UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

The Emmys today, released its list of nominees and "The Wire" - incredibly, stupefyingly - did not recieve ONE nomination. Not one! Hell, I bet those godawful shows on the UBN got more nominations than our boys in Baltimore. WTF?!?!? ("The Sopranos," by contrast, received 15 nominations.)

With an ensemble cast, it's understandable that none of the actors were nominated - who really could you nominate for "best actor" on "The Wire" in terms of them playing the lead? However, to pass up the writing for the show, the uber-gritty streetscape design and some of the expressionistic directing is tragic. Sorry, but if "Boston Legal" is gonna be nominated over "The Wire" for Best Drama then there's something rotten in the Denmark.

Despite all the great press, the slobbering reviews and editorials written in the LA Times and the NY Times, the show still gets little mass attention or respect. With only one season left, it appears that the show could forever be destined to be a cult favorite.

My own two sense: in the current political climate in the US, there is no real great potential for popular appeal for such a hard-hitting piece of social realism as "The Wire." With a bungled war that never seems to get better - and yet without a leader with a vision to really extract ourselves from the conflict - people are tired of opening up their newspapers and reading about suicide bombers and brutal violence. They want to see the Jack Bauer/John McClane badass who can slay everything in their way, they want to see families. The horribly dysfunctional Baltimore of Simon and Burns' vision is just not something, sadly, enough people want to dive into right now. It's understandable, but yet very disappointing at the same time.

Greetings.

- Someone posted a rumor that Steve Earle would be performing the "Down in the Hole" official Wire theme song for Season 5. And... the rumors are true. The song won't be commercially released until Sept. 25. If anybody has an in into listening to the song sooner please let me know. I'm still waiting to get my hands on the Season Four version.

I'm not super knowledgeable about Earle's music (though I've always thought "The Revolution Starts Now" would be the perfect campaign song) so I don't know what to expect. I do hope that he doesn't country-fy it too much. He is a great musician, though for a show that the hip-hop community as adopted as its own it's possible that his version might not fly too well given his more down-home style. Politically though, his views are pretty in-tune with what Simon and Burns have said.

- "Night at the Wire," the annual philanthropic event thrown by the actors and producers of the show, happened a few weeks ago. Sounded like they gave away some interesting prizes to people who donated funds.

- Not a whole lot of Wire news I've seen out there. With such a large ensemble cast as the show has, there's always news about what each cast member is up to, which I decide not to post since there's so many cameos and public appearances.

The most interesting thing are all the articles written by people who reference plot events in the show to illuminate current events. Here's a particularly brilliant one that makes a link between the famous "dope on the table" episode from Season One and the crackdown in China recently due to deadly toothpaste. The gist: by cracking down on a problem through showy plant closures, you don't really solve the problem. The problem is much deeper and thus the solutions must go much deeper.

"The Wire" may not be a commercial success but it's influence among the intellegentsia in this country and beyond is profound and should not be underestimated. Lots of journalists reference "Hamsterdam" for example when talking about the War on Drugs and practical social experiments. It's one of the legacies of this show.