A Good Christian Raisin’ and a Eighth Grade Education
Earlier this week I posted a John Prine video that’s no longer available on YouTube. I feel really bad about that…let me make it up to you.
Yep. That’s Steve Earle…before he was fat, or on The Wire, or a heroin addict, or a communist. And that’s Guy Clark who says, “Listen to that song!” at the beginning.
Damn. That’s good.
Just when you thought we were stuck without any real choices this election year, I’ve come up with an option. I’m beginning a grass roots effort to convince Maryland State Senator Clay Davis to throw his hat into the ring. It will take a lot of convincing and imagination to make this dream a reality, but if we all band together by purchasing a bumper sticker we have a shot at getting Mr. Clay elected.
Hey, at least we know what we’ll get from him.
HT to Coma for introducing me to Stuff White People Like.
After spending a little time here, I’ve discovered I’m a lot whiter than I thought I was, especially with this timely post on The Wire.
Check it out…lots of funny stuff. It’s definitely one that will stay in the feed reader.
Just when I thought this show couldn’t get any better, they give us a great ending that ties up all the loose ends yet still leaves us right back where we started
Spoilers from here on, mostly just my comments on this episode.
Hat tip to Reason for this one, very funny.
It seems like David Simon’s former boss is now taking his cues from the show.
I’m sad this show is ending, but I’m glad we can finally cancel HBO after the series finale.
I’ve been thinking a lot today about last night’s episoe of Lost. Why am I thinking about that? Why not? What would you have me think about?
Anyway, there are some spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen it yet stop reading. Feed readers sometimes don’t pick up on the –more– from WordPress (that ruined this week’s episode of The Wire for me), so be extra careful.
Last night we watched the first episode of season 5 of The Wire, and it is already shaping up to be very interesting. This season is focusing heavily on the newsroom of The Baltimore Sun and how news is sorted and reported. The best quote so far is, “I wonder what it’s like to work for a real newspaper,” which is ironically the same thing said about the Baltimore Police Department in season 3.
All we know of the newsroom so far is that staff has been cut by the parent corporation in Chicago, and the older guys who can actually write (“you don’t want to say that people were evacuated”) are being pushed out in favor of young kids who see the Sun only as a stopping point on their way to The Times or The Post.
One thing I’ve noticed about The Wire is that it exposes the fact that every profession they’ve examined is made up of people that basically fit into the same categories. There are always people who only care about their stats, the people that are there to do the minimum to get the paycheck, the ones who are only interested in furthering their careers, and the ones who do the job because it is a part of who they are and only want to do their best work. So far this has held true for police, politicians, teachers, drug dealers, thieves, and sometimes drug addicts.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the newsroom.
Unlike everyone else, I slacked off and waited until 2008 was officially here to do my review. 2007 was my first year of full on blogging. I’d messed around here and there with different blogs before, but 2007 was the year I drank the Kool Aid and went at it for real. I’ll keep this list confined to what occurred on this blog. You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m somewhat guarded about the personal life. Enough about me…here are my thoughts on my 10 most notable posts of 2007:
Ron Paul’s Presidential Run
At times it seemed to me that Ron Paul news was taking over this blog. On one hand I feel like I need to apologize for that, but on the other hand, it’s my blog and that’s what I was interested in. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who was excited by Dr. Paul’s message, and I hopefully played a small part in helping him get elected. More on that later this year, as I have some thoughts on what is realistic, and what is for the best.
Knox County Scandals
There were more in 2007 than I can even count. That makes you wonder how much stuff is going on that we haven’t even heard about yet. Last week I saw a t-shirt that read, “Miami: A sunny place for shady people.” Knox County seems to have the market cornered on shadiness this year.
Steroids in Sports (and Non-Sports)
My bottom line–WHO CARES? Next topic.
People Getting Nekkid and Almost Nekkid
I got a ton of traffic this year writing articles about Vanessa Hudgens, along with a couple of articles about the Inskip teacher who had arguably inappropriate photos on MySpace. I don’t really care who gets naked and takes photos of it, I just wonder how people can do that and not retain ALL digital copies of the material. Idiots.
Barbie Cummings and the Highway Patrol
This was just a funny local story that ended up causing me to exceed my bandwidth when it went national and I ended up ranking #3 on Google for “Barbie Cummings Blog”. Since then, Ms. Cummings life has apparently changed dramatically, much for the better. How do I know that? I’m resourceful, and it didn’t take much digging anyway. Nevertheless, it seems like she wants to leave that part of her life behind her, so I think it’s time this story finally died and went away, never to be mentioned here again.
Tennessee Smoking Ban
Thank you to our state’s elected leaders for writing and enforcing personal choice laws on private property. If you really want to look out for me and mine, stop wasting our tax dollars on this crap. Next thing you know we’re going to have to provide health care for people who would’ve otherwise died if you’d not spent millions trying to keep them from smoking.
Buddies Blogging
Some people I know IRL also started blogs this year. It’s funny that you can go months or years without talking or emailing with someone, and this medium puts you in the position to “converse” with them every day. Even when it isn’t dialog, you read what they write and they read what you write. Very cool. Not to mention the countless other blogs I’ve begun to read that I never would have learned about if I’d not started blogging for real this year.
The War On Education
Also known as the public school system. I feel like I don’t spend enough time or energy talking about this because I think it’s the number one problem facing our country. Solutions are anything but clear and simple, but one thing I’m very excited about for this coming year is that I’ve got an idea that may help a little, at least for individuals. I’m finishing up some other projects, and then I’m going at it full force.
Blogging About Blogging
As I said, 2007 was my first year blogging full throttle, and boy did I learn a lot. I posted a ton of stuff about monetizing, driving traffic, building networks, linking to other people, and I’m sure lots of other stuff that annoys people. I can’t help it…my interest is peaked. Another project I want to tackle for this year is keeping that stuff off of this site and directing it to a different blog that is dedicated to that subject.
The One I Wish Was More Popular
Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about The Wire. I really wished more people watched this show, especially the season that starts next week which will address the media. I’ve had several great conversations with people who watch The Wire, and I’d love to bring more of them to this venue. In fact, I think I’m going to, despite the fact that most people don’t know about the show. At least I’ll have the bragging rights that a couple of people heard about it from me when they are finally turned on to it.
From the looks of its ratings, there’s a good chance you’ve never watched HBO’s “The Wire”, and that’s okay. You probably haven’t heard much about it. It’s not the kind of show most of the people you work with will stand around and talk about. Honestly, it’s not the kind of show most of the people you work with can grasp. But that’s not the fault of the show.
If you think about it, most television dramas are written for the kids you went to high school with who got through literature class either reading Cliff Notes or speed reading the whole novel in a night. They could ace the test when asked to regurgitate the main events of the book and could tell you about the characters, plot and major themes. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, it’s just a reality–most people have a hard time thinking beyond what is merely written. I think that’s the reason The Wire doesn’t get the attention it deserves from the average television viewer. The Wire is literary television.
You walk away from each episode of The Wire wanting to talk about it. When I say “talk about it”, I don’t mean “what do you think will happen next week?” I mean you walk away actually discussing it. If you watched it alone, you wish you had someone with whom you could share your thoughts. It’s something that stays with you. You come away drawing parallels to what you see happening in real life with education, politics, and the war on drugs. You are forced to ask yourself some very tough questions about your own belief system and how it applies to situations you aren’t likely to encounter in your own life. In effect, The Wire does all the things through the medium of television that good literature does through writing–it forces you to think.
HBO has shown each season OnDemand in the months leading up to the fifth and final season which begins in January, and they’ve also shown a couple of mini-docs about the making of the show and the reality it portrays. Someone (I can’t remember who) commented in one of these documentaries that a possible reason the show isn’t a ratings success is that the majority of America just isn’t comfortable watching a program with a predominantly black cast. But I’m not sure that’s the case. I think the real reason may be that most Americans aren’t interested in making the intellectual investment to enjoy a show like The Wire.
I was probably wrong when I said that it’s okay if you’ve never watched The Wire. I wasn’t considering my audience. What I should have said is that it is okay that most Americans have never watched The Wire. You? I expect more from you. Check it out on Netflix or Blockbuster and get ready for some serious couch marathoning.
Kat Coble has posted a pretty good summary of present day politics in the United States.
But, really, the two major parties are very much the same now. They’ve both become interested solely in purchasing continued incumbancy, and any governance which may or may not occur is incidental.
Very true. This reminds me of an episode of The Wire I saw the other night–incredible show by the way. A Baltimore heroin operation is faced with the problem of taking an inferior product to the marketplace. Their solution? Split into two separate brands and manufacture some pretend competition between the two. The junkies end up buying the same crappy product either way, and the cash all flows to the same source.
