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New Twin Peaks Blog

Whimsical and incomplete, just like anything good related to TP.

Baltimore Crime Beat: "Wire" creator responds to top cop's criticism

But publicly, let me state that The Wire owes no apologies -- at least not for its depiction of those portions of Baltimore where we set our story, for its address of economic and political priorities and urban poverty, for its discussion of the drug war and the damage done from that misguided prohibition, or for its attention to the cover-your-ass institutional dynamic that leads, say, big-city police commissioners to perceive a fictional narrative, rather than actual, complex urban problems as a cause for righteous concern. As citizens using a fictional narrative as a means of arguing different priorities or policies, those who created and worked on The Wire have dissented.

 

Commissioner Bealefeld may not be comfortable with public dissent, or even a public critique of his agency. He may even believe that the recent decline in crime entitles him to denigrate as "stupid" or "slander" all prior dissent, as if the previous two decades of mismanagement in the Baltimore department had not happened and should not have been addressed by any act of storytelling, given that Baltimore is no longer among the most violent American cities, but merely a very violent one.

Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility.  That is the police department we depicted in The Wire, give or take our depiction of some conscientious officers and supervisors. And that is an accurate depiction of the Baltimore department for much of the last twenty years, from the late 1980s, when cocaine hit and the drug corners blossomed, until recently, when Mr. O'Malley became governor and the pressure to clear those corners without regard to legality and to make crime disappear on paper finally gave way to some normalcy and, perhaps, some police work.  Commissioner Bealefeld, who was present for much of that history, knows it as well as anyone associated with The Wire.

via weblogs.baltimoresun.com

Why would Baltimore's police commissioner pick a fight with David Simon? How weird. But I'm in favor of whatever it takes to get some good Simon trash-talk in circulation.

I never would have imagined that football or stories centered around
football in a small Texas town would be something that would bring me
on the verge of emotional breakdown on a regular basis. In my
experience, few things have been able to capture the feelings I have
of my home state, but I have to give it to the team at FNL, they
really have hit the nail on the head.

Being a transplant from Texas has its pluses and deltas for a guy
living in Brooklyn, NY. Texas has always had its mystique of
badassedness and I've never been want to play along. I think, as a
dramatical story, while maybe FNL struggles to portray the realities
of high school footballers or any real football teams as I've heard
some express, it does a phenomenal job at expressing the complexity of
Texas politic and persona.

via realdillon.posterous.com

Wonderful post from Wayne (of the also wonderful Surlee Voyage) about watching Friday Night Lights in the Texas diaspora.

Friday Night Lights is Back

Inspired by FakeLocke.com, I set up a blog for Friday Night Lights Season 5. Real Fans Watch, but not all real fans have Direct TV. Occasionally relevant twitter accounts @FNLDjacobs (spoilers!) and @Buzzfan1 (profanity!) remain active.

Vuvuzela: A Loud, Blank Cipher

Locals who had hoped that the rest of the world would take away some useful knowledge about South Africa's current affairs could hardly be faulted for cursing the existence of the vuvuzela. Zealous opinion about the ubiquitous plastic horns has nearly dominated the portion of the World Cup's global media coverage which is reserved for "African content." Not only that, at the rate they are selling abroad, the trumpets may turn out to be South Africa's most distinctive export, and its most enduring contribution to football culture. Move over, songmakers of the Spion Kop, the storied Liverpool fan foundry that originated crowd chants! The low B flat drone of the vuvuzela seems destined to turn your rhymes to sonic dust.

via www.socialtextjournal.org

On Voice and Authenticity

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights Buzz Bissinger on Twitter: "The liberation of Twitter is not to dwell it — make it real and visceral and immediate." On his avatar disappearing: "Tried some new fucking program that sucks the dongasaurus." On avatars: "Why is called an Avatar when all it is a weeny little picture. Can't we just call it a picture. Aren't avatars liquid blue things?" Television: "It is really fucking hard to come up with a good story line every week." Girl with the Dragon Tatto: "Now there is one angry chick." Steroids: "Everybody in the entire fucking world cheats. Except me and Brett Favre."

His voice and pace overwhelms — is this the world's first exposure to Bissinger's native voice, bombast and cadence sans editing? He misbehaves in interviews, most famously in his blistering diatribe against Will Leitch and Deadspin on Bob Costas Now, and recently in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Was the first draft of Friday Night Lights 1500 pages long and laced with F-bombs?

Bissinger's first person opus on Twitter is a level-headed intellectual analysis of the medium. On Twitter itself, he offers "A plea to all Twitterites": "don’t confuse my rants, sometimes over the top, with my continued effort to write with meticulousness, honesty."

When you have a newborn, the whole internet is tl;dr.^** So I've been blogging a lot of stuff I haven't had time to read. Still haven't read that steroids piece! But while Lev slept in the sling this morning, I spent some time on Hulu^* & YouTube.

Hulu watchers of Friday Night Lights have hopefully had time to watch the season ending episode of season 4. I've discussed the Friday Night Lights Podcast before, but it's worth listening to after you watch the final episode (major spoiler in that link).

Blake, Russ, and Lyle break down the football and melodrama in FNL with the same tone & levity they discuss the Superbowl; "Was Tinker lined up as a tight end on that play?" "Was that the first time Coach Taylor ever enjoyed talk radio?" "What does Slammin' Sammy Mead (the talk show host) look like?" "What kind of school year do they have in Dillon?"

But the coup de grâce is the interview with Madison Burge, who plays Becky on the show. An Austin native, Madison describes her level of familiarity with FNL as "Why's that guy in a wheel chair again?" She became a convert for good during her audition with Kyle Chandler which she summed up as "I'm nervous, you're gorgeous."

Burge says exactly what she thinks (or is very deeply embedded in character), is as charming in the interviews as she is on the show, and isn't afraid to wonder out loud what's going to happen next, especially to some of the significant characters whose luck took a turn for the worse.

Are you not caught up with Friday Night Lights, or generally bored with this post? Here's a conversation between Ricky Gervais and Larry David:

Ricky says: "I'm thin in America, but I still wear Black" and they excerpt the restaurant swearing scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I consider the funniest three minutes in televsion history. They discuss profanity, brutal honesty, not liking to work, and of course they laugh a lot. Also recommended!

^* Hulu Plus! For $10 a month you get twice as many ads and access to many more back episodes of some shows. Being able to watch on the iPad is nice, but I'm not entirely sold on the value yet.

^** What else? This blog post took me around 15 hours to write.

Paige Ferrari

via paigeferrari.tumblr.com

Until I can find the Mad Men season premiere online, I’ll probably just step outside when I want to enjoy retro gender roles and lax smoking restrictions.

I missed that Paige Ferrari (one of my favorite old Radar writers) is blogging again on her Tumblr and at The Awl.

Sippey: Which are the correct prepositions to use in the above paragraph? ON or AT?

Also, Seth Meyers said: Highly recommend @sportsguy33 podcast with @CKlosterman. Best LeBron discussion I've heard yet. I couldn't agree more. Everyone, but especially Mike Monteiro, Michael Sippey, and Anil Dash, should listen to the first twenty-five minutes of part 1 of that podcast, it is excellent. The rest of it gets a little basketball-geeky.

The previous Simmons' podcast is also recommended, featuring all-time greatest twitterer, Buzz Bissinger.

In last Sunday's episode of Mad Men, Grandpa Gene ate ice cream right out of the container and salted each spoonful before putting it in his mouth.

via kottke.org

It's fun to read all of Jason's Mad Men posts in one place.

The LOST Game

I was juggling the MASN in game thread, watching the game, scoring the game, and eyeballing Twitter. Within the first 5 minutes of LOST starting at 9 PM, tweets popped up all over the place about how shocking the first 5 minutes were and little details. The meltdown started after I tweeted:

No LOST spoilers! No LOST spoilers! I don’t care if my team is beating your team and you gave up on the game ;-)

To which a (Mets fan) friend replied, “Nice job jinxing the Nats.” And I thought poppycock! There’s no such thing as jinxes. Then I think someone pushed me into an electromagnetic well, brutha. Or something. Next thing I knew, Clippard (he of the sub 1.0 ERA previously) was giving up runs left and right following Bruney and the Mets sprung ahead 8-6 in the bottom of the 8th inning

via www.misschatter.com

Yes, jinxes are real.

"HBO's 'Treme' creator David Simon explains it all for you"

If we are true to ourselves as dramatists,  we will cheat and lie and pile one fraud upon the next,  given that with every scene,  we make fictional characters say and do things that were never said and done. And yet,  if we are respectful of the historical reality of post-Katrina New Orleans,  there are facts that must be referenced accurately as well. Some things,  you just don't make up.

Admittedly,  it's delicate. And we are likely to be at our best in those instances in which we are entirely aware of our deceits,  just as we are likely to fail when we proceed in ignorance of the facts. Technically speaking,  when we cheat and know it,  we are "taking creative liberties, " and when we cheat and don't know it,  we are "screwing up."

But "Treme" is drama,  and therefore artifice. It is not journalism. It is not documentary. It is a fictional representation set in a real time and place,  replete with moments of inside humor,  local celebrity and galloping,  unrestrained meta. At moments,  if we do our jobs correctly,  it may feel real.

via www.nola.com

via sippey.