Seth Kupchick's Blog: Bet on the Beaten, page 3

I don't believe in rewrites!

Disregarding much of what I wrote in the last blog, let me say that I don't believe a rewrite ever makes a book better, and be rewrite I mean rewrite. If you are fortunate enough to have written a piece that some of your friends have liked and that you can read over years later and mostly enjoy then you are 95% done with your manuscript, and should light one up, take off your shoes, and hire a copy editor to clean it up. To me, rewrites have been one of the greatest wastes of time ever except that they test the original manuscript and make me totally sure of my success or failure, but it's a test that I wouldn't recommend and often wonder why I bother doing it at all, save for some major insecurities.

My "childhood story" has been done for about 9 years now and yet I've tried radically changing it a couple of times and nothing has come of this, or so little it boggles the imagination. I'll admit that every unfinished manuscript could use a detail or two, not to mention one more line of great dialogue, but this is not a rewrite, but rather a touch up job, or a rewrite in the lightest way imaginable. I did add a couple of paragraphs in the newest version of my childhood story but I'd wanted to add those for a good 8 years so it's not like this was a revelation to me.

The reason I think rewrites are a waste of time is that if you have a story to tell and really attack it with precision then there is no way you are ever going to do better.

Rewrites

Writing was a very painful experience up until my mid-20's when I decided to stop working over a line of poetry for weeks straight to no avail. I mostly believed in the madness of my mind, and was spurred on by the Beat notion of "first thought, best thought." I fantasized about writing a whole book on LSD one day in Golden Gate Park, and thought if I hit the exact right day in the bull's eye that this was possible. I'm not even sure that I expected this book I'd write to be any good because it had to be out of sheer passion.

I wrote three to five novels in my twenties depending on your point of view, and all of them were unreadable. The first one used dash marks instead of punctuation, and while the next few strove for punctuation, my grammar was so bad that to say they need a copy editor would be kind. I would edit these books but not in the same painstaking way that I used to go about my poetry with, and kept most of the lines intact. I guess I tried shaping the manuscript some with paragraph breaks, and grammatical corrections, but I'm not sure I'd call it rewriting as much as tinkering.

My first success as an author, "If So Carried by the Wind," was written in one spurt and basically typed up straight from the notebooks. Like with my other manuscripts, I edited it for shape, but there was no rewrite, or not what I'd consider one. I tried adding one paragraph of description that was pointless and that's all I remember. I shuffled paragraphs, and may have changed a line or two of dialogue, but there really wasn't a rewrite, or shouldn't have been one. The truth is I massively rewrote it right after Casey, my mentor, and the antagonist of the book, told me it needed some work. I gutted the prose and the tone to what Stan Rice referred to as a "New York Times description of a book, but not the book itself." I did this for a lot of bad reasons, but the primary one was I'd never done a rewrite before, or been asked to, and didn't know what to do.

I don't think a rewrite ever does anything more than build on an already successful start with a manuscript. It serves the original, rather than the other way around, like a storyteller filling in a story that has real feeling. This is sometimes hard for writers because getting in the mood of the original story written in a different mood can be hard to access and then the prose sounds all fucked up.

I'm working on my first real rewrite right now, and it has gone through three mutations: 1) I wrote the original in the fall of 2008, and got some good reviews. 2) I gutted this in 2014 and basically did to it what I did to "If So Carried by the Wind," and the only good that came out of this was that it lead me back to the original. 3) I rewrote it in the summer of 2016 in less than two months, and that is basically the version I am going with now.

So, what to say about my most successful rewrite? For starters, I wrote it almost eight years after the original, so there was plenty of distance and perspective, not that I recommend this, but the manuscript had sat like a fine wine. Secondly, I had a good reread of it in the late summer before I had committed to doing a rewrite and was happy enough with it, but something in me thought I should give it one more crack. I was trying to make it as good as I could for my collaborator, an old friend, so that in some ways I was writing the rewrite for him and this may be the magic ingredient that made it better, partly because he wasn't asking me to do this, so I was sharing our childhood out of love. Before hitting the manuscript, I made a structural breakthrough by shortening every paragraph of the original, or breaking it in half, and freeing up space for more stories. I told myself that I was only going to rewrite when I was inspired and finished it in a about a month and a half, before sending it to Josh.

Writing is rewriting is a cliche and yet one that haunts all writers for everything is tinkered with if not rewritten and that's implied. My cautionary tale for all writers is that if you have written a piece worthy of a rewrite it means that you have really broken the ice and got something pure down on the page, a miracle, and that this should be remembered. We can all be better in our art and life, but sometimes art only allows you to venture so far and to accept the imperfections with the gems.

The Breakfast Club at 49

I first saw the Breakfast Club when it came out at the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall with my friend Sean Barth, and we stood in line after most of the shops had closed on the top floor to see it at the same theater where Mark Rattner from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was a ticket taker. I've seen it a lot of times since then and I don't think have ever been let down by it so in some ways it is one of my favorite movies and I'm sure would show up on a top fifty list I did, but in another mood maybe it would be in the top ten. Really, I don't know how such lists are made but if one were to define our generation it might be our seminal movie, like the "Graduate" was for the '60's.

I took a flight from Heathrow Airport to Seattle today, a long one, and watched three movies, and the Breakfast Club was the last of them. The first was "Rough Night," the second was "Maudie," a near masterpiece with Sally Hawkin and Ethan Hawke, and then the movie screen stopped working for a good two hours. Miraculously, it came back on for one last viewing before we landed and I chose the "Breakfast Club." I was really surprised they had it, actually, and knew that coming at the end of a triple feature it could change me, and it did. I also knew it was my time to see it again with my mind wiped clean.

I don't really want to go too critical on the movie, though I realize it is one of those touchstones that almost deserves this kind of analysis, so instead of ripping apart the parts I didn't like, a horrible tendency of our generation, I'll try to objectively say what struck me. I forgot how much Bender (Judd Nelson) all but dictates the movie for the first two acts, so in some ways the whole project hinges on his performance, and this is emphasized at the end with the last shot of him on the football field raising his hands in victory. I was also really amazed by Molly Ringwald's performance in the third act as Claire, and think this must be some of the best acting she's ever done. She really reaches an emotional pitch at the end, or the last 15 minutes, that is matched by Ally Sheedy, but something about Ringwald's performance touched me even more. On the negative side, I think Anthony Michael Hall turned in a so-so performance, and it surprised me to think this since I remember thinking he was great in it. "The Breakfast Club" is such a great movie that I don't really think there is a weak link in the chain, but if there is it may be Anthony Michael Hall as the geek, or the brain.

The script by John Hughes is great and I'm sure it reads this way, though the cast elevated it to a whole other realm that words on a page can only glimmer. I think the bravery of the "Breakfast Club" is that Hughes set out to give our generation a great play on the level of catharsis and emotion of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and doing this for teenagers was an audacious conceit that I can't think of being duplicated. It's true that the "Breakfast Club" is definitely a movie as opposed to a play, and there are some '80's dance sequence scenes that could be lambasted, but they have a tasteless class that the art of the film manages to balance. At the same time, the "Breakfast Club" liberated so many of us because it had SO much more dialogue than most movies made that it really stood out. Usually, movies like this get dialogue heavy, and one should always remember the word SCREEN in screenplay, but the "Breakfast Club" is one of those rare cinematic dramas that exists more on screen than in the theater, and yet mimics theater. I'm sure these words didn't pop into my head when I first saw it in the Galleria but it really was like seeing something you never saw before.

It's sometimes weird to me that the "Breakfast Club" was written by a baby boomer and it makes me think John Hughes was one of those rare specimens that could relate to younger people even when he was older, but wasn't one of them. I really think his script, as good as it was, could've fallen flat in the hands of a different cast, but Hughes's wisdom and structure in the script was given weight by the newness of the cast that clearly made his words on paper come to life, and the Brat Pack was never more alive. In a personal way, it was weird seeing my generation so well articulated, but the movie is still so close to me, that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to divorce it from my own experiences. I remember seeing "Risky Business" around the same time, another great movie that the critics were calling the "Graduate" for my generation, and though I came to love the movie dearly, I remember thinking after I saw it that it was no "Graduate," but what could ever be?

I'm not sure what the critics thought about the "Breakfast Club" but I'm sure they didn't like it. Hughes wasn't making it for them, and there was probably something too ostensibly amateurish about it for them to consider as high art, with its nod to '80's teen movies popping up everywhere, and yet.... I have no real complaints about it. It was a fearless movie that dared to be by saying the obvious in a straightforward and intelligent manner that made one think they never heard it before, and this is never easy. I really though I understood Claire better than I ever had before in this viewing when she said that being popular had its own pressures and that she would never admit to seeing any of the "Breakfast Club" in the halls of school. Clearly, this makes her sound like a bitch and yet in this truth telling movie of catharsis she is telling the truth like Judd Nelson cajoles them to in the beginning, and for the first time I got her point. The Brain, the Criminal, and the Basket Case, are on the outside of society, and therefore looking in, but Claire (the prom queen) and the jock (Estevez) are on the inside looking out and therefore holding up society. There is a lot of pressure in holding up society, as much as in tearing it down, and this didn't make sense to me at the time.

The ending is also mysterious. I don't think any of us are lead to believe that the temporary dalliances between the Jock and the Basket Case, or the Prom Queen and the Criminal, are meant to go anywhere, and yet the movie ends so ambiguously that one never knows. I guess Hughes was trying to make a feel good ending out of a tragedy where everyone's heart was ripped out, but why not rip it out some more and show a momentary lapse of love by people who'd otherwise never know each other, save for one magical day when the stars aligned during detention.

astrology continuum

I've studied Hellenistic Astrology for a long time via Robert Schmidt who I met once, but never studied under officially. That said, it's hard to study what he now refers to as Greek astrology without going through him so he is my main teacher. Like most everyone in the U.S., I started out my studies combing through modern astrological books and while this clearly grew out of older astrology it became something completely different based on character study. I remember reading somewhere that Hamlet was the first "psychological" character, because the play was concerned with unearthing his internal psyche and that would be modern astrology.

There is something valuable about knowing someone's internal state as opposed to what happens to them narratively. We're all psychological characters and the closer you get to someone the more you see this in them and modern astrology is great for that, seeing the internal state of a person, but there isn't a lot of narrative to one's internal state, or at least not in the traditional sense. You see their inner workings and of course these are created from their life experiences to a degree, but one's temperament is also free of what happens to them in the real world, and exists independently of narrative. I mean something happens to everyone and that doesn't change who we are, how we got here, or why we exist. It's us in much the same way our hair color defines us, but it's not much linked to whether we become larger than life figures, or lead simple lives, and why so many people debunk modern astrology. I mean how can a President and a Baker both have their Sun and Mercury in Cancer, and lead such different lives? Modern astrology doesn't bother itself much with this question and this way tried to free us of fate.

I'm not sure Greek astrology, or any ancient form, was much concerned with one's internal state, or what it was like working with them and seeing how they work everyday. Maybe ancient astrologers considered the elements of the signs to gauge someone's character, but it really wasn't the focus as far as I understand, and why people have run from this form of astrology screaming. I mean who wants to know their narrative before they've lived it, especially since the most I can do with ancient astrology is give a framework to the narrative, not a day by day account. Obscurity or eminence may be gleaned but past this it's hard for me to know what to say to someone whose chart I'm reading, though a better Greek astrologer might have a greater grasp of this.

So, I now see astrology as both narrative and internal psychology. The internal psychology part doesn't in the least grant the life a narrative, but rather a kind of flow chart of what occupations, loves, and friends, would suit the native better than others.... not so much a narrative but a checklist. Greek astrology will give a narrative or an overview of the life, but I'm not sure how to incorporate internal psychology into the read. I'd say that Greek astrology, or looking at life as a narrative, is a public way of viewing a chart rather than a private one, and therefore the signs at play in the horoscope would be how the native is seen publicly as opposed to internally, where a whole different landscape exists.

So, what is the public self vs. the internal self. This is a tough question to answer, and has to do with intimacy. Only people who know someone well can claim to know or at least intuit another's private self, and this is why intimacy is so hard and rare. Very few people get this glimpse into us, and even those we're close to for years sometimes don't see this, because we're usually more interested in the public image of a person.... What do you do? Where do you live? How do you survive?.... and few try to dive into the endless sea of the personal, or what's hidden beneath the surface of an individual. To link this idea to literature, I'd say those works where we really feel like we get to know the characters are psychological novels and allow us an internal view of someone's life, though of course this is contained within the framework of a narrative. A more superficial novel not so much concerned with character development would be more akin to pure narrative, and more linked to an ancient astrological view of looking at a life. The two blended make a complete work of art.

A public view of life is linked to the Moon, since the Moon represents the public, and a more personality based view of life is based on the Sun, since the Sun represents our individuality. Modern astrology is Sun sign based, and I'd say that Greek astrology, or most ancient forms is more Moon based, looking at our public impression on the world, or reflection, rather than the pure light that shines. Lord knows, we're only going to be remembered by the imprint we made here and that is a lunar way of looking at life, whereas our solar self just wants to shine.

Ascendant = How others see us.

Planetary Placement = Who we are.

Lot of Fortune = How we're remembered.

The Mariners: the third and final act

I haven't blogged much about baseball this year, but there were a few memorable ones (to me). The season has basically been over since late August, but the knife has really been put into the vampire's heart this September, and no one will remember this season as anything but disappointing. So, to save face, and explain three act structure not only in baseball, but literature and life, I'm going to write this down.

Act 1: The Mariner's had a terrible opening act, so bad in fact it was all I could do not to write them off in mid April. The first death blow was when they lost a game to the Angels with a 7 run lead going into the 9th inning, and were nearly no hit at home on a night not far from this. There were some encouraging signs in the first act, some young outfielders or utility men who had some life in them, but really it was a bust. I wanted to write a blog about this but I wasn't so into blogging this year and furthermore the first act had just begun but some movies are so bad you know they are over in the first few minuts and this was one of them.

In late May, I finally got out my poison pen and wrote the season off in a blog somewhere in this never ending back log of writing that may or may not be read one day depending on how significant or not I become as a writer, but it's there. I thought the Mariners were done in late May, or the end of the first act of the neverending baseball season that tries the patience of prognosticators and pundits. As a side note, baseball is probably the only major sport in America where the announcers can suspend disbelief well into September for a medoicre team, but it didn't used to be this way, and that brings up the wild card. Now all it takes is a .500 record to stay in contention and this makes predicting the postseason hard given that there are 162 games and anything can happen.

Act 2: Some good things happened to the M's in June, the beginning of the second act, and this was when I wrote what I now consider an unfortunate blog post that thankfully got only 30 views or so, but I'll explain my thinking one more time. By June, the beginning of the second act and the "conflict" of the season (the first act is the conceit) the Mariners started turning things around. I know that most teams have a little bit of a winning streak somewhere amidst those 162 games, or a moment when it looks as though they can turn things around, but this one for the M's felt real, and I'm not the only one thought so. In fact, the reality was so thick that what we all saw in June is basically the framework for what the fans and prognosticators are hoping for next season.

For the first time in many a moon cycle, the Mariners finally had a solid line up that could hit. They had an outfield for the first time in a long time that felt like more than some utility players filling in a position, not to mention a really good short stop in Juan Segura. They also had a good catcher, finally, when Mike Zunino seemed to turn things around after a promising but rocky two seasons, and it wasn't hard to imagine that with a little pitching this team could go far. They really had confidence and made the first act, or the conceit seem far behind them. So, what happened?

Well, injuries plauged the Mariners all season so in some ways they were really brought down before the season even began when Drew Smyley (?) one of their starting five went down for the season before he threw one pitch. But that left James Paxton and King Felix, but alas they went down too in the first act, and the Mariners were threadbare. But... they came back for the second act and it was my hope along with everyone's in the organization that Paxton and Felix would stay healthy for the rest of the season and perform well. Paxton superseded expectations at this point in the season and had a really strong month or two where he seemed to be living up to his potential in spades, but Felix.... well, he's beginning the decline of his career, and he wasn't as consistent as I was hoping, but he wasn't expected to be great only good. Or rather good most of the time and great when they needed him.

I didn't follow baseball as strongly as I do most seasons but by late August Paxton and Felix were out of the starting rotation again and this put a kibosh on the season. The night James Paxton went out a second time against the Angels was a death knell.

Act 3 (the resolution) - Like a bad movie or a book most of the fans wrote this one off by September including me and that's really saying something given the nature of the wild card. Sure, the announcers would say how the M's were only 3 out of the second wild card spot, but didn't mention that so were five other clubs, and the whole month felt like a failure to any educated fan. The conceit, the pitching staff beleaguered by injuries, proved the downfall, and the M's weren't making up for games they lost in April. They were out by the second act, unable to get through the heart of the season intact, like a soldier dead on the battlefield.

Political Outsider

I've always struggled between being an artist and/or a political activist, and for the most part the artist has won, but that's not to say the activist isn't raging within like a cold sore beneath the surface. I also fancy myself as someone who knows a good amount of 20th century American political history, so I'm able to hold my own in these conversations.

Right off the bat, I think a lot of people confuse politics with policy and this makes sense, since the word politics is often used to describe policy, and vice versa. To make it more confusing, our two party system tries to account for the policy differences by having different positions on the major policy issues of the day, but I'm afraid that's not very useful anymore, nor has it been for most of my life, or those of my generation (Gen X). It's to safe to say that in the '90's the Democratic Party adopted many of the Republican Party's policy positions in order to win elections because the Republicans were more popular, and since then everything has blurred. In essence, we're really living in a one party Country where the two parties represent only the slightest substantive policy differences.

The biggest difference between the Parties circa 2017 is politics and that is a confusing and slippery word that I've done my best to understand the last 40 years and that still eludes me at times. In many ways, politics is not so different than manners and it's how you introduce yourself and your ideas to the general populace, so that it's largely a rhetorical word. I've read that political science used to be called the political arts, and this actually makes more sense for in many ways a politician is a lot like an actor putting forth a personality that represents ideas. Sure, the Party the politician belongs to is supposed to substantiate his/her policy positions, but since the positions are relatively similar at this point, they don't go that far in defining anything.

In this toxic climate, the only refuge the people have is to differentiate themselves on semantic grounds, and this has become fraught. In my opinion, the Democratic Party has done more to screw up semantics than the Republican Party could've ever dreamed of with its politically correct language that assaulted the public in the late '80's and goes on to this day. It was a brilliant move by the centrist corporate Democrats to deflect the people from thinking about how they were no longer the Party of the working class but the corporate elite. Get everyone to fight over the word woman, or girl, or flight attendant, or server, or African American, or International District, to make them feel like they were truly enlightened while robbing everyone blind. Call me crazy, but the idea behind inclusion wasn't merely symbolic, but that is what it has become and it now defines the electoral process. Inclusion was supposed to mean an equal shot at the American Dream but the pro corporate/pro bank agenda of the Democratic Party has nothing to do with leveling the economic playing field and giving everyone a fair shot at success.

Please don't get me wrong, the Republicans practice their own form of linguistic demonization that have muddied the political waters and make any sane conversation impossible and it starts with the word "liberal." In the '80's, liberal became a dirty word and every Democratic politician seeking election ran from it like the plague, but in essence it really does define a certain kind of Democrat that generally hearkens back to the policy ideas of F.D.R. while embracing the civil rights ideas that the Kennedy's embodied (I'd include King and X but they didn't run for office). Policy wise this wing of the Democratic Party now represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren barely exists anymore (only a couple of other politicians in D.C. come to mind with their "liberal" credentials), and yet EVERY Democrat in the alt-right world is a liberal. To say this obfuscates a sane conversation on the make up of the political parties would be the understatement of the century, but there you have it. To Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, or anyone on Fox news, if you are not a Republican you are a liberal even if you are living in a 5 million dollar mansion and have all of your money invested in Wall St., drive a Rolls Royce, have a Mexican maid, and probably haven't talked to a "minority" in years.

The word Republican Lite has come to define the Democratic Party to me and it means that they are essentially a pro Wall St., pro Military intervention Party. Their take on taxation really isn't so different than the Republicans, and to call them progressive on social issues sounds funny to me since there really isn't a leader among them on this. They certainly don't believe very much in democracy making this investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election nothing less than absurd, because they couldn't be bothered to touch the issue even though George W. Bush (a Republican) all but stole two elections from them. Truly, I don't know what this Party represents anymore save piecemeal legislation crafted to appease certain social groups that they hope will vote for them, and this is where the conversation gets a little confusing circa 2017. This political strategy was never offered as anything but a pragmatic solution to an intransigent Republican Party, and the base was promised that when the political winds shifted the strategy would change. Well, the winds did shift in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected as the change candidate, defeating Hillary Clinton in the primary, and the Party stayed the same. Then, the winds shifted some more in 2016 when Trump and Sanders stole the show as outsider candidates... Bernie with a well earned socialist policy stance, and Trump with some hodgepodge Tea Party ideas... and still the Democratic Party is not listening.

Mao famously said that "a revolution is not a dinner party," but it clearly has become that to the liberal elite, and they have no desire to change anything, save a reservation to a newer hipper restaurant they heard about the day before. Semantics aside, we're fucked.


*my next piece will be on fake news, a topic I find endlessly fascinating.


low taxes on the rich kind of party though not quite as extreme on the issues as their friends across the aisle. It also means they are "progressive" on social issues like "abortion,"

Trump. the scentless apprentice

Trump was a stealth candidate with a big mouth who went outside of conventional rhetoric and excited the masses to no end, and that would include the rank and file Democrats. Personally, I didn't think he had a chance to win and in a legitimate political system that offered its base real candidates he wouldn't have stood a chance, but both Parties fielded such weak front runners in 2016 that he managed to rise from the rubble and actually win the nomination. In terms of policy, Trump is really no different than most Democrats or Republicans of the era, but stylistically he is light years different from them, and this is freaking everyone out, myself included. We've never had a President who tweets incessantly and talks about how fake the news is in such a blatant way. Sure, every Republican claims the media is out to get him, but Trump has taken it to a new level, and like most things that come out of this pathological liar's mouth there is a grain of truth to it and that's what makes this a unique Presidency, and one worth studying if we don't all die in a nuclear war first!

The mainstream media has been "fake" for most of my life and my words for this in the '90's was that we were living through an age of disinformation, so that the goal of the news was to distract and divert. I realize this view point was coming from a time when the news was relatively good in America, but Vietnam taught that you can't show the truth and keep the people on your side, so the media got imbedded in corporate America and became a spokesman for Wall St., the War Industry, etc., and on this Trump is right, except that he likes Wall St., the War Industry, etc. What makes him unique (?) is that he's the first serious political candidate I can think of who wholeheartedly believes in conspiratorial thinking, and isn't afraid to voice it. I realize a lot of this thinking comes from what they call the "alt right" and some of it makes sense, while some of it doesn't, but regardless no President has had the balls, insanity, stupidity, or whatever you want to call it, to come out and take the Country into his diabolical thought process. Nixon came close, I think, but technology wasn't as advanced and on some rudimentary level he was a Party man but Trump isn't. He's not a Republican, a Democrat, or even a politician until the last couple of years, and could give a fuck about his Party.

I don't really know what to say about Trump except that he is the byproduct of a political system that has completely broken down so that to blame him specifically for the shape we're in is absurd. We're a celebrity obsessed culture where everyone thinks they are one heartbeat away from either being a millionaire, or famous, or both, and Trump is the biggest TV fan we've probably ever had as President, and though he was a rich man's son he embodies the same hopes and fears of a celebrity obsessed culture, making him the ultimate Boomer President.

Hillary fuckin' Clinton

Last night, I read that Hillary was blaming Bernie Sanders for the Trump Presidency. I understand that no front runner in a primary wants a serious challenger, and there are some political seasons where none appears, or if they do they are swatted down so quickly that it doesn't matter, but no politician can go into a fair race thinking this is going to happen to them. A lot of people want to be President, or as Tears for Fears sang "Everybody Wants To Rule the World," and surely you've got to prepare for serious competition. Where Hillary, and the entire liberal elite got it all wrong is that they assumed Bill Clinton's "third way" (republican lite) would rule the Party for their lifetime and since that's all the baby boomers seem to care about that would be enough, but they got it all the wrong and now the Country is flat on its feet unable to react to all of the changes going on around us.

I see Hillary's accusation to the Bernie supporters as a form of emotional blackmail against the millions of people like me who want to see radical change in the political system. The problem with Gen X is that we were living off the wave of the WW II era and were taught that the real way to reform the Country would be to do it through the political parties, that they were the intestinal tract that we had to go through, and that they were malleable. I can't speak as much for the Republicans since I haven't studied them quite as much, but this idea so nascent in a Gen X'er was all but put to death in the '80's when the Democratic Party rewrote the rules their primaries and made it all but a certainty that the conservative wing of their party would inevitably be nominated for President. I actually feel like an idiot for thinking that the system could change through the primary system all these years, but politics has as much to do with how we're inculcated as kids.

To all of my FB friends and everyone who thinks I'm the asshole here, all I can say is fuck you too. I fell for the hope in the W. years that the Democratic Party could offer up some form of resistance, but alas they didn't, and this was a big disappoint to me. I'm not sure how I thought they'd do this since the Party was so sold out but W's insanity gave them all a lot of cover to go with the political winds (Iraq War, total surveillance, etc.) and play the victim. I played this card too for awhile, and thought that desperate times called for desperate measures and that someone would rise up from this cadaverous Party and do something to save the Nation. The only legislative achievement during those years that comes to mind is that Pelosi's House did stop W. from gutting social security, but truthfully if W's plan had gone further the Republican base may have risen up against this and realized that they were going to lose a lot of money, since most of the social programs they hate through institutionalized Party affiliation help them more than most. (Look at how their rank and file came out against gutting Obamacare this year).

To call the Democratic Party smoke and mirrors at this point would be kind. They have absolutely no moral vision for the society at all, just none. They are a pro Wall St. rich man Party much like the Bush era Republicans, or Trump, or who the rank and file Republicans call RINO's (Republican in name only). They have no more interest in defending the Constitution as Trump, and while they throw some red meat to their base it's more like ground beef that crumbles before it even reaches your mouth. Their rhetoric is nicer than the Republican Party and this is something, but rhetoric is also the Devil's tool, and essentially what Hillary Clinton is hiding behind when she say's Bernie is the reason for all the anger I see on FB, Bernie fuckin' Sanders. This assumes that somehow the Democratic Party is the clear choice in a general election but if that was true we'd all be seeing heroes emerging from the Party with a real voice, vision, and strength, in the face of Trump, the dreaded Orange Man, but we see nothing. There is no Democratic Party resistance, nor will there ever be and resistance will only transpire if those inspired folks within the Party start their own Party and leave this rotting carcass that all but ended with the Carter Presidency and the WW II generation behind.

I understand political pragmatism and there are times you have to tow the party line because the political winds aren't with you and this was the rationalization to the Clinton Presidency, and all but held up until Obama overturned Hillary's coronation in 2008 and people wanted change, but Obama was a stealth candidate with a slim voting record (only outdone by Trump) and he was much of the same. Hillary's argument calls for this pragmatism but assumes it's more than pragmatism but rather the way things are and that we're all happy with this like everyone is a rich boomer with a second house in the Hampton's.

The wild card in baseball

I'm Gen X and there was no wild card in baseball when I grew up. The wild card I remember was in football and it was intended to honor the team that was the best of the division losers in a conference, so that a team that put in an exceptional year but didn't win the division would be given a chance at the playoffs. Growing up, that was the Raiders to me, or the Patriots in the AFC East, or the Bengals in the AFC Central, all very good teams, but due to circumstance in a division with the best of an era.

The baseball wild card doesn't emulate this at all, and what's worse is that the whole idea of a wild card is more sacrilege in baseball than any sport. Growing up, football was new fangled, but baseball was time tested. All the new sports could have wild cards and fancy things like that, but baseball was tried and true. Hell, the Cubs still played all their games in daylight, and the tradition of bygone eras was maintained.

I accept that baseball had to go the way of all the other major sports and institute a wild card, but it in no way reflects the next best team that everyone is missing, like the wild card was intended to. I never thought of it this way before, but in some ways the wild card was initially intended to be akin to a dark horse candidate that puts everything on the line to win despite its outsider status, and yet is special for trying. The wild card now doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like a contest for mediocrity and while it's possible that a club out of a group of mediocrities could be hitting its stride in September, it's just as likely they'll be forgotten like refuse on the shore.

The argument made for the wild card is that it's good for fans with .500% ball clubs because it gives them something to root for in Augusts and September, that they weren't allowed to do for my generation. The purist in me misses the discipline, but even more than this I've come to resent what Rick Rizzs, the great Mariner announcer, has come to refer to as a "new division," though I haven't heard him go there this year, but he's right. Essentially, five or six clubs who can't win their division will be clumped for two wild card positions, and in the case of Seattle they never win (maybe this year will be different). I admit it creates post season excitement here, but at what cost?

My argument against the wild card is that the purist in me is disgusted that a bunch of .500% teams crumple together in a division akin to the 4th dimension to compete for playoff contention. It's old fashioned, but to me a .500% team just shouldn't have this distinction, even if they are able to make a run at the end, which is rare. Rick Rizzs taught me the idea that the wild card is a division but he seems to be holding off on that this year (he also used to call a young star reliever "Fast Eddie" after the Paul Newman character in "The Hustler"" but now he's changed it to "sweet" Eddie Diaz, or something stupid like that, and the way he emphasizes it makes me know that someone got to him) The wild card is for losers, and for losers it shall remain. If a club gets hot in September and blazes through October like an Indian Summer more power to them, but this is the exception to the norm. For the most part, the wild card clubs are also rans and an anathema to the excellence baseball used to promote.

*I did a little arithmetic tonight and in the American League, I'd argue there are 8 teams in contention for the Wild Card, with the Yankees on top for the first spot by a couple of games, and I think they'll stay there. That leaves only 4 teams in the entire American League essentially out of the hunt, 4 out of 11 teams, meaning there is almost a 0.66% chance your club will be battling for the second wild card spot in late August.... unbelievable! I guess this is why only 15,000 showed up in Camden Yards tonight to watch the M's vs. the O's, two of the clubs stuck in the middle of this unholy division.

Truthfully, it would be better to have one wild card and everyone chasing the Bronx Bombers. It would put the Mariners and Orioles about 4 games out and that's better than they should be positioned. Enough of this two wild card one sudden death game as if the two teams tied in the division bullshit!

The Mariners 2nd act rethought

I was wrong about the Mariners and I apologized. They are an excellent baseball team with so many sound fundamentals they are one step away from being in the playoffs and winning the world series. They were riddled with injuries in the 1st act of the season, not to mention years of failure, and weren't up to snuff, but there were seeds of the greatness they've become. This is the best Mariner's line up I've seen in at least ten years, and there's really not a rummy out there on the field. The pitching is still suspect, but the line up is so good, that they are able to win ball games they would've been out of years ago.

My biggest error as a baseball statistician was that I was judging the Mariners season before the 1st act officially ended, and jumped the gun. This was a mistake but one I'm going to remember and am inclined to say that no season can be really judged until you've hit the end of June and the 2nd act of the never ending season is at least a 1/3 of the way through, because there are just too many games. The beauty to this club is that all these young unknown players are all so hot together that you know they'll never forget this season, or so it feels right now. I know baseball is a game of streaks and this blazing June will probably settle down sometime by September, but for the most part these guys are locked in for the season and the stars have aligned.

As a fan, it's strange to be rooting for a good baseball club. In the past, a few Mariner wins would be knocked out so quickly by a few bad series that it was impossible to remember there was ever a spark of hope. If Felix can regain his game, that will only bolster this fledgling staff and finally the M's will make it to October, and the King can strut his stuff.