just need a quick confirmation on my idiocy

pt70 said
Post 34 is how the cars came out of the factory. The picture of post 37 is how it should look when done correctly. This allows the vacuum can to rotate to its proper position without hitting the intake manifold [on some manifolds]. Snug down the distributor clamp bolt so you can rotate the distributor when the engine fires up.

George Jets; sweet looking engine!

All factory LA small blocks distributors have the shaft tang and the rotor offset by about 15 degrees.

I understand all that. But the factory assumes the rotor and the drive tang are parallel to each other. Clearly the OP’s rotor and tang are not parallel.

All that matter is where the rotor points when the distributor is in. That means you clock the drive gear according to the rotor offset and stop trying to set the drive gear like the book says.

This isn’t nearly this hard.