Paul Heinz

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Dining at Topolobampo

It was a mere five years ago or so when my son Sam and I flipped through the TV channels and wound up tuning into PBS, where we became entranced with an enthusiastic geeky guy singing the praises of Mexican cuisine. Rick Bayless’s One Plate at a Time had us at “cochinita pibil,” whatever the hell that was. It hardly mattered. It was his passion that roped us in, infectious and encouraging, and like foot soldiers of an oddly ebullient military commander, we were ready to go wherever he led us.

Except to his flagship restaurant, apparently. Yes, about four years ago my wife and I managed to make it down to Chicago for a brunch at Frontera Grill, and twice now in the last year we’ve purchased Cubano sandwiches at Bayless’s O’Hare location, Tortas Frontera. But we’d never been to the Granddaddy of the Bayless franchise, the upscale Topolobampo, so when my son had one request for this 16th birthday – dining at Topolobampo (the name of which I didn’t master until Saturday as we were driving into Chicago) – we decided to take the plunge. 

It helped that we were a group of four instead of our usual family of five, because I’m not used to spending bookoo bucks on dining experiences. I’m simply not wired that way. Hell, my personal wine chart with a y-axis representing the price of a bottle of wine and an x-axis representing my happiness results in a straight vertical line. I like it all. When I “splurge” on a Wednesday afternoon and decide to get a lunch at Chipotle for nine dollars, I’m happy as a clam downing my sofritas, black beans and brown rice. Lovely. Until Saturday night, I believe the most I ever spent on a dinner was somewhere around $120 per person, drinks included. On Saturday we exceeded that by a considerable margin.

Our jovial yet subtle John Goodman-like waiter made the pitch for the newly introduced “Winter Beach Vacation” dinner, and all four of us took the bait (see what I did there?), enjoying seven courses ranging from crab taco (like no other taco I’ve ever had) to seared scallops to octopus, all delectable, though my favorite was probably the lobster chilpachole. Our meal was orchestrated perfectly, neither rushed nor tedious, with just enough time to enjoy our dish, let it settle for a bit, and then move on to the next course. Plates were retrieved at the right time, drinks were replenished timely (the house margarita was superb), and all four of us enjoyed a delicious, leisurely dinner in about two and a half hours.

Originally my daughter was supposed to fly up and join us for the weekend, but when she had to back out due to a school requirement, we invited my son’s friend, whose palette has expanded considerably since our camping trip in 2012 when his diet was restricted to…I think bread and Chips Ahoy. His attendance on Saturday night worked out perfectly, because what ever else you can say about Topolobampo, it isn’t obviously friendly to vegetarians; my daughter would have had to have put in a special request, and I’m not sure what the results would have been. Probably wonderful. But something to think about if you’re a veggie looking for fine Mexican dining.

So was it worth it? I’ve written before about how haphazard we humans value things. We’ll drive three blocks further to save a few cents on gas or spend weeks pricing out the best deal on a grill or refrigerator, and then think nothing of shelling out $12 on a martini or $100 plus on a concert ticket. In short, we are inconsistent, and we’re all a bit different on where we’re willing to spend money. For me, the value I get out of watching a good movie for $10 exceeds that of seeing a musical for $125. For others, it’s just the reverse.

An experience at a place like Topolobampo is a once a year or every other year event for me. Mind you, I have three kids in college and a new sewer coming this spring. There may come a time when our disposable income is such that we can enjoy a high-end restaurant more regularly, but I think it has much more to do with my mindset and my upbringing. My German-Lutheran Midwestern roots taught me to watch my wallet and choose carefully, a practice that has served me well in life, but I still pick my spots and manage to spend money on life experiences where appropriate.

Last Saturday was one of them, one plate at a time. Seven of them. And three margaritas. Say it with me: muy beuno.

The Cold Streak

In the midst of the cold spell affecting the upper Midwest last week, I mentioned to a few friends that it felt like the longest such streak since my second year at the University of Minnesota during grad school. Sure enough, the results are officially in, and it was indeed a streak to be reckoned with. According to NBC Chicago, in northern Illinois we experienced 12 daytime highs of lower than 20 degrees, the first time this has happened since 1936. It brought to mind the thrilling winters of my childhood that I love to boast about. Twenty years from now – if we’re lucky – we may recall fondly the winter of 2018, though from our lips the streak will likely be twice as long and twice as cold.

I’ve written previously about the winter of 1994, when Minneapolis experienced 22 straight days below freezing and seven straight days below 7 degrees. I only owned one car then – my ’85 Tercel – which meant only one battery could die (and even that was more than I could comfortably afford). Flash forward twenty-four years, and this unfortunate owner of four cars had to take two of them in for new batteries. The most recently purchased car just arrived at my daughter’s apartment in southern California, where I believe it’ll live a much happier life.

Four years ago Chicagoans experienced another cold winter – the third coldest on record – with temperatures reaching below zero on 26 days, breaking a hundred year-old record and keeping children home from school for several days. The biggest plus about this year’s cold streak is it occurred during the two weeks that kids had off from school, and as result there will be no days tacked on at the end of the school year. Then again, we all went a little stir crazy, and I believe the entire family is glad to be back on schedule this week.

There are a few (million) morons out there, who insist that because of these cold winters, it clearly means that global warming isn’t occurring, much like if your body experiences ninety percent third-degree burns, you can claim no harm done due to the other ten percent being perfectly healthy.  

Would that it were so.

One need only go to yesterday's news to find evidence offsetting the recent cold streak here, as Sydney, Australia experienced a high of 117 degrees fahrenheit, its hottest day since 1939.

Sports Writing as good as the Watching

There’s a current sports columnist whose prose harken back to the glorious baseball writings of Roger Angell, whose work I hadn’t known until my wife purchased a book called Game Time: A Baseball Companion – a fine, fine read if you like baseball history – and in our current environment of immediacy and “just the facts, Ma’am,” it’s easy to overlook quality work that sometimes appears on the web. Two weeks ago the Cubs and Nationals engaged in an epic battle for game 5 of the NLDS, and Yahoo sportswriter Jeff Passan published a piece with as much beauty, poetry and gravitas as the game itself. The Cubs didn’t clinch the series until 1:15 AM Eastern Time, and Passan published his piece less than four hours later. It would have taken me weeks to produce something as good, and even then it would probably fall short. This guy can write well and write fast. 

And I know, this is what great journalists have been doing for decades, but in a world when news is published as it happens, one revelation at a time, full of errors and retractions, typos and grammatical mistakes, it’s refreshing to know that a guy like Passan can pull off a feat that few are willing to pay for these days. Kudos to Yahoo Sports for shelling out some cash for quality. 

I happened upon Passan’s essay by chance after the Cubs victory, but now I seek out his material, and this morning I was yet again rewarded after last night’s incredible Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, an 11-inning victory for the Astros – their first World Series win in franchise history – and among the best baseball games I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

Baseball lends itself to grandiose writing, perhaps more than other sports – something about the pacing of the game, with pauses between each pitch – and it would be easy to overdo it with the writing equivalent of John Facenda’s deep baritone voice narrating an NFL film, and although Passan occasionally dips his toes in the waters of grandiloquent prose (comparing October baseball to a “feral animal best left to carve whatever circuitous path it pleases”), most of the time he just writes really good sentences – nothing flashy, but more than “just the facts, ma’am.” Consider the following:

The fortuity that favored the Dodgers in the third inning, when Bregman’s RBI single bounced off the brim of Taylor’s cap in center and caromed to Pederson instead of scooting by, had evened out by the grace of Diaz being in the right place at the right time.

Nice. Yes, the facts are there, but they’re there in a way that’s pleasant to read.

During the last week I’ve had the pleasure of watching two of the greatest endings to sports games I’ve even seen. One was last night. The other was last Thursday, when the Raiders had two game-winning touchdowns called back in the final seconds, only to score another one – this time official – to win 31–30. Unfortunately, Jeff Passan doesn’t write for football, and nothing I found on-line stood out as anything more than a decent summary of the game.  Perhaps good writers gravitate toward America’s Pastime the way good musicians do Bach, but I have to think that any sport can lead to writing that warrants our attention.

In the meantime, I’m going to tune into the remaining World Series games when I’m able to, and to Jeff Passan's writing either way.

A Reader Fears for my Soul

Once in a while I receive a written comment about a blog I’ve written, usually a funny or complimentary note and sometimes an interesting insight. Last month my inbox included the following all-caps comment from a woman who read my 2016 blog entry, When Music Meant Going to Hell.

Amanda writes:

YOU BETTER PAY HEED MY FRIEND... GOD IS COMING BACK FOR HIS BRIDE AND IF YOUR SITTING IN A ROOM ALLOWING THE DEVIL TO ENTERTAIN YOU WELL THATS JUST WHERE YOU'LL BE WHEN HE COMES AN GOES... IF YOU KNOW IS SATANIC WHY KEEP LISTENING... WHY KEEP PARTICIPATING... WALK AWAY... DO U THINK YOU'LL BE LISTENING TO THAT IN HEAVEN WITH GOD NO... DAY BY DAY YOU BECOME A BETTER PERSON AN CHRISTIAN ONE LESS SIN TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

Now, I don’t know Amanda, so I don’t want to poke fun at her for her poor grammar, her use of all-caps or her typos, and even though I chuckled at Amanda’s self-righteousness, after thinking it over for a while I came to conclude that she and I aren’t as far apart in our thinking as one might suspect.

In my original essay I discussed the subliminal message craze of the early 80s and how much of my childhood was spent worrying about the buried meanings and messages in the music I was listening to. I stayed away from bands that overtly referenced Satan and the like, but I was being told that bands like Led Zeppelin, Supertramp (seriously? SUPERTAMP?), The Eagles and Pink Floyd were going to send me to hell, all for some silly lyric taken out of context or an album photo that included a hidden figure on the balcony of a hotel. 

The whole discussion devolved quickly into a case of sanctimonious finger-pointing, almost gleefully, like the wonderful Christian leaders of the Middle Ages who burned people at the stake for daring to print bibles in languages other than Latin (despite the original books having been written in Hebrew and Greek – funny), or the accusatory claims of the fine citizens of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It seems that throughout history people have claimed to know what God wants or doesn’t want, and oddly enough those wants keep changing over time.

But Amanda has a point. We really shouldn’t immerse ourselves in pursuits that we find morally repugnant. I don’t watch horror films because I don’t revel in the suffering of others (even if the suffering is an act) and don’t want those images imprinted in my mind. (Think watching violence doesn’t matter? Think again.) Similarly, I wouldn’t want to spend any time reading white supremacist propaganda except only to better defend against it, and I don’t listen to music that glorifies violence or demonizes race or religion. Some professions may require an immersion into sordid waters, like an author writing about ethnic cleansing or an investigator attempting to solve a human trafficking case. But for those of us who aren’t actively working in these types of pursuits, I really do believe we’re better off avoiding the underbelly of humanity for the most part.

So Amanda, I agree with you that I shouldn’t be listening to music that overtly contradicts my values. But here’s the thing: I don’t want you or anyone else deciding for me what those values are and what constitutes a violation of those values. I’m quite capable of deciding for myself where the boundaries are. 

Keep on doing your thing, Amanda, and I’ll keep on doing mine. Something tells me we’ll both be okay. I’ll just be taking my journey using lower-case letters.

When to Say No

In Gavin de Becker’s book, Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane), he discusses how people often fail to trust their intuition that signals potential threats. We encounter a situation that doesn’t quite feel right – it may not even be something we can articulate – and instead of trusting our gut, we proceed due to social norms or lessons we were taught as children. Although de Becker focuses on the largest stakes for failing to heed our natural warning signals – namely the safety of our children – I’ve recently considered applying his advice to less drastic aspects of our lives: knowing when to say to no to an opportunity. 

I find this to be a very tricky endeavor, a balancing act that I don’t always get right, but I seem to be succeeding more often today than in my younger years. On the one hand, I don’t want to automatically say no to opportunities that might allow me to grow, meet new friends and experience new things even if it makes me a bit uncomfortable. On the other hand, I don’t want to commit to participating in activities that I dread, that take me away from things I’m passionate about or that make me unnecessarily anxious. 

How do you find a balance? After all, sometime encountering a situation that produces anxiety is exactly what you should do. When should you accept the challenge and when should you walk away from it?

I’m still working on it, but I’ve noticed a few things about my choices over the past few years.

1)     When it comes to friends and family, just do it.

I hate letting people down. HATE it. For that reason I’ve sometimes committed to doing things that I didn’t really want to do for fear that my friend or relative would think less of me or that I would feel especially guilty. I’ve come to appreciate this aspect of my character and I’ve learned that it’s better for me to commit to supporting the people in my life even if it’s mildly inconvenient or produces some anxiety. That’s what friends do and I’m okay with it. There have been times in my life when I didn’t support someone the way I should have and I’ve regretted it and sometimes suffered the consequences. The exception to this rule is if there’s someone in your life who is particularly corrosive to your well-being. I imagine that in these situations your intuition will be practically screaming at you to avoid the situation. Best to listen.

2)      When it comes to strangers, acquaintances or friends of friends, don’t fall for flattery.

It’s one thing when you’re dealing with friends and relatives, but quite another when confronting strangers or acquaintances, perhaps people you’re not even particularly fond of. In these situations I’ve found that my biggest foe is flattery. Someone thinks I would be especially good at (fill in the blank – playing piano for an event, leading a charitable team, attending a party) and even though I have no interest in the activity, I say yes up front because it makes me feel important and wanted. I’ve discovered that in these situations the first conversation should only be fact-finding in nature, and not until I’ve had a day or two to think things over should I commit. Failing to do so often leads to painful results, and I have failed many, many times, some as recently as this summer! I’m still learning.

3)      Consider breaking your word.

This is the one that’s really tough for me. As I said before, I hate letting people down, so once I commit to doing something I’m a very reliable person, but I’ve recently learned that there are situations in which withdrawing my participation leads to a boost in well-being and perhaps a benefit to the other party as well. I’ll never withdraw from a project when It would leave someone high and dry – bowing out of a gig on short notice, for example – but in situations where I know the person(s) will be able to manage without me or will have enough time to find a replacement, I’ve found that it’s perfectly acceptable – if mildly regrettable – to say, “This isn’t working for me. Thanks for the opportunity.” Flattery will try to convince us that we’re indispensable, but the reality is no one is indispensable. In many situations leaving an anxiety-producing situation will leave everyone in a better place eventually. I imagine it’s a lot like ending a relationship, preferably before the wedding date has been set.

4)     If an activity can potentially lead you to achieving a life goal, let reason trump fear.

I’ve encountered this a few times in my role as a musician. Sometimes I’ve placed myself in a situation that I didn’t feel comfortable in but I’ve felt that the stakes were high enough to warrant the anxiety. If a record producer told me that he wanted to use several of my songs for a star recording artist, but first he wanted to hear me perform them in front of a live audience, on some level this would be an anxiety-producing nightmare but well worth the effort for an opportunity to have my songs recorded. Sometimes your gut should be overruled. Other times? Not. For example, I’ve learned that my ability to perform classical music in front of an audience produces more anxiety for me that it’s worth. I’m not looking to be a classical artist and there are other forms of music that I enjoy more and play more competently, so now when I play an “offering” piece at the Presbyterian church on Sundays, I play a jazz or pop composition. The congregants seem to appreciate it, and my hands aren’t shaking during the performance!

5)     When your cup is full, don’t pour more into it.

A friend of mine once said to his wife: “I can be a good father, a good husband and a good carpenter,” (he was putting an addition on his house) “but I can only be good at two of those things at once. Which do you want me to let go of?” I love this, and I wish more people would be willing to lay things out so succinctly at their workplace. I recently told someone that my volunteer cup is full and that I’m going to start saying no to things even if they’re right up my alley. I’m simply at my limit when it comes to volunteering and won’t take on anything more. When I stop doing one volunteer activity then we can talk about taking on a new challenge. God willing, I’ll have plenty of more years to dabble in new opportunities.

6)     Apply your guidelines retroactively.

After writing out this list I applied my rules to four situations I experienced in the past year when I should have said no but didn’t. In each case there was a moment when I should have raised my hands and said, “Thanks for your consideration, but I’m not going to pursue this.”  In three of the four situations I did eventually withdraw from the project and was a better for it, but in the future I’d like to trust my gut at the time it tells me to get out and not weeks or months later. It won’t only benefit me, but the people to whom I’ve responded.

So there you have it: some hard-learned wisdom from someone who’s not always known for being wise, unless you include being a wiseass. In summary, when it comes to safely, take de Becker’s advice and heed your intuition. For other things, listen to your gut and give it a vote, but not necessarily a veto.  In time you may find the right balance.

Copyright, 2024, Paul Heinz, All Right Reserved