Thursday, October 5, 2006

And Now Beautiful yet Mindless Violence

And Now, Mindless Violence,



From the entertaining flick Kung Fu Hustle

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Am I "Desperate" or "Wire"d

My thoughts on desperate housewives? Well, it is, as before a show about a particular kind of people and their lives. I still hate Terri Hatcher and I think all of their problems are self inflicted by their ignorance and selfishness. I never feel the need to cheer for any of the characters and as a result I willingly bow out of yet another season before it all starts to infuriate me. Last season I started in because of the promise of Alfre Woodard, when I found out that her mental illness solution was to chain a man in her basement I relived I was not going to be investing precious time in a show where not a single person is capable of any moral high ground. I need a little innocence in my drama. Which is why I am digging the Wire.
The wire started slow, introducing a group of children born in the slums of Baltimore while including all the drugs and politics that made the show worth watching in previous seasons, but I wasn’t watching because I was trying to stomach the shenanigans of desperate housewives. Where the housewives toil glibly in a suburban nightmare of betrayal and lust, the kids on the Wire are just infants in the world that hates them with that “aggressive apathy” I so often call upon. Their school system moves them along each year because they don’t have the resources to educate them if they fail a grade. Their streets are lines with fiends and pushers, and their homes are foster care and group homes. But for some reason, in the grime and hurt of that environment I feel right at home with the shockingly stubborn system that herds these children like chattel into dead end lives. I live in that world, I know those kids.
On Wisteria lane the women all fawn and preen in a world of cleanliness and spite. On the Wire the kids sit on milk crates and toss bottles for fun. One world is the world of white privilege where the drama is often self destructive in ways that do not match the pristine polished environment. The other world is the gutters of a lost city where every link in the chain of the system feels held back by the one next to it. Watch as the cops get shuttled off their major crimes unit because of a power play that one of the detectives thought he could pull during an election year. Each department feels the ripples of this one event, and often on The Wire the information is disseminated in quick clips of conversation that only make sense as you listen and pay attention to the tapestry that is being laid bare.
All those chicks with their middle class over the top problems can KMA. I can’t give them another millisecond of my time. I’ll spend that hour hanging out with friends and family while we wait for The Wire to come on. That way I’ll find myself rooting for the real down and outs who need the support and attention. The people that often get forgot as system chases waifs with good credit and bad attitudes. On Sunday nights I’ll be watching the Wire.