Listing The Wire

March 15, 2008 at 12:08 am · Filed under Baltimore, Blog: Winter 07, The Wire

Readers of SLN know that I’m an obsessive fan of The Wire. I actually kind of stumbled upon the series in a hotel room somewhere while I was on tour when it first came out —I’ve never had HBO at home. The first thing I noticed was, “Hey, I know that block! That’s right around the corner from my apartment!” That realization came in the very first episode when Wee-Bey stops the truck in front of the New York Fried Chicken—at the corner of S Carey and Baltimore Streets; I lived right around the block on Hollins and Carey—to rebuke D’Andelo for speaking so specifically about the Barksdale crew’s intimidation of a witness in his trial. Then I remembered that I had seen camera crews in the neighborhood and its environs many months earlier, wondering what they could possibly be filming in a west side neighborhood that was more or less the border between gentrification and poverty. Now it made sense.

There’s really not much more to say than has already been said about the show. The Wire started by focusing on one thing—the drug trade—and then with each successive season, the camera panned out, expanding the view and revealing another piece of the puzzle, brilliantly crafting a world in which, to quote Lester Freamon, “all the pieces matter.” I’m seriously going to miss the show, but at least it remained great until the very end. I’ve decided to put together a post of lists for The Wire—some of my favs and not-so-favs. I’m sure when I go back and watch the entire series again starting with Episode One, I’ll remember plenty of other things that I wished I would have included on this list. But for now, here’s what I’ve come up with off the top of my head.

My 15 Favorite Scenes
1) Stringer’s “product” meeting. Shamrock trying to enforce Robert’s Rules of Order is priceless.

2) Bunny Colvin at Comstat after Hamsterdam. Rawls: “Jesus Christ, Ervin, don’t you see what he’s done? He’s legalized drugs!”

3) Omar testifying against Bird and catching Levy off guard: “I got the shotgun; you got the briefcase.”

4) Frank Sobotka driving to his death.

5) Snoop buys the nail gun. “Man said you wanna shoot nails this here the Cadillac, man. He meant Lexus but he ain’t know it.”

6) Stinger tells Avon he had D’Angelo killed.

7) Stringer Bell’s death.

8 ) Stringer and Avon’s talk while overlooking the harbor.

9) Bodie talking to McNulty in the park before he’s murdered on the corner.

10) McNulty tells Templeton he knows he’s full of shit.

11) D’Angelo going to Wee-Bey’s house thinking he’s going to be murdered, only to learn how to feed Wee-Bey’s fish.

12) Kima gets shot.

13) Cutty tells Avon he wants out. “The game ain’t in me no more. None of it.”

14) Clay Davis mentions “bleeding Bell dry” in passing during Lester’s blackmail session.

15) McNulty finds The Wealth of Nations in Stringer’s apartment after Stringer’s death.

Seasons
1) 3
2) 1
3) 4
4) 2
5) 5

This was hard. The fifth season is definitely fifth, but the previous four are really so close that a one through four ranking doesn’t really seem fair to me. However, I feel obligated to say that although Season Two is often written off and given short shrift, I never thought it was the weakest. Admittedly, I didn’t like it the first time I watched it. I was so drawn into the world created in Season One that I was a bit angry when the west side drug trade wasn’t the focal point of Season Two as well. But after a few more viewings, I really grew fond of Season Two, except for Ziggy and his duck (see below).

10 Favorite Characters (In Random Order, Except for No. 1)
1) Bunk
2) Bodie
3) Norman Wilson
4) Snoop
5) Lester
6) Stringer Bell
7) Daniels
8 ) Wee-Bey
9) Slim Charles
10) Spiros Vondopoulos

5 Characters I Wanted to Kill (In Order)
1) Templeton
2) Ziggy
3) Cheese
4) Orlando
5) Colicchio

Favorite “Way Down in the Hole” Versions
1) Tom Waits (Season 2)
2) DoMaJe (Season 4)
3) Blind Boys of Alabama (Season 1)
4) The Neville Brothers (Season 3)
5) Steve Earle (Season 5)

Favorite Tracks From The Wire
1) “The Fall” by Blake Leyh
2) “Oh My God” by Michael Franti
3) “That’s da Sound” by Dirty Hartz (feat. Verb)

Best Line From a Baltimore Track From The Wire
1) “All the hate in the air make it harder to breathe and all the cameras in the ‘hood make it hard to Believe.” Ogun feat. Phathead, “What You Know About Baltimore?”.

Favorite Cedric Daniels Quotes
1) To Prez after he, Herc, and Carver conducted late night “field interviews” at the Terrace highrises, which ended with Prez assaulting a kid with the handle of his pistol, resulting in the boy losing sight in one of his eyes: “Now tell me, who cold-cocked the kid? [Prez: Me.] Why? [Prez: He pissed me off.] No, Officer Pryzbylewski, he did not piss you off. He made you fear for your safety and that of your fellow officers. I’m guessin’ now, but maybe he was seen to pick up a bottle and menace Officers Hauk and Carver, both of whom had already sustained injury from flying projectiles. Rather than use deadly force in such a situation, maybe you elected to approach the youth, ordering him to drop the bottle. Maybe when he raised the bottle in a threatening manner you used a Kel light, not the handle of your service weapon, to incapacitate the suspect. Go practice.”

2) To Carver after he passes the sargent’s test: “A couple of weeks from now, you’re gonna be in some district somewhere with eleven to twelve uniforms looking to you for everything. And some of them gonna be good police, some of them gonna be young and stupid, a few are gonna be pieces of shit. But all of them will take their cue from you. You show them loyalty, they learn loyalty. You show them it’s about the work, it’ll be about the work. You show them some other kind of game, then that’s the game they’ll play.”

Funniest Things
1) Fuzzy Dunlop
2) Moving the desk
3) Donut
4) Brother Muzone’s “back door” comment to Omar before they set up to ambush Stringer.
4) McNulty tails Stringer to economics class
5) Kennard being carried by the seat of his pants after a jump out: “Put me down, bitch!”
6) Rawls putting on “Flight of the Valkyries” as the police descend upon Hamsterdam.

Stupidest Things
1) Ziggy’s duck
2) Serial killer plotline

Saddest Things
1) Dukie
2) Wallace

Wire Actors I’ve Seen Around Baltimore
1) Sonja Sohn at the Common Ground on the Avenue in Hampden.
2) Clarke Peters at Penn Station—he was the first one off the train.
3) Jermaine Crawford with his mom at a Dunkin’ Donuts on Security Blvd.

Coincidence I Always Wondered About But Was Afraid To Ask
1) Cheese and Randy have the same last name—Wagstaff.

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The Wire: R.I.P.

March 10, 2008 at 1:09 am · Filed under Baltimore, Blog: Winter 07, The Wire

I’ll need something to fill the void. Thoughts to come.

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Simon says

February 7, 2007 at 3:33 pm · Filed under Baltimore, Blog: Winter 06, The Wire

Last night, David Simon, the creator and executive producer of the HBO drama The Wire (among other things), was the guest speaker at Loyola College in Maryland’s 2007 Humanities Symposium. Titled Urban Spaces, Urban Voices, the symposium uses Jane Jacobs’ seminal text The Death and Life of Great American Cities as its point of departure. And who better to talk about the death of the American city than David Simon? He started by outlining his world view, which you know if you’ve read any of his books, seen any of his tv shows, or heard him interviewed, is not all that rosy. In fact, it’s downright pessimistic. Simon’s central thesis is this: in today’s world, human beings are worth less than they used to be, are not as important, have become less and less necessary, and are expendable—useless to the institutions they serve.

I wanted to ask a question, but wanted to phrase it just right. By the time I had carefully composed my query, the line at the microphone had been disbanded. But here’s what I was going to say:

I want to start by saying that I’m a great admirer of your work. There’s a wonderful, well-founded pessimism underlying all that you do. Specifically related to the war on drugs, you make the point that all of the tactics meant to remedy the problem are actually attempts by those who design them to mislead us into believing that progress is being made, when in fact, there is no progress whatsoever. When I read The Corner or watch The Wire I say, “Wow, David Simon is calling my attention to a lot of problems with society here.” But I never get a sense of what you think will make it better, besides Bunny Colvin taking it upon himself to decriminalize drugs, something that was actually suggested in Baltimore not long ago. So what do you see as a solution?

Luckily, the last person in line—an acquaintance of Simon’s from the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Maryland—asked pretty much the same thing, although phrased much more eloquently. This was his answer (paraphrased): Things will begin to get better when our leaders begin to plant olive trees rather than annuals. In other words, taking the long view instead of looking for instant gratification.

* * *
democracy: n. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.

oligarchy: n. Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.

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A brush with fame

November 24, 2006 at 4:51 pm · Filed under Baltimore, Blog: Fall 06, The Wire

Story Of The Day. I was at the Common Ground in Hampden today having a coffee and bagel lunch, when in walked a woman, who I seemed to recognize slightly, with three other people—two men and one woman. Although she looked familiar I couldn’t place her and didn’t want to stare. However, when I caught her looking at the poster I had just put up, I stared a little bit. It was Kima from The Wire! One of the characters from my perennial obsession right there before me. I really wanted a picture of/with her and with my polaroid slung over my shoulder it could have, should have been a done deal. Except that I couldn’t remember her real name. See, I didn’t want to be some crazy obsessed fan (ahem…) and say, “Kima! Kima!” No, I’d much prefer to approach her with her real name—maybe then I’d seem less crazy. But try as I might, I just couldn’t recall it (her name). Then she left. Then I called my friend Loran and asked him to look up her real name from The Wire website just in case I happened to see her on the street later. He found it. Sonja Sohn. I knew that. Didn’t see her again.

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The Wire S4

September 15, 2006 at 7:56 pm · Filed under Blog: Summer 06, The Wire

HBO’s The Wire is back for its fourth season. And right on the heels of S4′s debut comes the announcement that the show has been picked up for a concluding fifth season. There were two good articles in the recent Baltimore press worth checking out—one in the Sun and a wonderful feature in the CityPaper.

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