The Nose Knows

"I smell a gun," my three year-old grandson says to me as he heads for the spare room where we keep his toys.  Lately I've noticed that he uses "smell" interchangeably with "want".  Kids do stuff like that.  He'll figure out soon enough that his ping pong ball weapon of choice has only the slight patina of cheap plastic and not much smell at all. This got me thinking about noses and how we mostly fail to appreciate the gift that is our olfactory lobe.  

If you want to truly understand a place or thing you need to smell it.  How many times have you found yourself someplace from which you have long been absent yet it is instantly recognizable to you because it smells the same as you remember it. Your eyes and ears may not register recognition but your nose has an unfailing memory.  Smell, I think, is predominantly an emotional sense.  Think about it.  Just a whiff of perfume on a letter tucked away for many years or a particular blooming flower can transport you back to a significant event in your life.  I remember being in fourth or fifth grade when one of the girls in our class was helping the teacher pass out tests or papers of some kind.  As she walked by my desk I detected a hint of perfume that had me instantly "in love" with her.  It was probably Radio Girl or some other dime store fragrance but to me it was instant swoon.  I would recognize it anywhere.  (Call me, Joan!)   Carter Hall pipe tobacco has the smell that will always recall "Dad" just as Lilly of the Valley is an instant hit of "Mom".    Babies and old folks have an aroma all their own.  Burning bacon and diesel fumes never fail to put me back in the Army,  as does the smell of wet canvas and dirt.

This new appreciation of the nose was inspired by a recent trip to northern Idaho.  The pine and smell of brand new leaves on soft wood trees like maple took me back to my grade school years in Michigan and the springtime smell of lilac bushes transported me to the backyard of a house I haven't seen in more than fifty years.  My head was reeling with each inhalation of that beautiful fragrance and I was a kid again for just a few minutes.  

Kipling said it in his poem  Lichtenberg, about an Australian trooper who smells the blossoms of a tree and is reminded of his home in New South Wales:

"Smells are surer than sounds or sights

To make your heart-strings crack-

They start those awful voices o'nights

That whisper, "Old man, come back!"

Old Rudyard knew the power of a good nose.

Happy 40th Baby Girl!

There were times,  mainly the high school years, when I wanted to send her to reform school.  She has always been a firecracker and yesterday, she turned 40.  FORTY!!  How the hell did that happen?  My youngest daughter, Katie, now has four decades in her rear view mirror and that officially makes me, uh…OLD. 

I still remember seeing her freshly hatched and screaming her head off at me and everyone else within range of Irwin Army Hospital.  Soon she was dragging a blanket around and saying pretty amusing things for just a little squirt; then she was off to college.  It really did seem to go that fast.  Now she is a successful lawyer, wife and mom to her own little knothead, Dan.  

Weirdo parents that we are, my wife and I raised both Katie and her sister Kelly on Three Stooges, W.C. Fields and Mel Brooks movies.  However, Kate was the only one who memorized every line of "Blazing Saddles".  Multiple family moves required by the itinerant broadcast business contributed even more insanity to her less than traditional upbringing.  In spite of it all, or maybe because of it, at  40 Katie is a pretty doggone wonderful daughter.

Enjoy it while you can kid!  Soon Dan will be bringing home notes from the teacher, breaking stuff and eventually wrecking your car as Grandpa and Grandma watch through the prism of "been there, done that".

So. happy birthday Katie Dee!  You give me outright prolonged laughter and I in turn give you fatherly advice.  My gift to you on your fortieth is as follows:

Forget attempting to get into the movies with a student I.D.  Nobody will buy it.

Love, 

Dad

Katie laughs as Dan digs for brains.

Katie and Dan

Katie, Dan and Goofy husband Doug. (Sorry Doug I can't help myself.)

Alma? Betty? What the…??

"Dreamland" Where the men are men and the women are after 'em

"I Like Dreamin" was an exceptionally awful hit record for Kenny Nolan in the late 1970's.  Maybe it was dreadful but, at least to my mind, old Kenny espoused a great philosophy.  I really DO like dreaming and indulge myself as the star of nightly double and triple features nearly every time I close my eyes.  Ever since childhood my dreams have been vivid, memorable and in color.  I'm told that this is rare--the color and memorable part.

Statistically most folks don't remember their dreams and the majority of sleepers claim to only have black & white dreamland receivers.  I find that hard to believe.

Dream analysis is entertaining if you have the ability to recall your nightly sojourns.  My experience is that almost all of my dreams reflect ambivalence about whatever wakeful problems or personal dilemmas I'm currently having.  An elevator that keeps opening and closing as I search for someone, also the inability to speak or make myself heard is almost always prevalent in dreams regarding my personal relationships.  Dreams involving a return to booze and smokes usually are prompted by rage about something or someone.  (Having employed the services of Dr. Jack Daniels as my primary physician for more than thirty years probably explains this.)  Sleep with recurring episodes of running and being naked most always pertains to impending changes and job uncertainty.  

I've noticed a tendency toward running and fearful dreams when I'm staying in a strange new place.  No PHD is needed to get the drift of that one.  As a further indication of my slide into geezerdom, whipped cream and deserts visit my dreams more frequently than whoopee.  I presume that is par for the grandpa course.

The most common dream for all of us is the one where you are about to graduate from high school or college and have just discovered you forgot to attend or do the course work for a required class.  I still have that one in spite of not having darkened a classroom door in more than forty years.

Often when swapping radio lies with other broadcast veterans I find that a dream common to all of us is the recurring nightmare of being on the air and locked out of the studio as a record or commercial is ending.  You beat on the door and try to break the studio window glass but to no avail.  A cold sweat wake up follows that one.

The reason for this demented blog on dreamland is as follows:  Two nights ago,  for the first time EVER, I had a dream so BORING it woke me up!  This was so bad I actually had to get up for awhile and shake this incredibly mundane dream.  The worst part of it is I can think of absolutely nothing that would have instigated this nighttime ticket to dullsville.  Here is the gist of the episode:  Several years ago in Seattle and San Diego I worked with two different radio traffic directors.  Radio traffic directors are the people charged with scheduling commercials that run on the various shows a station broadcasts.  It is a rather dull job usually held by older matrons who treat the air personalities like their own children.  "Ken, you were supposed to play that American Airlines spot at 6:51 am, not 6:53!"  "The client wants a "make good" because he said that someone--YOU--made a farting sound when he claimed to have the lowest prices in town."  Etc etc etc.  In Seattle the traffic director was a black woman named Alma and in San Diego a white older lady, an Arkansas native, was the boss of traffic.  Her name was Betty.  Neither disliked me and, for the most part, I avoided getting into trouble with them.  That is what makes having this dream so peculiar.   It went like this:   I dreamed I was on the air and, for some reason, both of them called me on the station hot line to ask me to move some commercials around on the program log. Zzzzzzzzzz…oops, sorry.  I told you it was boring. The dream was interminable!  It kept going on and on with me moving commercials and them telling me to hang on they had more changes for me.  I finally bored myself into consciousness.  I have often wakened screaming, sweating, breathing hard, thirsty, hungry and YES horny but NEVER BORED.  What the hell is that about?!  I get tired just thinking about it and never ever want a repeat.

Tonight Alma and Betty had better not call me because I WON'T ANSWER.  Perhaps a big piece of cheesecake and a gander at some of the babes in my old high school yearbook will plow some fun furrows in my cerebellum.  I remember the time at the drive in movie when my pals and I spiked the girls Cokes with….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Yeah, that's better.  Goodnight!

Herb Alpert: This Guy Loves Art

Herb Alpert

A lot of artists would be happy to have eight Grammys, twenty-eight albums that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, and roughly a bajillion dollars from the sale of their very own record label (A&M), but not Herb Alpert.  Herb and his wife, the mega talented singer Lani Hall, keep giving back to young artists in every way they can.

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall

Herb, who created  and  fronted the "Tijuana Brass", in the 1960's could have easily taken the money and run, but he didn't.  He is first and foremost an artist--a guy who expanded his pallet to encompass  record executive,  painter and sculptor.  After selling A&M records, the little company Herb birthed with Jerry Moss,  the Alperts devoted a large chunk of change to  the Alpert Foundation.  In conjunction with the California Institute of the Arts, the Alpert Awards benefit artists in music, film , dance, theater and the visual arts.  Each year five prizes go to individuals deemed the most innovative and creative in their respective disciplines.  Artists who color outside the lines are encouraged.

On this Mother's Day weekend her mom and I are both honored to be in Santa Monica to watch our daughter, Kelly, and her husband, Pavol, receive this year's Alpert Award for theater.  Their New York City based "Nature Theater of Oklahoma" and its production of "Life and Times" has captured the imagination of critics worldwide and now…The Alpert Foundation.  We couldn't be more proud.

The ceremony was held today at Mr.  Alpert's studio where many of his paintings and sculptures are on display.  He and Lani are good and generous people doing amazing work to promote and encourage the artists of tomorrow.  Herb, by admission a shy kid, picked up a horn when he was eight years old.  "It changed my life," he said.

Now, the Alperts lovingly do the same for others.

Herb Alpert, Kelly, dance winner Julia Rhoads, and Pavol

Herb Alpert & Kelly Copper

And They're Off!

The track: Where the windows clean the people

I knew it was a mistake.  Now, the pressure is on--BIGTIME.
Those of you who check these scratchings on a weekly basis know that last year I plucked a winner for you.  "I'll Have Another" seemed a dandy choice to win the "run for the roses" and the old hay burner came through.  I don't recall what it paid but if I liked the nag it certainly didn't go off at 2/1, 7/5, or some other kissing your sister price.  The 15/1 shots are more my style.  Not too many trips to the pay window for this railbird but, damn it, when I cash one in it's worth burning a few calories to get there.

There is lots of buzz about Goldencents for this 139th Derby even though, as I write this, Orb and Verrazano are tied as favorites at 4/1.  Goldencents boasts Rick Pitino, national champion Louisville's basketball coach, as part owner and jockey Kevin Krigger, an African American, is scheduled to be aboard.  Pitino is practically a god in Kentucky these days and no African American has ridden a Derby winner since 1902.

Mylute, at 16/1, will feature Rosie Napravnik as its rider and a win by her would be a huge story and mean massive endorsements for Ms. Napravnik in addition to the hefty Derby purse.

As long as we're talking purses, if you have a big one and can make it to Churchill Downs, get ready to pony up $1000 for a gold-leafed mint julep.  On a budget?  Go for the regular julep.  You'll get just as drunk and it probably will only set you back $50.  Officials estimate that approximately 120,000 of these instant headaches will be served utilizing about 8,000 litres of bourbon and a ton of mint.  Pass the aspirin please.

The weather may play a big part in determining the Derby winner for 2013.  Rain is in the forecast and Goldencents is the only horse that has demonstrated a yen for playing in the mud.

My pick?  Glad you asked.  Remember I'm batting a thousand in this Kentucky Derby prediction thing.  I'm going with NORMANDY INVASION , sporting 9/1 odds with Javier Castellano aboard.  I like the price and especially like the sentiment.  Having just returned from a visit to the World War II Museum in New Orleans it just seems right.  Also, it's a pick dedicated to good friend Denny Krick.  Denny, a WW II veteran who joined us last week in New Orleans and is this week recovering from a serious operation.  All the while we were in the "Big Easy" he never let on that he had a serious date with the knife.

So  here's to  Denny and all the other men and women of the Greatest Generation.  They don't make 'em like that anymore.  For all of their sacrifice and grit may Derby Day be D Day for Normandy Invasion at Churchill Downs.

Denny storms Bourbon Street 2013