Keith Richards, unwelcome houseguest

Rock legend Nick Lowe could fall out of bed telling a great story and proof of that is this recent Word magazine podcast. 

Lowe -- famous for producing Elvis Costello, being married to Johnny Cash's daughter, and being a musical phenom of his own merit -- describes in great detail the night Keith Richards celebrated his release from jail by jumping onstage with Rockpile, a smoking-hot band centered around Lowe and guitarist Dave Edmunds. 

Lowe's tale about Richards must be 15 minutes long and is peppered with skips and starts, but it's well worth hearing. Long story short, Richards joins the band for a Chuck Berry cover -- then refuses to leave the stage, prompting an angry Edmunds to deliver some very choice words at the wayward legend who is crimping Rockpile's style. 

Is Richards to blame for Rockpile's subsequent flameout? Sounds like a great story to me.

Roger Ebert, Ver. 2.0

I marvel daily at technology, and struggle to keep up with its opportunities and ramifications, and that's my business. 

There are moments when I forget how powerful and energizing technology is, and times when I just want to jump off the grid into a forest of silence free of USB ports and wifi connectons.

Then I watch things like this TED speech from film critic Roger Ebert, who lost his jaw to cancer and survived several related brushes with death. Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and longtime PBS star, can no longer speak. But he's wired optimism to technology and the result is an inspiring message that should remind us all that when our backs are against the wall, opportunity lurks. 

Geeklust for 'The Wire'

I've written previously about how I think "The Wire" is the greatest show in TV history.

But I can control the urges to rave beyond that. Others, particularly those across the Pond who have taken to “The Wire” with unmatched passion, have taken their "Wire" fascination, OK obsession, to great lengths. 

Case in point is a post titled “When It’s Not Your Turn”: The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” in which authors Joy DeLyria and Sean Michael Robinson put on period costumes, so to speak, and take "The Wire" back into the mid 1800s for a literary smackdown with the likes of Charles Dickens. 

And talk smack they do, presenting a case for “The Wire” as classic literature, even packaging the story as period novel. Here's one passage: 

"Lastly, one might stand back from a pointillist work; whereas physically there is no other way to consume The Wire than piece by piece.  To experience the story in its entirety, without breaks between sections, would be exhausting; one would perhaps miss the essence of what makes it great: the slow build of detail, the gradual and yet inevitable churning of this massive beast of a world.

The genius of The Wire lies in its sheer size and scope, its slow layering of complexity which could not have been achieved in any other way but the serial format.  Dickens is often praised for his portrayal not merely of a set of characters and their lives, but of the setting as a character: the city itself an antagonist.  Yet in The Wire, Bodymore is a far more intricate and compelling character than London in Dickens’ hands; The Wire portrays society to such a degree of realism and intricacy that A Tale of Two Cities—or any other story—can hardly compare."

Halloa! 

It's all a bit much for me, but take it for what it’s worth: Over the top admiration that represents just one more layer of  the creativity that makes the “The Wire” so thought provoking years after its run on HBO came to an end.