Wow, good one!

Sorry it took me so long to come up with a comeback for that comment. Hilarious! The guys over at that anti-DVDVR website I showed you are no doubt impressed.


Now that The Wire's off the air, what do you plan on watching?

I'm thinking I could get REALLY roped into Friday Night Lights. The only problem is that I have a class on Tuesday.

that's weird...

... you were mentioned ON MY NUTS.

You Were Mentioned On Sirius

Didn't I spend a whole week of posts blabbing about how I'm better than the neighborhood we grew up in?

I got a funny e-mail from my La Salle friend "Beautiful" Bobby G (the guy who chased around the no-necked midget while naked and shaking his penis.) This is what it read:

"Hey dork, is your brother's name chris? some douche bag on left of center (sirius) was just talking about those fags the smiths and the ucp and said your gay brother loves the smiths. how weird and totally homo erotic. sorry to bother you but this is all i got right now in terms of social interaction. i'm pathetic and sexy."

So, congratulations. You are now known throughout the world as the most prominent Smiths fan who hasn't slit his wrists yet.

uhh....

"It's like The Great Gatsby mixed in with the best of Philip Roth."?


What the fuck? Where were you raised? I don't say shit like that.

The Wire

I would say this is true.

Your taste in movies and TV never ceases to puzzle me. You're a working comic but you took me to task this week for my claim that the US Office is better than the UK version. I'm not alone in thinking this -- it wasn't me being contrarian. The US version is balls-out hilarious and the conceit is easier to swallow. In the UK version, David Brent is completely incompetent at his job. Unless I am missing something about British hiring/firing procedures, it makes no sense for him to be at his job for as long as he is. In the US version, Michael Scott is tremendously bad at the administrative part of the job but actually has several moments where he completes a big sale. The show is absolutely hilarious. And not nearly as depressing as the UK version. Not that depressing is bad -- it's just that, in America you can move to a new city or bullshit job without a lot of effort, so it'd be false for everyone in the office to be miserable. And the background characters are realy well developed whereas they weren't in the UK version.

But we both agree that The Wire is the best show on television. I don't know about you, but I would go so far as to say it's the best show I've ever seen. I like it a lot more than The Sopranos which, while amazing, certainly has its downside. I like it more than Freaks and Geeks. Freaks and Geeks was a great comic tragedy and really relatable for folks like us, but it lacks the gravitas that The Wire has. The big cliche about The Wire is that it's literature on television. But it's a true cliche -- it's like The Great Gatsby mixed in with the best of Philip Roth.

Yes, I probably wouldn't be talking to you if it weren't for this show.

Ed Burns is holding this family together

Gregg -

Do you think it's fair to say that our thinly veiled hatred of each other, often displayed in bursts of impatience with each other, talking down to each other, and public mockery of each other, is barely being concealed these days due to our mutual love of HBO's The Wire? If that show didn't exist, I don't think we would ever talk to each other. Agree? Disagree?

Your loving brother,
Chris

Where is your IRE bumper sticker, the left side or right side of your car?

The poem about Nan's home county is awesome and inspiring and I can see where you get your sense of eternal "Free Mumia And Tibet Both At The Same Time" style revolution from . And I, too, loved the fucking fact she carried the ENGLAND GET OUT OF IRELAND NOW banner every year in the West Orange St. Patty's Day Parade, considering how soft-spoken and quiet Nan was. (Did you ever wonder what would have happened if Prince Charles or John Major somehow stumbled across TV3 -- the North Jersey forerunner to CN8 before Comcast bought out every cable system in America -- and saw our saintly grandmother holding that banner up? I mean, what if they saw it and were convinced and pulled all the Ulster police out?)

That poem is awesome. But here's the thing that makes me queazy about Rah Rah Johnny Irish: I'm sure the tar-lunged barfly at Quigley's is quoting that poem when he's putting change in the "Relief Support" can which then eventually makes its way into the hands of some IRA chapter type thing. The same IRA who kill Catholics who stumble across a bar brawl. And that makes me really squeamish.

I mean, I don't like all the shit that happens in Northern Ireland, but I don't like it the same way I don't like what happens in Lebanon or Palestine or Syria or North Korea. Even though my grandfather probably got the shit kicked out of him by some asshole English officer when he was a kid. I also hate St. Patrick's Day, as much as I love the St. Paddy's Day Parade.

I just wish I could feel my pride in my heritage on a different note than the folks who use their ancestral homeland as an excuse to drink, get rowdy and say dumb shit about a very complicated political situation they don't know a whole lot about. And plus, I rather like the English. Every Brit I've ever hung out with has been insanely good company. And I listen to way too much of The Who, The Clash and those 90's Britpop bands to get up in arms.

I think what makes me routinely question my views on being Irish-American is that I still have no idea what to get from dad's side of the family.