when you realize that you're giving everyone on the road the dirty finger and your face is locked in this permanent wrinkle, you know it's time to whip out your favorite bootleg eraserheads cd and sing along with ely buendia.

i always sing along to track number 16 first, pare ko, while thinking of the movie where jao mapa was the good guy, claudine baretto was the object of everyone's affection, and mark anthony fernandez was the way he always is - a little scruffy, very spoiled, and very very lovable. i sometimes imagine myself being so frustrated in loving someone that i'd spawn very honest lyrics about that love.

i then move back to tracks 7 and 8, magasin and ligaya. magasin happens to be a true to life experience for my brother - back when maui taylor was in csa and was a flat-chested freshman, my brother, being the all-knowing senior, decided to court that cute little thing. i never really knew about it until he showed me a picture of her when she started appearing in the now-defunct TGIS. and then one day, there she was, in all her almost-naked glory amidst pastries and other fattening what-nots, in a men's magazine that my house mate just happened to have lying around in the condo. my brother's reaction? sana dati pa siya nagka-boobs.

ligaya will always remind me of fourth year high school, when our accounting teacher's first name was ligaya and eheads was the biggest hit since everyone stopped listening to mike francis' two hit songs. my classmates would serande her and i know her advisory section actually sang that song in one of the school programs, somewhat a tribute to her, which didn't really work cause i remember having to cheat in accounting to make sure i pass.

eraserheads - with ely of course - can always do that to you. i bet each song means a different something to each one of us. my mom told me in the past how she's always reminded of me overdrive, and how the her favorite song is para sa masa because of the line "para sa fans ni sharon cuneta". UP students of the 90s probably thought of them each time they passed by narra and saw some quiet guy strumming his guitar. the back cover of their book, fruitcake, where they finally had pictures of themselves in togas taken (allegedly as a tribute to their parents who never saw them graduate from college, because they never did) reminds you of the millions of UP students who never marched from one end of quezon hall to the other, pausing in the middle to receive a bond paper encased in a stiff maroon folder with the UP parrot (yup, its a parrot, not an eagle) in gold ink.

while eraserheads is still out there, the eraserheads as i knew them isn't anymore. i'd forever have that cd though and one of these days, when the christmas traffic begins to tax whatever little patience i have, i'd probably slide it into my car's cd player, push the buttons to bring me to track number 16 and sing along with ely the lines i never grow tired of singing: o pare ko, meron akong problema ...