Perhaps the best introduction to the humorous and happy side of Lao Tzu is provided in The Tao of Pooh. Benjamin Hoff begins his book with a discussion of the painting, “The Vinegar Tasters!”:

As Hoff explains, “three men are standing around a vat of vinegar. Each one has dipped his finger into the vinegar and has tasted it. The expression on each man’s face shows his individual reaction. Since the painting is allegorical, we are to understand that these are no ordinary vinegar tasters, but are instead representatives of the “Three Teachings” of China, and that the vinegar they are sampling represents the Essence of Life. The three masters are Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Zi, author of the oldest existing book of Taoism. The first has a sour look on his face, the second wears a bitter expression, but the third man is smiling.”

According to Hoff, to Confucious life is sour because the laws of man are out of sync with the laws of universe. To Buddha, life is bitter, full of illusions and attachements that breed pain. But, for the smiling Lao Tzu, life is sweet, and so he smiles. Tao, the way, helps to realize that the earth mirrors the universe, is an expression of it. As Hoff writes, “Taoist understanding changes what others may perceive as negative into something positive. From the Taoist point of view, sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.”

However, this is not the end of the importance of humour. It is not enough to simply smile in the face of the negative moments in life and to try to make the best of hard times. Certainly it is true that at certain difficult moments, there is simply no option but to have a good laugh. But ever more difficult, especially at first, is to laugh at the expense of one’s self. As Alan Watts writes, “True humour is, indeed, laughter at one’s Self — at the Divine Comedy, the fabulous deception, whereby one comes to imagine that a creature in existence is not also of existence, that what man is is not also what everything is.” In other words, deluded by the emergence of consciousness, Jaynesian or not, we come to believe that our death is the end just because it is the end of the consciousness developed as a tool to think critically. Since we have come to cling to this consciousness as our Self, and with a similar desperation that this consciousness is what makes us special, separate and fundamentally different, its end seems to imply the end of us. But since we are a manifestation of everything, a matter of matter in motion, what we are carries on and on and on. And on.

Lao Tzu, in a moment of comedic humility, reminds us of just such a truth in Chapter 11. In our rendition, as many others, the importance of the lesson, one of many counter-intuitive truths offered in the Tao, is that our bodies are vessels for the continuation of Tao. Lao Tzu discusses this with reference to bowls and wheels, innocuous objects themselves, much like our own bodies, that nevertheless illustrate a grand truth about the cycle of life. Remember: Something is not everything. Nothing is also essential. So it goes…

Such is the case with Episode 9, titled “Game Day,” in which the most significant action is centred around an event with extensive metaphorical significance.

After the countless references to The Game over the course of the season thus far, it should be fairly obvious that the West vs. East basketball game that stands as the episode’s focal point, is meant to serve as a microcosm for The Game itself.

The Game has already been explored several times in previous episodes, most memorably in the third episode, where the writers used chess as a means for exploring concepts such as roles and restrictions. But whereas the chess metaphor was best confined to the pieces on the board and the way in which they move, the basketball game of Game Day offers a far more expansive view which, we shall see, extends beyond the court.

Generally, when a character in The Wire refers to The Game, they are specifically referring to the drug game. These references tend to be made by people who are themselves deeply involved in the drug game — whether they are the dealer or the pursuing cop. As such, their observations are made from a limited perspective.

If you ask a player on the basketball court about the game they are playing, you will get a description confined to the action as seen by this player: the score, how they have been playing, the momentum of their team, etc.

If you ask a spectator, their description will be similar, privileged by a better view of the entire court, but also coloured by personal preference and the behaviour of the crowd around them.

If you ask the ref, you will find that he sees the game with completely different eyes, consciously trying to ignore dramatics and personal taste, instead focusing only on possible violations of the rules, regardless of which team is guilty.

Ask the coaches and you may find that, while they are focused on the game and the performance of their players, they are also conscious of the players on the bench, past and future games, the potential acquisition of new players, finances, etc.

Finally, ask the owner and they may not even be watching the game, instead focusing entirely on statistics and finances, or merely enjoying the lifestyle their riches afford them.

The first view, that of the player on the court, is best captured by the titular quote, spoken by Herc when he and Carver are puzzling over the lack of activity in the normally bustling pit: “Maybe the whole thing is over, nobody bothered to tell us. Maybe we won.”

That Herc’s perspective is meant to be representative of that of a court-bound player is pointed out to us by the fact that, in his boredom, he is occupying his time by throwing pebbles in a paint can, a small-scale version of basketball.

His comment, while it is spoken in jest, is meant to portray the shortsightedness of his limited perspective. If there is no one else on the court, he assumes that the game is not being played. Carver, the more intelligent of the pair, realizes that something is amiss and moves to investigate.

Freamon, practically quoting the speech that Daniels made to his wife in the preceding episode says the following:

“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers, but you follow the money and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.”

Due to his deeper understanding of both the street-level behaviour and the financial activities that support it — not to mention his remote location away from the action in the office — Lester could perhaps be characterized as a coach in our basketball metaphor.

His observation begins to show us just how far The Game reaches and how blurred the line between teams becomes at this level of removal. After all, Senator Clay Davis, ostensibly on the same team as the cops, was found to be financially involved with the drug dealers.

Barksdale and Bell, who could be thought of as coach and owner, respectively, are seen early in the episode spending thousands of dollars to acquire a star player for their team. This shows us just how much of the game is played off the actual court.

The events of the basketball game itself also serve to mirror the off-court plot of the episode. This is made evident in a few key moments.

First, Proposition Joe’s ringer come in, turning the tide of the game just as Sydnor visually identifies Barksdale for the first time. As Barksdale begins to lose on the court, he is also losing ground on the streets, where one of his key advantages has just been neutralized.

Second, when a player on Barksdale’s team is fouled, the ref doesn’t call it. This happens immediately after the viewer sees McNulty committing his own foul, logging a recorded conversation as having been visually confirmed by Sydnor when, in fact, no one witnessed the call at all. In both worlds, Barksdale has been fouled, and in both worlds, the perpetrators will get away with it.

This brings us to the metaphorical role of the ref who, instinctively, one might be tempted to think of as the police. But since the cops are clearly meant to be represented by the team that is playing against Avon, the ref’s role is somewhat more interesting. In fact, the ref is not the police, but the law itself. He represents the legal system that exists as a separate entity from both the criminals who break it and the police who ostensibly enforce it.

The message is simple: The law is not a clear, efficient and impartial system of control. Like the referee, it can be taken advantage of by either side and it can make mistakes. When people say that justice is blind, they mean that it is meant to render judgment without partiality. In the case of The Wire, it simply means that it doesn’t see very well.

More interesting even than the ref’s shortcomings, is Avon’s reprimand when he confronts the ref about his bad call.

After being chewed out by Avon, the ref sheepishly replies that… maybe he could put some time back on the clock, to which Avon replies:

“Are you talking about a fucking do-over? That’s not how the game is played!”

In a truly interesting and significant move, Avon stops criticizing the ref’s call and starts criticizing his abilities as a ref in general:

“Man, you supposed to be the ref, right? Why don’t you stand up for your fuckin’ self? Pussy. You can’t just let any [motherfucker] get in your face. You understand?”

Avon’s plea is for consistency. He is, in fact, attacking the ref for listening to his initial complaint, pointing out that he should not allow himself to be bullied. By extension, he is criticizing the ref for ignoring the foul in the first place. If there is to be a law, then it should be applied consistently, not with favouritism, ineptitude or backtracking.

Of course, this sentiment is unusual coming from a criminal who breaks the law for a living, but clearly Avon’s comments are meant to acknowledge the hypocrisy of breaking the law to catch a criminal, or — in the case of Clay Davis — not enforcing it when the perpetrator is a senator.

Once Lieutenant Daniels gets the news that Avon has been spotted out in public, he immediately insists that they follow him. McNulty sees this as a mistake the second he hears it, reminding Daniels that they have no charge on Avon and that “we get him on voice alone or we don’t get him.”

Daniels insists, however, and the scene where Avon is tailed from the court is used to connect the microcosm of the basketball game to the macrocosm of the real world. As Barksdale begins to toy with his pursuers, we are reminded that this is a part of The Game as well. It is not over just because the buzzer has gone off.

in a bold move, Avon decides to drive right past Daniels, making eye contact and waving a “naughty-naughty” finger as if he is scolding a child. With this act, he proves himself to be on the same level as McNulty. He knows he is being tailed, but that they have nothing on him. They get him by voice or they don’t get him at all. One can only hope that this experience will drive Daniels to take the Barksdale investigation more seriously. In the words of McNulty, “Stupid criminals make stupid cops. I’m proud to be chasing this guy.”

As a whole, this episode is a crash course in understanding The Game. We are shown, in no uncertain terms, that The Game is incredibly complex. To say that it is like a game of basketball is to oversimplify, for The Game is not confined within the boundaries that define the court. The Game is the ref, the coach, the benchwarmers, the spectators, the financial support, and on an on.

When you back your perspective away like this, you realize you are no longer looking at just a basketball court, but society itself. The line that defines what constitutes The Game cannot really be drawn anywhere.

In the end, one might conclude that The Game doesn’t exist, that it is just a label imposed on society. The alternative conclusion is The Game is everything.

This leads us, finally, to Omar, who clearly seems to draw the latter conclusion, and is the one character who was not represented metaphorically in the basketball game. Omar does not play a well-defined role in any system. He only plays The Game. This is evident from his habitual whistling of “The Farmer in the Dell,” and his propensity for nursery rhyme (“Open this door now, before I huff and puff…”).

Omar seems, at times, almost supernatural in his ability to see The Game so clearly for what it is without being restricted by its rules. This ability comes directly from his rejection of systems and their superficialities. By ignoring the broken system that struggles ineptly to control society, Omar is able to see through to the way things really work.

We are, nevertheless, reminded of his fallible humanity at the end of the episode when he attacks Barksdale, only to end up taking a bullet himself. Here, he has failed to follow his own advice, which he imparted in the last episode: “You come at the king, you best not miss.”

Back to Overthinking The Wire

The process of realizing something you believed in (a person, a truth, an idea, an institution, a system of governance, etc) is not true, coming to terms with this, and taking the opportunity to reevaluating what you had believed to be true with the intentions of finding new meaning.

In more detail:

The term is often misunderstood. It is used to describe someone who once believed in something or someone, an idea or a politician or an institution, only to find out that this something did not live up to there expectations, or ideals — the realization that the thing believed in was not what it was believed to be. And, here begins the misunderstanding: the disillusionment is seen as a bad thing, those unfortunately disillusioned individuals are seen as lost, without foundation, and confused in a fast moving and often ambiguous world, without a moral compass.

The essence of the word needs to be rediscovered. If we are truly disillusioned, we are in the process of liberating ourselves from illusions, from something that was never true in the first place, though we believed in it or them nonetheless. Hooray! We don’t have to believe in them anymore. We don’t have to cling to politicians, political parties, ideologies, political or economic institutions, economic or political systems, social hierarchies, etc anymore, if the rhetoric they spout or the philosophy animating them is no longer understood as true.

We rest, as it stands, on the precipice of mass disillusionment. A series of illusions essential to the functioning of liberal, capitalist democracy, have been exposed for exactly what they are: the ascent of the middle class, capitalism with a human face, the harmonious mutually reinforcing relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy, the achievement of freedom through the nation-state. These are myths of a presiding ideology, deftly crafted and marketed illusions, meant to sustain the system that has now spread across the globe. The system peaks, so the decline must begin.

This realization tends to be part of a longer process of understanding. In its realization, disillusionment can be extremely painful. It is cause for a reexamination of values and convictions. It is a time to reconstruct the institutions through which we govern ourselves, distribute wealth, and share resources. We have good reason to be disillusioned and the process of disillusionment has the potential to be a creative force in the reconstruction of politico-socio-economic order.

What we had, we might realize, we never actually had. This makes it much easier to walk away.

Honestly, if you’re going to attempt to sell yourself, why do it with a sheepish, half mumbled request for attention?

To remedy this regret, I submit the following pitch for my first novel, “The Horrible Cripple of Toothpick Palace.”

Let us begin with the newly minted trailer:

Let’s continue with the synopsis:

Since the first prayer drifted quietly up into the skies, humanity has done business with the gods. The faithful pay for godly protection with prayer and supplication, while the gods live in the skies like benevolent kings. Over time, this agreement has become so firmly entrenched that it is honoured without question.

While humanity and its gods enjoy the stagnant comfort of their respective routines, a hate-filled man is planning a vicious attack on both of them. He skillfully evades the gaze of the gods while amassing worldly influence and power. With the aid of a fortune made through the exploitation of humanity’s greed and vanity, he builds and empire to rival that of the holy protectors in the sky.

In the small town of Luxury Plains — a factory town that unwittingly serves the terrible little man — the citizens are too preoccupied with a heavily publicized military action against an evil that lurks across the ocean to realize that they are to be the fuel in a fire with which he plans to consume the world.

An examination of the perils of blind faith and conformity, “The Horrible Cripple of Toothpick Palace,” follows a world’s descent into unholy chaos when a mere mortal manages to get a bitter stranglehold on the gods through manipulation of their followers.

What happens when the complex systems of faith and power that support modern societies catch fire? Can humanity and their gods survive the attack of a twisted mortal demon who knows every weak point in the foundation that supports the modern world?

I think that’s just about all the salesmanship I have in me right now. Feel free to give it a peek if it interests you.

It is available here, but only in Kindle format. Remember that free programs like Calibre can convert e-book formats so they can be usable for almost any device.

Finally, if you are in dire financial straits, or simply unwilling to pay, e-mail us at nothingjustis@gmail.com . We may be able to put a complementary copy into your hands.

Marlowe states that he was initially attracted to the depths of the jungle by its relatively uncharted nature. As a child, he was drawn to the compellingly empty space on the map. Metaphorically speaking, the lines of exploration and demarcation on the map represent cultural and scientific progress, the stuff of modernity, namely the things the civilized world sees as having elevated it above the level of animals and so-called “savages.”

When Marlowe makes his way down the river, heading towards Kurtz and gradually getting further and further away from the trappings of modern society, he is understandably put off by just how savage the world seems to his civilized eyes.

This frightening feeling of being lost in this geographic “heart of darkness” manifests itself first as a vague fear of the unknown, an unseen yet looming threat hiding behind the trees that line the riverside. But it is not, as it seems at first, the land that is possessed by some rank and primitive evil standing in opposition to modern society’s relative “holiness.” There is nothing inherently sinister about the jungle or its inhabitants. In fact, the jungle is notable only for the previously mentioned absence of these metaphorical lines on the map, the conspicuous absence of everything modern people use to give their existence meaning. The artificial light of science and progress does not shine here, and the meagre modern light carried into the jungle by Marlowe and his steamboat is not reflected back.

Marlowe admits to being conveniently distracted from this oppressive emptiness by the tedious day-to-day tasks that are forced on him as he pilots his boat (the one little island of modernity to be found here) down the treacherous river. It is only in the idle times that the true fear begins to writhe.

This true fear, which, in turn, points towards what we might call “the true heart of darkness,” is born when Marlowe begins to realize that his fear of this place and the people in it is not based on their fundamental and dramatic difference from himself. On the contrary, the true fear comes, not from witnessing the savagery of the jungle, but from feeling a strange affinity for this savagery emanating from deep in his supposedly civilized core. The primal solitude of the jungle doesn’t poison his sensibilities so much as it forces him to confront the emptiness that exists within him after the conditioning of modern society melt away in the foul heat. It is as if he is realizing for the first time that lines drawn on a map don’t change the land itself. Beneath all his culture and conditioning beats a savage, animalistic heart that has been obscured by the trivia of modern society, but never destroyed.

When he stumbles upon Kurtz, a man who has lived longer and deeper in the unmapped jungle than most, he sees just how dark this heart of darkness can be. Kurtz has found within himself something far more sinister than anything the jungle has to offer, for not only has he degenerated to an animalistic immorality, but he is embracing it in concert with the shrewd intelligence of the modern world. In effect, he has become a monster more horrible than anything the deep, dark jungle, or the modern world could have birthed on its own.

He uses and abuses all of the know-how of the modern world, but feels none of the typically accompanying cultural restrictions. He has all the benefits of a map, but no moral compass to restrain him. In this way, he has the ability to pass himself off as a god amongst the natives, using them to accomplish his own greedy ends.

It is not until Kurtz is confronted by scraps of the civilized world he left behind — in the form of Marlowe, his boat and his crew — that he himself sees how far he has fallen, as if these bits of civilization are a light shining down, showing the depth of his dark well of depravity.

Here, Marlowe has his feet in both worlds, understanding Kurtz’s position, yet unwilling to embrace it himself. He watches, from an slightly elevated position, the last moments of a monster.

As he dies, Kurtz’s haunting last words, “The horror! The horror!” are not directed at anything he has seen in the jungle, but what he has seen inside himself. The true heart of darkness, the one that gives this novel its name, is the foul heart that beats deep within each of us.

Marlowe’s deception of Kurtz’s betrothed, in which he lies about the dead man’s final words, is quite interesting as well. In a way, perhaps, he understands Kurtz’s descent and wants to simply save what he can of the man’s reputation. In another, perhaps greater, way, he is covering the woman’s eyes, shielding her from having to see The Horror for herself. It cannot be un-seen. Even though Marlowe himself has backed away from the dark chasm, he is haunted by what he saw there. The heart of darkness still calls out to him, even from the civilized safety of the London harbour.

The Wire’s episodes are generally titled quite innocuously. Titles like: The Target, The Buys, The Pager, etc., all point to specific aspects of the surface narrative, but carry very little weight when it comes to the hidden currents that are the best part of the show. This is why, in the past, we have chosen to use the headlining quotes of each episode to drive our discussions, essentially ignoring the official titles.

This episode is called Lessons, and while the prior episodes have tended to have fairly well-defined themes that focus on a particular aspect of The Wire’s complexity, Lessons seems to purposely zoom out, giving us a bigger picture of the sheer extent of the complexity itself.

The result is an episode that is difficult to summarize in simple terms, but nonetheless leaves the viewer with a lot to think about.

In terms of its overall structure, Lessons is what the title predicts: a series of lessons, the most overtly stated of these being the eponymous quote by Omar.

The episode opens beautifully, with Detective McNulty and his two children stumbling upon Stringer Bell at a market. Proving once again that he has absolutely no sense of the borders that are meant to exist between things like family and work, McNulty has his children tail Bell to his car. When Bell makes an unexpected move and McNulty loses his children, it seems as if he himself is being taught a much-needed lesson in parenting.

His ineptitude in this respect, is highlighted extensively. He is, after all, a detective who makes his living obsessively watching and cataloguing the details of criminal activity, but when asked by a security guard what his children are wearing, he has no idea.

As one would expect, this lesson is completely lost on McNulty, so when we see him telling the story to Bunk later in the episode, it isn’t an embarrassing story about losing his kids at the supermarket, it’s a proud story about how great his kids were at tailing Stringer Bell.

Even Bunk seems taken aback by the cavalier attitude McNulty seems to have towards raising his children.

This vignette is the perfect introduction to this episode on lessons, and several of the many ways in which lessons can function. The young brothers McNulty have internalized the lessons their father has taught them and have become quite adept at following people without being seen. Their father, on the other hand, is completely oblivious to the lessons in parenting provided for him by the situation.

Some lessons are taught overtly by an instructor. Other lessons are less obvious and must be actively drawn from the situation itself, without an instructor pointing out the value. The latter form of lesson is clearly the more difficult to internalize.

This episode is so packed full of lessons, overt and situational, learned and ignored, that chronicling each example would put an already hefty word-count into the realm of the obscene (I say this having already cut over a thousand words from the first draft of this post.) As such, it is necessary to deal with many of the lessons only briefly, just as the episode itself does.

We see Herc and Carver studying for a promotional exam, poring over a textbook filled with bureaucratically nonsensical questions about navigating police hierarchies. Obsessed with cramming for this aptitude test, they completely ignore the lessons in actual police work that are being taught to them by their fellow officers. Oddly enough, in this particular institution, this aptitude test is far more likely to get them promoted than the actual police work they are neglecting.

They do, however, both learn a few real lessons when they are forced to split up for a time and are and paired with Sydnor and Greggs, who quickly call them out for their shoddy work and thoughtlessness.

In the next room, Lester Freamon sits by the computer, teaching Pryzbylewski the finer points of intelligent policing, teaching him to see through the disinformation to the realities beneath. Later in the episode, Freamon also imparts on Greggs his wisdom on the subject of influencing a witness.

On the criminal side, Avon takes Orlando aside and gives him a harsh lesson on understanding his role in the organization. He is meant to be nothing more than a clean name on the liquor license, worthless if he tarnishes his record with a drug charge.

McNulty tails Stringer Bell to a community college and finds that he is enrolled in a class called “Intro to Macroeconomics.” The lessons he learns there, he applies to the drug trade, as well as to the running of his front companies.

The most depressing commentary on lessons offered by this episode comes when one of the children living with Wallace comes to him for help with his math homework. The problem he has to solve involves passengers getting on and off a bus. He can’t come up with the answer until Wallace rephrases the problem in the terms of a drug deal.

When asked why he could manage the addition and subtraction in one case and not the other, the child responds with: “Count be wrong, they fuck you up.”

If we ignore, for a second, just how heartbreaking the picture painted by this scene is, we get an interesting perspective on education.

The boy is clearly intelligent enough to do his homework, but is in a situation in which the hypothetical problems presented by his math text book have little to no bearing on his actual life. His aptitudes, then, are guided by what he sees and interacts with, his only real lessons coming from the world that he no doubt wants to escape. This is something that will be explored several seasons from now when The Wire focuses its attention on the school system in Baltimore.

Lieutenant Daniels, torn between his career and his job, explains to his wife why the higher-ups are so resistant to proper police work:

“This is the thing that everyone knows and no one says. You follow the drugs, you get a drug case. You follow the money, and you don’t know where you’re going. That’s why they don’t want wire taps, wired CIs, or anything else they can’t control. Because once the tape starts rolling, who the hell knows what’s going to be said.”

The most memorable lesson of the episode, as mentioned earlier, is the one taught by Omar.

The scene begins with Wee Bey and Stinkum sitting in an SUV, planning a raid on a rival crew. Wee Bey, clearly the more experienced man, begins teaching Stinkum some lessons of his own, going over the plan and reminding him what to do with his gun and the car after they’ve finished.

As he goes through this information, he betrays his own shortcomings as a teacher when he says: “Him there, and that other fool there, they’re the only ones who might be trouble.” He is making assumptions, acting as if all the variables are visible, when in fact, the most important one is hidden from sight.

Wee Bey runs ahead and, after a moment, Stinkum follows. As Stinkum walks towards where Wee Bey is distracting the targets, Omar appears out of nowhere, killing him and wounding Wee Bey.

Wee Bey cowers behind a parked car as Omar ominously whistles “The Farmer in the Dell,” a song for children. The message is clear: This is child’s play for Omar, no more than a game of cat and mouse.

In fact, The Wire has already provided us with the accompanying imagery for this cat and mouse comparison. Just before Stinkum’s death, a cat enters the frame, coming from the direction in which Omar is hiding. When Wee Bey surveys the aftermath of the attack from his hiding place, a rat crosses the street, running right past Stinkum’s dead body. To highlight the point, the camera actually follows the rat instead of staying focused on the corpse.

Then Omar imparts his wisdom: “Listen here Bey: you come at the king, you best not miss.”

The idea, of course, is that you only have one chance to come at the king. An attack exposes you, and if you make a mistake, it may be your last. Since Barksdale’s crew started gunning for Omar, they have done little but miss, killing his sidekick and blowing up his van, but never getting anywhere Omar himself.

This is a lesson that McNulty and the more intelligent members of his detail already know. It is a lesson they have been trying to put into practice since the first episode. They are, above all else, trying to capture Avon Barksdale. Charging his underlings with smaller crimes — as their superiors continually order them to do — would be missing the king, giving away their wiretaps for charges that don’t even touch Barksdale himself and put him immediately on the defensive.

The final lesson of the episode comes in the form of a metaphor when McNulty is forced to pick up a drunken Bunk from the home of a woman with whom he has cheated on his wife. McNulty finds him in the bathroom, sitting in a pink bathrobe burning his clothes.

McNulty asks why he’s burning his clothes.

“Hair, fibers, pussy on it…” mumbles Bunk.

“Trace evidence,” responds McNulty, knowingly.

Once McNulty has Bunk back at his place, he asks: “Hey Bunk, I’ll give you that burning trace evidence makes sense. What did you plan to wear home?”

In his drunken stupour, Bunk didn’t realized that a blatant and excessive destruction of evidence has actually made him more conspicuous than he would have been otherwise.

I could have sworn this story was a true anecdote from David Simon’s non-fiction book, Homicide: A Year on the killing Streets. I tried to confirm this suspicion, but only stumbled on another blog about The Wire  in which the author has the same feeling.

True or not, the anecdote, to me, clearly relates to the can of worms that was opened when the detail began following the drug money. The fact that they were forced to return the money to a Senator’s driver without asking any further questions — far from alleviating suspicion — simply makes Senator Davis’s guilt that much more obvious. Had the driver simply taken the fall, it could have been argued that he was acting on his own. When the senator and his influential friends move to cover up the entire thing, they are — in effect — burning their clothing and exposing their guilt.

At this point, I almost feel like apologizing for the piecemeal nature of this post but, in retrospect, it seems rather appropriate given that the episode itself seems tailor-made convey the confusion that arises when on realizes just how many lessons there are to learn.

Former episodes have tried to aid us in understanding the more complex and problematic aspects of a modern society. Lessons, on the other hand, slaps us in the face to remind us that nothing is ever as simple as we hope it will be. It takes the mess of intensely complex interaction present in society and lays it at our feet so we can inspect it one disjointed piece at a time, searching for some sort of coherence in the chaos. What we find is not coherence itself, but merely more questions.

Back to Overthinking The Wire

It is as true of Catholicism as it is of Classic Rock, so on the one hand they seem ubiquitous and on the other, as they now exist apart from the moment that made them, they’ll never again completely capture, or be fully realized in, a moment.

The fallacy is that whatever something is never did capture that special something, but expressed it in that moment.

What else is there?

Hahaha. If only the question was rhetorical.

There is also the desperate grasps of things and ways and people and eras, to maintain, or save a moment past its moment, so desperately desperate to hold on to something that doesn’t exist that they want to force everyone else to share in the same delusion.

Somehow it is defining and cannot be saved. Some what do we do with the remnants? Privately, they can be savored by those who wish to continue worshiping old times and past moments. Publicly, it’s time to make space for the new.

Here are a few suggestions.

1) When it comes to music, we need to start culling the herd. The only genre I really feel capable of speaking for is rock. As a starting point, can we all agree to listen to BTO’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet one last time, and then retire it, like, forever. Nobody needs to hear that song anymore. It was okay but, I mean, there’s so much other music we’ll never hear. Let’s stop with it. It’s sad, I know, but it will actually feel liberating in the end.

We'll miss them and then immediately we won't.

If anyone has any other suggestions for songs that need to be retired from circulation, please pitch in.

2) A ten year plan to induct the necessary bands (KISS) and coral their collectibles into the rock and roll hall of fame, and then burn it down. Rock was great. It had terrific moments, it defined a generation, took music to some incredible, unexpected and sublime moments. But enough already. Nobody is going to do any of that again, not with rock’n'roll as the medium. Let’s stop revering it and move on.

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3) All mainstream political parties and systems currently in existence in North America (and probably everywhere else I just haven’t done the research).

It’s just a start but hopefully we can make nothing out of something, somewhere, someday.

For a guy like Tom, it might prove to be money well spent. The way he sees it, he’s “paying for three things at once, and that’s a great value.”

Tom, who it turns out, is no media slouch himself, is also a long-time friend of Ezra, though he admits they haven’t talked much as of late. So the weekend is a chance to rub elbows with some of the greats at SNN, to catch up with an old friend, and do it all over some frank talk about politics, current events and the media, as well as some just plain fun winter activities.

More than anything though, for Tom, it’s the informal get-togethers that will offer the most precious moments. In particular, says Tom, he would love a little one-on-one time with Ezra.

Tom says he wants to catch up, hear about his career and stuff. “As a fellow employee of SNN, we rarely talk. I can’t even remember the last time Ezra had me on his show.”

This weekend should change all that. “I’m hoping he’s true to his word, and chooses the snow shoeing activity on Saturday afternoon just like he said he would on his show last weekend.” Once there out on the ice, together, and away from that zany world of journalism, they can finally just talk.

“I want to ask him something. I mean, I just want to know.” Tom trails off a little bit, then recovers. “I just want to know what happened to us. I think he’s such a cool guy. Like, you know, he’s got his own tv show, with really cool guests, and he hangs out with other Sun tv journalists, like Krista, and Mikey, and Chuck. They just seem like such a cool bunch.

“And it’s so expensive and I don’t have the vacation time anyways, to always knock off work to come and hang with them in Tdot, or Cowtown or wherever, whenever they’re trying to raise funds for the station. So I got to find out what happened, you know. Where it went wrong between us.

What follows in this blog is a brief review of the best books thus far written about the great game of hockey. I hope to accomplish two things. One is to point to some great works already written as proof that it is possible to think and write about the sport outside the stale cliches of hockey journalism. The second is to open dialogue with other devotees of the game who might have suggestions for other titles. My hope is that I can avoid leaping into the dirty mitt of the major leagues, and discover, even if it is nascent, a hidden literary and intellectual tradition in hockey

There are a few good ones.

The best book about hockey (in this vein and also ever), in my opinion, is Ken Dryden’s The Game. It is an intimate portrait of perhaps the most articulate player to ever play the game, in the throes of one of the greatest dynasties in the history of sports, and within a great transition of the sport itself. As fans of the great tradition of the game, Dryden’s coincidental presence at this perfect juncture borders on miraculous.

In similar fashion, minus the insider/player perspective, are Stephen Brunt’s two great books, Searching for Bobby Orr and Gretzky’s Tears. Both offer insight into the transformation of hockey, from an old boys club controlled Canadian pastime into a corporate controlled, North American major sport. These books, in particular, help us understand what might be impossible otherwise: what the fuck is Don Cherry talking about and where is he coming from?

Another great aspect of both books is that, though not based on him, neither can avoid discussing the most influential hockey intellect of the modern era, Scotty Bowman. This is a fascinating man in need of an updated biography.

As for fiction, I’m less certain. My favourite is King Leary, by recently deceased Etobocokian Paul Quarrington. This book beautifully digs into hockey’s deep, mythic past, when Percival Leary won the Stanley Cup in 1919 and the spin-o-rama was known as the st.louis-whirlygig. And it is all the more poignant because, with Crosby injured and Ovechkin tamed, hockey lacks a true king. But this is the only non-young adult fiction I can think of worth mentioning.

Finally, the other genre part of the hockey cannon, biography, is where the majority of the spirit of hockey writing resides There are many hockey biographies. My favourite is Messier by Jeff Klein. He insinuates a truism we know but will not speak. Behind the great and the powerful, there is something more great and more powerful. In the late 80s, behind the Great One, the true hockey power was the Moose.

Anyways, I’m interested to know what other works you might not nominate to hockey’s literary hall of fame. It is too beautiful, complicated and culturally embedded tradition not to inspire the prose it so obviously deserves.