Preaching to the choir.
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Greetings! Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, blessings on this festive Kwanzaa, a salaam alaykum, may Ganesh shower you with fortune ... have you rubbed your Buddha lately?
Santa Claus was ridiculously generous this holiday. My parents offered to help out on thousands of dollars of crippling student loan payments. I, in turn, bought them Season One of The Wire in hopes it'll suck them in. That's a $50-dollar investment.
I would call it an even trade.
You've heard my spiel before. The Wire is transcendence. It's Shakespeare set in Baltimore. It's the answer.
Effing no one is doing what The Wire does. No TV show holds Urban America up to the fluorescent mirror, warts and all, like The Wire. No one has explored to this degree why and how our cities are failing, and with such incredibly gripping writing. The show is addictive like the drugs they sell on the corner.
The Wire is produced by a former Baltimore reporter and a retired B-more cop - not exactly Hollywood royalty. Time Magazine has repeatedly dubbed it the best show on TV. I've yet to hear a critic or publication deny its impact. It turns the tables on all other TV shows by presenting a complex cast of black actors with a couple of token white dudes. As far as the big awards go, Hollywood has nominated it for one Emmy in its four seasons. It did not win. You do the math.
Why am I heaping it on so thick? Season Five starts next week. Each season, the show comes at Baltimore from a different angle - the drug trade, the unions, city hall and schools.
The fifth and final season? The Media. I just got goosebumps writing that.
I've already seen a 30-minute HBO preview of the upcoming season ...
Look, I haven't used this blog as much as back in the day, particularly the J-School days. There are a lot of times I'd love to share the lessons of a rookie reporter. You want my take on the media? Just watch The Wire's fifth season. I know, I know - I may not exactly be reporting out of Baltimore's crumbling neighborhoods, but I can already tell that show is gonna speak to my experience in a lot of ways. Seriously. I was telling Nameless the other day - I don't even know if I'll be able to handle this last season. Yikes.
(And if Baltimore Examiner reporter SaraGlobal is out there, I'd love to get her take on the show. Anyone...? Bueller?)
Speaking of Nameless, she's accepted a new reporting gig about an hour away and she's heading down next week. Giddyup! (The other day I called to talk but she was busy watching "Deal or no Deal" with the family. So now I keep telling her she's prohibited from watching The Wire at my place but I've burned her a nice disc of Deal or No Deal episodes to keep her busy. For some reason she doesn't find it very funny...)
*********************************************************************************
Holy crap, the Lakers just dropped 50 on the Jazz in a quarter-and-a-half of play! They're up by twenty! How bout that Lakeshow? (praying I didn't just jinx them).
These are heady days for the Lakeshow. They really turned a corner with that pivotal win at Phoenix on Christmas.
Hey, you wanna know what's actually fun these days about being the media? One evening, you're enjoying a quality win by your team on a nationally televised holiday game. The next morning, surprise! You're interviewing one of the co-owners of your demoralized rival's opponent, breaking some moderately interesting NBA news. Millions of Lakeshow fans enjoyed the Christmas win, but none were privileged to enjoy it quite. like. that.
(Nameless is a Kings fan, even though she grew up in the East Bay. She wanted to make sure I knew how "unsexy" I was when I told her about this, grinning ear-to-ear.)
I've been chasing more on this story during the last few days, really hustling, producing results. I should have a decent business-angle feature running Sunday. I enjoyed reporting it and I think the bosses liked it too.
...But what happens? Turns out I failed to schedule an extra day off this week (because we're so short-staffed right now) to cover a Saturday shift (once again, because we're so short-staffed right now). That means they have to pay me a few extra bucks in OT tomorrow. Yes, I shoulda marked it on my calendar. But interestingly, I finish one of my best, busiest weeks of reporting getting reprimanded and warned like never before in the past two years at this paper.
Bring on The Wire Season Five!
(71-44 Lakeshow!)
Santa Claus was ridiculously generous this holiday. My parents offered to help out on thousands of dollars of crippling student loan payments. I, in turn, bought them Season One of The Wire in hopes it'll suck them in. That's a $50-dollar investment.
I would call it an even trade.
You've heard my spiel before. The Wire is transcendence. It's Shakespeare set in Baltimore. It's the answer.
Effing no one is doing what The Wire does. No TV show holds Urban America up to the fluorescent mirror, warts and all, like The Wire. No one has explored to this degree why and how our cities are failing, and with such incredibly gripping writing. The show is addictive like the drugs they sell on the corner.
The Wire is produced by a former Baltimore reporter and a retired B-more cop - not exactly Hollywood royalty. Time Magazine has repeatedly dubbed it the best show on TV. I've yet to hear a critic or publication deny its impact. It turns the tables on all other TV shows by presenting a complex cast of black actors with a couple of token white dudes. As far as the big awards go, Hollywood has nominated it for one Emmy in its four seasons. It did not win. You do the math.
Why am I heaping it on so thick? Season Five starts next week. Each season, the show comes at Baltimore from a different angle - the drug trade, the unions, city hall and schools.
The fifth and final season? The Media. I just got goosebumps writing that.
I've already seen a 30-minute HBO preview of the upcoming season ...
Look, I haven't used this blog as much as back in the day, particularly the J-School days. There are a lot of times I'd love to share the lessons of a rookie reporter. You want my take on the media? Just watch The Wire's fifth season. I know, I know - I may not exactly be reporting out of Baltimore's crumbling neighborhoods, but I can already tell that show is gonna speak to my experience in a lot of ways. Seriously. I was telling Nameless the other day - I don't even know if I'll be able to handle this last season. Yikes.
(And if Baltimore Examiner reporter SaraGlobal is out there, I'd love to get her take on the show. Anyone...? Bueller?)
Speaking of Nameless, she's accepted a new reporting gig about an hour away and she's heading down next week. Giddyup! (The other day I called to talk but she was busy watching "Deal or no Deal" with the family. So now I keep telling her she's prohibited from watching The Wire at my place but I've burned her a nice disc of Deal or No Deal episodes to keep her busy. For some reason she doesn't find it very funny...)
*********************************************************************************
Holy crap, the Lakers just dropped 50 on the Jazz in a quarter-and-a-half of play! They're up by twenty! How bout that Lakeshow? (praying I didn't just jinx them).
These are heady days for the Lakeshow. They really turned a corner with that pivotal win at Phoenix on Christmas.
Hey, you wanna know what's actually fun these days about being the media? One evening, you're enjoying a quality win by your team on a nationally televised holiday game. The next morning, surprise! You're interviewing one of the co-owners of your demoralized rival's opponent, breaking some moderately interesting NBA news. Millions of Lakeshow fans enjoyed the Christmas win, but none were privileged to enjoy it quite. like. that.
(Nameless is a Kings fan, even though she grew up in the East Bay. She wanted to make sure I knew how "unsexy" I was when I told her about this, grinning ear-to-ear.)
I've been chasing more on this story during the last few days, really hustling, producing results. I should have a decent business-angle feature running Sunday. I enjoyed reporting it and I think the bosses liked it too.
...But what happens? Turns out I failed to schedule an extra day off this week (because we're so short-staffed right now) to cover a Saturday shift (once again, because we're so short-staffed right now). That means they have to pay me a few extra bucks in OT tomorrow. Yes, I shoulda marked it on my calendar. But interestingly, I finish one of my best, busiest weeks of reporting getting reprimanded and warned like never before in the past two years at this paper.
Bring on The Wire Season Five!
(71-44 Lakeshow!)
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