The best TV show EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER (really)

There are so many things I want to be doing right now I feel like I could ricochet around the house like a pinball. There are the star ornaments above to be finished -- just some quickie painty/collagey thingies that are really the only ornaments I am making this year. And I want to be writing, of course, and also reading the big fat book that came from Amazon today, my latest nonfiction book feeding my British Raj obsession, and needed to fill in some last minute factual gaps in Spicy Little Curses. And then there's the great baking marathon which simply must come to a close, as my mother and I, between the two of us, have made TWENTY kinds of cookies!!! And I want to gift wrap, and smother the dogs with affection (Shiloh's face is starting to go bald from the radiation, by the way. Boo hoo. I was kind of thinking she was somehow impervious to radiation, it's been quite a few weeks, but now her fur is falling out on her snout, especially right around her nose and lips. My poor old baby.)

It's pretty much all fun stuff, and most of it is holiday stuff. I didn't get any writing done today, unfortunately. Slept in until 8!!!! We never do that. Our bed is far too comfortable right now, with the flannel sheets, and a few months ago we got new curtains that are dark, which seems to be a bad thing. 6 am feels like 3 am, and we keep hitting snooze. In our defense, though, it was a late night due to it being the season finale of the best show on television ever ever EVER: The Wire. We don't get HBO so we went to my parents house to catch up the past 3 episodes that they tivo'ed for us, plus the new one. OH MY LORD. If you haven't seen this show, you MUST. Really, no show has ever come anywhere close to the quality of The Wire. Each season is structured like a novel, a single ongoing storyline with fantastic writing and amazing characters. Now, by the end of season 4, we love some of these characters so much that the show really has the potential for total emotional devastation. No show has ever had that power, for me.

If you haven't heard of it, it's "about" cops & drug dealers in Baltimore, but that's really NOT what it's about. It's more about the myriad ills of urban America. It's about the ways the system is failing the kids, about the politics of governing a city with massive financial and racial issues, about whole chunks of a city that have just rotted away because of drugs. The best thing about it is the characters: never have there been such real, multi-dimensional characters on a TV show. I read a quote from the show's creator (a former Baltimore cop and public school teacher) who said something to the effect of "Good and evil bore the shit out of me." The drug dealers are just as much real fully fleshed characters as the cops. Neither are good or evil. I can't even begin to do it justice. If you are already a fan of the show: Bubbles! Omar! Bunny! Carver! Stringer Bell (ooh la la, Stringer Bell)! Bodie! Jimmy and Bunk and Kima and Daniels and Carcetti. . . and of course: Randy, Michael, Namond, and Duquan, the best young actors I have seen in a long, long time. Frick. It's so damn good. You have to start with the first season; Netflix it. I kid you not. Go. Now. It's actually the reason we got Netflix to begin with, because our video store only had one copy of each disc and we could. not. wait. And if you don't think you're into "cop shows" don't let that stop you. This makes all other cop shows look like little urban fairy tales written by half wits for half wits. It will ruin you for other cop shows. Okay, I've said enough. (Okay, not quite, if you watched it last night, how broken is your heart? How much do you want to adopt those kids?)

(Oh, and one more thing -- watching this show, seeing all these AMAZING African American actors that you've never seen before, you want to see them all more, in movies, in other shows, and it really makes you realize how few great roles there are for African American actors, and how seldom they get cast in roles that are "race blind". Ptthhhwwwwt!)

Also, while at my parents' house last night I took a few pictures of my mom's Christmas decor, including some of the contents of the "toy cupboard" which is an antique pie safe complete with punched tin doors, that becomes a toy display for the holidays. So fun!