wildyams

I haven't blogged in a while so I figured I should pen an entry here, only I was somewhat stumped for a topic, but then I decided I'd talk a bit about my favorite show on TV and the best show I've ever seen: The Wire. It's not on the air right now as it is in between seasons, so maybe it's odd to be writing about it now, but the reason I am is because, quite frankly, it doesn't get discussed enough. While I do see occasional references here and there online, I only know of two other people who watch it, and none of my friends have ever watched it. It is very unlike any other show I've ever seen for a couple of reasons, and these reasons I think all are part of why it stands apart from everything else in terms of quality.

First, none of the episodes are standalone episodes at all. While this in and of itself isn't too unique nowadays, with many shows having taken on a "serial" approach with a continuing storyline, typically other shows can still be caught up on with a quick synopsis and they do typically try to adhere somewhat to a beginning, middle and end for each episode (unless it's a "to be continued..." episode). The Wire does not really have that "serial" aspect to it, and the continuing storyline generally only holds for that current season. Sure there is some inevitable carryover from one season to the next, but not nearly in the same way as with other shows (as I'll explain below). Most interesting, however, the show does not tend to have a clear beginning or end with each episode. They do craft the episodes somewhat in this manner, but in reality none of the episodes have a solid thread within themselves in the way that other shows do. At the same time there are not cliffhanger endings as you might think with a show that doesn't seem to have a clear resolution at the clear of each episode, but rather it just stops where it's at and resumes the following week. This is because each season itself is the cohesive plot that begins with the beginning of the first episode and finishes with the end of the last episode. Even though it is technically so far four 13 episode seasons, in reality it has just been four stories with one for each season.

The second interesting thing about the show is the enormous cast of main characters. Through four seasons the people who are regulars on the show must be near or over a hundred people. The show has gotten more complex as it has gone on with each season's new storyline and the new additions to the cast that have joined as a result. This combined with the non-episodic way the stories unfold makes the show particularly difficult to try to pick up in the middle, and while the cast of characters is relatively smaller in the earlier seasons, even in Season 1 the cast is still quite large. The show is about Baltimore, and while it initially starts as a sort-of duel between the one task force in the Baltimore Police Department and the biggest drug-dealing crime family in the city, it begins to expand to cover many other areas of the city (all levels and districts of the PD, the schools, the city government, political elections and campaigning, the docks, various neighborhoods, the district attorneys, the judicial system, the prisons, etc). In the first season it takes a few episodes before the team of police officers is even assembled, and they don't even lay eyes on the guy who is their main target until about three quarters of the way through the season. On the police's side, it covers not just this task force that's trying to bring down the drug-dealers, but also various other departments of the PD, and on the drug-dealers' side it shows all different levels of their organization in great detail, from the young kids on the street to the people who are the muscle to the people who are in charge.

The final thing that makes the show so original, and the thing that to me is the most surprising, is the fact that there is no real core main characters, but rather everyone is just a part of this monstrous cast. There are main characters from season to season, but they are always changing. The people who are the main characters in the first season are almost entirely nonexistent or very minor by the fourth season; while conversely people who were not there for the first or second season, or who were minor characters end up becoming the main stars of the fourth season. While other shows have had the occasional star leave to pursue a movie career or a spinoff show or something, that has not been the case here, and that has not been why the cast has changed so drastically. It's a buzzword to say it, but it has just organically developed in that direction as the years have gone on. Maybe most surprisingly, even with the cast changing so drastically the show has not suffered at all, with it being just as good last season as it was in its first season.

Other than these things the thing that tends to make the show stand out so much is because while it is so incredibly good, it still flies completely under the radar for virtually everyone. Most people have never even heard of it, and that's really too bad. It may be due to the fact that there are no big stars on the show, and that the creators are not really well known outside of The Wire itself. In other words, it requires a leap of faith on the part of most viewers to even give it a chance, and due to the nature of the show one can't really pick it up in the middle and must go rent the first season's DVDs if they want to get drawn into it (and I don't think a lot of people are willing to do that). The show has one more season on the air starting this winter, and after that the creators have decided they won't do it anymore because they only had five seasons' worth of stories in mind when they created it and think it won't be feasible to continue it beyond that without the show dropping severely in quality. If you've never seen the show, or even worse, if you've never heard of it, do yourself a favor and check it out now. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

I made a fantastic discovery yesterday: I finally found the score to the US theatrical version of Luc Besson's movie The Big Blue. I saw The Big Blue in theaters on Cape Cod when I was 13 and was fascinated and impressed by the movie. Years later I found the VHS tape of the movie for sale while in college in Colorado and I bought it and watched it a lot during my college years. Somewhere around 95 I was on Xmas break and was up in San Francisco visiting Cella with some friends because we were going to see Primus play there on New Year's Eve, and while we were acting all touristy during the day we went into Amoeba Records in Berkley and I found the soundtrack to The Big Blue and I bought it immediately because I was such a fan of the music in that movie. Well, to my displeasure it was not the music I was looking for, as I would later discover that in the French release of the movie (titled Le Grand Bleu) Luc Besson had used his since-frequent composer Eric Serra to score the movie, but when it came over to the US they trimmed down the length of the movie, gave it a "happier" ending (which is far worse) and gave it a new score from composer Bill Conti.

At the time I'd never seen the French release, so I didn't know any of this, but instead just listened to the Eric Serra score on the CD I'd bought. Years later when the DVD finally came out it was the French release with the extended version and far, far superior ending. The only issue I had with it was that it was with the original Eric Serra score and not the Bill Conti score, which was apparently not available anywhere except on the VHS tape (which I no longer had). Well naturally I've long wanted that Bill Conti score, but I'd kinda written it off. Then the other day I saw a 2001 documentary on a couple free divers who were leaders in the sport and which had narration by Jacques Mayol (who apparently killed himself 6 years ago), and naturally that made me think again of The Big Blue. This prompted me to search around and see if there was anything out there about the original Bill Conti score, and that's when I found the whole thing, ready for download from this website here. Naturally I downloaded it right away and have been listening to it rather non-stop ever since and it is every bit as beautiful as I remember it.

The first band I ever really truly fell in love with was Metallica back when I was 12 years old. They were my favorite band from then through most of my HS years, but then their music began to suck and I kinda lost interest through the latter half of the 90's. The next time I really took much notice of them was when they came out against Napster and to me that was really a final nail in the coffin of whatever love I'd had at one time for the band. I still have their old albums and listen to them on occasion, but the band is dead to me as far as I'm concerned.

Around the time I started to become disinterested in Metallica, Riggs turned me onto another band which has either been my favorite or second favorite band from then (around 1992 or so) till now, and that band is Nine Inch Nails. Well, imagine how happy I am to see that my favorite band is now on the flipside of the coin that Metallica was on a few years ago. Check out Trent Reznor this week telling the audience in Australia at a NIN show that since the record companies continue to charge outrageous prices for CDs they should steal his music:

In light of my last entry I've been wanting to clarify something in case I come across as saying that people should just steal music (which I almost surely am). I do not support just blatantly stealing music; but I am in support of what Trent Reznor is saying because in my mind what he's advocating will hopefully bring about a swift deconstruction and reconstruction of the music industry, and that is something that I think is sorely needed. With Nine Inch Nails in particular, I have downloaded their last two albums online a few weeks before they were released simply because I was anxious to hear their new music; however, in the case of both of those albums I still went and purchased them the day they were released because I wanted to support the artist. To further support the artist, as I've detailed here on my blog, I went to see NIN five times on their last tour through the US and I joined their fan club for an annual fee; so it should be clear I'm not at all trying to say that good musicians shouldn't get paid, because believe me I appreciate what they do and am willing to pay to support it.

Myself I really haven't downloaded hardly any music since the original Napster went down, although that is largely due to the fact that if I have a copy of something I'd prefer it was a pristine copy. I learned that when you download indiscriminately like that the versions you get are often either not full versions of the songs, or were ripped at a low bit rate or they could have a lot of blemishes and clicks in them. Really any downloading I've done in the last say 5 years or so was either to acquire some album which is not available any other way (some of the obscure soundtracks I've blogged about, like The Shining, Fright Night and Teen Wolf, for instance), or just to get an advance copy from a band I love, like NIN. There have been a couple exceedingly rare instances where I've downloaded a solitary song from an album I could have purchased, but there's probably been less than 20 of those in the last 5 years, and with those I've never used file sharing software (instead opting for trying to find the mp3 itself just hosted on some server online).

By far most of the music I've acquired in the last 5 years has come from either borrowing CDs from friends or from buying used CDs, usually online. The reason for this is because if I can I try to avoid buying new albums simply because I know that doing so supports the RIAA and the music industry and that is something I absolutely don't want to do. I am really hoping and praying for the music industry to collapse and be reborn as something that makes more sense for artists and fans. There is a way for musicians to still get paid what they deserve while simultaneously not ripping off fans and also encouraging a return to better music with more to it, and that is to just get rid of all the people in the music industry who are just taking up space and collecting paychecks. Let the money the fans pay go to the artists or to people who work with the artists because they have a true passion about music and not to people who couldn't care less but just like being in the entertainment industry so they can feel important or get laid or whatever.

In its current incarnation the music industry to me represents greed and bloat with most of the money spent by fans going to line the pockets of useless middlemen taking up space or to add to the coffers of giant media conglomerates who have no interest in music other than the fact that it helps their bottom line. These conglomerates who have in effect purchased the entire music industry in the last two decades or so have, in my opinion, completely eviscerated it by keeping CD prices arbitrarily high through collusion while simultaneously abandoning the process of finding truly talented musicians in favor of flash in the pan, bubblegum pop hit makers. They go after people who have looks and singing ability (sometimes not even that), but people who have no songwriting skill, and who even worse really put no heart or soul into their music. The state of contemporary music is as big a disaster right now as is the business end of the music industry. That is to say that the "show" and the "business" are both competing for which is worse off. So because of this, I readily welcome any kind of cataclysmic shift that can happen with music and the music industry and I welcome the imminent collapse.

And hopefully the movie industry is next.

I haven't made a Red Sox entry in probably about 3 years, and that's mainly because I'm a pretty poor baseball fan, even though the Sox are technically my team. However, for the first time in my life I've really started to elevate my interest in baseball in general, and by extension, the Red Sox. It's probably no surprise that this has happened to me over the course of this season in which the Red Sox have had the best record in baseball for a lot of the year, being that since I'm not a die hard fan I'm essentially a frontrunner. In any event, for the last month or two I've really been following the Red Sox closely, and during this season I actually did watch all the Sox games that were broadcast thanks to Tivo. I even went to a game against the Angels with my Dad back in early August (which the Red Sox lost horribly). Lately I've been reading everything I can find about the Sox, from message boards to blogs to sites like ESPN, and I've even been following the games that aren't on TV out here on ESPN"s GameCast. I'm even toying quite seriously with getting the MLB Extra Innings package on cable next year so I can see almost all the Red Sox games and really follow them next season.

Anyway, tonight was a real big night for the Red Sox and their fans as the Sox won the American League East pennant for the first time since 1995 (in 2004 when they won the World Series they were the wildcard team). The Yankees, or as they're known to the online Red Sox fanbase the "MFYs" (you figure it out), had won the previous 9 AL East pennants, due in large part to the fact that they have the highest payroll in sports, which they did again this year, topping out at over $200 million. Nevertheless, the Red Sox have put quite a team together this year and should be poised to make a serious run at another World Series win, but that's getting ahead of things.

Tonight the Red Sox defeated the Twins in Boston, and then tens of thousands of Red Sox fans stayed after the game at Fenway Park to watch the Yankees-Orioles game on the jumbotron in case the Yankees lost, which would give the Red Sox the pennant. Well, it was looking bleak with the Yankees up 9-6 in the bottom of the 9th when ace closer for the Yankees, Mariano Rivera, blew the save and allowed the Orioles to tie it at 9 apiece and send it into extra innings. In the bottom of the 10th the Yankees allowed a man on and intentionally walked two guys to load the bases which set up a suicide squeeze from Jay Payton to give the Red Sox the division crown. When this happened the Red Sox players, who had been watching all this in the clubhouse, came back onto the field to celebrate with the fans, and apparently just got hammered drunk. The Red Sox ace closer, Jonathan Papelbon, was by all accounts the real standout drunk, as he was running around the field without his pants on while wearing swimming goggles and an empty Bud Light case on his head. Below are a couple pictures, enjoy:

Good times for the Red Sox tonight :)