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ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

Jerusalem posted:

Hey, I know this is some shameful poo poo, but I've started to do write-ups of Sopranos over in Ishamael's thread in a similar vein to how I did for The Wire. First episode write-up is here and I hope to maintain a similar output to what I did for The Wire, schedule permitting.

Second episode has Bodie in it!

There's a good handful of Wire alums who also share Sopranos credits. I won't say who shows up where in case you don't want to be spoiled, but this link has all the cast members who've been on both shows and which episodes they appeared in.

https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sopranos

I'm loving the write-ups by the way!

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Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.
Season 5 makes me irrationally angry.

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost
Season 5 made more sense to me when I realized faking murders was the logical result of "juking the stats" and "cases go from red to black by way of green." When the system has hosed up priorities and incentives, it is vulnerable to poo poo like that.

Addamere
Jan 3, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Rand alPaul posted:



:lol: was David Simon actually pro-Carcetti? Did I misread his show?

What if Carcetti was the hero :chud:

Laterite
Mar 14, 2007

It's Gutfest '89
Grimey Drawer

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



I'm just going to repost this here so that I'll be able to find the quote as necessary:

Originally posted in the comments for Simon's Eulogy of DeAndre McCullough

Tim of the BPD posted:

Dave, another dead junkie, nothing more nothing less. I walked you through those very streets some 25 years ago, before the book, before your stint in homicide & before the TV shows. Fayette & Mount has not change a bit. The violence brought upon the community by all the "Dre's" of the city is unforgivable. To make him out as something special is incredibly short sighted. Your compassion is, in my experience, misguided. You've chosen to fall in love with your subject matter & have overlooked the carnage he brought upon his own neighborhood. Where, I'm left to wonder, is the compassion for those that "Dre" left in his wake.

David Simon posted:

I remember you well, Tim. You were a fine police officer, thoroughly professional in your duties. I remember how precise your casework was, and how committed you were to addressing the drug trade along the lower end of the Western District. I admired you and your craft in every possible sense.

But here, your lack of basic empathy, if not a certain fundamental humanity, is startling.

DeAndre hurt no one more than himself. He was not notably violent and his crimes, until the very end, were about self-destruction. And indeed, if you consider the robberies of those pharmacies to be ruthless you are mistaken. He couldn’t bring himself to even brandish the gun, and in some cases it is entirely unclear that even had a weapon or a loaded weapon. He couldn’t even announce the robbery, merely handing a note and running away with the prescription drugs.

That you can ignore the totality of this tragedy — willfully avoiding all possible context for how children find themselves growing up in places like Fayette Street, and giving yourself a dose of smug, self-satisfaction by simply labeling other human beings as “junkies” — this is a problem of a stunted, malformed human condition. And I am not referring to the others you are so quick to categorize and condemn. I say this harshly because, frankly, you must know that you are not merely conducting an academic or intellectual exercise when you write in this way about this particular young man at this particular moment.

I have never actually sent anyone participating here to any sort of kill file. I’m quite content with fundamental disagreements on content. But in your case, I have to consider what you intended to accomplish with your post. Even if you believe every word you wrote, and even — if only for the sake of argument, we pretend that every word you wrote was intellectually justified — are you not aware that you are writing in a forum in which other human beings are genuinely grieving for someone they have lost? That for myself — and for many others who knew DeAndre in ways that you can’t — this is staggering and heartbreaking? In that precise context, what kind of person writes as you did in this forum? And to what honorable purpose?

With all due respect to the good that you tried to do on Fayette Street in your days there, I have to ask you to reflect on your own cruelty, your indifference to others and their pain, and ultimately, on your lack of manners. Seriously. When you go to the funerals of people you knew, do you sign the visitor book with an accounting of the flaws and failings of the deceased, and do you do so as a means of making you feel superior in your own skin? Because, Tim, that is exactly what you just did on this website.

DeAndre struggled with great demons. As did many people lost on Fayette Street. The sad outcome doesn’t make their humanity or struggle any less real. Nor does it answer the greater question of why the Fayette Streets exist, and why we allow certain children in one of the most monied and propertied societies to learn their earliest lessons of life in such places.

If you’re going to write again, think a little harder. Feel a little more deeply. Or understand what has happened — and happened for the first and only time — when the next comment is your last in this forum.

Respectfully, and with fond memories of you in other contexts,

David

Tim of the BPD posted:

Dave, you conventionally chose to forget about the victims of the robberies who had no clue that "Dre" was such a gentle and loving guy. Ban me if it makes you feel good but you have missed something here. I live in the real world, "Dre" was not a good person & contributed NOTHING to improving his circumstance. I know better than you the story of "Dre", I feel for the true victims of his life style, not for what he did to himself. Do you really believe what YOU write?

David Simon posted:

Tim,

I went back and reread the original post with your comments in mind. One would think, from your stance, that I had lionized DeAndre or excused or avoided his culpability in the tragedy, or that I had obscured the wrongs in which he was involved. But no, his failings are right there on the page — every one of them, right down to the last robberies.

You on the other hand are insistent on making this man less human — which is, I believe, the precise dynamic that has allowed the drug war to go on as long as it has — achieving nothing and destroying everything still standing after the onslaught of the drugs themselves.

You want to believe that DeAndre was the bad apple, that the game itself isn’t a dishonorable fraud on the part of our society. Well, you have a problem. Ed and I walked into that rec center on Vincent Street and we latched on to a half dozen adolescents, including DeAndre. And now, today, they are all of them gone. All of them. Not one still standing as part of our society and ready to claim the mantle of personal righteousness upon which you insist. Dinky was shot to death. So was Boo. Tae is in prison. So is Brooks. R.C. is gone, also an overdose. And now, after a long fight, DeAndre.

When the odds are that stacked against childhood, it is no longer a matter of individual failure. It is systemic, it is indicative not of one young man’s venalities, but of a powerful dynamic arrayed against all of the young men. You fought the drug war in that neighborhood and I know you did so fairly, giving the ground stashes to the right guys, never cheating the P.C. You played by the rules. But you are having a hard time being honest with yourself about what corruptions you served by doing so. In truth, those were rules to a rigged game, and you were a soldier in Pharoah’s army. And everything you did along Fayette Street — at least in terms of drug enforcement — didn’t serve anyone, or help anyone, least of all that neighborhood. To the extent you responded to violence and to crimes against people and their property, you were a meaningful civic asset. But nothing was achieved from your service to this dystopic and dishonorable drug prohibition. Sorry. All my years of reporting and writing have led to that inexorable conclusion.

The factories were gone, the jobs were overseas. The only hiring industry in that America was the corners. And you chased drug stats in a city in which half of all adult African-American males were without work and without any legitimate prospect of work. DeAndre grew up amid that rigged game and he played out his string. That he lasted as long as he did, that he went longer than every single one of his contemporaries is testament to his own fitful attempts at change and to the great efforts of his mother, who clawed her way to sobriety and managed to move her entire extended family away from Fayette Street. Only DeAndre, the oldest and most affected by a childhood in that place, could not be rescued.

In response to your query, I believe every loving word I write. And I knew that young man far better than you have any right to claim. His mistakes and his wrongs are in the original post, plain as day. But that isn’t enough for you, because some of his humanity was there as well. And that is what bothers you, isn’t it? You need all his failure to be a consequence of his being just that much less a human being than you and yours. Fitzgerald famously said that the sign of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two seemingly opposing arguments at the same time. Well, DeAndre did what he did and lived as he lived and died as he died. No one is denying any of that. Yet at the same time, he was also quite human, a wounded soul who wanted more for himself and those he loved. And the people who knew him understood this. That this is unacceptable to you, that you can only hold one side of this duality in your mind is not about DeAndre. Brother, it is about you.

If you want to argue the drug war further, I will do so, and you should take your opinions to another heading at this site, perhaps the last one that argues drug policy, which is pegged to the recent Mexican election. I can be civil in debating the issue as an issue, and we can avoid any further discussion of DeAndre. But this post is here to serve the memory of one human being who, despite his struggles and failings, mattered to other human beings. And I can’t allow the basic indecency that underlies your remarks to continue. You can make your points without maligning this specific young man at a time when his family and friends are still coming to terms with his death. That’s just real, real wrong. Sorry.

If you comment here again, under this heading, I will necessarily delete the entry.

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011
Anyone who could blame DeAndre for his downfall clearly didn't understand the message of The Corner or The Wire. Typical drug war conservatives that think "oh another drug dealer died he deserved it for his lifestyle". As if he had much of a choice. It is sad that he seemingly came close to getting out of the game, but addiction can always pull one back in. A couple legit acting gigs doesn't necessarily repair a lifetime of living on the corner. I worry about Fran's recovery. I can't say I feel any surprise at all at DeAndre's death although it is incredibly sad.

Strange that this cop pick on a dead man who apparently wasn't all that violent even in his robberies. This BPD poster is clearly an entitled individual who doesn't understand the systemic disarray that creates situations like DeAndre's on corners across the country. "To make him out as something special is incredibly short sighted." He even admits that the corner hasn't changed in 25 years, yet he's blaming one individual for being a drug dealer and addict, to the point of removing his humanity. The fact that police still think like this is so depressing. He even admits to being a street cop on those corners 25 years ago "doing good work" despite the fact that it remains in the same lovely state it was nearly 30 years ago. The hypocrisy is incredible. I'm actually visibly angry after reading these comments, on an obituary no less.

These posts alone actually make the message of The Corner much stronger, it just shows the police have such a disconnect in repairing the community, they don't seem to understand that the issues on the Corner go beyond individual choices. DeAndre and others like him didn't have much, if any, of a choice in changing their lifestyle. If anything I felt his parents Gary and Fran had more culpability for introducing him to this lifestyle despite being middle-class before hand. But that's what hard drugs tend to do, they bring us down to the bottoms of society. Again a systemic drug war issue, not an issue with individual morality. How one could blame DeAndre for his circumstance and ignore the overall context of the corners of America is just plain angering, the fact that it's LE makes it even more of a piss off.

To me, the Corner/The Wire showed that the corners need more positive role models like Cuddy's boxing club or the school teacher's after school program. As well as drug rehab programs where you don't have to wait weeks to enrol. If the city were willing to invest in this kind of thing it might help the issue. Increasing police presence on buy-busts on loving bottom of the barrel junkies and poor drug dealers selling simply to survive - what's the purpose? How does this sort of thing help? LE even admitted it didn't change a thing after 25 years.

Anyone know if the open air markets still exist there in Baltimore/New York/Chicago? It's something I haven't experienced in Canada, here the drug problem is obviously prevalent but it's not quite as open and obvious with gangs shouting out brand names for their drugs, etc. You tend to need a connection before hand. I've definitely seen some gang members hanging out in certain areas but it doesn't seem quite as obvious or easy where to pick up and maybe that helps a bit. However, people are still dying in huge numbers from suburban kids buying fent analogues and selling them as H to various junkies across the city. But it tends to be on a who you know basis, not shouting in the street announcing product availability. Even the Corner touched on this a few years ahead of its time with Fat Kurt saying 'dope ain't dope anymore'.

denzelcurrypower fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Mar 25, 2019

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010
To be fair, the police selects for exactly the kinds of people with this type of thinking and then further reinforces that thinking constantly throughout their entire organisation and culture.

It's because their role isn't and never was to "repair the community" or whatever noble high-minded bullshit you or they want to pretend they are for. They exist to maintain order. Specifically the kind of order where the few can profit immensely off of the labour and suffering of everyone else.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

I think it's Colvin in season 3 who basically straight up tells Carver he's not good police, but admits it isn't Carver's fault because how the gently caress else is he gonna be considering the entire system he's coming up in having completely the wrong focus for decades (if not generations).

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Idris Elba has started rappin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huaE85-V8u4

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

You know I'm starting to suspect Idris Elba might be a talented man.

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011

Jerusalem posted:

I think it's Colvin in season 3 who basically straight up tells Carver he's not good police, but admits it isn't Carver's fault because how the gently caress else is he gonna be considering the entire system he's coming up in having completely the wrong focus for decades (if not generations).

I guess it's true, this one BPD officer isn't entirely in the blame for his misguided views. But I'm glad David Simon put him in his place for making disrespectful and idiotic comments on a man's obituary. Maybe the Wire/The Corner should be required training for police? They can't all be like this...

The hypocrisy is just incredible in how he says he hit the corners for 25 years and nothing improved, and then blames DeAngelo for his death. Try something different for fucks sake.

God Hole
Mar 2, 2016

I interned at a DA's office in a major metropolitan city right around the time of the Ferguson protests.

I was sitting outside of a courtroom waiting for a trial to begin when a group of about 6 patrol police, some of them relatively high ranking officers, sat down next to me.

One of the officers began telling the other 5 a story of the previous day's events out on the streets. The officer had encountered an alleged low-level drug dealer in the middle of a transaction, making sure to emphasize the race of this individual. When the alleged suspect noticed the officer, he panicked and began trying to escape, ignoring the officer's command to halt. The officer shot the offender with a tazer, bringing him to the ground in a gruesomely described display of convulsions. It turned out the alleged suspect's mother was nearby, and probably owing to the chaos of the scene, believed the officer had shot and killed her son with a firearm and collapsed beside him in a fit of hysterics and prayers to God.

I guess that final sentence was the punchline to the officer's joke or something because all 6 of them proceeded to burst into laughter, some of them laughing so hard they collapsed onto their sides on the bench, red in the face, gripping their stomachs. I felt like I was going to throw up.

In my frequent interactions with the police in the course of my work, this experience was not an outlier by any means. The culture very much reinforces an "us vs them" mentality, and those that don't buy into it are shunned out or leave of their own accord. As it stands, there is no room for empathy in that line of work. People cannot be remembered or humanized in any way. The nails only exist to be hammered

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
I did a bit of Google Street mapping of some of the locations brought up in both the Homicide and Corner books and man, some of those places are as depressing as hell to look at

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.

Jerusalem posted:

You know I'm starting to suspect Idris Elba might be a talented man.

If only The Dark Tower had been good.

dreffen
Dec 3, 2005

MEDIOCRE, MORSOV!

Hasselblad posted:

If only The Dark Tower had been good.

Dark Tower was probably the biggest flop he's had right? Beasts of No Nation was good, his Thor parts were good, that Netflix show might be good?

Luther also was good, Pacific Rim also.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

dreffen posted:

Dark Tower was probably the biggest flop he's had right? Beasts of No Nation was good, his Thor parts were good, that Netflix show might be good?

Luther also was good, Pacific Rim also.

It was a pretty important flop though because it's the only time he's really been given one of those huge nerd roles that fans obsess over, so he definitely could've put some extra jet fuel into his career had Dark Tower succeeded and if a few sequels had been made. He gets a lot of good roles still(he was the villain in the most recent Star Trek film), but maybe missed his chance at breaking into the true A-List.

Strawman
Feb 9, 2008

Tortuga means turtle, and that's me. I take my time but I always win.


Basebf555 posted:

It was a pretty important flop though because it's the only time he's really been given one of those huge nerd roles that fans obsess over, so he definitely could've put some extra jet fuel into his career had Dark Tower succeeded and if a few sequels had been made. He gets a lot of good roles still(he was the villain in the most recent Star Trek film), but maybe missed his chance at breaking into the true A-List.

Was it actually shite or did it just flop?

A Typical Goon
Feb 25, 2011
It was awful

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

It absolutely loving sucked :smith:

He's playing the villain in that Fast and Furious spin-off which looks loving bonkers so he's probably getting one hell of a payday out of that.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


they shoulda just made the gunslinger a movie (since it's the best book in the series anyway and would've been by far the cheapest to film).

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.
I honestly have next to 0 recollection of what happened in the movie. None of it made sense and non of it was like the book.

Phenotype
Jul 24, 2007

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.



Oh, it wasn't that bad. Fight scenes were solid, cinematography was good, gunslinging tricks were good. The main issue I had with it was that it felt like they were afraid to let it become an "epic," so they never gave the scenes enough time to breathe, just bring the characters in immediately before an action setpiece and then end the scene without giving much backstory or sense of the world around them. I thought he was a great Roland, just let down by the producers and screenwriters. I'm not sure why a movie as trite as Aquaman deserves 2.5 hours to tell a story, and all the mythology of the Dark Tower needs to get shaved off so they can fit it into a 90-minute package, but that wasn't Idris Elba's fault.

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.
That's the thing, the story was simply not at all told. It was a bunch of action scenes cobbled together with neat special effects. It was as flat and shallow as Siccario II.

Phenotype
Jul 24, 2007

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.



Yep, that's fair. They were so set on making it into a quick disposable summer action movie that they didn't let it be anything more than "Cowboy goes after evil wizard". It wasn't a bad movie though, it was a perfectly serviceable generic summer action movie. It was just incredibly disappointing for fans.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

It's thrown out there a lot, but I do think a story like The Dark Tower really needs to be told in the form of a tv series.

What I wouldn't give for a season of Roland wandering through the desert, finding the doors and traveling to New York in different time periods to recruit his Ka-Tet :sigh:

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.

Jerusalem posted:

It's thrown out there a lot, but I do think a story like The Dark Tower really needs to be told in the form of a tv series.

What I wouldn't give for a season of Roland wandering through the desert, finding the doors and traveling to New York in different time periods to recruit his Ka-Tet :sigh:

Unfortunately that is something only SyFi would do and they would add their gooniness to it.
However, Amazon would likely do it justice.

Ginette Reno
Nov 18, 2006

How Doers get more done
Fun Shoe
Was watching random Wire clips as I often do and found myself watching the whole scene where Stringer finally gets caught talking on the phone about illegal poo poo. And I realized....those two hitters that Shamrock is talking about being "good with it". He must mean killing Clay Davis. At that point in the show Stringer has next to nothing to do with managing the Barksdale/Stanfield war so what would he need killers for? Only logical explanation is he still wants to hit Clay even after being told no.

So Omar/Mouzone kinda saved Clay's rear end too.

But it's also another example of Stringer being caught between two worlds. Even if Omar and Mouzone don't kill him and his plan works and Avon gets locked up he's still going to get end up in prison himself if he were to actually hurt Clay Davis. That would bring hell down on him like Avon said. But Stringer is so proud he still can't let it go even though it's going to ruin him if he does it.

Syrian Lannister
Aug 25, 2007

Oh, did I kill him too?
I've been a very busy little man.


Sugartime Jones
Baltimore urban explorer Dan Bell visits Cutty's old gym

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww2_JMszX6c&t=83s

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1124059882204934163

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.
Tried watching Luther. Could not understand much that Elba was mumbling. Like the Ozzie Osborne of actors.

Shrimp or Shrimps
Feb 14, 2012


Hasselblad posted:

Tried watching Luther. Could not understand much that Elba was mumbling. Like the Ozzie Osborne of actors.

Rewatching Luther at the moment. It's aces. Love his physical acting.

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost
Between the accents and words I don't know I have a hard time with some UK shows too. I just turn on subtitles.

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.

deoju posted:

Between the accents and words I don't know I have a hard time with some UK shows too. I just turn on subtitles.

I found that heavy drinking makes Monty Python very understandable. Perhaps that will work for Luther as well.

Shut up Meg
Jan 8, 2019

You're safe here.

deoju posted:

Between the accents and words I don't know I have a hard time with some UK shows too. I just turn on subtitles.

Funnily enough, when my UK friend ripped the DVDs for me, they all had the subtitles burned in because he had problems with the accents and words he didn't know for this US show.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010
Someone remind me, did we ever definitively settle on what exactly Simon intended with the train scenes and the train background noises?

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 21:32 on May 6, 2019

algebra testes
Mar 5, 2011


Lipstick Apathy

Orange Devil posted:

Someone remind me, did we ever definitvely settle on what exactly Simon intended with the train scenes and the train background noises?

It's like "the job", I think.

McNulty getting drunk on the train tracks then decides he'll actually do the detail, steps out of the way of a moving train.

When Lester finds the tombs in the abandoned projects you hear a train horn in the background.

Or something.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



I woke up this morning thinking that Dominic West looks enough like Steve Guttenberg that perhaps The Wire was created as a gritty reboot of Police Academy, and now I can't breathe

Syrian Lannister
Aug 25, 2007

Oh, did I kill him too?
I've been a very busy little man.


Sugartime Jones

Data Graham posted:

I woke up this morning thinking that Dominic West looks enough like Steve Guttenberg that perhaps The Wire was created as a gritty reboot of Police Academy, and now I can't breathe

I'm strangely intrigued by this concept

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deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost
Lol. :cop:

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