An open thread on “The Wire.” We’ll catch up this week by opining on the first two episodes.

You may have noticed Richard Price wrote episode #2. He’s a novelist, and I recognized Major Bunny’s speech at the end of the hour as a version of one that appeared in “Clockers,” about the corner being the poor man’s lounge. He was describing the conflict between the law — which says you can’t drink on the street — and reality, which says it’s more fun for a poor man to drink on the street with his friends than inside a stuffy apartment, which is where the good people who run the city want him to drink. (They prefer to drink on the lovely, breezy outdoor patios of expensive restaurants, I guess.)

Anyhoo, by the end of the speech, we pretty much know where Maj. Bunny is going — he’s going to legalize drugs in his district, in a de facto way, by looking the other way when they’re being sold. You can’t really blame him; one of his cops is in the hospital, shot in the jaw during the sort of b.s. hand-to-hand drug bust we like to think makes a difference but really amounts to squishing toothpaste around in the tube. He’s giving up! He’s surrendering! He’s laying down his weapons, and we’ll just see what happens. This is going to be good.

Elsewhere, Kima is on the hunt at the lesbian bar, on the lookout for some strange because she just can’t get into being one of the new baby’s two mommies. This is why I love this show: It just confounds all your expectations. Kima’s so butch she’s worse than a man. I love her.

Bravo to HBO for including this link on their website, which is not entirely flattering to their presentation:

The truly difficult part, however, will be getting any new viewers to watch. “The Wire” has loyalists for the same reason important books have readers. But almost everyone else — Emmy dunces included — hasn’t tuned in. This is a series that goes beyond critical darling. “The Wire” is better than its own hype. If you don’t watch the show, it’s your fault, your loss.

It’s one thing to be principled and believe the work stands on its own, is worthy of effort on behalf of viewers and pays off immeasurably by season’s end. It’s entirely different to be audaciously — and perhaps ill-advisedly — disdainful of the most basic rule of television: Give people a reason to watch. Here’s hoping HBO slaps a 17-minute “previously on” montage to the beginning of Sunday’s episode, however unlikely.

OK, floor is yours. Discuss.

My name is Little Miss Workety-Work, and I think I’m going to knock off, here in hour 12 of my day-for-pay. Since nothing happened other than phone calls and copy manipulation, not much to report. Although we got some more fish! Fish, Round 3! Stay tuned!

But, there was some most excellent bloggage around the dial today, so here you are:

First, a Wall Street Journal correspondent’s personal e-mail to friends describing her daily life in Iraq becomes an overnight internet sensation. Small wonder: It’s some of the most vivid eyewitness reporting from Iraq I’ve yet read.

Second, Lance Mannion on Cat Stevens, old girlfriends and dad when he’s pissed off. Enjoy.

John Scalzi points out some cross-talk from Justice Scalia.

My beloved Poor Man, master o’ snark, gets ayn-gray, uses dirty words, makes sense.

I’m thinking of starting an every-Monday open thread for discussion of “The Wire.” Any takers?

Also, I was wrong about the Anne Hull series. The next two parts run next Sunday/Monday, not this week.

‘kay? See you all tomorrow.

I keep thinking I should write something about the Dan Rather thing, only the only thing I have to say seems so obvious and duhhh I keep waiting for someone else to say it. Probably someone has; I can’t read every damn blog in the world. But OK, here goes:

* If you were going to fake documents from 1972, wouldn’t your very first act be to go to a junk shop and buy a damn period typewriter? I mean, it’s so obvious. Doesn’t everyone old enough to remember typing the old-fashioned way remember their reaction the first time they used a word processor? Oooh, it looks just like a book, in case you forgot. Also: When I type ‘my 37th birthday,’ it makes the ‘th’ little and bumps it up half a line! That is too cool! OK, maybe not you, but certainly this was my reaction, and I’m not that different. Granted, I have a background in print publications, and I have half an eye for typography, thanks to JCB, but you probably had the same idea.

(Speaking of typewriters, JCB remembers, too.)

* Also, what’s all this crapola about the crumbling edifice of TV news, particularly that of the sainted Tiffany network? Does anyone watch network news anymore? I don’t, and I’m talking for years and years now. When I do, I’m astonished at how simple-minded so much of it is, how dead-on it’s aimed at the Crabby Old Man demographic (”Who’s spending your tax dollars on crap, crap I tell you? Stay tuned.”) And the ads! There’s a look at the id of any program, because the advertisers know: Adult diapers, cholesterol medications, and those pills whose name we cannot speak around here. (”Will you be ready?”) I haven’t watched network news regularly since I discovered NPR, which was in 1978. Plus I remember about a million other chinks in CBS’s armor, including “The Insider.”

So right there, I can’t get past the fact the obvious forgery is so totally obvious it’s insulting, and the premise that by humiliating Dan Rather, bloggers have somehow topped a Saddam statue and beaten it with their shoes.

That’s just me. But my brains may be suspect these days. I actually paid 99 cents for an iTunes Music Store download of that “Milkshake” song. That thing’s mind control, I tell ya.

If I was indolent over the weekend in my bloggage, I have an excuse: Our street had a block party. What a great end-of-summer idea — throw up barricades at the end of the street and drag some tables and barbecue grills out there instead. The kids get the primal thrill of riding their bikes all over the street and we get a similar charge out of sitting in a lawn chair eating a hamburger. The thing started at noon and broke up at 8 p.m. I came and went several times, even pausing for a nap for 90 minutes or so.

Yes, it was a potluck. “What are you bringing?” Alan asked.

“I thought I’d bring my beet sal–”

“WHY DON’T YOU JUST BRING KIPPERED HERRING?” Alan exploded. “I MEAN, FOR GOD’S SAKE.”

If he had heard me out, he’d have heard the whole plan — Waldorf salad for the rank and file, beet salad for the brave. Both were eaten to the last scrap. Revenge!

Because it was a neighborhood party and the policing is community-oriented, an officer dropped by, with his drug-sniffing dog. The kids were thrilled, especially when the dog peed on command, which is evidently something you have to teach a dog that spends most of its day riding around in the back seat.

The dog detected no illegal drugs at our party, although he seemed intent on the hamburgers.

Called Carolyn today, after I heard that Hurricane Jeanne took much the same path as Frances, which hit them pretty hard. She was, as usual, at work. No rest for the weary during a four-hurricane month, at least not for a weary Florida journalist. She told me funny stories about watching the network-news bigfeet take turns wading into a huge puddle to do their live stand-ups. My favorite, though, was the part about sleeping on a cot in her office, watching the storm rage outside the window: “There’s this green lightning, and at some point all you can do is just sit in awe and watch it.”

That’s the best part of journalism — the sitting-in-awe part.

Carolyn’s house is fine and they got their power back pretty quickly this time. And her paper’s website is getting a zillion hits a day.

Over the last couple of years I’ve come to look forward to Anne Hull’s bylilne in the WashPost. Even though it appears rarely, it’s always over a well-written story that keeps me paging through take after take (that’s newspaper jargon for “page after page,” if you’re wondering), the whole time saying, “But I don’t have time to read this much…”

I’ll follow a good writer anywhere.

Anyway, her Sunday/Monday two-parter on a gay teenage boy coming to terms with his sexuality in deepest Oklahoma is worth the time. First part here, second part here, and Tuesday/Wednesday is about a girl going through the same thing, if I read the promos right.

Yes, it’s long. Yes, it requires registration. But if you have the time, it’s worth it:

It was a Sunday morning that Janice Shackelford will never forget. Michael had a friend staying over. Church was starting in an hour, so Janice knocked on her son’s bedroom door. “Time to wake up, guys,” Janice remembers calling. She tried the door, but it was locked. Next to the door were some blinds hanging over a glass panel. Janice peeked through and saw Michael and his friend on the floor, kissing.

Suddenly, Janice realized why she’d hit so many roadblocks. “The gay movement had gone into the politics and changed everything,” she says. “Now it’s not even a disease or sickness.”

I’m thisclose to closing down comments and going back to the old send-Nance-an-e-mail system of feedback. Today I spent 20 minutes killing comment spam for boner pills. My blacklisting system can kill 80 at a time, and I must have reloaded at least six or seven pages’ worth, so that’s, what? Fifty million? Yes.

But speaking of which, I got an interesting call today: I was the high bidder, by default, on a geegaw from the Rockin’ Docs silent auction. There was a disputed high bid, the next two people down on the list didn’t leave phone numbers, and so there I was, little old me, high bidder (at $37) for a clock with a little blue pill that goes around on the second hand. A border around the edge asks, “Is it time to talk about (the pill whose name I dare not speak, for triggering another wave of comment spam)?” Plus there’s a necktie, AND two pens, all emblazoned with Big Pharma’s big hit.

I know just who I’m giving it to. That is, if I can stand to give it up.

When I worked in Columbus, the zoo — then under the stewardship of Jack Hanna — was the sort of place where a reporter just couldn’t win. The editor sat on the board, the publishers were big boosters, and the rules seem to be: We can’t write enough about this place, and it better be flattering. To be sure, there were a few good stories there, but for the most part it was Here’s the New Gorilla Exhibit, Is the Elephant Really Pregnant, et al.

Here’s one good story: A report came over the scanner that a gorilla had escaped from its cage. An escaped gorilla! It was a Superman comic! A photographer and I raced to the scene, only to find the gorilla had wandered through an unlocked door, nosed around the place, did no harm and then had to suffer the indignity of a tranquilizer dart. I wrote a whimsical piece that evoked King Kong and Fay Wray, the copy desk eviscerated it, and I hated zoo stories after that.

A much better zoo story came the night two keepers got drunk after hours and threw a troublesome, nipping goose into the cheetah exhibit. “Is this really Page One material?” the editor-on-the-zoo-board wondered. For once, he was overruled. If that isn’t a Page One story, nothing is.

The Fort Wayne zoo is a somewhat different story. It always got friendly coverage, but it pretty much always deserved it — it’s a children’s zoo that manages to be fun, inexpensive and people-pleasing all at once. It’s not too big, doesn’t have delusions of grandeur and is just a nice place to spend an afternoon. As is frequently the case with standout public institutions, it’s all due to one man — the former director, Earl Wells. He was a reporter’s dream, fun to talk to, easy to quote. I recall a long conversation about how misunderstood snakes are, while a friendly baby boa constrictor went up and down my arm. He was also a 4-H leader and all-around great guy. Everybody loved him. He retired a few years ago.

Last week came the awful news: He’d set up a ladder at his house that slipped into an underground wasp nest. He fell, was knocked unconscious, and stung something like 1,000 times, after which he fell into a coma. Died yesterday. Damn it all. Talk about irony. The man spends his life helping animals, and ends up slain by wasps.

Longtime readers — if there are any left — might recall the spring before last, when I was working the world’s nuttiest schedule, one-third columnist, one-third reporter, one-third metro editor. The latter was a night shift, which meant I answered at least a dozen calls a night from people who didn’t get their newspapers. Most of these I could transfer to the appropriate people in circulation, but there were always a few who called too late.

Most were righteously p.o.’d, and I can’t say I blame them — just because you didn’t get home from work until 7:30 doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get your newspaper if your carrier screwed up. I always asked where they lived, and if they lived south, I’d drop by on the way home from work and hand-deliver a copy. It took me into strange neighborhoods, but almost all of them would chat a bit, and that was a very nice fringe. It was spring, the world was turning warm, and I played jazz on the radio. I was Nick Danger, Late-Night Newsboy, who always goes the extra mile for a subscriber.

So you can imagine where my sympathies were when I read about this woman, cited for delivering her Harrisburg, Pa. Patriot-News route to a flooded area in a rubber raft. Illegal operation of a watercraft, or some such crapola. Of course the paper won’t back her up, because she’s an “independent contractor.” I say every so often you get to stand up for the good people in the world, and they oughta. We shall see.

Another southern California day — 80s, not a cloud, bright starlight, no humidity. You couldn’t have ordered a better one, so I spent the afternoon making phone calls, lolling with “Cloud Atlas” between them, and finally taking a bike ride. I went past our new skate park, which I’ll have to get the picture-machine going on — it’s quite a nice one, and it is packed, it seems. I’ve never ridden past that there weren’t at least 50 kids risking their necks. The city tried this in the ’80s; they threw up some half-pipes and let the lawyers take over, so it was liability-release-on-file and helmets-must-be-worn and restricted-hours-yessir and blah blah blah. Amazingly, it failed. This one is much nicer and has a plainly stated, skate-at-your-own-risk sign on the gate, and it’s hopping all the time. It’ll probably be supporting a snack bar before long. Economic development downtown! Who’d have thought?

Well, hell. I don’t know what happened. Day before yesterday, the computer was running so fast it was practically blowing my hair back. Then yesterday — nothing. I mean, I couldn’t get the network up with all the Viagra in the world. Today I went back downstairs, unplugged everything, dusted everything (don’t know why; it seemed like a proper offering to the gods), replugged everything in, and it worked at lightning speed again.

And yes, I did all this yesterday, and it didn’t work.

But it works now! Rejoice! Leave comments!

Reader Maureen asked if I can bring back the daily picture. Maybe. I’ll work on it. Right now, I’d be satisfied with the daily something-to-say. I’m aware I’m sucking of late, but oh well.

I wanted to write something about “The Wire.” I notice it premiered Sunday, on Emmy night, and I wonder if it was intentional — the show’s been shut all the way out, not even a nomination, every year it’s been eligible. (It did win a Peabody, no small consolation prize.) I also noticed too many people spent Sunday night watching said Emmys, and even though this is the age of TiVo, and HBO is the network of second chances to see what you missed Sunday, it makes me a little sad. No true “Wire” fan would miss the premiere.

If you haven’t seen the show before, don’t do what I did the first year: Shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh, another police procedural. No thanks.” It’s worth the time and effort, because it does what the best cop shows have always done — use the station house to tell a bigger story. In this case, we’re talking class and race and crime and punishment and luck and misfortune and …ambition! Yes, ambition is going to be a big, big theme this season. You can smell it. (Also, they tell you.)

About every piece of publicity this show gets mentions that its creator, David Simon, was a journalist, and surely, one of the very cool things about the show is how sharply observed it is, how it gets the details just right. The little corner boy with the asthma inhaler, the drug lord with the hankering to be a real businessman, the black couple in the fancy restaurant who look around and see two different things.

It’s a challenge to watch, no doubt about it, but put your little hand in mine, and we’ll climb the mountain together. The basic outline: The Barksdale gang sells drugs in the projects and on the corners of Baltimore; the police in the Major Case Squad are trying to bring them down. It all gets a little Russian-novelly at times, but HBO has visual aids, and anything you want to know, just ask.

A lot happens in this show; I notice the synopsis of the first episode on the HBO website is about four times longer than the ones for “Six Feet Under” and “Deadwood.” If you like challenging TV, you’ll certainly be challenged.

Make a date. Set the TiVo. And screw the Emmys.

Yes, I know the site was down. My e-mail was down, too. I don’t know what happened, but my guess would be: Ivan threw a branch over a wire somewhere in the American south, where my site lives, and so we were all made to suffer. (Yes, I’m being smartass here. I saw those houses.) But things are back now, and I received three days worth of e-mail. 110 pieces were backed up in the pipeline, I saw. A moment later, the computer chirped that the sorting was over, and the important stuff was ready to read. In the in-box: 10 pieces. Ten! And one was spam that slipped the filter! Ratio of spam:important stuff, more than 10:1.

Then I did the daily spam-comment/blacklist chore. Nine more pieces there. It reminded me of a conversation this weekend, in Columbus, where Kate and I went to celebrate my brother’s birthday. I was helping him do internet research on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which meant I was doing all the research, because my brother doesn’t own a computer and is where everyone else in the world was approximately 15 years ago, saying, “A what? A browser? What’s that?”

“Hey, I’m getting pretty good at this,” he said, when I left him on his own and he figured out the “back” button, after accidentally quitting the program three times in a row.

“Well, when you finally decide to go online,” my sister said. “Promise me you’ll get a Mac.”

He said no no noooo, he’d be getting a PC, “because then you can get Windows.” My sister and I exchanged a glance, and I wondered how long it would be before he sends all his credit-card numbers to a Nigerian oil minister, as security on that Swiss bank account number he’d be getting under separate cover.

(He’s not that stupid, but he’s also got some catching up to do. I actually used to hit “unsubscribe” on spam e-mail, thinking it would stem the tide. Silly me.)

So that’s what I did this weekend: Go to Columbus. Which meant? Yes, shopping! Nothing for me, but baby got two cute new pairs of shoes, from Nordstrom’s. Yes, I paid too much, but I didn’t pay as much as I could have — no $65 kiddie Birkenstocks for us, no $110 European brands with delicate leaf patterns — and what the hell, the kid’s been wearing Target shoes all her life. One pair of genuine Merrell jungle mocs in fuschia is not the crime of the century.

There’s nothing like the Nordstrom’s children’s shoe department to make the class fractures of American life stand out to the casual observer. A man in his 50s, but still obviously the father of this 4-year-old, picks out five pairs of shoes bing bam boom and pays by credit card: That’ll be $265, sir. He may die before he gets to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, but he’ll leave a nice estate. A couple who look as though they can obviously afford it pick up the delicate leaf-pattered Euro pair, turn them over, make exasperated lip noises at the $110 price tag, put them back on the shelf. A hassled Somali clerk in a hijab waits on all with seemingly endless patience and good humor, more than any of her customers. But then, she works for Nordstrom’s. Patience and good humor is their stock in trade. Along with shoes.

Kate loves her shoes, and still loved them after she was denied a trip to Build-a-Bear. The Carrie Bradshaw of 2027. Although Carrie would never wear Merrells.

Today we went down both water slides at the Westerville Community Center, then took the shoes home to show daddy. Life as a kid is pretty good, if you’ve got the right address. Ask the Somali.

I think I want to do work like this. So much more interesting than city council meetings or writing headlines.