Where Wallace Is At

Hey D,  I found Wallace.  He has turned out ok after all.  He is off the drugs and doing commercials for Adidas.  Wallace appears to be in good shape now that he is clean and lifting weights.

Adidas is debuting new jerseys this weekend in what appears to be a far less offense way than the Nike Pro Combat Elite jerseys.  The jerseys appear to be similar to regular ones and do not uneccessarily change the colors teams are used to wearing.  An Oregon jersey freak show this is not. 

I Like A Da YouTubes

Ever get lost on YouTube and end up spending an embarrassing amount of time surfing from video to video? It's OK, you can admit it. In fact, there may be something wrong with you never have. In the first of a new department of posts, I'll save you some time and give you a few videos guaranteed to be a worthwhile watch.

This first one I discovered a few years ago and have been touting ever since, somehow without it getting old. You can't watch this without laughing.



This next one came out a year or so ago and features former Yankee center fielder Melky Cabrera drunk in a hotel room with adult film star Mary Carey behind the camera. For those who aren't too quick on the uptake, the Melk Man's priceless "I like a da woman!" at 1:16 is the inspiration for the title of this series.



The final video for today is from Season One of The Wire. If you've never seen the show, don't worry, I purposely chose a video with no spoilers. This scene, with D'Angelo showing his crew members Wallace and Bodie how to play chess, catches the series in a nutshell. Watch this one, and then go watch the entire series.

The Man on the Left is Wasting Your Time

It baffles me that, with hundreds of options when it comes to what to watch on TV, enough people have tuned into a show like CSI: Miami to keep it running for 8 seasons and counting. Really, with all the shows and channels and forms of entertainment out there, this canned-ham cop show featuring David Caruso and his skull-piercing one-liners is that popular? This will not stand, man.

I feel for the people who are under the impression that these mass-produced, cookie-cutter cop shows are quality entertainment. It's like someone who drinks Milwaukee's Best and thinks it's good just because it's the only thing he can get his hands on. He doesn't know about Guinness, so to him the Beast is a way of life. Now, I've seen several episodes of each of the CSI series, and I'd be lying if I said it were an outright bad show. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say CSI: NY, starring Lt. Dan and that Greek chick who was in Rounders for 2 minutes, is actually watchable. But CSI, NCIS, Medium, The Closer, The Mentalist, etc. etc. are the television equivalent of cheap beer. They get the job done, but there's no lasting quality to it. Just like Natty is not Yards, none of these cop shows are The Wire.

If you want to see what well-invested time is, set aside 12 hours over the course of a week or two and take in Season One of The Wire. You'll be hooked after that, and you will thank me. You'll be wishing you could try to go shot for shot with McNulty and you'll have a totally new association with the name "Omar." Maybe even a small part of you will want to move to Baltimore and become a homicide detective or a drug kingpin. More importantly, you will no longer settle for the mediocre story lines and underdeveloped characters rolled out by the network cop show assembly line.

The Wire goes places that CSI wouldn't dare. Part if it has to do with it being an HBO show and having virtually no boundary on language/violence/nudity/etc. But even putting that aside, the show laps the field on its depth alone. The Wire, unlike all the others, does not keep its episodes self-contained; the seasons are a thick stew of plot lines revolving around the pursuit of one criminal outlet. That's my problem with the network cop shows - they cater to the short attention span. 40 minutes of show plus commercials are all it takes for the crime to be committed and the bad guy to be caught. It just doesn't happen that way. The investigations are so streamlined that it's a borderline insult to real life detectives and forensic workers. I'm sorry, but if you want real, that's not where you get it. And if you want characters, that's definitely not where you get them.

Since each of these cop shows are dedicated to solving the crime in the span of one episode, there's little time left over for developing their characters. It might take a full season or two to get a real grip on these shows' major players. Since The Wire doesn't follow self-imposed deadlines for what has to be accomplished in each episode, it can take the time to show you all there is to see about the good guys and the bad guys. It allows the viewer to create something of a relationship with each character, often leaving you rooting for the criminals and rooting against some of the men with the badges. That's what The Wire is really all about - duality. Every person has multiple agendas and every story has multiple sides.

You want a real character? How about a binge-drinking, womanizing, insubordinate murder detective who, in his sober hours, is the most gifted police in the city? Or how about a dope-fiend informant whose performance, wardrobe, and makeup were so good that he was mistaken for an actual crackhead on the set (go to the 1:20 mark of the video)? And how many shows give you a homosexual stick-up man who makes his living robbing drug dealers, yet will not use foul language or go after anyone who isn't in the drug game?

Like we've all said before in one way or another, the non-working, non-sleeping hours of the week are precious. All you can ask of yourself is to spend that time wisely. In certain ways, the old "you are what you eat" adage can be amended to "you are what you watch on TV." So if you want to be showered in half-ass entertainment, then Horatio the Orangehead Caine up there on the left is your man. But if you want to get into a show that will pay dividends on your time, then give our boy McNulty up there a spin - but you'll have to bring your own Jameson.

Saturated

This week we plunged deeper into the doldrums of winter with only the faux hope of "Pitchers and Catchers!" on our tray. Great, pitchers and catchers reported, that gets you excited for about 15 minutes before you realize it's still 25 degrees outside up here and the real season is still 6 weeks away. The Winter Olympics hold my attention for about 76 seconds a day. With nothing going on, there's nothing to talk about, which brings radio hosts, newspaper columnists, hood rats drinking MGD in a dive bar, and everyone else with an opinion and a forum back to the same tired, beaten-to-death-and-back topics that I just cannot take anymore.

I'm saturated. There is nothing more to absorb. Or I'm like those stain-defender Dockers where the grape juice just bounces right off the pants in the commercial. Either way, hearing or reading any discussion on these issues are an immediate trigger to the tune-out button.

(Speaking of which, how great would an actual tune-out button be in real life? You get buried in a boring conversation or pointless meeting at work, and you can just hit a button and in one ear you get to hear music from your iPod, or some George Carlin stand-up, or whatever you want to actually be listening to? When we all have computer chips in our brains someday I hope this gets invented pronto.)

I digress, but that's why parentheses exist. The following is a list of subjects more tired than Forrest Gump after running across the country 4 times.

-Tiger Woods
-Steroids
-Brett Favre
-Joba Chamberlain - starter or reliever? (Reliever. If you want 2,000 words on why, I do take individual requests)
-The annual "Donovan McNabb -trade him or keep him?" debate
-Sarah Palin
-Tim Tebow's draft status
-Which team "might offer Johnny Damon a contract this week" (EDIT: Enjoy Detroit, Johnny.)
-The price of gas
-Snow
-Any and all celebrity couples
-The movie Avatar

And coming soon:
-NCAA tournament bubble teams
-Stats and scores from spring training games
-The NFL's impending labor fiasco

The moral of the story is, just let these subjects play themselves out. Brain-piercing repetitive discussion has no impact on anything. But it does give me an excuse to channel Marlo Stanfield's first spoken line in The Wire - "Do it or don't. But I got someplace to be."