Back in the Game

It's been many moons since I posted anything on the blog. The show is over, grad school life is intense... what else can a man say about the show?

But a few weeks ago, I was driving up through Westwood past the W Hotel on my way to campus when a familiar figure caught my eye. It was Wood Harris, hanging out in front of the hotel with a small entourage. "Avon!" I yelled. "What's up baby," he said (seeing him and two of Claire's boyfriends from "Six Feet Under" have made up the core of star sightings down here). The sighting brought back the living reality of the show to me and that maybe my Wire blogging days are not all behind me.

George Pelecanos on tour




I'm very excited about this. His tour, which launches today in D.C., swings through the country this month. Pelecanos is a D.C. crime novelist who was a producer and writer on "The Wire," penning every several episodes, including the second-to-last episode in every season. I've now read about five of his novels - his latest, "The Way Home" came out Tuesday - and the more of his novels I read, the bigger his stamp I see on the show. An interview in the L.A. Times is here.

People always talk about Simon and Burns as the genius behind the show, but there are so many similarities between the themes of "The Wire" and Pelecanos' novels that I think that his contribution to the overall product has been minimized and overlooked. The street language, the love of the city no matter how broken it appears, the interest in the mores of contemporary urban masculinity, the portrayal of villains as individuals whose lives took the course they did as a result of societal dysfunction and injustice rather than personal failure - these are all aspects of the show that one finds again and again in his novels.

I recommend them and stopping by and seeing him speak. I'll be at the reading in LA on Tuesday.