Consarn it, get me Avon Barksdale on the horn.

Television Without Pity has recently started recapping The Wire beginning with season one. Considering how badly BET is supposedly chopping up season two in reruns, that site might be your best bet if you don't have HBO and have been too busy watching all your old Airwolf tapes to make the leap to dvd in the last ten years. As you'll immediately notice upon first visit, TWOP uses little cartoon icons next to the title of each show. Some of them are more closely related to the show's actual contents than others. The one they're using for The Wire, however, leaves me a tad mystified:

I get that this humorous, crotchety caricature is "listening in" on someone or something, in keeping with the crack investigative skills of some of (damn you, Herc) the Major Crimes unit, yet I'm struck by how completely he fails to embody anyone on the show. I guess he might vaguely resemble the Greek, but then again I don't recall the Greek hoisting any unwieldy ear horn thingies while conducting his nefarious dealings (that's what flunkies are for). Granted, this antique hearing device does resemble some of the Baltimore PD's moldering surveillance equipment, but even Valchek makes a more sightly specimen than TWOP's cartoon codger. Personally, I might have doodled McNulty and Bunk puking outside an Irish bar, or maybe Stringer Bell scribbling away in a community college business class; or perhaps even Bubbles visiting Space Camp and spilling crack vials while floating in the zero gravity chamber (now that was a Very Special Episode). Now that the damage is done though, I hope David Simon still has time to incorporate this mysterious character into season five; perhaps as Lovable Lou, a quick-tempered, cantankerous ex-colonel who speaks to Prez's math class about the dangers of both improper ear horn insertion and B-more's latest street drugs. Which reminds me, in keeping w/ past topical drug names such as "WMD's", I predict next season's corner kids will be slinging "Global Warnings"* and "Of Montreal Sex Tapes" (that last one's just a hunch).

*with apologies to Philly Boy Roy

UPDATE: I can't believe I actually wrote about this today. Could the topics of this blog be any more pointless? What happened?!?