer as a bagger at the local Winn Dixie. Eventually, I quit both the bagboy and gopher job for my dream job – record store clerk at the local mall. I pushed music for nigh on two years, eventually winding up as the lowest paid “assistant manager” ever. It’s OK though, the steady stream of nubile female clerks hired by the owner more than made up the difference.

Omni Music in the Merritt Square Mall, I used to alphabetize those shelves
with the quickness. And who’s that in the background?

I only quit the record store gig because I was moving. After that I didn’t work for a few years, just used my scholarship money and student loans to live. Took the bus around town after my car broke down, and finally found gainful employment again sometime later as an ADA programmer for Raytheon. Since it was only an internship thing through school, the job only lasted about four months. A time later I actually managed to matriculate, and landed my current job of four years. Back in the tech industry, working on something that I actually earned a degree in. There were other spotty jobs in there, making funnel cakes at craft shows for a few hundred a weekend, tutoring a high-school friend’s mother in college Algebra, etc. – but nothing meaningful. I think it’s a pretty varied employment history – and what’s better, it filled up nearly two paragraphs so as to make today’s entry look all the more beefy.

I’m outta here, time to give the leaked Beastie Boys album a test-spin. Nite.

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44 gallon jug of chili

D-size baby, 'cause we don't play around with that C shit.
I can make my entries this week if I make sure I write at night, y’allz. All I gots to do is get my discipline on and come up with something funny and/or interesting each night around midnight, write it down, find a semi-related picture to accompany it, and post that junk. All for what, again? Oh right? because I have this website where I try to write something every day, I forgot for a minute.

I interviewed a guy for work the other day, and was surprised to find myself ultimately confident sitting on the other side of what I know to be a fairly daunting situation. The guy did great, knew what he should know and made good efforts at the stuff he didn’t. While I was talking to him, he asked me how long I’d been working at my current job. Man guys, you know I’ve been working here for four years? Despite a close brush with the FBI, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing. No, really? the FBI.

My brother and I had a good time this weekend reminiscing about stuff from the old days. We were watching something on TV when the channel did whatever it is channels do when they all of the sudden trump programming audio with a series of what sound like telephone key presses. Have you ever heard this? You’ll be watching TV, or, it used to happen a lot at the very beginning of VHS tapes – and out of nowhere it sounds like someone hit speed-dial on a phone. Beep-boop-beep-beep-beep-boop-boop. Anyway, he asked me if I remembered what I used to tell him about those beeps – and I had to laugh. I told him that it was the president’s phone number, and if you slowed it down enough you could make it out and dial up the president himself. He also remembered being scared to death whenever we had to take an “offramp” when on the freeway, because I’d apparently told him they were real “ramps” like from the Dukes of Hazard – and we’d have to launch into the air if we took one. Oh man, where did I get this stuff?

You know we actually skipped the last period of school one day so we could beat my brother home by a half hour or so. Just enough time to get a length of PVC pipe, some D-size model rocket engines, and the ignition switch for those engines. We took the aforementioned supplies, climbed on the roof, and fashioned a makeshift rocket-engine bazooka. We then lay in wait for Frank to come home from school, having removed the front door key from it’s regular hiding place under a log in the flower bed. As he walked up, we let loose – shooting engines as fast as we could load them into the pipe. Nevermind that they went every which way but straight after coming out of the pipe, it was the look on his face that made it worth it. No wonder he hated me.

The crown jewel of brotherly abuse though, would have to be 1994’s “Frank Day.” I was a senior in high school, and Frank was a freshman. My friends and I had been planning what Frank’s “freshman day” would be like for nigh on three years. For those who don’t know, “freshman day” is that day in high school where all the upperclassmen pick on and beat up the new blood. This particular year, freshman day fell on a Friday which also happened to be a football game Friday. Usually on football game Fridays, the “pep squad” would get together after school and make up a bunch of huge “Go Team!”-ish banners to hang around campus (y’know, to inspire the athletes and all). Some of my buddies and I got the great idea to sneak into this pep squad banner-making party and use their materials for our benefit. The result? We created a huge banner which read “Frank Day,” instead of “frehsman day.” I think there was some extra text at the bottom, but basically we wanted to hang it up so my brother would have the fear of God in him for what was coming.

Imagine Frank coming to school Friday morning and, amidst the “Rock ’em Raiders” fanfare, seeing his name plastered across a 20ft banner hanging from one of the 2nd story walkways for all to see. The banner did way more than we had intended, for it stirred the interest of a lot of kids in the senior class. Word got out that we planned to inflict Frank’s punishment on him as he walked home from the bus after school. The banner helped to whip everyone into a frenzy, and things got a little out of hand. I knew this when me and four buddies turned the corner onto my street after school let out? and saw what must have been fifteen cars, lining the streets near my house. There were people there I hardly knew, who had just come along for the festivities. As I saw the massive motorcade, I got a small idea of the fear my brother would feel as he would turn that same corner minutes later. The shaving cream and egg toting crowd erupted into cheers as little bro Frank and his bespectacled friend Isaac turned that corner – and as any sane persons would have, they both immediately turned tail and ran the opposite direction.

Yeah, we eventually caught up with ’em, egged ’em, creamed ’em, and even attempted to hogtie ’em before I, ever the sympathetic big brother, intervened and sounded the “he’s had enough” clarion. It was good, even if it only did serve to deepen the resentment Frank harbored towards me. As one senior put it in our “last will and testaments,”: “To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.”

Speaking of senior year “Last Will and Testament” stuff, reading these is cracking me up, we must have had some conspiracy to rip on my brother until the very end. Seems that quite a few of the seniors bequeathed strange items to one Frank. An orchestrated plan?, judge for yourself:

“To Frank a dozen jelly donuts.” -Mike K.
“To Frank: 44 gallon jug of chili, and meat too!” -Andy W.
“To FRANK, a life-long membership to Jenny Kraig (sic)” -Tracy R.
“To Frank a girdle.” -Dan R.
“To Frank: Keg of butter.” – Shawn O.
“To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.” – Jeremy D.
“To Frank, my legacy and my school.” -Dave

Man, we were awful. That’s all the guilt I can stand for one night guys, and it is nearly 1:30 in the AM for crap’s sake. What the heck am I doing? G’nite all, Dave out.

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a 7th grade attempt at fantasy

Just a really cool GIS for "womb."
Last night was the sneak-attack Decemberists/Shins show in Davis. Pat and Cynthia accompanied us, as Cynthia was the conduit for tickets being a UCD student and all. The acoustics during the opening band were kinda lacking, and I don’t know if I just got used to the hollow “high school gym” sound or if the equipment/mix just got better with each act – but the Decemberists and Shins sounded great. Was a fun night with an earlier bedtime than the usual SF shows.

Shipped off a couple of old 5.25″ Apple IIgs floppy disks today, sending them to a dude that does file recovery from old Apple disks. I found them in the spare room the other night. They are mine and Joey’s class disks from our middle school Language Arts class. I’m pretty sure they contain all our work for the year, including essays and whatnot. The main thing I want off of them is our “final” project from that year: a long fictional narrative. I’m pretty sure mine was called “Quest,” and was a 7th grade attempt at fantasy. I remember being extremely proud of it at the time, which was before I ever even read the Hobbit. I think Joey’s was about some kid who went inside a waterfall in search of some treasure or something? but I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m hoping to at least get those stories – and kind of getting my hopes up for some recovered surprise, maybe some lost stories we were working on or an interesting assignment. Anyway, it cost $36 to get text files off two disks – hopefully it’s worth it.

One the “indie music is on TV” tip, Pat brought over a Newsweek article to rub in my face the other day. Here’s the online version of the article, without some supporting graphics from the print version. In the actual magazine, they have a graphic that does that “if you like this band, try this other band” thing – pointing people towards indie bands that may fit their likes. The bands in that sidebar graphic read eerily like my Best of 2003 from last year: Shins, Bright Eyes, Postal Service, Death Cab, etc. It’s actually a good article, and they mention several newish albums that are also on my current playlist. I like the quote from Gibbard about “feeling” something coming? I wonder. What the heck am I gonna listen to to be cooler than everyone when everyone’s listening to indie? Man, a self-important music-snob’s job is a hard one?

OK, I have nothing more. Oh wait, I got one thing. I forget where I stole this from, but check out Britney Spears’ backwards message. If you play the chorus of “Hit Me Baby One More Time” backwards, you can hear “sleep with me I’m not too young.” OK, where do I sign up?

Dave out.