Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Winners Circle

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I’ve just been busy and sort of brain dead.  In my free time I’ve been (finally) watching the last season of The Wire.  I’ve been putting off watching it because I didn’t want it to end.  But my cousins who live in another state had worked their way up through season four and I said I’d watch season five with them when they got there.  We discuss by email.

I saw this today via Kottke:  #WireDerbyHorseNames.   Someone started thinking of naming racehorses after characters in The Wire and it was taken up by twitterers.

But of course, the beauty in naming Kentucky Derby horses rests not in actually naming them after characters from The Wire, but rather, naming them after catchy ideas and pithy quotes from the show. (There are exceptions. Like, Poot.) So that concept soon began to spread, and it wasn't long before the masterpieces rolled in, fewer than 140 characters at a time.

I liked “Always Boris”. 

Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

I never intended to read yet another epic poem immediately after finishing The Iliad .  But I subscribe to the Poetry Unbound podcast and in...