For Wisconsin Sports Fans, 2011 was the Best Year Ever

The ’57 Braves must have been something else.

The Packers Championships in the 60s?  Wish I had been there.

The ’71 Bucks.  The ’77 Warriors.  The ’82 Brewers.  Three UW Rose Bowl victories.  Terrific times.

But for Wisconsin sports fans, 2011 was the greatest year on record, and I’m not quite sure young Wisconsinites get it.  They can’t recall a time when the Packers weren’t a contender (assuming they block out 2008).  To them, the Badgers football team has always been bowl-bound.  And sure, the Brewers had some tough years, but two playoff appearances in four seasons is nothing to scoff at.

They don’t know what we know.  We’ve suffered through bad seasons.  Really bad.  Horrendously bad.  Like 4-12 Packer teams, a Brewers franchise that avoided the playoffs for two and a half decades, and...well, you want to hear about bad?  Get this – the 2011 Badgers football team won as many games as in my entire tenure at UW-Madison.  (And it took me five football seasons to graduate!)

I’m not even joking about that last one.  UW won ten games in five seasons.  It was the Don Morton debacle.

So when looking back on 2011, it’s hard to convey to young folks just how amazing this year has been.

Consider the following:

The Packers lost a total of one game in 2011, won a Super Bowl and set a record for regular season wins.

The Brewers won 101 games in 2011, including a playoff run, and set a record for regular season wins.

Both Marquette and Wisconsin made the Sweet Sixteen in the men’s NCAA tournament.

And sure, UW football started 2011 with a loss in the Rose Bowl, but it ended the year with a chance to change the outcome.

Years like 2011 just don’t happen.  Maybe in cities where drinking beer is just a pastime, not a mission, but not in puny Milwaukee and Green Bay. 

So soak it up, young sports lovers.  2011 might go down as the pinnacle of Wisconsin sports years.  A year you’ll tell your grandkids about.  A year that will one day bring a smile to you as you suffer through season after season of botched fielding, inept tackling and sloppy dribbling.

Then again, you might instead recall 2012, a year that shows just as much promise today as its little sister did last New Year’s Eve.

Soak it up, indeed.

The Dark Side of Friendship Bread essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on Dec 27, 2011.

Sucker Magazine Publication Forthcoming

(The following blog-in-brief is currently posted at Sucker, a new Young Adult magazine created by Hannah Goodman, that will debut within the next month or two.  An excerpt of my novel, Things I Hate About My Mother, has been accepted for publication for the first issue).

My friend forwards an email about a new Young Adult literary magazine called Sucker:

“Maybe you’re interested?” she writes.

Interested?  Of course I’m interested.  I’m always interested in miniscule chances at achieving love and admiration.  It’s what we writers thrive on.

And then something weird happens: I achieve…well…not LOVE, exactly, but modest admiration for something I’ve written!  Me.

A nip and a tuck, and voilà!  Published.

Okay. So the rewrites were a LITTLE more painful than a nip and a tuck, but when you’re heavily sedated and the doctor has you under the knife and says, “You SURE you don’t want me to remove this mole since I’ve already got you here?” you just do it.

Thanks Dr. Hannah, surgeon extraordinaire.

-Paul Heinz, Sucker Writer

A Modest Tribute to Seth Erlebacher

I was going to try to write something really profound, but I’ve given up, at least for the time being.  Words are woefully inadequate to sum up a man’s life, but I feel it necessary to offer at least a modest tribute to my brother-in-law, Seth Erlebacher, who died last Friday and whose funeral was held today in New York.  Additional facets of Seth’s life will surely be aroused in future days, but today, still too close to the shock of Seth’s passing to have fully reflected on the magnitude of his life, I’d like to mention just a few lasting impressions that I’ll take with me.

His enthusiasm:  Seth’s zest for life was never more apparent than when my family traveled with his, as he packed his family’s days from morning until night, determined to tap every ounce of his opportunity to explore and discover.  My family and I would be the ones to call it a day or sleep in, but Seth, who worked so tirelessly at IBM for so many years, applied the same zeal in his recreation as he did in his work.

His laughter: Seth video-taped my wedding in 1995, so he isn’t actually seen on tape, but he IS heard.  When a family of ducks waddles across the deck where the wedding party is standing, you can hear Seth’s laughter in the background, a high-pitched, hiccup type laugh that was as infectious as it was entertaining.

His inclusiveness:  when Seth’s family hosted a gathering for Passover or Chanukah, it wasn’t just a family or two in attendance, but virtually any person who might not otherwise have plans.  Early on in my relationship with Seth, I was among the many to join in for Passover, only a boyfriend to his sister-in-law at that time, but it was my initiation into the world of Judaism and associated family traditions.  The effort put forth by both he and his wife, Melissa, to host such functions was always staggering, but they did so with joy and with the ultimate aim of inclusion.

His children: amazing kids should of course be commended for their own accomplishments, but I believe the people who raise them deserve just a little bit of credit.   The best qualities of Seth and Melissa have passed on to their children, and I’ve been honored to watch them grow and become the amazing people they are today.

This morning, my son sang at his fourth-grade holiday concert, and the final song was a song of peace.  “Shalom, shalom, may peace be with you, my friend.”  But in Hebrew Shalom has a triple meaning: it means peace, but can also be used to say hello or goodbye.  So as my son sang “shalom,” and as he waved his arm in sign language with a sweeping motion across his chest, I took it as his way, consciously or not, of saying goodbye to his uncle.

So long, Seth.

Another Ponzi Scheme: Friendship Bread

(Note: this is an edited version of a previous essay.  This version will appear soon on Milwaukee's NPR affiliate: 89.7 WUWM)

It’s that time of year again, and the truth is out: those who gleefully hand out kits of homemade friendship bread are in fact NOT kind and warmhearted people, but rather mean-spirited souls who exult in the false hopes and misfortunes of others.

I recently had the honor of receiving the “Friendship Treatment” from Jan, who en route to her yoga class stopped by to offer me a bag filled with a thick, beige liquid along with a printout of instructions. “It’s a ten-day process, and we’re already on day four, so enjoy!” she said, practically skipping back to her van, certain that she’d helped to spread a little sunshine in my dim world, and I admit that initially I was flattered: someone had made bread for me! How thoughtful. How quaint.

For those who haven’t been indoctrinated into the world of friendship bread, the process is basically a ponzi scheme without the financial implications. You start with a few ingredients and mix them in a Ziplock bag. For the next ten days, you squeeze the bag a few times and occasionally add an ingredient or two. Eventually, you divide the mix into four different bags: one that will provide two loaves of bread for yourself, and the rest to be distributed to three friends who will repeat the process, and so on, until every man, woman and child on the planet has prepared, baked and eaten two loaves of bread.

It wasn’t until day ten that I realized just what a scam this bread-making business is. I learned that none of the previous nine days had been necessary at all, because I now had to empty practically every bag, box and bottle in my cupboard to finish the process.

Here are the ingredients I added on day ten:

Sugar, milk, flour, oil, MORE sugar, vanilla, eggs, baking powder, salt, MORE flour, MORE milk, baking soda, instant vanilla pudding mix and cinnamon.

Seriously. I’d basically fallen for a variation of the story “Stone Soup,” in which a man tricks a community to cook a big vat of soup by asking each citizen to add an ingredient, except in this version of the story, I was a community of one.

I have half a mind to give my friend a Ziplock bag filled with water and say, “Here’s a bag of friendship soup. Enjoy!”

So thanks anyway, but I’m going to pass on this charming tradition in the future. You want to be a friend? Bring a six-pack of Guinness over sometime, and if you really must include something baked, offer me your thoughts on world peace.