Watching, Reading, Writing

The first episode of the new season of The Wire will become available on HBO-on-Demand later today, but rather than talk about my love for this show, I want to mention one of David Simon's earlier projects.

J.C. and I spent our pre-Labor Day Sunday watching a six-hour mini-series called The Corner. The series was directed by Charles S. Dutton and is based on The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, a book co-written by Simon and Edward Burns. The mini-series is something of a docu-drama, based on the true stories of the people written about in the book, but acted out in stellar performances by T.K. Carter, Sean Nelson, and Khandi Alexander, among others. I won't say too much more about the thing--other than that it's brutal, honest, heartbreaking, and definitely worth your time.
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School starts this week, and I could be tackling any number of esteemed tomes to get myself prepared, but instead, I've been reading Elmore Leonard's Killshot, which I believe is going to be a movie sometime soon--starring Diane Lane, whom, like Elmore Leonard, but for different reasons, I adore.
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I'm a few thousand words into a story I kind of like, tentatively titled "Summer of Skin." For those of you who may be interested, here's the opening paragraph:

The boy, I can only imagine, had expectations. Blondes with flawless tanned skin against a backdrop of ruffled white satin sheets, covering their perfect augmented breasts with their forearms. Maybe a celebrity or two—Pamela Anderson, I think, was right about then becoming famous. Hell, the kid was ten. He may have been looking for something he could start a fire with.
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And in other news, edifice Wrecked is running a cool little Halloween contest.