David Simon

We finally figured out why David Simon couldn't see the comments he posted to an item on my blog while everyone he contacted at The Sun could. Turns out that after reading my blog on The Sun's website and successfully posting comments there, Simon later found an archived version through a Google search. This archived version lives on after the story fades from The Sun's site, but it's not possible to add comments to that version. And that version did not include any comments.

The greatest commencement address ever is now more than three decades old. And it's safe to say it will never be surpassed or even equaled. It belongs to the ages. In 1979, its author summed up the condition of modern man by noting that, quote, more than at any other time in history, humanity is at the crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. Unquote. Bang. That's all she wrote.

David Simon thinks I zapped comments he posted to an item on my blog, about his offer to do another season of "The Wire" if Attorney General Eric Holder stops the war on drugs. I'm sure a MacArthur "genius" like David Simon can figure out how to post a comment. But I can assure you that I did not delete his comments. I'm not even sure how to do that since I am new to p2p blog software and not a genius, MacArthur or otherwise. Simon complains in an email that I didn't make it clear in my original blog post that his offer to the attorney general was tongue-in-cheek.

David Simon whose HBO show "Treme" is shot in New Orleans, is venting to the media site Poynter.org about plans to cut back the city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune. News broke this week that the paper's owners plan to publish the Times-Picayune just three days a week starting this fall. There will also be staff cuts. "It's grievous news as it would be for any American city," Simons told Poynter in an email, adding, "But New Orleans isn't immune. No one is. And this slow suicide - as the great Molly Ivins called it - will continue unabated until the industry swallows hard and takes its product - every last newspaper - behind a paywall.

Fans of "The Wire" were taken aback to read that creator David Simon is sort of tired of their rah-rah, late-to-the-game enthusiasm. Simon on Thursday told the New York Times: I do have a certain amused contempt for the number of people who walk sideways into the thing and act like they were there all along. It's selling more DVDs now than when it was on the air. But I'm indifferent to who thinks Omar is really cool now, or that this is the best scene or this is the best season.

David Simon whose HBO show "Treme" is shot in New Orleans, is venting to the media site Poynter.org about plans to cut back the city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune. News broke this week that the paper's owners plan to publish the Times-Picayune just three days a week starting this fall. There will also be staff cuts. "It's grievous news as it would be for any American city," Simons told Poynter in an email, adding, "But New Orleans isn't immune. No one is. And this slow suicide - as the great Molly Ivins called it - will continue unabated until the industry swallows hard and takes its product - every last newspaper - behind a paywall.

David Simon, the Emmy- and Peabody-Award-winning creator of The Wire, has an unusual promise for viewers of the Baltimore-based, HBO drama that begins its fourth season tonight: He won't desert them at the end of the 13-episode cycle -- even if the series is canceled. THE WIRE / / Season 4 begins at 10 tonight on HBO

The show about New Orleans musicians and the Baltimore crime drama are vastly different, but their shared DNA does shine through. One of the great joys of the HBO's drama "Treme" is watching the way that Wendell Pierce, known to fans of "The Wire" as Detective William "Bunk" Moreland, makes you come to care about his new character, Antoine Batiste, a struggling trombone player trying to make it in post-Katrina New Orleans. Batiste is our point of entry and a guide into the culture of that city.

Over the course of a 40-year professional career he has been a musician, composer, conductor, educator and nationally renowned arts administrator. But now the founding director of the Baltimore School for the Arts, who retired in 1996 after leading the school through its first 16 years of existence, is debuting in an entirely new role: David Simon, American realist painter. Today, the latest career evolution of the 78-year-old musician-turned-painter will be celebrated at the Baltimore School for the Arts with an opening reception for a benefit exhibition of more than 80 of Simon's realistic oil paintings and watercolors.

It looks as if Baltimore is going to be back in prime time. As early as next month, HBO is expected to begin filming a new weekly police drama here that will mean at least 100 new jobs and more than $20 million to the area economy. While an official announcement is not expected until tomorrow in Los Angeles on the Winter Press Tour, The Sun has confirmed that HBO will order 13 episodes of The Wire, a crime drama from David Simon, Emmy Award-winning writer-producer of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street and HBO's The Corner.

Fans of "The Wire" were taken aback to read that creator David Simon is sort of tired of their rah-rah, late-to-the-game enthusiasm. Simon on Thursday told the New York Times: I do have a certain amused contempt for the number of people who walk sideways into the thing and act like they were there all along. It's selling more DVDs now than when it was on the air. But I'm indifferent to who thinks Omar is really cool now, or that this is the best scene or this is the best season.

I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to David Simon and The Baltimore Sun for telling Gene Cassidy's remarkable story ("David Simon's 'Homicide' cop battling life on the streets once again," March 11). Gene is truly one of Baltimore's finest, ever. Sunday's article brought attention not only to this hometown hero but also to the need for living liver donors for Gene and others. The fortunate thing for those in need of a transplant is that the liver is one of only two organs that will regenerate if cut in half.

March 11, 2012 Seven-baker-twenty-four unit turns at Mosher and rumbles past that stretch of Appleton Street where Gene Cassidy took two in the head for the company, the first one stealing his eyesight, the second lodging in his brain beyond the skill of a surgeon's knife. Cassidy was 27 then, not even four years on the job, strong and lucky and hard-headed Irish enough that he refused to do the obvious and inevitable thing. He did not die. At University Hospital that night, the other patrol officers and detectives were told it was certain, that their friend would not make it. But Cassidy breathes still, and Appleton and Mosher looks much as it did in October 1987, when Cassidy tumbled out of his radio car to jack up a man wanted on an assault warrant.

"Diner" has resonated with Baltimore-connected writers and moviemakers across the popular and literary spectrum. Here are some of their reactions to the movie's 30th anniversary. The film "shined a light on a time in Baltimore that I was not that familiar with, much the same as my earlier movies may have done to Barry. We later discussed the fact that even though Barry and I grew up five Beltway exits away from each other, I never met a Jewish person until high school and he told me he didn't realize everybody wasn't a Jew until about the same time in his youth.

The pros of Baltimore's visionary Gran Prix IndyCar race are plentiful, while the cons are petty and inconsequential. If Baltimore can alter the "Homicide" image popularized by David Simon's successful book and television series, we'll be ahead of the game no matter how much of a profit the event ends up making. Baltimore has really lost its luster among people we met during recent trips abroad and out west -- even in Denver, where they have done a beautiful job in successfully duplicating our downtown stadiums and Harborplace attractions.

We finally figured out why David Simon couldn't see the comments he posted to an item on my blog while everyone he contacted at The Sun could. Turns out that after reading my blog on The Sun's website and successfully posting comments there, Simon later found an archived version through a Google search. This archived version lives on after the story fades from The Sun's site, but it's not possible to add comments to that version. And that version did not include any comments.

In a gritty West Baltimore neighborhood, in a courtyard where broken glass competes with tufts of grass for space, a teen-age boy sits quietly in a chair, peering intently at a small toy in his hand, oblivious to the rest of the world. Without warning, an empty whiskey bottle is hurled at the wall behind him, shattering within inches of his ear and jolting him out of his trance. A few yards away, another, older youth screams at him to pay attention, cursing in the epithet-filled street language not taught in schools.

David Simon has repaid a long-held literary debt — with interest. On Tuesday, Penguin Classics reissues "Paths of Glory," Humphrey Cobb's surgically sharp novel of the First World War. To Simon, Cobb's 1935 rendering of a doomed French assault and its calamitous aftermath has repercussions that go beyond its immediate anti-war themes. He hears Cobb's characters every time he listens to BP executives trying to explain destructive actions taken for short-term gains. And when bureaucrats assess Hurricane Katrina with "we all did our best" cliches, they remind him of French generals rationalizing the debacles of Verdun.

And now, a follow-up email from David Simon: Comments no longer appear on my screen, or on my wife's, or on the office computer.  Nor is there a link to comments, which appeared there yesterday evening.  Very strange.  I've tried to call it up on three separate computers and no link.  If they are back now, they are back after an absence.  I haven't checked. As to your characterization of your item and its intent, Ms. Vozzella, I can't agree.  By omission, you have implied, with all vigor, that I have let the MacArthur stuff go to my head and have made a demand of the AG that is steeped in arrogance.