On storytelling and the Voltron Principle

I haven't posted anything in a while and this is just to quiet the voices in my head. As Pascal wrote, 'I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time'.

Way back, before technology and the invention of on demand anything. Back when Walkmans were de rigueur and Eddie Murphy was actually funny, Voltron had a transitory moment in the sun.

To those uninitiated, the premise centered on a group of five pilots, commanding five robot lions, charged with protecting the planet Arus. King Zarkon, the rapscallion he was, albeit with a seemingly sempiternal fiscal basin and zonked board of directors, would send his most recent budgetary boondoggle to begin a brouhaha on the planet and the band of five would pilot their feline contrivance to save the day in the final four minutes of the episode.

The drama evolved from their preternatural disremembering of previous errors in judgement. This little joy luck club would jump into their phallic pellets and individually charge off to do battle, invariably getting their ass handed to them. With no time left in the episode and less for the doomed planet, one of these mental midgets would conceptualize the notion of mating the five lions into Voltron, the Defender of the Universe (a feature that comes standard with the unit). Once assembled, they would draw their mighty sword and cut the bad robot up in time for commercial.

Now why the hell wouldn't they just join up from the beginning and make it back to the hangar in time for happy hour?

Racing has a similar dysfunction but it lacks the Voltron option.

No story arc exists. No structure informs the neophyte, who runs in what division and what a win in any race means in the grand scheme. I'm a fan and I don't get the progression of the season, because there is none. How am I supposed to explain it to my friends who think the Kentucky Derby is the championship?

This sop to breeders and stud fees has to stop. Graded races have to mean something again and until their numbers significantly decrease, no credible argument can be made by industry types that they have the best interests of the sport and the breed at heart.

The story leading to the Kentucky Derby has the fundamentals in place (I think the KD should be the first 3yo GI of the season but that is a fight for another day.) Why does everyone just forget the template after the Belmont?

If there are two seasons to the year, the Triple Crown and then the BC, why not develop a narrative? A three act play in six parts? Why is there no gauntlet for older horses? Why is the Claiming Crown treated like the red headed step-child? The Breeders' Cup defines nothing; the BCS is a fustercluck of Leviathan proportions, I'll grant you, but at least they crown a champion at the end of the day.

F1 has a structure similar to racing in that the tracks are not owned by the league and races are held at one track at a time. The Bahrain GP is not run the same day as Monaco...that would be stupid. It would dilute the talent pool and fans would end up changing the channel-if they could find it. At the end of the season-and there is an end-the team (among other categories) with the most points wins.

Points are objective. No ambiguity exists when comparing numbers and if the funding of this sport relies so heavily on figures and payouts, where does the disconnect lie when the horses run?

Return to the system a sense of exclusivity, among the races. If maidens can run in GI races and horses eligible for N2l can win them, what the hell are we expecting for the future of this game? Grade I races, in theory, exhibit the best that horse racing has to offer. How asinine does that argument sound when Da'Tara is counted among the Belmont winners?

There should be qualifying criteria and damn few ways of meeting them. Off the top of my head:

• GIII eligible horses must have won N3X or listed stakes.
• GII won or placed in GIII
• GI won or placed in GII
• Reduce meet lengths-No track needs to run for over 45 days
• Cut back racing days to Fri-Sun (when your customers are actually off)
• Have the NTRA Alliance actually serve a purpose by developing a tiered track system based on average daily purse. (This separates the lower level claiming tracks from the so called boutique race meets)

I could go on and this is not even fleshed out. Nobody is willing to cooperate because it would involve a certain amount of sacrifice and we can't have that.

So instead of agreeing that a little bit of something is better than all of nothing, developing a story; a progression for the season-a destination, the disparate tracks try to one up each other and insist on a salmagundi of mediocrity, a pastiche of pedestrianism, a...something else rococo that adds up to of mix of badness.

Why not put Voltron together from the beginning and spare everyone their individual serving of whoop-ass?