Live-Blogging The Wire

You fuckers have been bugging me to watch The Wire for the past two years, and, like I've been saying, it's in there, man, it's in my Netflix queue. It's just down a ways, past some documentaries about globalization and the second Jackass movie. But Nina was willing to accelerate it a bit in hers, and so last night I finally saw the first three episodes. In view of the faux-momentousness of the event, I decided to "live blog" it.

00:04 - "He'd wait until there was money on the ground, then he'd run off with it. Couldn't help himself." Snot Boogie's racket sounds pretty awesome. I'd play craps with him, although I can see how he'd be an acquired taste.

00:06 - Where do I know that dude McNulty's talking to? Holy shit, it's agent Richard Gill! "You gonna lick? You gonna lick? I'll tell you what you can lick." ("That's why they call me stallion...")

00:22 - Avon Barksdale is a sneaker name. Or the name of a cartoon dog butler.

00:28 - "Use Me 'Til You Use Me Up," says Nina, giving and singing the name of the Al Jarreau song they're playing at the titty bar. "How do you know that?" "It's on a CD I have," she says. "The CD is called 'Badass Singing.'"

00:33 - That fat cop Landsman looks like if Alec Baldwin in The Departed had a baby with Chief Tyrol

00:41 - I've never even heard of anyone paying drug dealers with xeroxed money. That's pretty gutsy.

00:43 - Wait, that white kid who's shooting up with Bubbles -- is that Telly? It is! This show is like a Who's Who of mid-nineties character actors.

00:47 - "You give great case, brother" -- that's some white collar-ass slang.

00:55 - Is that bartender at the strip club moonlighting as a taxi dispatcher? Nina thinks D'Angelo is handsome until I point out he looks like a baby whose eyebrows got shaved off.

00:58 - "You shot the mouse?!"

Hey, so that's a good show, you know? It kind of reminds me of Prime Suspect, both in terms of the subject matter and tone, and in how some scenes seem to be shot on film and some on something cheaper -- Deadwood on DV, say. We're going to keep plowing through, I think. And not least of all, now I know what all the fuss is about Lance Reddick's web site.