nancynall.com » A loss.
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A loss.

This morn­ing brings sad news: David Mills, aka Under­cover Black Man, aka writer/producer/whatever on “The Wire,” “Homi­cide: Life on the Street” and “Treme,” died sud­denly yes­ter­day on the set of “Treme.” The story linked above — and I have no idea what the Inves­tiga­tive Voice is, sorry — says it was an aneurysm.

It’s awful when a per­son this tal­ented is cut down in the prime of life. I didn’t know David, but like lots of peo­ple in that orbit, we exchanged a few e-mails from time to time. This detail from the story above should pro­vide a hint as to what we had in com­mon: While attend­ing (the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land), Mills started a news­pa­per devoted to George Clin­ton and Par­lia­ment Funkadelic. You should not be sur­prised to learn that one of Mills’ first big splashes in TV writ­ing was “Bop Gun,” an episode of “Homi­cide” that takes its name from a P-Funk song. It also con­tains this price­less throw­away detail: A perp con­fesses to shoot­ing some­one over the destruc­tion of a rare Eddie Hazel record, a ref­er­ence maybe 12 peo­ple in the coun­try got, but that’s why you watched “Homi­cide,” for the chance you might be in that 12. (Why isn’t this show in syn­di­ca­tion any­where? I just learned this morn­ing that episode also fea­tures a 13-year-old Jake Gyl­len­haal. And I don’t think I’ve seen it since it aired in 1994.)

Mills died barely a week before “Treme” is set to pre­miere — April 11.

I can’t find it now, but in one of our e-mail exchanges, I told Mills a blog post of his had prompted me to fill out my P-Funk col­lec­tion via iTunes, and we went back and forth a lit­tle about guilty-pleasure pop hits. He said one of his was Diana Ross’ “Remem­ber Me,” and then I down­loaded that one, too. It’s fairly cheesy, Diana at her Diana-est, basi­cally a more uptempo ver­sion of “I Will Always Love You.” I guess now I have some­one to remem­ber when I hear it.

Damn it any­way.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage:

Google Maps added a bike fea­ture, sug­gest­ing the most bike-friendly routes between loca­tions. Here’s the map from my zip code to Belle Isle. I’d say they have some bugs to work out, but it’s a good start.

If you haven’t read the story I linked in the pre­vi­ous post, you are required to do so now. I am reminded once again of Jim at Sweet Juniper’s off­hand remark: One of the great things about this city is, fre­quently there’s nobody around to tell you you can’t do some­thing. Like open a strip club in your house.

Where is Jon Stewart’s MacArthur Fel­low­ship?

If any­one cares, my wind­shield was only cracked, not bro­ken, and it’s been like that for years, lit­er­ally. Alan bor­rowed my car in 2006 and came home with a crack in the wind­shield the width of my hand, and claimed no knowl­edge of how it hap­pened. Lit­tle by lit­tle, it expanded, and now it’s about 18 inches long. Although it’s down at the bot­tom and restricts my view not at all, it’s the sort of thing that would be an easy add-on ticket for a cop inter­ested in chop-busting. Bonus: In the four years I’ve had it, the own­er­ship of the glass shop changed and the price dropped from $590 to a lit­tle over $200. It pays to wait.

And now to think about my wind­shield not even a lit­tle — a bike ride.

Posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 11:10 am in Television. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


24 responses to
“A loss.”

  1. LAMary said on March 31st, 2010 at 11:27 am

    Hey, we’ve got a 2001 VW Pas­sat wagon with a crack in the wind­shield that is exactly what you describe. Inex­plic­a­ble begin­ning, slow crawl to a larger size over the last three years. I don’t think we have a place here that will fix it for 200 bucks.

    Jon Stew­art and team are won­der­ful. I liked it last night when I watched it and luck­ily no one else is here in the office so I watched it again. Still won­der­ful.

  2. prospero said on March 31st, 2010 at 11:51 am

    Wouldn’t kill over an Eddie Hazel record. Hasil Atkins maybe. Par­li­a­funkadelict­ment Thang, another whole story. Saw them, Bootsy con dia­per included, at UGA. Under the influ­ence of LSD. A good time was had by all.

    The Adena Wat­son and sweat­ing the Araber episode of Homi­cide was clearly the best hour of TV ever made, and decid­edly bet­ter than most movies. The Wire was very good, but no Frank Pem­ble­ton, so never as good. Sopra­nos? Not even close. Dam­ages? When Patty’s insan­ity man­i­fests, pretty close.

  3. paddyo' said on March 31st, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    Just don’t go pulling a Wal­ter White if you DO get stopped by a cop for that wind­shield, missie. Gives new mean­ing to the show’s title, “Break­ing Bad.”

  4. LAMary said on March 31st, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    I was present at the mak­ing of the “Do Fries Come with that Shake?” video a long time ago. What I remem­ber mostly was Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers being inca­pable of mov­ing to the music. He and his girl­friend were sup­posed to be rock­ing out to the tune. He didn’t seem to have a clue.

  5. jcburns

    jcburns said on March 31st, 2010 at 1:02 pm

    Actu­ally (as you may know) our ancient Ford Explorer has one of those cracks, and has for about 11 years now.

  6. alex said on March 31st, 2010 at 1:31 pm

    My newly inher­ited 1989 Honda Accord (with only 116K miles, red metal­lic with gold pin­strip­ing, pris­tine beige inte­rior, gen­tly dri­ven by a lit­tle old lady) has one of those teensy lit­tle star­bursts in the wind­shield. This has been there since 1989, when I took mama’s car with­out per­mis­sion and made the mis­take of fol­low­ing a dump truck on the Inter­state and got hit with fly­ing gravel.

    I adore this lit­tle car, I tell ya. It’s more fun to drive than either of our newish cars. And kids keep offer­ing $$, but I’m not tempted. At 116,000 it’s barely bro­ken in.

  7. Julie Robinson said on March 31st, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    Our daugh­ter got a sim­i­lar crack the year she lived in Col­orado. Appar­ently with the tem­per­a­ture changes, huge quan­ti­ties of snow, and gravel roads, every­one expects it at least once a year. We had it replaced for about $350, and this win­ter, five years later, it had another one. Like Nancy, it was only $200 this time. Are we get­ting cheap auto glass from China?

    BTW, all those cheap fixes you can try from the auto stores are no help. One of them actu­ally increased the length and breadth of the crack.

    Woo-hoo, it’s 67 in the Fort! Will this be the day Cur­tis Smith shaves the black bear fur off his face?

  8. paddyo' said on March 31st, 2010 at 1:58 pm

    Here in Col­orado (where, BTW, we broke a 131-year-old record high yes­ter­day with 82 degrees), wind­shield chips, cracks, stars and more are a reg­u­lar part of life, whether you go off-road or not.
    Which is why the crack-fix agents hang out at the car wash, with their lit­tle bot­tles of liq­uid glass and suction-cup devices (they look like minia­ture skull-neck immo­bi­liza­tion rigs, except they attach them to the wind­shield around the crack) and their trip­li­cate forms for fil­ing with the insur­ance com­pany. I had one of them do it for my wind­shield some years ago and it lasted for years before another fresh star broke out into a full-windshield crack before I could get it filled.
    When my “new” (2 years) wind­shield got another chip a few months ago, I dis­cov­ered from the fix-it guy, to my sur­prise, that my insurer (State Farm) no longer cov­ers this ser­vice. So the $40 came out-of-pocket.

  9. Jeff Borden said on March 31st, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    Alex,

    I have never had the money to be a reg­u­lar new car buyer. Our 1999 Acura was my first new vehi­cle since 1980 and my wife’s since 1977, but my 1980 Accord would have to go down as my hand’s down favorite auto­mo­bile I’ve ever owned. Prob­a­bly about the size a Civic is today, it was a bronze metal­lic two-door hatch­back with a five-speed man­ual fea­tur­ing McPher­son strut sus­pen­sion, rack and pin­ion steer­ing and the heart of a lion.

    The drive train was still rolling strong when the motor mount rusted com­pletely through and the transaxle fell onto Clybourn Avenue while my wife was dri­ving it home in 1992. The $600 esti­mate to fix the car was too pricey for a rusty Honda with 134,000, so we sold it to a mechanic at the local Shell sta­tion for $100. He, in turn, fixed it up and sold it for $1,500. I assume it is in its final rest­ing place, but I had seen it maybe six or eight years ago rolling down Lawrence.

    Hold onto that Accord, man. Those cars are like roaches. They’re nearly impos­si­ble to kill.

  10. Rana said on March 31st, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    Yup, Hon­das are pretty much bomb-proof. My Civic is about 14 years old now, and still runs quite well. The only draw­back, though, is that repairs tend to be expen­sive when they finally need to be made. I try to tell myself that it’s bet­ter to have one expen­sive repair every ten years than a cheaper one every two or three.

    That bicy­cle route func­tion is great – I ran it through our local map, and it cor­rectly iden­ti­fied the route I plan to use for com­mut­ing when it gets light enough in the evenings (I work nights). Given that the route includes a bicy­cle path that doesn’t show up in car direc­tions, I’m even more impressed.

  11. Julie Robinson said on March 31st, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    So pad­dyo’, it sounds like you need some exper­tise with the do-it-yourself kits.
    We didn’t, and the crack grew.

    And even though Toy­otas have a bad name right now, our 88 Corolla was still going strong when we replaced it three years ago. We gave it to a young cou­ple who are still dri­ving it after invest­ing $200 in engine work. It’s reli­a­bil­ity was a major rea­son we bought our Camry. We test-drove Accords too, but the Camry was less $$$. Mom had her Corolla for 23 years and now is happy in an Accord. It will almost surely out­live her.

  12. judybusy said on March 31st, 2010 at 3:02 pm

    To add to the few weather com­ments: As it’s now 70 degrees out there, I can safely say we’ve just had our first snow-free March in Min­neapo­lis since they began keep­ing records in 1884. Now, back to work, so I can fin­ish and get the heck outta here!

  13. Dexter said on March 31st, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    pad­dyo’ and other fans who, like me, may have missed “Break­ing Bad” Sun­day (I was sim­ply too engrossed in “The Pacific” to remem­ber BB) , it is on tomor­row morn­ing at 1:30 east­ern time, so set those recorders.
    By the way, I have been very impressed with “The Pacific”, in all areas. There was some great act­ing going on last Sun­day.

    I plot­ted a Google Maps bike route for my brother , from his home in Wau­conda, IL to U.S. Cel­lu­lar Field on 35th Street, Chicago. By car, it is 44.2 miles, by bicy­cle, 53.4 miles. Too much street traf­fic for him…when he makes the ride hap­pen, he is going to pedal straight east to the Lake­front Path and then down into town. This got me thinking—just how far can a town be from center-city and still be called a sub­urb? An exurb? When he lived in Griffith,Indiana, no one called that city a sub­urb of Chicago, but it is a hel­luva lot closer than Wau­conda, which I guess is called an exurb.

  14. Joe Kobiela said on March 31st, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    Dex,
    just ordered hel­met for my pil­low and with the old breed. Those are the books Pacific is based on. I am enjoy­ing the Pacific but for me so far Band of Broth­ers was bet­ter. pacific is still good, My Uncle Jack was on the Oki­nawa land­ing but Dad and Uncle bill were both Air­borne.
    Pilot Joe

  15. Michael said on March 31st, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    I can­not believe I am the first to post about UBM. I would have to guess that NN​.COM sent me to him the first time, but once there I was hooked. His site has been a daily stop for years.

    I know that my days will be less joy filled with­out his unique eye on the world. I notice that his site is unchanged, and I hope it will stay that way, the archives are a bril­liant source of mate­r­ial.

  16. Sue said on March 31st, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    Dex­ter, I don’t know about true def­i­n­i­tions, but they don’t really apply in the Chicago area. Chicago’s north­ern burbs stretch about to Wis­con­sin it seems, in the mind­set of the area, and Cook County is so huge that in my opin­ion if you pay taxes in that county or have to drive from the Cook County side of Bar­ring­ton to 26th and S. Cal­i­for­nia for jury duty you can say you’re from Chicago. Once Pala­tine secedes they can call them­selves a sub­urb but until then it’s all Chicago.

  17. Dave K. said on March 31st, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    I haven’t made the upgrade to my Dish Net­work sub which would include FX and AMC (plus 100 other chan­nels I don’t need), so I still am miss­ing “Break­ing Bad”. I assume this week’s episode was another good one. I got a text from my son which said,”‘Breaking Bad’ makes ‘Jus­ti­fied’ look like ‘Jer­sey Shore’!”

  18. jcburns

    jcburns said on March 31st, 2010 at 5:50 pm

    In an unsigned obit, David Simon remem­bers his friend. Sorry for your loss, Nance. Even if you didn’t “know” him, there is a strange kind of “semi-knowing” that comes from this internet-connected life.

  19. brian stouder said on March 31st, 2010 at 9:12 pm

    Dex­ter and Joe – on Direct Tv’s chan­nel 101, I watched an install­ment of Pacific; it was cen­tered on Guadal­canal, and was rough tele­vi­sion.

    I don’t think I’ll ever watch any more of it. For me, bru­tal re-enactments of war, pack­aged in a 90 or 100 minute movie, with a begin­ning and a mid­dle and an end is quite enough. Past that, if it is well-made, one has to ask one­self “Why am I sub­ject­ing myself to this?”

    As for the Google bike trail – it looks to me like the place to bike to is the Henry Ford Museum!

  20. Dexter said on March 31st, 2010 at 9:34 pm

    bri­anstouder: The Guadal­canal episodes were harsh, but last Sunday’s show had lots of lovin’…those Mel­bourne girls really appre­ci­ated those Yanks.

  21. Dexter said on April 1st, 2010 at 3:14 am

    I fell asleep in my recliner and missed most of the re-run of Break­ing Bad, damn it. Now I’ll have to watch the record­ing I made of it.
    I skipped the first thread which linked the Jay Thun­der­bolt story until now…I see JMMO men­tioned David Lynch, too, as I did on nance’s Face­book page.
    This story is amaz­ing, and for the topic alone would score big at Cannes.

  22. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 1st, 2010 at 7:48 am

    At Quan­tico or Par­ris Island, Leckie & Sledge’s books are effec­tively required read­ing, have been for years. Lit­tle known fact about Marines is that they actu­ally do quite a bit of read­ing — there’s a “stan­dard” if non-reg list out there, rank by rank, of strongly rec­om­mended read­ing, from slick sleeve right up through stars on your shoul­ders. I’ll have to look that up, but “Hel­met for My Pil­low” & “With the Old Breed” are almost as har­row­ing to read as it sounds like they are to watch.

    On the other hand, some of you might find this of inter­est:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​Z​O​U​8​G​IRUd_g

  23. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 1st, 2010 at 8:11 am

    Found it –
    http://home.comcast.net/~antaylor1/usmccommandant.html

    Granted, not much Dick­ens or Thack­eray on it, but some of the titles, espe­cially as you go through the ranks, might sur­prise you.

  24. crinoidgirl said on April 1st, 2010 at 9:33 am

    Jeff (tmmo) -

    You linked to a pretty old list. Here is the lat­est ver­sion:

    http://​www​.mca​-marines​.org/​p​d​f​/​U​S​M​C​R​e​a​d​i​n​g​L​i​st.pdf

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