Ah, the eremitic life

I had tentative plans to join Waitress T and her boyfriend at a rock show, and K called to see what I was up to, but I thought I'd rather stay in and watch the third season of "The Wire." I think I made the right choice. The third season is the best one, and the show is the smartest on television, no question. Forget "the Shield," "NYPD Blue" in its prime, or "The Sopranos" --- "The Wire" is the grittiest, deepest, most thoughtful, most realistic, most biting crime show, bar none. It's not even about crime so much as the human (or at least urban) condition. It shows how everyone --- cop, crook, politician, family man, wife, drug addict, laborer --- becomes trapped in a specific system and falls prey to that system's rules and pressures. If everything on TV were even half this ambitious and clever, I'd own a TV.