The Wire (TV series) - Wkp - Music [with audio clips of each season's opening theme]:
The opening theme is 'Way Down in the Hole', a gospel- and blues-inspired song written by Tom Waits for his 1987 album Franks Wild Years. Each season uses a different recording of it against a different opening sequence, with the theme being performed, in order, by
The Blind Boys of Alabama S1
Tom Waits S2
The Neville Brothers S3
'DoMaJe' S4 *
Steve Earle. S5
*Season four's version of 'Way Down in the Hole' was arranged and recorded specifically for the show, and the group, DoMaJe, is made up of five Baltimore teenagers: Ivan Ashford, Markel Steele, Cameron Brown, Tariq Al-Sabir, and Avery Bargasse.
The closing theme is 'The Fall', composed by Blake Leyh, who is also the show's music supervisor.
During season finales, a song is played before the closing scene in a montage showing the major characters' lives continuing in the aftermath of the narrative. The first season montage is played over 'Step by Step' by Jesse Winchester, the second 'Feel Alright' by Steve Earle, the third 'Fast Train' written by Van Morrison and performed by Solomon Burke, the fourth 'I Walk on Gilded Splinters' written by Dr. John and performed by Paul Weller, and the fifth uses an extended version of 'Way Down In The Hole' by The Blind Boys of Alabama, the same version of the song used as the opening theme for the first season.
While the songs reflect the mood of the sequences, the lyrics are usually only loosely tied to the visual shots. In the commentary track to episode 37 'Mission Accomplished', executive producer David Simon says: "I hate it when somebody purposely tries to have the lyrics match the visual. It brutalizes the visual hmm. it does sth, is that it? brutalizes ~ simplifies I guess, reduces it to an illustration, seems to tell you what you're seeing in a way to have the lyrics dead on point.Yet at the same time it can’t be totally off point. It has to glance at what you're trying to say." sure yes good, glance at.
Maximum Fun Forum :: The Wire ... favorite version of theme song?:
-It's a close one, but I'd say season one, followed very closely by two then, distantly, 4 and 3. I love the Neville brothers, but their version falls flat. It's too early to judge the new Steve Earle song for season five.
-I'm partial to the first season version, but I think that's only because I relate the song to my sheer amazement about how awesome the experience of first watching the show was.
-I'm partial to the version in Season Two (the original version). Tom Waits is great, "Frank's Wild Years" is a pretty great (if uneven) album, and it's a bit weird for me to hear other people singing his stuff. That being said, I appreciate how The Wire does it.
-Season One is the best theme song.
-I really love Season One's theme.
- I liked the fourth season's theme the most probably, but the Tom Waits version (S2) was really good, too.
The House Next Door: The Wire and the Art of the Credit Sequence :
I. Accompanied by the octogenarian gospel act The Blind Boys of Alabama, the Season One credits sequence announces that The Wire is not a kicking-down-doors-and-busting-heads kind of cop show. There's a patient and persistent atmosphere to the sequence, exemplified by its protracted running time. Instead of armories or Kevlar vests the credits display affidavits, court orders, mug shots, antiquated surveillance equipment, and people dragging on cigarettes to pass the time.
A dialogue is brokered through the alternating images of law enforcement and those seeking to undermine it. To wit: a pay phone call in which a dealer orders a re-up of drugs is followed by a shot of an officer listening in through an ear-piece. Though their heads are out of frame, the man using the pay phone is clearly facing screen left, while the man with the ear piece is facing screen right. Yet bisecting the frame in both shots is the titular wire, occupying roughly the same position within the frame.
Or consider this sequence: a hand in close-up hits the pavement, dropping a handful of vials. An indifferent foot steps on the glass and, in a match on action, we cut to the feet of a uniformed officer on mop-up duty.
II. For the second season, the targets are now predominantly middle-aged Polish-Americans and shadowy Turks with a decidedly different set of rituals and cultural norms. The credits begin with a graphic match right out of the gate, cutting between the digital frequency wave of a sound modulator and a large piece of rope securing a boat to a dock. Most of the shots in this sequence are in plain daylight. This is partly a concession to reality as stevedores don’t off-load ships at night. But the sunlit frankness of these images has a metaphoric aspect: it speaks to the impunity with which these men bend the law.
To score the Season Two credits, the producers chose Waits' original recorded version of "Way Down In The Hole." This announces that Season Two will have different themes, a different feel, and a down-and-dirty sleaziness that can only be summoned via electric guitar and a voice which, to quote Gary Graff, sounds “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car.”
The sequence draws a clear parallel between drug abuse and alcoholism, cutting from a recycled image of a drug hand-off to a shot being poured in a dank bar. Just as the crimes of the union are considered more socially acceptable than pushing drugs, the credits introduce the idea that getting hammered at the local pub is merely the condoned flip-side of pushing off in an abandoned building. The Wire repeatedly gives us supposed authority figures puking all over themselves in public, getting behind the wheel while under the influence, and abandoning their better judgement while soused.
The “sexiness” that was distinctly absent from Season One is introduced in literal form: a come- hither look from an attractive blonde; cherry-red polish being applied to a woman’s delicate nails; a man's hand unzipping a woman's jacket in a seductive downward motion; the faces of European prostitutes staring up from confiscated passports. The Wire has never played coy about sex; but Season Two, which revolves around a cargo container full of dead prostitutes, delves into carnal matters. Look beyond the sequence's sexual imagery and you discover the overriding theme of Season Two: personal encumbrances that bring about downfall.
III. In this season, both cops and criminals angling for legitimacy butt heads with an institution (local government) and learn, in so many words, that you can’t fight City Hall. The Neville Brothers perform the theme song's third incarnation. It's a far more up-tempo rendition than the previous two, but it's also more boisterous and spiritual, employing a call and response technique that makes it seem as if the words are being sung between a church choir and its congregation.
We can see change happening all around the characters, and it is represented in the credits as well via images of blueprints, construction sites, and ground-breaking ceremonies. Yet just as prevalent is the sight of money changing hands. Real estate and development, like drug dealing, is a lucrative business that often unfolds on the wrong side of the law.
Season Three focuses on the idea of improving the community, with several creative variations on what exactly entails said community. Certainly mayoral candidate Tommy Carcetti thinks he can make Baltimore a better place, using a platform of improved crime statistics to siphon off voters from Mayor Clarence V. Royce’s strong black voting base. Season Three gives us “Hamsterdam,” a safe haven for competing corner boys to sell their wares, with the police merely serving as impartial referees. We also meet Deacon, a religious figure who genuinely wants to make a difference in the community, and starts by helping former convict Dennis “Cutty” Wise open a boxing gym/community center (this plotline is made especially poignant by the casting of Melvin Williams, ex-drug dealer and the inspiration for Avon Barksdale, in the Deacon role). Even Stringer Bell becomes an advocate of civic behavior by creating “the co-op,” a regular gathering of Baltimore’s drug barons in a hotel conference room. ...Stringer is entranced by the lucrative world of legitimate business, desperate to free himself from the same world that Avon violently clings to.
IV. The goal here is exploring how criminals are created as opposed to how we incarcerate them. Accordingly, there’s a youthful exuberance to the credits, extending from the cutting style (which is really quite playful) to the shot selection to the unsurprising choice of musical performer.
From the youthful voices (Ivan Ashford, Markel Steele, Cameron Brown, Tariq Al-Sabir, and Avery Bargasse) who sing this season's version of "Way Down in the Hole" (arranged by Doreen Vail, Maurette Brown-Clark, and J.B. Wilkins), to images of children leaning against an ice cream truck or hands playing dice, this season promises to focus on street kids who risk death or jail on West Baltimore's corners. We even see Marlo—himself only a few years removed from the kids who will make up his ever-growing army of dealers—tuck a couple of his trademark lollipops into his pocket. We see young kids, no more than seven or eight years old, emulating gang signals with one another, a shot of children watching indifferently as a school bus zips past, a wall-mounted convex mirror (used to monitor students rounding a corner) placed alongside grainy surveillance footage.
The other theme that will come into play is a continuation of one started last season about how ineffectual politicians are at solving the problems that fall under their responsibility. Opening with the now-familiar images of flickering sound waves, bundles of audio wire, and other emblems of surveillance, we cut to a white man in a suit (possibly mayoral candidate Tommy Carcetti) holding a briefcase and crossing the frame in front of a government building. We then graphic match to a large red case, which we learn early on contains an industrial-grade nail gun purchased by Marlo’s enforcer, Snoop, as part of a unique strategy to make Marlo’s dead bodies "disappear." These images are linked by the shape of the characters' carrying cases. The implication, borne out in Season Four, is that the politicians hide their failures (in this instance the troubled school system), using creative accounting and “juked” statistics to conjure the illusion of progress.
A procession of shots near the end of the credits: A local shop-keeper spins open a counter-top security window, sending through a pack of smokes. A hand (Marlo’s) spins a pair of expensive-looking designer rims. A piece of playground equipment spins anonymously at night. A child rolls a large tire around in an empty alley. Bundles of narcotics are packed alongside a spare tire in the back of a car, a piece of carpeting pulled up to conceal them. And then a similar cut of fabric, this time a body bag being carried from an abandoned row house. The same motions are repeated throughout and the eye is unavoidably drawn to how these shots flow seamlessly into one another.
-MZS: Andrew, my favorite part of this piece is the discussion of the Season Four credits, where you analyze the cutting patterns that link circular imagery.These people, these institutions, this city, should be moving forward, yet too often they're content to go round and round.
-KLTHORSON said... As the Producer in charge of post-production, the title sequence falls under my bailiwick (happily). I am very interested in the last photo-image of your essay: a trail of blood, shaped like an upside down wishbone, flickering in the rotation of the squad car lights. I wonder if you are aware that this piece of 35 millimeter is the first image of the first episode of The Wire. It is The Wire's first visual step and a moment that constantly brings the series full circle wherever you are in the story. This is a favorite image. It match cuts well to other wire-like silhouettes. It is concrete-real yet artistic-abstract. Electrified by a pulsing light, this shot, an emblem of death, is very much alive. It is a very useful little picture when you only have 90 seconds to tell a story.
Sarah Boxer in her New York Times article (April 22, 2000) about opening credits quotes design authority and writer Ken Coupland: "The first few minutes of a film can be compared to the curious stage of consciousness that makes the transition between wakefulness and sleep." hm.
When I see the blood shot I jump back five years to Gerri Peroni in the cutting room on the pilot episode of The Wire. She chose to lead us into the episode with this powerful image. She keeps the flow of the image alive by blending to the tracking shot of the street... We are moving towards Mcnulty on the stoop. This makes a path to the heart of the teaser, the tale of Snot Boogie and the American way. The transition from teaser to titles is true to a dream including that restless scant second where you almost wake up as the action cuts swiftly from McNulty's gaze to Snot Boogie unblinking.
-Karen Thorson has it going on, huh? She starts thinking about the credits as soon as the first dailies come in and she makes the most out of that minute-thirty every season.
Just when we start to believe that we're thinking about everything too much, we read something like that and get juiced all over again.-- David Simon
Friday, June 27, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Newbies edition)
-filmcricket said... I've watched all but the last episode of the first season now, and honestly, I don't quite get what all the fuss is about. It's a great show, no question: compelling, well-acted, well-written. But I don't feel my mind being blown. Five minutes in Al Swearengen's company makes my brain feel like it's been wrung out. None of the folks on The Wire do that to me yet.
--I have to say, the more you see Omar, the more you'll realize he's got that Swearengen effect on you. That's a guarantee. Or, I don't know you, so maybe it's not.
-It's just... the idea that drug dealers can be multi-faceted, that "the system" is set up to perpetuate itself, that good cops can do bad things and vice versa, that hierarchies dislike mavericks - none of this is news. All of it has been portrayed on screen before, and certainly played out in real life.
The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, "Old Cases" (Newbies edition): What you could hopefully be finding (or at least, what I am finding) is a show that is intelligent and thought-provoking, that doesn't babysit you, that has compelling characters and an interesting storyline. this is the question, does it? At this point in the story, while everything is being established, it's just a really good show. The greatness (or otherwise) of a story is not determined just by the quality of each individual episode, but by the way they build on each other, the way plot elements are established and pay off, the development of characters and so on.
ok by late in S1 I did find almost every scene compelling for character: McNulty, Daniels, Bubbles, Omar, Avon, Stringer, Wee-Bey.
-filmcricket said... I've watched all but the last episode of the first season now, and honestly, I don't quite get what all the fuss is about. It's a great show, no question: compelling, well-acted, well-written. But I don't feel my mind being blown. Five minutes in Al Swearengen's company makes my brain feel like it's been wrung out. None of the folks on The Wire do that to me yet.
--I have to say, the more you see Omar, the more you'll realize he's got that Swearengen effect on you. That's a guarantee. Or, I don't know you, so maybe it's not.
-It's just... the idea that drug dealers can be multi-faceted, that "the system" is set up to perpetuate itself, that good cops can do bad things and vice versa, that hierarchies dislike mavericks - none of this is news. All of it has been portrayed on screen before, and certainly played out in real life.
The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, "Old Cases" (Newbies edition): What you could hopefully be finding (or at least, what I am finding) is a show that is intelligent and thought-provoking, that doesn't babysit you, that has compelling characters and an interesting storyline. this is the question, does it? At this point in the story, while everything is being established, it's just a really good show. The greatness (or otherwise) of a story is not determined just by the quality of each individual episode, but by the way they build on each other, the way plot elements are established and pay off, the development of characters and so on.
ok by late in S1 I did find almost every scene compelling for character: McNulty, Daniels, Bubbles, Omar, Avon, Stringer, Wee-Bey.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
________________
The House Next Door: David vs. David vs. David; or which is the greatest TV drama ever, Milch's Deadwood or Simon's The Wire or Chase's The Sopranos :
MZS: Not really, but only because I do think -- and I keep emphasizing this in comments sections of articles at The House Next Door -- that ultimately these things come down to who you are and.. what sort of world you think we live in, or ought to live in. And everybody's a little different in that regard, and different works of art speak to us differently. MZS comes out as clearly the one of these guys I'd be more willing to go on listening to; and I do expect that Deadwood and maybe John from Cincinnati will be the series most my when I ever watch it. poetry, tragedy, high highs & low lows, endlessness -'complexity & infinite potential' not the words I like- of every one person. origins, too. I do like the beginnings of things. (Didion: easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends.) and I would rather listen to Milch, seems the one I'd find more fascinating, than Simon or Chase.
MZS: How fatalistic are each of these shows? That's one question worth asking. To what degree can you escape your destiny, according to each show? Do you have a destiny, and can you escape it?
AS: Well, The Sopranos makes it pretty clear that escaping is impossible. I mean, that's what the entire show is about. The Wire, less so, but it shows that escaping is very, very hard.
MZS: Well, that line of Tony's on The Sopranos, "There's two ways a guy like me can go out -- dead, or in prison" -- that works, I think, figuratively as well as literally: that either your life is destroyed by an attempt to change your fundamental nature, or you end up in the prison of whoever you were all this time.
AS: And I can see you being more disposed toward Deadwood because that's by far the most optimistic show of the three.
MZS: It is. And it sounds funny to say that, because it's such a nasty show. It's so profane and bloody and sexually explicit and everything. But ultimately I feel that it is a life-affirming series, in terms of believing in the potential of every human being.
MZS: Well, is this the beginning of something, or is this the end of something?
AS: I don't know. The problem with The Sopranos was that it was so good, but also so popular that I think it made people think it was possible to replicate that success on a regular basis. I think one of the reasons Deadwood got cancelled, because it was never gonna bring ratings close to what The Sopranos brought.
MZS: And yet, all things considered I think it was the second or the third highest rated show that they had, consistently.
AS: Yeah.
AJ: Another thing about Deadwood, too, is that it had to be a lot more expensive than anything shot in contemporary--
AS: And also the fact that Milch is constantly writing and rewriting and tearing things apart and starting over.
MZS: I ask this because I was re-watching some episodes from Season One of Deadwood not too long ago, and at the beginning of the DVD they have a little trailer celebrating HBO. And this was, I guess, 2004, maybe, late 2004, when the first season came out on DVD. And in there were all these shows that were in rotation on HBO: they had Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire, all in production at the same time!
And I felt like I was looking at--this is like the lost continent of Atlantis here. You know? Is it gone?
AJ: Shows like Tell Me You Love Me and In Treatment seem like they're going in a slightly different direction. It seems like almost [the] pursuit of a very different audience. They're shows that I like quite well. Anytime that you get shows that I consider intelligent--
MZS: But they're not shows that make me put my four-year old son to bed early.
AJ: No, they're not. It seems like right now, Showtime is kind of chugging along [with] the HBO model to a certain extent. I'm not really too crazy about any of their shows, except for Brotherhood, which ironically is the one that people say is a Sopranos rip-off, but I think it has a little bit more of The Wire in it. It owes a bit to both--
MZS: I was gonna say, Sopranos plus The Wire.
AS: HBO certainly [led to] a lot of these great shows. Mad Men on AMC. really? really is it great? sounds light to me The Shield, to some extent, on FX. Because of what Oz and The Sopranos and the rest of these shows did, the rest of cable is starting to catch up.
AJ: But HBO really is still The Standard. I had missed the last few episodes that FX showed of The Riches, and it's coming back for its second season right now, so I was going back and looking at the last couple of episodes of the first season. There's this one scene where Eddie Izzard's character is realizing just how expensive his family's lifestyle is, and then he's screaming at Minnie Driver on the phone, "Do you know how much money we're spending on HBO?" They just have to acknowledge it, almost. You've talked about FX being kind of the HBO Lite the HBO of basic cable. 'It's not tv, it's HBO.' and now: 'There is no law (Damages). There is order (The Shield). There is no picket fence (The Riches). There is no hero (Rescue Me). There is no villain (The Shield). There is no laugh track (Always Sunny.) There is no .. very special .. episode. FX. There is no box.'
MZS: It's interesting some of the different lessons that these cable networks seem to have drawn [from the success of HBO series]. For FX, it's what I call the "Oh, shit!" factor -- that the appeal of HBO shows is when you're watching them and somebody does something totally crazy and the audience goes, "Oh, shit!" y FX big on shock.
hmm. I was wanting a mention of Lost. did not get it.
75 comments:
-"The Sopranos" is the most personal of the three, dealing as it does with individuals as they are shaped by their families, and the terrible gravity of family dynamics. I tend to think that "deadwood" took itself out of the running, not only because it was cut off prematurely, but because it was cut off at a point such that the conclusion of the story came at a point so horrific that it ends up contradicting the spirit of the show. I agree that "deadwood", dirty as it was in all respects, is the most life affirming of the series.... but given that it concluded with the entire town colluding in the murder of an innocent to spare a favored member - I think we can only define it as the least depressing if we deny the actual ending and imagine, however hazily, where the show would have gone and *ought* to have concluded. I recommend "the sopranos" and "the wire" without hesitation. "deadwood" I cannot recommend without the caveat that it ends prematurely, and in entirely the wrong place.
-I just posted a response over at my blog, a rambling journey that eventually lead me to conclude that The Sopranos is the greatest because, better than any other TV show, it explores the human condition, the way we live today and the forces that shape us into individuals. I think the formation of civilizations, and the functioning of social systems are fascinating topics, but ultimately, nothing quite matches the human mind for complexity and depth. I agree with that. just seems to me that Deadwood is coming out of a mind (Milch's) most int to me.
I definitely liked Deadwood, but it never quite hooked me in the way those other two shows did. But, talking about the show's lack of conclusion, I saw John From Cincinnati as the lost fourth season of the show, spinning the action 150 years into the future, but continuing to explore the same themes, and bringing back the 'souls' of the Deadwood characters in new forms for the 21st century. I can see why people had issues with the show, but thematically, it's right there with Deadwood, and provided a sense of closure for that series with its euphoric finale. The metaphysical stuff about humanity as one organism was implicit in Deadwood, and it's brought to the fore in JFC. JFC still seems [to be taken as the subject of] jokes, and evidence of HBO's loss of direction, but I think history will see it differently, and it'll find a bigger and bigger audience as time goes on. It's a singularly powerful work, and while I wouldn't put it quite up there with The Sopranos or The Wire, it's not too far behind.
-I am a huge fan of Deadwood and its poetry, even though its artistic fluctuations affected me (and my appreciation thereof adversely) more than they obviously had Matt - but there is something elemental in my longing for catharsis ?resolution? in the show. The way things happen in the real world is a bitch sometimes, but when I think about the show, it is impossible for me not to think of what could have been achieved were it given the opportunity to naturally run its course.
The Wire, I just don't get. I am still on that one episode from the first series where the guy who also happens to be the guy that plays Matthew Abaddon in the recent Lost episodes, has dinner, at his relatively upper class looking house epis 6 the one I am on, with his wife, as they talk about his possible political future in the Force. It just hasn't grabbed me. epis 3 & 4 got me involved A bit too literalistic for my taste, The Wire – at least what I have seen of it so far (all three or four episodes).
All that is by way of my saying that I think it is The Sopranos that deserves the crown…
--Ali, Hang in there with The Wire. You are (literally) the 10th person (including me) who got to just about that exact point, said "Huh, not for me, I guess" and gave up. But then we (all) went back and stuck it out for another episode or two...and now I can't imagine life without it. Kind of hyperbolic, but not really! That said, I go with Matt and Deadwood. I have a close friend who was an AD for all three seasons, and it is the only show she has worked on - and she has worked on some fine shows - that gets her misty-eyed with love and longing. And me too.
-For me the Wire stands head and shoulders above the others because of the scope they are playing with. The Sopranos was, of course, deeply and famously grounded in the individual. Deadwood was more community-oriented, but let's face it, without Swearengen there's no Deadwood. But the Wire was about Baltimore, and each "character", from Carcetti right down to Bubs, was really just a facet of the whole. Which meant that, as lovable as McNulty could be (and detestable, depending on the episode), as innovative as Stringer was, as unique and fascinating as Omar was, and that for all of Marlo's fearsomeness, the show remained much, much bigger than any of them. I am convinced that, had the show chosen to focus on McNulty, or Omar, or Stringer, they would have found a protagonist more than capable of shouldering the weight of a fascinating series. Instead, the Wire had the courage to rise above even its most appealing and interesting characters. Stringer died, McNulty all but vanishes for 2 seasons, Omar remains a recurring theme almost to the end but never was the show's focus, and Marlo doesn't even show up until halfway through the show's run and doesn't show a hint of emotion until the second to last episode. And yet the show rolled on, consistently brilliant from start to finish, letting each character be the facet of the story they were intended to be. The one constant is Baltimore.
And in characterizing a place, the Wire is unparalleled in the history of Television. I live in North Jersey, and somehow the world Tony inhabits never felt half as vivid as Baltimore, a place I have never been too. And Deadwood was wondrous, but also always felt fanciful to me, brilliantly realized the way Tolkein's Middle Earth or McMurty's Lonesome Dove are (or, were it a show of higher quality hrm, the way the Island in Lost might be). But I can sit down with a boxed set of the Wire and at the end feel, not just that I have observed a real place, but that in some sense I have actually lived there, that in watching it has become my home too.
-Matt Zoller Seitz said...
Alan: "I always took Milch's "the camp lasted four years, so I want to do four seasons" as a face-saving exercise once he realized the show might be in trouble." I don't think so. He said pretty much the same thing to me, in those words, when I visited the set while Season Two was still in production -- and HBO had just kicked in a shitload of money to expand the town -- and he reconfirmed it when I visited again a year later.
It gets my dander up (to use "Deadwood" vernacular) when unsatisfying or unresolved subplots from Season Three are held against "Deadwood." Milch always had more of an improvisational bent than Chase or Simon, but he operated the same way throughout the series' run, and Seasons One and Two were mighty tight, and there were callbacks to Season One in Season Two, and to the first two seasons in Season Three. I have to believe that he wouldn't have brought Brian Cox and his drama troupe into the town, and established Langrishe's close, rather touching relationship with Swearengen, if he hadn't intended to use those characters again, more prominently, in the never-happened Season Four.
For overall consistency, "The Wire" wins, hands-down.
But there was a richness of language, characterization, incident, and theme on "Deadwood" that "The Wire" rarely seemed inclined to attempt, and that "The Sopranos" approached only sometimes.
Plus, "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" seem very much rooted in late 20th century/early 21st century American life, where "Deadwood" seems to me more timeless, more applicable to different eras and peoples. (Milch originally pitched it as a Rome series, and told that HBO already had one, said, "What about a western, then?" huh. A better compliment to the show's universality is tough to imagine. ~ than its plausibility in conception as set Rome or American frontier)
-The first two seasons of Deadwood were significantly better than anything else, and season three had its moments. Perhaps this is obvious, or perhaps I am just in left field, but I always thought that Deadwood ended with a shoutout to the end of 'The Sun Also Rises' -- "Isn't it pretty to think so", which to me goes a lot better with the actual ending than the more Shakespearean one suggested.
Deadwood literary, TheWire journalistic. & TheSopranos ~ ? I dunno, tvshowish?
-Mo Ryan: Whereas Chase sometimes wants to beat the audience over the head with the idea that "people don't change," and The Wire's theme is that "institutions don't change," Deadwood's theme seems to be, "Isn't life strange and terrible and wonderful?"
--MZS: I've written probably tens of thousands of words about "Deadwood" over the years*, but you've summed up my preference for "Deadwood" in a single sentence. Thanks and I hope you don't mind if I start quoting that all over the place.
-Deadwood's theme seems to be, "Isn't life strange and terrible and wonderful?"
--Alternately, "It's a sad and beautiful world. Buzz off."
The first two seasons of Deadwood are better than anything the other two shows had to offer, imo. That said, I might vote for The Wire as best, simply because it was consistently amazing for several seasons. Deadwood was gutshot in S3; it stumbled and died in the street.
*-Matt Zoller Seitz said...
Jack Reed: "Thanks Matt, Alan, and Andrew for a really interesting conversation. It compelled me to check out your Deadwood recaps, Matt, which I've long noticed in the sidebar and have been meaning to read following your dense critiques of the final Sopranos season (I wasn't reading HND during Deadwood's). Sadly, the Star-Ledger links no longer work. Is it possible for these to be reprinted in full at House Next Door? It would be great to have a look at them."
Well, Jack, this is a sad story that's been recounted on this site before, but: the Star-Ledger's web site doesn't do permalinks (I guess they're trying to save bandwidth) so after a couple of weeks, all links stop working except for stuff they make a point of archiving in a permanent home (such as a sampling of my and Alan's "Sopranos" coverage). The stuff would usually be saved in an electronic archive somewhere, and of course in bound editions of the print newspaper. However, unfortunately for me, ten of my 12 recaps of "Deadwood" Season Three were written as online-only content, meaning they never appeared in the paper. I didn't realize at the time that the paper had no intention of saving content that did not appear in the print edition, otherwise I would have saved copies of everything on my computer. But I wrote most of the recaps in e-mail and sent them to the paper as soon as I was done; that means the articles -- probably 14,000 words worth of analysis -- no longer exist in any retrievable form. Basically, they're gone.
I've tried to find them through various search engines (including Google Cache, which readers keep suggesting to me, not realizing its limitations) but to no avail.
Unless some "Deadwood" obsessive saved copies of all of them someplace and can send me copies, I have to just write this one off as the electronic equivalent of a manuscript lost in a fire. As they were written the summer after after my wife's death, there's no way for me to re-create the mindset that produced them, even if I could approximate their content and style, which is unlikely anyway. oh-
Deadwood (12) .....David Milch (20)
The House Next Door: Deadwood Monday: Season Three, Ep. 25, "Tell Your God to Ready for Blood": 'Deadwood' creator David Milch once said that his panoramic western drama was actually all about one character, 'the human organism.' That sounds grandiose and abstract until you watch 'Deadwood,' a show featuring at least 60 recurring characters, each one of whom is not just psychologically complex, but rich in undiscovered potential. These people travel through life, interacting with government, business, law enforcement, and religion; making and sometimes ducking moral choices, chasing dreams and fleeing demons, evolving as they go, and illuminating the constants of human experience.
-Change is the dominant theme of 'Deadwood': the change from lawlessness to order , and personal change.
The House Next Door: David vs. David vs. David; or which is the greatest TV drama ever, Milch's Deadwood or Simon's The Wire or Chase's The Sopranos :
MZS: Not really, but only because I do think -- and I keep emphasizing this in comments sections of articles at The House Next Door -- that ultimately these things come down to who you are and.. what sort of world you think we live in, or ought to live in. And everybody's a little different in that regard, and different works of art speak to us differently. MZS comes out as clearly the one of these guys I'd be more willing to go on listening to; and I do expect that Deadwood and maybe John from Cincinnati will be the series most my when I ever watch it. poetry, tragedy, high highs & low lows, endlessness -'complexity & infinite potential' not the words I like- of every one person. origins, too. I do like the beginnings of things. (Didion: easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends.) and I would rather listen to Milch, seems the one I'd find more fascinating, than Simon or Chase.
MZS: How fatalistic are each of these shows? That's one question worth asking. To what degree can you escape your destiny, according to each show? Do you have a destiny, and can you escape it?
AS: Well, The Sopranos makes it pretty clear that escaping is impossible. I mean, that's what the entire show is about. The Wire, less so, but it shows that escaping is very, very hard.
MZS: Well, that line of Tony's on The Sopranos, "There's two ways a guy like me can go out -- dead, or in prison" -- that works, I think, figuratively as well as literally: that either your life is destroyed by an attempt to change your fundamental nature, or you end up in the prison of whoever you were all this time.
AS: And I can see you being more disposed toward Deadwood because that's by far the most optimistic show of the three.
MZS: It is. And it sounds funny to say that, because it's such a nasty show. It's so profane and bloody and sexually explicit and everything. But ultimately I feel that it is a life-affirming series, in terms of believing in the potential of every human being.
MZS: Well, is this the beginning of something, or is this the end of something?
AS: I don't know. The problem with The Sopranos was that it was so good, but also so popular that I think it made people think it was possible to replicate that success on a regular basis. I think one of the reasons Deadwood got cancelled, because it was never gonna bring ratings close to what The Sopranos brought.
MZS: And yet, all things considered I think it was the second or the third highest rated show that they had, consistently.
AS: Yeah.
AJ: Another thing about Deadwood, too, is that it had to be a lot more expensive than anything shot in contemporary--
AS: And also the fact that Milch is constantly writing and rewriting and tearing things apart and starting over.
MZS: I ask this because I was re-watching some episodes from Season One of Deadwood not too long ago, and at the beginning of the DVD they have a little trailer celebrating HBO. And this was, I guess, 2004, maybe, late 2004, when the first season came out on DVD. And in there were all these shows that were in rotation on HBO: they had Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire, all in production at the same time!
And I felt like I was looking at--this is like the lost continent of Atlantis here. You know? Is it gone?
AJ: Shows like Tell Me You Love Me and In Treatment seem like they're going in a slightly different direction. It seems like almost [the] pursuit of a very different audience. They're shows that I like quite well. Anytime that you get shows that I consider intelligent--
MZS: But they're not shows that make me put my four-year old son to bed early.
AJ: No, they're not. It seems like right now, Showtime is kind of chugging along [with] the HBO model to a certain extent. I'm not really too crazy about any of their shows, except for Brotherhood, which ironically is the one that people say is a Sopranos rip-off, but I think it has a little bit more of The Wire in it. It owes a bit to both--
MZS: I was gonna say, Sopranos plus The Wire.
AS: HBO certainly [led to] a lot of these great shows. Mad Men on AMC. really? really is it great? sounds light to me The Shield, to some extent, on FX. Because of what Oz and The Sopranos and the rest of these shows did, the rest of cable is starting to catch up.
AJ: But HBO really is still The Standard. I had missed the last few episodes that FX showed of The Riches, and it's coming back for its second season right now, so I was going back and looking at the last couple of episodes of the first season. There's this one scene where Eddie Izzard's character is realizing just how expensive his family's lifestyle is, and then he's screaming at Minnie Driver on the phone, "Do you know how much money we're spending on HBO?" They just have to acknowledge it, almost. You've talked about FX being kind of the HBO Lite the HBO of basic cable. 'It's not tv, it's HBO.' and now: 'There is no law (Damages). There is order (The Shield). There is no picket fence (The Riches). There is no hero (Rescue Me). There is no villain (The Shield). There is no laugh track (Always Sunny.) There is no .. very special .. episode. FX. There is no box.'
MZS: It's interesting some of the different lessons that these cable networks seem to have drawn [from the success of HBO series]. For FX, it's what I call the "Oh, shit!" factor -- that the appeal of HBO shows is when you're watching them and somebody does something totally crazy and the audience goes, "Oh, shit!" y FX big on shock.
hmm. I was wanting a mention of Lost. did not get it.
75 comments:
-"The Sopranos" is the most personal of the three, dealing as it does with individuals as they are shaped by their families, and the terrible gravity of family dynamics. I tend to think that "deadwood" took itself out of the running, not only because it was cut off prematurely, but because it was cut off at a point such that the conclusion of the story came at a point so horrific that it ends up contradicting the spirit of the show. I agree that "deadwood", dirty as it was in all respects, is the most life affirming of the series.... but given that it concluded with the entire town colluding in the murder of an innocent to spare a favored member - I think we can only define it as the least depressing if we deny the actual ending and imagine, however hazily, where the show would have gone and *ought* to have concluded. I recommend "the sopranos" and "the wire" without hesitation. "deadwood" I cannot recommend without the caveat that it ends prematurely, and in entirely the wrong place.
-I just posted a response over at my blog, a rambling journey that eventually lead me to conclude that The Sopranos is the greatest because, better than any other TV show, it explores the human condition, the way we live today and the forces that shape us into individuals. I think the formation of civilizations, and the functioning of social systems are fascinating topics, but ultimately, nothing quite matches the human mind for complexity and depth. I agree with that. just seems to me that Deadwood is coming out of a mind (Milch's) most int to me.
I definitely liked Deadwood, but it never quite hooked me in the way those other two shows did. But, talking about the show's lack of conclusion, I saw John From Cincinnati as the lost fourth season of the show, spinning the action 150 years into the future, but continuing to explore the same themes, and bringing back the 'souls' of the Deadwood characters in new forms for the 21st century. I can see why people had issues with the show, but thematically, it's right there with Deadwood, and provided a sense of closure for that series with its euphoric finale. The metaphysical stuff about humanity as one organism was implicit in Deadwood, and it's brought to the fore in JFC. JFC still seems [to be taken as the subject of] jokes, and evidence of HBO's loss of direction, but I think history will see it differently, and it'll find a bigger and bigger audience as time goes on. It's a singularly powerful work, and while I wouldn't put it quite up there with The Sopranos or The Wire, it's not too far behind.
-I am a huge fan of Deadwood and its poetry, even though its artistic fluctuations affected me (and my appreciation thereof adversely) more than they obviously had Matt - but there is something elemental in my longing for catharsis ?resolution? in the show. The way things happen in the real world is a bitch sometimes, but when I think about the show, it is impossible for me not to think of what could have been achieved were it given the opportunity to naturally run its course.
The Wire, I just don't get. I am still on that one episode from the first series where the guy who also happens to be the guy that plays Matthew Abaddon in the recent Lost episodes, has dinner, at his relatively upper class looking house epis 6 the one I am on, with his wife, as they talk about his possible political future in the Force. It just hasn't grabbed me. epis 3 & 4 got me involved A bit too literalistic for my taste, The Wire – at least what I have seen of it so far (all three or four episodes).
All that is by way of my saying that I think it is The Sopranos that deserves the crown…
--Ali, Hang in there with The Wire. You are (literally) the 10th person (including me) who got to just about that exact point, said "Huh, not for me, I guess" and gave up. But then we (all) went back and stuck it out for another episode or two...and now I can't imagine life without it. Kind of hyperbolic, but not really! That said, I go with Matt and Deadwood. I have a close friend who was an AD for all three seasons, and it is the only show she has worked on - and she has worked on some fine shows - that gets her misty-eyed with love and longing. And me too.
-For me the Wire stands head and shoulders above the others because of the scope they are playing with. The Sopranos was, of course, deeply and famously grounded in the individual. Deadwood was more community-oriented, but let's face it, without Swearengen there's no Deadwood. But the Wire was about Baltimore, and each "character", from Carcetti right down to Bubs, was really just a facet of the whole. Which meant that, as lovable as McNulty could be (and detestable, depending on the episode), as innovative as Stringer was, as unique and fascinating as Omar was, and that for all of Marlo's fearsomeness, the show remained much, much bigger than any of them. I am convinced that, had the show chosen to focus on McNulty, or Omar, or Stringer, they would have found a protagonist more than capable of shouldering the weight of a fascinating series. Instead, the Wire had the courage to rise above even its most appealing and interesting characters. Stringer died, McNulty all but vanishes for 2 seasons, Omar remains a recurring theme almost to the end but never was the show's focus, and Marlo doesn't even show up until halfway through the show's run and doesn't show a hint of emotion until the second to last episode. And yet the show rolled on, consistently brilliant from start to finish, letting each character be the facet of the story they were intended to be. The one constant is Baltimore.
And in characterizing a place, the Wire is unparalleled in the history of Television. I live in North Jersey, and somehow the world Tony inhabits never felt half as vivid as Baltimore, a place I have never been too. And Deadwood was wondrous, but also always felt fanciful to me, brilliantly realized the way Tolkein's Middle Earth or McMurty's Lonesome Dove are (or, were it a show of higher quality hrm, the way the Island in Lost might be). But I can sit down with a boxed set of the Wire and at the end feel, not just that I have observed a real place, but that in some sense I have actually lived there, that in watching it has become my home too.
-Matt Zoller Seitz said...
Alan: "I always took Milch's "the camp lasted four years, so I want to do four seasons" as a face-saving exercise once he realized the show might be in trouble." I don't think so. He said pretty much the same thing to me, in those words, when I visited the set while Season Two was still in production -- and HBO had just kicked in a shitload of money to expand the town -- and he reconfirmed it when I visited again a year later.
It gets my dander up (to use "Deadwood" vernacular) when unsatisfying or unresolved subplots from Season Three are held against "Deadwood." Milch always had more of an improvisational bent than Chase or Simon, but he operated the same way throughout the series' run, and Seasons One and Two were mighty tight, and there were callbacks to Season One in Season Two, and to the first two seasons in Season Three. I have to believe that he wouldn't have brought Brian Cox and his drama troupe into the town, and established Langrishe's close, rather touching relationship with Swearengen, if he hadn't intended to use those characters again, more prominently, in the never-happened Season Four.
For overall consistency, "The Wire" wins, hands-down.
But there was a richness of language, characterization, incident, and theme on "Deadwood" that "The Wire" rarely seemed inclined to attempt, and that "The Sopranos" approached only sometimes.
Plus, "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" seem very much rooted in late 20th century/early 21st century American life, where "Deadwood" seems to me more timeless, more applicable to different eras and peoples. (Milch originally pitched it as a Rome series, and told that HBO already had one, said, "What about a western, then?" huh. A better compliment to the show's universality is tough to imagine. ~ than its plausibility in conception as set Rome or American frontier)
-The first two seasons of Deadwood were significantly better than anything else, and season three had its moments. Perhaps this is obvious, or perhaps I am just in left field, but I always thought that Deadwood ended with a shoutout to the end of 'The Sun Also Rises' -- "Isn't it pretty to think so", which to me goes a lot better with the actual ending than the more Shakespearean one suggested.
Deadwood literary, TheWire journalistic. & TheSopranos ~ ? I dunno, tvshowish?
-Mo Ryan: Whereas Chase sometimes wants to beat the audience over the head with the idea that "people don't change," and The Wire's theme is that "institutions don't change," Deadwood's theme seems to be, "Isn't life strange and terrible and wonderful?"
--MZS: I've written probably tens of thousands of words about "Deadwood" over the years*, but you've summed up my preference for "Deadwood" in a single sentence. Thanks and I hope you don't mind if I start quoting that all over the place.
-Deadwood's theme seems to be, "Isn't life strange and terrible and wonderful?"
--Alternately, "It's a sad and beautiful world. Buzz off."
The first two seasons of Deadwood are better than anything the other two shows had to offer, imo. That said, I might vote for The Wire as best, simply because it was consistently amazing for several seasons. Deadwood was gutshot in S3; it stumbled and died in the street.
*-Matt Zoller Seitz said...
Jack Reed: "Thanks Matt, Alan, and Andrew for a really interesting conversation. It compelled me to check out your Deadwood recaps, Matt, which I've long noticed in the sidebar and have been meaning to read following your dense critiques of the final Sopranos season (I wasn't reading HND during Deadwood's). Sadly, the Star-Ledger links no longer work. Is it possible for these to be reprinted in full at House Next Door? It would be great to have a look at them."
Well, Jack, this is a sad story that's been recounted on this site before, but: the Star-Ledger's web site doesn't do permalinks (I guess they're trying to save bandwidth) so after a couple of weeks, all links stop working except for stuff they make a point of archiving in a permanent home (such as a sampling of my and Alan's "Sopranos" coverage). The stuff would usually be saved in an electronic archive somewhere, and of course in bound editions of the print newspaper. However, unfortunately for me, ten of my 12 recaps of "Deadwood" Season Three were written as online-only content, meaning they never appeared in the paper. I didn't realize at the time that the paper had no intention of saving content that did not appear in the print edition, otherwise I would have saved copies of everything on my computer. But I wrote most of the recaps in e-mail and sent them to the paper as soon as I was done; that means the articles -- probably 14,000 words worth of analysis -- no longer exist in any retrievable form. Basically, they're gone.
I've tried to find them through various search engines (including Google Cache, which readers keep suggesting to me, not realizing its limitations) but to no avail.
Unless some "Deadwood" obsessive saved copies of all of them someplace and can send me copies, I have to just write this one off as the electronic equivalent of a manuscript lost in a fire. As they were written the summer after after my wife's death, there's no way for me to re-create the mindset that produced them, even if I could approximate their content and style, which is unlikely anyway. oh-
Deadwood (12) .....David Milch (20)
The House Next Door: Deadwood Monday: Season Three, Ep. 25, "Tell Your God to Ready for Blood": 'Deadwood' creator David Milch once said that his panoramic western drama was actually all about one character, 'the human organism.' That sounds grandiose and abstract until you watch 'Deadwood,' a show featuring at least 60 recurring characters, each one of whom is not just psychologically complex, but rich in undiscovered potential. These people travel through life, interacting with government, business, law enforcement, and religion; making and sometimes ducking moral choices, chasing dreams and fleeing demons, evolving as they go, and illuminating the constants of human experience.
-Change is the dominant theme of 'Deadwood': the change from lawlessness to order , and personal change.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Wire: Episode 3, "The Buys" (Veterans edition)
...it took a while to really appreciate how great the show was. For some, that revelation didn't (or won't) come for another episode or two. For me, it was the chess scene contained right here in "The Buys." y this epis more engaging: the chess scene, the McNulty & Greggs interaction.
During our post-finale interview, Simon and I talked about how all three characters in the chess scene eventually wound up dead at the hands of their employers.
D'Angelo, Bodie, Wallace.
-Everything that we've seen from Bodie makes him seem like an arrogant punk who spits too much, then the Wallace incident happened and I thought I was right. But by the end I wanted him to run off that corner with Poot instead of standing strong. The slow moving pace and patience that the series requires creates a better understanding of characters and motivations. By the end, I knew Bodie as a person. He was no longer just an archetype but a friend, just maybe not a good firend. He was a friend that would definately let you down from time to time and make your life harder. But it is this emotional investment in the characters that I think, for me at least, makes the series so unique.
-Still, it is hard to forgive him for Wallace.
-In fact, it's Poot that ends up being the cold one in this situation, contrary to what we would think leading up to this scene.
-I feel like i'm looking through photos of a dead relative still. It's all too fresh.
-Arguably the most series-defining moment of the episode is where D ask Stringer "Where does it all go, the money?" Knowing how much it played a role in season 3 (the best season of the television ever, in my opinion), its a small nod to what is too come.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, "Old Cases" (Veterans edition)
the pre-credits scene w the desk wedged in the door. it's very funny, esp if y watch knowing Lester's smarter than these other guys put tgthr & therefore knows what's wrong, and a commentary on inefficient bureaucracy.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Veterans edition):
much less to Omar's introduction than I remembered, though Michael K. Williams' delivery of "Well now..." while watching the cops roll out of ThePit foreshadowed the "Indeed"s & other bon mots fr Omar in future episodes.
...it took a while to really appreciate how great the show was. For some, that revelation didn't (or won't) come for another episode or two. For me, it was the chess scene contained right here in "The Buys." y this epis more engaging: the chess scene, the McNulty & Greggs interaction.
During our post-finale interview, Simon and I talked about how all three characters in the chess scene eventually wound up dead at the hands of their employers.
D'Angelo, Bodie, Wallace.
-Everything that we've seen from Bodie makes him seem like an arrogant punk who spits too much, then the Wallace incident happened and I thought I was right. But by the end I wanted him to run off that corner with Poot instead of standing strong. The slow moving pace and patience that the series requires creates a better understanding of characters and motivations. By the end, I knew Bodie as a person. He was no longer just an archetype but a friend, just maybe not a good firend. He was a friend that would definately let you down from time to time and make your life harder. But it is this emotional investment in the characters that I think, for me at least, makes the series so unique.
-Still, it is hard to forgive him for Wallace.
-In fact, it's Poot that ends up being the cold one in this situation, contrary to what we would think leading up to this scene.
-I feel like i'm looking through photos of a dead relative still. It's all too fresh.
-Arguably the most series-defining moment of the episode is where D ask Stringer "Where does it all go, the money?" Knowing how much it played a role in season 3 (the best season of the television ever, in my opinion), its a small nod to what is too come.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, "Old Cases" (Veterans edition)
the pre-credits scene w the desk wedged in the door. it's very funny, esp if y watch knowing Lester's smarter than these other guys put tgthr & therefore knows what's wrong, and a commentary on inefficient bureaucracy.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Veterans edition):
much less to Omar's introduction than I remembered, though Michael K. Williams' delivery of "Well now..." while watching the cops roll out of ThePit foreshadowed the "Indeed"s & other bon mots fr Omar in future episodes.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 2, "The Detail" (Veterans edition): One of the stylistic choices that Simon and Robert Colesberry insisted for this show was -- with one yearly exception, for the montage near the end of each season finale -- to eschew the use of any music that didn't come from a practical background source. No score, no songs that appear as if from nowhere. If the song doesn't originate from the sound system at a club, or somebody's car stereo (as in this episode's use of 'American Woman' during the terrible trio's middle of the night arrival at the high-rises), it can't be used. Eventually, the producers would find ways to bend their own rules -- there's a montage midway through season two that's scored to Johnny Cash's 'Walk the Line,' but it's justified because the character who appears at the beginning and end is listening to it on a portable stereo like in Lost, Hurley on the beach listening to song on his discman & that song closes out the epis, nice scene, then same thing round campfire ~ next epis -- but for the most part, the lack of musical cues helps the show's aura of realism, as well as Simon's desire not to hold the audience's hand and tell them how to feel at any given moment.
-In a subsequent episode of Season One I noticed them bending the 'no unnatural music' rule. It's the scene where Avon makes a visit to the Pit crew, I believe to reward Wallace for spotting Brandon. He comes in, in slow-motion to very stylized background music yes I wonder whether Simon wanted this & why that as far as I can tell did not belong anywhere organically. Having watched all the seasons and being very accustomed to the no-music style, I found it very jarring!
--Indeed, thanks for reminding me of Avon's entrance into the Pit. It's maybe the only time in the series where they completely violate the rules. With Prez's "Walk the Line"cork board montage in season two, or Cutty jogging through a lot of election day drama to "Move On Up" in season four, they at least made a pretense of playing by the rule, and the season-ending montages are a built-in exception. Avon's entrance...? Well, I guess we can study it further when we get to that episode.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 5, "The Pager" (Veterans edition)
...Coming up next Friday (or possibly Saturday, depending on how my early-week vacation wreaks havoc with my schedule): "The Wire," in which a bug gets placed, Wallace hands out snacks, and Avon pays a visit to the Pit. so that's in epis 6 "The Wire": Brandon's bloodied body is discovered in the pit. Wallace gets even more unsettled about the situation after Avon rewards him for his part in Brandon's murder. that's the scene where Avon has come down to the pit. The detail gets a wiretap running.
-In a subsequent episode of Season One I noticed them bending the 'no unnatural music' rule. It's the scene where Avon makes a visit to the Pit crew, I believe to reward Wallace for spotting Brandon. He comes in, in slow-motion to very stylized background music yes I wonder whether Simon wanted this & why that as far as I can tell did not belong anywhere organically. Having watched all the seasons and being very accustomed to the no-music style, I found it very jarring!
--Indeed, thanks for reminding me of Avon's entrance into the Pit. It's maybe the only time in the series where they completely violate the rules. With Prez's "Walk the Line"cork board montage in season two, or Cutty jogging through a lot of election day drama to "Move On Up" in season four, they at least made a pretense of playing by the rule, and the season-ending montages are a built-in exception. Avon's entrance...? Well, I guess we can study it further when we get to that episode.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 5, "The Pager" (Veterans edition)
...Coming up next Friday (or possibly Saturday, depending on how my early-week vacation wreaks havoc with my schedule): "The Wire," in which a bug gets placed, Wallace hands out snacks, and Avon pays a visit to the Pit. so that's in epis 6 "The Wire": Brandon's bloodied body is discovered in the pit. Wallace gets even more unsettled about the situation after Avon rewards him for his part in Brandon's murder. that's the scene where Avon has come down to the pit. The detail gets a wiretap running.
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, Season 1, Episode 2, "The Detail" (Newbies edition)
"It ain't about right. It's about money," D insists, one of several series-defining statements in this episode. Another of those comes during the extraordinary interrogation scene at Homicide.
(That scene's the first indication that Larry Gilliard Jr. as D'Angelo Barksdale is going to do something really special here. y he's good In typical Hollywood fashion, nobody in the business noticed, and his post-show profile is just as low as it was before. It's sad how excited I got when I saw him in a small role in a screener for next week's episode of "Fear Itself.")
McNulty has already explained to the Pit crew that all he cares about are the bodies, not the drugs, and right before he and Bunk try guilting D'Angelo with the tale of Gant's (fictional) orphaned children, McNulty asks D'Angelo a very simple question:
"Why can't you sell the shit and walk the fuck away? Everything else in this country gets sold without shooting people behind it." behind it.
but is that true, everything else gets sold without shooting! oil, say.
Det.Charlie Crews ('Life'): Is that right. Is *that* right.
-I've watched the first two episodes and I thought it funny how you said The Wire teaches you how to watch it cause my reaction after the pilot was one of indifference. right. rdh: not ~compelling. I didn't get the hype or your bold proclamation that it's "the best drama in TV history." ***
Your analysis, however, provided much more insight than I caught at first glance. I enjoyed the second episode, but again your analysis helps me to fill in the blanks.
--As I said last week, you really want to get through four or five episodes of season one before you can really appreciate how it's working. It's a slow build, but totally worth it.
-As you noted last week, it's young Wallace and not D'Angelo that knows that Alexander Hamilton wasn't a president, but D'Angelo knows more about how the world works, which to me seems yet another shade of gray on this very gray show: just when we have Wallace pegged as the "smart kid" of the bunch, he gets one-upped by D. This show makes it impossible to fit its characters into neat categories, as is already evident in just the first two episodes, and I love it for that.
-I love what Reddick is doing with Daniels; his intensity is mesmerizing.
The one person I'd like to see more of is Stringer. Idris Elba is an extremely compelling screen presence and so far it appears that Stringer's Avon's consigliere [mmm: konsiʎˈʎɛːɾe - the Italian term for an adviser or counsellor, fr Latin consilium, 'advice'] just because Elba sucks all the oxygen from the room when he's in it. wait, that's *why* he's number two (not in charge)? bcs his presence is so compelling? didn't leave out a word, eg it appears _odd_ that Stringer is Avon's consigliere?
***
az- Wheelchair Assassin's review of The Wire - The Complete First Season
The Wire is doubtless the most challenging and important show I've ever seen, leaving even other classics like The Shield and The Sopranos in its dust, and this first season remains its defining document. We watch a single case, built almost entirely on electronic surveillance (hence the title) come together piece by piece from the ground up, with the emotional stakes and social relevance being ratcheted up consistently along the way, right up until a harrowing conclusion that takes up the last two episodes. All thirteen of these episdoes are filled with amazingly detailed and complex storytelling, sharp characterization, and endless insights into the nature of modern crime and punishment--and they're mighty exciting to watch, to boot. is it?
For many, The Wire will probably be so lifelike and believable that it doesn't even function as entertainment. what do I want from entertainment? not: not-lifelike. but, maybe I want Dostoevsky more than Tolstoy, fox more than hedgehog, inside-the-mind more than all-the-world. maybe not finding this compelling bcs not getting in the minds of the characters. it's people in relation to the city, to the institutions, not esp re in solitude or intimacy, is that accurate? however subtle re character, it's not from within, not about interiority. that's not the subject. In that sense, the show's greatest strength is also its (only) weakness, as there's nothing remotely sensationalistic or cliched about it, no reliance on overdirected action scenes, contrived cliffhanger endings, or improbable plot twists. but that's not what I'm wanting, is it. I want to get caught up *in* characters. I like esp D'Angelo & Wallace (sure, they are esp conflicted, so get some interiority there), and find Avon & Stringer & McNulty & Daniels interesting but am not ~ involved. is that life-like, to keep at a distance?
anyway I'm impressed with show, its intentions & realization. but not enthralled. think that may have been true wrt War & Peace, also.
Although there isn't really a main character per se, Dominic West is sort of a first among equals ok y as Jimmy McNulty, the self-righteous, insubordinate, irresponsible detective who turns the case into a personal crusade to prove his superior intelligence and frequently succeeds. For all his flaws, Jimmy's a man's man, the kind of guy you can't help but like, especially since he really is smarter than pretty much everyone else around him. After West, the biggest impression among the wire team is probably made by Lance Reddick as Cedric Daniels, the almost impossibly intense, glaring leader whose initially suspect dedication steadily grows over the course of the season. Backing them is a whole crew of memorable characters, from the odd-couple pairing of loutish white detective Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi) and his smooth black partner Carver (Seth Gilliam); to Jimmy's trash-talking, cigar-chomping partner Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce); to paternal, wisdom-dispensing ex-homicide detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters); and of course abrasive, venal Major Bill Rawls (John Doman), who manages to save his best vitriol for Jimmy.
"It ain't about right. It's about money," D insists, one of several series-defining statements in this episode. Another of those comes during the extraordinary interrogation scene at Homicide.
(That scene's the first indication that Larry Gilliard Jr. as D'Angelo Barksdale is going to do something really special here. y he's good In typical Hollywood fashion, nobody in the business noticed, and his post-show profile is just as low as it was before. It's sad how excited I got when I saw him in a small role in a screener for next week's episode of "Fear Itself.")
McNulty has already explained to the Pit crew that all he cares about are the bodies, not the drugs, and right before he and Bunk try guilting D'Angelo with the tale of Gant's (fictional) orphaned children, McNulty asks D'Angelo a very simple question:
"Why can't you sell the shit and walk the fuck away? Everything else in this country gets sold without shooting people behind it." behind it.
but is that true, everything else gets sold without shooting! oil, say.
Det.Charlie Crews ('Life'): Is that right. Is *that* right.
-I've watched the first two episodes and I thought it funny how you said The Wire teaches you how to watch it cause my reaction after the pilot was one of indifference. right. rdh: not ~compelling. I didn't get the hype or your bold proclamation that it's "the best drama in TV history." ***
Your analysis, however, provided much more insight than I caught at first glance. I enjoyed the second episode, but again your analysis helps me to fill in the blanks.
--As I said last week, you really want to get through four or five episodes of season one before you can really appreciate how it's working. It's a slow build, but totally worth it.
-As you noted last week, it's young Wallace and not D'Angelo that knows that Alexander Hamilton wasn't a president, but D'Angelo knows more about how the world works, which to me seems yet another shade of gray on this very gray show: just when we have Wallace pegged as the "smart kid" of the bunch, he gets one-upped by D. This show makes it impossible to fit its characters into neat categories, as is already evident in just the first two episodes, and I love it for that.
-I love what Reddick is doing with Daniels; his intensity is mesmerizing.
The one person I'd like to see more of is Stringer. Idris Elba is an extremely compelling screen presence and so far it appears that Stringer's Avon's consigliere [mmm: konsiʎˈʎɛːɾe - the Italian term for an adviser or counsellor, fr Latin consilium, 'advice'] just because Elba sucks all the oxygen from the room when he's in it. wait, that's *why* he's number two (not in charge)? bcs his presence is so compelling? didn't leave out a word, eg it appears _odd_ that Stringer is Avon's consigliere?
***
az- Wheelchair Assassin's review of The Wire - The Complete First Season
The Wire is doubtless the most challenging and important show I've ever seen, leaving even other classics like The Shield and The Sopranos in its dust, and this first season remains its defining document. We watch a single case, built almost entirely on electronic surveillance (hence the title) come together piece by piece from the ground up, with the emotional stakes and social relevance being ratcheted up consistently along the way, right up until a harrowing conclusion that takes up the last two episodes. All thirteen of these episdoes are filled with amazingly detailed and complex storytelling, sharp characterization, and endless insights into the nature of modern crime and punishment--and they're mighty exciting to watch, to boot. is it?
For many, The Wire will probably be so lifelike and believable that it doesn't even function as entertainment. what do I want from entertainment? not: not-lifelike. but, maybe I want Dostoevsky more than Tolstoy, fox more than hedgehog, inside-the-mind more than all-the-world. maybe not finding this compelling bcs not getting in the minds of the characters. it's people in relation to the city, to the institutions, not esp re in solitude or intimacy, is that accurate? however subtle re character, it's not from within, not about interiority. that's not the subject. In that sense, the show's greatest strength is also its (only) weakness, as there's nothing remotely sensationalistic or cliched about it, no reliance on overdirected action scenes, contrived cliffhanger endings, or improbable plot twists. but that's not what I'm wanting, is it. I want to get caught up *in* characters. I like esp D'Angelo & Wallace (sure, they are esp conflicted, so get some interiority there), and find Avon & Stringer & McNulty & Daniels interesting but am not ~ involved. is that life-like, to keep at a distance?
anyway I'm impressed with show, its intentions & realization. but not enthralled. think that may have been true wrt War & Peace, also.
Although there isn't really a main character per se, Dominic West is sort of a first among equals ok y as Jimmy McNulty, the self-righteous, insubordinate, irresponsible detective who turns the case into a personal crusade to prove his superior intelligence and frequently succeeds. For all his flaws, Jimmy's a man's man, the kind of guy you can't help but like, especially since he really is smarter than pretty much everyone else around him. After West, the biggest impression among the wire team is probably made by Lance Reddick as Cedric Daniels, the almost impossibly intense, glaring leader whose initially suspect dedication steadily grows over the course of the season. Backing them is a whole crew of memorable characters, from the odd-couple pairing of loutish white detective Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi) and his smooth black partner Carver (Seth Gilliam); to Jimmy's trash-talking, cigar-chomping partner Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce); to paternal, wisdom-dispensing ex-homicide detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters); and of course abrasive, venal Major Bill Rawls (John Doman), who manages to save his best vitriol for Jimmy.
________
The Wire: Episode 13 - Sentencing:
DEE: Y'all don't understand, man. Y'all don't get it. You grow up in this shit. My grandfather was Butch Stamford. You know who Butch Stamford was in this town?
McNULTY: Mm-hmm.
DEE: All my people, man, my father, my uncles cousins. It's just what we do. You just live with this shit, until you can't breathe no more. I swear to God, I was courtside for eight months, and I was freer in jail than I was at ho
me.
PEARLMAN: What are you looking for?
DEE: I want it to go away.
PEARLMAN: I can't...
DEE: I want what Wallace wanted. I want to start over. That's what I want. I don't care where. Anywhere. I don't give a fuck. I just want to go somewhere, where I can breathe like regular folk. You give me that... And I'll give you them.
The Wire - Episode Closed Captioning Transcripts
10: The Cost
11: The Hunt
13: Sentencing
14: Ebb Tide
15: Collateral Damage
16: Hot Shots
17: Hard Cases
18: Undertow
19: All Prologue
20: Backwash
The Wire: Episode 13 - Sentencing:
DEE: Y'all don't understand, man. Y'all don't get it. You grow up in this shit. My grandfather was Butch Stamford. You know who Butch Stamford was in this town?
McNULTY: Mm-hmm.
DEE: All my people, man, my father, my uncles cousins. It's just what we do. You just live with this shit, until you can't breathe no more. I swear to God, I was courtside for eight months, and I was freer in jail than I was at ho
me.PEARLMAN: What are you looking for?
DEE: I want it to go away.
PEARLMAN: I can't...
DEE: I want what Wallace wanted. I want to start over. That's what I want. I don't care where. Anywhere. I don't give a fuck. I just want to go somewhere, where I can breathe like regular folk. You give me that... And I'll give you them.
The Wire - Episode Closed Captioning Transcripts
10: The Cost
11: The Hunt
13: Sentencing
14: Ebb Tide
15: Collateral Damage
16: Hot Shots
17: Hard Cases
18: Undertow
19: All Prologue
20: Backwash
________
of int to me at end of Season 1 finale Sentencing:
why did McNulty say "What'd I do?" at trial? ~it's his catchphrase, ok, so overall this season, this case, what did he do? what happened? ~ put away a good guy D'Angelo for 20 years & Avon only for 3-4 and the business going on as usual with Stringer at helm
what happens to D'Angelo? oh. killed in prison on order of Stringer, made to look like suicide, without Avon knowing. but Stringer eventually tells.
signif of ending w Omar? (tht at first it was Omar's introduction but no) "all in the game"
Street level characters of The Wire - Wkp #Brother_Mouzone
Brother Mouzone is a hitman from New York. "The Brother" does not fit the usual picture of a hitman, always wearing a suit, bowtie, and glasses, speaking politely, and reading magazines such as Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Nation. He dresses and acts in a manner typically associated with the Nation of Islam, more particularly its military wing, the Fruit of Islam, but is never specified to belong to either (usually anti-drug) organization. (Though he reveals himself as a Muslim by mouthing "Allah akbar" repeatedly after Omar shoots him, when he believes he is about to die.) He is always accompanied by his bodyguard Lamar.
Stringer duped Omar Little into believing that Mouzone was responsible for the brutal murder of Omar's boyfriend Brandon.
After Omar confronted Mouzone and shot him, he realized that he was tricked and called the ambulance for Brother Mouzone himself.
In season three, Mouzone returned to Baltimore to search for Omar. He located Omar's boyfriend Dante with advice from Baltimore local Vinson. Mouzone beat Dante until he revealed Omar's whereabouts. After he tracked Omar down he suggested that they team up to kill Stringer Bell. Avon gave Mouzone a time and a place to find Stringer, realizing it was the only way to satisfy Mouzone's vengeance. Omar and Mouzone planned an ambush and killed Stringer together. Before returning to New York, Mouzone released Dante and gave Omar his weapon to dispose of. as sign of trust?
Marlo Stanfield - Wkp: At the end of season 3, Avon was arrested for parole violation, weapons charges and drug crimes. Marlo and Chris attended his sentencing hearing. Avon acknowledges Marlo; thus conceding that the crown has been passed.
Street level characters of The Wire #Johnny_Weeks: In season one Johnny is Bubbles' best friend. In the pilot episode he is beaten nearly to death by Bodie Broadus, Poot Carr and other dealers after trying to pass counterfeit money to D'Angelo Barksdale's operation; this spurs Bubbles to become a police informant.
While in the hospital for that beating, Johnny discovers he is HIV positive. In the season three finale he dies from an overdose and his partially rat-eaten body is discovered in a vacant house in the 'Hamsterdam' free zone that Major Colvin had set up.
Johnny is based on a young white homeless addict that David Simon met while researching The Corner. This man would follow Simon's subject, drug addict Gary McCullough, around.
Bubbles (The Wire) - Wkp:
Bubbles was the nickname of a real police informant, whose name has not been made public at the request of his family. The real Bubbles was noted as having an incredible memory for faces, and was often very helpful in pointing out drug dealers to police. David Simon met with him twice shortly before his death from AIDS, intending to write an article about him. He ended up turning it into an obituary.
in Season3: Johnny died by overdose in one of Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin's "Hamsterdam" zones. By season's end, Bubbles was selling white t-shirts discarded by Marlo Stanfield's crew. It was in doing so that he met a young homeless kid named Sherrod, whom Bubbles took on as his new friend and protégé.
in Season4: Bubbles has become the daily victim of another street addict, who robs him and beats him up. In an effort to get rid of this daily assault, Bubbles concocts a 'hot shot' of heroin and sodium cyanide that he supposes will be stolen from him by the vagrant and then consumed by him. However on the day after he prepares the 'hot shot' he does not see the vagrant and falls asleep. Sherrod uses the tainted drugs while Bubbles sleeps and Bubbles awakes to find that Sherrod has died. Romeo & Juliet. Consumed by guilt and grief, Bubbles confesses his actions to the police. Sergeant Jay Landsman sees that the death was unintentional and decides, despite the climbing homicide rate, to send Bubbles to a psychiatric facility at a state hospital rather than charge Bubbles with murder.
in Season5: Bubbles has been clean for over a year. He is living in his sister's basement and selling The Baltimore Sun to make money. His Narcotics Anonymous sponsor is Walon.
Street level characters of The Wire #Walon: Walon is an HIV-positive recovering drug addict. He first appears in season one when Bubbles and Johnny see him speaking at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Bubbles' conversations with Walon help him realise that he wants to get clean. When he makes a serious attempt, Walon gives him advice on keeping clean, which Bubbles is unable to stick with. Years later, when Bubbles is locked in a medical rehab facility, Walon visits him to again help him with his sobriety and grief. In later episodes, it is revealed that Walon has become Bubbles' sponsor.
Walon is played by singer/songwriter and recovering heroin addict Steve Earle. huh. cool. himself the beautiful boy at Guy Clark's holiday table singing Mercenary song (that he wrote I think?) "I'll fight for no country but I'll die for good pay."
and the character's name ~ no connection to Waylon Jennings I guess ~
Earle also performs the theme song for Season 5.
The Wire (TV series) # Season_4: September 2006, The Wire returned for a fourth season, expanding its scope to include an examination of the school system.
The show introduces Dukie, Randy, Michael, and Namond, four boys from West Baltimore, as they enter the eighth grade.At the same school, Prez oh has begun a new career as a math teacher. Despite mentorship from the more seasoned faculty,Prez has difficulties maintaining order and keeping his students focused in the chaotic and sometimes violent classroom. Namond, and later Michael, work as drugrunners for Bodie oh fr S1, working under D'Angelo in the pit, then took over. who killed Wallace on Stringer's order "You got heat?"
Other major plots include the mayoral race that continues the political storyline begun in season three, and a closer look at Marlo Stanfield's drug gang, which has grown to control most of western Baltimore's trafficking.
McNulty has found peace working as a patrolman and living with Beadie Russell Amy Ryan
of int to me at end of Season 1 finale Sentencing:
why did McNulty say "What'd I do?" at trial? ~it's his catchphrase, ok, so overall this season, this case, what did he do? what happened? ~ put away a good guy D'Angelo for 20 years & Avon only for 3-4 and the business going on as usual with Stringer at helm
what happens to D'Angelo? oh. killed in prison on order of Stringer, made to look like suicide, without Avon knowing. but Stringer eventually tells.
signif of ending w Omar? (tht at first it was Omar's introduction but no) "all in the game"
Street level characters of The Wire - Wkp #Brother_Mouzone
Brother Mouzone is a hitman from New York. "The Brother" does not fit the usual picture of a hitman, always wearing a suit, bowtie, and glasses, speaking politely, and reading magazines such as Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Nation. He dresses and acts in a manner typically associated with the Nation of Islam, more particularly its military wing, the Fruit of Islam, but is never specified to belong to either (usually anti-drug) organization. (Though he reveals himself as a Muslim by mouthing "Allah akbar" repeatedly after Omar shoots him, when he believes he is about to die.) He is always accompanied by his bodyguard Lamar.
Stringer duped Omar Little into believing that Mouzone was responsible for the brutal murder of Omar's boyfriend Brandon.
After Omar confronted Mouzone and shot him, he realized that he was tricked and called the ambulance for Brother Mouzone himself.
In season three, Mouzone returned to Baltimore to search for Omar. He located Omar's boyfriend Dante with advice from Baltimore local Vinson. Mouzone beat Dante until he revealed Omar's whereabouts. After he tracked Omar down he suggested that they team up to kill Stringer Bell. Avon gave Mouzone a time and a place to find Stringer, realizing it was the only way to satisfy Mouzone's vengeance. Omar and Mouzone planned an ambush and killed Stringer together. Before returning to New York, Mouzone released Dante and gave Omar his weapon to dispose of. as sign of trust?
Marlo Stanfield - Wkp: At the end of season 3, Avon was arrested for parole violation, weapons charges and drug crimes. Marlo and Chris attended his sentencing hearing. Avon acknowledges Marlo; thus conceding that the crown has been passed.
Street level characters of The Wire #Johnny_Weeks: In season one Johnny is Bubbles' best friend. In the pilot episode he is beaten nearly to death by Bodie Broadus, Poot Carr and other dealers after trying to pass counterfeit money to D'Angelo Barksdale's operation; this spurs Bubbles to become a police informant.
While in the hospital for that beating, Johnny discovers he is HIV positive. In the season three finale he dies from an overdose and his partially rat-eaten body is discovered in a vacant house in the 'Hamsterdam' free zone that Major Colvin had set up.
Johnny is based on a young white homeless addict that David Simon met while researching The Corner. This man would follow Simon's subject, drug addict Gary McCullough, around.
Bubbles (The Wire) - Wkp:
Bubbles was the nickname of a real police informant, whose name has not been made public at the request of his family. The real Bubbles was noted as having an incredible memory for faces, and was often very helpful in pointing out drug dealers to police. David Simon met with him twice shortly before his death from AIDS, intending to write an article about him. He ended up turning it into an obituary.
in Season3: Johnny died by overdose in one of Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin's "Hamsterdam" zones. By season's end, Bubbles was selling white t-shirts discarded by Marlo Stanfield's crew. It was in doing so that he met a young homeless kid named Sherrod, whom Bubbles took on as his new friend and protégé.
in Season4: Bubbles has become the daily victim of another street addict, who robs him and beats him up. In an effort to get rid of this daily assault, Bubbles concocts a 'hot shot' of heroin and sodium cyanide that he supposes will be stolen from him by the vagrant and then consumed by him. However on the day after he prepares the 'hot shot' he does not see the vagrant and falls asleep. Sherrod uses the tainted drugs while Bubbles sleeps and Bubbles awakes to find that Sherrod has died. Romeo & Juliet. Consumed by guilt and grief, Bubbles confesses his actions to the police. Sergeant Jay Landsman sees that the death was unintentional and decides, despite the climbing homicide rate, to send Bubbles to a psychiatric facility at a state hospital rather than charge Bubbles with murder.
in Season5: Bubbles has been clean for over a year. He is living in his sister's basement and selling The Baltimore Sun to make money. His Narcotics Anonymous sponsor is Walon.
Street level characters of The Wire #Walon: Walon is an HIV-positive recovering drug addict. He first appears in season one when Bubbles and Johnny see him speaking at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Bubbles' conversations with Walon help him realise that he wants to get clean. When he makes a serious attempt, Walon gives him advice on keeping clean, which Bubbles is unable to stick with. Years later, when Bubbles is locked in a medical rehab facility, Walon visits him to again help him with his sobriety and grief. In later episodes, it is revealed that Walon has become Bubbles' sponsor.
Walon is played by singer/songwriter and recovering heroin addict Steve Earle. huh. cool. himself the beautiful boy at Guy Clark's holiday table singing Mercenary song (that he wrote I think?) "I'll fight for no country but I'll die for good pay."
and the character's name ~ no connection to Waylon Jennings I guess ~
Earle also performs the theme song for Season 5.
The Wire (TV series) # Season_4: September 2006, The Wire returned for a fourth season, expanding its scope to include an examination of the school system.
The show introduces Dukie, Randy, Michael, and Namond, four boys from West Baltimore, as they enter the eighth grade.At the same school, Prez oh has begun a new career as a math teacher. Despite mentorship from the more seasoned faculty,Prez has difficulties maintaining order and keeping his students focused in the chaotic and sometimes violent classroom. Namond, and later Michael, work as drugrunners for Bodie oh fr S1, working under D'Angelo in the pit, then took over. who killed Wallace on Stringer's order "You got heat?"
Other major plots include the mayoral race that continues the political storyline begun in season three, and a closer look at Marlo Stanfield's drug gang, which has grown to control most of western Baltimore's trafficking.
McNulty has found peace working as a patrolman and living with Beadie Russell Amy Ryan
-
International Noir Fiction: Tana French (and is Benjamin Black actually John Banville when he's slumming?): a crime novel from Ireland that was preceded by p.r. and reviews that tout it as a 'literary crime novel'... All that p.r. and some of the reviews made French's novel sound like a dark, brooding Gothic thriller, which it isn't. It's for the most part a straightforward 'policier'.
Rob's chatty manner takes the story over after a florid opening chapter (fortunately--I'm not sure I could have stuck with the overheated prose of the novel's beginning, which is much more Gothic than the body of the book).less of overheated prose than in The Likeness. opening & closing dramatics: "this is not my story." and "sometimes I still dream I am in __ House." eh.
The "current" story involves the body of a young girl discovered on a prehistoric, sacrificial stone in the middle of an archaeological dig that is hurrying its task in advance of road construction. The archaeologists, the murdered girl's family, and local developers come under suspicion, but no evidence points clearly to any of them. good sum. the detectives enumerate the possibilities as 1) perv crime 2) family 3) threat from developers to the dad who chairs a Move the Motorway campaign. French's book fortunately concentrates on the procedural aspects of the investigation, along with the detectives' struggle against depression as the case moves forward without success over the course of a month.
I want to address a complaint made by several of the people who have posted reviews on Amazon. The ending does not wrap up some of the threads of the tale, and that has confounded and annoyed some readers--if this is a mystery, why isn't everything tied up in a neat bundle at the end? And if this is not a mystery in that sense, is that because it's really a literary novel in disguise (or slumming as a detective story)? While there is a sophisticated structure underlying the book, I didn't get the sense that it was condescending to the genre. But the oblique clues to the unresolved parts of the story have a metaphysical tone ~? a monster in the woods - some sort of beast seen by teenagers Jonathan (Shades) & Cathal (Metallica) & Sandra - and then by Ryan on his night in the woods remembering - and there is the mention, maybe by the older woman they talk to of a ~Piddy, a mischief making ancestor of Puck - but there is only that one mention, no other recall to it given us in Ryan's thoughts or anything~ that you have to take on whatever terms you are willing to do so--French does not tell you how far to go in accepting that aspect of the book at face value, or even how far she's willing to assert it.
az- on Page 217: "My mammy, may she rest in peace... she always said it was the pooka took them. But she was fierce old-fashioned, God love her." This one took me by surprise. The pooka is an ancient child-starer out of legend, a wild mischief-making descendant of Pan and ancestor of Puck. He had not been on Kiernan and McCabe's list of persons of interest. "No, they went into the river, or otherwise your lot would have found the bodies..."
I liked the book much more than I anticipated, and followed it closely through a long-ish 400+ pages without it seeming too long. I'd appreciate hearing from others who've read this one--do you think it measures up as a crime novel? or does it seem pretentious in its literary ambitions?
-What puzzles me a bit about the reviews of "In the Woods" is the absence of attention to the person at the novel's gravitational center (neither of the two detectives, at least in my view). This person (to remain unidentified, in order not to spoil things) seems to me one of the scariest, most dangerously sociopathic figures in recent fiction. How come what he/she manages to do to everyone around gets left aside in discussions of the book's other, extraordinary character portraits? (So yes, it has strong literary qualities as well as being a page-turner of a mystery.)
--All the reviewers are tiptoeing around the psychopath you mention because to say anything at all is to spoil the mystery or the reading experience or however you would characterize the process of a crime story unveiling itself. Plus the psychopathic depth of this character's actions are only revealed at the end--part of the nature of a narrator embedded in the story (another aspect of the carefully constructed armature of the novel). So in a way, the surface level of the novel doesn't deal with that psycho, the reader can only ferret out that character between the lines, or retrospective see that character operating in the shadows of the novel. Maybe in that sense, that character is the emblem of the unsolved mystery and the metaphysical overtones--a novelistic metaphysics, to put a probably too grand name to it...
-Dont you get it.....Ryan did the original murders and that is why he blocks out what happened....
--Anonymous thinks that the novel is a puzzle to be solved, and that the answer is Ryan as the murderer in the old case (the murder of his 2 childhood friends). I think the novel is more than a puzzle, and the obvious possibility that Ryan murdered his friends is no more certain (or essential to the novel) than the other possibilities, criminal or metaphysical. gosh I didn't give this much thought ~ Ryan realizes the possibility late in the book, thinks of a look Cassie gave him after talking to one of the detectives on the old case, a look like she was holding something back. but no, I don't think there was any strong suggestion that this is what happened. anyway we get no sense of a motive for him.
International Noir Fiction: Tana French (and is Benjamin Black actually John Banville when he's slumming?): a crime novel from Ireland that was preceded by p.r. and reviews that tout it as a 'literary crime novel'... All that p.r. and some of the reviews made French's novel sound like a dark, brooding Gothic thriller, which it isn't. It's for the most part a straightforward 'policier'.
Rob's chatty manner takes the story over after a florid opening chapter (fortunately--I'm not sure I could have stuck with the overheated prose of the novel's beginning, which is much more Gothic than the body of the book).less of overheated prose than in The Likeness. opening & closing dramatics: "this is not my story." and "sometimes I still dream I am in __ House." eh.
The "current" story involves the body of a young girl discovered on a prehistoric, sacrificial stone in the middle of an archaeological dig that is hurrying its task in advance of road construction. The archaeologists, the murdered girl's family, and local developers come under suspicion, but no evidence points clearly to any of them. good sum. the detectives enumerate the possibilities as 1) perv crime 2) family 3) threat from developers to the dad who chairs a Move the Motorway campaign. French's book fortunately concentrates on the procedural aspects of the investigation, along with the detectives' struggle against depression as the case moves forward without success over the course of a month.
I want to address a complaint made by several of the people who have posted reviews on Amazon. The ending does not wrap up some of the threads of the tale, and that has confounded and annoyed some readers--if this is a mystery, why isn't everything tied up in a neat bundle at the end? And if this is not a mystery in that sense, is that because it's really a literary novel in disguise (or slumming as a detective story)? While there is a sophisticated structure underlying the book, I didn't get the sense that it was condescending to the genre. But the oblique clues to the unresolved parts of the story have a metaphysical tone ~? a monster in the woods - some sort of beast seen by teenagers Jonathan (Shades) & Cathal (Metallica) & Sandra - and then by Ryan on his night in the woods remembering - and there is the mention, maybe by the older woman they talk to of a ~Piddy, a mischief making ancestor of Puck - but there is only that one mention, no other recall to it given us in Ryan's thoughts or anything~ that you have to take on whatever terms you are willing to do so--French does not tell you how far to go in accepting that aspect of the book at face value, or even how far she's willing to assert it.
az- on Page 217: "My mammy, may she rest in peace... she always said it was the pooka took them. But she was fierce old-fashioned, God love her." This one took me by surprise. The pooka is an ancient child-starer out of legend, a wild mischief-making descendant of Pan and ancestor of Puck. He had not been on Kiernan and McCabe's list of persons of interest. "No, they went into the river, or otherwise your lot would have found the bodies..."
I liked the book much more than I anticipated, and followed it closely through a long-ish 400+ pages without it seeming too long. I'd appreciate hearing from others who've read this one--do you think it measures up as a crime novel? or does it seem pretentious in its literary ambitions?
-What puzzles me a bit about the reviews of "In the Woods" is the absence of attention to the person at the novel's gravitational center (neither of the two detectives, at least in my view). This person (to remain unidentified, in order not to spoil things) seems to me one of the scariest, most dangerously sociopathic figures in recent fiction. How come what he/she manages to do to everyone around gets left aside in discussions of the book's other, extraordinary character portraits? (So yes, it has strong literary qualities as well as being a page-turner of a mystery.)
--All the reviewers are tiptoeing around the psychopath you mention because to say anything at all is to spoil the mystery or the reading experience or however you would characterize the process of a crime story unveiling itself. Plus the psychopathic depth of this character's actions are only revealed at the end--part of the nature of a narrator embedded in the story (another aspect of the carefully constructed armature of the novel). So in a way, the surface level of the novel doesn't deal with that psycho, the reader can only ferret out that character between the lines, or retrospective see that character operating in the shadows of the novel. Maybe in that sense, that character is the emblem of the unsolved mystery and the metaphysical overtones--a novelistic metaphysics, to put a probably too grand name to it...
-Dont you get it.....Ryan did the original murders and that is why he blocks out what happened....
--Anonymous thinks that the novel is a puzzle to be solved, and that the answer is Ryan as the murderer in the old case (the murder of his 2 childhood friends). I think the novel is more than a puzzle, and the obvious possibility that Ryan murdered his friends is no more certain (or essential to the novel) than the other possibilities, criminal or metaphysical. gosh I didn't give this much thought ~ Ryan realizes the possibility late in the book, thinks of a look Cassie gave him after talking to one of the detectives on the old case, a look like she was holding something back. but no, I don't think there was any strong suggestion that this is what happened. anyway we get no sense of a motive for him.
-
Title: Where We Come From ... Where We’re Going Site: 56th Street and Lake Park Avenue, Chicago. Artist: Olivia Gude. Sponsors: Chicago Public Art Group. Scale: 800 square feet. Materials: Acrylic paint on concrete. Year: 1992 I always like this
CPAG Guide | For this oral history mural on the Metra underpass in Hyde Park, Gude asked various passersby, “Where are you coming from? Where are you going?” The images & words are drawn from photos of the people & their taped responses.
Chicago Reader Blogs: Chicagoland | Local artist Jonathan Gitelson was commissioned to do an art installation called Chicago El Stories for the Armitage Brown Line station, a 21st century version of Olivia Gude's Where Have You Been? Where Are You Going? oral history mural in Hyde Park. y good. read re Armitage in NewCity & wanted mention of this also interview collected stories train passengers (Metra, in Gude's paintg)
and then walk down the street, turn right...
Title: Where We Come From ... Where We’re Going Site: 56th Street and Lake Park Avenue, Chicago. Artist: Olivia Gude. Sponsors: Chicago Public Art Group. Scale: 800 square feet. Materials: Acrylic paint on concrete. Year: 1992 I always like this
CPAG Guide | For this oral history mural on the Metra underpass in Hyde Park, Gude asked various passersby, “Where are you coming from? Where are you going?” The images & words are drawn from photos of the people & their taped responses.
Chicago Reader Blogs: Chicagoland | Local artist Jonathan Gitelson was commissioned to do an art installation called Chicago El Stories for the Armitage Brown Line station, a 21st century version of Olivia Gude's Where Have You Been? Where Are You Going? oral history mural in Hyde Park. y good. read re Armitage in NewCity & wanted mention of this also interview collected stories train passengers (Metra, in Gude's paintg)
and then walk down the street, turn right...
Saturday, June 14, 2008
What's Alan Watching?: The Wire, season 1, episode 1: "The Target" (Newbies edition):
The first season of 'The Wire' is the story of two men on opposite sides of the drug war -- McNulty with the cops, D'Angelo Barksdale with the dope slingers -- and what happens when each one starts to notice did McNulty just start to notice? D'Angelo I guess is just starting ~ to take exception, find himself at odds with that his bosses and co-workers are following a rigid set of rules. and I d n know that D'Angelo was central.
McNulty needles his partner, Bunk Moreland, for taking a Homicide call when it was someone else's turn in the rotation and, therefore, "giving a f_ when it ain't your turn to give a f_." The entire series, essentially, is about people who decide to give a f_ when it isn't their turn. hmm. is it? Simon re how it's about the American city, its institutions, how everyone beholden to & compromised by institutions. if it's about caring "when it's not your turn" then it's about the extent to which not compromised right? bucking the turn.
The opening scene, McNulty asks: If they knew Snot would rob the pot every time out, why did they keep letting him play? And the witness, confused by the very premise which is what? that could exclude someone bcs know from past experience not going to follow the rules of the question, lays out the basic message of the series: "Got to. This America, man."
The America of "The Wire" is broken in a fundamental probably irreparable way. It is an interconnected network of ossified institutions, all of them so committed to perpetuating their own business-as-usual approach, that they keep letting their own equivalents of Snot Boogie into the game. hrrm. I don't have a clear sense of what this opening scene suggest or evokes, to me, but it's not that. it's not a metaphor for a broken system where unbrokenness would be to exclude Snot Boogie from the game. it's more upbeat then that, this of-course inclusion of him because 'This America.' being excluded from much of whatever America is, and taking America to mean that can't exclude one another. am I wrong? maybe.
16 comments (on this 'newbie' post)
-Could the series start any better than the cold open with McNulty talking with the witness about Snot Boogie? The story of Snot Boogie doesn't relate to the overall arc what arc?, but "this is America, man" speaks to the ambitions of the show. This is about modern America, and the ways in which it is set in its ways, many of which are f*&^ed up.
-I've been intrigued by this series ever since I heard Slate's David Plotz refer to season four as "television perfection"cool season4 is the one I want to invest in and I was pleased by the potential the first episode seemed to have. Having heard that the series was complex and had a large cast, I made a special effort to pay attention to who was who, although I admit to not recognizing the murder victim and meekly appreciated the flashback. me too. not good w faces. I might try your suggestion and cram a few more into a marathon, because I definitely look forward to growing accustomed to this show's cast and style.
veteran post with 42 comments
-As for the pilot first scene and foreshadowing, this really sums up the whole 5 seasons:
Doesn't seem fair.
Life just be that way I guess.
-re: the typewriters: I sort of had the sense that, despite the year being nominally 2002, the first season was really illustrating Baltimore in the 80's when the drug trade was starting to get really violent. Another thing to note about the first season is that you seldom see anyone using a cell phone---even the cops use pagers and pay phones. My sense is that the five seasons of the show spanned about 20 years of Baltimore city history, and compressing that into the 6 or so years that it took place over was more metaphorical (and practical, to have the same characters throughout) than anything else.
-Question: I have just finished season 4 am rather impatiently waiting for Season 5 to come out on DVD. Is anything going to be ruined for me reading these "veteran" versions?
Alan Sepinwall said... Yes.
The first season of 'The Wire' is the story of two men on opposite sides of the drug war -- McNulty with the cops, D'Angelo Barksdale with the dope slingers -- and what happens when each one starts to notice did McNulty just start to notice? D'Angelo I guess is just starting ~ to take exception, find himself at odds with that his bosses and co-workers are following a rigid set of rules. and I d n know that D'Angelo was central.
McNulty needles his partner, Bunk Moreland, for taking a Homicide call when it was someone else's turn in the rotation and, therefore, "giving a f_ when it ain't your turn to give a f_." The entire series, essentially, is about people who decide to give a f_ when it isn't their turn. hmm. is it? Simon re how it's about the American city, its institutions, how everyone beholden to & compromised by institutions. if it's about caring "when it's not your turn" then it's about the extent to which not compromised right? bucking the turn.
The opening scene, McNulty asks: If they knew Snot would rob the pot every time out, why did they keep letting him play? And the witness, confused by the very premise which is what? that could exclude someone bcs know from past experience not going to follow the rules of the question, lays out the basic message of the series: "Got to. This America, man."
The America of "The Wire" is broken in a fundamental probably irreparable way. It is an interconnected network of ossified institutions, all of them so committed to perpetuating their own business-as-usual approach, that they keep letting their own equivalents of Snot Boogie into the game. hrrm. I don't have a clear sense of what this opening scene suggest or evokes, to me, but it's not that. it's not a metaphor for a broken system where unbrokenness would be to exclude Snot Boogie from the game. it's more upbeat then that, this of-course inclusion of him because 'This America.' being excluded from much of whatever America is, and taking America to mean that can't exclude one another. am I wrong? maybe.
16 comments (on this 'newbie' post)
-Could the series start any better than the cold open with McNulty talking with the witness about Snot Boogie? The story of Snot Boogie doesn't relate to the overall arc what arc?, but "this is America, man" speaks to the ambitions of the show. This is about modern America, and the ways in which it is set in its ways, many of which are f*&^ed up.
-I've been intrigued by this series ever since I heard Slate's David Plotz refer to season four as "television perfection"cool season4 is the one I want to invest in and I was pleased by the potential the first episode seemed to have. Having heard that the series was complex and had a large cast, I made a special effort to pay attention to who was who, although I admit to not recognizing the murder victim and meekly appreciated the flashback. me too. not good w faces. I might try your suggestion and cram a few more into a marathon, because I definitely look forward to growing accustomed to this show's cast and style.
veteran post with 42 comments
-As for the pilot first scene and foreshadowing, this really sums up the whole 5 seasons:
Doesn't seem fair.
Life just be that way I guess.
-re: the typewriters: I sort of had the sense that, despite the year being nominally 2002, the first season was really illustrating Baltimore in the 80's when the drug trade was starting to get really violent. Another thing to note about the first season is that you seldom see anyone using a cell phone---even the cops use pagers and pay phones. My sense is that the five seasons of the show spanned about 20 years of Baltimore city history, and compressing that into the 6 or so years that it took place over was more metaphorical (and practical, to have the same characters throughout) than anything else.
-Question: I have just finished season 4 am rather impatiently waiting for Season 5 to come out on DVD. Is anything going to be ruined for me reading these "veteran" versions?
Alan Sepinwall said... Yes.
Friday, June 13, 2008
12th Annual Webby Nominees [2008]:
Special Achievement Awards
* Webby Artist of the Year: will.i.am
* Webby Person of the Year: Stephen Colbert
webbyawards.com/webbys/specialachievement.php re each special achievement award winner, why being honored. no pages for past years ~ special achievement awards listed at top of each years nominees-winners page, but only current year has this link.
2007
Special Achievement Awards
* Webby Artist of the Year: will.i.am
* Webby Person of the Year: Stephen Colbert
webbyawards.com/webbys/specialachievement.php re each special achievement award winner, why being honored. no pages for past years ~ special achievement awards listed at top of each years nominees-winners page, but only current year has this link.
2007
- Webby Lifetime Achievement: eBay
- Webby Artist of the Year: Beastie Boys
- Webby Person of the Year: Steve Chen & Chad Hurley, Co-Founders, YouTube
- Breakout of the Year: MySpace.com
- Webby Person of the Year: Craig Newmark, founder of Craiglist.org
- Webby Lifetime Achievement: Former Vice-President Al Gore
- Breakout of the Year: Flickr
Saturday, June 7, 2008
____
az- Every Time You Say Goodbye: Alison Krauss and Union Station: Music
8. I do... I don't know why somewhere dreams come true, I don't know where we'll find a place for you. Every time you look that way I would lay down my life for you. I don't know why I know these things but
12. ..track and I stay behind. Nothing can bring me from this ball & chain, I made up my mind that I would live today, and you're keeping me going, I know it's insane, 'cause I love you and lose again. When the heart calls, the mind obeys and it knows better than
az- Feels Like the Third Time: Freakwater: Music
1. we'll walk through this twon, where all the alleys are haunted, though the streets are deserted these ghosts remain undaunted, and you're laughing louder in my ear, with every bottle of beer. ---- my old drunk friend.
and just introduced by Mike Bertrand O to
az- Time Without Consequence: Alexi Murdoch: Music:
1. I have been searching all of my days, all of my days. Many a road you know I've been walking on, all of my days. And I look around
az- O.C.M.S.: Old Crow Medicine Show: Music
1. I sniff cocaine before I die I'll be sniffing cocaine as it took my life, cocaine, gonna kill my honey dead. won't you tell it to me, tell it to me, drink your corn liquor, let the cocaine be, cocaine, gonna kill my honey dead.
2. ..for an ideal he didn't even know about. he was gambling at the wagon when that army man showed up and he flashed that pen & paper and old flukie he signed up. It's gonna be a big time in the jungle, gonna be a firefight, gonna be a rumble, send me out to Vietnam.*
3. there ain't a thing for a poor man, mmm, in this world.
9. so I could feel at ease & go back to my home. take 'em away, take 'em away lord, take away these chains from me. my heart is broken 'cause my spirit's not free. lord take away these chains from me. this is the catchy song.
sun beatin down, my legs can't seem to stand, there's a boss man at the turn row with a wrap on his hand I got nine children -and nothing in the pan MikeO: that's a sad story.
10. see your face so clearly... you sound nervous. you seem alone. I hardly recognize...
-We're all in this together... shades of Will Oldham, three questions. very pretty.
11. ..my way out of North Carolin', starin at the road** and pray to god I see headlights. I made it down the coast in seventeen hours, pickin me a bouquet of and dogwood flowers and I'm hoping for Rawley I can see my baby tonite. So rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama anyway you feel. that's the best, this song. -hey, mama rock me
-
* az- Home: Dixie Chicks: Music 3. would you mind if I send one back here to you? I cry, never gonna hold the hand of another guy, too young ~ they told her, waiting for the love of a travelin' soldier - our love will never end, waitin' for the soldier to come back again
**az- Georgia Hard: Robbie Fulks: Music and the wheels had ideas of their own. ...a club to wreck, and a town to burn, not a cent to waste, no a rock unturned, days like those, you got to throw away. Wide two-wheelin, bound to no one -
-Where there's a road!
____
az- Every Time You Say Goodbye: Alison Krauss and Union Station: Music
8. I do... I don't know why somewhere dreams come true, I don't know where we'll find a place for you. Every time you look that way I would lay down my life for you. I don't know why I know these things but
12. ..track and I stay behind. Nothing can bring me from this ball & chain, I made up my mind that I would live today, and you're keeping me going, I know it's insane, 'cause I love you and lose again. When the heart calls, the mind obeys and it knows better than
az- Feels Like the Third Time: Freakwater: Music
1. we'll walk through this twon, where all the alleys are haunted, though the streets are deserted these ghosts remain undaunted, and you're laughing louder in my ear, with every bottle of beer. ---- my old drunk friend.
and just introduced by Mike Bertrand O to
az- Time Without Consequence: Alexi Murdoch: Music:
1. I have been searching all of my days, all of my days. Many a road you know I've been walking on, all of my days. And I look around
az- O.C.M.S.: Old Crow Medicine Show: Music
1. I sniff cocaine before I die I'll be sniffing cocaine as it took my life, cocaine, gonna kill my honey dead. won't you tell it to me, tell it to me, drink your corn liquor, let the cocaine be, cocaine, gonna kill my honey dead.
2. ..for an ideal he didn't even know about. he was gambling at the wagon when that army man showed up and he flashed that pen & paper and old flukie he signed up. It's gonna be a big time in the jungle, gonna be a firefight, gonna be a rumble, send me out to Vietnam.*
3. there ain't a thing for a poor man, mmm, in this world.
9. so I could feel at ease & go back to my home. take 'em away, take 'em away lord, take away these chains from me. my heart is broken 'cause my spirit's not free. lord take away these chains from me. this is the catchy song.
sun beatin down, my legs can't seem to stand, there's a boss man at the turn row with a wrap on his hand I got nine children -and nothing in the pan MikeO: that's a sad story.
10. see your face so clearly... you sound nervous. you seem alone. I hardly recognize...
-We're all in this together... shades of Will Oldham, three questions. very pretty.
11. ..my way out of North Carolin', starin at the road** and pray to god I see headlights. I made it down the coast in seventeen hours, pickin me a bouquet of and dogwood flowers and I'm hoping for Rawley I can see my baby tonite. So rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama anyway you feel. that's the best, this song. -hey, mama rock me
-
* az- Home: Dixie Chicks: Music 3. would you mind if I send one back here to you? I cry, never gonna hold the hand of another guy, too young ~ they told her, waiting for the love of a travelin' soldier - our love will never end, waitin' for the soldier to come back again
**az- Georgia Hard: Robbie Fulks: Music and the wheels had ideas of their own. ...a club to wreck, and a town to burn, not a cent to waste, no a rock unturned, days like those, you got to throw away. Wide two-wheelin, bound to no one -
-Where there's a road!
____
____
az- Graceland: Paul Simon: Music
every song.
these are the days of miracle & wonder, this is the long distance call. the way the camera follows us in slow-mo, the way we look to us all. the way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky. these are the days of miracle & wonder, and don't cry baby don't cry don't cry.
boy in the bubble with the babbling heart and I believe-
this one's pretty outstanding, as well (as title song), ~ classic or what's the word.
..a national guitar. I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war. I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. Poor boys, and pilgrims, with families, and we are going to Graceland.
..what I said, we come and we go. that's a thing that I keep in the back of my head. I know what I know, I've seen what I said. we come and we go. that's a thing that I keep in the back of my head. She said there's something about you that really reminds me of money. She was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that
was in the early morning hours when I fell into a phone call. believing I had supernatural powers I slammed into a brick wall. I said hey is this my problem, is this my fault? if that's the way it's gonna be I'm gonna call the whole thing to a halt. You don't feel you could love me but I feel you could.
-breakdowns, call 'em breakdowns, what are you gonna do about it that's what's what I'd like to know.
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Diamonds on the soles of her shoe-oes.
and I could say ooh ooh ooh ooooooh as if everybody knows what I'm talking about, as if everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about. talking about diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal. I can call you Betty and Betty when you call me you can call me Al. A man walks down the street, says why am I short of attention, got a short little span of attention, and all my nights are so long. where's my wife and family, what if I die here? who'll be my role model, now that my role model is gone gone gone
-jumped back in the alley
this is the story of how we begin to remember, this is the powerful pulsing of love in the veins. after the dream of falling & calling your name out, these are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain.
dusk Kythera the little church I have gone running, listen to this, & to M Etheridge "I remember how we used to love to dance" and Tracy Chapman "New Beginning"
Homeless. we are Homeless. Moonlight ~~ing on a midnight _.
ok maybe the least to me.
as a lonely little wrinkle. He said well I don't claim to be happy about this, or this. And I don't seem to be happy about that. I don't want no part of this crazy love. I don't want no part of your love. I don't want no part of this crazy love, I don't want no part of your love.
cajun girls dancing the xylophone...
-well that was your mother, and that was your father, a long time ago boy when life was sweet.
-walkin together down the very same street. why don't we get together & call ourselves an institution?
it was the myth of fingerprints. I've seen them all and man they're all the same. awesome.
well the sun gets weary and the sun goes down. ever since the watermelon. and the lights come up on the black hill town. somebody set look you've better thing to do. well it's not just me and it's not just you
-this is all around the world
every song is outstanding. and the words, feels like do not make sense, it's a private language and happens to be one that I understand, very nearly, closely ~ I can say oooooh as if everyone hear would know exactly what I was talking about and don't cry baby don't don't cry these are the days of miracle and wonder this is a long distance call I've seen them all and man they're all the same this is all around the world.
this is the story of how we begin to remember. after the dream of falling and calling your name out
___
az- Graceland: Paul Simon: Music
every song.
these are the days of miracle & wonder, this is the long distance call. the way the camera follows us in slow-mo, the way we look to us all. the way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky. these are the days of miracle & wonder, and don't cry baby don't cry don't cry.
boy in the bubble with the babbling heart and I believe-
this one's pretty outstanding, as well (as title song), ~ classic or what's the word.
..a national guitar. I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war. I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. Poor boys, and pilgrims, with families, and we are going to Graceland.
..what I said, we come and we go. that's a thing that I keep in the back of my head. I know what I know, I've seen what I said. we come and we go. that's a thing that I keep in the back of my head. She said there's something about you that really reminds me of money. She was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that
was in the early morning hours when I fell into a phone call. believing I had supernatural powers I slammed into a brick wall. I said hey is this my problem, is this my fault? if that's the way it's gonna be I'm gonna call the whole thing to a halt. You don't feel you could love me but I feel you could.
-breakdowns, call 'em breakdowns, what are you gonna do about it that's what's what I'd like to know.
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Diamonds on the soles of her shoe-oes.
and I could say ooh ooh ooh ooooooh as if everybody knows what I'm talking about, as if everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about. talking about diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal. I can call you Betty and Betty when you call me you can call me Al. A man walks down the street, says why am I short of attention, got a short little span of attention, and all my nights are so long. where's my wife and family, what if I die here? who'll be my role model, now that my role model is gone gone gone
-jumped back in the alley
this is the story of how we begin to remember, this is the powerful pulsing of love in the veins. after the dream of falling & calling your name out, these are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain.
dusk Kythera the little church I have gone running, listen to this, & to M Etheridge "I remember how we used to love to dance" and Tracy Chapman "New Beginning"
Homeless. we are Homeless. Moonlight ~~ing on a midnight _.
ok maybe the least to me.
as a lonely little wrinkle. He said well I don't claim to be happy about this, or this. And I don't seem to be happy about that. I don't want no part of this crazy love. I don't want no part of your love. I don't want no part of this crazy love, I don't want no part of your love.
cajun girls dancing the xylophone...
-well that was your mother, and that was your father, a long time ago boy when life was sweet.
-walkin together down the very same street. why don't we get together & call ourselves an institution?
it was the myth of fingerprints. I've seen them all and man they're all the same. awesome.
well the sun gets weary and the sun goes down. ever since the watermelon. and the lights come up on the black hill town. somebody set look you've better thing to do. well it's not just me and it's not just you
-this is all around the world
every song is outstanding. and the words, feels like do not make sense, it's a private language and happens to be one that I understand, very nearly, closely ~ I can say oooooh as if everyone hear would know exactly what I was talking about and don't cry baby don't don't cry these are the days of miracle and wonder this is a long distance call I've seen them all and man they're all the same this is all around the world.
this is the story of how we begin to remember. after the dream of falling and calling your name out
___
__
Alison Krauss: I Don't Know Why. Lose Again.
Paul Simon: Graceland.
classics. for me. or what's the word? amazon calls these two both "essential recordings."
I don't know why - the sky is so blue - I don't know why - I'm so in love with you - every time you look that way I would lay down my life for you - and I don't know why I know these things but I do. (paul simon: I know what I know. I know what I know, I see what I say..aren't you the woman that was recently given a fulbright?..she was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that funny)
I made up my mind that I would live today, and you're keeping me going, I know it's insane but I love you and lose again.
they say losing love is like a window in your heart - everyone sees your blown apart - everyone can see the wind blow ..I'm bound singing to Graceland..
The Cure: Pictures of You.
Tracy Chapman: Fast Car.
dr-ne-ner ne-ner ne-ner nenerner, dr-ne-ner ne-ner ne-ner nenerner. I've been looking so long at these Pictures of You that I almost believe that the pictures are all I can see
hmmhmmhmhm, hm hm hm. hmmhmmhmhm, hm hm hm. You've got a fast car. I got a plan to get us out of here, I'd always hoped for a better-- maybe together we can get somewhere
and more recent (for me)?
Townes Van Zandt: Flying Shoes. To Live's To Fly. No Place to Fall.
..flyin' shoes. til I'll be tying on - my flyin shoes.
you're soft as glass - and I'm a gentle man. We've got the sky to talk about and the earth to lie upon.
if I had no place to fall - and I needed to - could I count on you?
(to lay me down). ..you got pretty eyes, won't you spin me round?
Freakwater: My Old Drunk Friend.
It's good to see you again. I won't ask where you've been. You never want to say.
_
Alison Krauss: I Don't Know Why. Lose Again.
Paul Simon: Graceland.
classics. for me. or what's the word? amazon calls these two both "essential recordings."
I don't know why - the sky is so blue - I don't know why - I'm so in love with you - every time you look that way I would lay down my life for you - and I don't know why I know these things but I do. (paul simon: I know what I know. I know what I know, I see what I say..aren't you the woman that was recently given a fulbright?..she was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that funny)
I made up my mind that I would live today, and you're keeping me going, I know it's insane but I love you and lose again.
they say losing love is like a window in your heart - everyone sees your blown apart - everyone can see the wind blow ..I'm bound singing to Graceland..
The Cure: Pictures of You.
Tracy Chapman: Fast Car.
dr-ne-ner ne-ner ne-ner nenerner, dr-ne-ner ne-ner ne-ner nenerner. I've been looking so long at these Pictures of You that I almost believe that the pictures are all I can see
hmmhmmhmhm, hm hm hm. hmmhmmhmhm, hm hm hm. You've got a fast car. I got a plan to get us out of here, I'd always hoped for a better-- maybe together we can get somewhere
and more recent (for me)?
Townes Van Zandt: Flying Shoes. To Live's To Fly. No Place to Fall.
..flyin' shoes. til I'll be tying on - my flyin shoes.
you're soft as glass - and I'm a gentle man. We've got the sky to talk about and the earth to lie upon.
if I had no place to fall - and I needed to - could I count on you?
(to lay me down). ..you got pretty eyes, won't you spin me round?
Freakwater: My Old Drunk Friend.
It's good to see you again. I won't ask where you've been. You never want to say.
_
Friday, June 6, 2008
ESK - OT3:
Disclaimer: The OT3 materials are copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. We know that. In fact, we're really, really, really sick of hearing about just how copyrighted they are. This page does not contain links to the actual OT3 materials, and does not contain any copyrighted material except that which is protected by the Fair Use clause. What you'll find here is a synopsis of the OT3 basics in our own words, and a short discussion of how we feel about them.
What ARE the 'OT3 materials'?
This may be really difficult for lower-level Scientologists to believe, but here goes: In the OT3 materials basically say that 75 million years ago, an evil being named Xenu decided to solve a population problem on his galactic colony by exiling a bunch of people to Earth. ...But that really only took care of the physical problem - Xenu didn't just want the bodies gone, he wanted to make sure the 'thetans' (spirits / souls) of those people didn't come back and reincarnate on his colony. So when the souls started leaving the bodies, he captured the souls and forced them into a huge implant station that was kind of like a movie theatre. There, he made them watch movies that 'implanted' them with false pictures of Christ, and other historical events that Hubbard says didn't actually happen.
The souls were so screwed up from this implanting that they roamed aimlessly around Earth for millions of years. When human beings started evolving, the thetans started entering their bodies and inhabiting them, and thus these thetans are called 'body thetans'. And body thetans, says Hubbard, are the source of all human misery. The practical portion of OT3 involves getting rid of these body thetans. The PC uses the Emeter to locate body thetans that are stuck to his body, and talk to them, auditing them until they blow (go away). All subsequent OT levels after OT3 also deal with body thetans.
Bullshit.
No, seriously. We've seen the evidence.
But if that's true, why do ALL Scientologists deny that that's what's on OT3?
To be honest, we're not totally sure why upper-level Scientologists insist on publicly denying the fact that the OT materials have anything to do with Xenu. I mean, c'mon guys. The cat is so totally out of the bag. I mean, the cat has been out of the bag so long that if you asked the cat about the bag, the cat would be like, "Oh, the BAG? That was forever ago." And then the cat would roll its eyes and go back to being out of the bag. cute.
Lower level Scientologists who have not yet reached OT3, however, deny it because they really, truly, factually, honestly, utterly don't know. They've probably never even heard of Xenu or body thetans, or if they *have*, the only people they've ever heard about it from were non-Scientologists. Even if they are repeatedly told by strangers and non-Scientologists that Xenu is at the core of OT3, they think, "Well, that can't be true. I've been in Scientology for years, and I've never heard mention of any 'Xenu'. This guy's not even a Scientologist - what does he know?" Most lower-level Scientologists find reference to Xenu and aliens ridiculous.
So what you end up with here is an entire society of people who will deny to the death that the OT3 materials contain any reference to Xenu - the higher-ups because they don't want to get in trouble, and the lower-downs because they really don't know about it.
Why are the materials so secret within the church?
Well, there's the Scientologist answer to that question and the skeptical answer to that question.
The Scientologist answer is that if you're not spiritually ready to read the materials, and you look at them anyway, you could die, or at the very least, ruin your case (make yourself unable to have further Scientology auditing).
The skeptical answer is that if Scientology let people read those materials before they're fully indoctrinated into the church's ideology, they'll leave. The point has been made that the OT3 materials aren't any "weirder" than any other religion. We'll leave the decision on that one up to you.
We at ESK think that making fun of Xenu all the time is really missing the point. If Scientologists want to believe in Xenu, they're welcome to do so. What really ought to be criticized are the practices of Scientology management, such as physical abuse in the Sea Org [ Scientology cult's "Sea Org": Tax-exempt child abuse, coerced abortions, internal prisons : Indybay: abuses that go on daily in the Scientology's 'Sea Org' and its internal prison system, the 'Rehabilitation Project Force' (RPF) ] denial of basic medical services, disconnection from family & friends ~ suppressive persons, and other issues of malfeasance. yes.
family-alt ~ bcs attempts at family, community ~ vulnerable to becoming cults. meaning what? controlling. possessive. exclusive. even a small group of friends, as in just-read Likeness by Tana French, that is wh int'd me: 'No Pasts' - request for some kind of 'total' commitment to the group.
religioustolerance.org: Unification Church: organized in 1954 in Seoul, South Korea by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. followers often called Moonies by persons outside of the Association; term considered derogatory by its members, who refer to themselves as Unificationists.
The Church and the Counter-cult/anti-cult movements:
Their core, dedicated members accept strong discipline and can develop a deep commitment to the church. The group can become their whole life, the source of their religious, cultural, social, and other support systems. If they become disillusioned by some aspect of the church, this minority of unusually dedicated members can find it very difficult to leave the organization and abandon these support networks. When they do leave, they are often angry with themselves and the church, believing that they have wasted perhaps years of their life within the group. This problem is common to all high intensity denominations which require major commitment to the group. e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and (for priests and nuns) the Roman Catholic Church.
Cult - Wkp: Some anthropologists and sociologists studying cults have argued that no one has yet been able to define “cult” in a way that enables the term to identify only groups that have been identified as problematic. However, without the 'problematic' concern, scientific criteria of characteristics attributed to cults do exist. A little-known example is the Alexander and Rollins, 1984, scientific study concluding that the socially well-received group Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult by using the model of Lifton's thought reform techniques and applying those to AA group’s indoctrination methodology. Even though the elements exist, several researchers have pointed out the benefit of the organization.
1.3Psychological definition: Studies of the psychological aspects of cults focus on the individual person, and factors relating to the choice to become involved as well as the subsequent effects on individuals - especially coercive persuasion which suppresses the ability of people to reason, think critically, and make choices in their own best interest:
1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
3. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader;
4. They get a new identity based on the group;
5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
Disclaimer: The OT3 materials are copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. We know that. In fact, we're really, really, really sick of hearing about just how copyrighted they are. This page does not contain links to the actual OT3 materials, and does not contain any copyrighted material except that which is protected by the Fair Use clause. What you'll find here is a synopsis of the OT3 basics in our own words, and a short discussion of how we feel about them.
What ARE the 'OT3 materials'?
This may be really difficult for lower-level Scientologists to believe, but here goes: In the OT3 materials basically say that 75 million years ago, an evil being named Xenu decided to solve a population problem on his galactic colony by exiling a bunch of people to Earth. ...But that really only took care of the physical problem - Xenu didn't just want the bodies gone, he wanted to make sure the 'thetans' (spirits / souls) of those people didn't come back and reincarnate on his colony. So when the souls started leaving the bodies, he captured the souls and forced them into a huge implant station that was kind of like a movie theatre. There, he made them watch movies that 'implanted' them with false pictures of Christ, and other historical events that Hubbard says didn't actually happen.
The souls were so screwed up from this implanting that they roamed aimlessly around Earth for millions of years. When human beings started evolving, the thetans started entering their bodies and inhabiting them, and thus these thetans are called 'body thetans'. And body thetans, says Hubbard, are the source of all human misery. The practical portion of OT3 involves getting rid of these body thetans. The PC uses the Emeter to locate body thetans that are stuck to his body, and talk to them, auditing them until they blow (go away). All subsequent OT levels after OT3 also deal with body thetans.
Bullshit.
No, seriously. We've seen the evidence.
But if that's true, why do ALL Scientologists deny that that's what's on OT3?
To be honest, we're not totally sure why upper-level Scientologists insist on publicly denying the fact that the OT materials have anything to do with Xenu. I mean, c'mon guys. The cat is so totally out of the bag. I mean, the cat has been out of the bag so long that if you asked the cat about the bag, the cat would be like, "Oh, the BAG? That was forever ago." And then the cat would roll its eyes and go back to being out of the bag. cute.
Lower level Scientologists who have not yet reached OT3, however, deny it because they really, truly, factually, honestly, utterly don't know. They've probably never even heard of Xenu or body thetans, or if they *have*, the only people they've ever heard about it from were non-Scientologists. Even if they are repeatedly told by strangers and non-Scientologists that Xenu is at the core of OT3, they think, "Well, that can't be true. I've been in Scientology for years, and I've never heard mention of any 'Xenu'. This guy's not even a Scientologist - what does he know?" Most lower-level Scientologists find reference to Xenu and aliens ridiculous.
So what you end up with here is an entire society of people who will deny to the death that the OT3 materials contain any reference to Xenu - the higher-ups because they don't want to get in trouble, and the lower-downs because they really don't know about it.
Why are the materials so secret within the church?
Well, there's the Scientologist answer to that question and the skeptical answer to that question.
The Scientologist answer is that if you're not spiritually ready to read the materials, and you look at them anyway, you could die, or at the very least, ruin your case (make yourself unable to have further Scientology auditing).
The skeptical answer is that if Scientology let people read those materials before they're fully indoctrinated into the church's ideology, they'll leave. The point has been made that the OT3 materials aren't any "weirder" than any other religion. We'll leave the decision on that one up to you.
We at ESK think that making fun of Xenu all the time is really missing the point. If Scientologists want to believe in Xenu, they're welcome to do so. What really ought to be criticized are the practices of Scientology management, such as physical abuse in the Sea Org [ Scientology cult's "Sea Org": Tax-exempt child abuse, coerced abortions, internal prisons : Indybay: abuses that go on daily in the Scientology's 'Sea Org' and its internal prison system, the 'Rehabilitation Project Force' (RPF) ] denial of basic medical services, disconnection from family & friends ~ suppressive persons, and other issues of malfeasance. yes.
family-alt ~ bcs attempts at family, community ~ vulnerable to becoming cults. meaning what? controlling. possessive. exclusive. even a small group of friends, as in just-read Likeness by Tana French, that is wh int'd me: 'No Pasts' - request for some kind of 'total' commitment to the group.
religioustolerance.org: Unification Church: organized in 1954 in Seoul, South Korea by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. followers often called Moonies by persons outside of the Association; term considered derogatory by its members, who refer to themselves as Unificationists.
The Church and the Counter-cult/anti-cult movements:
Their core, dedicated members accept strong discipline and can develop a deep commitment to the church. The group can become their whole life, the source of their religious, cultural, social, and other support systems. If they become disillusioned by some aspect of the church, this minority of unusually dedicated members can find it very difficult to leave the organization and abandon these support networks. When they do leave, they are often angry with themselves and the church, believing that they have wasted perhaps years of their life within the group. This problem is common to all high intensity denominations which require major commitment to the group. e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and (for priests and nuns) the Roman Catholic Church.
Cult - Wkp: Some anthropologists and sociologists studying cults have argued that no one has yet been able to define “cult” in a way that enables the term to identify only groups that have been identified as problematic. However, without the 'problematic' concern, scientific criteria of characteristics attributed to cults do exist. A little-known example is the Alexander and Rollins, 1984, scientific study concluding that the socially well-received group Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult by using the model of Lifton's thought reform techniques and applying those to AA group’s indoctrination methodology. Even though the elements exist, several researchers have pointed out the benefit of the organization.
1.3Psychological definition: Studies of the psychological aspects of cults focus on the individual person, and factors relating to the choice to become involved as well as the subsequent effects on individuals - especially coercive persuasion which suppresses the ability of people to reason, think critically, and make choices in their own best interest:
1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
3. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader;
4. They get a new identity based on the group;
5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
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