Jason Toney

Giveaway! Pete Rock Prize Packs

"Start from scratch so the bass line's credible" - Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Straighten It Out

Courtesy of Rapster Records and in honor of Kon & Amir's new release of Pete Rock joints called Underground Classics, I'm giving away 2 prize packs featuring one of two Pete Rock Tees (XL in either chocolate or olive) and a copy of the CD, which came out on the 19th.

All you need to enter is your name and your email address.

It's Pete Rock.

Get up on it.

exactscience

First and Last Name:   Email address:

Disclaimer: Must be a US resident to enter because I ain't sending shit internationally. Please believe it.This contest will officially close when I feel like it but probably in a week or so.

The Wire: School Daze (403)

"Man, that school shit is a joke" - Dead Prez, "They" Schools

Episode 40: Home Rooms
Written by Ed Burns & Richard Price
Directed by Seith Mann

"Y'all ain't got no 'Honey Nut'?" - Omar

"How you expect to run with the wolves all night when you spend all day runnin' with the puppies?" - Omar

"Patience, girl. More patience." - Omar

"I'm my own trademark, ya feel me?" - Omar

Official: "I love the first day, man. Everybody all friendly an' shit." - Namond

Previously on: Michael makes an impression, Bunk catches a case and Carcetti makes a move.

We open this week with naked ass Omar startled by the garbage man. Despite his jittery nerves, Omar has little to worry about these days. With the Barksdale crew done, nobody's gunning for him. He's traded in Brandon for a new man, Reynaldo, and the low-rent crews he's hustlin' don't even put up a fight for their stashes. Things are so easy, he walks to the store in his pajamas without a gun in search of Honey Nut Cheerios. Obviously, Omar likes to start his day with a healthy breakfast.

When he returns from his errand, Reynaldo is at the table reading George Pelecanos's Drama City and Omar decides it's time to remind the "wolves" of Baltimore just who he is. In a week of stories full of people trying to teach others a lesson or two, Omar is maybe the only successful one. After casing a Stansfield stash house at the same time as Kima, Reynaldo assists Omar in the stick-up and walks away unscathed. Despite the number of guns around their condemned row house, Rey obviously didn't know who he was going to bed with. He's been schooled now, yo.

In Baltimore, everywhere there are lessons to be learned. Bunk learns that McNulty isn't the man he once was. Despite his argument that McNulty is like the fake lake trout "all dressed up like something [he] ain't" in his picaresque life with Beadie (Yay Beadie!!), McNulty appears to be the real deal. Royce learns that Carcetti is also for real and tries to school him on big boy politics by sic-ing the entire Baltimore infrastructure on his campaign. Bunny learns he can't stop being good Po-Lice just because he no longer has the badge. Lester and Kima are taught that being good Po-Lice in Baltimore always has a price. And Herc, after years of remedial classes, finally learns that knowing is half the battle. It's Prez, however, who gets the education of his life.

All his preparation to mold young minds is for naught on the first day of school as Randy gets over on him and steals his hall passes. His students know instinctively that he's green and pay him no attention or respect. He is unable to get through even one lesson in any of his math classes. He has to break up a fight between Shaquan and a girl whose name we never learn during what appears to be third period at Tilghman (an 8th grade math class that also features Randy, Namond, Michael and Dukie) and has to have order restored several times by Cutty's old girlfriend, Grace, whose last name I still don't know. He ends the day with gum all over his formerly pristine chairs, one glimmer of hope from a completed assignment and another clue that maybe he isn't cut out for this either with a "Fuck Prezbo" scratched into a desk. The very next day, the girls go at it again, with our nameless young 8th grader cutting Shaquan's cheek wide open with a box cutter. She threatens Prez as his students look on until Grace, once again, saves the day by slapping her and re-establishing order. Dukie, who has spent his first two days of school getting teased and playing with a discarded electric hand fan, uses it to cool down our angry and exhausted aggressor.

Damn.

Other things:

• Randy has a serious hustle at school, rocking three different uniforms so that he can sell to each grade level during lunch.
• Michael has caught the eyes of both Marlo and Bodie who see him as a kid with bonafied skills. "Big paws on a puppy" is how Chris explains it. Bodie tries to get Michael to give up school and take Namond's place as his lead runner but Michael is more interested in caring for his younger brother.
• Bodie might also see Michael as the potential muscle he's going to need for whatever trouble is coming down the pike. And be sure trouble is coming. Marlo wants Bodie's corner, Slim Charles has no gun-slinging type support to give for an independent like Bodie, no matter how well he's selling that Pandemic but Bodie is still "Barksdale" in his heart and is not going to get tossed or hustled without a fight.
• Speaking of the wise old Slim Charles, he's now part of Prop Joe's co-op (which meets in a hotel conference room real official-like) and they note that while Marlo is a problem, he's nothing compared to the New York crews creeping into the Eastern and starting to push in on the Western. Prop Joe wants to go after Marlo to get him in the co-op so that Baltimore dealers can have a unified front against New York (not unlike Royce circling the wagons to deal with Carcetti) but Slim hopes that "[he's] got some better shit to say than Stringer." Slim, proving how keyed in he is, even knows how Marlo is hiding his bodies.
• While the kids are great this year, the real acting tour de force so far this season has been Glynn Turman. He's excellent in this role and he was wearing a tie I own. He's got good taste. Bonus: Glynn is also in one of my very favorite movies of all time.
• Assistant Principal Donnelly makes reference to Up the Down Staircase as school opens. We've talked about that before.

Next week: Kima and Lester move to Homicide (but what about Sydnor and Massey?); Omar goes directly after Marlo and we get more Cutty and Bubbles time.

Welcome back Omar. We missed you.

Sunday Random Ten: The Science of Sleep Edition

"Fine girls runnin' up in Brooklyn" - Kerri Chandler, Brooklyn (featuring E-Man)

Random Data

# of pounds lost this week: 4.5
Phase 2 hacks: I've added water crackers to my diet and will add pita bread as well. I'm limiting meat to once a day and most of the time I don't want it. Last night I had chicken black bean chili and my stomach disagreed with that decision. I would've been just fine with the hummus and tapenade platter to go with my steamed veggies.
Life changes: I didn't fast food it after dancing my face off at Pause Friday night; I didn't steal some of Anna's fries at dinner last night. I'm tending not to finish everything on my plate when going out to eat.
The dream I had last night: Driving on the open road on a Thursday. I stop and go to the bathroom. At the urinal, my friend Alexis tells me to go to Hawaii. I complain about the price. She tells me to book a ticket. It's affordable so I do. Flash Forward, I'm in Hawaii. Todd Kelley and EJ live there. For some reason it looks like Vegas in Hawaii. Another version of Alexis is there. She has a twin which I guess are actually triplets because neither is the Alexis who told me to go to Hawaii. I'm in a men's room at a Hawaiian Casino and Alexis #2 (platinum blonde Alexis) is on the floor, she tells me it's time to go home. I agree but the price is much more expensive to come home than it was to leave. Before I can go to the airport, it is midnight and the casino bar is giving away free drinks. I am handed something called "Lagerschlager." It is a beer but you must drink it through a large collection of ground up spices at the top of the bottle. It tastes not quite right. The spices won't leave my mouth. They are clumping. As I fight to chew through the spices, I'm desperately thirsty and I wake myself up.

Out of 270 songs I listened to on my iPod or iTunes last week, we have ourselves a

Sunday Random Ten

1. If You See Light - The Mountain Goats
2. Nothing Really - Kinky
3. Fight The Power - Public Enemy
4. I Gotcha - Lupe Fiasco
5. Who Needs Forever? - Astrud Gilberto
6. Multiply (In A Minor Key) - Jamie Lidell
7. Some Say - Nina Simone
8. Kiana - Wildchild
9. The Light Remix (For U w/ Erykah Badu) - Common
10. Sun is Shining - Bob Marley & The Wailers

Hot Links & Gumbo

"Love, if you ever find me, I wonder will you ever try me? I'm so different than before" - Rosey, Love (Koop Remix)

Little Superstar¹

MediaPost Publications - ABC Avoids Airing Free Premieres On Web - 09/15/2006

UNLIKE VIRTUALLY ALL OTHER NETWORKS, ABC has avoided offering exclusive premieres of its new shows on Web sites such as AOL or Google. For ABC, it's all about driving viewers back to a show's initial debut on the network.

"Our research shows that if you give people this opportunity, we would be hurting ourselves," says Mike Benson, senior vice president of marketing for ABC. "We'd rather have people sample the show on our air."

If ABC gives away its prime-time premieres free on the Web, it's more difficult to judge how network marketing performs. "You have to hope people come back to see the second and third shows," says Benson.

African American Environmentalist Association: When it is Time I Want a GREEN BURIAL

I want a green burial. Wrap me up and put me in the ground as soon as possible after the official death notice has been signed. I guess we need green graveyards too. I wouldn't mind being buried in the woods somewhere but this could get unseemly if many people start doing it. Jewish religious culture has it right. A green funeral would be short, sweet and to the point, with just the closest of relatives and friends avaiable at the time. Six feet deep is fine but less is okay too. I would not mind being worm food for future fish bait. "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Breaking news! Blacks are ordinary people, too - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review²

So maybe there's not yet an audience for films and TV shows where blacks and Italians live like normal, boring Americans, like Charlie Sheen and those "Two and a Half Men." But sooner or later there will be. And that's when I'll tune into shows like "The Wire" again.

mental_floss magazine - Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix³

According to Reuters reports, McDonald’s is planning on selling breakfast all day long! And strangely enough, the problem had all been in the restaurant’s layout. CEO Jim Skinner announced yesterday that the new restaurant layouts and operating systems should help make for a much more flexible menu. And apparently, I’m not the only one who’s lovin’ it: stocks edged up $.21 on the day after Micky D’s showed off their plans.

The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google⁴

This is a guide for synchronizing Contacts (address book) and Calendars (schedule) across multiple computers and gadgets.

Hip Hop Blogs: The Long Tail of Hip-Hop

I have a hunch that even though there are fewer big hit albums, the total amount of hip-hop music consumed this year has stayed the same, or gone up. I think hip-hop is just feeling the long tail effect, where demand in a market shifts from the hits to the niches.

Starvation

This child and others -- pictures of starvation -- were painted surrounding a picnicking family, oblivious to their presence. Banksy arguably feels that this is how the privileged eat everyday.

---

¹My friend, Shin, sent this to me earlier this week. I'm split between being frightened by creepy child and wanting to challenge him to a dance off. "So you think you can dance, copper boy?!"

²Breaking News!! I refer you to The Cosby Show, A Different World, The Jeffersons, Girlfriends, Frank's Place, What's Happening?, Sanford & Son, Grey's Anatomy and even Run's House & Good Times as representations of the Black experience in America that don't deal in crime. That said, Dude, you're not digging very deep. The Wire is as diverse a cast of characters as you will ever see, regardless of race. It's not about what they do. It's about the how and why.

³If I was still eating fast food, this would be very exciting.

⁴I need this in the worst way. I've missed 2 events this month because I wasn't synchronized.

The Wire: Shiiiiiiiit! (402)

"We've got this thing right here. Right here's the spot." - Basement Jaxx,  Right Here's The Spot (featuring Me'shell N'Degeocello)

Episode 39: Soft Eyes
Written by David Mills
Directed by Christine Moore

"Do you know what Theodore Roosevelt said about hunting grizzly bears? The thrill is in overcoming your own fear." - Cool Lester Smooth

"Either you real out there or you ain't..." - Wee-bay

"I'm the father you never had and I don't want to be dissapointed in you ever again." - Daniels impersonating Lester Freamon

"Owing niggas for shit? That ain't me, man." - Michael

"I'll take any motherfucker's money if he giving it away." - Namond & Clay Davis

"You need soft eyes." - Miss Hanson

Official: "I still wake up white in a city that ain't" - Carcetti

Previously on...(there's nothing older than last's week's episode so I'll just direct you there)

The cold open deals with Herc and his unfortunate incident with the Mayor but we can get to that later. The best part of this episode was one scene. Daniels & Pearlman are in bed together having a conversation about Pearlman's day. Lester has played her with his subpoenas. Included are State Senator Clay Davis, two City Councilmen and the City Development Agency headed by Kralchick (sp?). When she met with Lester earlier in the day, she developed a nervous tick while Detective Sydnor sweated bullets about the heat this would bring. Lester, reading glasses on and the certainty that what he's doing is right all over his face, reveals why they have to do this now and guilts Pearlman into securing the subpoenas. As Rhonda looks to Cedric for support, he teases her knowing all too well the power of Cool Lester Smooth's gaze. He's so cool that "butter wouldn't melt in his mouth" and their silly dialog about it is the most enjoyable 2 or 3 minutes of TV I've had all week.

The subpoenas themselves once delivered by Kima and Sydnor shake the very foundation of Royce's political machine. Clay "Shiiiiiiiiiit" Davis rips him a new asshole which, in turn, puts Royce on Burrell and Rawls who try to figure out a way to get a handle on Major Crimes and prevent any more surprises.

That's kind of hard when the Fraternal Order of Police would love to support Carcetti but is following the poll numbers and throws its hat in with Royce.  Valchek, though, is in Carcetti's pocket and when Norris catches a murder that smells like a witness killing, Carcetti has the ammunition he needs to wallop Royce in the debate. It is just the thing Tommy had to have as, until that point, he was more interested in playing Battleship with his daughter than stay in a campaign he knew he couldn't win.

While all this is going on, Namond and his mother, De'Londa, visit his father, Wee-Bey, in prison. Brianna Barksdale is keeping up her side of the bargain and taking care of Nam and De'Londa but De' dimes out Namond and his poor work ethic as part of Bodie's crew. Wee-Bey encourages his son to take advantage of the situation and to cut his damn hair 'cause even the white police are going to remember the boy with the pretty ponytail. As usual, Namond doesn't listen.

Marlo isn't in hiding anymore. Major Crimes gets his voice on a cell call while Snoop, wearing a Scarface tee, and the rest of his crew engage in target practice and he's got his captains throwing cash to the neighborhood kids right before school so that they can buy new clothes. Michael refuses the money and stares down Marlo showing how much heart he has. Michael spends as much time as he can in Cutty's gym which now features equipment, trainers and a picture of their "Platinum Club Patron" Avon Barksdale. It also features a gaggle of women looking for Cutty's affection and a much leaner Justin, who appears to have left the corners for a chance to be a boxer. Cutty offers to train Michael but he declines. Cutty maintains his landscaping gig and seems to be doing very well for himself.

Bubbles, however, is barely maintaining. He's shooting again and has his "intern" Sharrod helping him sell out of his Depo Cart. Sharrod is maybe 14 or 15 and can barely count. After several discussions about it, Sharrod agrees to go back to school and ends up at Tilghman with Bubs in a shirt and tie trying to convince Principal Donnelly that Sharrod deserves a spot in school. I am still laughing at the looks on Prez's and Bubbles's faces as they recognize each other in the school office.

Other Notes:

• Herc catches the Mayor getting a BJ from one of his aides and spends the entire episode trying to figure out if he's fucked himself over or not. I spend the entire episode trying to figure out what the actress who played Royce's aid was holding when their tryst was discovered. I'm sure it wasn't Glyn Turman's delicates but it sure did look real...as did Turman's "Oh" Face.
• Prez has his classroom perfect for the school year. His soundtrack for work is Johnny Cash ("Ring of Fire").
• Bunk is having no luck finding Lex but Bodie agrees to call Carver if Lex shows up. Bodie's soundtrack for work is Chingy (or was that a local B-More Rap cat?).
• Donut steals an escalade and then all our young cast get rousted by Carver and some radio car beat cops. Officer Eddie Walker hustles Randy for the $200 he had from Marlo for school clothes. In the midst of this, I realized that Randy is related to "Cheese" and, according to his character profile, is his son.
• Miss Donnelly sends clothes and supplies to Dukie's home warning young Cindy not to give the box of goods to anyone in the house except Duquan. It is obvious why as the rest of his family is strung out.
• Carver really is Good Po-Lice now.

Next week? Omar!!!

Sunday Random Ten - It Was A Good Week Edition

bum bum-clang clang-duh duh duh - The Philadelphia Experiment, Philadelphia Freedom

Random Data

# of days in Fat Smash Detox: 7
# of workouts: 3
# of pounds lost: 12 (that's right, 12!)
# of times I've cheated: 4
Types of cheats: some salmon and 2 shrimp at Gyu-Kaku on Monday before I realized they had a tofu platter for grilling; a small brownie for dessert at our work offsite event lunch on Thursday; some small pastries at the Big Brother All-Stars Wrap Party Thursday evening (I just had to try the chocolate/caramel volcano); a small piece of peanut butter cookie at Aroma this morning.
bonus cheat: weighing myself today (and yesterday) instead of at the end of phase 1 which is Tuesday. But that's okay because I'm continuing phase 1 for at least a few more days after then and possibly through the rest of the week.
Detox favorites: mediterranean platter for dinner with a side of vegetables to dip in my hummus and tabouli and black olive tapenade; asparagus; veggie sausage; spinach
Foods I miss: pita bread and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Foods I don't: meat (well, I wouldn't mind some tuna and maybe some el pollo loco chicken - with the skin off, I promise!)
Things I've noticed: smaller belly, longer neck, far fewer aches and pains, greater ability to focus on tasks for longer periods of time, smaller appetite.
Things others have noticed: good looking skin, general hotness.
Just a reminder: 12 pounds!!!!

Out of 387 songs I've played on my iPod or in my iTunes in the last 7 days, we've got ourselves a

Sunday Random Ten

1. Until The End of Time (ft. The Benjamin Wright Orchestra) - Justin Timberlake
2. Caught Out There - Kelis
3. Maybe Sprout Wings - The Mountain Goats
4. Made Up Lovesong #43 - Guillemots
5. Mushaboom (Postal Service Remix) - Feist
6. Can't Stop This - The Roots
7. Feel My Truth (Chronic 3000 remix) - Jay-Z & Dr. Dre
8. Woke Up New - The Mountain Goats
9. The Fever - Rapper Big Pooh
10. Black Mozart (Opus II) - Madlib

Hot LInks & Gumbo

"Mm, what you say? Mm, that it's just what we need?" - Imogen Heap, Hide and Seek

THE BEAT » Blog Archive » Who Buried Roger Rabbit?

Roger was popular enough to headline his own section of Disneyland — Roger Rabbit’s Toontown — and starred in several shorts. The mythology and the metaphors seemed to have been thoroughly embraced by Disney synergies.

But you don’t hear much talk about Roger any more. Jeff Lange over at Jimhillmedia has a sobering 2-part photo essay entitled Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Curious Case of the Rapidly Receding Rabbit that chronicles Roger’s rise and fall.

VG Cats - Tom & Jerry: The Lost Episodes

Esquire:Feature Story: Tenacious TV

It's impossible to predict the arc of the Lost narrative, or even to guess how long that arc will last. Conversely, Survivor is static; the program is now entering its thirteenth season, and all of the previous twelve have been slightly different species of the same animal. Its cast members have been ingrained with the history and language of the show, and they all take their strategic cues from prior seasons. Survivor should not be able to compete with a program like Lost, which is better in almost every conceivable way. But it does. And that's because Survivor has an advantage that Lost could never construct: Survivor—like most reality programming—is powered by the overwhelming significance of jealousy in everyday life. Which is why it still feels partially real to people, even when they know it mostly isn't.

slow news week: Gawker launches shitty music blog - Oh Word

It was a bad sign when their “manifesto” dissed music bloggers far and wide then claimed “we aim to be discerning, but not snobby.” Hipster please! At least cop to your true nature.

Superman Retires

White people to Hiphop: we quit. - Oh Word

From Anticon down, it seems that every other former white-rap affiliated musician seems to be repositioning himself in the marketplace as some sort of electronica-rock hybrid. Sure those guys had one foot in that genre to begin with but the rate at which samplers are getting dropped and guitars picked up is still remarkable. The music isn’t substantially different though it often embraces a wider (read: whiter) set of influences, but these guys seem desperate to break away from the underground rap association in order to latch onto the more stable (and hip) indie-rock crowd. Now the cynic in me wants to view this as a purely exploitative move: first these poseurs try to take over rap and when they can’t do that, they run scurrying back to the warm embrace of rock, but I honestly don’t think that’s the case. Rather, it seems with a shrinking (and perennially un-cool) underground rap market rejecting their aesthetic in favor of Jim Jones, these guys have decided to just shrug their shoulders and move on to a more receptive crowd.

The futon critic - the web's best primetime television resource

"This is a different CI this season -- there will be politics and more at stake emotionally and personally for our detectives," says Warren Leight, Executive Producer and new show runner, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." "We'll see more character-oriented stories, we want to give characters a larger role going forward and see the affect and sense the toll this job takes on the officers. Detective Goren isn't always going to be the smartest guy in the room anymore."

Conspicuous Consumption: FutureSex / LoveSounds

"Must be my future sex love sound and when it goes down, baby, you know we gotta do it." - Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSound

Nothing about FutureSex/LoveSounds is conventional. In today's, and really in all, pop culture landscapes, none of this makes sense. The songs are too long. The production is literally futuristic sounding while also, somehow, conveying a kind of 80s synth pop aesthetic. Justin sparingly utilizes his trademark falsetto and rarely shows off his vocal range without good reason.

Yet it all works from beginning to end and to spectacular effect.

I'm not going to break down the album track by track as I'm sure it will be discussed ad nauseum until Grammy season and beyond but this is a grand concept record in the tradition of Prince's 80s albums. Timberlake isn't near the virtuoso that Prince is nor is he nearly as weird, so this doesn't reach the level of any of those albums but in the desolate pop waters of 2006, what JT, Timberland and will.i.am do here is leaps and bounds ahead of everything else.

Every track weaves together perfectly. Songs sound better in the context of the album than they do alone (I even like SexyBack when played as part of the full package) and these 7 minute tracks that meld together two completely different songs in order to tell one story are outstanding.

Even more than Justified (which I also loved), I can imagine myself coming back to this album years from now and still finding it fresh and interesting.

In a world of disposable media, that's saying something.

Last week I also consumed:

1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2. Exodus into Unheard Rhythms
3. Right About Now

The Wire: S-N-Double O-P! (401)

"Only thing tighter than my rhymes is the puss" - Busta Rhymes featuring Rah Digga, Untouchable (New Crack City)

Episode 38: Boys of Summer
Story by David Simon & Ed Burns
Directed by Joe Chappelle

"There's an election? Who's runnin'?" - Cool Lester Smooth

"Pandemic! Got that Pandemic!" - Hilltop Touters

"I've been schooled, dog. I'm trying to tell you." - Felicia "Snoop" Pearson

"That lost-ball, high-grass motherfucker, Carcetti, needs to get used to life in the wilderness." - Mayor Clarence Royce

"Fuck yourself with a forty, shit-breath" - Officer Tony Colicchio

"Look at that bow-legged motherfucker. I made him walk like that." - Bunk Moreland

Official: "Lambs to the slaughter here." - Marcia Donnelly

If you want to know what happened in the previously on... check my season 4 primer.

Welcome back, Baltimore! Oh, how I have missed you so. We're about a year after season 3 ended. Marlo is the absolute big fish in the Western drug world. New Major Daniels is running the Western police division. The primary election is 4 weeks away and school is about to start but, really, we start with Snoop shopping for a nail gun at Hardware Barn. The DeWalt 410 (although it looks to actually be a DeWalt DC618k) she's been using has a low battery life and she wants an upgrade. As the hardware salesman tells her, the Hilti DX 460 will do the job. He earns a $100 tip for helping the hit-woman and #3 in command in Marlo's crew get her job done that much easier.

And, it's on. The newly arranged theme song is "gospirational" and performed by Doreen Vail & Maurette Brown-Clark. There are 57 different shots in the new main title and if you're obsessive like me, you can read the entire list after the jump. Every season I want to know what's in the title sequence but I've never really had a reason before to actually go through it. Now, I'll never have to do it again this season.

The story every season is dependent on what the Major Case Squad is doing so let's start there. The team, lead by Lester "Cool Lester Smooth" Freamon and Kima Greggs while their absentee lieutenant focuses on building his dream house, is up on just about all the street level guys in Marlo's crew. As discussed, Marlo is much more tactical than Avon ever was but he isn't as smart or as paranoid about the police as Stringer Bell.

The problem for Major Case, though, is that there are no bodies. There is very little sting (or bargaining power) in arresting and bringing down the drug kingpin if they can't clear some murders. Marlo, Chris (who is an even more gentlemanly killer than Omar and Brother Mouzone) and Snoop have devised an ingenious plan for keeping the police off their back. They store the bodies in abandoned and boarded up buildings, reboarding them with the nail gun after they've don their business.

With all this free time, Lester has the team going through old Barksdale/Bell assets and asks Pearlman for subpeonas so that they can "follow the money" which leads to several prominent politicians during election time.

Speaking of elections, Carcetti is a great councilman but a terrible candidate. He can't even get his advance crew leader, Norman (played by the excellent Reg E. Cathey), to vote for him. He also can't seem to raise any money or get his friend and opponent, Tony, to forgive him. Meanwhile, Royce is losing voter confidence but getting new funds at every turn.

But who cares about politics, when you've got the real mayor of West Baltimore, "Bodie" Broadus running a low-traffic corner after getting pushed off of Lafayette by Marlo's crew? His new independent crew features Lex & young hopper Namond along with Reese and a few others. Slim Charles provides the package but he's an independent distributor now, okay with selling to the small-time clockers and not trying to hold any corners of his own. Bodie regularly gets visits from McNulty and Carver -- who might finally have become good Po-Lice -- but doesn't seem to have any real issues outside of too much product. Well, there is the little problem of his boy Lex not knowing who is untouchable and killing Fruit, one of Marlo's top corner captains, all for love.

Fruit's death provides the first body caught on the wire and gives Bunk something to do. Lex's murder a few days later at the hands of Snoop and Chris will make things all the more interesting for Bunk and Lester and Carver...and Randy. Randy is one of our new faces. He's one of the junior high school age kids running amok in the Western. He rolls with Namond (who has the money and the attitude but none of the heart), Michael (their fearless protector), Donut (the comedian), and Dukie (dirty, dishelved and obviously fending for himself at 13). Randy is the brains. He's a good kid with a kind heart who comes from what appears to be a stable home. He's also partially responsible for Lex's death.

Other stuff:
-Prez is teaching math at a middle school in the western. The principal and assistant principal are ecstatic to have a former police officer as a teacher.
-McNulty is flying right. He's living with "Beadie" and her kids, refusing promotions from Daniels and staying sober.
-Herc is working Mayoral security detail and still doesn't have a very developed sense of humor.
-The Baltimore Sun is right. Snoop is awesome.
-Fruit was already living on borrowed time as "Cutty" would've killed him last season if hadn't lost his heart for the drug game.

Next week: who the hell knows? I couldn't make heads or tails out of the preview outside of our favorite crooked congressman putting the pressure on Royce after getting Lester's subpeona.

last.fm: 50,000!

"I'm just a crazy fool." - Osunlade, Crazy Love

Sometime early last week, last.fm scrobbled the 50,000th song that I've listened to  either on a computer or on my iPod since joining the site on January 25th, 2005. In that time, I've listened to just about all my music via iTunes so it is a pretty accurate reflection of my listening habits. It averages out to about 575 songs per week. I don't mind saying that that's a lot of music.

In honor of that, here's my very first weekly artist top 10 (12). It generated on February 20th, 2005:

1. MF Doom - 60
2. Viktor Vaughn - 37
3. Gang Starr - 27
4. Jaylib - 10
5. Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf - 10
6. Jean Grae - 7
7. Erykah Badu - 7
8. Beastie Boys - 7
9. Jamiroquai - 6
10. Q and Not U - 6
11. The Roots - 6
12. Jay-Z - 6

And, 50,000 songs later...

1. Justin Timberlake - 66
2. Oh No - 56
3. Talib Kweli - 42
4. Daft Punk - 28
5. Danity Kane - 24
6. Under The Influence of Giants - 21
7. M.I.A. - 20
8. Kelis - 18
9. Wildchild - 17
10. Jay-Z - 15

Bonus: My Summer Soundtrack according to last.fm (and the brilliant rolling 3 month chart)

1. Me & U - Cassie
2. Crosses - Zero 7
3. Transformer - Gnarls Barkley
4. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
5. Crosses - Jose Gonzalez
6. Showstopper (ft. P.Diddy & Yung Joc) - Danity Kane
7. Fight The Power - Public Enemy
8. Afraid - Nelly Furtado
9. I Don't Know Why I Love You - The Brand New Heavies
10. Waters of March - Sergio Mendes
11. Margarita - Sleepy Brown