#WireQuoteDay is trending HARD on Twitter right now.

Reading through the various submissions takes me down a memory lane of amazing episodes, characters and moments from perhaps the greatest television show of all time. People are pulling out some obscure and brilliant selections.

But there are also some picks that make me wanna say…come on man, that’s the best you could come up with? One of the most obvious quotes from “The Wire”? It’s like picking “NEWMAN!” for Seinfeld Quote Day. You don’t even have to have seen the show to know some of these quotes.

I guess you could say Wire Quote Day is separating the casual Wire fans from the psychotic Wire fans.

Not to pick on any of these individual tweeters, because there are dozens of tweets to pick from for each of these quotes, but here are the least original choices for Wire Quote Day.

"My name is my NAME" -Mario #wirequoteday—
Anna Kathryn Pierce (@akpierce) March 25, 2011

(Um…Mario?)

This one is easily the most beaten into the ground. Of all the clever turns of phrase on that show over five seasons, hundreds of people zero in on this memorable but overplayed Marlo Stanfield line. Yawn.

"Come at the king, you best not miss." –Omar #WireQuoteDay—
Craig (@coolaid0) March 25, 2011

Great line, but I liked it better the first two dozen times it was tweeted.

"What about Wallace!?!" #wirequoteday—
Russell Mann (@rmann18) March 25, 2011

This was a really great scene…but wasn’t the quote “Where’s Wallace”? Anyway, please dig a little deeper here, folks. It’s motherfucking WIRE QUOTE DAY, STRING! WHERE’S THE INSPIRED QUOTE CHOICE, STRING???? WHERE IT AT???

@KenTremendous we gotta get a WIRE on them!!! #WireQuoteDay—
nick (@elSneaker) March 25, 2011

Not so much obvious as incredibly weak, baffling, even. Did you actually watch the show?

"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket." -Frank Sobotka #wirequoteday—
Brian Scheer (@Scheer_Power) March 25, 2011

Ah yes, the time when David Simon hit us over the head with the moral of the story…one of my least favorite moments on an almost flawless show.

@BastardMachine Omar coming. #WireQuoteDay—
Christopher Devon (@ONN8) March 25, 2011

Such a weak choice…if you’re going to do something in this vein, let’s call it the lookout warning signal genre, why not “Narcos!” or “Five oh creepin!”

[Farmer in the Dell] -Omar #WireQuoteDay—
Andrew Lee (@L4ndrew) March 25, 2011

Huh? That’s not even…ah forget it.

Sheeeeeeeeiiiiiiiit -Clay Davis
#WireQuoteDay—
mike tully (@realmiketully) March 25, 2011

Even Isiah Whitlock Jr. thinks that’s a lame pick.

"I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It's all in the Game though, right?" -Omar #WireQuoteDay—
Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) March 24, 2011

This is one of the best moments in The Wire, but come on. You can do better than this on Wire Quote Day!

"Aw F—." "Mother F—–." "F— F— F—ety F—." "F—." "Hmph F—." "F— F— F—." "The F—?" #WireQuoteDay http://bit.ly/ehcCFU—
Rocco DeMaro (@RoccoDeMaro) March 25, 2011

Awesome scene, but as a quote? Poo.

Anyway — here are my picks:

Update: No surprise…it turns out that Wire Quote Day was the brainchild of America’s best TV critic, Tim Goodman:

We need to designate a Wire Quote Day. "One of theirs gotta drop." – Marlo.—
Tim Goodman (@BastardMachine) March 24, 2011

Rumors on the Internets is constantly deluged with tips and articles, most of them worthy of posting — but if we can’t find an original angle, we usually pass. We post the best of these items to our Facebook page so our readers can enjoy all the goodness. It’s a nice break from your oversharing, obnoxious friends and their meaningless thoughts, I assure you.

Join the fun by clicking here:

Here’s what you missed over the past week:

HEATHER MORRIS FOR THE WIN

Glee fans know Heather Morris (above) as Brittany, the delightfully dumb cheerleader who loves scissoring, but before she broke out on that show, she was a backup dancer for Beyonce.

This video is a “choreography demo” intended to show Lady Bee some dance moves worked out by her choreography team and backup dancer.

You will have no trouble locating Ms. Morris because she absolutely crushes it on this video…

“TRUE LOVE WAYS”

I’m sure you all enjoyed the Panda Cheese Panda video.

Commenter Vicky Pickering points out that the Panda’s theme song is this Buddy Holly classic, which deserves to be appreciated in its own right:

RESCUE LOS 33!

If you have no fear of carpal-tunnel symptoms or have a lot of time on your hands, you can re-live the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners with this delightful Flash game.

THE WIRE MONOPOLY

Reader Major Beans sent along this terrific concept, posted at Unreality Magazine:

It’s pretty damn cool, but still needs some work.

For starters, 8 different properties are marked “Stoop.” Not cutting it in my book. Maybe the board’s creators oughta flesh it out with some actual street corners, such as those marked on this map.

Amazing concept, however. But then again, this is a completely biased view coming from a guy who refers to the the robber in Settlers of Catan as “Omar.”

CHARGERS FANS, SHOW ME YOUR LIGHTNING BOLTS!

This amazing viral video is of a kid who lives in PA yet somehow has become a Chargers fan…

He was absolutely devastated by the loss to Oakland last weekend, so of course his mom (a Steelers fan) captured it all on video so the world could laugh at him.

Thanks to this guy’s mom for the laughs, and to Nils Coq au Vin and his brother MAC for passing this one along.

Thank you, as well, to all of our Facebook fans for their support. Don’t be afraid to chime in with comments, “likes” and reactions, positive or negative.

Once again, join our Facebook posse by clicking here:

In our opinion, this is the greatest television show ever made. In its scope, seriousness, ambition, performances, writing, photography, and economy of narrative, it is virtually unparalleled. This show blew through the rubble of the walls torn down by “The Sopranos” and delivered to its viewers a story that was more urgent, more complex, more heartbreaking, and more relevant than any ever told before on television.

Without question, “The Wire” was the best television show of the aughts.

David Simon spent decades writing for the Baltimore Sun, mainly on the police beat, where he ultimately managed to embed himself in the homicide department. The result was his book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets,” which ultimately became an excellent 90s police drama. In collaboration with Ed Burns, a former Baltimore detective and school teacher who Simon met in his Sun days, he wrote the book “The Corner,” and later adapted it into an HBO miniseries.

In 2002, Burns and Simon began working on a new, even more ambitious HBO project that would be a police procedural on the surface, but would take as its subject a topic no less weighty than the decline and fall of the American urban social compact and the corrupting power of huge American institutions, with the rippling consequences on the lives of Baltimore’s most unfortunate citizens.

In a recent and tremendously informative interview with Vice, Simon related the meaning of the show as he sees it:

It’s one thing to recognize capitalism for the powerful economic tool it is and to acknowledge that, for better or for worse, we’re stuck with it and, hey, thank God we have it. There’s not a lot else that can produce mass wealth with the dexterity that capitalism can. But to mistake it for a social framework is an incredible intellectual corruption and it’s one that the West has accepted as a given since 1980—since Reagan. Human beings—in this country in particular—are worth less and less. When capitalism triumphs unequivocally, labor is diminished. It’s a zero-sum game…

I guess what I’m saying is that the overall theme was: We’ve given ourselves over to the Olympian god that is capitalism and now we’re reaping the whirlwind. This is the America that unencumbered capitalism has built. It’s the America that we deserve because we let it happen. We don’t deserve anything better. The Wire was trying to take the scales from people’s eyes and say, “This is what you’ve built. Take a look at it.” It’s an accurate portrayal of the problems inherent in American cities.

Are there other parts of those cities that are economically viable? Of course. You can climb higher up on the pyramid that is capitalism and find the upper-middle-class neighborhoods and the private schools. You can find where the money went. But The Wire was dissent because of its choice to center itself on the other America, the one that got left behind. That was the overall theme and that worked for all five seasons. So that’s the institution versus the individual.

To portray the characters in this epic narrative, Simon and Burns turned to an ensemble unlike any seen before on TV — especially in terms of racial composition. They cast C-list actor Dominic West (perhaps best known at the time as Sandy Bullock’s a-hole boyfriend in “28 Days”) in the lead role, but surrounded him with a cast of no-name actors. Many of these performers were experienced veterans, bit players in many films and television shows, but others were discovered at local stage companies, and dozens of fine performances on “The Wire” have been delivered by completely inexperienced actors cast off the street. Simon and Burns also used their extensive connections in Baltimore to haul in many memorable Baltimoreans for supporting parts  – disgraced former state police superintendent Ed Norris plays a homicide detective, former drug kingpin Little Melvin Williams plays a church deacon, and Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich has a cameo as a security guard.

You would think this unconventional approach to casting would be disastrous. In fact, it is anything but. “The Wire” has the finest and most compelling ensemble cast in television history. Dozens deep, the characters keep coming at you, season after season, grabbing your eyeballs with magnificent performances. It’s ultimately impossible to think of these actors and not see them as the characters they so memorably portrayed on the series.

The next element of “The Wire” that led it to eternal greatness is its superb writing staff. Along with Simon and Burns, the writer’s table featured Rafael Alvarez, who penned many classic episodes, Joy Lusco Kecken, a mainstay of the early seasons, and Simon’s former Sun colleague Bill Zorzi, who crafted the political storylines of the later seasons. What’s more, they recruited the eastern seaboard’s finest crime novelists to join the staff, plucking them from nearby cities like a college recruiter assembling a national champion. DC’s George Pelecanos (“The Big Blowdown”), New York’s Richard Price (“Clockers”), and Boston’s Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”) joined the writing team and contributed greatly to the show’s layered, complex narratives and characterizations.

Moreover, the show had the look and feel of real inner-city Bodymore, Murdaland. The crew shot on locations throughout the city, thanks to the open embrace of municipal officials and the city’s residents. The aesthetic qualities of the show were enhanced by lots of well-chosen diegetic music ranging from The Pogues (in the policemen’s bar) to Young Leek (on the radios of the corner boys). A huge amount of credit for the show’s tonal brilliance has to go to producer Robert Colesberry, a Hollywood veteran who helped relative neophytes Simon and Burns navigate the ropes of a major television series. Every season until his unexpected death partway through the run of “The Wire,” Colesberry slaved over the opening credit sequence, seeking to find the perfect combination of sights and sounds to represent the show’s ethos:

The series centers on Dominic West’s portrayal of Jimmy McNulty, a headstrong, arrogant, charming Baltimore “po-lice” determined to outsmart the city’s criminals. McNulty is incensed by the murder trial of D’Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.), a scion of the Barksdale criminal family who walks free thanks to bribed witnesses. McNulty, though just a lowly homicide detective, uses his relationship with Judge Phelan (Peter Gerety) to initiate an investigation of the Barksdale gang, which is being ignored by the Baltimore Police Department in their quest for arrest “stats”; the BPD is blinded by their tactics of assaulting city street corners like checkpoints in a war zone. (This clip is out of sequence, but it pretty much says it all.)

Despite the opposition of McNulty’s commander in homicide, the irascible Major William Rawls (John Doman), the department reluctantly authorizes a detail headed by Lieutenant Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), a rising star in the BPD who is conflicted between his wife’s ambitions for his career and his passion for solid police work. You’d think that those two concepts would work in concert, but “The Wire” effectively and repeatedly demonstrates that in the real world of Baltimore, singleminded devotion to the purported goal of your organization often hinders your ability to rise within that organization: hardcore police get stashed in the pawn shop unit for making waves in the department, drug dealers who take an enlightened approach to “the game” end up getting caught up in a senseless crossfire over ghetto territory, and newspaper editors who insist on accuracy get demoted, while the Jayson Blairs get Pulitzers.

The detail is a mishmash of odds and ends from around the department, intended to be ineffective and quickly fade away: through it, we meet many of the series’ main characters. Sonja Sohn is a revelation as Kima Greggs, Lieutenant Daniels’ protege in narcotics, who is quickly entranced by McNulty’s passion for police work, to the consternation of her longtime boss. The comedy team of inept detectives, Thomas “Herc” Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Ellis Carver (Seth Gilliam) are the unit’s footsoldiers, often left out on a roof doing surveillance. Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) is an older detective known as a “housecat” for his years working a desk job, but it soon turns out that he’s an exceptionally competent cop who wasn’t stuck inside by choice.  Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost) is a son-in-law of a colonel who’s proven incompetent at almost every assignment. Rhonda Pearlman, an assistant D.A., is the detail’s legal liaison, and soon becomes McNulty’s mistress. The unit is rounded out by a peanut gallery of idiots and drunks from every dark corner of the department. Daniels manages to salvage his detail somewhat by bargaining with another commander for Leander Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson), a promising young detective capable of doing undercover work.

McNulty often enlists the help of his homicide partner Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce), a foulmouthed clotheshorse who we would hire to investigate the murder of any loved one, even though he is a fictional character. He’s that awesome.

Relentlessly prodded by McNulty, the detail focuses on the principals of the powerful Barksdale gang: the intimidating Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), his crafty second-in-command Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), and ruthless hitman Wee-Bey Brice (Hassan Johnson), as well as D’Angelo, Avon’s nephew: a young man born into the game who might not be cut out for its rigors. We watch as D’Angelo attempts to organize a “crew” of very young men in a low-rise housing project known as “the pit” — corralling the vicious Bodie Broadus (J.D. Williams), the amorous Malik “Poot” Carr (Trey Cheney), and the bright Wallace (Michael B. Jordan).

As with nearly all the sets of characters in the show, the casting of the Barksdale gang is flawless. The Julliard-trained Gilliard simply looks and sounds out of place alongside his street-wise subordinates, none of whom had much acting experience before joining the show. Meanwhile, the leading-man skills of Harris and Elba make them intimidating figures on the screen:

As the detail zeroes in on the pit crew, tapping pay phones and watching them from nearby high-rises, Kima begins to work with her confidential informant Bubbles (Andre Royo), a heroin addict who knows the streets inside and out.

Meanwhile, Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) stalks the drug dealers of the city, wielding a shotgun and whistling “The Farmer in the Dell.” It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Omar Little is one of the greatest and most original characters in the history of television: a black, gay man whose job description is “I rip and run…I robs drug dealers.” His immortal catchphrase, “Oh, indeed,” will live on forever in television lore. Here is one of the show’s most memorable scenes, in which Omar turns the tables on mob lawyer Maurice Levy (Michael Kostroff) while testifying at the trial of one of the Barksdale soldiers:

“The Wire” is a challenging show that expects its viewers to listen up and pay attention. Many people we’ve urged to watch the show have struggled through the first few episodes, finding them slow and a little boring. That’s OK – each season unfolds like a novel, setting up its characters and themes in the early episodes, thickening the plot in the middle of the season, building up to an epic conclusion late in the season, followed by a thoughtful denouement and everyone’s favorite thing, a montage. We watch as Daniels begins to ignore his career and follow his passion, even as McNulty drives him insane; under Freamon’s tutelage, Prez becomes a superb detective; Kima goes undercover on an assignment that goes horribly awry; and D’Angelo sinks deeper and deeper into the doomed world of “the game.”

By the end of season one — in which the Barksdale gang’s attempts to capture and kill Omar have dreadful consequences that ripple through all the characters’ lives — if you haven’t been hooked, then you need to stop reading this website and never come back again. Seriously.

Season Two shifts focus to the Baltimore docks, where stevedores ply a dying trade at the Patapsco Terminal — their livelihood under unrelenting attack from real estate developers and automated robot replacements. Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer) is a union leader who has begun cutting deals with Spiros Vondas (Paul Ben-Victor), the pointman for an international smuggler known only as “the Greek.” When a shipment of prostitutes goes awry, a “can full of dead girls” ends up on the Baltimore docks and is discovered by port patrolwoman Beadie Russell (Amy Ryan). Eventually, the detail springs back into action thanks to inane departmental politics, and discovers that the docks are a highway for drugs straight into the poorest neighborhoods of Baltimore. One memorable scene has Bunk and Freamon attempting to interrogate shipmates from the boat that carried the dead girls:

In the meantime, Omar continues his relentless assault on the Barksdale gang, in an increasingly bloody and Pyrrhic war that leads to the death of one of his associates. Bunk, charged with investigating the murder, confronts Omar about the devastation that his ilk have caused the city.

There are many valid choices for “best scene of ‘The Wire’” ever, but this is our pick.

Season Three is a simply perfect piece of television filmmaking. Stringer Bell mightily tries to limit the gang’s liability by stepping back from fights over territory and supplying street dealers in concert with an alliance of Bmore drug kingpins led by the rotund Proposition Joe (Robert Chew). Avon insists upon holding corners. As Stringer takes college classes and tries to invest the gang’s money in real estate development, the detail and the pressures of the street close in on him. Avon begins a war with Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector), a up-and-coming dealer who refuses to back down to Stringer’s co-op or Avon’s reputation.

Robert Wisdom’s Major Bunny Colvin (seen in the second clip above) reacts to the relentless pressure to reduce crime in his district by deciding to legalize drugs, creating a free zone known as “Hamsterdam.” As the police officers under Colvin’s command struggle to deal with his change in tactics, Ellis Carver – now a DEU sergeant – begins to absorb some of Bunny’s schooling.

Meanwhile, our main man McNulty — who’s been dumped by both his wife and Rhonda Pearlman — begins to realize that he’s never going to find fulfillment through police work alone. This kick in the ass from Lester Freamon helps, of course:

Season Four is the most acclaimed of the series. It’s probably not a coincidence that most viewers and many critics didn’t really notice this show existed until the fourth season began airing. As Prez begins a new career in the Baltimore public school system, we meet some of his young charges…Namond Brice (Julito McCullum), Wee-Bey’s son who thinks himself a player in the game; Michael Lee (Tristan Wilds), a stoic, tough kid who takes care of his younger brother Bug; Randy Wagstaff (Maestro Harrell) an enterprising young orphan who cracks under pressure; and Dukie Weems (Jermaine Crawford), an intelligent boy trapped in absolute poverty.

Marlo’s crew are now the undisputed lords of West Baltimore, thanks to his ruthless instinct and the help of two deadly efficient enforcers, Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson <— seriously, read this). The Stanfield gang is beyond ruthless: they’ll kill someone if there’s a rumor that he insulted Marlo. For a long time, they baffle our friends in the police department with a nonexistent body count: we know, however, that Chris and Snoop are hiding bodies in the many decaying, abandoned houses in Baltimore’s inner city. The scene that opens Season Four, in which Snoop buys a nail gun from a home improvement store for the purpose of sealing up the vacant houses, is a classic:

A political storyline also threads through Seasons Three and Four, featuring the upstart mayoral campaign of Thomas Carcetti, a Martin O’Malley-alike who dares to dream that the age of the white mayor in Baltimore isn’t over. Through the political scenes, we find out more about the policy pressures that often undergird the problems we witness in the police department, the schools, and the neighborhoods. Carcetti is presented as a sympathetic alternative to the venal, corrupt politicians like state Rep. Clay Davis (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), but he too is corruptible — we see him cheat on his wife and make cynical decisions to advance his political career. Still, Carcetti’s passion for public service makes him a character we want to see succeed, as in this amusing scene where his own campaign manager jokes about voting for someone else:

Season Five’s new storylines are mostly solid, though not as fascinating as those introduced earlier – we meet the staff of the Baltimore Sun, a particular interest of David Simon’s, and watch as the dickish editors chase prizes and ignore the city’s real problems. The relative dullness of the newspaper storylines are completely forgivable, however, because they are paired with developments in the ongoing narratives that bring the show to a transcendent “conclusion” (you’ll see what we mean when you watch it).

Many, many characters re-appear in the fifth season, their lives having been transformed in some way, for better or for worse. Some finally get their shit together; others come unraveled in disturbing ways. For every junkie that gets clean, another troubled kid picks up the needle. One cop hangs up his badge, and another is there to scoop it up. The criminals kill each other over money, territory, or “connects”; the cops valiantly surveil and wiretap, trying for the magic moment when you catch someone doing dirt on the wire. The game is still the game.

We just ran down a solid dozen paragraphs of recap, and still managed to skip over tons of great characters and storylines, like that of Dennis “Cutty” Wise, a cold-blooded killer whose rage and menace have been diluted by a long prison stint; Marcia Donnelly, the assistant principal of a Baltimore middle school who may not be officially in charge, but runs the school with an iron fist; Brother Mouzone, the bowtied New York hitman who loves to read Harper’s; Nick Sobotka, the young stevedore who can’t make a living in his family’s trade, and has to turn to drug dealing to support his girlfriend and young daughter; and so many more.

Anyone paying close attention to this series knows we have much love for Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle. Heed his words:

Ostensibly a cop series with a story to tell about the drug war in America’s inner city (Baltimore, in this case), “The Wire” over five seasons was really an insanely ambitious, intimately detailed historical document about institutional failure on all levels – cops, criminals, courts, politics, schools and newspapers. Dense, novelistic, painful, funny, real and transformative all at once. “The Wire” is the best television series ever made. Period.

Salon’s Laura Miller compares “The Wire” to a classical masterpiece:

“The Iliad” is only one poem from a series known as the Epic Cycle (“The Odyssey” is another; the rest are lost), full of dead heroes and the fathers (and mothers and wives and children) who mourn them. This story, too, goes on and on. Death, loss, enslavement, the ruination of all their hopes and dreams, and yet in the midst of the world’s stony realities, as inevitable as the wine darkness of the sea and the rosy fingers of dawn, there can be heroism, courage, honor. Just don’t expect things to change; all of this is part of the game, and in “The Iliad” the game is war.

The characters in “The Wire” inhabit such a world. The gods may have different names; instead of Apollo and Juno pulling the strings, it’s the bureaucracy, party politics, the free market: all equally capricious and implacable. Anyone who tries to alter the system — be it Stringer Bell aiming to turn legit businessman, Bunny Colvin experimenting with decriminalizing drugs in “Hamsterdam” or Frank Sobotka struggling to save his beloved stevedores union from its inevitable demise — will be crushed. The best they can hope for is to clean up one little corner of their world; Bunny may not be able to save the neighborhood, but at the end of Season 4, he managed to save one kid.

To thrive, you have to learn to fly low and kiss up, and if you’re unfortunate enough to be afflicted with a sense of vocation, you play it like that smooth operator, Bunk Moreland, not like that perennial troublemaker, Jimmy McNulty.

Despite the greatness of the other shows among our top ten list and honorable mentions, “The Wire” stands alone as a masterful creation of television programming that is impossible to top.

In five virtually-perfect seasons, it made us laugh and cringe, boiled our blood and drew us to the edge of our seats; sometimes we got a little dust in our eyes. It’s the greatest television show we have ever encountered. The end.

TV Aughtrospective:
Introduction and Runners-Up
#10: “Six Feet Under.”
#9: “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.”
#8: “The Daily Show.”
#7: “South Park.”
#6: “Mad Men.”
#5: “Arrested Development.”
#4: “American Idol.”
#3: “Lost.”
#2: “The Sopranos.”
#1: “The Wire.”

The cast of The Wire will stick up for you!

So, Mike Phelps took an Olympic-sized hit from a top-of-the-line Roor bong at a South Carolina frat party.

All hell broke loose after the above picture got out…

The local po-po arrested a bunch of hapless stoners and pumped them for info on Aquaman instead of, you know, asking where they got their drugs from. Not that we’d encourage any investigation of small time drug users in a jurisdiction with several unsolved homicides.

Kellogg’s said “Oh hell no” and pulled his endorsements, which we’re SURE was purely for moral reasons and not a cost-saving measure in light of the economic apocalypse.

Then Phelps had to apologize to China for being one toke over the line!! Sweet Jesus.

Well, Phleppsyboy, everything we’ve seen about you out of the pool indicates that you’re something of a douche. We wish we could find a link to the story about Phelps jealously texting male swimmers that their ladies were hitting it with NBA stars in Beijing, just because said ballers were ignoring him. But we can’t, so trust us…

Anyway, you might feel really alone right now, but you aren’t.

Ziggy Sobotka, Bodie Broadus and Bubbles are on your side, according to NYMag’s VULTURE blog!

Let’s start with these amusing comments from James Ransone, who played troubled dockworker Ziggy in Season 2.

“I am literally shocked that he lost the fucking Kellogg’s endorsement. It’s a fucking cereal. What do you think stoners eat?” said James Ransone, who played hapless dock worker and small-time dealer Ziggy, at a Sports Illustrated party on Wednesday.

Does “literally shocked” mean he stuck his finger in a socket because he was so distraught at the injustice?

“That’s my next tattoo. A portrait of Michael Phelps ripping a bong on my back,” Ransone continued.

“The ultimate irony is that I hate weed because it’s disgusting and awful. The last time I tried to smoke pot I was 22. I watched Boogie Nights and cried myself to sleep while eating Cool Ranch Doritos.”

More comments on the situation were forthcoming from series regular JD Williams, the actor who portrayed Bodie on the show’s first four seasons:

“Do you know how long it takes to smoke from a bong? For them to take that picture, he had to be doing the slowest, longest hit ever!”

(That makes no sense, but whatever.)

Bodie takes hits so fast, he can’t be photographed. Be a man!!!

Williams also thought Phelps shouldn’t have copped to the crime so quickly. “I’m not a big advocate of lying, but he probably could have kept us at bay a little longer,” says Williams. “He could have said, ‘Actually, there was no weed in there. I was just showing everybody, like, how if I was doing it, how I’d put my lips on the bong.’ It would have boiled over. But he just gave it up right away! Like, ‘Yeah there was weed in the bong and I was smoking it. I’m young. It will never happen again.’ You’re 23, homeboy! Trust me, if you’re 23 and smoking weed now, you’re gonna smoke some more.”

We can count on the actor who spent the most time on the show, five-season veteran Andre Royo, to give the most forward-looking, pragmatic outlook. The more time you spend with David Simon, the smarter you become.

André Royo, who played lovable junkie-informant Bubbles, thought Kellogg’s loss was medical marijuana advocates’ gain: “At the end of the day, I think it’s a great advertisement for weed,” said Royo at benefit on Monday for Women’s Expressive Theater.

Bubs looks on the bright side…

“It didn’t slow him down. He broke records! I can see Michael being the face of whatever that marijuana-legalization proposition is in California: ‘You, too, can get eight medals if you smoke a bong.’”

So there you have it!

Coming soon, Herc and Carver defend A-Rod against steroid outrage.

The sunny, broad intersection of Arizona Street and Boulevard Pope John Paul II abuts the Rio Grande and is a five-minute drive from a main bridge into El Paso. Easily visible across the river was a picket line of U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.

Huerta was riding in the passenger seat of a new silver-colored Dodge Journey SUV with Texas plates, which had stopped at a red light. The car was driven by a secretary at the prosecutor’s office, Marisela Esparza Granados. When García arrived, the splintered windshield wipers on the vehicle were still struggling to operate.

The intersection around the Dodge was littered with spent shells. García and his partner, who carry clipboards but no weapons, methodically photographed the scene and collected 85 casings, all in the caliber consistent with the account some witnesses told police — that two hooded men from two vans pulled in front of the Dodge and opened fire with AK-47s.

The criminologists at the forensic lab were struck by several details. First, they suspected that Huerta was followed by at least one, and perhaps several, chase vehicles, which would have helped the gunmen get into position to ambush Huerta. They knew the car Huerta would use and his route, the investigators said.

Second, the criminologists were impressed with the precision, speed and audacity of the attack.

When it rolled to a stop at the traffic light, Huerta’s vehicle was surrounded by other cars at a crowded intersection. But no other vehicles were hit by stray bullets. Later, Hawley, the lab coordinator, pointed out the tight pattern of gunfire pocking the SUV’s windshield.

“You see they hit where they aim. He was the target. Not her,” Hawley said. The assassins concentrated their fire directly at Huerta, who was not wearing a bulletproof vest. “If they know they’re wearing a bulletproof vest, they ignore the chest and shoot the head,” he added.

The autopsy revealed that Huerta had been struck at least 40 times, most in the chest. The passenger seat of the SUV was soaked with blood. The secretary, Esparza, was struck only three times, though a neck wound was fatal.

In the crime laboratory, the shell casings were examined by the ballistics team and recorded. The bullets are almost always from the United States. The assassins do not trust bullets made in Mexico, Hawley said, adding, “The American bullets are better.”

You’ve just enjoyed a tasty portion of the WASHINGTON POST‘s article on the deadliness of Mexican drug cartel assassins.

Now, American news sources have been gawking at the insane Mexican assassination situation for some time now. Here’s an article from the New York Times about a decade ago that observes the cartel’s penchant for recruiting American assassins, focusing on one top Mexican-American killer:

The hit man, David Barron Corona, 34, led a group of young Hispanic toughs who started in crime by selling marijuana and amphetamines on California street corners, developed a taste for murder in years of drive-by shootings, and after establishing contacts with Mexican traffickers blossomed into a ruthless new breed of cross-border assassin.

[…]

Although Mr. Barron’s story is dramatic, he is by no means unique, an American anti-drug agent said. Mexican traffickers have been recruiting gang members in cities all along the 2,000-mile border to work as henchmen in Mexico, he said.

The agent described these gang members as ”hard-core, violence-prone” criminals who speak both English and Spanish and have access to weapons. ”They’ll do anything for money,” the agent said.

”It’s the same thing in El Paso-Juarez,” he added, referring to the metropolitan area that straddles the border between Texas and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. ”They kill on one side of the river and hide on the other. That’s why the border is as much a mirror of what is happening in the United States as it is of Mexico.”

[…]

When exactly Mr. Barron made the acquaintance of Ramon Arellano Felix, one of the brothers who control the Tijuana cartel, is not clear. But he appears to have earned Mr. Arellano’s enduring trust in November 1992, when Mr. Arellano was pinned down in the restroom of a disco in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, during an attack by gunmen from a rival drug mafia.

Mr. Barron helped Mr. Arellano escape through the disco’s air-conditioning ducts, American officials said.

After that experience, Mr. Arellano assigned Mr. Barron to recruit cartel gunmen from among gang associates in San Diego, according to a United States prosecutor who discussed Mr. Barron in a 1995 interview.

”When the traffickers wanted to send hit squads into Mexico, Barron would assemble the group and dispatch them to their targets,” the prosecutor said. The gang members were paid weekly retainers and given bonuses of thousands of dollars for specific jobs, the prosecutor said.

Mr. Barron recruited gang members for an attack on one of the Arellanos’ rivals in May 1993. That operation degenerated into a furious firefight at the Guadalajara airport and left a Roman Catholic Cardinal dead in the crossfire, said Alejandro Hodoyan, an Arellano lieutenant who was arrested last year and described the workings of the cartel to Mexican investigators.

Well, that guy might SOUND like a masta killa, but look how things turned out for him:

Accidentally capped in the eye by his own hit squad. And the target got away. We’re not impressed.

Well, unfortunately the Mexican cartel killers have evolved quite a bit from the David Barron days:

In Mexico’s chaotic drug war, attacks are no longer the work of desperate amateurs with bad aim. Increasingly, the killings are being carried out by professionals, often hooded and gloved, who trap their targets in coordinated ambushes, strike with overwhelming firepower, and then vanish into the afternoon rush hour — just as they did in the Huerta killing.

The paid assassins, known as sicarios, are rarely apprehended. Mexican officials say the commando squads probably travel from state to state, across a country where the government and its security forces are drawing alarming conclusions about the scope and skill of an enemy supported by billions of dollars in drug profits.

“They are getting very good at their jobs,” said Hector Hawley Morelos, coordinator of the state forensics and crime laboratory here, where criminologists and coroners have been overwhelmed by more than 1,600 homicides in Juarez this year. “The assassins show a high level of sophistication. They have had training — somewhere. They appear to have knowledge of police investigative procedures. For instance, they don’t leave fingerprints. That is very disturbing.”

[...]

In the Juarez morgue, the three walk-in freezers are filled to capacity with more than 90 corpses, stacked floor to ceiling, in leaking white bags with zippers. After a few months, those who are not identified are buried in a field at the city cemetery at the edge of the desert.

“The patterns that we often see with organized crime homicides are high-caliber weapons, multiple wounds, extreme trauma,” said Alma Rosa Padilla, a chief medical examiner, who completes as many as five full autopsies each day. “They don’t go to the hospital.”

OK, that’s terrifying.

As the WAPO article points out, there are a lot of former army and police members defecting to the dark side all the time, bringing their expertise along with them.

Dude. That’s like Lieutenant Daniels’ Major Case Squad joining forces with the Marlo Stanfield crew to take out Tommy Carcetti, Scott Templeton and Julian Bond.

Well, like that, except in real life and not cool. Also, Mexican.

[NEXT IN THIS SERIES: "Tijuana's Pozolero is One Cold Sumbitch"]

The eyes of Irish cokeheads aren’t smiling tonight.

In a daring operation at sea last week, Irish authorities seized a cocaine shipment worth almost 700 million euros from a yacht called “Dances with Waves.”

This was no fluke…the yacht had been identified as the carrier of a drug shipment before it even left the Caribbean. American “black radar” tracked it across the Atlantic as a global narcotics-fighting consortium prepared to seize it when it landed. Then the cheesily-named yacht got caught in a gigantic storm and had to be rescued.

Too bad for its crew that the rescuers came to arrest them too…

Attend the tale of Operation Seabight!

OPERATION Seabight will go down in history as a landmark Irish anti-drug smuggling operation.

The critical element of the operation is not that it delivered Ireland’s largest cocaine seizure with the recovery of an estimated €675m worth of high-grade Colombian cocaine. In fact, the major element of Operation Seabight is that, for the first time, it illustrated the potential of police forces in numerous countries liaising and exploiting military-style technology in the war against drugs.

The startling reality is that the 60-foot sloop ‘Dances With Waves’ was doomed to arrest from almost the minute it left the Caribbean.

As the old sloop battled gales and mountainous seas to cross the Atlantic with her cargo of 1,875kg of cocaine, her every movement was watched.

It is a certainty the yacht was tracked on radar in the Caribbean by a long range P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft which is at the forefront of the US war on drugs, probably in collaboration with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

The Orion, used by both the US Customs Service and the US Navy along with other forces, can patrol for up to 17 hours at a stretch operating from a base in Florida to cover the Caribbean. It uses sophisticated inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) to produce a two-dimensional high-resolution image of a ship.

Suspicions over ‘Dances With Waves’ mounted when she was detected in waters off Trinidad & Tobago. Just 17 months ago, the catamaran ‘Lucky Day’, whose 1,554kg cocaine shipment was seized in Dunlough Bay in west Cork, began her transatlantic journey from precisely these same waters.

We’re told the Lucky Day’s sister ships, the “Ned Nederlander” and the “Dusty Bottoms,” escaped capture…

Two aspects of this tale are pretty entertaining. The first is the awesome technology and tactics utilized by the anti drug forces to catch their prey:

US satellites — several with military-style surveillance capabilities — tracked the sloop as it continued its slow journey.

‘Over the horizon’ or ‘black’ radar — almost impossible to detect — was used to monitor every movement of the sloop. The radar is used to detect targets at very long ranges, up to thousands of kilometres.

Such radars are used by the US Navy, which can track ships up to 3,000 kilometres away, and operate in an anti-drug role from bases in Virginia to cover the Caribbean and Central America, and from Texas to cover the Atlantic and Pacific.

So precise was the monitoring operation that European and US police forces knew the sloop was in trouble in the stormy seas in the hours before she was boarded.

[...]

The astonishing level of surveillance was the result of co-operation between some of the world’s leading police and anti-drug agencies.

Four agencies in particular delivered the ‘Dances With Waves’ seizure — the Portugal-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (MAOC); the elite Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in the UK; Ireland’s Joint Drugs Taskforce; and the DEA, so beloved of Hollywood crime writers.

Between them, the four agencies can access virtually unlimited resources — and can bridge the sophistication gap that, for so long, favoured the drug smugglers.

Yesterday, gardai and Naval Service personnel refused to comment on the precise intelligence and assets used to track ‘Dances With Waves’.

But one navy officer put it succinctly when he acknowledged: “This is undoubtedly the most successful anti-drug operation we have ever mounted.”

The other amusing point is that the yacht was about to capsize, dumping its precious cargo into the sea, when the authorities rushed in to save the day. It seems they were as interested in saving the blow as the smugglers were!

THE luxury yacht carrying around €700m worth of cocaine was of the verge of capsizing when naval officers swooped on Thursday morning.

The 70 bales of cocaine were within minutes of being washed into the sea, as happened off the Cork coast last year.

Authorities were forced to board the ship in “horrendous weather conditions” to prevent evidence being lost in the seven- metre swells.

Gardai believe that the traffickers underestimated the stormy Atlantic conditions.

Although the 60ft craft could travel at high speeds, it was not designed for rough weather.

Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea said there were “huge waves” when naval personnel made their move.

While praising the operation, Minister O’Dea said that he would not be going to Cork.

“They’ve taken the vessel in and are doing an inspection of the yacht now.

“The lads did the job, let them take the praise,” he said.

The smugglers must have crapped their pants when they were battling to save their yacht from Poseidon only to look up and see this gigantic warship roll up alongside:

“Yeah, we’re gonna need that cocaine. Oh, and also your freedom.”

The drug war is largely a waste of resources, in our opinion.

But as long as we’re fighting it, I guess you gotta concur with Minister O’Dea and congratulate the lads on a job well done. As we say here in America, they’re good po-lice.

The holidays are approaching…but in these dire financial times, many of us don’t have the cash to blow on our sweeties and main squeezes this year.

Don’t worry, ROTI has got the situation all figured out. Instead of paying retail prices for jewelry at the mall, you gotta get in on the North Carolina Department of Administration’s State Surplus Property Auction!

Almost two hundred items will be up for bid, from rings to bracelets to necklaces and top-quality watches, and all at a discount price.

How is this possible? Because everything in the auction was seized from drug dealers:

RALEIGH, N.C. – If you’re in the market for a diamond-studded gold gorilla pendant, the North Carolina Department of Revenue may have just what you’re looking for — thanks to busted drug dealers.

The department hopes to auction hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry — including a $38,000 watch and a $23,000 gold pendant depicting Jesus — confiscated during drug busts over the past year by the department’s unauthorized substances division.

Necklaces, rings and bracelets will be available alongside more unique items, such as a $29,500 Jacob & Co. five time zone watch with a face of sparkling yellow, pink and blue stones forming the continents on a world map. A silver-colored men’s Breitling 1884 chronometre watch is listed at $38,000.

The diamond gorilla has a stone missing, but it’s still appraised at $21,600.

“You’d be surprised who buys this stuff,” Department of Revenue spokeswoman Kim Brooks said Monday.

New owners won’t get the stories behind the jewelry, though some collectors have bought pieces because they knew their history.

The public auction, scheduled for Thursday at the State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, will be the first of its kind in nine years.

Law enforcement agencies pick up cars, boats and other items, too, but usually everything is sold through a sealed bid process. This year, enough jewelry was confiscated to put together a public auction, Brooks said.

“We felt we had enough items that would be of interest to folks that might generate a little more money,” she said.

The seized pieces often find new homes with husbands shopping for their wives or jewelers looking for merchandise to sell. Some are melted down.

What?!? Melted down? We might have to go to this auction ourselves, just to be sure nothing melty happens to the $23,000 Jesus.

Here are some other choice items formerly sported by North Carolina rubber band men.

This is obviously the deal of the season! What woman WOULDN’T be thrilled to know that their new tennis bracelet was previously donned by a Raleigh Donette?

See you on Thursday!