Archive for January, 2012

“What a fool believes” is another one of those old old songs has been running around in my head, stirring up memories and ideas and questions. I can remember hearing it at age 13, with my childhood experiences still current events, and applying the song’s situation  to being in 6th grade, but at the same time sensing that my understanding was far from complete.

The song concerns a man’s meeting up with a woman in whom he had a deep interest, but who does not return it and, he now realizes, never did. “(He was) trying hard to recreate what had yet to be created …  she had a place in his life. He never made her think twice.”

There it was: unrequited love.  At the time, I was still hoping that it only happened in grade school, with people you didn’t really know, who you just had a crush on, and that adults didn’t have to suffer such indignities. At least they must know how to deal with it. Later I would discover that suffer adults did, but most of the time they didn’t talk about it.

Watching the video today, I am struck by several things. The musicianship–it’s not always easy to find songs that will hold their listenability for 30 years. And also Michael McDonald’s long hair — these days I remember the 70′s  long hair style on men only when I see it on film; I forget about it when I’m not looking at old pictures and it always merits a double take. More than anything, the people of the age come across as free, innocent even, people who had not yet dealt with all that has happened in the last 30 years which roughly comprises my adulthood — not to have seen the way the post-WWII life that we assumed would last for hundreds of years was slipping away in just a couple of decades.  Across the years, today the hope is still transparent and real through the song. I liste and reflect that the song is correct about hope and its endurance. Indeed, “he can still believe there’s a place in her life. Somewhere someday, she will return.”

Like King Arthur she will return. And “what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.” I think Paul Simon wrote something along the same lines about the same time. To be able to say that at all is a kind of innocence when it’s compared with modern lyrics, which Pia was complaining about this morning –songs of lies by liars -about violence by violent people, often — and this makes me think “What a fool believes” is still a very sweet song. Even if she didn’t ever love him, even if she never will return. Because, as I’ve been telling my own children, in the end, love belongs to the lover. It’s him that experiences it, not her, anyway. And tragedy is part of life, you can’t escape. So singing about it and making it into a beautiful song that is remembered long after the event, perhaps is enough, I would say, to make the experience worthwhile. Though, since I didn’t experience it and write the song, I can’t be sure.

New Denton establishment offers variety and adventure with a Tex-Mex theme

So you’ve been wondering where to get some Mexican food in Denton. You don’t want to visit one of the ubiquitous taco casas? You say you want to sit down in a chic environment and have someone bring you something you can feel some serious anticipation about? You want honest, fresh authentic ingredients cooked with care and perhaps even passion? Look no further than South Denton, where a new restaurant called Mi Taza has been constructed with a chic bistro setting. And the price? Cheaper than Don Jose’s or South of the Border for sure.

This is a place where you can get fajitas in more or less the usual style–choose a plate of tacos, enchiladas, burritos tostadas or quesadillas if you want to play it safe–but the real stars of the menu show here are the  Latin and South American food items,the cachapa, the soups and the arepas. Let me sing the song of the arepas! This cross between a gordita and a corn muffin, stuffed with chicken, beef or gouda cheese, is delicioso without a precedent. You have to try the arepas to understand. I wake up nights and think about them.

The cachapa, a corn meal pancake folded around shredded beef and cheese, is as flavorful and succulent as anything I’ve ever had at a 50$ a plate restaurant, Mexican or otherwise.  The soups are truly superior and again range from the pedestrian — tortilla soup — to the exotic — sopa de apio, made from the casava root and I promise, a very very tasty bowl of comfort food it is. You can get fine coffee, granitas, agua frescas and flan and sopapillas as well. Truly this is a restaurant where the adventurous can sit down and break (corn) bread with the more meat and potatoes types (potatoes, by the way, come from the Andes of South America).  I encourage you to make the trip down Teasley lane, pull off into the Kroger parking lot, and look on the southeast side for the Mi Taza coffee mug sign.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad you did.

Mi Taza Latin Cafe and Restaurant

5017 Teasley Lane Denton TX 76210 (940) 591-9999

Tuesday to Friday 11-2:30 and 5-9

Saturday 11-9           Sunday 9-2