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My Fickle Mistress April 8, 2008

Posted by wes285 in Uncategorized.
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I don’t talk about my dating life in this space. It is one of a few topics that I will almost never talk about. But, I have to break my rule this one time. I am so in love with this new girl. She is so incredibly beautiful and I am CRAZY about her. I feel the need to run around and scream it from the mountain tops (god, I disgust myself). I put a picture of her at the end of the post so you call can be jealous of me.

Writing is a fickle mistress, or so the cliche goes. In my case, the lack of an actual girlfriend would make writing my fickle girlfriend? I haven’t been able to write anything coherent for two weeks. I’ve started several pieces in that time. But I would get about halfway through, read what I had written and realize it was a complete mess. So, I’d just get into bed and go to sleep.

In school, when I got stuck on a paper with “writer’s block”, I’d get up and do something else. I’d end up not starting the paper in earnest until after midnight and stay up until 4 or 5 am to bang the paper out. That wasn’t writer’s block. That was just plain laziness and procrastination. I easily could have finished those papers a day in advance if I wanted to. I work the best under pressure, and there was no pressure to finish a paper that early. Why stay in and write a paper due in two days when I could go out and get drunk tonite?

This is different. I have no deadline here. No topic that I am forced to write about. There’s no pressure to write. So I end up with a group of babbling incoherent sentences about nothing.

When something gets difficult, you force it and keep going until you get back on track. Apparently that doesn’t work for writing. If you’re churning out shit and you try to force it out, you just force more shit out. Sunday night I decided to try to write through it. I posted something and it was a complete catastrophe. I ended up taking it down the next morning. Hopefully no one read it (well, I know at least two people did).

I guess this is what the beginning stages of writer’s block feels like.

So instead of embarrassing myself and subjecting you to dreadful writing, I will send you elsewhere.

The Wire, along with The West Wing, is my favorite TV show. Like most people who watch The Wire, I was a bit disappointed by certain parts of last season (although, the last few episodes made up for much of it). David Simon wrote a piece on the Huffington Post defending his work. David Simon is the most bitter man in the U.S. But, if you can get past his self-righteous disdain for the entire world, I think he actually makes good points. There are subtle, but important, points that a lot of people, including myself, missed. And he paints a depressing picture of the state of print media. Two of my friends that are just getting their start in journalism say it’s a pretty accurate picture. And that is downright depressing.

Her name is Rose. You can find her in the motion pictures Troy and Wicker Park. We are in love and we will be married and have kids one day. I hope that day comes very soon.

Marlo? He Got To Fall January 28, 2008

Posted by wes285 in Television.
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If you haven’t seen the last episode of The Wire yet, don’t read this post.

In my 22 (almost 23) years of watching TV, I have never had such a visceral hatred for a fictional character as I do for Marlo Stanfield. There aren’t very many characters in The Wire (the greatest show on TV save for The West Wing) that are purely unlikeable. There’s generally something in each character that the viewer can feel some sympathy for. Not the case with Marlo. With the other drug kingpins in the show, when they want someone dead, there’s generally a valid reason, as far as “the game” goes. There’s sort of an unwritten rule that ordinary citizens not involved in “the game” are not to be touched. Marlo? If someone so much as looks at him the wrong way, you can be pretty sure that the offender is going to end up with hot lead in the back of his head from Chris or Snoop. A convenience store security guard for chastising him, not actually catching and reporting him, for stealing some lollipops (Marlo has millions of dollars, no reason to steal other than the sheer fact that he can because he is who he is). June Bug for allegedly insulting Marlo. The lady delivering chips to Old Face Andre’s convenience store just so he could frame Omar. He kills because he can, not because he needs to.

Okay, so far just an evil character that kills or orders murders on impulse. Not that out of the ordinary in drug culture I guess? But then this week, he murdered Prop Joe. After getting schooled by the older drug lord on the art of laundering money and shipping money to accounts overseas to literally getting clean dollar bills to finding him a lawyer, Marlo kills Prop Joe just because he wants to be at the top. He has no real beef with Prop Joe. He just wants to wear the crown. Even after Prop Joe offers to disappear and pass on the crown to Marlo, he gets one in the back of the head from Chris as Marlo looks on icily.

Sure Prop Joe was one of my favorite characters and I didn’t want to see him go. But the ice cold look in Marlo’s eyes as the Joe is shot in the back of the head is the look of evil incarnate (amazing acting job by Jamie Hector). I think I speak for just about every fan of The Wire when I say, using the words that have been become his trademark: Marlo? He got to fall.