A pragmatic world.

Recently I've been trying to figure out why the world is so f-ed up all the time, when it's obvious what the problems are. Seriously.

I was watching an episode of Charlie Rose recently and they had a discussion on Latin America. The interesting part for me was at the very end of the show when all four panelists talked about the failure of the Drug War.

Charlie Rose

These were not pinko commies talking, they weren't pot heads either. All four men were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. If you don't know who the Council on Foreign Relations are you should probably look them up. Council on Foreign Relations

These guys basically replaced the Trilateral Commission as the world body that tells everyone what to do. Middle of the road players including both Clintons, both Bushes and the current president.

The bottom line is the powers that be are now admitting that the Drug war is a failure. So we should really knock it off. But we're still debating it.

Time to just admit the truth and move on I say. But there are still a lot of folks that get something out of Mexico as a failed state, Afghanistan as a failed state and Latinos, African Americans and other minorities being locked up.

Time for the rest of us to step up and stop the nonsense I say. Time to get pragmatic!

I'm gonna miss Ken Griffey.

When Ken Griffey, Jr. retired earlier this week I realized I was officially old.

I remember a night in 1988 when we took my niece up to Everett, WA to see the then Everett Giants play the Bellingham Mariners featuring an 18 year old phenom by the name of Ken Griffey, Jr. From that point on I referred to my niece as a Griffey baby.

She turned 24 earlier this year and works as manager of a sports club. So, yeah. I'm old.

It's hard to explain what Griffey, Jr. meant to Seattle sports back in the late 80's. The Mariners aren't exactly the best team in baseball these days, but back in then they were one of the worst teams in professional sports.

The Mariners were a replacement team given to the city in 1977 after a successful law suit against Major League Baseball for allowing Milwaukee to steal our original team the Pilots after one season in 1970. That law suit was to be the only big win for the team until Griffey, Jr. came on the scene.

From 1977 to 1991 the Mariners never breached the .500 mark for an entire season.

Add to the fact that the team was dreadful was the stadium where they played. TheKingdome was a large concrete cylinder with all the charm of a roadside culvert with seats.

One of the worst night of my life was a Mariners-Yankees game in the mid-80's. Myself, my brother-in-law and mutual friend went to bat night with five kids in tow.

Back then they used to give the kids real bats and sometime during a late rally the kids discovered that if all 30,000 of them pounded the floor with their bats at the same time the Kingdome would echo so hard that the entire building shook from the noise.

The Mariners came back from a 6-1 deficit that night and won the game on a Tom Paciorek three run homer in the ninth. That blast set off the kids in bat pounding frenzy that caused most of the adults in attendance to work for an entire week.

I later told someone that what we went through that night was akin to jumping into a trash dumpster and having a crowd of people whack it on the side with large logs.

And that was a good night at the Kingdome.

But when Griffey came to the team everything changed. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed as sports fan.

It took two years before the team had it's first winning season. Several more before the city built a new stadium. But almost immediately things got noticeably better for the Seattle baseball club.

Griffey was one of those rare athletes that matched the hype of his arrival. He was that good.

And when his Dad came to the Mariners in 1990 marking the first time a father and son had played on a major league team the city fell in love.

When the team started winning shortly after, the romance was in full bloom,

If you are a true baseball fan and you never got to see Griffey play in his prime you missed something special. Because you really had to see him in person to realize just how good he was.

Whether it the time during his sophomore season when he ignored the cut off man to throw out a runner trying to score from second on a deep single or when he tomahawked a ball several feet out of the strike zone for a home run that kept his record setting home run streak alive in 1993, Griffey was incredible in person.

That doesn't mean there weren't controversies. But they were so minor and so "Griffey" that they seem quaint in this day and age.

One of those controversies was his refusal to sign autographs for adults.

This was during the sports memorabilia hey day. It's hard to believe now but there was a time in the late 80's and early 90's when people were investing in baseball card sets like Glenn Beck invests in gold now.

Griffey got upset when he found out that many of the autographs he was giving out were for memorabilia sellers rather than real fans. That was when he went to his only kids policies.

He would sign all day long for children when they flocked to him, but adults were ignored or waved off. Some people were bugged by that but most of us understood his reasoning.

The team won games and division championships with Griffey in 1995 and 1997, but they were never get able over the hump and win the World Series.

In 1998, the team traded star pitcher Randy Johnson in order to avoid losing him in free agency. The team went 76-85 that year and 79-83 the next despite monster numbers from Griffey, Jr.

That's probably why when he asked to be traded to his hometown after the 1999 season the fans of Seattle accepted it and wished him well. He always did his best for the city of Seattle and the city wanted to return the favor.

They welcomed him back with open arms last year despite diminished skills. He played decently in 2009 but this year he hasn't been able to capture the old magic.

I don't think anyone was surprised that Griffey retired in the middle of the season considering his play this year. He's been less than a shadow of his former self, he has been quite frankly terrible.

It's always hard to see your heroes when they come back down to earth. I remember seeing Nolan Ryan in his last game. It was supposed to be second to last outing but two batters into the game there a loud pop that resounding throughout the stadium.

He faced two more batters after that and walked them both. I don't think came within a foot of the plate on eight straight pitches.

The old cowboy tipped his hat to the crowd as he left. It was then that I realized that Nolan was a very bald, middle aged man with a broken gate.

I also knew he would never pitch again and it made me sad.

That's how I felt when I heard Griffey, Jr. was retiring this last week. He was a class act in era when we seem to have fewer and fewer of them.

By the way, your debate coach is in a little trouble...

That was my Mom said in a phone conversation back in the 80's. To say she was understating his predicament would be to say BP was underestimating the anger of Americans after the gulf oil spill.

My old debate coach was indeed in trouble. Having been removed from his teaching job after one of my classmates returned from California and accused him of sexual impropriety, he turned to being the coke don of Seattle. After that an ugly divorce, a child custody battle and then an armed man attacking on his wife resulting in the death of their young son ended up with my old debate maestro ending up in jail on drug and murder charges.

It's a very convoluted story to tell so I'm just going to leave the link to the story here and let all of you read what happened.

http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1986/8601250648.asp

As I told my Mom at the time, that's more than a little trouble. That's whole sheetpile of trouble.

Recently I started talked on Facebook with one of my old debate buddies from back in the day. (Another Facebook miracle as my new/old friend Laura Nooney replied the other day.) it brought back some of the old memories.

Our debate team was the stuff of sitcoms, actually. We were from a white trash town up north but we consistently ranked at the top of the state rankings.

Most of the other top teams were from the upper middle class suburbs of Seattle (Newport, Woodway and Sammamish High Schools) or the top private schools in the area (Gonzaga, Bellermine, Holy Names) and the sight of a bunch of rugrats from Lynnwood winning trophies and winning championships really frosted their hides. It was real life Good Will Hunting scenario and we rubbed their noses in it every chance we got. We were incredibly obnoxious, cheated whenever we could get away with it, and we were lead by a coach who looked and acted like he was the spawn of Satan.

Seriously, dude looked like Satan. Goatee and all.

Then the came the 80's. John Hughes was the rage in films and cocaine was the rage in the clubs of Seattle. That's when everything fell apart for our coach. As you can see from the above article.

Lynnwood's a lot different now. Our hometown got paved over to install hotels, shopping malls and fast food restaurants. Our high school became a haven for the children of Southeast Asian refugees. (At one point in the mid-90's half of the Cambodian presidential cabinet residing in Lynnwood, WA.)

But at one time, a bunch of hick kids dominated the awards stands at debate tournaments all over the state of Washington. And it was good.

Pictured above. Our beloved old Lynnwood High School as me and my friends knew it and the brand new 100 million dollar Lynnwood HS that opened just last year. Almost makes me want to go back to High School.

Why Progressives always lose.

One of my biggest faults is my continued belief in progressive politics. Since the player on my team always seem well read and educated, I consistently underestimate their ability to be manipulated into believing that a conservative is a progressive.

Many of my friends are currently angry with our president and for what? Barack Obama hasn't disappointed me because I actually listened to what he said in the 2008 campaign . It's the people who didn't listen to what he said that are disappointed.

Now I just watched Move-On Dot Org raise tons of money for conservative candidates in Pennsylvania and Arkansas to oust two older conservative candidates. because they think the new candidates are somehow on the left.

I know the simpleton talking heads keep saying Sestak and Halter are on the left. But that's mostly because they are getting funds from groups like Move On.

Halter is hardly a liberal. He wouldn't have survived in a state like Arkansas if he was. And Joe Sestak is actually to the right of Arlen Specter. Plus, he's a jerk who mistreats his staff to boot. But Move On Dot Org didn't research Sestak and Halter because they were so busy hating on Specter and Blanche Lincoln.

That's pretty typical of Move On, a bunch of Silicon Valley activists types who learned how to raise money on the Internet before anyone else and who have never taken the time to learn anything about politics. Not only that but they're bullies and creeps to boot.

Unfortunately, they're early success has continued to make them a name to be reckoned with despite their lack of any real credentials in politics.

I don't know what will happen in the fall, but from the looks of it the Dems will once again shoot themselves in the foot. With a lot of help from progressive activists.

Thank God for Arizona!

I went to Arizona last week to find out what was really going on over there, instead of the nonsense I was getting from unreliable news sources like NPR and the New York Times. I especially wanted to find out the truth about what law enforcement thought of the new law that was enacted in regards to illegal immigrants that has everyone up in arms.

I ended up talking to an Officer Renfro of the Phoenix PD at a local Circle K and asked him about the law. Renfro said he loved the new law and said he had already used it to detain a couple of "bad guys" and get them out of the country.

He told me he was patrolling his usual beat in Phoenix last week when he came across a couple of young men that he quickly realized had no business in the state of Arizona. "I was thinking to myself, if only some of those liberal commentators were here so they could see what is really going on. The fact is, here were two men who I was sure did not belong in this country and if it wasn't for the new law I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it."

How did Renfro know these two were illegals?

"It was obvious. Liberals will say it's profiling but I prefer to call it good police work. I think I first noticed the pasty skin, but it was mullets that gave them away. As soon as I got a look at them I said, unless they are a couple of carpet munchers they're from Canada. And they most assuredly were not carpetmunchers."

So, what did Officer Renfro do then?

"In the old days I wouldn't have been able to do anything. But with this new law I just went over and started asking some questions. I asked if they were with the Coyotes, eh? You know, the local hockey team. They said they weren't. Then I asked for some ID."

Then what happened, I asked.

" Well, first they say some BS about leaving their wallets at home. How they thought you didn't have to carry ID according to the US Constitution. Yeah, that's right they tried that constitution crap on me. Like I don't know my rights as a police officer. Then the little one says to me, Is there a problem Officer?"

Renfro was starting to get angry all over again as he told the story.

"I says, There sure is, Gord. I don't think you two are Americans. I just called BS on those two cheeseheads. That's when they came clean and admitted they were down from Medicine Hat trying to stay warm for the winter. And I get that. I understand what they were doing. But it's not right for a couple of hosers like that to come down and illegally soak up American sunshine that should be going to actual legal snowbirds from right here in the good ol' US of A.It's just plain wrong. And it's something that we as a nation should abide by. Not is we're going to continue to be a strong country."

I nodded as Renfro explained the situation.

"That's why I am so glad to be here in Arizona where the politicians gave us some tools to take care of the situation. Let's face it, if we wait for that crowd in DC to do something we'll all be saying things like oot and aboot and eh after every word. Heck, we might even end up speaking that gutter French they speak up in Quebec. If that happens even the Frogs will be making fun of us. And I'm not gonna let that happen on my watch."

I told Renfro I was proud of him. Proud of the people of Arizona, too. You see, I, for one, do not want to have to read cereal boxes in two languages any time soon. It's just plain un-American.

The Whitest Fest You Know

Went to Coachella this weekend and had a pretty good time. There was one thing though that bothered me a lot about the direction of the festival. For a "hip" festival it ain't very hip, and it's not open to any really adventurous acts.

In the first years of the Coachella Festival there was definitely an attempt to bring in acts from all of the music spectrum. Over the years DJ and Hip Hop acts like the Chemical Brothers and Black Star played the main stage while more exotic fair like Tricky and the Nortec Collective played in the tents around the grounds.

Now the only acts that one might consider soul or R & B are either British bands featuring mostly white performers or older acts that have long ago been given the "whitey" hipster stamp of approval. Acts like De La Soul and Jay-Z who might have been radical choices when they first came out are hardly adventurous choices in 2010.

Even the couple of older acts that peaked my interest, Sly Stone and Gil Scott-Heron have both long been the kind of artists that old hippies point to proudly in their record or CD collections. Proof that whitey white white folks have a little subversiveness in them. Let's face it. Sly Stone was a headliner at Woodstock and Gil Scott-Heron played on the original Saturday Night Live a generation ago.

Oh, sure their were some DJ's on the bill. But even the dance music was mostly played by white British folks and hippie types. There were no underground hip hop acts, no jazz and other than a couple of hipster Latino acts like Aterciopelados and Calle 13 very little Latin flavor. Considering SoCal is a mostly Latino enclave that was pretty much a big middle finger to the people that live in the area.

Coachella isn't about the people of Southern California. It isn't even about music at this point. It's about making a buck.

I've always said the album that kills a big act isn't the one that sells poorly. It's the album that sells a ton of records and CD's that really stinks. You know the album I'm talking about. That real stinker that you and all your friends purchased and now the Used Record Store won't even take it back. That's the one that kills a career. Not the well regarded follow up record that no one buys after being burned on the last record.

The same is true of big events. No one went to Sundance last year despite some of the best films the festival has shown in years. Why? Because of all the years of crappy films made by a small handful of filmmakers. The years of crappy mumblecore, big actor vanity projects and the political screeds masquerading as documentaries have made Sundance a pale shell of the festival that once defined independent film. Sundance lost the adventurousness that made it a top festival and now people are turning their back on it.

The same thing will happen to Coachella unless they go back to the things that made the festival great.

What happened to popular music in America?

Tonight I was watching a little American Idol to kill time. It was the elimination episode after the usual karaoke performances from the night before. This week the Idol contestants were butchering the catalogue of Lennon-McCartney. It's really hard to take Beatles songs and make them unlistenable, but the Idol crew did their best.

I think the most noticeable thing about most Idol contestants is their overwhelming love for maudlin crooning. For that reason they almost uniformly picked the later Beatles ballads penned by McCartney instead the great pop numbers McCartney and Lennon churned out as a writing duo in the mid-60's. This meant a long and winding parade of the sap that Sir Paul specialized in over the years.

I was pleasantly surprised when the long haired rocker kid did the classic Lennon solo number Jealous Man until I began to worry this might open the door for another contestant to choose a later McCartney number like Ebony and Ivory.

To make a long story short, I started getting bored watching the show tonight and I started You Tube spelunking to kill time. Going to my front page I saw that a whole lot of old Smith's videos had been queued up for me because I had watched Morrissey's Every Day Is Like Sunday the other day.

Wow, they were a great band. I mean, really f-ing great. I watched them play early small shows on German TV and later big shows in front of tens of thousands in Madrid. Johnny Marr playing that great guitar and Morrissey doing his odd sensual geek boy dance while singing the most disarming, funny and heartbreaking lyrics.

It was about the time I was watching the lads from Manchester playing There's a Light That Never Goes Out with the audience singing so loud to almost couldn't hear Morrissey singing that I looked up and saw the Ryan Seacrest intro-ing current pop star Rihanna, She was singing her newest single Rockstar 101.

Good lord, what dreck. She comes out in a what appeared to be somewhere between a bondage outfit and a wetsuit. Then she proceeded to sing about being a rock star with lame keyboard sounds playing behind her in the background. I'm not sure what you call the kind of music the band was playing but it most certainly didn't rock.

Near the end of the song someone brought her a guitar to put on and she played a couple of chords while striking her best "Rockstar" pose. I'm not sure who she was trying to imitate but the guys in Zeppelin don't have to worry about copyright infringement. The bottom line is Rihanna may be a step up from the Idol contestants but she doesn't have the kind of unbridled energy that a great performer should have.

The fact that she is considered a star right now says a lot about the current pop landscape.

It's not that there isn't great music out there. There is.

And a lot of it is coming from the US. It's just not being promoted on TV right now in this country.

Over in Europe there are still a lot of great music shows and they broadcast live from all the big festivals. When I meet young people from Holland, France, Spain and Britain. In Europe American bands like MGMT, TV On The Radio, the Black Keys and Deerhunter play in front of large crowds in the thousands at the big festivals.

Festivals here in the US like Coachella, Bonneroo and Austin City Limits also draw large crowds. But nothing like the festivals in Europe. And these bands are almost never on TV with the rare exception of an occasional one off on Letterman or Leno.

Americans are force fed the likes of this Idol cast and Disney's latest cupie doll pop tarts like Miley Cyrus or Demi Lovato while our best bands are playing overseas.

It's sad state of affairs if you ask me.