Seth Kupchick's Blog: Bet on the Beaten, page 15

Seinfelding, or Surfing Jewish with a Beck's.

I watch a lot of local TV and "Seinfeld" is just about the only thing from the Nineties left on the air, and for the Gen Y kids this must be like how the shows from the Seventies seemed to me, when they disappeared from the TV landscape in the Nineties, to be replaced by the shows from the Eighties. I first saw "Seinfeld" in 1992, and hadn't been watching much TV since the late Eighties, when I left home and went to college, taking on the 'Kill your Television set,' movement, though I didn't have a bumper sticker. I just thought that I'd watched too much TV in my life and it was the source of my depression, but that was reactionary thinking for the most part, not taking into account all of the enjoyment I got from TV, even if it was nothing more than a friend, with a voice, that didn't talk back at me, just to me.

"Seinfeld," was a break through for sure, because there really hadn't been a TV show like it before, that had nothing to do with family, or trying to make a family, and though I already see myself comparing it to "Three's Company," in my mind, and they were kind of similar, Seinfeld had none of the roommate love that Jack, Chrissie, and Janet, had for each other, nor did he live with George, Elaine, or Kramer, so that the show was kind of like a more intellectual "Three's Company," not so much about love, or dating, but how to fill up the empty hours in a day, and it was brilliant for this, the 'show about nothing,' as people called it at the time, amazed they could find 'nothing' so funny. Part of the nothingness had to do with how little love the characters showed each other, though they liked each other well enough, but that would almost seem to be missing the mark, because it was a reserved sort of 'like,' and you could easily imagine them living without each other at a moment's notice, without it being particularly tragic. Sure, Jack Tripper, Chrissie Snow, and Janet (?), couldn't stay roommates forever, but the idea that they wouldn't be was actually sad, ending an era. I don't think there was anything sad about imagining the characters from "Seinfeld," not hanging out, because they used each other with little respect to each other's integrity, and this may be why Larry David's quasi spin-off "Curb Your Enthusiasm," was such a hit whereas "Three's a Crowd," was a monumental flop, because Jack just couldn't exist without his fun loving friends, and married to boot, even though he was a Navy guy deep down. Larry on "Curb" barely needed the Seinfeld characters to exist, or Jeff for that matter, who could be any sidekick, because the humor of the nothingness that those characters lived in was based completely on a selfish ethos. It's also why watching Seinfeld doesn't exactly feel like reading a Samuel Beckett play, even though the conceit might not be so different. The characters in those Beckett plays are deeply in need of love, and the only two traditional love affairs on Seinfeld were between Jerry and Elaine, who couldn't admit they loved each other, living separate lives, but I guess it was an accomplishment that they could be such good friends, a free love era accomplishment, and the other big relationship was George's marriage to Susan, painted as nothing short of a domesticated nightmare, and he ends up literally killing her.

Seinfeld was the Nineties, just look at Jerry's jeans, tucked in button down shirt, and white sneakers. I didn't much like the Nineties, but I didn't like the Eighties, either, or the 2000's, and yet I've lived through them all, so the problem must be me, or maybe my soul is in the Seventies, I'm not sure. I doubt that you are very conscious to the times you are actually living in because that would be like watching yourself before you act, and that's not possible, but we are defined by our times, and I say that to all of those hopelessly romantic writers out there, or painters, that think they are going to be discovered long after they are dead. Sure, that's possible, but even so you'll be remembered for not being remembered when you were alive, and your work will somehow encompass that time, just like Kafka can be read as the prelude to the Nazi takeover of Prague, indicative of the 1930's his time, even though he wasn't discovered until he was dead, and who knows what the Nazi's burned of his... a great literary mystery and tragedy.

The thing about a popular artist/entertainer like Larry David, the co-creator of "Seinfeld" (I think, though I'm sure someone has written a fuckin' book about this), is that he's popular in his life and much more so than would seem possible. My friend, Josh Mills, writes a lot about Ernie Kovacs, a kind of underground TV hero in the Fifties, ahead of his time, but I don't think he took middle America, or the South, by storm, the way that "Seinfeld" did, an incredible feat for such a Jewish show. I should say that I am Jewish and when I watched it in real time, because I was glued to my set Thursday's at nine for it, NBC's decade defining 'must see TV' evening that included the mega-hits "Friends," and "Frasier," not to mention an unnamed third that I wouldn't be surprised to find out was a minor hit, though I can't name it, nor am I going to look it up on Wikipedia, that I was shocked Christian America liked "Seinfeld" not only for the highly intellectual conceit, but also the sheer Jewish brilliance of it, though that's a hard thing to name.

To be fair, America had been eating up Jewish comedy for a long time, because many of the great comedians and comic writers are Jewish, and therefore were subtly getting into the minds of the middle Americans, but "Seinfeld" took this further, because Jerry and George were overtly Jewish, unlike, say, Samantha on "Bewitched," not to mention their parents, and Elaine and Kramer may as well have been even if they weren't. They defined urban hip, and that's hard for Jewish characters on a mainstream show. Hell, even the main characters on "The Big Bang Theory'" are gentiles, though a nod is paid to an Indian (not an 'Indian'), and a Jew, but they don't spearhead the show. Jerry Seinfeld, and George Costnaza, my ex-manager's 'spirit animal,' are the leads, with Elaine as the sexual/intellectual diet-coke drinking femme fatalle, and Kramer the 'freak.' I must've thought this was a victory for my people, but really I thought that the show was just so perfectly reflective of its time, with crack comedy writing every week, and just a brilliant concept, that it forced itself into the minds of America on almost sheer talent, like it should be in a meritocracy, and I'm sure this is partly true, because it's a flawless show, perfectly reflective of its times.

I think it works reflexively: Seinfeld was the Nineties, and the Nineties were Seinfeld, not grunge, or the movie Slacker, though influenced by it, or at least the latter, because they were slackers, for sure, but really amoral ones. I was in my early twenties when I started watching "Seinfeld" and wanted to live like the characters, or maybe thought I was living like them, but in a pop-culture way, in the same way that people used to imagine which 'Beatle' they would be (a game people love playing on FB). I'm not sure who I would've been on Seinfeld, though I fear the answer would be 'Jerry' because he's a real dweeb, but better than George, a sleazeball, and Elaine was a woman, leaving only Kramer, and in some ways I did feel like him but he was even freer than me, I think, and I tried learning from him, and how he lived by his wits, from hustle to hustle. George and Kramer are the hustlers of the show, without jobs, and Jerry and Elaine are gainfully employed, but.... not rich, like Larry David was to be on his HBO mega-underground hit "Curb Your Enthusiasm," that I'll be forced to get to later. The characters on Seinfeld were 'urban-hip,' but not underground, or radical, but hip in a sort of cockeyed way that made the mainstream viewer tip his hat to them, without being them, but being able to accept them like family into their living room on their TV set, making them likable enough. I liked them and I'm sure they made me feel better about being me, plus they gave Jenny and I a favorite show, always a positive thing in a relationship.

A lot was made of the final "Seinfeld" episode in 1998, not quite making it to the end of the decade, and being usurped by the rise of "Sex and the City," another New York show (and now "Girls"). I should reread the plot of the final episode but they all end up in jail together and the writers put the theme of how selfish the characters were to the fore, and this was a strange admission, and yet a necessary one, because they may have been the most selfish yet likable characters in the history of a TV show, and that's saying a lot. I think that the sitcoms in the Fifties and Sixties assumed that you'd like the characters and that they weren't immoral in the least, because the Country was bolstered by the success in WWII, and defeating a worthy opponent in the Nazi's. But that changed in the Nineties with "Seinfeld," a defiantly anti-family show, even more so than "Three's Company," though I can't explain why, but if Jack Tripper, or Chrissie Snow, or Janet, were to have a baby, I'm sure the other characters on the show would be supportive, but on "Seinfeld," they'd ridicule the idea of parenthood, and I can almost imagine George Costanza telling Jerry that he was going to abort the baby, and getting laughs, somehow.

This leads me to Larry David, one of the most gifted and troubling comics of our times. Anyone would be a fool to argue that Larry David isn't one of the great comic talents of our times, because he is, and I love him for it, but part of his gift, is that he is the unlikable guy that somehow gets popular, and this is an inherently annoying role, and he knows it, and takes out his angst on us week after week for it, and I love him for it, but he nauseates me too, kind of like the later Woody Allen. "Curb Your Enthusiasm," is the show of a schmuck, plain and simple. It is to the 2000's, what Seinfeld was to the Nineties, though a more underground zeitgeist, but to its lovers a far superior show, though I really don't think it's anywhere as good as "Seinfeld." In spite of itself, the four main characters on "Seinfeld" simulate a dysfunctional family, and though I'd never call the show 'cozy' in the way that, say, "Roseanne" is cozy, it's cozy enough to comfort you like a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and I could imagine them doing a "Seinfeld" about that. The show declared that it was about 'nothing' when Jerry and George were writing a sitcom, a show within the show, and just part of the genius of "Seinfeld," that makes me like it on aesthetic grounds, in spite of the moral vacuum that the characters put you in.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" is way more 'theater of the absurd,' and is meant to shock the viewer, much more than "Seinfeld" was ever meant to do, because the former was on NBC 'must-see-TV' and the latter HBO, a pay per view station, but it was a hit, and Larry David should be proud, because he got way more than his 15 minutes in the spotlight, and this must have eaten him up in his "Seinfeld" days where he had to make millions behind the scenes watching his friends get famous... poor Larry. Well, he took out this personal sacrifice on us with "Curb Your Enthusiasm," a great show, but maybe the title is fitting, because it's nowhere as good as "Seinfeld," as good as it is. "Curb" was a hit, and I've probably seen almost every episode, and it did help me get through the Bush Years, though it's hard to say why? From a 'Seinfeldian' perspective, it was hard to imagine the W. years were upon us, though the Clinton years were a real let down, and I almost started this essay writing about how 'Hillary and Jerry,' were the only things still on TV from the Nineties, then I thought about Jennifer Aniston, and I had to stop myself, but you get the point. I don't think "Seinfeld" predicted the Nineties, but in retrospect it did because it was the last real hit TV show before 9-11, so it captured a sort of innocence in the Country, that Bill Clinton and Jerry Seinfeld have come to symbolize by historical accident, and I'm pretty sure that's why people still love Bill Clinton, or think of him as 'better times,' and would play the Republican theme song 'Happy Day's are Here Again,' to a Hillary presidency, because watching "Seinfeld" I'm almost stunned that I lived through it. It must be how "Leave It To Beaver," would look to my parents, when I'd obsessively watch it alone in my room.

There will never be another "Seinfeld," again, and there may never be another 'Liz Lemon,' either, or any of the greats, or maybe TV will get better. "Seinfeld" was the last show before the internet took over the media landscape, and though it competed against cable, cable wasn't developed enough to have a worthy opponent for such a cutting edge show, with "The Soprano's," and "Sex and the City," coming on at the end of "Seinfeld's" run. "Seinfeld" defined America in the apolitical Clinton '90's, when it was hard to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, and the Country was strangely united though at the expense of the Hippie's ideals, that Clinton ironically pretended to embody, because he liked smoking pot and having sex, with mustard and ketchup, but proved to be more into Wall St. like many of his cohorts that had fucked whoever they wanted in 1969 in the name of revolution and then made a million in the stock market or divorce law. A seedy generation, to say the least, and poor Gen X is of it and this makes me sad for us, and angry.

There are so many tangential thoughts I've wanted to put into this essay since I think about these ideas driving pizzas, but not so much thinking as immersing, true to my watery nature astrologically (Cancer), but I don't even pretend to know what I'm going to write, knowing that is a spiritual experience, where I have to have faith that the Gods are going to pull me through, and they have so far. "Seinfeld" gave me a lot of joy and that is a great thing so I'm forever thankful for it giving me another day to live, but anything can be analyzed politically, and furthermore Larry David foisted himself onto the public consciousness, raping the conceit of "Seinfeld," a show about nothing, or arguing about a bar of soap, but lacking any of the fictional quasi-middle class character of "Seinfeld," in favor of an almost-autobiographical unabashedly 'nouveau-riche' 'bourgeoise-pig,' and I had a much harder time stomaching this part of the show, in spite of the comic brilliance, but not a cozy brilliance. I didn't like how easy Larry was with being a millionaire even if he was a man of the people, but I'll always love him, like my bastard father, that walked out on my Mother when she was pregnant with me, fucking us up forever. I'm afraid that's what the great genius Larry David has done for America, but he's just a reflection like me, and I thank him for being true to himself, but we are from different generations, with a different sense of humor, and he's not always funny to me, though I like that there is a socialist lurking within him. Maybe he'd give me some money to keep writing this blog!

I have an agitated consciousness, so thanks for listening.

Oh yeah, Elaine was dating a communist on "Seinfeld" and she wanted him to stop dressing so working class, in his Levi work shirts, on purely aesthetic grounds. I guess the Nineties were innocent enough to have enough comic space to allow for such contemplation. It's odd to think that the days of my generation were an innocence before the storm, because I never felt that innocent in the Nineties, though in retrospect they were an innocent time that people imagined would go on forever, with Bill Clinton making an agreement with the Republicans to make peace, as long as there was a Democrat in the White House with the name Clinton. Just some thoughts before the 2016 Presidential election (ugh!).

The Mariners Suck! (just kidding)

The Mariner's played a very boring game tonight at SAFECO field against the Twins, a mediocre team, and it was almost like the Mariner's lowered themselves to their level, because no one really rose to anything. It was the kind of game that will send the pundits crazy with doom-saying because they have to talk about something on the radio, but a baseball season is so long, that you are bound to lose a lot of games, and some of them really will be very boring. Tonight, Chris Young, the Princeton graduate, the academic on the mound, pitched very well, but the M's gave him no support, so that he could only lose. If Felix Hernandez, had been pitching, the journalists and pundits of the sports radio universe would've said the M's lost one for Felix, or something like that, because his ego has become so big that it has taken over the team, but I'm not sure if that's Felix doing that, or the media, but either way he's larger than life, so that we worry about whether Felix wins or loses, as opposed to the Mariners. I guess this was a quasi-rational way of thinking for awhile, because Felix was a Cy Young award winner a couple of years ago with twelve wins, or something like that, and I guess the voters looked at his ERA and his style, and gave him the biggest award bestowed on a pitcher, in spite of the mediocrity of his team. Well, I think that's a shitty way of thinking even though I'm glad "King Felix," won the award, because he is a true talent, but everyone knows that. I should sit in the "King's Court," for $35 against the A's.

The Mariner's sucked tonight, and I guess the only reason I'm harping on this, is because I remember listening to the guy that does the post game show with Shannon Drayer, talking about a 1-o loss against the Padres in San Diego, on June 18th, a Wednesday, or sometime like that, and what made it weird was that not only were the Padres inter-league play, but they had played each other in Seattle the day before, a very rare occurrence. He said the M's up and down season was fun, because anything would be after last year's truly boring performance, but he was mad at them for not scoring runs, and having no offense, calling it pathetic. Some of this angst may have been due to denying "King Felix" a victory for his stats, which were all that mattered to Mariner's fans for years, because they didn't have a team that stood a snowball's chance in Hell of making it to the playoffs, even as a wild card, the part of the season that extends to October, in the three-act idea of the season. The M's have been pretty dismal for about a decade, so the only thing that mattered was stats.

I heard a stat during the game tonight that really struck me and last year's M's won 50 games on July 23rd, and what they are on the cusp of doing on July 8th or 9th, yet they seem so much better this year, that I thought the number must be different, and the stat wrong, but I'm sure it's not. Part of my incredulity, can be attributed to the team just being much more exciting this year, perhaps exhibiting some of last year's tendencies, like tonight's loss, but at least seeming like they could go out there and win, if the moment called. There is lots of talk about a mid-season trade deadline on sports radio, and the Mariners chances of strengthening the squad, but I think they are so much better than anyone thought, that this is sort of a ridiculous notion. They've really come on in the 2nd act of the season,and I have no doubt they will be in the running for a post-season spot in October, since the inception of the Wild Card, because the A's are awfully good. But make no bones about it the M's are a good team, and that's why I said (just kidding), in my title. Sure, tonight's loss was frustrating, and Chris Young did a really good job, and he's one of those players that the pundits on the radio love to question, but this isn't fair, considering the year he is having, and if he was Felix, Shannon Drayer and the rest of them would be screaming bloody murder for the 'King's' stats, but no one in the media is going to shed a tear for Chris Young, because lots of the pundits think he is the weak link in the chain, but he pitched great tonight, so fuck the offense. They were out to lunch, like they were on June 18th against the Padres, in San Diego, a Navy town, and I could cry over spoilt milk, but I won't. I really don't think the loss tonight was indicative of a great demise in the team, but the M's have been so bad for so long, that the fans get a twitch of remembering every time things turn South even for a game, thinking the end is in sight, and everything is over. Yes, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Twins, are a bad team but they've only won 10 LESS games than the M's, and on paper that really doesn't sound like that much, hardly the difference between a millionaire and someone from the middle class, yet the M's sucked last year, and were out of it by the time of the All-Star game, on my birthday, but not this year, as expectations bloom. The M's aren't doomed but the naysayer's will say they are but a baseball season is long, and part of the lesson I'm learning is that they had won as many games last year, a dismal year, as they were about to win in a two-week span, reminding me of how long and trying a baseball season is, testing one's patience for suffering, because even the best lose 60 games and that sounds like an awful lot taken as a number independent of judgment, but in the language of baseball it's ten or twelve games, and those add up over the course of a never ending season. If you were to think of baseball monetarily it's almost like you're counting to the penny, or the dime, splitting money in halves and thirds, whereas this isn't so extreme in other sports. One of the first rules of baseball is that you have to acknowledge it's a long season and even if you are a great team, you are going to lose a lot of games, and tonight was one of those games. Hell, the M's had a chance in the bottom of the 8th and thy hit into a double play, it was just one of those nights.

I guess the trade deadline is coming up and I'm not a pundit or anyone with any inside information, and yet from the little I listened to on the radio, it didn't look like there was that much opening up on the market, and this team has been unfolding organically, so I'd let it do this, because they are already such a surprise it's remarkable. That may sound naive, and I realize that the skepticism for this team is still high,so that everyone thinks that because they didn't score a run tonight, or any for the last three games, that they are done for. These voices pop up on the radio every night, because analysis has become part of the game, or maybe it always has been, but now more than ever. I think 'Ogilvie,' from "The Bad News Bears," will be my favorite 'stats man' ever but he was a boy on a little league team and a fictional character, but for sure stats are more integral to baseball than any other sport, and mastering them is part of the art. Forgetting them is the other part, and this is when intuition steps in, like it does with any art, and takes over. That said, I'm going to say the M's aren't done for even though tonight's loss at home against a forgettable team (with 40 wins, only ten less than the M's, but a lifetime in baseball years), wasn't an impressive performance, and yet they were in the game until the end, like they tend to be, the sign of a winner in baseball. Sure, the M's offense flailed in the 8th when there seemed to be a spark, but there's always tomorrow, and in baseball that is a lifetime away. Just hold on M's fans. the A's are almost in town, and then it's the All-Star break, where all the peacocks can show off their colors. Baseball teaches patience, and patience teaches art.

America's Sun Sign is Cancer

The 4th of July is one of the most sentimental holidays of the year. It is at once the most political of all the big holidays, and the least political, celebrating a miracle, the day of emancipation from the British tyrants, and the King of England. It's both a personal memory and a public memory, at once distorted and actual, existing in the collective mind, like a dream card, to pick and choose from, when the fates leave us questioning. We are our Nation so we must also be its destiny that is revealed in a birthday, and why that should be the ultimate secret, but it's not. Happy birthday America, for all you could be, and all you're not. Your Sun is in Cancer, and so is mine, so I must be one of those children that best represents your intentions, and I can see that, always being proud to be an American, understanding the rare freedom that the Constitution has granted me.

The summer is the saddest time of the year and I guess that makes Cancer the saddest sign of the zodiac. I always felt weird being a Cancer, like I picked the worst card, the emotional moody sign, named after a deadly disease. Cancer's make good artists because they feel moods and try to emulate them, but they don't deal very well with reality, and that's how I've felt most of my life, and maybe how America feels. It kind of feels like a dream that we're this successful as a Nation and maybe the Cancer's creative nature is the reason for this success, but it's also a very conservative sign, but I'm not sure why? I always attributed it to Cancer's conservative nature, with the Moon wed to Saturn, in the essential makeup of the sign, not exactly a happy marriage, but a deep one, perhaps. We're a very conservative crazy Country like the Moon in this depressive marriage, but exalting Jupiter, so that the marriage is actually producing something vitally wise, even if it's inhibiting and kind of sad, in and of itself. The Moon is ignoring Mars, the bad boy rebel, and exalting Jupiter, the planet of judgement and wisdom, that spends roughly a year transiting through each sign. I'm not sure if that's America or not, but the military got a lot of accidental luck in WW II, although we lost 400,000 men, and to be honest America hasn't been that successful with war, save the revolution, and the civil war, where we fought ourselves, and also did in the Revolution, with the dispossessed Brits, against the ruling elite.

America is what America was, and America will be what America has been. Our leaders will reflect us for better or worse, but we are the wounded children that God loved, the immigrants, that were allowed to begin again in a beautiful nation, so God Bless America, for your religious freedom, and your divinity at the same time, a rare dual gift. We're more than just hot dogs and beer, we're ruled by the Moon, the feelings and dreams of a reflected life, not pure illumination, but reflected illumination. We're art.

The three act structure in baseball (an analysis of the 2014 Seattle Mariners)

I'm a really big movie fan and tried writing a screenplay a few years ago and my girlfriend told me that I had to read a book called "Making a Good Script Great." I scoffed at the idea, of course, thinking I was way beyond learning anything from a 'how to' book, and though I question if it made me a better screenwriter, it did teach me the nuts and bolts of three act structure, and how if a screenplay is a 105 pages long (a 105 minute movie, or an hour and forty five minutes), that the first act is roughly thirty pages long, the second act forty five pages long, and the third act also thirty pages long. The book also stresses that these numbers aren't literal but are close enough to accurate, that you'll find this sort of structure playing out in movie after movie, and though there are exceptions, just as there are exceptions to every rule, the parameters basically work out. Hell, even Jean Luc-Godard, the great avant-garde French New Wave director said 'every movie has a beginning, middle, and end, just not necessarily in that order.' I don't want to get too much into what Linda Seger wrote in her book but she sure wasn't using examples like Godard, and more importantly really got into what act in a screenplay needs to accomplish, so that a writer didn't have a blistering start, or an exciting night at the typewriter, only to be stymied and stuck on page thirty or so. She wanted to give a screenwriter some structure and guidelines to work within.

I'm going to use the recent movie "Nebraska" as an example, not that it's a favorite of mine, or that I even thought the screenplay was that successful, but it was a simple story that easily illustrates three act structure. The opening act shows an old man thinking he's won a million dollars and needs only drive to Lincoln, Nebraska, to pick up his winnings, thinking that if he doesn't get there on time, they'll give the prize to someone else. The first act also introduces Woody's son, with a similarly destitute life as a TV salesman in Billings, Montana, with no real future to speak of, that's only accentuated by his girlfriend leaving him. Woody gets his son to drive him to Lincoln to procure his winnings but on the way gets drunk, hits his head on the railroad tracks, and the whole journey gets sidetracked. In essence, I'd say Woody's head injury (one of many in his life), all but ends the first act, or maybe it's a scene or two later, when he's in the hospital, bitching about how he doesn't want to go to Hawthorne, his hometown, but without this plot device there would have been no movie, or it would have been much more abstract, and just been a father and a son straining to talk to each other on a long distance drive. According to "Making A Good Script Great," the second act is almost always longer than the first or third act, and that's because it's the central story of the movie, and this also makes sense, when I consider the millions of movies I've watched, and the experience I've had as a moviegoer. Lots of movies have good conceits, with some interesting characters, only to die about twenty minutes into the picture, and this is especially true of conceit-laden movies not focusing on characters so much, but ideas that introduce themselves way too quickly and have nowhere to go. The second act is when a movie coalesces and really becomes about something and in the case of "Nebraska" it's Woody's relationship to his extended family and friends that he hasn't seen for decades, even though he only lives a few hundred miles away. "Nebraska" isn't so much about Billings, Montana, where the movie starts, or Lincoln, Nebraska, where it basically ends, but Hawthorne, a forgotten American town in the middle, that I'm not even sure exists, but boy did Alexander Payne make it look picturesquely forgotten, reminding me of how Peter Bogdanovich made that town in Texas look in "The Last Picture Show." It's also interesting that the location for the second act on this road trip movie is somewhere between those of the beginning and end, not really conscious of either. The third act, of course, winds the movie up and (spoiler alert), Woody doesn't win the million dollars in the lottery, not to mention he bonds with his son, who buys him a truck, because that's all Woody really wanted with the prize money anyway.

I suppose when you start studying something like three act structure you start seeing it pop up everywhere, because art imitates life, and that would include sports, so it's no surprise that I've really seen it playing out in a baseball season, where the symmetry seems to work perfectly. The first act runs from April to May, where hope springs eternal (no pun intended), and every team is a winner, especially since a baseball season is so long and it's hard to write off any team too soon. The second act runs from June to August, with the All-Star break in mid July symbolizing the half way point of the season almost perfectly, and it's here the good clubs rise, and the bad ones fall by the wayside, and are forgotten, just like a good movie, let alone a great one, needs a strong second act to make any kind of impact at all, because lots of clubs can have a good April, and be completely forgotten by August. The third and final act of the season happens in September and October, ending with the World Series, and a champion, that gets to fly a banner in its park, the equivalent of winning an academy award. I'm a big Mariner fan this year, listening to about %70 of the games on the radio, like baseball was meant to be taken in, or with a good friend at the ball park, but not on TV, where it's too slow and meandering to be much fun. I wondered if the Mariners had it in them this year to make the season interesting, let alone memorable. I'd argue that an interesting season would require a good second act, or else the first act will be forgotten, and the third act in September, won't mean much, even if it hold promise. The Mariners have been famous for a good decade or so of closing well, when the games don't really matter, and nothing is on the line. In mid August, they'll sometimes go on a five or six game winning streak that gets the media excited for a moment, before falling off completely, because at that point the season is over, for all intents and purposes.

I'm not sure what the conceit was this year, or the opening act, in April and May, because I'm not such a nut that I watch the Spring Training games, and listen to every bit of minutiae about the M's, but I think it had to do with the pitching being good, because that was their strength in the 2013 season, and if I had a dime for every game they lost 1-o, or 2-1, I'd be a rich man, a truly frustrating team to like, and I should know because I tried listening to them, but gave up by June, the beginning of the second act. So, they had good starting pitching, and just as importantly had acquired one of the best second basemen in the game, and a perennial All-Star, Robinson Cano, a power hitting second baseman. The M's swooned and soared in April and May, the opening act, but played %500 ball and that's really all you need to do early in the year, although the great clubs usually do better, but the word 'great' had nothing to do with the conceit of the season, the Mariners were just going for better. On a side-note, my own personal conceit for the team had to do with the Japanese owner dying, a tragedy, but perhaps a good thing for the franchise, because he didn't go to one Mariner game, in I want to say over 15 years, and that would include one they played in Japan, so I have a hard time believing he really gave a shit about baseball or the team, never a good thing for an owner, and in my heart I just knew the M's would be better when he was gone, because the owner has to care about his business.

The Mariners weebled and wobbled in the first act, but beneath the wins and losses there was a tenacity to this club, that was just missing in previous years ('weebles wobble but they don't fall down). For example, they'd actually come back to win ball games, in the late innings, with clutch hitting, or they'd occasionally pour one on, and just destroy a team, always the sign of a winner. I went to a game or two in May, and saw the weaknesses first hand, realizing that they were missing about three players to make them really good, but they were good enough, to make me like them, and believe in them, one of the best feelings for a sports fan, or at least this one. I had the feeling they could win every time I tuned into 710 AM, to catch a game, something utterly missing from the previous season. Still, I wondered if these guys had a good summer in them, and since baseball is the national pastime, and one of the best books written on it is called, "The Boys of Summer," about the Brooklyn Dodgers, you've kind of got to have a good summer, to make it really interesting. I wrote a blog about the Mariners at the end of May, the first act, teetering on June, wondering if they had what they took to have a really good second act, or if they'd be forgotten, like so many so-so teams in the beginning. In a way, I didn't care, or better put, respected them even if they didn't have a good second act in them, because they'd given me a couple of months of real excitement and entertainment, and what more could I want? They had satisfied me, but I realized they hadn't taken the city by storm, and my love for them was very personal, having to do with a love for baseball in general. I knew that if they folded in the second act, or played erratic baseball, that the audience would lose its patience with them, and call it another a bad season, turning instead to the Sounders (the soccer team), or wishing for a basketball team to return, but let's face it, the Super Bowl champ Seahawks have stolen the city's heart, and I'd argue that's the foundation for the Mariner's success (Russell Wilson goes to the games), but also their invisibility, but come July we'll see how long that lasts. I told a couple of sports fans at work that the Mariners would feed off the success of the Seahawks, giving a boost to their low self-esteem, but they didn't listen to me. They were cynics beaten down by losing year after losing year, and thought I sounded polyannish. I wanted to tell them they were underestimating my powers of intuition regarding sports, especially baseball and football, but they wouldn't have listened, and I'm too old to be surprised by that.

Well, who's laughing now is all I can say. We're almost at the All-Star break, and this team just rocks. They filled in those three missing players I was talking about, most notably with the appearance of James Jones in late May, at the end of the first act, an instant crowd favorite, but more than that a superstar in the making, and I don't say that lightly. This guy has just started his career, and he already reminds me of the footage I've seen of Jackie Robinson, from the Brooklyn Dodgers, an original 'boy of summer,' batting lead off like he was born for the position (I'm not sure where Jackie batted in the Dodger lineup.) Sometimes, James Jones reminds me of a more talented Mookie Wilson, a crazy thing to say, since Mookie is one of my favorite baseball players of all time, the center fielder/lead off hitter, from those great mid-Eighties Mets teams, that culminated in one of the great World Series victories ever against the Red Sox, when the ball went under first baseman Bill Buckner's legs, an ex L.A. Dodger from my childhood, a back up first baseman, and pinch hitter, not to mention a leftie (nor do I mean 'leftist' spell check. I'm sure Bill Buckner is a good law abiding citizen-baseball player, if he hasn't committed suicide for his blunder, that will define his career, and make him both greater than he ever would've been otherwise, and more doomed at the same time... a tragic figure!). Justin Smoak is also gone and it's weird for me to say this, because I kind of liked him, but I think the team is better off with a real #5 hitter in Logan Morrison, that has been lighting it up at the plate in a way that Smoak never did, though he was getting better. If you look at the Mariners season as a movie, then I'd say the second act has introduced James Jones and Logan Morrison (adding some real weight to the hitting), not to mention Zunnino is having just a great year, and Cano is Cano; like the skipper, Lloyd McClendon said, "Cano is kind of like one of those great shooters in the N.B.A. that ends up with twenty points every night, and you have no idea how it happened." I did have the privilege of watching Cano throw the ball around in the infield, and I can only say there is something special to his step, a true talent. I should also add that Brad Miller at shortstop is starting to hit and that's a big deal because he was awful at the plate in May and June (the first act), but has really come alive at the beginning of the second act, and if he keeps batting like this no one will even remember how mediocre he was at the beginning, except the statisticians, and the critics. If I was to compare this club with the 2001 Mariner's that won the most games ever in a regular season when everyone was on fire, they are not much like them. That team had a much stronger first act, in May and June, and folded a bit in the third act, but were so strong they held on for the post-season. These Mariners are sort of the opposite.

The second act has started off so much better than I thought it would that I feel like I'm watching a masterpiece between the Mariners and the A's, arch rivals, believe it or not, at least up here. The A's have the Mariners number, year in and year out, but we'll see this year, because something feels different. This team was interesting in the first act, but they shed their skin in June, and have gotten even better. I'm just hoping to catch some games before anyone else finds out or believes, but the Mariners are benefiting from the good Voo-Doo of the Seahawks commanding victory in the Super Bowl, that the Mariners are starting to exhibit, at just the right time, the beginning of the second act of the season in June, going into the heart of the second act in July, and ending with the Sun in Leo. The third act begins with the Sun in Virgo, and it's a more analytical time when everyone is thinking out mathematically possibilities for each teams chance to win their division, or more possible, be a wild card, and the words for the endgame are 'the Mariners have been mathematically eliminated," but this is such an abstract term that most teams stay technically alive in the pennant race even in September, even if they don't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of making a real run, and everyone knows it. It's part of the bargain for being a baseball fan, because there are just so many games, that you're going to win and lose a lot, stretching out the mathematical possibility for a chance of post-season success, even if the odds are almost impossible, relying on the winning team to lose all of their games, and the losing team to win all of their games, almost overnight, which almost never happens in the third act, because the season is coming to its logical conclusion. Let's face it, most 'underdog' victors had a pretty good second act between June, July, and August, like I hope the Mariners fulfill.

They've finished out the first third of the second act in blistering colors, promising more to come. Things only seem to be getting better on the team, but the cynics won't believe this, and say 'they're the Mariners, they'll fold, just you watch." That may be true, but these guys just don't feel like that in the least, and if anything seem to be going in a better direction filling the gaps in their lineup as if by magic, without so much as a trade, or an acquisition. Plus, Lloyd McClendon, the skipper, is just 'a cool cat,' in the word of Shannon Drayer, the sort of voice behind the voice of the Mariners (Rick Riz is the voice, in the post-Dave Niehaus era, kind of unexpected, but kind of not, since Niehaus died of a heart attack, and sounded like he was going to have a heart attack on the air, his genius, so 'get the salami and mustard from the cupboard, Ma, we've got ourselves a Grand Salami!') I'm going to catch the Neptunean M's in July around my birthday, right before the All-Star break, against the Minnesota Twins, a classic, symbolizing the beginning of the second act in late May to June, Gemini (twins), the transition from beginning to forming. The Mariner's are becoming a great team, chosen by some kind of weird destiny that drives the cynics and the mathematicians crazy, because they are irrational, and that's why I love them. I'd also ask the devout baseball fan to shed his partisan allegiances for just a moment, to observe this budding flower, that can only be described as the Seattle Mariner, coming to life, a beautiful moment before anything is defined. I moved to Seattle a year or two after the great Mariners breakthrough against the Yankees in '96, I want to say, and caught the afterglow, when people waved Mariners banners outside of their wealthy Capitol Hill homes. Those days are gone and there is no 'You Gotta Love These Guys,' campaign for the Mariners (Jenny used to say, "No, I don't.") We didn't really love those guys even though we should've but I do love these guys but the ad-men haven't even caught up to it, and that's when a team is pure.

The Mariners played their longest game this year tonight in Houston at Minute Maid stadium, and I can't tell from the announcers if it's a dome stadium or not, but I don't think it's the Astrodome, that relic from a bygone era, when J.R. Richards did crack and lit up the league. These Astros feel more sober than those in the Seventies, but it's hard to tell beneath the All-American veneer that baseball presents because deep down these men are successful, and will get away with whatever they can, given the social norms, fluctuating with eras. The game took 3:36 minutes to finish, and I want to say the Mariners won 13-3, but it was worse than that, and they picked up a game on the A's losing to Detroit. It's important to remember that one has a favorite team, but success is also dependent on how well the competition fares, so here's to the second act, and a real death like third act, that keeps everyone on their seats, including me, eating some garlic fries, with yellow mustard.

Beverly Hillbillies Forever!

I was a Beverly Hillbilly, and I've probably never related to a show more than that one, and that is really saying something, since I could teach a P.H.D. level course in the history of sitcoms, because I was a 'TV Baby' in the words of Matt Dillon at the end of "Drugstore Cowboy," the kind that he was warning America against, or at least his generation, whatever they were called ( second wave Boomers in my lingo.) "The Beverly Hillbillies," was really my show, and I just couldn't get enough of the Clampett's playing the accidental purveyors of an oil fortune, moving the family from the Ozarks to Beverly Hills, and having a banker in town, Mr. Drysdale, with his incredible hilarious sidekick, Jane, an intellectual Englishwoman with a horrible crush on Jethro, running their affairs.

I'm sure the audiences of the Sixties probably found the "Hillbillies," just garbage, even if it was popular, and I got that as a kid, but that only made it even better to me, in spite of what my parents thought. More importantly, I really think it was ahead of its time and in some ways the Clampett's lifestyle wasn't so different than those of the debauched rock stars of the Sixties, living off a fortune from song royalties, and just kind of goofing off day to day, but the Clampett's weren't drugged out, but their lifestyle almost felt like that; Granny was drinking Moonshine almost religiously and no one really cared; I even think Uncle Jeb took to the Moonshine, probably everyone did, because it was all part of being a Hillbilly, along with shooting guns. Elly May had the most interesting passion that pretty much predated the wild life crusade, because she basically loved animals more than people, and was a completely pure spirit; all the Clampett's were pure spirits and that's what made the show so lovable. I didn't necessarily feel like the Clampett's, because I was educated, but spiritually I was in the same boat as they were, a stranger in a strange land, in their depression-era jalopy. I was a 'Hillybilly' in spite of my education, though I know some of my peers would argue that Oakwood made me a 'Hillbilly' because it taught me not to give a fuck about what anyone thought.

It's almost hard for me to analyze the show except that "The Beverly Hillbillies" lived like movie stars, and indeed that was referenced in perhaps the best TV sitcom song ever, and I mean ever, with Flatt or Scruggs singing, "Movie Stars, Swimming Pools," in that great Southern drawl. I knew Brian Wilson as a kid and the Hillbillies lived kind of like him to be honest with you, but with cleaner depression era values, and though they were seen like stereotypes in their day, I'd argue they were some of the purer Southern characters ever put on TV. Yes, they were Country simpletons, but they didn't have a bad thought in their head, and were living in a kind of dream life in Beverly Hills, acting like the money didn't matter, and was just an accidental blessing. They weren't affected by any of the trappings of wealth in the least, an incredible feat if you consider where they were living, and when they'd get mixed up with Beverly Hills folk, usually involving a romance between either Jed, the patriarch and widower, Elly May, the animal loving hot tomboy daughter, or Jethro, Elly May's cousin, and Jed's nephew, a kind of absurdist Elvis figure, that the banker's assistant Jane has a crush on. As a running gag, I'd say this is one of my favorite in TV sitcom history.... it never had a chance of culminating, and yet it played out, as if it was culminating, and just sort of got at the ridiculousness of love. Not to mention, Nancy Kulp, as Jane Hathaway, turns in one of the most comically dry British comic roles in history, but maybe she was aided by not being in a British sitcom, playing off Hillbillies, but who cares? She and Jethro cracked me up, and I loved how she'd make any excuse to go to the Clampett's on business for Mr. Drysdale, just to see Jethro. A romance for the ages!

I think this show got at the absurdity of my life more than any other, whether it meant to or not, though I'd argue not. Art's reaction on us is always personal, and I'm pretty sure CBS wasn't making "The Beverly Hillbillies," for people in L.A., but the Midwest, and South, focusing the program on the heartland, where the great post war American blue collar man lived and got a living wage to raise a family, not the bohemian freak tripping out in the city. I think "The Beverly Hillbillies" were making fun of Beverly Hills and the money that ruled it through the banker, Mr. Drysdale, running the Clampett's financial affairs, like a money manager, but without any of the frills of the Clinton era of the 1990's and not really ripping them off, just mildly amused by their antics and raising a profit.

The most egregious character was Granny holding a civil war grudge, but I liked her rebel yell. I was Granny to my parents, wanting to wage war against them, and all of Beverly Hills for existing, trusting no one, and seeing everyone as a Yankee outsider. Grannie was almost akin to a modern day terrorist, in her sort of unflinching reaction to pulling the trigger at the slightest threat to her way of life, that was constantly threatened because she wasn't living in Dixie, but in Beverly Hills, because that's what millionaires were supposed to do. It's funny that no one in the family ever questioned Uncle Jeb "Packin' up the car, and movin' to Beverly... Hills, that is...Movie Stars, Swimming Pools," considering all of their souls were in Dixie, but maybe that was part of the 'stupidity' of the show, that made it just so damn appealing, at least to me. I don't think my friends liked it that much, and it really fascinated my Grandma, because I think she was taught to think it was a stupid show, but I wasn't stupid (was I?), and I loved it. It's the show I remember watching with her in her Fifties den in L.A., not to mention playing cards (Go fish, and Crazy 8's). "The Beverly Hillbillies" was our show, but I'm sure for very different reasons, and that's what makes art!

Recently, Josh Mills wrote on facebook that the reason he didn't like "The Big Lebowski," was that he didn't relate to the characters, and this is a fair enough criticism, albeit a very personal one. If your barometer for liking a movie has to do with how well you relate to the characters, you might not like very much, because there are lots of movies with despicable characters that no one relates to, or very few, yet the art of the movie is so great that everyone forgives it for being so repulsive, in the name of art. I didn't really relate to any individual character on "The Beverly Hillbillies," but the situation was mine. The source of the humor of every show was that it made no sense that these people were in Beverly Hills, an occurrence of 'dumb luck' as my Grandma used to call it. They didn't really belong there, yet were adding a lot of local color, like movie stars, even though the Clampett's were too simple to fathom an artistic cultural thought. They were F.D.R.'s dream of a morally enlightened poor folk, even if they lacked the detailed observations of a lawyer, or a fact checker, going on old time economy. I guess it should be remembered that the South lost their basic economy when they lost the Civil War, the slave trade, and felt out of place, kind of like the Hillbillies, who can never quite believe they have any money at all, even though they are living like millionaires, the billionaires of today. More than relate to the characters, I related to their rustic antiquated attitude, feeling like an outsider in my homeland, though I was ruling it. I wasn't as handsome as Jethro, or as sublime as Uncle Jed, nor as Dr. Doolittle as Elly May, but I was as out of place in Beverly Hills as they were, and felt like the Gods had played a funny trick on me.

The humor of the show played on this trick. We were supposed to think that Mr. Drysdale and the bankers were getting the best of the Hillbillies because they were idiots, but in the end it turned out that the homespun wisdom of the Hillbillies outsmarted the cunning of the bankers. I'd say this was a very F.D.R. era vision of the working poor, that was lost in the Eighties, when the poor, or uneducated, became nothing more than drug addicts and losers. The Hillbiillies were hilariously uneducated but this gave them wisdom, and though they'd never write books, they lead a moral life, wherever they were, and cemented the idea that a man was who he was, whether rich or poor. The Hillbillies could have lost all their money overnight and I'm not so sure they would've cared that much, and that was the greatness of their almost punk attitude, a good decade before punk, the big fuck you, but the Hillbillies had no anger, so they weren't really punk, they just didn't care. They may have been more slacker giving me even more reason to love them,fighting a loser's war in a foreign land, barricaded in a mansion, with a swimming pool, and roman columns. They were basically homegrown terrorists in Beverly Hills and I loved them for it.

Bitch'd out by Anton Newcombe

Anton Newcombe called me a Fuckwit and a moron today on Twitter and I didn't deserve it. I nicely critiqued his barrage of photos that I really haven't enjoyed too much, save his passion for taking them, but it makes me wonder why he's posting them. I'm not a famous person, but I do think when someone posts something on a social media site, that he or she has gone public and is open to all of the criticism or praise in the world, but few of us want the criticism, yet all of us want the praise. In social media, like the real world, silence is the most deadly form of criticism, but the second most deadly is endless praise, and I'm afraid that's what social media presents. Anton Newcombe is a great musician that I've listened to for years, and before he went on the road his tweets were mostly reverential and not too ego driven, but now that he's on the road all he does is tweet pictures of his band. Don't get me wrong, this is endearing, but like family photos a few go a long way, not to mention I mostly hate food shots, and Anton feels compelled to photograph almost every meal he's eaten, no matter how uninteresting. I think he's going for a sort of Sonic Youth/Warhol the art is repetition idea, and I guess it works on that level, so hats off to him; but so few of the photos stand out that I was starting to wonder why I was following this guy's ego at every quick stop in Europe, or showing me his van. He must've been posting them for the groupies and that's cool, but I have a right to speak up, and he didn't like that. I replied to one of his ubiquitous posts and said I respected his music and spirit, but that there were too many photos that didn't feel like art, and this pissed him off. He told me I could stop following him, and then went on to block me from following him like I was a serious intruder. The irony to this is that he favorited a comment of mine a minute before about a dancer at his show being 'almost like a Dead-Head,' so he must not have thought I was too much of a moron. The truth is my criticism got under his skin, like my criticism always has.

The point of this pointed piece isn't so much about Anton Newcombe and I, because we don't even know each other, but what it means to post on social media, and what are the effects. Like all social exchange there are social rules, and I can say in general that people try to play nice and safe, because, well, they are people, and playing nice and safe helps us to survive. It's very hard to have a real conversation on FB because there is no facial reaction feed off of, and yet it's closer to social exchange, than just shutting off altogether, and what makes it preferable to just watching TV, although that sounds kind of good right now. I'm sure that everyone's page has their own rules, like tables at a party, and to broach the rules of one's table, is to be accepted at another, so FB may be the place for some bruisers, to weasel their way into the crowd, while everyone else is worried about how they look to their friends. Anton Newcombe taught me a lot about Twitter, but I guess I thought he abused it somewhat and I wasn't sure to what ends, so i questioned him, because he was posting his photos publicly. Admittedly, I reminded myself a little of this guy that saw me painting in one of the greatest summers of my life and thought it was complete shit, even though I wasn't done. I pretty much thought the guy was a 'total fuckwit,' like Anton thought of me, and yet I remember his criticism, and I'm sure it spurred this piece on. I think guys like Anton Newcombe (and me) thrive off of confrontation and criticism, however we meet it, and though we get pissed, it's almost an elixir for our art, like the muse's pussy.

"The Graduate," the Bar Mitzvah Boy

I wrote a really shitty review on the Graduate not too long ago just to write something, but I'm going to give myself a do-over. "The Graduate" was my favorite movie from about 5th grade through at least the first years of high school, and was the best straight-movie of the Sixties (not Corman), before "Easy Rider" and "Midnight Cowboy," popped everyone's bubble in '69, ushering in the gritty realism of the early Seventies. "The Graduate" is not a work of realism in the least, yet it feels strangely real, or at least relatable, and that may be the core of its charm, and why it was so easy to like in the 5th grade, even though I felt very smart for liking it. I should also say that Benjamin Braddock was the only character in the movie that really existed for me, and I'm sure it was that way for most people that loved the film, or even liked it, because he's the only character in the screenplay with a trajectory. Yes, Mrs. Robinson is a major character hauntingly played by Anne Bancroft in her standout performance, but "The Graduate" was so good that it had two standout performances, and Dustin Hoffman was the newcomer so he kind of stole the show, but it was his movie. Rarely in a film, have I seen a character start as such a total nebbish and end as such a cool symbol of rebellion against the social order, but an accidental rebel. Watching Benjamin Braddock's character arc is almost watching the entire career of the Beatles, or the films of Woody Allen, from the screwball comedies, to the serious dramas, but all in the span of a movie. Benjamin may be 22 but we watch him become a man in the Jewish tradition, without an official Bar Mitzvah, although he sort of has one of those in the opening act when his parents throw a graduation party in his honor, without any of his friends present, and where Mrs. Robinson intuits his vulnerability, and starts seducing him. I was about 13 years old when I saw "The Graduate," so it's no wonder that I liked it so much, since it's a trial of manhood.

The whole movie is seen through Benjamin's eyes, just like all of reality is seen through a teenager's eyes, and very little of the world exists outside of his perceptions. Benjamin may be a college graduate but it's very hard to tell what he studied save that he took college very seriously and is wondering why, mirroring the youth rebellion of the Sixties that started questioning what their parents told them to do, a position given weight by the Vietnam war, but Benjamin is no hippy. He's a Beverly Hills kid that likes lounging by his kidney shaped swimming pool, with his cool shades on, quietly reveling in his first sexual affair, that is opening him up in remarkable ways, nor is the moral ambiguity of the affair questioned that much. Mrs. Robinson is what we now call a 'Cougar,' and she certainly preys on Benjamin so maybe this lets him off the hook somewhat, but she is the wife of his father's business partner, and a family friend, making the situation very incestuous and sticky. To make it weirder, Mrs. Robinson has a beautiful daughter, that goes to Berkeley, and is clearly Benjamin's missing half, but Mrs. Robinson forbids him from seeing her, and this makes him love her all the more, but Mrs. Robinson never makes it clear exactly why she doesn't want Benjamin seeing her, save to challenge his integrity, and this drives him crazy. It was the great mystery in her character, aside from her marital unhappiness, and the unresolved depth of her character. Too many years later, I can shrink out why Mrs. Robinson didn't want Benjamin dating her daughter from him being trash to sleeping with her, or just good old mother/daughter sexual competition, towards resenting her daughter for trying to be free, like she was once too, but it doesn't matter.

"The Graduate" is seen through Benjamin's eyes and one of the baffling things about it to me is how romantic I thought Benjamin Braddock was not only in his affair, but more importantly his hopeless romantic passion of for Elaine Robinson, the unattainable. Part of the appeal is that screenplay and deadpan performance is just hilarious in a way that is very rare in movies, hitting on a whole new tone, I think, that was addressing the social changes of the Sixties, while clinging to the the past, so that the movie has that incredible tension of being old and new at the same time, both experimental and traditional, a very rare combination, not to mention a killer soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel, that also sounded new and old at the same time, perhaps complimenting the movie as well as any rock n' roll era soundtrack ever did. Benjamin's is new and old too and his first moral transgression somehow has the innocence of a teenage Bar Mitzvah boy even though he's having a questionable affair with an older woman, a family friend, but what 13 year old Bar Mitzvah boy didn't dream of that, and so it didn't make him so sleazy. We're even lead to believe he was a 22 year old virgin, probably a near impossibility in the Summer of Love in L.A., and this made his affair with Mrs. Robinson all the more boyish. The problem with Benjamin's behavior happens when he falls in love with Elaine Robinson, the affair my 13 year old self gave him more credit for but questioned later.

I should say that watching him fall in love with Elaine was just classic to me like all love stories were for me imagining my college life not too far down the road, and their disgust at society in that scene when they are at the drive-in is just classic. "I don't know what it is, but ever since getting back from school I just want to be obnoxious," say's Benjamin. "I know what you mean," say's Elaine, and it was one of those beautiful scenes when two souls meet. Unfortunately, the relationship is doomed from the beginning because Mrs. Robinson forbids it, but Elaine is also engaged and still in college at Berkeley, making things impossible. I'm not sure how to describe the second half of the second act, or the third act in general, but I'll stop beating around the bush and in modern parlance, just say that Benjamin starts stalking Elaine. No, he doesn't feel like a stalker because we, the audience, are watching him mature and become a man before our eyes, nor are we thinking of Benjamin as being anything but a hopeless romantic, putting everything on the line for love, because the conceit of the movie early in the first act is that he's completely disillusioned with his bachelor's degree, and fitting into the world, but not knowing what to be, a case of arrested adolescence. J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield had this too but he was a little younger than Benjamin and ended up in a psych ward, but I'd call it the complex of the disaffected teenager not yet a writer, but almost one. I'm not even sure Benjamin Braddock is on the path of the artist like Holden seemed to be, if not a downright mystic, but he's at least an Italian race car driver in his little red Alfa Romeo, taking him on his adventures through Beverly Hills and then up north to Berkeley and the heart of the Sixties. I know that part of what makes Benjamin's stalking so charming is that he really is intoxicated with Elaine Robinson and their love has a certain fated irrevocable quality to it, from knowing each other as kids, to just sort of relating in an unspeakable way, so that we know Benjamin is reacting to that, and yet.... he's stalking her to "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme." I really doubt love like he had for Elaine could exist in the movies today, so I guess chalk "The Graduate" up to 1967, and a perfect combination of the casting, the right director (Mike Nichols), and a kick-ass screenplay by Buck Henry, appearing in the movie as a concierge in the hotel where Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson stage their affair. It was really a perfect movie with a whole new tone that I'm convinced Sundance cinema tried to imitate again and again, both serious, funny, deep, shallow, and a fantasy, seeming real.

A lot of people talked about the ending because of the obvious imagery of Benjamin storming the traditional wedding of Elaine Robinson, symbolizing her descent into mediocrity, with the approval of her parents, and Benjamin's mad dash to stop it, using the crucifix as a bar in the door to stop the congregation from chasing Elaine and him down as they ran through the streets of Santa Barbara, with her in a wedding dress, and then there's the final shot that really is one of the most ambiguous ever, with those unexplainable looks Katherine Ross and Dustin Hoffman have on their face, and to give Katherine Ross credit she had a similar but different look at the end of the "Stepford Wives," when she was a robot, and had been killed. Was she married to Benjamin? Did Benjamin even believe in relationships, let alone marriage? It was hard to tell except that they had committed the greatest act they could against their parents, while fulfilling their childhood destiny, very Greek and tragic. I know at the beginning of "The Player," Buck Henry is pitching "The Graduate II," to the studio execs., and Lord Knows the end begs it, but it never happened. In some ways, Benjamin looks like he's pulled off the greatest heist ever, and his heart is really in it, because Elaine gives him a reason to believe he didn't come for nothing, and like any fool in love he takes the slightest hint or suggestion of conquest in his favor, whether or not he's making it up in his mind. At the same time, Elaine is a little confused what he is doing there especially after she learned that he was sleeping with her mother; as I write this I almost feel a politically correct pain running up my spine because that really paints my hero Benjamin in a not so good light; I'm not so sure I would trust him, and I'm wondering why Elaine gave him the time of day, except they were fated. Admittedly, she was one of the weaker characters in the screenplay, more of a symbol, but it was a perfect movie, and Katherine Ross was a star that made me want her. She was more hippie than Benjamin but maybe less rebellious deep down, needing him to guide her on, because she was going to marry a very straight California blonde haired boy. She was the kind of California hippie girl on the brink of woman's lib, but not quite there yet, needing Benjamin's madness to tip her over. As for Benjamin Braddock, well, he may have just been mad, because "The Graduate" is a story of him becoming a man, an individual's story, and I question how much he cared who he was hurting in it, not that he was malevolent, but a conqueror, and he bedded the mother and daughter of his parent's best friends, either the greatest rebellion, or the greatest suck-up, but either way a big move. He had a big pair of balls at the end of that movie, but I'm not so sure Benjamin was ready to dissolve his ego in a relationship being too in love with the chase as the symbolism of being.

I'm sort of getting ready to end the essay except I think you have to give Mike Nichols a lot of credit as a director, because the movie incorporates a very interesting point of view that makes the audience feel through Benjamin, watching the insane reality of his affluent parents attacking him (us). It really gets at the Bar Mitzvah boy feeling of entering the adult world with lots of conflicting information coming your way, except that Benjamin is a little older, the product of luxury, but still he's observing insanity, and losing his mind, a very tangible adolescent feeling when confronting the adult world. The scenes of Benjamin in the swimming pool are so epic, I don't even really know where to begin, and the scene where his parents buy him the diver's suit for his birthday, and he comes out wearing it with his parents friends (the Robinson's?), taking movies of him, and we don't hear them, only Benjamin's breathing.... an all-timer, out of the park, especially when he just jumps in the water and sits in the bottom of the pool. I think it's the last humiliation that leads him to call Mrs. Robinson and start their affair, perhaps to get back at his parents, but part of the beauty of "The Graduate," is that it raises really deep questions, without trying to answer them at all.

Oh yeah, Benjamin's dad ended up on St. Elsewhere, much later, but I could never get him saying to Benjamin about marrying Elaine Robinson, "It seems like a pretty half-baked idea, Benjamin." "Oh no sir, it's completely baked," he replies. Then the toast pops out of the toaster, and the second act ends.

Eddie and the Cruisers (I and II), a love affair

When all is said and done, "Eddie and the Cruisers," may be my favorite movie of all time, and I'm not joking. I'm pretty sure I saw it at the Crest theater in Westwood, with my best friend, Josh Davis, and we were excited to see it, because we were huge Doors fans and loved Jim Morrison, a real L.A. hero, our hometown. "Eddie" was a kind of Morrison story but not quite, because he wasn't as realized as Morrison, yet realized just enough to be glimpsed as immortal, like Cobain, but he didn't exist yet. I completely loved the movie at 15 but I think that I realized it was trash, but such beautiful vintage trash, that it may as well have been the best movie ever, because many directors have had tried to simulate movies like "Eddie and the Cruisers," through the filter of high art, and I'm not sure that ever works. There will never be another movie that is both as insightful and appalling as "Eddie and the Cruisers," especially for anyone into the Sixties vision of the rock star as a kind of shaman.

It was our generation's movie and I ate it up as a kid because I knew it was made just for us, even if this wasn't the intent. It wasn't "Ordinary People," a serious drama, that I also liked; "Cruisers" was an unbridled guilty pleasure with an amazing run on cable, when cable was new, that vaunted it to a whole other level. In some ways, "Eddie and the Cruisers," was ahead of its time in the marketing department, because it may have been one of the first movies that flopped at the box office, but did well in cable, so well that it became a staple of my generation. I liked it a lot when I saw it in the theater but admittedly it wasn't my favorite, just a good one, but when I got to watch it a million times over on cable, where "Eddie" all but reinvented himself, I was overwhelmed, by what a great movie it was about art, the Sixties, politics, racial relations, the music business, etc. It was one of the those movies that fearlessly covered all the bases and chose to look at an artist ahead of his time, that died a fatal death, making his best record ever, never to be released, kind of like Brian Wilson with "Smiley Smile," that missed its moment, and never made the impact everyone predicted. In a way, Eddie was a Brian Wilson and a Kurt Cobain before his time, or a Buddy Holly - he was the past and future of rock n' roll, all in one person, singing songs that sounded a lot like Bruce Springsteen, peaking when the 'film' was released, and making the comparison all too clear, and yet the songs were originals from the early Eighties transposed onto 1964, further changing the meaning of "The Dark Side." It sounded like Springsteen from 1964, but it was "John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band," and that made song completely new, and a big rock hit. I'm pretty sure the "Eddie and the Cruisers," soundtrack defied the music industry at the time because it didn't become popular until the cable release when lots of teenage dilettantes like myself were watching it in the late afternoon imagining ourselves Eddie, the latent undiscovered genius in all of us.

"If you don't want to be great you shouldn't bother playing music," say's Eddie.

"We're not great," said Sal, the bassist, "We're just some guys from Jersey."

Dramatically, the screenplay was compelling because it had a TV crew looking into Eddie from the perspective of 1983, as the great Jim Morrison that never was, or the Elvis that could have been, if he had read Rimbaud. True to the film's over the top screenplay, Eddie's great lost tapes were called, "A Season in Hell," after the Rimbaud poem, but I think that's where I learned about the 19 year old French poet that was a great influence on the Beats and I'd argue all of contemporary fiction, whatever that amounts to. The movie was really incredible because in some ways it was the story every 15 year old American boy in was told about rock n'roll... that it started out with Sal and 'just some guys from Jersey," doing something crazy with the groove, making kids dance, but it evolved to something more poetic and refined. Shit, I read a poetry book in 7th grade English called, "Reflections on a Watermelon Pickle," in Katie McGovern's class, the mother of Elizabeth McGovern, from "Downton Abbey," that I saw "In the Skin of our Teeth," at Oakwood, and everyone knew she was going to be a star. I'm pretty sure they had John Lennon's "In my Life," in "Reflections on a Watermelon Pickle," one of the best lyrical songs ever, but the point was that the rock stars of the Sixties were more than musicians, but visionaries given the academic stamp of approval. It was the myth we were raised on and "Eddie and the Cruisers," must be the best fictional telling of it of all time, bar none, and that's no small achievement. Yes, there have been other great movies about rock stars, and "Spinal Tap" quickly comes to mind, but that wasn't an earnest telling of the rock star as mystic, but a sarcastic one, whereas "Eddie" took itself completely seriously, like all awful movies. But what a fearless topic it chose, to show the self-destructive and violent life of a Jersey visionary kind of like Springsteen, or the Jim Morrison to come, or Eddie Cochran, all in one. His ghost was followed by a news reporter on the story of her life, Ellen Barkin, trying to unveil Eddie's tormented soul in real time.

I watched "Eddie and the Cruisers," the first summer I started getting high, and though I didn't buy the album, I knew every song by heart, because it was one of those rare movies that bonded almost every male member of my peer group, and I'd imagine some females too, because the movie was just too pertinent to us and defied the criticism of the day, no matter how right it was, because make no bones about it, "Eddie and the Crusiers," is a failure, and you couldn't be a self-respecting critic circa '83 and come to any other conclusion. I'm sure if I was a boomer critic I would've seen "Eddie" as some kind of retarded nightmare, and yet all of these critics missed the essence of the movie, and how it was going to relate to us, because it was a representation of the rock star myth that we were raised on, both romanticizing and ridiculing. Well, "Eddie and the Cruisers," does both in one fell swoop, and after watching it at least thirty or forty times, at many different points in my life, it never lets down, never. It's just too multi-layered and complex.

I didn't know "Eddie and the Cruisers II" existed until a couple of weeks ago, when Josh Mills, of FB fame, called me out for it, and said we should see it together. Well, it randomly came on TV at 9 in the morning when Jenny was going to work, and uncharacteristically I stayed up to watch it, because I felt like I'd been waiting my whole life for this moment, like Phil Collins sang about, around the time "Eddie" was released. True, I didn't know it existed until two weeks ago, but if any was ripe for it, it was me, and I watched like a real movie addict, foregoing my life, or any rational thought, for the joy of lying in bed and watching a movie, enjoying the decadence, and the sequel didn't let down. The critic in me should really let it sink in because I realize it was an important viewing, and I may never have one like it again. It caught me completely off guard, and I showered in the middle of it, to enjoy the second half, and sort of took an intermission, but only missed a segment between commercial breaks.

Don't get me wrong, movie fans, it's horrible, and you have to start off knowing that, but it's even worse than the 1st, but it had to be, and that makes it one of the best sequels I've ever seen, I really think so. I mean, I've waited my whole life to see "Eddie and the Cruisers II," because Lord knows, the first sets it up perfectly, but I never thought anyone would actually have the audacity to do it, and yet someone did, and they did it right. The 'critic in me' could make fun of this movie for a million years to come starting with the pretext that Eddie is an anonymous construction worker, driven crazy by watching the cult of 'Eddie,' on TV, wondering what he's doing with his life. We're supposed to believe he's as famous as Elvis in a sort of unbelievable way, and yet no one ever seems to recognize him, even though he looks almost exactly like Eddie Wilson (after Brian Wilson, and Eddie Cochran???). The conceit becomes even more implausible in the second act when 'Eddie' starts playing with a hair band and not only looks like Eddie Wilson but sings like him too; making it even stranger his record company is promoting this idea to sell the "Season in Hell" sessions, but lo and behold it's actually happening, and they don't even know about it!

The movie is actually a perfect sequel. In "Eddie and the Cruisers," we're presented with a Jersey guy that dreams of being great, much to the chagrin of some of his band-mates, but predicting the poetic-musical-revolution of the Sixties. In "Eddie and the Cruisers II," Eddie seems to embrace his working class roots, and instead of thinking himself great, the message is that you've got to practice, and just sort of put it on the line, not expecting much. It's a stripped down Eddie, true to a mid life crisis, only highlighted in Eddie's case, because he's forced to watch images of himself as a brilliant young man, without even being able to take credit for it. He's haunted by himself like we all are in middle age, but as a hard-hat construction dude tying one on.

I guess the message of "Eddie and the Crusiers II," was to overcome fear, but that was the message in "Eddie and the Cruisers I" too, and in each case the fear had to do with mediocrity. In the first film Eddie wanted to by great, not just a 'guy from Jersey,' in the words of Sal. In the sequel, Eddie didn't want to be great, but simply wanted to be, living in pure devotion to the music, without fearing the epic consequences of his "Season in Hell" visions. He just wanted to play guitar again and get in front of an audience and perform, without the guilt or shame, of being the late great Eddie Wilson, symbolizing all that rock had come to, and could have been, if he wasn't tragically killed in a car accident on a bridge, though his body was never found. Maybe it's the 'detective story' level at which "Eddie and the Cruisers" lives that makes it so fantastical, because Eddie is treated almost like we treat aliens now, as some sort of sacred creature that may or may not exist, like Hitler or Morrison, or any famous or infamous person that ever lived, but was never buried. I'd argue that 'Eddie Wilson' as a fictional character could have only exited after J.F.K. but before the alien conspiracy genre that took over the Nineties, right before "Roswell, New Mexico," the "X Files," and "Independence Day," overwhelmed the American box office, there was a brief moment in time that the boomer hero/avatar, the rock star, had his moment in the Sun, and though Tommy tried to be the movie that defined this for our generation, since it did for our parents, it was "Eddie" that sealed the deal. We were able to imagine Eddie Wilson like he was Ziggy Stardust, even though he sounded like Bruce Springsteen. Maybe the movie was trying to say that "the Boss" would've been considered a revolutionary talent in 1964, but instead became the working class hero in 1989, the long forlorn years of Pappy Bush, baiting us into Iraq.

Mariner's mash-up

I'm a really big Mariner's fan this year and while I can't say that they've overtaken my life, like the Kings seem to have done to my friends in Los Angeles, via FB, I can say they have become a constant source of entertainment for me, and a way to take my mind off of my life's problems. I was a really big baseball fan as a kid, well into high school, and it was the only sport I really liked in high school, or so I remember, but I never played it, nor was I very good. I was much better at basketball or football, but baseball was the the sport I enjoyed watching the most, and still do. It's something about the never ending season, and just kind of losing yourself in it, like being lost across time and space, because unlike basketball or hockey that also have long seasons, they are only half the length, and the beginning seems like an afterthought, not to mention the end, because they let so many teams into the playoffs, but not baseball, or at least not traditionally. The pennant run was cruel because it inevitably excluded at least two very good teams, that just weren't good enough to win the division, though the Major Leagues have loosened up some and now have a wild card berth, or two, but still the postseason isn't so easy to enter. More than that, the individual games just feel like something, or in the words of the French, have a jine se qua. The long season literally beats you down like a symphony, or a never ending potboiler, that takes a summer to read. Somehow, I start to feel like I'm travelling with the team, over 81 games, and the home games make me feel like I've come home too, even though I almost never leave Seattle.

I am actually following the Mariner's, and can't remember doing this since about 2001, when they had the Major League record for most wins in a season, beating one of those classic Yankee's teams from the '20's, but then folding in the post-season. For the most part, they are a hard team to love, but I started listening this year, and they started reminding me of the 1984 Met's, or around there, when they had Hubie Brooks at 3rd, Mookie Wilson in CF, Dave Kingman at 1st, Brian Giles at 2nd, with Neil Allen, and Jeff Reardon, coming out of the bullpen. I had cable and ironically caught every Met's game in high school, because they were always on TV, even though I was living in an L.A. canyon, and should've been watching the Dodger's, but they only had certain select games on, unlike the Met's that were on WGN constantly, and I would know because I had the TV on for at least 7 hours a day.

The mid-Eighties Met's were a fun team to watch and must've simulated how the Brooklyn Dodger's fit into the New York landscape in the Fifties, as those lovable 'bums,' or 'the boys of summer.' The Amazin' Met's of my era weren't the best team, but they had the most heart, and therefore threatened to win every game, because the beauty of baseball is that there are so many games a good team could win any of them, even though they don't. A winning streak usually only lasts a week or so.

The M's have that mid-Eighties Met's feel to me, and I've been waiting for that for a long time, from this bunch, suffering through bad season after bad season. I started listening last year, but had to stop after dozens of 1-0, or 2-1, losses, so that they were out of the pennant run by June, but not this year. If anything, they are entering the second act of the season stronger than ever, and look like they are finally starting to come alive at the plate; they are also doing this on solid footing in the division because they played %.500 ball in April and May, albeit with an exhilaration that kept them in the hunt. All they need to do now is get hot for a month and hopefully catch the A's, and we're entering the hot day's of the year, so maybe they will, especially since 75 degrees in Seattle is like 95 degrees in most other cities.

I do think you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of team they like, and who they root for; do they choose a winner, or do they like an underdog, an underachiever, scratching for achievement, and hoping to pull off an upset. In essence, I think these are the two kinds of people in the world, the one betting on the sure thing, and the other betting against it (the 'Sure Thing' was a John Cusack road trip movie, where the 'sure thing' is anything but). I suppose there's a third type of fan and it's the one that likes getting beat up year after year with a miserable team to root for, but does so out of blind loyalty, the true die-hard fan. I've been this kind of fan too, not to mention the one rooting for a winner, and two examples would be the Seventies Lakers and Kings, perennial losers, but conversely the U.S.C. Trojan football team that expected nothing less than a National Championship, every time they walked on the gridiron. But the Eighties Met's and the 2014 Mariner's are my kind of team, lurking in the wilderness, but ready to strike at any given moment. The core of that Met's team did beat the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series, maybe the best I've ever seen, with the ball going through Bill Buckner's legs at first base, an ex-Dodger, giving the Met's a miracle victory.

To Josh Mills, of FB fame, I'd say our 8th grade class was this kind of team, threatening to topple the Senior's, but not quite able to do it. We should've won the big game against all odds but my pass went through Davis' fingers and we didn't win, though we knew we did in our hearts, and this was hard to reconcile. "The Bad News Bears," were also this kind of team, but they were fictional, yet very real to us, because I think everyone in our class loved this movie, considering it had Tatum O'Neal as a star pitcher, and what chemistry she had with Walter Matthau, as 'Buttermaker.' The 'Bears,' sponsored by 'Chico's Bail Bonds,' were our Brooklyn Bum's, and we all could have been on that team, with Tanner, telling the Yankee's, 'we'll get your cruddy ass next year,' and our coach a drunken slob, but in our case it was Jeff Body, a kind of 'Lebowski' stoner bleeding us dry on his van service to Oakwood. We were the 'Bad News Bears,' the lovable losers, and the best team to fall for.

Memories of the Democratic Party

I used to listen to liberal talk radio a lot in the W. era (the W. is for Afghan Women!). One of the more popular hosts, Thom Hartmann, had the basic idea that we needed to go back to F.D.R.'s economic policies to make America work again, meaning tax the rich, and create a social safety net that would allow the poor to rise. In theory, I completely agreed with him, and thought that the key to a better society would be to level the playing field with tax policy, and that only a regulated capitalism, could actually simulate what we think of as capitalism, and that the small business owner only had a chance if there wasn't a mega-corporation waiting to buy him out, or worse, just destroy his business, and one need only think of how Wal-Mart's have pretty much taken over small town America with their cheap products from China, luring middle America into the shopping aisle. Don't get me wrong, I still pretty much agree with this for the most part, and do believe that the disparity between rich and poor is too great to overcome, and yet I always had a tinge of confusion, or regret, when Hartmann spoke that something wasn't quite right in his vision and that it wouldn't be that easy to change America, or the world, with policies and ideas that were new in the Twenties, and Thirties, riding the coattails of the Bolshevik Revolution, a time in America when people actually thought a Communist might become President. It's hard to pinpoint what is exactly wrong with this idea, and yet I think it has to do with Hartmann not taking into consideration the people of the Country, but rather the policymakers, or politicians, as being the only ones with a say in anything, but political theater is theater and the audience, or voting bloc, have as much to do with policy as the legislators. There is a famous quote, "The people get the government they deserve," and it's as true now as it ever was.

I'm not sure where America went wrong, or how to even begin to analyze such a big topic, as the relationship between the people and their leaders, but it must have something to do with living in a Country in its rise or fall, and the expectations the people have given their historical circumstance. I'd argue that a standout feature of my generation (born in '68), was that we were the first to be living in America's fall, predicted by the Beats in Allen Ginsberg's famous book of poetry, "The Fall of America," but not lived out by him since the Beats imagined America in its rise and glorified it through the automobile. We were the generation that first experienced America in its fall, and what was so sad is that we were born during the height of the hippie movement, that was trying to redefine the greatness of the America they had been raised on, making it a truly idealistic Country embracing freedom, but their vision wasn't taken up by the mainstream, or rather only parts of it were, like Gay Marriage, and other great social causes, but the economic forces behind the Country didn't move to an agrarian way of life to protect the environment, since that was the big issue looming when I was born, and instead a sort of oligarchy corrupted the political system protecting big business every step of the way.

In 1979, I was taught that the Republicans were the party of big business, and the Democrats were the party of the working man. It feels wrong to say that nowadays, because I really don't see the Democrats as representing the working man in the least, and yet that's how the two party system was presented to me. (I should also add that compared to the contemporary Republicans the Democrats do represent the working class, but that's a 'false equivalence.') I was also taught that the Democrats were
the anti-war party because Bobby Kennedy was against the war, and so was McGovern, but I'm not sure what Hubert Humphrey thought when he ran for President in '68 against Nixon, but I doubt he was really anti-war, considering L.B.J. escalated Vietnam into the imbroglio we see it as now, and it's arguable that J.F.K. would've done the same, not to mention a Republican, Gerald Ford, ended the war, but no one said politics was easy to understand. The Hippies thinking they were going to takeover the world hijacked the Democratic Party for the '72 election and that was supposed to be their election, because it was the first time 18 year old's could vote, and like Barry McGuire sang in 'The Eve of Destruction,' "You're old enough to kill, but not for votin.'" Well, all that changed in '72, except the 18 year old did anything but swing the election for McGovern, and many would argue that the Democratic Party was traumatized by this election for a good generation or two, because it's oft- referenced as a reason for the Party not nominating a a true 'liberal' for the candidacy, and instead a milquetoast one, that holds the potential of winning.

The Democratic Party I was supposed to inherit never really existed. I got the latent WWII F.D.R. politics of Carter, and a legion of Dixiecrats that had yet to split from the party, making for F.D.R's unique coalition, before the Dixiecrats gave up on the working man through the politics of desegregation, going along with Republican tax policies too, while pretending to be the Party of the working class. I was supposed to inherit a Democratic Party that was from my Grandpa's generation, mixed with a radical left wing Hippie socialist vision of America, but this party never won anything, kind of like a sports franchise denied a championship. I was allowed to imagine a Democratic Party that could have been, but Reagan obliterated the fantasy when I was 12 years old, even though I supported him over Carter, because it was clear that the Socialist State that F.D.R. had envisioned was dated, and had been hijacked by lazy liberals. What's more, is that another shift happened around 1984 (get the irony) and the Republicans started being seen as the party representing individual freedom, whereas I was taught they were the next closest thing to fascists wanting to take away your freedom.

The social safety net that the Democrats gave the people in the Thirties was given in the trust that the recipients of the benefits were going to contribute to society in a useful way, because I have a feeling there was shame relying on the government to take care of you, and the obligation of taking on the government's debt, almost insured that you'd have to give back to the Country in some way. I'd argue, this is because those programs were enacted during America's first forthright rise from the Forties to the Seventies, though the cracks started to show then, like they did in the mirrors people were doing Cocaine on. The people believed in the government in America's ascent, like the people must for a Country to be successful, and that must've been a beautiful and pure feeling, because if the people get the government they deserve, then the people trusted themselves.

I used to tell my Grandma in the Reagan Eighties that the treasury was setting a horrible example for the youth of America by going into debt like a drunken sailor, no offense to my Gramps, who was in the Navy, but an officer. She never knew what to say when I said this to her and she just kind of shrugged her shoulders, because she was in her '60's and just kind of burnt out by all the social change, but she knew I was right because her generation was taught to be thrifty and have a 'pay as you go' philosophy, like Pelosi tried instilling at one point in the Democratic Party, but must've failed... She's one of those examples of a politician from the party I was promised, the first woman Speaker of the House, and now the Democratic Party leader in the people's house, but she'd be in the liberal minority in the Senate, and by minority I mean minority, but she's not in the Senate, and has to run for office every two years. Maybe I'm romanticizing her and she's sold out too just like San Francisco, the city she hails from, but she still has some ideals intact. I'd say Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown, and a few other 'flakes' from California (please laugh), still possess Sixties era values of communal living, in the name of living in peace with Mother earth, but their vision is so compromised it's hard to know what they really believe, and so I'm in the political wilderness. I wanted the %99'ers to win and do think that Wall St. is just a casino, with no moral or ethical responsibility to speak of, and yet I didn't really want to talk to the protesters, when I saw them camping out at the community college, but I donated to their library the Samuel Beckett trilogy, "Molloy," to get them through a night in a tent. Still, I wouldn't have had any of them over for dinner, because I didn't know what to say to them.

The liberals of the Sixties have become Nazi's in the name of good causes, like cutting out smoking cigarettes in bars, and the freedom loving martyr's have become Ron Paul head's, and America really makes no sense right now. We're a Country in its decline, and quite frankly I wasn't taught what this would look like as a kid, thinking the States were on the precipice of the greatest society ever, or complete anarchy. Like Tom Hayden, a great State Senator from Santa Monica, living down the street from my best friend, a block from the ocean, and married to Jane Fonda, said in a documentary about the year 1968, "I really didn't know if America was about to have a revolution, or not." This is the way of thinking I was borne into and that doesn't exist anymore, or at least not with the same spirit. When people imagine the end of America now it's with none of the hope that I was born into of the Bobby Kennedy campaign of '68, but rather as a cannibalistic nightmare between the have's and the have not's. I realize that's because America was at its true tipping point in '68, and could have gone for Kennedy or Nixon, and went for Nixon, due to a cruel turn of events, though Nixon could never erase the Kennedy's from his mind, and knew they somehow beat him in the public imagination of their day, even if they didn't win. The politics of Nixon would be more realized than even he could imagine in the W. Presidency, 27 years later, starting in 2001, and all but ending there too, for all political purposes, with 9-11.

The modern day Democratic Party is dead to me. The Republicans are more exciting because they are split in two, between a lunatic wing, created to invigorate the party, by the Koch brothers, and a more established pro Iraq Bush era wing, probably also created by the Koch brothers, as they watch in amusement at which will win. For my money, I like the tea-baggers, but I'd ditch them both for Che Guevara in a second, because American politics, just doesn't speak to me right now, though I know changes are happening everyday, because history marches on. Maybe the new chairwoman of the Fed will raise interest rates and force an obese America to cut back. Or maybe Rand Paul will worm his way into the Presidency and destroy the Fed once and for all, and be an isolationist.

I'll end this polemic with a parable. I delivered a pizza to a man in a sort of crumbling million dollar house in Queen Anne that answered the door late, but gave a ten dollar tip, and said, "I'm sorry it took me a few minutes to come down but I was listening to the fuckin' President, excuse my language." "What did he say," I said. "He was speaking to West Point and only %20 of the cadets applauded him. Obama is an egoist." "He's a disappointment," I said, but I wanted to agree with the guy more, except he had nothing to say, but his hatred for the President was intense. It may have been completely based on a Right Wing contempt for Democratic Party politics, however conservative, or in the mainstream, but I wanted to agree with him nevertheless, because I don't really like Obama. I know he has his followers, but is he really popular? It doesn't feel like it. I don't know what Obama said that pissed so many people off, but I think it was an ambiguous foreign policy speech, so that no one will name him after it, like the 'Truman Doctrine,' of containment against Communism. I hoped that Obama was the seed of the dream of Bobby Kennedy come to life, and all the more so after the Kennedy family endorsed him, only to learn he was more like Bill Clinton, and makes me think a Hillary Presidency will look no different than Obama's, leading to four more years of stagnation, with the memory of a woman becoming President, instead of a Black Man, but the second historic Presidency in a row, and yet accomplishing little, but letting the Country slide further into decline. It'll be a 'Mary Tyler Moore,' moment, but take the snapshot.