All of which sounded great to me until I hung up the phone and turned to confront a certain Baltimore writer by the name of Lippman, who has penned and published nine actual novels and with whom I share quarters. Her lifework is replete with hardback covers, actual chapter breaks, and descriptive prose that goes a good deal further than “INT. HOMICIDE UNIT/HEADQUARTERS – DAY.”

“First of all,” she informed me, “you just compared yourself to Herman Melville, which even by your egotistical standards is a bit over-the-top. And second of all, if The Wire is really a novel, what’s its ISBN number?”

- Transcript: David Simon on why he created The Wire | Times Online

this rings of a joke only bookeaters can appreciate, right up there with telling someone to go 306.7 themselves.

in the article, simon makes a pretty compelling point about the show’s value as a “visual novel.” it’s an interesting argument to raise among readers. is there such a thing as a literary television show? lost addicts would say so, but i’m firmly of the camp that both shows just use their medium create active engagement. it’s called making quality television and we haven’t had a long history of exposure to be able to see it for just that.*

* this line of thinking also allows me to loop in the complexities of arrested development, which inevitably leads to a discussion on how quality can a network television show be if its still taking commercial breaks. but i suppose that’s a diatribe for another blog.

There are certain crime stories you read where you literally wonder, “What could that person possibly have been thinking?”

The kinds of cases where you think they should just skip the pre-trial hearings, the pleas, the trial, the judge, the jury, all of that, and just sentence the individual guilty immediately.

Because there are some things for which there is literally, no POSSIBLE excuse.

I present to you the story of Kiara Medlock and her mother, of Ozark, Arkansas. Seems Kiara, age 10 and all of 65 pounds, was wildly misbehaving on the night of Nov. 12, and her mother called the police.

Officer Dustin Bradshaw arrived at the scene, and when he wasn’t able to subdue Kiara, her mother allegedly told the officer to “tase her if you have to.” Which, after Kiara kicked him, Officer Bradshaw did.

The child was then handcuffed and taken to a youth shelter.

This is despicable by the adults here on so many levels. One, by the officer, who sees no other option when outweighing a child by oh, 100 pounds, then to TASE them? Two, by the mother, for suggesting to the officer that he send volts of electric shock into her daughter?

I’m sorry, I don’t care how violent or unruly the kid is, this is despicable. Check out the brief police report here.

**I came late to “The Wire”. Everyone told me the HBO show about drug dealers and cops was truly amazing, and I heard them and didn’t believe.

Finally, I went out rented the first three seasons on DVD. Best. Show. I’ve. Ever. Seen. I positively worship all five seasons, with Season 5 being David Simon’s ultimate masterpiece. I can’t recommend this show highly enough if you’ve never seen it.

If you’re a big fan like me, you’ll enjoy this: Someone put together the 100 best quotes from “The Wire.” Warning: Not Safe for Work (a bit of colorful language, you might say).

Get the gist without giving traffic to the Post here.

The entire article is only four paragraphs long, yet no less than three doozies are dropped.

• First, and saddest, Kevin McKidd is on Grey’s Anatomy?  Ugh, whatever.
• Second, Kevin McKidd is the main voice in the Call of Duty games?  Interesting.  He’s Scottish, not British like his character Soap MacTavish.  Not sure if a movie adaptation is especially necessary since nobody can figure out what the hell’s going on in COD single player, but hey, there’s finally a modern war movie that people actually like, so go for it.  As for this little crack, “if the script is good, and Gerard [Butler] isn’t available, then absolutely.”  No.
• Finally, they are making a Rome movie!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?1/1/1/1/1/!/1/1/!/!??!/1/!?!?QuestionMarkExclamationPointShift1!? Unless David Simon and Mitch Hurwitz are secretly collaborating on an IMAX 3D Arrested Development-The Wire 11 hour double feature, this is the best news ever in ever.  If you’ve never watched Rome do it now.  Now.  It’s two seasons, you can handle it.

I am certainly glad that Chycho decided to post this and enlighten folks (Chycho has recently been on an important hiatus).

Part One

Part Two

I think my buddy Jay Midnyte would be interested in Mr Simon’s thoughts on free market capitalism.

E1 Music is excited to announce the release of The Avon Barksdale Story- Legends Of The Unwired – in March 2010. This gripping film won Best Docudrama at this year’s NY International Independent Film & Video Festival and reveals the raw truth about death, drugs, and violence in the streets of Baltimore, MD. In The Avon Barksdale Story, the real Nathan Avon “Bodie” Barksdale tells all to actor Wood Harris, who played his on screen character in HBO’s critically acclaimed series The Wire.

The Wire was based on the lives of real gangsters. The Avon Barksdale Story is the first to chronicle the actual lives of these real people.  Barksdale’s real name, Nathan Avon Barksdale, and his nickname, “Bodie,” were both used in the series as composite characters. Avon Barksdale was The Wire’s first season’s central character. The storyline focused on the Barksdale clan and their ruthless hold on Baltimore’s underworld and the intense efforts of law enforcement to stop them. Barksdale was a real crime figure in Baltimore.

Barksdale says he consulted David Simon, the creator of The Wire, during the early filming of the highly successful mini-series. He says, “The Wire was one long commercial for this!”

During the drug wars of the ‘80s, long before The Wire’s drug kingpin Avon Barksdale entered the mind of David Simon, a young man (named Nathan Avon “Bodie” Barksdale) was in the belly of one of the most violent neighborhoods on Baltimore’s Westside. The Lexington Terrace Projects was one of the most notorious areas in the city making it the perfect backdrop for HBO’s The Wire. But unlike David Simon, an admitted outsider, this story possesses the intimate detailing which can only come from an insider’s view. The real Barksdale brings the riveting fact-filled account of his world now known as The Avon Barksdale Story – Legends of the Unwired. A must see story for all true fans of The Wire!

This film was financed, directed, and produced by the KAJ Enterprise film group.

De voorbije twee maanden wat minder gelezen, al werd dat gelukkig wel gecompenseerd door een paar heel fijne leeservaringen.

• Patrick Ness - The Ask And The Answer. Tweede deel van de Chaos Walking-trilogie, waarvan het derde deel gepland staat voor 2010. Samengevat: vermoedelijk het beste jeugdboek dat ik las sinds, uhm, m’n jeugd. Inhoudelijk zit het anders, maar je zou het kunnen vergelijken met The Lord Of The Rings: het eerste deel is lichter van toon, kleurrijk, haast een avonturenboek. Het tweede deel is een pak donkerder, gewelddadiger en wat taaier. Maar het is een bescheiden triomf geworden: een onheilszwanger en goed geschreven oorlogsboek met sci-fi- en fantasy-elementen, en onderliggende thema’s als genocide, collectieve schuld, individuele verantwoordelijkheid, racisme, etc. (****1/2)
• Ian McEwan – Amsterdam. De gruwel van McEwan wordt gedomesticeerd, nog wat verfijnd, verburgerlijkt en het gevolg is dat z’n boeken toch wat van hun charme verliezen. Nog op het programma: ’s mans meest bejubelde werken Atonement, Saturday en On Chesil Beach. Benieuwd wat dat brengt. (***1/2)
• Anthony Bourdain – Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in The Culinary Underbelly. Een beetje een Jamie Oliver from hell, deze Bourdain. De man staat achter het fornuis is een gerenommeerd New Yorks restaurant en doet uit de doeken hoe het eraan toe gaat in die betere restaurants. Wat volgt is een brok opschepperij van een paar honderd pagina’s, over slavenlabeur, drugsgebruik in e keuken, geweld en andere toestanden die de onwetende restaurantbezoeker zelden of nooit te zien krijgt. Bij momenten héél erg grappig, zeker als je het zootje in je achterhoofd verplaatst naar een Vlaemsche locatie, maar het blijft uiteindelijk ook bij een repetitieve opsomming van sterke verhalen. (***)
• George P. Pelecanos – The Night Gardener en The Turnaround. De eerste is een prima mystery thriller, de tweede is een uitstekende toevoeging aan zijn meer sociaal-realistische werken. (***1/2 en ****)
• A.F.Th. van der Heijden – Doodverf. Elders uitvoerig genoeg besproken. (****)
• Mark Oliver Everett – Things The Grandchildren Should Know. Een van de meest leesbare boeken van een muzikant ooit? Misschien wel, want Everett (E) slaagt erin om de bullshit tot het absolute minimum te beperken. TTGSK bevat de memoires van een man die op z’n veertigste al genoeg heeft meegemaakt voor drie mensenlevens. De toon van het boek is het bijzonderst, een opmerkelijk evenwicht van berusting, ernst en humor. Wordt een groot deel van het boek gespendeerd aan het verziekte gezinsleven van de Everetts, de dood van zijn ouders, de zelfmoord van zijn moeder en de ellende van anderen in zijn omgeving (Everett is echt een shit magnet), dan biedt het ook het verhaal van Eels. Je hoeft echter geen fan te zijn om het te kunnen waarderen. (****)
• Phil Freeman – Sound Levels: Profiles In American Music, 2002-2009. Bundel interviews die Freeman de voorbije jaren schreef voor allerhande publicaties. In deze bundel bespreekt Freeman, een muziekjournalist die zowel over free jazz als extreme metal schrijft, vooral de driehoeksverhouding tussen de artiest, diens rol op het podium en het publiek. Het levert interessante conversaties op met figuren als Tom Waits, Ornette Coleman, Eugene Robinson (Oxbow), Mike Patton, David Thomas (Pere Ubu), de jongens van SunnO))) en een resem andere bekende en minder bekende figuren. Verkrijgbaar als boek of download (voor 3,5 euro) via Lulu. (***1/2)
• Richard Price – Lush Life. Schrijver van Clockers, Freedomland, Samaritan én schrijver voor The Wire. Beetje vergelijkbaar met Pelecanos, maar dan serieuzer, nog meer op de route van het realisme en soms met een Dickensiaanse opzet. Een verhaal over grootstadsmisdaad, maar ook de manier waarop het levens verandert en verhouding bepaalt tussen klassen en rassen. Indrukwekkend (****).
• Paul Auster – Invisible. Of eigenlijk Onzichtbaar, de Nederlandstalige versie. De beste Auster in lange tijd, met typische experimenten én een verhaal dat boeit. (****)
• James Ellroy – Blood’s A Rover. Derde en laatse deel van de Underworld USA-trilogie. Lijkt de stilistische waanzin van de twee vorige delen niet verder te zetten: het boek is iets minder taai en complex dan voorganger The Cold 6000, waardoor het eerder aansluit bij American Tabloid. Het verhaal wordt verdergezet vanaf 1968 en loopt tot 1972. Opnieuw volgt Ellroy drie protagonisten, allemaal op de een of andere manier betrokken bij wat er achter de politieke en criminele schermen gebeurt. FBI, maffia, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, communisten, zwarte miltanten, allemaal zitten ze met hun motieven verstrengeld in aanvankelijk onontwarbare verhaallijnen die gaandeweg duidelijker worden. Elementen uit de hardboiled-traditie worden gekoppeld aan een politieke thriller vol paranoia, msileidende façades en geweld. Opnieuw niks voor gevoelige zieltjes (en blijf ervan af als je totaal geen voeling hebt met de politieke geschiedenis van de VS), maar die typische schwung, dat ritmische vertellen, die taalwoede, blijft intact. Een boek dat de noties van de traditionele roman op z’n kop zet en uitpakt met een zeldzame combinatie van ambitie en lef. De voorbije jaren kwam je redelijk wat pastiches tegen van ’s mans ultra-herkenbare stijl, al kan je niet anders dan vermoeden dat het gaat om een verdedigingsmechanisme. Het is immers weinigen gegeven (Selby? Miller?) om keer op keer zo verwoestend uit te halen en of je nu houdt van die stijl of niet, het is als getuige zijn van een razende natuurkracht. Blood’s A Rover is een beklemmend, verwarrend en overdonderend meesterwerk. Het is inderdaad maar misdaadliteratuur. Het schrijft ook 95% van de Vlaamse schrijversgilde op een navelstaarderig hoopje. (*****)
• Eugene S. Robinson – A Long Slow Screw. Beantwoordt aan wat ik ervan verwachtte. Een bevlogen misdaadroman in de hardboiled-traditie. Al is overcooked misschien beter, want Robinsons geweld gaat net iets verder dan dat van zijn voorgangers. Begint wat krampachtig en komt moeilijk op gang, al is de tweede helft een overtuigende rit. (***1/2)
• Nu bezig: David Simon – Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. Om de Wire-ervaring nog eens mee te maken.

NP: Digital Primitives - Hum, Crackle & Pop

David Simon nos vuelve a sorprender, esta vez con Generation Kill, otra joya de la HBO. Se trata de un drama de 7 episodios creado por el artífice de The Wire y basada en el aclamado libro de Evan Wright. Nos cuenta la historia de un batallón de marines en la guerra de Iraq, centrada en el relato de un reportero de la revista Rolling Stone incrustado dentro de un pelotón durante el asalto a Bagdag en el año 2003.

Entre los guionistas se encuentran, además de Wright y el propio Simon, Ed Burns, quien ya se encargara del guión de The Wire.

The value of the motion picture camera, as argued by the critic Andre Malraux, is that it makes possible the “furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism”.   Cinema and its nephew television, then, have long been considered the art forms most capable of capturing and duplicating life in its most realistic form.  Critics and audiences praise films and television programs for their efforts at “realism,” but how often do the subjects of this praise actually resemble reality?   Most TV shows touted as “the most realistic ever” seem to take the medium’s well-worn formulas and inject tired story outlines with a few extra doses of violence and sex per episode in hopes of holding viewers over past the next commercial break.  This stagnant bog of superficial development encompasses the bulk of today’s television landscape, where each week brings a new, more “realistic” take on a murder investigation that culminates in ludicrous stylization and cheesy one-liners.  Art directors drip blood and spongy brain pieces on stages until forcing the viewer to conclude that, yes, the corpse of an abused woman who has had her head blown off before being horribly burned and regurgitated by an alligator would probably look just like that in real life.  This is what passes today for “realistic”, and this is why David Simon’s The Wire, even with its own healthy share of blown off heads, slips under the mainstream realism-junkie’s radar despite the most accurate and biting depiction of the systems of real life in television history.  In an artistic environment where traces of blood and semen under black lights constitute insight into human lives, The Wire presents a radical and experimental critique of television and social institutions through its reverence for truly realistic representation.

By grounding the show in the genre of a police procedural, the creators of The Wire establish a representational framework from which radical experimentation is possible.  Aside from the sitcom, which hasn’t grown an inch since All in the Family, no TV genre is more standardized and predictable than the cop show.  Audience familiarity with the form works in the favor of these programs, evident from the 15 procedurals on Fall 2009 prime time major network schedules, as mainstream America turns to these repetitive tales of violence and justice as a sort of comfort viewing.  When tuning into one of these programs (generally recognizable by their acronymic titles), one can expect, nearly without fail, to encounter a series of standard elements.  First, the main police characters will model ideal intellectual and moral righteousness in their crusades against crime and pursuits of true justice.  While the criminal may have sympathetic moments, he will be evil opposed to the unassailable good of the police and the victims.  Additionally, the plot will follow a standard episodic formula, in which a crime is committed (on-screen or off) and the police interview a series of suspects leading to a bait-and-switch, in which the audience is led to believe in one suspect’s guilt before the true guilty party is exposed in the final five minutes.  Nearly always, the police bring the criminal to justice in the end.  Given these elements, the comfort derived from such programs seems easily explained.  Police shows confirm notions of right and wrong, reward faith in the justice system, and get the blood flowing strong before wrapping it all up in an agreeable manner.  The Wire is a cop show by appearance and definition, but it does none of these things.

Through the juxtaposition of a truly realistic depiction of the process of law enforcement with an audience’s expectations for the genre, The Wire criticizes not only the form of television drama but also the real life politics of the subjects it depicts.  The first major element of realism distinguishing The Wire from generic police shows (heretofore known as Lawyers and Officers: Comforting Intent, or LAO:CI) is the depiction of the police department itself as an active institution, rather than a moody setting for tense interrogations and convoluted revelations.  The word “active” here applies only in its most basic meaning, in that the Baltimore Police Department affects the characters and plot of the show.  It does not mean that the department “actively” does its duty to “serve and protect,” but instead that its institutional uselessness systematically prevents individual officers from doing so.  The Wire presents an ancient organization corrupted to the core, not by the inherent evil or stupidity depicted in the “bad cops” of LAO:CI but through the constant clash of irreconcilable self-interest.  If The Wire’s focus lay solely on individual character interactions, as with LAO:CI, it’s intended themes might not seem so unique.  The presence of nearly as many budget meetings as criminal interrogations, however, shows the creators’ slavish devotion to real-world relevance.  Certainly, daring detectives solve crimes through ingenuity and empathy in the real world, but not if no one pays them for it.  As stated on each season of The Wire, cases “turn green before they turn black [solved],” and when green must sneak its way through a massive bureaucracy, it seems that black rarely turns up.  Most cop shows neglect such systematic function entirely, and The Wire’s respect for its central role adds a level of realism wholly absent from the major TV landscape.

Because of it’s emphasis on the futility of real-world institutions, The Wire cannot function dramatically in the same way as the traditionally representational LAO:CI.  Since Dragnet, these shows have operated on the basic structure of the crime, the investigation, and the solution.  The Wire, as a narrative critiquing the institution, depicts many crimes and investigations but many breakdowns on the road to the solution.  The procedural aspect is present, and thus comments on the failure of traditional cop shows to represent reality.  The detectives almost resemble their LAO:CI counterparts, interviewing witnesses, tearing up, kissing girls and reviewing case files.  They usually even solve the “mysteries” of the crime accurately, but find themselves unable to achieve convictions because of the system’s small print and political soft stepping.  The characters grow in their outright disgust, not towards the criminals they investigate (like LAO:CI), but the hierarchy (established through a series of unworthy promotions) that prevents any true justice.  The audience shares this frustration with the characters, allowing a point of accessibility in a work that subverts the traditional areas of emotional entrance.  While LAO:CI maintains a massive audience by comforting the viewer with warm and cozy blood and guts morality, effective criticism cannot be comfortable, and as a serious indictment of the failure of law enforcement and society, The Wire seeks to infuriate the viewer.  The anger that The Wire inspires emanates not only from what the viewers see on screen, but from how closely it resembles what they read in the headlines of their local paper (or what they should read, as the show’s fifth season addresses), and how often their favorite “realistic” shows forget about it.

Although The Wire establishes an experimental mode through uncommon levels of realism and commentary, the show’s boldest experimentation comes through plot choices that not only illustrate the flaws of society, but also question how things could be different.  While the first two seasons model the adherence to reality discussed above, subsequent seasons build a sort of informed fantasy on top of the foundation of realism, creating social experiments whose results play out with respectable believability due to the apparent veracity of what has come before.  Like the LAO:CI special effects artists who convince the audience of the accuracy of their organ splatters, The Wire’s viewers believe that a controlled legalization of narcotics might resemble the drama shown on screen.  Such a plot development is fantasy, a trial utterly unlikely to exist in the political landscape of present day America.  It is a fantasy, however, based in the spirit of realism, using characters that exist believably in as complete a real world as television has seen, to ask questions about real society.  Although the creators fictionalize dramatic answers, the viewers know that the truth lies in the very asking of the question.  Mainstream society won’t ask, and neither will its television programs.  Indeed, the only significant (and believable) fictionalized answer the show presents is that those who dare to ask will be punished accordingly.  The LAO:CI networks, perhaps, don’t covet the position of The Wire’s mayor, stuck in charge of the few system cogs willing to turn the other way and see what might happen.

Television police dramas follow the blueprint so closely that their “art” seems to worship the establishment it depicts.  That a vast audience eats it up and swallows it all as “realism” sticks hard in the sides of the creators of The Wire.  While Lawyers and Officers: Comforting Intent “represents” very little with accuracy and still sits as mainstream’s definitive view of law enforcement, The Wire plays on this common acceptance with some representation of its own, striving to capture the disturbing big picture that the formula leaves out.  Crimes are committed, crimes are solved, and criminals go to jail.  These things often occur in reality, but the crime is all too often followed with nothing.  The Wire shows how the complexity of the system allows and even causes this nothing to follow, indicting the institutions of America and suggesting that even when the most well-meaning individuals come together, self-interest remains the unavoidable saboteur of progress.  LAO:CI cannot achieve these levels of critique and experimentation.  It must support the institutions that The Wire tears down, because the mainstream must retain its faith in their functionality.  The Wire has no comforting intent.

The Wire (HBO) o cómo mostrar la realidad en el Baltimore del narcotráfico. Creada por David Simon, a quien también se le debe la obra maestra de la misma cadena: Generation Kill, muestra la cruda realidad de los bajos fondos de esta ciudad.  Simon fue, además del creador de la serie, reportero de la crónica negra de Baltimore durante años (periodista de sucesos vaya) y, además, uno de los co-guionistas, Ed Burns,  fue policía en la misma ciudad.

Dividida en cinco temporadas y cincuenta capítulos, cada uno muestra diferentes parcelas de la realidad de Baltimore. De modo que un mismo asunto como es el del narcotráfico nos lo muestran desde diferentes puntos de vista: el de la policía, el de los narcos, el de los educadores, el de los menores de edad, el de las familias desestructuradas, los políticos o el de los periodistas son algunos de ellos.

Tal como dice mi fiel FilmAffinity: La serie, deudora al tiempo de series modernas como Los Sopranos y de clásicos como Policías de Nueva York – (NYPD Blue), aborda temas como la corrupción dentro de la ley, las lealtades cruzadas al interior de los cárteles o la problemática social conectada con el narcotráfico.

Algunas críticas dicen de ella:

“Cualquiera de los capítulos de ‘The Wire’ es tan bueno o mejor que cualquiera de las películas presentadas a los Oscar” (Lisa Schwarzbaum: Entertainment Weekly)

“Si sólo dispones de una hora a la semana para ver la televisión, concédesela a ‘The Wire’.” (Maureen Ryan: Chicago Tribune)

“Vibrante y magistral obra de arte, la saga novelesca y urbana de la HBO ‘The Wire’ es la mejor serie de la televisión.” (Robert Abele: LA Weekly)

“Han conseguido aquello que muchos bienintencionados escritores con conciencia social han intentado y han fracasado: escribir una historia sobre los sistemas sociales, con toda su complejidad, y aun así hacerla humana, divertida y, lo más importante de todo, fascinantemente entretenida.” (James Poniewozik: Time)

“El retrato más lúcido y pavoroso de los mecanismos del narcotráfico que yo he visto nunca.” (Carlos Boyero: Diario El País)

Les murs ont des oreilles, pourtant personne ne leur parle.

Avec ma collection de cicatrices, je crois plus au pragmatisme qu’à la rédemption.

Je pourrais attendre patiemment la réinsertion ou le jugement dernier, mais je n’ai jamais eu de penchant pour la science fiction.

Je voudrais passer à table, mais la faim me tiraille, car je sais que j’ai plus de chance d’avoir une épitaphe qu’une autobiographie.

J’ai besoin qu’il y ait plus de crimes que de coupables, pour que l’ordre ait un sens, pour mordre et que l’on me l’ordonne.

Les désirs de futurs en commun font les promesses de réussites individuelles.

La vie rêvée se venge de tout ce qu’elle n’a pas pu, de tout ce qu’elle n’a pas voulu quand la misère a frappé à sa porte.

Qui a dit que les mauvais cauchemars passaient et que les monstres n’existaient pas ? Sûrement ceux qui les fabriquent, puis les entretiennent pour mieux les combattre un soir de sondage.

Je préfère avoir le moral que la morale.

Le code pénal n’est pas un guide de survie en société, alors la rue trouve une forme de justice sociale dans l’argent sale.

Gardez bien à l’esprit que la loi du plus fort n’est rien face à celle du plus résistant.

Les gyrophares rythment tout, mes insomnies sans chagrin raisonnable, les jours de minimas sociaux, mes gueules de bois pour une mise en abîme, les nuits où l’on fait semblant d’aimer à deux, la messe pour acheter un peu de foi, les récréations où les enfants n’en sont déjà plus.

L’école a la mémoire trop usée pour se remémorer à quoi pouvait bien lui servir ses mains.

Pour former les nouveaux citoyens, on envoie ceux qui ne croient plus en être, ou pire, ceux qui pensent que le mensonge est acceptable au regard de leurs échecs.

Je vote plus par habitude que par conviction.

J’aimerais que l’on organise un suffrage universel pour désigner Dieu, une fois pour toute. Je me lasse d’être tenu en laisse par ses subalternes car ils meurent plus vite qu’ils ne mentent.

Laissez-moi parler au proxénète, m’entendez-vous ?

J’ai vu l’information passer du devoir au pouvoir sans que nul ne se plaigne du voyage, enfin, jusqu’à l’arrivée.

En avoir plein les yeux, c’est sûrement plus important qu’en avoir dans la tête ou même dans le pantalon, du moment que la simulation est parfaite.

Ce qui différencie un fait probant d’une vérité vague ? Le nombre de personne qui y croit !

Demain tu pourras voir l’ennemi public numéro 1 se confondre avec ton concitoyen célèbre préféré et secrètement, tu aimeras les deux.

Apparemment j’ai le choix entre être une victime et un criminel, dans le deux cas le public scandera mon nom.

Quand la journée s’écrase en catastrophe sur ce goût d’inachevé logé dans ma gorge, je me pince pour être sûr que tout ça est bien vrai, afin de me rassurer.

Mais en fait, j’ai besoin d’un verre de plus pour tenir le coup au cas où demain viendrait à voir le jour.

Entre mes besoins et mes envies, mon cul bascule.

Finalement, comme souvent, je me retrouve avec une inconnue, dans un lit qui n’est pas le mien non plus, c’est déjà mieux que la solitude, enfin c’est peut-être ça, la solitude.

Le bien et le mal, ce n’est qu’une histoire, une belle histoire si tu le veux, continue à dormir.

Personne ne t’attend et ne compte sur toi, remplis les cases, satisfais les quotas, deviens une statistique et tout ça pour quoi ?

Je me demande parfois, au crépuscule de nos actes manqués, comment fait-on pour continuer une guerre lorsqu’on sait qu’elle ne se terminera jamais ?

Sûrement parce que nous ne sommes pas plus cons qu’ils le pensent, mais moins que ce nous voudrions.

Alors j’ai choisi l’arme au lieu de l’âme parce que la première a un prix et la seconde n’en a pas. Je ne suis pas philanthrope.

J’ai dû me perdre entre la vitrine et l’arrière-boutique pour avoir autant chercher la sortie.

…

J’ai vu la ville s’éteindre de tout son peuple pour ne jamais se réveiller.

Une prison comme on les aime, ouverte 24h sur 24h, même le dimanche, avec plus de ciment que de sentiments, plus de morts que de vivants.

Et les hommes dans tout ça ! Je pense que personne ne leur a dit qu’ils faisaient juste partie du décor.

Back in April when IRMP3 interviewed SriKrishna Natesan, drummer of Chennai based Thrash Metal outfit ‘Blind Image‘, we were told to “Watch out for the second album. You will have no idea what hit you“. Looks like Blind Image is pretty much true to its words and the second album which is titled ‘More Than Human‘ seems to be one hell of an album. Although I am yet to receive my copy of ‘More Than Human’ which is officially scheduled to release on Novemeber 7th at High on caffeine Adyar (LB road – Mitsubishi showroom complex, Time – 6:00 PM . Opening acts Esher’s Knot, Public Issue and Blue Carbon), I could surely tell from the album teaser on reverbnation ‘More than Human’ is  going to be a killer record. The CD will be available at the venue priced at just Rs 150/-  (or you can mail to roadcrew.records@gmail.com to get your copy delivered).

I couldn’t listen to the audio/read the text from this story without posting it for others: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6872920.ece.

There it is. Not embedded in text simply because I want it to stick out there like a sore thumb, just begging for attention.

The Wire is probably the best television show ever made and it deserves as much publicity as possible for its overall quality and the message it achieves. If Simon’s retrospective on creating The Wire reminds others who have watched it to tell their friends or even gets new watchers on board to check it out themselves then it’s a good thing.

If a similar essay is ever posted for Deadwood I’ll probably pass out in sheer top-shelf HBO overload.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6872920.ece.

Oops, there it is again. Just click it.

— Reid

Cult and classic favorites, new editions, and complete series collections dominate today’s new release schedule.

Christmas is a little over nine weeks away, and already the movie studios and television networks are pumping out special editions of DVD and Blu-Ray sets unmistakable for their gift potential, including new editions and expanded versions of cult and classic favorites. This week shows a pretty broad cross section of the last forty years of film and television, including at least one half-forgotten classic TV series, possibly the best cop show ever, and a half-dozen other, smaller releases with appeal to more selective audiences.

The big release this week, of course, is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen on DVD and Blu-Ray. Nevertheless, the following is just a sampling of what else is available, including the suggested manufacturer’s list price. Of course, prices may vary according to retailer, and will likely decrease as the holidays bear down on us.

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles – “Those Aren’t Pillows” Edition ($14.98)  Boasting career highs from both writer-director John Hughes and co-star John Candy, this 1987 classic features Steve Martin as Neal Page, an uptight Chicago executive stuck in a series of accidents, near-accidents and strokes of bad luck while trying to fly home for Thanksgiving. Candy plays Del Griffith, the slovenly shower curtain ring salesman who dogs his every errant step and false move. The chemistry between Candy and Martin is almost legendary, with each new calamity building on the last to overwhelm the mismatched travelers. Full of quotes and scenes you’ll re-create with friends through the holidays. “Dell Griffith, please to meet you.”

This new DVD includes Hughes and Candy retrospectives and a deleted scene.

Monsoon Wedding – The Criterion Collection ($39.95) This 2001 dramatic comedy won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and helped reignite foreign film afficianados’ love affair with Bollywood cinema. Directed by Mira Nair (the upcoming Amelia), the story follows the entanglements and complications arising from a traditional Punjabi wedding, showing the ups and downs of both the family members and the servants on whose shoulders the celebration ultimately rests. Maybe some of the characters are a bit broad, and the observations a little precious, but audiences who enjoy family centered works such as this probably won’t care anyway.

The Criterion edition contains all the usual premium-grade extras you’d expect, including three short documentaries about India directed by Nair. Also available on Blu-Ray disc.

Easy Rider ($38.96) - The iconic road movie about 60s rebellion comes – only a little ironically – to Blu-Ray disc with a new featurette and commentary by director and co-star Dennis Hopper. For those few who don’t already know, the 1969 film follows two rebels (Hopper and Peter Fonda) as they drive from California to New Orleans in order to see Mardi Gras. Along the way they pick up a small-town lawyer (Jack Nicholson, in his star-making role) who shares their disillusionment with society and its trappings. For a treatise on freedom, the film’s attention to form, structure, and even geographic accuracy are appropriately loose, with digressions and long talky passages frequently interrupting the travelogue montage sequences. And the infamous ending, though explosive at the time, today feels both pretentious and stiff. Still, the movie overall captures the era’s zeitgeist, even while as a work of cinema it gets creakier by the year.

Vega$: The First Season Volume 1 ($36.98) More than twenty years before the sexy lab rats of CSI:, Las Vegas was kept safe by freewheelin’ private detective Dan Tanna (Robert Urich), cruising the streets in his vintage Thunderbird and solving cases with his bumbling sidekick and single-mom secretary. The show is vintage late 70s cheese, right down to the swanky, horn-driven music and do-your-thing attitude, and with his cool car and hip bachelor pad Tanna is the archetypal private eye of the period. Urich, who might be described not unkindly as the Tim Daly of his generation, holds the show down thanks to his easy charm. The three-disc set includes the first half of the first season, though why CBS video wouldn’t spring for the other half is anybody’s guess.

Homicide: Life On The Street – The Complete Series ($149.95) About as far from Vega$ as humanly possible in tone and approach alike, NBC’s critically-adored, audience-starved 1993-99 procedural consistently struggled to find its audience, and no wonder. The show was simply ahead of its time, as demonstrated by the success of The Wire, Homicide creator David Simon’s later effort and a sequel to this earlier series in all but name. Based on Simon’s book chronicling his year with the Baltimore Police homicide department, Homicide the series ranks among the best television ever produced, and for our money it’s the best cop show ever. Utterly and completely riveting for six of its seven seasons, with the seventh (following the departure of breakout star Andre Braugher) being only very good. The middle seasons depicting the mammoth “Luther Mahoney Saga” are essential viewing for any cop show fan.

The equally mammoth 35-disc collection includes all 122 episodes, three crossover Law & Order episodes, and the 2001 telepic Homicide: Life Everlasting, which served as coda and elegy and for the series.

The Hunger: The Complete Second Season ($39.98) Possibly the closest thing Generation X’ers might ever get to their own Twilight outside of the Whedonverse (True Blood arguably notwithstanding), the second and final season of this British anthology series featured demons, vampires, and smart erotica mixed into a potent swirl and hosted by David Bowie, who at 62 years old still has more erotic cool than the somnambulant hipsters of Twilight likely ever will.

The four disc set includes all 22 episodes, produced by Tony and Ridley Scott and featuring appearances by Anthony Michael Hall, Giovanni Ribisi, Eric Roberts, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Beals, and many others. The first season, hosted by Terrence Stamp, is also available.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

“Everything we do, we do for love. The beauty of love is that in giving it away, you are left with more than you had before.”

- David Simon, M.D.

Yet another inspiring quote straight out of my Chopra Center calendar. I’ve been thinking about love lately and about how the more open I am to giving and receiving love in all areas of my life, the more in balance and content I am. I feel that most bad things stem from a place of fear – hate stems from fear, war stems from fear, anger stems from fear…Perhaps all we need to solve all of the problems of the world is a whole lot of love and a fearlessness to give that love away.

How can you alter the interactions and actions throughout your day?

Sidenote: I took the picture above while frolicking around a garden this past summer. Its my favorite self-portrait!

From a fine article in The Times, The Wire creator David Simon, reveals the intention behind the series in advance of his new book with show writer and former Baltimore Sun alumnus Rafael Alvarez.

‘Character is an essential for all good drama, and plotting is just as fundamental. But ultimately, the storytelling that speaks to our current condition, that grapples with the basic realities and contradictions of our immediate world – these are stories that, in the end, have a small chance of presenting a social, and even political, argument. And to be honest, The Wire was not merely trying to tell a good story or two. We were very much trying to pick a fight.

[..]The Wire was not about Jimmy McNulty. Or Avon Barksdale. Or Marlo Stanfield, or Tommy Carcetti or Gus Haynes. It was not about crime. Or punishment. Or the drug war. Or politics. Or race. Or education, labor relations or journalism.
It was about The City.
It is how we in the West live at the millennium, an urbanized species compacted together, sharing a common love, awe, and fear of what we have rendered not only in Baltimore or St. Louis or Chicago, but in Manchester or Amsterdam or Mexico City or Cairo as well.
At best, our metropolises are the ultimate aspiration of community, the repository for every myth and hope of people clinging to the sides of the ever-more-fragile pyramid that is capitalism. At worst, our cities – or those places in our cities where most of us fear to tread – are vessels for the darkest contradicts and most brutal competitions that underlie the way we actually live together, or fail to live together.‘

Man, but that last para is poetry.

San Francisco Opera’s fall season opened with a fabulous production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. I was lucky enough to see it three times (the final dress rehearsal, a simulcast at ATT ballpark, and the closing performance). The production updated the setting from medieval Spain to the Peninsular War, which of course I loved. The Goya-inspired setting fit well with a story of war, divided families, and one atrocity leading to another.

At the heart of Trovatore’s tangled, over-the-top plot are two brothers, separated at birth, now unknown to each other fighting for opposite sides and rivals for the love of the same woman. Watching the opera, I found myself thinking about brothers in literature. As I write this, I’m watching The Man in the Iron Mask, yet another take on brothers separated at birth who become rivals. Sibling relationships are fascinating, but in British historical stories the laws of inheritance make the rivalry between brothers particularly intense. Among the aristocracy the eldest son inherits the title and estates, while younger sons may at best receive a secondary property of their mother’s and in many cases have to make their own way in the world as soldiers, ministers, or barristers. In As You Like It, Orlando is living as a servant on the dubious charity of his elder brother Oliver who has inherited all the family lands and fortune.

Questions of legitimacy can further complicate this rivalry. In King Lear, the Duke of Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund sets out to destroy his legitimate brother Edgar, driven by the pent up jealousy of watching his brother be heir to their father’s lands and title due to the fact that Edgar’s mother was married to the duke while Edmund was born on the wrong side of the blanket.

The issues grow even more tangled when an acknowledged son and heir may actually be illegitimate. The rivalry between Lymond and Richard runs through Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles (including one of the best literary sword fights I’ve ever read in The Game of Kings). At the heart of that rivalry is competition for parental affection and the family estates, and the question of who is who’s son, who deserves what, who is loved best. What makes rivalry between brothers particularly interesting, is that it tends to be mixed, as in Lymond and Richard’s case, with strong love that goes back to the cradle.

I think I had Lymond and Richard in mind when I created Charles and Edgar in Secrets of a Lady. I know I was thinking of Edmund and Edgar, because I deliberately named my Edgar after the legitimate brother from Lear. I decided quite early on in the plotting process, over lattes with my friend Penny, that Charles was illegitimate, that Edgar knew this and Charles didn’t, and that part of Edgar’s motivation stemmed from feeling that everything Charles had inherited should rightfully be his. I also knew I wanted the bond between the brothers to be strong, so that Edgar’s betrayal would be a particularly intense blow to Charles (poor Charles gets betrayed a great deal).

Beneath a Silent Moon features another pair of brothers in Quen and Val. There’s a rivalry between them that their father has encouraged. Charles tells Mel about the boys trying to scale the Old Tower at Dunmykel when they were children. But I found as I wrote the book that, despite the fact that much of Val’s behavior is appalling, the relationship between the two brothers was more complex and had more affection in it than I had at first envisioned. Quen and Val’s relationship is also clouded by questions of legitimacy as the story progresses. I think that one of the reasons I write about legitimacy and illegitimacy in so many books is that so much of the social order among British aristocrats was build on birth. So that questions about legitimacy can strike at the very foundations of that world (foundations which Edgar, in particular, takes very seriously).

In Beneath a Silent Moon, the reader doesn’t see Val react to the revelations about Quen’s birth, but in the letters I wrote for the new edition, Quen writes to Aspasia that Val said their father “wouldn’t do violence to himself–Talbots have too strong a sense of self-preservation, as we both should know. I pointed out that I’m apparently not a Talbot, as I had explained to him before we left Scotland. Val shot me one of his looks and said I’d been raised as one, I couldn’t escape the legacy.” Val handles the revelation of his elder brother’s illegitimacy better than Edgar. But then, for all his faults, I think Val has more ambiguity tolerance than Edgar.

Do you like stories about brothers? What are some favorites? Writers, do you enjoy writing about brothers as rivals?

In honor of the National Equity March, this week’s Fraser Correspondence addition is a love letter from Simon to David.