Fritinancy

Brands to Die For

Happy Halloween! In honor of the Days of the Dead, here are some of my favorite necro-brands:

Hollywood Forever was founded in 1899 as Hollywood Memorial Park and became the burial ground of choice for Tinseltown celebrities (Cecil B. deMille, Marion Davies, Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin are interred there). By the late 20th century the graveyard had fallen into disrepair; it was bought in 1998 by Forever Enterprises, a family funeral business in--honest to God--Creve Coeur ("heartbreak"), Missouri. Brent and Tyler Cassity, the 20-something brothers who owned Forever, had hit on a concept that was destined for Hollywood: recording and storing digitized tributes to the deceased. Today, Hollywood Forever's "LifeStory theaters" and "Lifestories™ kiosks" also screen live worldwide webcasts of funeral services. And the Forever Network includes Forever Network Studios and Forever Fernwood in Marin County, California, which sounds like where all the stars of the 1970s show Fernwood 2Night are reposing, but isn't. Listen to an NPR interview with Tyler Cassity that was originally broadcast on Halloween 2000.

Promessa Organic only sounds like a non-dairy breakfast spread. In fact it's a Swedish company that's developing "an environmentally friendly form of burial that takes full consideration of the biological realities to which a corpse is subjected." You have to admire a death brand that comes right out and says corpse. Here--look at some illustrations (100% safe for work).

Peternity: the name says it all, doesn't it? This is where you get your engravable yard statues, your custom engraved glasswork, and your pet memorial urns. Perhaps inspired by Hollywood Forever, Peternity also offers virtual pet memorials.

Nick Carr of Rough Type called YouDeparted "kind of a social network for the dead." "While you're still alive, you set up a profile page on the site, including text, pictures, and videos, and then after you croak the URL is released to your family or friends," Carr writes. While you're still on this side you can get involved in the site's blog, "Before You Depart."

(Carr clearly digs this stuff. At the end of his YouDeparted post he writes:

You have to think, though, that there are other opportunities along these lines. Second Life, for instance, could offer its members, for a nominal fee, the ability to have their avatars turn into ghosts after they pass away. The ghosts would just randomly float around the virtual world for eternity. They could call the service Third Life.

And last year, in a post titled "Flaming the Dead," he wrote about Legacy.com, FindAGrave.com, and MyDeathSpace.com. That last site profiles MySpace members who have died.)

I'm guessing that Respectance--"an interactive community for sharing memories"--was coined from "respect" and "observance," but that doesn't make me like the name any better. And those horizontally scrolling tribute photos on the home page make me reach for the Dramamine. (No disrespect.) A Respectance blog post by co-founder Richard Derks talks reverently about "emosocial media," characterized by "relevance and connection." A commenter named James cut to the chase: "Your emo social media meme sounds sucky to me ... Nice try, but drop the emo dudes." (Hat tip to Lauren K.)

On the other hand, forget the tributes to friends and family. What about tributes to me? That's what Story of My Life™ (tagline: "Keep Your Story Forever") is all about. That, and finding many places to insert the ™ symbol. And Capitalizing a Lot of Letters. And committing reckless prose, thus:

If the only two inevitables are death and taxes, Story of My Life™ is jumping feet first into the fire by helping you to write all of the different Stories that make up your Life, and enriching them with videos and pictures while securely storing and making them accessible - forever.

"Feet first into the fire"? Keep doing that and you won't be writing your Story much longer.

For a bracing antidote, visit BlueLips, the best name and the most engaging concept I encountered in my morbid meanderings. Just take a look at the left-hand navigation, which truly has something for everyone: casket furniture, coffin gems jewelry, "deadly divorce" (a coffin for your wedding ring), toe tags, and a "rare Jessica Mitford mug."

And finally, good news from Trifac, Inc.: The Montreal jewelry company is diversifying into funeral products, including hair reliquaries with mythopoetic names like Ishtar, Lotus, Lumen, and, yes, Hymen ("from the deity who celebrated weddings").

Whistling in the Graveyard

When you buy a house near a cemetery, you expect that the neighbors will be pretty quiet. That's not quite the case with my local necropolis, Mountain View Cemetery. Especially between Halloween and New Year's, the place is downright festive. In a weird way, it's kind of wonderful.

A bit of background. Mountain View was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who's better known as the designer of New York's Central Park. It opened its gates in 1863--in California years, that's practically the Middle Ages--just in time to welcome the earthly remains of assorted pioneers, Gold Rush millionaires, and robber barons. Even in death, these were not people with retiring natures. They liked to flout mortality with soaring marble and alabaster pyramids, obelisks, and mega-crypts that announced to their survivors, "You damn betcha you can take it with you." Mountain View's monuments would make Ozymandias blush. Look on my works ye mighty, indeed.

Mountain View sprawls over 226 verdant acres--it was a natural firebreak during the 1991 Oakland Hills fire--and its paths make for pleasant strolling, birding, and dog-walking. I admit I enjoy sneaking a peek at the funerals, too. We get all kinds, from solemnly choreographed police interments, complete with bagpipe flourishes, to hang-loose "celebrations of life" at which the mourners wear flip-flops and T-shirts. When the bluesman John Lee Hooker was buried at Mountain View in 2001, there was as fine a show of feathered millinery as you could ever hope to see. (Incongruous as it seems, the Mississippi-born King of the Boogie spent his final years in Los Altos, in the heart of Silicon Valley.)

But last Saturday Mountain View Cemetery was the setting for a celebration of a different sort:

The Pumpkin Festival had something for everyone, or at least everyone who was short and young: jumper structures, a hay-bale maze, balloon artists, free snacks. Kids ambled amid the gravestones and sat on the steps of a mausoleum to check out their loot:

At about 1:30, a real live--well, real dead--funeral cortege rolled slowly through the gates and up the winding cemetery roads. The kids went right on jumping and snacking.

Meanwhile, just outside the gates, at the glorious, gothic-fantastic Chapel of the Chimes (built by Julia Morgan, the architect of Hearst Castle), the "Feast of the Angelitos" was getting under way. Kids and parents were encouraged to build nichos--altars inspired by the Mexican Days of the Dead--and to eat pan de los muertos.

Sunday night there was a "ghost walk" through the chapel's catacombs, followed by a reading by mystery novelist Hailey Lind, whose most recent book, Brush with Death, is set in the chapel.

Are other cemeteries having this much fun with death? I don't know, but I can't help thinking it's a very smart brand strategy. Mountain View and Chapel of the Chimes are making themselves part of our community's everyday life in ways that inspire pride and love: besides the Halloween activities, there's a magnificent tulip festival in the spring, a holiday light display at Christmas, and jazz concerts all year round.

How better to build positive feelings for a business that most people would rather not think about at all?

More on necro-branding tomorrow.

Excellent with Steak. Or Stakes.

"I never drink ... wine," Count Dracula famously said. But if he did, he might choose this:

The wine department of my local grocery store is featuring Vampire wines this week in a Halloween display that also includes several other spooky labels: Phantom, Incognito, Dracula, Old Ghost, 7 Deadly Zins, and Gato Negro (black cat). Positioned nearby are some elegant-looking bottles of Vampyre Vodka.

Vampire and Vampyre are the creations of Michael Machat, an entertainment attorney from New York who started Vampire Vineyards without knowing anything about wine except that it's fun to drink.

“I had this idea that it would be cool if somebody had a wine called ‘Vampire’ and they made it in Transylvania," Machat told Brandchannel. "It was so obvious, I thought surely somebody had done it.” He started the company in the mid-'90s while he was living in England; since relocating to Southern California he's found a West Coast source to make his "blood of the vine," as his cheeky website calls it.

I haven't tasted Vampire, but I find the brand story eminently quaffable. "Welcome mortal," says Vampire.com's home page. The media page is called "Press Bites." And Machat is busy creating clever brand extensions: besides Vampire and Vampyre, there's Vamp NRG, a nonalcoholic energy drink like Red Bull; and Dracola, "the unearthly red cola for the children of the night."

And there are tchotchkes: "vampire bite" temporary tattoos, Vampire wine glasses, and--for $199.98--a Vamp NRG skateboard deck. You can even buy thematically appropriate DVDs of movies like Blacula and the original 1931 version of Dracula.

It's enough to give "serious" winemakers and connoisseurs the dry heaves, I'm sure. But it's a triumph of storytelling and branding, and I'll drink to that.

Keeping It Clean

Used to be, grooming brands wanted to be associated with, you know, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Or ships and sealing-wax. Well, that was then. The competition is fierce, and to gain an edge in a crowded market you must be edgy--or even borderline offensive--with your branding strategy.

For example: Underarmy, the militant antiperspirant from Bliss that drives a Humvee over the old "freshness" euphemisms in favor of a straightforward "K.O. the B.O." Did I mention that Underarmy is for women? (Bliss has a bunch of clever product names like The Youth As We Know It, Fat Girl Slim, and--my favorite--Poetic Waxing Kit. Wax poetic--get it?)

Also: Bluebeards Original grooming products for men, purportedly a "gentle system." Um, right. In the nightmare-inducing fairy tale, Bluebeard is the guy who kills his wives and hangs their bodies on the castle walls.

Also: Cutting Up, a shaving cream. Wait--I thought shaving cream was supposed to prevent the cutting up! (Hat tip to Short Takes, who adds, "There’s no truth to the rumor they’re also coming out with an after-shave called 'Stings Like Hell.'")

But the best one came into my inbox earlier today courtesy of the ever-vigilant Wes Phillips. It's a "universal no-rinse cleanser for hands and face," and it's called Momspit. That's right--just like Mother used to make! Indeed, the tagline reads: "Inspired by the original." Or, si vous préférez: "Inspiré par l'original." Ah, la salive de la mère--c'est merveilleuse! And it's full of yummy-mummy goodness, too. No alcohol!

Actually, in some of the photos it looks like a deodorant tube, so with a slight change of spelling--MomsPit--you could have yourself a twofer.

Word of the Week: Blooper

Blooper: A misspoken word or phrase, especially one uttered on broadcast media. In baseball, a weakly hit ball or a high, lobbed pitch. Both usages are American in origin.

Blooper in the sense of "blunder" arose about 10 years after the word was coined in the mid-1920s. According to Richard Lederer, author of several popular books on language, the baseball term was coined almost simultaneously with to bloop: to operate a radio set "in such a way that it emitted howls and whistles, perhaps an echo of our reactions to physical or verbal howlers." Both coinages were probably onomatopoetic: imitative of the radio howl and of the sound of a poorly hit ball.

Beginning in the late 1940s, live television broadcasting greatly increased the potential for verbal blunders. Michael Erard¹, in his recently published book Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, writes that a radio and TV director named Kermit Shafer was responsible for making "blooper" a household word:

Shafer was the first to transform other people's flustered speaking, slips of the tongue, and inadvertent solecisms from television and radio broadcasts into gold. In his hands, a blooper wasn't just a mistake. It was a noteworthy event, a slice of everyday media life, otherwise evanescent, that he shined up for display. There was the Vick's 44 Cough Syrup commercial that guaranteed "You'll never get any better!" Or as the stumbling newscaster said, "Also keeping an eye on the Woodstock Rock Festival was New York's governor Rockin Nelsenfeller."

Shafer claimed (erroneously) to have coined blooper; he also trademarked the word. (Shafer's trademarks appear to have expired, but there are several other live "blooper" trademarks.) He produced many records with titles such as All Time Great Bloopers, Prize Bloopers, and 100 Super Duper Bloopers. In 1974 he made a feature-length movie, Pardon My Blooper! 

For discussions of blooper on the American Dialect Society's listserv, see here and here.

____

¹Erard's surname is a felicitous near-aptronym: a slightly bloopered version of "error."

Answers to Airport Name Game

For the original quiz, go here.

1. Sioux City, Iowa. The airport's official name, Colonel Bud Day Field, honors George E. "Bud" Day, a Sioux City native and U.S. Air Force veteran of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Day is the most highly decorated U.S. military officer since General Douglas MacArthur. The airport, also known as Sioux Gateway Airport, was in the news lately because after 19 years its officials finally decided to stop fighting its FAA airport code: SUX. "If we can't beat 'em, we can make money off 'em," seems to be the general spirit.

2. Brasilia. As president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961, Juscelino Kubitschek de Olveira, whose mother was of Czech origin, oversaw the construction of the new capital city.

3. Toronto. Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson was Canada's fourteenth prime minister, from 1963 to 1968.

4. Venice. The explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) was born in Venice.

5. Warsaw. The airport in the Polish capital is named for the composer (1810-1849), who actually was born in Zelazowa Wola, in central Poland. He left his native country for Paris at age 20 and never returned.

6. Sydney. Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith (1897-1935) was an early Australian aviator.

7. Agana, Guam. This capital city's airport is named for Antonio Borja Won Pat (1908-1987), who was Guam's first delegate to the U.S. Congress.

8. Barrow, Alaska. Aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers died in an August 1935 plane crash near Point Barrow.

9. Gdańsk, Poland. The airport is named for the former Polish president (1990-1995) and co-founder of the Solidarity movement. The "W" on the the façade of the passenger terminal is adapted from Walesa's signature.

10. Oranjestad, Aruba. The airport is named for the current queen of the Netherlands (born 1938). The Caribbean island is in the Realm of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

11. Beirut. Hariri, whose first name is also spelled Rafik or Rafiq, was Lebanon's prime minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2004. He was assassinated in 2005.

12. Jedda, Saudi Arabia. King Abdulaziz (1876-1953) unified the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was its first monarch.

13. Manila. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr. (1932-1983), was a Philippine senator and opponent of President Ferdinand Marcos. He was assassinated at the airport that now bears his name.

14. Casablanca. Mohammed V was the sultan of Morocco from 1927 to 1953. He lived in exile from 1953 to 1955 and was the country's king from 1957 until his death in 1961.

15. Dar es Salaam. Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999) was Tanzania's first president (1964-1985).

16. Tirana, Albania. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (1910-1997), later known as Mother Teresa, was born in Albania. She founded the Missionaries of Charity and spent more than 40 years ministering to the sick and dying in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II after her death.

17. Johannesburg. Oliver Reginald Tambo (1917-1993) was a leader of the South African anti-apartheid movement and a president of the African National Congress.

18. Guadalajara. Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753-1811) was a Creole priest (Mexican born of Spanish parents); he is considered the father of Mexican independence from Spain.

19. Algiers. Houari Boumedienne was the nom de guerre of Mohamed Boukharouba (1932-1978), who fought in the war for Algerian independence from France and was Algeria's president from 1965 to 1978. He created his assumed name from the names of the patron saints of Oran (Sidi el Houari) and Tlemcen (Sidi Boumedienne).

20. Havana. José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1895) was a leader of the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain. He was also a celebrated poet and writer.

21. Orange County, California. A nine-foot bronze statue of the Duke says "Hello, pilgrim" to everyone who enters the terminal. (See photo, above.)

22. Santiago, Chile. Merino Benítez (1888-1970) created the Chilean Air Force and founded LAN, Chile's national airline.

23. Kolkata (Calcutta). The airport's previous name was Dum Dum Airport; it was changed to honor the Bengali patriot Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (1897-1945[?]).

24. Caracas, Venezuela. Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios y Blanco, known as El Libertador, was born in Caracas in 1783 and died in Santa Maria, Colombia, in 1833. Together with José de San Martin, he led several independence movements in South America; the country of Bolivia is named after him.

25. Baltimore/Washington. This airport was renamed in 2005 to honor the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), a native of Baltimore.

Congratulations to Jessica of Beauty Marks, Kim of Knits with a Silent K, and Charles for their correct answers, and to Going Like Sixty for knowing the SUX story.

Extra-credit answer: Friedman Memorial Airport is in Hailey, Idaho, the gateway to Sun Valley. It's named for a pioneer Jewish merchant and his family. Other than Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, I doubt there's another airport in the world that's named for a Jew.

And here's a bonus answer to a question I didn't pose: In 2002 Speke Airport became Liverpool John Lennon Airport, in honor of that city's most famous native son. John Russell noted my lapse--more of an intentional omission, really--in a comment.

John Lennon is far from the only airport name I left out of my quiz. There's Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans; "Pappy" Boyington Field (for the World War II flying ace) in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Antonio Carlos Jobim Airport (for the musician) in Rio. In Mexico and many Central and South American countries, just about every airport is named for someone (usually a military hero). European airports, on the other hand, are almost always named only for their cities. The exception is Greece, where many airports are named after gods and historical figures from antiquity: Aphrodite, Aristotle, Hippocrates. Alexander the Great--even, bizarrely, Ikaros (a k a Icarus).

The Wikipedians have assembled a comprehensive list of airline destinations, to which I am indebted. If you're into airport codes like SUX and LAX, you can order stickers here.

Airport Name Game

I'm flying from Lionel Wilson to Bob Hope. Which airport am I leaving and where am I headed?

If you guessed Oakland and Burbank, you're probably a frequent Southwest Airlines flyer. Or maybe you're just someone who, like me, has an unhealthy obsession with airport eponyms: names that honor people.

Some airport eponyms have achieved official status: JFK, LaGuardia, DeGaulle. But in many cities in the U.S. and elsewhere, airports generally known by their city names also get secondary names that recognize local heroes or public servants. Lionel Wilson, in case you were wondering, was Oakland's first African-American mayor; he served from 1977 to 1990. And Bob Hope was Bob Hope.

So here's a quiz for you. Name the city and country in which an airport is named for each of these people. To keep it fair, I've excluded obscure general-aviation airports and bush-plane destinations. Most of the answers are large or well-known cities--in their respective regions, anyway. Most of the airports are international hubs.

Answers tomorrow. No fair Googling.

Name the Airport

1.  Bud Day

2.  Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek

3.  Lester Pearson

4.  Marco Polo

5.  Frederic Chopin

6.  Kingsford Smith

7.  Antonio B. Won Pat

8.  Wiley Post–Will Rogers (two names, one airport)

9.  Lech Walesa

10.  Queen Beatrix

11.  Rafic Hariri

12.  King Abdulaziz

13.  Ninoy Aquino

14.  Mohammed V

15.  Mwalimu J. K. Nyerere

16.  Mother Teresa

17.  Oliver Tambo

18.  Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

19.  Houari Boumedienne

20.  José Martí 

21.  John Wayne

22.  Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez

23.  Nataji Subhash Chandra Bose

24.  Simón Bolívar

25.  Thurgood Marshall

For trivia buffs (and Friedmans) only: Where is Friedman Memorial Airport? 

October Linkfest

Blogs I've been enjoying but haven't linked to previously. In alphabetical order:

Apophenia is Danah Boyd's blog about subjects that interest her, particularly in her academic field: youth culture and social media. A June 2007 post, "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace," and her subsequent response to critiques of that essay, stirred up a huge online controversy. For something a little lighter, check out "LOLCat Bible = Infinite Entertainment."

Ben and Alice--he's a computer programmer, she's a PhD candidate in English at Columbia--call themselves "two nerds" with "five opinions." Fortunately, all of those opinions are interesting and well articulated. I especially enjoyed Ben's posts on the pros and cons of circumcision and on "ten better names for NBA teams" (Phoenix Ashes? Hollywood Agents?).

Just when I was beginning to think no one besides me gets annoyed about Elizabeth hooking up (again!) with that dork Anthony in "For Better or For Worse," I discovered The Comics Curmudgeon. Not comix, not manga: comics. In the daily paper. With your cornflakes. My local daily no longer carries a lot of the oldies, so I go to CC to get my "Apartment 3G" and "Mary Worth" fix and to read sage commentary like this (about--in case you had any doubt--"Rex Morgan, M.D."). After you link, scroll down:

That final panel isn’t artsy visual narrative, or a metaphor for Rex’s dual nature, or anything like that. It’s actually offering us a look into Rex Morgan’s head, wherein lies … another, slightly smaller, Rex Morgan head. And what’s inside that Rex Morgan head? You’ve got it: yet another Rex Morgan head. It’s like those damn nesting Russian dolls, only with Rex Morgan heads.

I can't figure out who writes Descriptively Adequate--I'll go out on a limb and guess that it's a linguist--but I love the title and am wild for this analysis of the "whomever" scene in last week's episode of "The Office." (Update: Benjamin Zimmer, at Language Log, clues me in that Descriptively Adequate is written by Ed Cormany.)

Sometimes I just can't wait for the next issue of the New Yorker to read Hendrik Hertzberg. So I'm very glad he also writes a blog about all the stuff that ticks him off: Bush, the neocons, the Supreme Court, etc.

The Party of the First Part is Adam Freedman's spirited attack on legalese like "witnesseth" and "rest, residue, and remainder." Freedman also gives credit where it's due, as when a U.S. district judge rendered a decision written in the verse style of "Green Eggs and Ham."

Now that the New York Times has made all its content searchable and free, there's no reason not to read Paul Krugman every day, instead of just the two days a week he appears in the paper. He's on book tour right now, promoting Conscience of a Liberal (which is also the name of his blog), but he's still finding time to post at least a couple times a day. Good stuff on politics, economics, hell, and handbaskets.

Swiss Miss is the nom de blog of Tina Roth Eisenberg, a Swiss designer now living and working in New York, and her blog is a "visual archive of things that 'make me look.'" Like these window stickers in the shape of Boeings, Cessnas, and other aircraft; and this amazing bookshelf system.

Tenser, Said the Tensor is the blog of a nameless grad student in linguistics who's also into comics, sci-fi, "and other geekery." His (her?) language posts are quite wonderful, like this meditation on "toward" vs. "towards" and this post, "A Tale of Two Geddies," about how and why bass player Gary Lee Weinrib became Geddy Lee and the actor Gary Watanabe became Gedde Watanabe.

Word on "The Wire"

I came late to "The Wire," the HBO series that will begin its fifth and final season in January. For one thing, I don't subscribe to HBO. For another, I'd been unimpressed by all the other premium-channel hits my friends raved about. "Sex in the City"? Slightly amusing, mostly annoying. "The Sopranos"? Alternately boring and annoying; basically, I just couldn't sustain any empathy for any of the characters. (Even Carmela, and I love Edie Falco.) I dropped in on "Deadwood" too late in its run to have the faintest idea what was going on; maybe I'll give it another try sometime, but what I did see and understand I found uninvolving. I made it through one and a half episodes of "Six Feet Under": I love black humor, but this show was too arch and artificial for my taste. Ditto for "Mad Men," which aired on a channel I do subscribe to and which was about advertising, something I care about. I watched three episodes, admired the clothes and the furniture, but resented being hammered by every knowing cultural reference: no seatbelts--got it; smoking while pregnant--ditto; anti-Semitism and sexism--yep, got those too.

Final reason for not watching "The Wire": I had jumped to the conclusion that it was Just Another Cop Show. I'd seen enough of that genre to know all the formulas.

Well, I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I discovered the first season (2002) of "The Wire" in the DVD section of my branch library and was hooked as soon as I heard the opening music (Tom Waits's alt-gospel "Way Down in the Hole," sung during the first season by the Blind Boys of Alabama; each season opens with a different cover of the same song). Plot, characters, camerawork, dialogue, sense of place: everything about "The Wire" is orders of magnitude better than anything you've ever seen on TV. The show's co-creator, David Simon--a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun who's written two nonfiction books about Baltimore and who was a writer on "Homicide"--compares his vision to those of Dickens, Tolstoy, and Euripides. Simon has a robust ego, but I wouldn't argue with him. I raced through the first season, then watched it a second time with the commentary track, then raced over to the local video store to rent the second season. I'm now midway through the third season. (Each season features the same principal characters but with a different case, and a different part of Baltimore, as its focus. The first season centered on the drug trade in the projects; the second was about corruption in the stevedores' union; the third went into the corridors of City Hall; the fourth was about the schools. Elements of previous seasons' plot lines carry over every year, just as storylines weave through, say, the chapters of War and Peace.) I've slowed down: the fourth season has just come out on DVD, and it'll be quite a while before I can see the fifth season, unless I break down and subscribe to HBO.

Margaret Talbot has written a terrific piece about "The Wire" and David Simon in the Oct. 22 issue of the New Yorker, full of inside info and great quotes. In it I learned that the fifth season of the show will take place "at a downsizing newspaper called the Baltimore Sun," with several former reporters and editors playing roles. Talbot writes:

Some of the dialogue from the fifth season is taken word for word from the Sun’s newsroom. Simon recalled, “There was this writer, Carl, who every day would eat the same thing for lunch: cottage cheese. One day, somebody walked by and saw him staring down into his cottage cheese, poking it with a spoon and saying to himself, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.’ That’s in there.”

Sounds exactly like some of the newspaper guys I used to work with. Talbot goes on:

Viewers of “The Wire” must master a whole argot, though it can take a while, because the words are never defined, just as they wouldn’t be by real people tossing them around. To have “suction” is to have pull with your higher-ups on the police force or in City Hall; a “redball” is a high-profile case with political consequences; to “re-up” is to get more drugs to sell. Drugs are branded with names taken from the latest news cycle: Pandemic, W.M.D., Greenhouse Gas. “The game” is the drug trade, although it emerges during the course of the show as a metaphor for the web of constraints that political and economic institutions impose on the people trapped within them. And, in one memorable neologism, a penis is referred to as a “Charles Dickens.”

There's also "ambo," for "ambulance." And the way the cops refer to themselves--"He's good police," pronounced PO-leece. Talbot writes:

Simon is an authenticity freak. He said, “I’m the kind of person who, when I’m writing, cares above all about whether the people I’m writing about will recognize themselves. I’m not thinking about the general reader. My greatest fear is that the people in the world I’m writing about will read it and say, ‘Nah, there’s nothing there.’ ”

Curiously--some would put it more strongly than that--"The Wire" has never won an Emmy. (It was nominated only once, for a script written by the crime novelist George Pelecanos.) It draws a viewing audience of only about 4.4 million; last season 13 million people watched "The Sopranos" each week. Talbot writes that the people who watch "The Wire" fall into two groups: "people who identify with the inner-city characters, and critics." (Participants in the show's bulletin boards seem to fall into the former camp. One of them wrote recently: "i think jimmy is Da man for whenever he has the chance to be an @$$ hole he back to people who did it to him, like the floating body from season 2 ep 1 that was a classic.") Talbot observes: "Sometimes the fan base of 'The Wire' seems like the demographics of many American cities—mainly the urban poor and the affluent élite, with the middle class hollowed out."

Toward the end of the profile, Talbot reports on a trip she took with Simon to New Orleans, where he's been researching his next series, about that city's music community. Oh, goody. Looks as though an HBO subscription is definitely in my future. Meanwhile, back to Season Three.

Learn New Words, Feed the Hungry

Want to put your big vocabulary to good use? Go to FreeRice and play a multiple-choice word game. For every correct answer, the site will donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. (The money comes from advertisers listed on the site.)

The game starts with easy words like murderous and gets progressively harder, with words like doggo, mucronate, mavis, and footling. I briefly hit the top score of 50, but dropped back down with my next incorrect answer. (Reportedly, if you get 100 consecutive correct answers, you can reach the "secret" top level of 51. In my dreams... Update: Language Hat left a comment here to let us know that the "51" story is a joke.)

Since the site launched on Oct. 7, nearly 138 million grains of rice have been donated.

(A tip of the language hat to Language Hat.)