The Wire

When you're out of town for three weeks in a summer and you are in places that don't have television, you get out of the habit of watching television. Then, when you come back home, you try not to watch television to see how long you can hold out. You don't have cable, so that helps. You don't work at a job where you need to watch television so that you have something to talk about with your co-workers. So you are doing okay and you don't miss television. You see your teevee-free future spread out in front of you and you can see that it is going to be okay. You will eat better. You will sit down at a table and write a letter to an old friend. You will learn the names of trees.

And then they release the third season of The Wire on DVD.

Oh, I was so close to living life of value. But it's worth it really. I mean, c'mon. The Wire is the best thing on television and if it isn't please don't tell me because I don't need to know about it. And, if you know, please don't tell me what happens in this season because I have no idea. The first two episodes are just so good, though.

A funny thing happened to me while watching the first episode, though. One scene takes place at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game and I'm sitting there watching it and I think to myself "it would be nice to go to a baseball game." Where did that come from? Sure, I used to go to Detroit Tigers games all the time when I was a kid, but I kind of fell out of baseball when I stopped being any good at it and I haven't followed it for years. And now this? We'll have to see where the urge takes me. The last baseball game I attended was in Evansville at the minor league stadium where they filmed the Madonna movie A League of Their Own. It was such bad baseball that we left after three hours and it was only the fifth inning. Maybe I need to try a real baseball game. We'll see.