Stephen H. Provost's Blog, page 10

Curiosity: The Writer's Muse

Writers are born, not made … or is it the other way around? The nature-versus-nurture debate has baffled philosophers for millennia, as though there were some definitive answer to be had.

But is there really?

We’re keen on labeling and compartmentalizing things for our own convenience, and there’s something to be said for that. It’s helpful in determining whether the leftovers in the fridge are beef stroganoff or Fancy Feast.

But we creative types don’t tend to like leftovers. We’re all about cooking up something new (even if it is a new perspective on something old, like highway history, for instance). I’ve written about everything from my hometown’s history to ancient religion; I’ve penned a children’s fairy tale and a paranormal adventure. There’s no formula to any of it, but there’s common thread: It all stems from the kind of curiosity that might prompt our cat Tyrion to forgo the Fancy Feast for the stroganoff if he happened to discover it lying on out on the kitchen counter.

“Ooooooooh! Something newwwwwwww! Imma gonna try it!”

Curiosity is that singular trait that sets writers (and other creative types) apart from the crowd. It’s also the one thing that ties nature and nurture together in a package – even if that package is anything but neat. It’s a swirling, seething ever-shifting sea of endless discovery and transformation. What comes next? What’s over there? How did we get here?

When it’s not killing the cat (and most of the time, it’s not), curiosity is like a perfectly sustainable engine of renewal and reimagining. It’s a natural part of who we are, but it leads us to seek out new information, refine our craft and take the next step in our artistic development. It’s the part of our nature that nurtures us. Can we all start singing “The Circle of Life” now?

Seriously, instead of trying to figure out whether a good writer is born or made, follow in the footsteps of Puss in Boots and Pangur Bán. Get curious. Explore, discover and write about what you find, whether it be in the recesses of the past, the pages of some forgotten tome or the back alleys of your own imagination.

The more you nurture your own creative nature, the more accomplished you’ll become – and the more fun you’ll have.  

Hakuna matata.

Note: The accompanying photo does not constitute evidence concerning Schrödinger's cat. It's our own tuxedo-attired Tyrion, who's very much alive and, despite his innate curiosity, often likes to think inside the box.

"Memortality": Coming in February 2017

The phone rang. It was my publisher. One of the reasons he was calling was to ask me whether I’d be upset if he delayed the release of my forthcoming book on Highway 99 a few months.

You probably think I was disappointed. The book’s written, the illustrations are ready to go, the contract’s signed, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve done on the project. But as eager as I am to see it in print, the rest of what my publisher had to say made any mild disappointment I might have felt evaporate in the proverbial New York minute.

“We’d like to publish ‘Memortality.’”

“Memortality” is a novel I’d written after I finished work on the Highway 99 project, based on an idea that occurred to me when I was working on my 2015 release, “Fresno Growing Up.” As an author of historical nonfiction, it’s my goal to bring memories to life again. But that got me wondering: What if someone could do that for real, not just through words on a printed page? What if our memories of lost loved ones could literally bring them back to life?

That’s the concept behind “Memortality” (a word I coined by combining “memory” and “immortality”). It’s about a very special woman named Minerva Rus who can use her eidetic memory to put things back the way they were … and even bring people back from the dead.

I’ll be sharing more about the “Memortality” and how I came to write it in the months ahead, but suffice to say I consider this the most original, exciting story that’s ever popped into (and now out of) my head.

I submitted it to Linden Publishing, which released “Fresno Growing Up” on its Craven Street imprint and did an excellent job with the design and marketing. I didn’t know what to expect. But not only did the folks at Linden accept the manuscript, they’re making it their debut release on a brand new imprint. To an author, that’s like being chosen to carry the flag at the Olympic opening ceremonies. It’s quite an honor.

The target release date for “Memortality” is Feb. 1, 2017, and it’s already available for pre-order on Amazon. The Highway 99 book is due to be out just a few months later, so I’ll have not one but two books hitting the shelves in the first half of next year.

In the meantime, I’ll be continuing work on two new projects – both of which are moving right along. But “Memortality” is front and center. I’m thrilled to announce it as my debut novel for Linden/Pace and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop during the months ahead. Watch this space and my Facebook page for updates on “Memortality,” including the cover reveal, plot teasers, etc.

This is going to one heck of a memorable ride.

Writing: The Great Escape

Over the past five years, I’ve written nearly a dozen freestanding books of various lengths, a couple of short stories, dozens of newspaper columns and more blog entries than I can count.

Why do I do it? Why pursue an occupation that many find daunting to consider and grueling to pursue?

Because I can? No, because I must.

I don’t have any choice. “Writer’s block” to me is nothing more than an excuse not to get started (most often) or not to continue (occasionally). It’s a phantom menace, the voice of the wolf inside my head that I don’t feed very often because the other wolf is a lot hungrier.

George Orwell posited that, putting aside the need to earn a living, there are four great motives for writing prose:

Sheer egoism: “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc.”

Aesthetic enthusiasm: “Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.”

Historical impulse: “Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

Political purpose: “Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

Guilty on all counts. Orwell’s “1984” left a lasting impression on me as a young adult, both for its creativity in fashioning an alternate universe and for its insights into the human condition.

I share each of the four motives he mentioned, but all of them together aren’t what keeps me writing. One thing does: Like Orwell, I’m able to create an alternate universe. And, to be blunt, I like it better there.

New worlds, old worlds

Novelists create new worlds; writers of non-fiction revisit old ones. I’ve had the privilege of doing both. As an author of paranormal fantasy/science fiction, I get to imagine what life would be like if the rules were different, if the world were more vibrant, if the challenges less mundane and the means of answering them more noble. Who wants to worry about paying bills, going to the doctor or attending some pointless meeting when you can imagine yourself slaying a dragon – or, far better yet, befriending one?

As an author of historical nonfiction, I get to travel back in time and visit worlds that have passed into memory. I wrote a book about my hometown as it was during my childhood and another about the history of a long-traveled highway. Sorry, H.G. Wells, but I don’t need your time machine. I can research and write my way back into a world that might otherwise have passed to oblivion. Talk about power. Talk about responsibility.

It’s not that I don’t like this world. I have a wonderful wife, two stepsons who are maturing into proverbial “fine young men,” a father who loves me and two cats who provide unconditional affection (they do demand a bowl of kibble and a rub behind the ears, but that’s beside the point). I live in a beautiful town where I don’t have to choose between the beach and the forest and the foothills, because it’s got all three. What’s not to like?

In response, I refer you back to the earlier reference to bills, health concerns, meetings … you get the picture.

I write because, in doing so, I can escape such mundane concerns. I write because I have the audacity to believe that I can create a world more exciting, more honorable, less bitter and less tragic than the one in which I live. A world where whimsy and nostalgia vanquish bigotry and heartache and disease – maybe not every time (a good story has to have conflict, after all), but enough to keep hope alive that I’m headed for a happy ending.

Writer's Paradox

There have been times in this life when I’ve lacked that hope, and it was then that I started writing, first in the angst of teenage isolation, then in the aftermath of job loss and divorce. I suppose that means there’s something to the old cliché about affliction stoking the fires of creativity, which makes this musing something of a paradox: Torment set my pen in motion, a chariot upon which I can escape that self-same torment.

But that paradox no longer matters. I’ve fallen in love with writing, and now that life is good again, I’m not about to quit. This is one of those “till death do us part” things, with one singularly fascinating caveat: My writing will survive me, and will carry a portion of me into the afterlife of the printed page.

That’s something Orwell touched upon in his nod to egoism: Writing offers a taste of immortality achieved through memory preserved – of "memortality," if you will. (I like how that sounds.) And though it’s a taste and nothing more, it’s enough to whet the appetite for what lies beyond. In the next line, on the next page, in the next chapter.

To visit worlds where I’d like to live – and worlds that will outlive me.

This is why I write.

This is why I’ll never stop.

Welcome to Political Babylon

We, the people of Political Babylon ...

I’m taking a timeout from talking about presidential candidates online. That’s not to say I’ll never do so, but I’m going to try to refrain – and here’s why.

It’s not that I don’t care about the election or have a preference. I have a strong preference and, yes, I do care. What I don’t care for is how this election has started to look like everything that’s wrong with organized religion.

It’s not the candidates but their supporters who have led me to this conclusion, just as it isn’t any deity that makes me wary of religious fervor. It’s the us-vs.-them fanaticism that drives people to turn against one another and feel as though it’s acceptable – even noble – to become backbiters, kitchen sink dumpers and even suicide bombers.

All for the sake of some cult of personality; for the privilege of following some Pied Piper.

The way people hurl abuse at one another in the name of one candidate or another is nauseating. It’s gotten to the point where one can’t make a reasoned observation about any candidate without one of his/her supporters shouting the political equivalent of “Blasphemy!” or “Heresy!” Facebook and Twitter have become venues for verbally re-enacting the Spanish Inquisition using less physical implements of torture: bullying, accusation, name-calling and the full gamut of fallacious arguments.

People defend “their” candidates like they’re Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King all rolled into one.

They’re not.

Partisans and true believers go around throwing money into campaign war chests as though they're making offerings at some sacred temple. They refuse to risk upsetting any of the money-changers’ tables for fear one might topple over on their candidate and he/she will lose the advantage. The end justifies the means. Sure it does. Keep telling yourself that as your credibility disappears down the toilet. Do you even care?

Nearly everyone decries the tenor of the candidates’ rhetoric as unbecoming of a president. Well, look in the mirror. How's your rhetoric sounded lately? These politicians are putting on a show you’re paying to see, so kindly stop paying for it or stop complaining.

We the voters have personalized these candidates to such an extent we've adopted them as symbols of our own psychosis. In psychological terms, there's more projection going on here than you'll find at a 20-screen multiplex, and the image on the screen is just as two-dimensional.

No, I’m not joining the chorus of “let’s get along for the sake of party unity.” Party unity be damned. It’s just an excuse for people to act like one party or the other (or the two-party system) is “the one true church” and everyone else needs to be excommunicated. Whatever happened to voting your conscience? Whatever happened to staying civil for civility's sake? That concept seems to have disappeared down the toilet as well.

In the meantime, we’ve stopped talking about the issues. We’re so busy defending “our son of a bitch” because he’s our son of a bitch, it's as if we’ve forgotten why we started supporting him (or her) in the first place. This is what happens with personality cults: They become all about the person, while the issues are neglected and forgotten. The result is paralysis at best, demagoguery and despotism at worst. We get what we pay for with our 30-second attention spans.

Wonder why we tolerate people who flip-flop on the issues - who obfuscate, lie and spin everything under the sun? Then read that last paragraph again. We care more about party affiliation, name recognition and our own projections in this theater of the absurd than we do about the plot lines, the substance, the issues.

It’s what we want. It’s what we allow. If we don't have a Pied Piper, but we'll create one to follow. If we believe hard enough, these candidates will be everything we want them to be, right?

Be careful what you wish for, because the reflection in that mirror ain’t pretty. If we really want a candidate who looks just like our own psychoses, it won’t be long before we come to regret it. Then we’ll blame our savior: We’ll sacrifice him or her on the altar of our own denial, and we’ll start the ugly cycle all over again.

Welcome to Political Babylon. 

 

Meet Isis: Cat, companion and the truest of friends

Allow me to introduce you to Isis. Not the goddess (although she sometimes behaves like one) and certainly not the terrorist group.

Isis is a cat. My cat. And I’m her human.

As I write this, Isis is in severe kidney failure. She’s only nine years old, and she doesn’t deserve that. She deserves so much more.

I met Isis at a PetSmart store on one of those days when they bring in shelter pets and hope someone bonds with them. Isis was there, with her brother, who was running all over the cage, playful as can be. Isis wasn’t having any of that. She just casually came up and said “hello” to me, nudging her head up against the cage when I put my hand down to pet her. Right away, we were comfortable with each other.

I had a name picked out for her right away. I was going to call her Frejya, after the Norse goddess, because her crystal blue eyes and glistening white and grey coat, with a hint of tan, reminded me of a book I’d read by Elizabeth H. Boyer from the early ’80s. I’d read it a long time ago, and if I remember correctly, one of the characters was a woman or goddess who’d been magically transformed into a cat.

But then I was informed that she already had a name: Isis. I liked that, too, and I figured that, since she already had it, I wasn’t going to take it away from her. Isis she would remain.

Isis came along at just the right time, and she’s been there during the hardest time of my life. Since I’ve known her, I’ve been through a divorce, been laid off from my job of fourteen years and watched my father’s health gradually decline.

Isis was there for me the whole time, and along with my mother and my wife, Samaire, hers has been the most comforting presence I’ve ever known.

She nearly always came when I called her name, and even today, in her weakened state, she still does. Sometimes, she lies down at the foot of the bed, and the moment I say her name, she’ll turn around and look at me, then get up and walk like some miniature white tiger on padded paws right up to me and curl up next to me, purring.

When everything was going wrong and I was struggling with depression, I imagined she was that white tiger, and that she was there to protect me when I no longer had the hope or energy to fight myself.

Now, I have to protect her. She spent the past week in the animal hospital on IV fluids and she seemed to perk up a little, but at the end of that time, she still was barely eating and her kidney numbers weren’t much better. The vet said he recommended euthanizing her.

Samaire said she didn’t think we should, and I realized she was right. I wouldn’t make that kind of decision for a family member who walks on two legs. How could I do that for my beloved white tiger just because she walks on four?

Besides, I want more time with her – even if it’s only a little bit. I’m typing through tears here, and I don’t cry very often. Not to complain, but I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve learned to deal with loss and numb myself to pain pretty effectively. But not this kind of loss. Not this kind of pain.

All the talk of rainbow bridges and “better places” doesn’t mean a thing when you face the prospect of losing someone you love deeply and someone who has loved you so unconditionally for so long.

Right now, Isis still isn’t eating on her own, but she will swallow (grudgingly) the food we put in her mouth, and we’re giving her subcutaneous fluids to keep her hydrated. I’m spending as much time curled up in bed beside her as I can because, to me, every moment now is precious.

I wanted to introduce you to Isis, because I may not have many more chances to do so, and because everyone should get the chance to know someone this special. An unfailing friend. A white tiger. Someone you know without a shadow of a doubt really loves you.

That’s who Isis is to me and, whatever happens, it’s who she’ll always be.  

Bernie Sanders no slave to the McGovern Effect

Some Democrats are still scared of George McGovern. They look at Bernie Sanders, and they see someone “too far to the left” to win the general election.

That’s the conventional political wisdom. But keep in mind that this same “conventional wisdom” all but guaranteed that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee in 2008 and dismissed the notion of Donald Trump being anything but a flash in the pan this year.

Even Nate Silver’s analytics-driven FiveThirtyEight was flat wrong (along with a lot of other pundits) in predicting that Clinton would win this year’s Michigan primary handily – probably the most badly bungled prediction since “Dewey defeats Truman.”

Political punditry isn’t exact, and it’s not a science.

Sometimes, it’s nothing more than spin: advocacy disguised as analysis.

Other times, the pundits are so full of themselves they believe their own “infallibility” hype. They get cocky, and they get it wrong.

And often, they’re wrong about the future because they’re wrong about the past. Certain assumptions are just repeated ad nauseam on cable TV until they become a sort of political gospel.

This is where the McGovern Effect comes in.

Ever since the Democrats nominated “peace candidate” George McGovern in 1972 – only to watch Tricky Dick Nixon annihilate him in the General Election – they’ve been deathly afraid of history repeating itself.

Nominate someone too far to the left, and it’ll be another massacre. So the conventional wisdom says. Just look at liberal Mike Dukakis, who failed to work any Massachusetts miracles against George Bush I.

It’s the gospel truth.

And because a lot Democrats today have accepted that gospel, they look at Bernie Sanders and see George McGovern staring back at them. They look in the other direction, at Hillary Clinton, and they see a last name that’s shared by a relatively moderate two-term Democratic president.

No brainer, right?

Go with what works.

Except they’re so worried about history repeating itself that they’re ignoring a more recent, more telling precedent. All they have to do is look across the aisle.

Reagan's revolution

Four years after McGovern lost in that landslide, a Republican challenged the incumbent president from the right and nearly beat him. That challenger was, of course, Ronald Reagan – who scared establishment Republicans out of their wits. He was too conservative, they thought. They remembered what had happened to Barry Goldwater in ’64 when he won the nomination from the far right: LBJ had destroyed him in the general election, just as Nixon later buried McGovern.

The GOP establishment breathed a sigh of relief when they saw incumbent Gerald Ford hang on by the skin of his teeth to defeat Reagan … only to watch him lose to Jimmy Carter in the general election.

We all know what happened four years later: Reagan won the nomination on his second try and defeated Carter for the presidency.

Historically speaking, Sanders resembles Reagan a lot more than he does McGovern. Or Goldwater. Or Dukakis.

For one thing, like Reagan, he’s generating the kind of excitement his primary opponent can’t match. Hillary Clinton is about as exciting as Gerald Ford was – without the clumsiness but with a whole lot more political baggage. Would Reagan have carried enough enthusiasm into the general election to beat Carter in ’76? We’ll never know. But we do know he beat him four years later.

By then, Ford was out of politics and Carter was a wounded president, crippled by a sluggish economy and the Iran hostage crisis.

That made him vulnerable – in much the same way the Republicans are vulnerable this year. Will the Republican nominee be Donald Trump or Ted Cruz? It hardly matters. In either case, the Democrats will face someone with the kind of anemic approval ratings that resemble Carter’s a lot more than Nixon’s.

The opposition

This is where the McGovern Effect breaks down even more.

In Nixon, McGovern faced an incumbent who was highly popular at the time among everyone except the far left. Naturally, the far left voted for McGovern, and everyone else chose Nixon.

The same held true for Goldwater and Dukakis, both of whom were victims of strong opposition far more than their own ideology. Goldwater was up against the heir to a charismatic president whose death was still being mourned a year after his assassination. And Dukakis’ opponent, the first George Bush, was Reagan’s chosen successor. Kennedy and Reagan: the two most iconic presidents of the second half of the 20th century.

Somehow, the names Trump and Cruz just don’t have the same gravitas.

On top of this, Sanders also has an advantage in social media that McGovern could never have conceived of.

Does this mean Sanders’ nascent revolution is destined to repeat the Reagan revolution’s electoral success?

I’m not going there.

What I will say is that anyone who dismisses Sanders as a viable Democratic candidate based on the McGovern Effect is ignoring some powerful evidence that points in the opposite direction.

“Destiny” and “inevitability” are the language of pundits who crow about their predictions and then end up eating it. The crow, that is.

A sparrow might just tell another story.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Standing up to political bullies

Vote for me. Or else.

I'm sure this is not what Theodore Roosevelt had in mind when he coined the term “bully pulpit” in reference to the presidency.

These days, presidential candidates seem hell bent on trying to bully one another – and the voters – into submission with all the gusto of an MMA athlete (minus the peak conditioning and the sense of honorable combat). They talk over one another relentlessly on the debate stage, conduct push polls, call one another names and make implicit threats.

Republican candidate Marco Rubio questions Donald Trump’s penis size, and Trump responds by labeling him “Little Marco.” Others are dismissed as stupid, weak, pathetic or wacko. Trump speaks in sweeping generalizations, declaring that Islam “hates” America and referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists. This isn’t just bigotry, it’s bullying. And Trump - whose most famous quote is, "You're fired!" - isn’t shy about doing it.

He refused to disavow an endorsement by a former leader of the KKK, a racist group that virtually epitomizes violent bullying, eventually blaming his response on a bad earpiece. A campaign rally in Chicago turned violent when fistfights broke out between his supporters and protesters. Trump’s response? Pin the blame on the protesters, whom he labeled as “thugs.”

He also asked supporters at a rally to raise their right hands and repeat a pledge to vote for him on Election Day “no matter what,” then warned them that “bad things happen if you don’t live up to what you just did.”

Intimidation and manipulation

Intimidation is the bully’s stock-in-trade. Candidates often use it in the context of a political protection racket, playing on the public’s fears by warning of a perceived threat, then casting themselves in the role as guardian or savior. Trump did precisely this when he denigrated immigrants and vowed to build a wall to “protect” us from them. But his implicit threat about “bad things” happening to supporters who don’t live up to their pledge takes intimidation to a whole new level.

Vote for me. Or else.

Trump may be the worst, but he’s far from the only bully on the block. His main rival for the GOP nomination, Ted Cruz, sent out an official-looking mailer to Iowa voters labeled VOTING VIOLATION. “Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record,” it warned, adding that “a follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.”

So much for the secret ballot. Big Brother Ted is watching you.

And if you think Republican bullies are the only ones in the schoolyard, think again. A piece by Nolan Dalla describes how a caller sought to bully him into voting for Clinton by using a so-called push poll. Such phone calls seek to “push” citizens into voting for one candidate by asking questions that contain negative (and sometimes false) information about his or her opponent.

In this case, the caller labeled Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, “divisive” and declared that he had “blocked” gun-control and immigration-reform legislation (ignoring the fact that no single representative in Congress can “block” anything by himself).

I haven’t been push polled, but I have encountered Clinton supporters who don’t hesitate in attempting to bully others. Some have gone so far as to accuse those who don’t support her of misogyny. (My standard response: Did you support Sarah Palin for vice president in 2008? If not, does that make you a misogynist?)

Clinton herself even tried to bully Sanders on the debate stage by interrupting him – and he had the temerity to stand up to her by saying, “Excuse me, I’m talking,” her campaign responded with an email criticizing his “tone.”

Remember: She interrupted him.

That’s another typical tactic of a bully: accusing the victim. Interrupting someone is universally considered rude, yet the Clinton campaign tried to depict Sanders as the villain because he stood up to her.

Personal experience

Why does any of this matter to me? Because it hits close to home. I was bullied relentlessly in junior high school, and I learned how to recognize it. It’s ugly.

Even when candidates aren’t acting like bullies themselves, they often subject themselves to lobbyists and their sponsors, who practice another form of bullying: offering financial support to those they feel will support their causes. Or they count on their most passionate supporters to act as unacknowledged surrogates who’ll attempt to prod, harass or shame people into voting for them.

Do you want me to support one bully because the other one is worse? That’s not on even on my radar screen anymore. Been there, done that. The idea of being a pawn on a power struggle between two bullies doesn’t appeal to me. I value myself enough not to put myself in that position again, and I suspect plenty of other voters do, too, which is why many of them so often decide to stay home on Election Day or vote for third-party candidates.

I refuse to settle for a nation where bullying is the status quo, where the “art of the deal” is more important than public service, where push polling and influence peddling are par for the course, where I’m pressured to support one candidate out of fear the other option will be worse.

You can’t stop bullies until you stand up and declare, “I will no longer accept this.”

The ends don’t justify the means, and the lesser of two evils isn't good enough. It never was.       

• • •

Incidentally, Theodore Roosevelt, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this article, ran the most successful third-party campaign in the modern U.S. history, winning more than 4 million votes to finish second, ahead of the Republican candidate.

His attitude toward bullying indicates he wouldn't have thought much of today's candidates. "Ridicule is one of the favorite weapons of wickednes," he once said and, on another occasion, "Politeness (is) a sign of dignity, not subservience."

About that phrase he coined: “bully pulpit” … for the record, he used “bully” the way it’s used the in the expression “bully for you” – as a synonym for fantastic, wonderful or jolly good.

None of which, I hasten to add, applies to the state of political discourse in these United States, circa 2016.

 

From Gatekeeper to Ringmaster: How the Media Created a Campaign Monster

Ever wonder why reason members of the public get angry at the major mainstream media outlets at election time? Here’s my answer: Instead of focusing on reporting the news, they emphasize interpreting it and predicting the results.

This doesn’t come across too well to the general public. Viewers and readers feel like they’re being told what to think and whom to support - or which candidates are (supposedly) viable and which aren’t.

But politics is notoriously fluid and changeable, so those predictions are often wrong, and this stark reality leaves media outlets in a no-win situation.

To wit: When the predictions misfire, they look as if they’re trying to drive the news rather than report it. Whether it’s true or not, they appear as if they’ve got a dog in the hunt or, at the very least, are being manipulated by spin doctors from the major parties or their chosen candidates. When the predictions are right, on the other hand, they tend to look like self-fulfilling prophecies, and people wonder what might have happened if the media had stopped speculating and started reporting.

As a member of the mainstream media, I understand why media outlets do this. There’s a nearly insatiable curiosity among the electorate to know the results as quickly as possible, and that curiosity results in web hits, viewership and readership. Speculation and prediction make for great clickbait.

When it comes to predicting outcomes, I’m not just talking about polls. I’m talking about the media’s role in interpreting these polls, even going so far as writing off some candidates, while declaring others “inevitable” before much of the voting is done. This benefits party hacks who operate under the credo “he may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB” and whose goal is to unify their troops behind a single standard-bearer as quickly as possible.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus reflected this mindset when he stated flatly, “I don’t care who the nominee is. Our job is to support the person that gets the majority of delegates – and whoever that is, is going to have the 100 percent support of the Republican Party.”

Even if it were David Duke? Joseph Stalin? Attila the Hun?

Apparently.

Setting the table

But back to the media. When its emphasis shifts from reporting to speculative analysis, do they cross the line from being a simple observer and actually become part of the story? It’s definitely a concern and, worse than that, a trend.

The tendency seems to be most pronounced on television, where the role of analyst as de facto cheerleader has evolved parallel to a similar development in sports. There, announcers have drifted from the traditional, dispassionate Vin Scully model to something that more closely resembles a ringmaster for pro wrestling. I’m not just talking about home team announcers, I’m referring to national announcers who try to “keep things exciting” by gushing over the winners as though they’re the second coming of Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens and Babe Ruth all rolled into one.

Political commentators are taking the same approach, and cable TV election coverage in particular is starting to resemble a WWE free-for-brawl. Debate formats are designed to maximize the impact of zingers and minimize civil discourse, and their video intros look like the same kind of hype-driven buildup you’d see from Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania. Are the WWE founder and The Donald really that far apart in terms of self-promotion? (Both, incidentally, backed failed football leagues.) Is it any wonder that quite a few people have warned that Trump is really trolling everyone to promote his brand?

Trump is winning, in part, because media coverage has become tailor-made for the carnival barker, and he’s exploiting it because that’s what he knows how to do. He’s good at it. In a way, I can’t blame him, but I can blame the media for setting the table and drooling over the fact that he’s invited himself to their party of hype and glory.

It’s a symbiotic relationship that benefits both sides: One gets ratings, the other gets an ego boost – and the money from future book deals, speaking engagements and sponsorship agreements that’s bound to come with it.

What do the American people get? Entertainment. Which is exactly what the WWE is: World Wrestling Entertainment. It’s not real. But the presidential election is. Or it used to be. The way things are going, there’s reason to wonder.

Ace Frehley: Finding the Holy Grail in San Miguel

I sit on the edge of my parents’ bed, frantically pressing redial on their push-button phone. It’s a very cool piece of new technology in 1978, and I’m sure it will give me an advantage in my quest for the Holy Grail of my teenage years: Tickets to see KISS in concert.

This isn’t just any concert, mind you. It’s at Magic Mountain, the amusement park about half an hour up the freeway (minus traffic) from our San Fernando Valley home, which is where the band is filming its forthcoming TV movie, “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.”

I’m 15 years old and grateful that my parents tolerate, even if they don’t understand, my preoccupation with KISS. I dress up as Peter Criss for Halloween, I (of course) own all their records and some of their releases on 8-track – which I can listen to as much as I want as long as I stay in my room with the door closed to muffle the sound.

My mom kind of likes Beth, so I guess that’s something.

I dial and redial and redial until it seems my fingers will become as calloused as guitar virtuoso Ace Frehley’s, but to no avail. KISS is so popular that even my modern secret-weapon phone is of about as much use in this pursuit as Anthony Zerbe’s warped malevolence is against our heroes in the TV movie.

That movie, for the record, turns out to be bad. Really bad. But neither this inconvenient truth nor my failure to obtain the tickets sours me on my allegiance to KISS, which remains strong enough nearly 20 years later when I finally do get to see the band in concert, on their reunion tour at the tail end of the 1990s.

The Revelation

And it remains strong in 2016 when, on my way from the Central Coast to Fresno for a book signing event (my book “Fresno Growing Up” came out last year), I happen to see a poster in the front window of a convenience store in Paso Robles. On it is the face of founding guitarist Ace Frehley, sans makeup, promoting a concert he’ll be playing March 4 just up the road from where my wife and I now live.

It’s in less than a week.

My wife, Samaire, is even more understanding about my affection for KISS than my parents were. Before she met me, she’d never heard of the KISS Army and wouldn’t have known the Starchild from the Spaceman. But she knew I still had a connection to my childhood idols, so as a gift, she bought us tickets to the KISS-Motley Crue show in Irvine a couple of years back. There, KISS put on a great show minus Frehley and original drummer Peter Criss, who haven’t been in the band for more than a decade, but the band still rocked, even if Crue was a disappointment.

Now, when I mention that poster in the convenience store window, she urges me to get tickets. I put it off, but when she sends me a Facebook message the day before the show, that reads, in all capital letters, “WE CAN DO THIS!” I decide to see whether any are available. They are, so I pick up a pair: $45 each for general admission (no VIP tickets were left) to a place called The Ranch.

The drunk

We arrive at the venue a little before the doors are supposed to open at 7 p.m., then wait around 45 minutes past that as the crew inside tries to resolve some unnamed technical problem.

We finally enter, and find ourselves with a clear path to the front row, front and center, about three feet away from where Ace himself will be standing. I’ve been to dozens of rock shows in my 53 years, but the only time I’d been anywhere near the front was at a Sammy Hagar concert where I sat in the fourth row: close enough for him to splash me with some of his trademark blue tequila.

Speaking of booze, plenty of concertgoers at The Ranch have had their fill and more. What do you expect from a rock concert, right? I indulge a little – but only a little – myself.

But it goes too far when this clearly inebriated, annoying little varmint (about 5-foot-3 with thick-rimmed glasses and a goofy looking hat) keeps trying to muscle his way into the front row between me and another guy. We stand our ground and don’t let him in.

Still, he refuses to go away. Instead, he starts pushing up against my wife, who’s standing just behind me.

I turn and give him a couple of angry looks, hoping my 6-foot-5 frame will scare him off, and when that doesn’t work, I finally shout at him to get the hell away from my wife. He just sticks out his tongue at me in about the palest imitation of Gene Simmons you can imagine. What do I do now? Pop him one and get thrown out of the concert – and maybe in jail? Alert security? Just about then, Samaire – who, at 5-foot-10, is a fairly imposing figure in her own right – grabs him by both shoulders and pushes him forcefully back into the crowd. Security gives the guy some stern words and he disappears.

Good riddance.

The Ranch

A little bit about the venue: The Ranch is a roadhouse-type joint in San Miguel, an unincorporated town of about 2,500 people along U.S. 101 in northern San Luis Obispo County.

It's about as far, figuratively speaking, from Magic Mountain as you can get.

In fact, it’s so far off the concert circuit map that the road crew tapes a piece of paper to the stage that reads “San Miguel TX,” then hurriedly realizes its mistake and crosses out the TX, scrawling in CA underneath.

Even Ace, who points out during the concert that he’ll be playing in Beverly Hills the next day, notes the contrast. And when, at the end of the show, he says goodnight, I can swear I hear him say “San Ramon.”

Not that I can blame him. I wouldn’t have known where San Miguel was, either, if I hadn’t lived in the county and worked as an editor/columnist at the local newspaper for four years.

The Opening Act

Backing up a couple of hours, it does take Frehley and his band a seemingly interminable amount of time to actually get on stage.

The music itself doesn’t start until 8:45 or so, and then it’s the opening act, a local cover band called Soundhouse. The lead singer, an imposing character with a shaved head ala Chris Daughtry or Disturbed’s David Draiman, spent some time reassuring antsy concertgoers outside the bar as they waited for it to open. Samaire and I had both mistakenly assumed he was the bouncer.

The bad news: Soundhouse plays a lengthy set of, if I remember right, nine tunes, further delaying Frehley’s arrival. The good news: They’re a surprisingly kick-ass outfit. The vocalist, Erik McCornack, churns his way through tunes from Ozzy, Guns ’n’ Roses, Bryan Adams, AC/DC and Stone Temple Pilots, among others, as though he’d recorded them himself.

Unlike most concerts, where opening acts tend to range from nuisance to awful, Soundhouse’s set is actually a lot of fun.

The Main Event

Even after Soundhouse concludes its set, the stage stays empty for a good half-hour, and Frehley’s band doesn’t appear until nearly 10 p.m. Some in the crowd joke that he’s fallen asleep or is boozing it up in his tour bus – an unfair accusation considering that Ace, a onetime prolific imbiber, has been sober for quite a few years now.

When Paul Daniel Frehley finally does appear, it’s more than worth the wait. He might be on the verge of turning 65 years old, but he’s in top form throughout the 16-song set, which he performs along what he calls “the best band I’ve ever assembled.”

Not the best band he’s ever been in, of course, but this band lives up to its leader’s billing. It consists of guitarist Richie Scarlet, a member of Ace’s first post-KISS band, Frehley’s Comet; bassist Chris Wyse (The Cult, Owl) and drummer Scot Coogan, who's toured with Lita Ford and Lynch Mob.

Ace doesn’t have a problem sharing the limelight, stepping aside as Wyse performs an impressive bass solo segueing into his lead vocals on “Strange Ways,” an Ace classic off KISS’s second release, “Hotter Than Hell.”

Coogan’s vocal chops are even better. He takes Paul Stanley’s lead on the KISS classics “Love Gun” and “Detroit Rock City,” and nails them to the wall.

The Set

I wonder if Ace is going to allow us to take photos (some artists don’t even allow the media to do so), and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that no one’s objecting when I whip out my cellphone and start clicking away.

Frehley opens his set with “Toys,” off his 2014 studio album, “Space Invader,” and hits a couple of KISS highlights early in the set when he launches into (pun intended) “Rocket Ride” and “Parasite.” He omits a couple of tunes from the set list taped to the stage floor – “2 Young 2 Die” and “Rip It Out” – perhaps because of the lateness of the hour, although he does return to the stage for a two-song encore of “Detroit Rock City” and the Simmons-penned “Deuce.”

Other highlights: The classic KISS debut album cut “Cold Gin,” which has the audience singing along with gusto, and “Rock Soldiers,” in which the audience repeatedly shouts out the lyrics “Ace is back and he told you so” and “He’s going to play without an ACE in his DECK.”

Frehley also debuts the battle anthem“Emerald,” off his forthcoming album of cover tunes, “Origins, Vol. 1.” Originally performed by Thin Lizzy on its “Jailbreak” album, it came out in 1976, the same year KISS released its classic “Destroyer” and “Rock and Roll Over” LPs.

The takeaway

Before Frehley hits the stage, I think back on my vain attempt to secure tickets to that Magic Mountain show back in 1978 and tell Samaire, “If someone had told me then that I’d be in the front row for an Ace Frehley show in San Miguel nearly 40 years later, I would have said they were crazy.”

Why? Because Frehley was still playing? Because KISS had gone on without him? Because he was playing in San-flippin’-Miguel? Because I was there in the front row?

All of the above.

Sometimes, you do, eventually find your teenage Holy Grail; it just takes a few decades to reach it.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Dysfunction

Have you ever heard a child ask, “Why are things this way?” and found yourself unable to come up with an answer?

Why do we continue to rely on a dysfunctional process? An inefficient and unfair system? For transportation. For employment. For health care. You name it.

This question of “settling” for dysfunction always seems to come up at election time, and for good reason. The staggered primary system effectively disenfranchises massive numbers of Americans eager to vote on the presidency – a problem is magnified by media outlets salivating to declare “winners” and “inevitable nominees” before the votes are even counted.

If you live on the wrong side of Super Tuesday, it’s likely you won’t even get a chance to vote before two-thirds or more of the candidates have dropped out of the race. 

The solution is simple: A national primary. We all vote at the same time in the general election, so there’s no reason it can’t be done when we’re picking the nominees. 

But even if we were to change the primary system, when we get to the general election, we’d still be stuck with the Electoral College, an antiquated monstrosity that skews the popular vote by awarding electors (for nearly all states) on a winner-take-all basis. If you live in California, which has favored Democrats by 10 to 24 percentage points in each of the past five presidential elections, the result is all but a foregone conclusion.

I won’t even get into the problem with unelected “superdelegates” on the Democratic nominating process or the problem with voting on a weekday rather than a weekend or – as has been repeatedly proposed – a national voting holiday.

These mechanisms have all been in place for years, decades or even centuries. We complain about them, despair at them, and yet nothing gets done to change them.

Why?

For the same reasons we resist alternative energy sources, higher wages and guaranteed health care. I call them the seven deadly sins of dysfunction, and they apply to families, communities and organizations just as surely as they do to nations.

The sins

Fear. No matter how much we might moan about the current situation, we’re scared that any alternative will be worse. So we settle. We call ourselves "pragmatic: for failing to pursue options that promise to enhance our lives because we fear they have the potential to screw things up even more. This isn’t pragmatism, it’s fear. As long as we tell ourselves we’re “just being practical,” what we're really doing is reinforcing the status quo.

Pride. “America is the greatest nation on Earth, and we do it this way, so it must be correct!” When we make statements like this, we forget that America’s greatness is largely a product of its willingness to innovate. From Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, we’ve forged greatness through change, not through blind allegiance to past practices. Pride is the great antidote to ambition. It says, “We’ve made it” and basks in the glow of self-adulation. Meanwhile, situations are changing that require us to adapt or perish. In this instance, the great spiritual teachers are correct: Pride is a killer.

Greed. Once we’ve established a predictable flow of dollars based on a given system, those who are on the receiving end of those dollars have a powerful incentive to keep it in place. And those dollars give them the power to perpetuate systems, even as they become damaging to the public at large. This is true whether the recipients are political Super PACs, banks, lobbyists, oil companies, health insurers or lawyers.

Power. Those with the money typically wield the power, but money isn’t the only problem. Those empowered by the status quo routinely use shame, threat, peer pressure, manipulation and intimidation to bully and goad those without power into accepting things as they are. And it works.

Resignation. “It’s always been this way” and “It can never change” are the mantras of those who might wish for things to change but have seen attempts at reform and innovation stymied repeatedly by those whose self-interest lies in preserving the status quo. If your experience tells you that change is impossible, you tend to accept the way things are as the way they should be. You learn to accept the unacceptable and rationalize it as “good” in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance that exists between hope and reality. Welcome to Stockholm, my dear Syndrome.

Laziness. Sometimes, the necessary change seems to require so much effort it just doesn’t seem worth it. Switch to alternative fuels? How many oil workers will lose their jobs? How many gas stations will have to be torn down? It just doesn’t seem worth it. What’s forgotten is that we’ve done this before: Remember when the transportation economy consisted of railroads and horse-drawn carriages? Building the nation’s road and highway system was a far more mammoth undertaking than any conversion to alternative fuels would be. And the effort created far more jobs than were lost in the transition. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Sometimes, it just seems like too big a pain in the ass.

Negligence. We just don’t want to think about it. Election reform is a prime example. Every four years, we complain about how badly dysfunctional our election system is. But then, once the campaign cycle is over, we forget about it. It’s just not a priority anymore, so nothing gets done. Then, before we know it, four more years have passed and it’s too late to fix things, so we just accept – and validate – the broken system once again.

There’s a broad array of dysfunction arrayed against any hope for change. But the good news is that we humans are, despite our stubbornness, highly adaptable. What we have to realize is that, while there may be no perfect time to embrace change, every moment that passes is a bad time to perpetuate dysfunction.