My morning ritual these days is, get up, go out for a walk, come home, make coffee, and listen to the new Wilco album, streamed over the internet. Then I go to work. And since I work at home, I can stream Wilco all day if I want to.

I love Wilco. I love them because they are always changing, and I think that is what music is all about. There is nothing worse than the same band churning out the same stuff. Music is suppose to be about the creation of something new.

I also love Wilco, because they have been streaming their new album, A Ghost is Born, two months before it is released in the stores. This is a band, a very popular band that sells out shows from coast to coast, giving their music away. It just slays me.

On a Wilco message board, I read a review of a show Wilco just did, and Jeff Tweedy (the frontman, Mr. Wilco) asked the crowd how many had heard the new album. Everyone went ballistic. Everyone had heard it. Everyone knew that all the new songs were going to be fantastic live.

Wilco’s last album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was also streamed on the internet, because their record label at the time hated the record and when Wilco would not change it, the record company dropped them. YHF is Wilco’s masterpiece, to me anyway. I could listen to it daily. It went on to be an indy hit and made it onto most top ten lists. It is an exceptional album, the kind of album that everytime you listen to it you hear something new.

A Ghost is Born is totally different than all Wilco has done before. It’s full of scratchy guitar and the Beatles and lyrics like

Saxophones started blowing me down
I was buried in sound

Buried in sound, indeed. Thank you, Wilco, for making my mornings a better place.

So, I just finished writing my Spain trip journal. This brought up emotions that I have not felt since I left Spain a month ago.

Love, and travel, are the same. Love and travel. When you lose a lover, you feel like you are missing a foot or something. (At least I do. I mean, when I am the one who is left. When I am the the one that splits, I feel like I have an extra foot.) It’s the same with travel. When it is over you limp around for awhile with drool coming out of your mouth. But even worse than that is the day or two leading up to the leaving part.

I experienced the last two days in Barcelona all over again when I wrote my trip journal. That awful feeling of seperation. The heavy sighs, the glasses of wine sucked down even faster than normal. The placing of skull in hand with elbow resting on counter. Gawd, that’s an awful feeling. And now I am looking back to a month ago, after these four plus weeks have sort of healed me of the whole seperation thing. All those memories dredged up. It’s hard, for me, not having money to be a vagabond traveling person. I have visions of winning the lottery, but I am not lucky that way.

Market smells and colors swirl in my brain. The aroma of garlic fried in butter haunts me. I long for rain, because rain filled many of my Spanish moments. I wrote here once that one must keep a journal, but now the journal tortures me.

I live for the longing, I always have.

We are speeding through May and will soon be hitting June like a hammer on an egg. What is happening to time? It seems to me, that time is accelerating. I am in sales, and that means “fourth quarter sales.” Before we know it, fourth quarter will be here, October sky and thoughts of Christmas sales.

But for now, I have June. And Bookexpo.

Bookexpo is the big book trade show in the U.S. I love it. Books are announced and rights are bought and sold. All the big publishers have parties. For many years I have gone as an employee – this year I go as an author. How cool is that? I can totally relate with a nodding and shaking head when the other authors talk about how hard it is to make money in the publishing world.

Bookexpo was always held in Chicago until a few years ago, but in recent years it has been in New York and Los Angeles. I love Chicago, and it is the best city for Bookexpo. Mostly because of the food. This year Bookexpo is back in Chicago, so I’ll get to eat Greek in Greek Town and German at Bergoff’s. These are rituals for me when I visit Chicago. I’ve been to trendy places like Blackbird, and I’d choose Moussaka at the Greek Isles over any trendy place, any day.

I discovered Chicago because of my job. The first time I visited Chicago, it was for a wine tasting and I worked there with my boss. We ate bratwurst at Berghoff’s and hung out at blues clubs. Somehow I always made it to work the next day. I’ve been back many times and it always seems to involve bratwurst and blues. Chicago has it going on. I’ve been to enough Bookexpos in Chicago now, that the city will always smell like new books mixed with mustard. It is a delightful smell. This year Bill Clinton will be at Bookexpo, and we will all pray for a future. Bill Clinton, Bratwurst, Blues and Books. What more could you ask for?

Ah, Phoenix. It’s kind of crazy that so many have migrated there. A strip-mall wasteland. A river runs through it, or at least some canals do. I saw one. It had water in it. But how? And there are something like 100,000 homes suppose to be built in the next ten to twenty years in that humongous sweltering valley.

Someday there will be houses from Scottsdale to Santa Monica, all in the low $200,000’s. Oops. Excuse me. In Scottsdale and Santa Monica, the houses will remain a bit higher. Let’s say, from Buckeye to Banning. Those will be the affordable homes.

This is already happening. Is California (or, the extension of California, Arizona) that big of a draw that people are willing to live in the pit of hell to own a home?

It’s all very confusing to me. But let’s move on to another topic.

I was having some dinner at some relatives of one of my relatives house on Friday night. We all helped ourselves to some chicken, fried potatoes, and corn on the cob, and then I sat, as instructed, “where ever you want to sit.” Which was in the living room on the L-shaped couch. There was a show on the TV and Dick Van Dyck was a private eye with a bizarre white hair-do. (Was that a WIG?)

Anyway, I was eating my dinner and one of the relatives of my relative was sitting next to me. I took a bite of corn. It was soggy and disappointing as I am a corn connoisseur and very hard to please in this respect.

My seat mate looked up at me, holding his corn. “I grew this corn, in the backyard.”

“Really?” I asked. I was genuinely interested and even forgot that the corn was soggy for a second.

“No,” he said. “I was just razzing you.” (Or something like that.) “Oh.” I said. Some minutes of silence ensued.

“Actually, this corn is from Colorado.” This came after I had completely forgotten about the corn-in-the-yard comment, and was busy watching Dick Van Dyck SING in that weird wig on that private-eye TV show. Was that a hit show at some point? I am so out-of-touch.

“From Colorado? Really?” I said. “I would have thought it came from Iowa.” What the hell was I talking about? More silence. The Colorado Corn was proving to be Curiously Crappy.

“Actually,” he said after a bit more time, or another Dick song, or what seemed like an eternity at any rate, “the best corn comes from Minnesota. The corn in Iowa is mostly grown for feed.”

“Wow.” I said. Though at the time this seemed a most lonely and bizarre conversation, chances are good that I will remember the details for the rest of my life. Therefore, I will be able to hold my own when the corn topic might arise in one of these Western States. For this I am eternally grateful.

I have to go to a wedding this weekend. I hate weddings. Well, I hate bad weddings. Sometimes, someone manages to throw a good one, but that is pretty rare. A couple of years ago I went to a wedding and reception that was held at the home of a once-famous 1980’s rocker, and that was a pretty good one. All the guys still had “the hair.” You know, 1980’s rock band hair. All the wives were 1980’s groupies, all grown up and married but still a Size One and obviously, they also still had “the hair.” There was a band (of course) and they played Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” At a wedding! I’ll never forget that.

Sadly, weddings like this are few and far between. Brides, and mothers, put way too much confidence in hotel catering managers and DJ’s. Why is the DJ dictating the events of the wedding? I HATE that. “And Nowwwa, the whole wedding party will dance.” To some gawdawful Whitney ballad. I don’t believe the DJ should be in charge of the party – we, the guests should be in charge of the party. Well, really, the bride should be, but usually the bride is too nervous, too uptight, or too drunk to be in charge.

Of course, there is always that random wedding where people get up and dance to Kool and the Gang early on, like before their 9th cocktail. Usually though, there are about two hours of everyone sitting around, eating their dry prime rib, soggy caeser salad, and Stouffers lasagna and looking at each other. This is way too long.

I hate the dollar dance, the garter thing, and especially, the bouquet throwing. I’ve been scolded to never use the word “hate” in my writing, but I hate those things! Hate them! How come people are always trying to get me to go up to catch that stupid bouquet? I’ve already been married, twice and I don’t want to get married anytime soon again. (One marriage was annulled and doesn’t count, but still I don’t want to do that bouquet thing.)

So. When I got married – it’s been eleven years now – I threw a party that people still talk about. I planned the whole thing myself, with not much help from my party-loving, gorgeous ex-husband (not that I would have accepted any help.) I heard a cool jazz band at the Fillmore Street Festival in San Francisco, and looked them up and hired them. I talked to this crazy fashion photographer, that the band turned me on to. He said stuff like “do you want pictures with people with boogers in their noses? I think not.” Of course I hired him. He set up a sort of backdrop where everyone had their picture taken “prom style” – the line for this was always long. I have pictures of people airborne at my wedding, pictures of people in all sorts of crazy airborne twists, three feet off the ground. We had the whole thing at a killer place where they have jazz concerts, right on the Pacific. The sunset was fantastic, I had a thousand cases of wine and two kegs, all kinds of food that I never ate, and everyone had a good time but me.

I hated it! I was so stressed out. I think me, and weddings, just don’t mix. Perhaps I’ll go into wedding planning, a la J Lo in that movie “The Wedding Planner” – a control freak type job cut out well for me, except that I hate to wear nylons and beige business suit dress thingys. I’d do it just for the gazillion suffering wedding guests out there. I’d do it for you, people.

I’m in the process of writing my trip report. It seems to be taking forever. But it hasn’t really been forever – I’ve been back less than a month. I’m still in Sevilla. I sit and write and check my notes and think about the events and where they fell into place, in my mind vs. in my journal.

You have got to write this stuff down. At least I do. There are blind spots in my brain. Whole days could go by that would be unremembered if I didn’t make a note here or there about what was going on. For example:

On September 30, 1998, in Florence, I wrote in my journal that the Arno was very brown, that I could have had a bartender named Lorenzo but chose not to, and that I was smoking cigarettes and it felt really good.

What I remember: my friend Lisa was hanging with some guy named Carmello. He took us to a bar, full of guys, who looked at us with suspicion. Lorenzo, the bartender, was aloof, until he asked me what I thought of Carmello, and I said, “stronzo.”

I didn’t know much Italian, but I knew that word. I didn’t really think Carmello was a stronzo. I think I was just trying to impress Lorenzo with my usage of Italian swear words. “Why don’t you stay?” he asked, when we were leaving.

I’m not sure I would even have this memory at all, had I not written a short paragraph about it in one of my scraggly notebooks. It’s not even that great of a memory. But it is A MEMORY.

If I didn’t have these journals, I could never write a trip report. I’m about to post a trip report from a journey I took four years ago, and I can because I wrote down everything on that trip.

Sometimes the writing is really lame:

“Everyone has an umbrella here. It rains alot.” (Man, that is FANTASTIC. George W. could do better.)

Sometimes it is better:

“The boy from the glass shop comes into the cafe and he and the barman have a quick drink and hum to each other.” (Did this really happen, or is this my perception of what happened? Hmmm.)

Sometimes it takes a while before you can read your journal and think, hey, that is pretty good.

It’s important to me that it be good – but it is more important to me that I’ve recorded it.

All that I’m asking tonight, is that I make it back home alive. No explosions, no crashes, no fights. I want to get back home tonight.

Jason from Grandaddy

I remember, in the early days of my travelin’ years, I was oh so happy with Destinations like Las Vegas. I was in my early 20’s, and really, Vegas was a pretty cool destination in those days. In 1991 Vegas, the Sands was still there, they still had $4.99 prime rib and you could still envision Doris Day being thrown into the pool. The MGM Grand was the hip and happening new spot then, and now the MGM seems as has-been as the Riviera did then. Vegas was a different place in 1991, full of bad wigs and nickle slots, and I loved it.

Here we are fifteen years later, and my scope has broadened just a bit. First, lots of trips to Vermont and Chicago, both places I love enough to live in, and then finally, in 1998, my first trip to Italy.

Damn. (Swear word. Swear word.) I touched down on that tarmac in Rome and I was a goner. I mean, really gone, like a (swear word) slave. If I had thought weekend trips to Vegas were addicting, I was not prepared for what Italy would do to me.

For a few years, I was a slave to Italy. Then the pull was too great, and I pushed myself by sheer will into an apartment in Venice. There, I tired of my master and moved on to other lovers, by way of the St. Lucia Train Station. How I loved them all.

Amsterdam, Copenhagen. Budapest, where I spent a sick and twisted yet colorful summer month. Strasborg, Vienna… the blood of the nomad was in me, and Europe was the flying carpet on which I rode.

Now. I am in a place I love, an ocean community full of freaks. It is truly beautiful here, and very, very free. But I can’t calm myself, the thought of unseen cities makes me scratch the mosquito bite on my chest a bit too hard. I am a nomad of the 21st century – I can have it all, so why isn’t it here, now?

So I have been playing the lottery, and waiting, waiting. Thinking of writing to the Icelandic Tourist Board to see if they perhaps need someone to write a restaurant book. I don’t know. It’s the bleeping trouble with travel.

At a cafe in Sevilla during Semana Santa, we sat down at a table and were given a menu that almost gave me a rupture then and still gives me fits of giggles now. The menu, clearly created and photocopied for the fiesta, came home with me in my journal.

Each menu item is offered in a full size portion (racion) and a half portion (media racion.)

Media racion in a straight translation = half racion. Media racion in screwed-up English translation: Stocking racion.

Hmmm. How does “half” become “stocking?”

But it gets better. Check out of some of these menu items.

Lom Lunny Dry
Cane Loin
Loin Flesh Oven
Tuna Pickles

Let’s try to break this down.

Lom Lunny Dry. The Spanish dish is called “Mojama.” This is a blue fin tuna prepared in some manner. Lom Lunny Dry? What Spanish-English dictionary is this? At least it was only 6 Euro for a Stocking racion!

Cane Loin. Probably Spaniards crack up when we say stuff like “Tender Loin.” They probably threw this one on the menu with a snicker. As far as I can tell, “Cana de lomo” is either a meat cone, a meat bone, or meat in a draft beer from Paraguay.

Loin Flesh Oven. Ahhh, my favorite. It sounds like the title of a porno movie! I about peed my pants when I read this one. This came from “Lomo Mechado” which according to my Eating and Drinking in Spain book, this can “mean any number of things, but most often refers to a roast.” Please, elaborate, what else can it mean? There has got to be something sick and twisted somewhere in the usage of this term.

Tuna Pickles. This is pretty tame compared to the others, but I bet one could get children to eat their fish by calling it a “pickle.” I, for one, am going to attempt this dish very soon, because anything that is pickled or is served with pickles rocks.

So on this day, we ordered a simple plate of “Prawa,” a Fino for me and a beer for mom. I wasn’t yet into my Fino phase, but that’s what I got and so that is what I drank. We peeled the little shrimps and watched all the locals celebrating the first day of the fiesta. Someday I will go back and order a Stocking Racion of Loin Flesh Oven. It will probably be on my mind until I do.

I can’t believe it is May already. It is hot in San Diego, summer is here, there are girls in bikinis and drunk guys with tattoos all over the place. There are keggers and guys with signs that say “I have weed for sale.” I am not sure that my little hamlet is part of the real world. But it is good to come home from a long and tiring work trip and get back into non-reality.

So. The company I work for gives out an award every year, for excellence in wine literature. That is, the writing of many books about wine. In order to get the award you have to have written about American wine a bit. All the most famous wine writers have received this award, except for Oz Clarke. I’m sure he doesn’t really give a fig about this, but I am just as sure he would be pretty happy to come and accept it if he did. This year, the recipient was the 90 something year old Robert Lawrence Balzer. At first I was like, why are we giving the award to that guy? I didn’t realize, that he is totally loved by all these old winemaker and wine industry guys. Plus, he hung out with Gloria Swanson (which he went on and on about in his speech.) OK. Homie REALLY won my respect when I spotted him, during the Press (I mean part Press and part Professional Drunk/Gate Crasher) tasting, smoking a cigarette on the steps of the California Culinary Academy with a couple of young, hot, future grill cooks. I tried to be accomodating (which of these 790 wines would you like on your dinner table, Mr. Balzer? He gives me the look that is given to all women who are not Gloria Swanson.)

It was a good event – out of 14 of them (in almost 20 years) I have done 13 and it’s getting pretty smooth now. I can’t even begin to describe the set up of 800 or more different wines, on long tables, by varietal, at 6 A.M. Well I could describe but it would be really boring. Just imagine setting 150 Chardonnays on long tables in alphabetical order and then discovering you forgot one. You then have to move 300 bottles four inches to make room. Let me just say that there is a bit of Champagne flowing amongst the staff by 10 AM, when the Press/Professional Drunk Gate Crasher Tasting starts.

The Press/PDGC tasting goes for six hours, and then we clean everything up for a big banquet and all the boys at my work (all hot 30 somethings) are in tuxes and I am in a cocktail dress from Ross Dress for Less. I sometimes have a hard time getting rid of the PDGCs at 4:00. At 3:30 I go around and say WE ARE DONE IN HALF AN HOUR. PLEASE MOVE ALONG. Some of these dudes are still on Gewurztraminers; there are about 500 reds to get through, and they want to try them all (or at least all the expensive ones.) Last year, there was a bit of a problem as some of these guys did not listen to me but instead, at 4:00, proceeded to pour 3/4 full glasses of Stags Leap Cabernet straight down their throats. So this year, I wasn’t taking any of that nonsense and instead told them, borrowing from the film Pulp Fiction, that if they did not finish by 4:00 I was “going to get medieval on their ass.” Well, what do you know! It worked! They all left by 4:15. I need to expand this whole S & M thing with the wine writers in my life.

So we (us and 150 other paying folks, like Mr. Robert Mondavi) eat and drink and then we have several hundred bottles of wine, half or 3/4 full, left over. Everyone asks, what do you do with all that leftover wine?

Well, email me and I will tell you.