John Steffen – Page 28

golf

Schaumburg

Post date 2012/08/01

You can do up some serious muni courses in Chicago. For a kid born and raised in a small town where the only sniff of bent grass came from a private country club, Chicago is quite a playground. I was lucky enough to grow up on the fourteenth green of such a private club in an isolated town inconvenient to an urban center; I value that greatly and am thankful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to learn the game in such a great setting.

But as an adult, with my own car, and mostly free Saturday mornings, I wouldn’t trade the diversity and choice of Chicagoland golf for anything. I value this greatly and am thankful to my wife for letting me have most Saturday mornings as me-golf time.

Hey, just thanking the people that matter. But I also mention this because we Chicagoans need to cherish what we have here. I know it’s tough to cherish things when your round is approaching five hours or a traffic jam threatens to make you late for your tee time. Let’s try though. You gotta take the good with the bad.

Okay, on to Schaumburg.

Schaumburg embodies what I’m talking about. It’s 27 municipally-owned holes packed in to a middle class suburban setting with near-country club conditions and a challenging layout – all very approachable. Solid course, competitive price, and great conditioning. Even amidst this drought-stricken summer and despite the tremendous amount of play it gets, Schaumburg’s greens were smooth and the fairways lush and well-defined. The grounds crew at this place deserves some serious props.

Now it did cost $69 with cart, we waited every shot on the back nine, and there were occasional conditioning trouble spots (because of weather I think), but to me this golf experience leaves nothing to be desired. That’s how I am.

I love the layout. When the park district bought it in 1989, they brought in Bob Lohmann for the redesign. Lohmann is a prolific regional architect whose most famous project may be the Merit Club. You don’t know which of Schaumburg’s two nines you’re going to draw unless you check the rotations online, I rarely check though because Lohmann made them all very comparable. The Baer stands out in that it has three 400+ par fours, with the potential for a long, punishing finishing hole if they put the back tees all the way back, which I’ve never seen. This boosts the rating/slope for any combo that includes Baer.

Pictured at the top of this post is the par four first hole of the Baer course (10th for me on this day). It’s a nearly 400 yarder with water right, a sloped fairway, and a huge green. It’s a challenging hole but also a beautiful setting. You get panoramic views over the lake of the fourth and fifth holes on the Tournament course, and then enjoy a great walk to the next tee box that takes you out into the lake for a waterborne drive. It’s the most beautiful part of the course in my view.

The best hole, for my money, is the par 4 sixth hole on the Players course. It’s 440 yards from the back tees, and unlike the last on the Baer mentioned above, they actually do use the back tees. Check it out:

Your tee shot on this hole is slightly elevated and slightly blind (I think they need an all-clear bell of some sort). It originates from a tree lined pocket by the course entrance. If you hit it solidly, you can benefit from the downhill, which is important, because the shorter iron you have in to the green the better. The approach is to a well-bunkered green also guarded by a canal that is overgrown with vegetation to add to the intimidation factor. The hole is situated adjacent to a busy suburban thoroughfare (Roselle Road), but you hardly notice. It feels like you’re a thousand miles from suburbia.

Besides the 27 holes, Schaumburg has a well-appointed clubhouse with locker rooms and party space. The restaurant has a great burger too. They also have a grass range, a learning center, and seasoned staff who keep play rolling along decently. Even though I only play here one or two times a year, I keep my handicap here and kind of call it my home course. It’s often difficult to get a morning tee time on the weekend because of the permanents, but there are a fair amount of cancellations, so keep calling.

Play it, you’ll love it.

Here’s my scorecard. Started really ugly, but those ten straight pars made for quite a party.

screen

Magic and Bird

Post date 2012/07/29

My bro-in-law cracked out this hoops documentary from HBO Sports during a family vacation one night. It’s a tearjerker; I didn’t expect that man. I outlasted everybody and thankfully I was alone when the HIV portion of the story came on. It made me sad. I remember where I was when Magic made the HIV announcement, that’s how big he was in my life.

Magic and Bird were influential because they reigned from 1979–1992, my formative years, when I was between 12 and 25 (when the male species is at the peak of his sports fandom). I never liked either the Lakers or the Celtics, hated them in fact, but I couldn’t help but notice them. These guys cast a huge shadow over the NBA and over my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers (only to be surpassed by the shadow Jordan cast over the Cavs).

Basketball, the NBA, Bird and Magic, Dr. J and Moses Malone, and the Cavs comprise the root structure of my love for sports. The joy I felt this Saturday morning watching the Men’s Bicycle Road Race in the Olympics may not have been so joyful had Magic and Bird not clashed in the NCAA final in 1979. Had these two men been born decades apart, I may have been reading the newspaper or working instead of watching sports.

This love of sports; it’s their fault. They are to blame.

We have some real sports issues in this country. Our athletes, and coaches, and managers, and owners, and administrators, mostly just lie, cheat, and steal. That I continue to consume this crap in such massive quantities is such a horrible statement on my life that I’m kind of embarrassed. I can’t help myself though. You can understand why I do it when you consider Earvin and Larry. They did things right.

Did Magic and Bird lie? Yeah, probably. Did they cheat and steal? Never. Never.

The fans were the biggest winners from the Bird/Magic years. These guys had a love for the game and respect for competition that is unheard of in this day and age. Don’t get me wrong, I love the NBA now and I think it’s in great hands, but there is nothing like Bird and Magic – no rivalry as big, no interviews as honest, no stories as compelling.

Were they the best ever? No. Jordan was better than both for sure. LeBron could certainly shut both of them down. Who cares. The greatness of Magic and Bird transcended speed, agility, court savvy, and skill. This documentary captured that beautifully.

Bryant Gumbel, Arsenio Hall, Cedric Maxwell, and a pack of newspaper columnists discuss this rivalry and its impact on basketball and on American culture. The story was uplifting at times and gut-wrenching at others. Mostly uplifting. Magic is just an unstoppable positive force of nature. He’s like this huge tornado of optimism and good cheer that squashes anything negative or salty in its path. Bird is the complete opposite; private, quiet, surly.

The most emotional aspects of the show were when Bird was talking about Magic. The interview with Bird shortly after the HIV announcement was one of the most honest and heartfelt interviews I’ve ever heard. And near the end, during the Dream Team segment, when Larry talked about how different he is from Earvin, and how sometimes he’d like to be more like Magic, it was genuine and sincere. If you don’t get a little choked up you aren’t human.

Dammit, Larry Bird had to shorten his career because he hurt his back shoveling gravel while putting in a driveway at his mother’s house. Earvin Johnson had to shorten his career to concentrate on beating the AIDS virus. But that wasn’t the end. These guys are still killing it.

This was almost as compelling as The Fab Five. Damn close.

books

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Post date 2012/07/19
Tags reference

I’m trying to improve my writing. Really, I am. It’s fun and I want to get better at it. Contrast this to my feelings about golf, something else that’s a lot of fun, which I don’t feel a compunction to improve. I just love to play; I don’t practice and I don’t get too discouraged on bad days or too high on good days. It’s golf. Whatever happens, happens.

Right now I’m thinking: “What’s the proper punctuation for that last sentence?” Should it be?:

Whatever happens; happens.

Or should it be?:

Whatever happens – happens.

Good lord. Are all those question marks in the right place? I’m stressed. I hate this.

I don’t have this same level of concern in golf. I replay shots in my head just because they’re fun to think about, not because I want to change them and certainly not because I want to guard against making the same mistake again. I don’t really feel like I’m battling a golf course, but I always feel like I’m battling words.

I’m self-conscious and insecure about the words here. I don’t publicize it because this is all just practice, man. It’s like when you first start playing golf and you aren’t comfortable playing golf with strangers; you don’t seek it out, but you have to do it. If someone joins up with you, so be it. So I’m doing it. Writing in kind of a public manner but not really telling anyone about it. People may occasionally stumble across this site and think I’m a dumbass. It’s stressful, but that’s okay. Hopefully I’ll get better.

I’m practicing for some time down the road when I really want to devote time to amateur journalism. A time when anyone who wants to have a voice can have a voice. We’re gonna get there. Heck, we’re almost there. I can’t imagine what this is going to be like in ten years, but I do know that I want to be ready with a basic set of writing and analytical skills so that I can churn out quality content in a timely manner.

So that’s that.

Enter Lynne Truss and her book about punctuation. It’s a whole book devoted to explaining the usage of commas, periods, apostrophes, etc … It’s bigger than that though. It’s also devoted to wry, English wit and the power of preserving something that seems part of a bygone era. It’s an impassioned piece of work. I like Truss.

Here’s what you get, from the colon and semicolon chapter:

But colons and semicolons – well, they are in a different league, my dear! They give such a lift! Assuming a sentence rises into the air with the initial capital letter and lands with a soft-ish bump at the full stop, the humble comma can keep the sentence aloft all right, like this, UP, for hours if necessary, UP, like this, UP, sort-of bouncing, and then falling down, and then UP it goes again, assuming you have enough additional things to say, although in the end you may run out of ideas and then you have to roll along the ground with no commas at all until some sort of surface resistance takes over and you run out of steam anyway and then eventually with the help of three dots … you stop. But the thermals that benignly waft our sentences to new altitudes – that allow us to coast on air, and loop-the-loop, suspending the laws of gravity – well, they are the colons, and semicolons. … (pg 106)

Nerdy, funny, inventive for sure. It’s a short book, but gives Truss enough time to dig into the history of punctuation while remaining highly applicable to what you’re writing today. She has plenty of everyday examples augmented by lists of rules that clarify and illuminate. I’m not quite sure how I’ll use it. Whenever I finish a good reference book I always tell myself I’ll come back to it and review the rules, maybe type them into little lists in Evernote that I can refer to, but I never do.

It will probably have to wait until that magical time, when I’m retired and have some expendable hours, at about 90 maybe, at which point I’ll be able to partake in some amateur journalism of a serious nature.

screen

Prometheus

Post date 2012/07/16

I wanted to see this thing straight away but didn’t get around to it until the weekend after July 4th. That’s about a month in so it was relegated to a very small theatre in the AMC 21 in Chicago, which resulted in me sitting closer to the screen than I have in years. I think it added to the effect.

This is horror sci-fi. Star Wars is sci-fi. The Shining is horror. Prometheus is both, with a somewhat shallow back story on the origins of life and failings of human beings. Screw the back story. This is an awesome futuristic action flick with tons of monsters, space ships, and evil humans.

The star is Noomi Rapace, from TGWTDT fame (Swedish version). She’s turned in to a must-see actor for me; anything she’s in from now on, I’ll see. Period. She plays scientist Elizabeth Shaw, who’s trying to find the origin of human life.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Rapace thrives in jarring, intense, uncomfortable scenes. The rape scene(s) in TGWTDT are such, but she went above and beyond in this movie for what I’ll call the semi-automated alien C-section. Yeah man, she had had to do some light programming via a touch interface to have an operating machine cut an eight inch incision in her abdomen, pull out a slimy, wriggling alien thing, and staple her back up.

** REALLY SERIOUS PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This was difficult for her for various physical and emotional reasons. First of all, she couldn’t just pull up “C-section” from the menu because the machine was built for a man. Even in the future, I guess there are system constraints that prohibit having the whole surgical catalog in one app. It appears the current trend of declining memory chip pricing stops (or regresses) some time before 2080, making it cost-prohibitive to dump both male and female medical procedures on the same chip.

So there’s that. Then there’s the fact that Shaw was infertile up to this point in her life, so the joy of finally having a baby was quickly squelched by figuring out that it was an alien thing. That takes some emotional toll, which Shaw focuses on saving humanity.

Great stuff. I loved it.

It’s foreshadowed and hinted at, but you don’t really verify that this is an Alien prequel. It kind of slaps you in the face, though, when the man-squid creature rises out of a dead pre-human right before they roll the credits. Assuming it is a prequel, I’m not sure where Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley comes in. It would have made it too easy to give Rapace’s character the name Ripley, but Ridley Scott didn’t go there.

I’m torn. Part of me wants to re-watch the Alien franchise, but that kind of puts things out of order huh? I’m going to sit tight until I find out what they are going to do with the sequel to Prometheus.

books

Devil In A Blue Dress

Post date 2012/07/13
Tags crime

I love American crime novels. I especially love American crime novels set in Southern California. It’s a whole sub-genre with giants like Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Sue Grafton as examples. I recently added Walter Mosley and his character Easy Rawlins to my mix. I just finished the first of five (or so) and it’s stellar stuff.

Rawlins is different from Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, and Kinsey Milhone because he didn’t start out in law enforcement. He’s just a man building airplanes at a Los Angeles manufacturing plant in 1948 who gets fired and takes an odd job for a gangster so he can pay his mortgage. One thing leads to another and he starts embracing this investigator stuff.

The back story is that he’s a WWII vet from Houston who came to LA to avoid a spot of trouble. It’s not that he committed a crime in Houston per se, but his crowd was getting a little rough so he came to LA to start fresh. It was looking like a great call too: decent job, small house, plenty of places to party. But then his boss pushes him a little too hard and he stands his ground and gets canned.

The plot twists and turns through a stack of LA bad guys and crooked politicians. Good action, intrigue, and character development. Oh, and the woman, in the blue dress – she’s a devil from a few different angles.

Rawlins is a great character: humorless, straightforward, and insightful. There are some deep explorations of race and class from Rawlins, like this:

Talking with Mr. Todd Carter was a strange experience. I mean, there I was, a Negro in a rich white man’s office, talking to him like we were best friends – even closer. I could tell that he didn’t have the fear or contempt that most white people showed when they dealt with me.

It was a strange experience but I had seen it before. Mr. Todd Carter was so rich that he didn’t even consider me in human terms. He could tell me anything. I could have been a prized dog that he knelt to and hugged when he felt low.

It was the worst kind of racism. The fact that he didn’t even recognize our difference showed that he didn’t care one damn about me. But I didn’t have the time to worry about it. I just watched him move his lips about lost love until, finally, I began to see him as some strange being. Like a baby who grows to man-size and terrorizes his poor parents with his strength and stupidity.

Man that was cool. See what I’m saying; humorless, straightforward, and insightful.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Rawlins also has a somewhat non-standard sense of private investigator morality that I found refreshing (finally, someone kept some dirty money!). I can’t wait to see where Mosley takes this guy. The problem is, I’m generating quite a backlog with all of this serialized stuff, so I may not get to Rawlins again until the end of the year. That’s a good problem to have though, I think.

food

Edzo’s

Post date 2012/07/06
Tags burgers

Alright folks, we got us some burger stuff to cover. There’s a good chance that the burger pictured above could be one of the top ten food items ever to touch my lips. Certainly a top two burger, but I’m also ready to group this with all-time great things like Lou Malnati’s sausage pizza, G’s mussels, Don Pan’s pandebono, mom’s Mrs. Field’s knockoff cookies, and my sister’s frosting… You get my drift? This is the real thing folks. I’m not messing round.

It’s from Edzo’s in Evanston and it was a joyous experience. The only other burger in town I would even include in the same tier is the one from Tavish, but it’s been a few years since I’ve tasted it so it’s a difficult comparison to make. We aren’t going there.

About a month ago my buddy saw Edzo’s on Check Please! and he immediately started planning a visit. Yeah, we go on burger dates every so often, is that weird? So one Saturday morning after playing golf at Winnetka we made a quick detour to downtown Evanston for a burger. It was a huge sensory experience packed in to about five hours: great golf and a great burger, all behind me by 11:30am. Wow. Just wow.

I had the eight ounce Char Burger, medium, “with everything” and a shake. I was positively giddy waiting for it and it didn’t disappoint. “Everything” is mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion (I don’t customize anyone’s condiment stack, I usually just say “everything”). I don’t think there are any exotic meats like brisket or short rib in the burger, it just seemed like a secret combo of ground beef and spices. I love simple.

You can certainly tell it was hand-packed, plenty of nooks, crannies, and randomness. And there was virtually no lower bun saturation yet it was juicy. I think they achieved this by using the condiment stack as a juice barrier. The bun is soft and compresses perfectly without losing any of it’s bunness, allowing even small-mouthed people to shovel in the thick burger and a full condiment stack with very little mess. They may have went slightly past medium on mine but not much. It tasted great, near perfect.

The menu is simply awesome. Behold the solid food portion of the menu. Just behold it.

It’s a burger-lover’s dream because they clearly define the two types available. You can get it fried on a flat piece of steel, griddled; or you can get it heated on a grate over a flame, charred. It’s a rarity to be given this many options in a burger shop, and it’s certainly never so succinctly explained.

What a great place for a date also. My wife can’t eat a whole eight ounce burger but she could certainly find something on the menu. I’m betting the four ounce griddled version would remind her of a classic burger joint she visited as a kid which served a quarter pounder fried in it’s own juices (probably better at Edzo’s, actually). Or she could get the grilled chicken if she was in a healthy mood. The shake was killer also and the fries looked great (thin-cut with skin-on). Maybe I’ll take her to Edzo’s for our anniversary.

They’re opening one in Lincoln Park soon that will be a little different because they may not be able to offer the Char Burger. Good, that means I’ll be forced to try something new.

golf

Winnetka

Post date 2012/07/01

There are a bunch of North Shore municipal courses that are pretty decent. But this one, Winnetka, stands out above the rest I think. I’m pitting it against Wilmette, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Sunset Valley, and it edges those out. In fact, I’m going out on a limb here, Winnetka can compete for my golf dollars with high-end municipal courses like Village Links and George Dunne. It’s that great.

I walked it for $49 a few Saturdays ago and it was even better than I remember. I haven’t played it since 2009 and I noted the addition of shaggy grass on many of the bunkers, which added a nice touch to an already beautiful golf course. It’s a good value with a lot going for it – great conditions, a solidly challenging middle tee box, and less than 20 miles from downtown. Also, if you want a real challenge, the 6,500 yard+ back tees provide a stern test because bunkers, trees, and lakes crowd almost every tee shot, lengthening this course even more.

Pictured above is the approach to the beautiful, peaceful par four fourteenth hole. It’s short but there’s trouble: a lake left and OB/forest preserve right. The approach is exacting because the shallow, elevated green is guarded by two bunkers in front; don’t club down off the tee too much because you need to be sure you have a short iron approach. We shouldn’t be surprised that Winnetka has such a well-designed hole because some heavyweights have been involved with this course. They have a nice history on their website.

The layout is short and tight, but it doesn’t really feel that short when you’re out there (tight for sure). Maybe it’s the par 71 or something. None of the par fives are going to beat you up, but the par fours and par threes have a ton of challenge. Even the middle tees have three par fours over 400 yards, and the par threes are nicely varied. As the round progresses the par threes get longer and longer, measuring from the middle tees: 147 yards, 164 yards, 171 yards, and 207 yards. I went 7 iron, 5 iron, 4 iron, and 4+ wood on this day. Nice variety.

They seem to have thrown in the women’s tee as an afterthought. It’s a brutal 5,569 yards long and will probably frustrate many a female with it’s 73.7/131 rating/slope combination.

I’ll give you another great thing about this course: they have crack of dawn tee times. We went out at 6:04am because that’s the earliest one I could get. There were plenty of groups already out. I love the early, early tee times that many of the courses here in Chicago let you take. This eastern edge of the central time zone is great for morning people like myself.

Chicago is the best everyday golf region on earth!

books

The Drowning Pool

Post date 2012/06/27
Tags crime, pop-fiction

Thanks to authors like Ross MacDonald, I think I’ll always read American detective novels. It’s just what I do. MacDonald’s character Lew Archer is quickly becoming one of my favorite fictional characters because of his keen observations, sense of humor, and taste in alcohol.

Archer seems to spend a lot of time in bars looking for information and MacDonald loves to add a little color by describing the place and the inhabitants (pg 76):

The place was built on two levels, so that the bar commanded a view of the dining-room. It was nearly two o’clock. The bar was doing a rush-hour business before the curfew knelled. I found an empty stool, ordered a Guinness stout for energy, and looked around me.

I love Guinness. MacDonald followed this with the introduction to some of the key characters. I didn’t recognize how important this character survey was at the time, but I learned my lesson.

Archer’s humor tends to the wry side. Here’s him recounting a trip to an opulent mansion looking for a black limousine (pg 99):

I climbed into my car, closing the door very gently so as not to start an avalanche of money. The loop in the drive took me past the garages. They contained an Austin, a jeep, and a white roadster, but no black limousine.

Hah, “an avalanche of money,” that’s funny stuff. I cracked a smile.

Or what about when he snuck up on a guy from a clump of trees (pg 109).

Reavis glanced at me, the color mounting floridly in his face. “Archer?”

I said: “The name is Leatherstocking.”

I’m rolling on the floor at this point. Not only does MacDonald toss in humor, but he pays tribute to one of America’s greatest writers. It’s really inventive.

The villains aren’t funny though.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This book contained a somewhat out-of-place scene with an evil doctor who uses high pressure water torture on his subjects (plenty of “drowning pool” references). Sue Grafton was highly influenced by MacDonald but I don’t think she’s ever created a villain so bizarre. If memory serves, neither has Burke or Hillerman, two of my other favorite authors. I’ll start paying more attention. Archer ends up escaping from this water torture chamber by filling it up until the door bursts open from the pressure. Then he gets washed out and kills the doctor. It was kind of James Bond-like. Interesting tactic by MacDonald. I’m okay with it.

This is book two with Archer and I’m ready to stay with it for the whole series. Both books were made into movies with Paul Newman, although they changed Archer’s name to Harper. I need to check those out. I’m reading almost all serialized fiction right now. I’m starting the Easy Rawlins series and have a Smiley and Samson novel queued up. Then there’s Game of Thrones book four and probably another Robicheaux adventure. I just don’t feel like branching out. I’m busy at work and throwing in some occasional non-fiction, so I’m not going to be adventurous with my fiction.

golf

Bonita Bay Trip 2012

Post date 2012/06/25

I do golf trips. My biggest one every year is a late May/early June trip to Bonita Springs, FL with a group of friends. It’s tough leaving Chicago during the longest and most beautiful days of the year, but if you do it right, it’s worth it. Here are my tips for doing it right.

Go off-season to someplace hot, which basically means Florida or Arizona between May and September. The crowds are down and you can get on courses you could never imagine for dirt cheap. Don’t go off-season/shoulder season to a northern climate like Michigan or Wisconsin because you’re rolling the dice with the weather. I’m telling you, June heat in Florida is a piece of cake.
Play 36 a day for no more than two consecutive days. I’m in decent golf shape, but two consecutive 36 hole days beats me up. My legs leave me about half way through the second round and the fun quotient goes downhill from there. I’m 46 and it wasn’t but a decade ago when playing 54 holes for one of the days was a must. No more!
Minimize car time. My default is to keep the rounds on the 36 hole days at the same facility, or in close proximity, even if it means playing the same course twice. If you abide by rule #1 you’ll be on a great course, so playing it twice is even better than playing it once. The payoff is a nice, leisurely lunch. That between-round lunch with a great group of friends is sometimes the best part of the day (depending on how you’re hitting it, of course).
Remember: It’s about community, not about posting scores. If you get angry or dejected with a bad round, then go home. I struggled with this early on but I have things under control now. Also, never let distractions bother you. In fact, this is the time to work on handling distractions. I’ve started to see how long I can hold a conversation with my buddies into the swing, stopping only for the few seconds it takes to hit the ball.
Get some consistency. Hitting the same place every year really takes the logistics out of the picture, which lets your crew focus on hanging out rather than planning on hanging out. It also makes deviations even more memorable. I just pulled up a bunch of pix from a year where we hit someplace new and it brought back some great memories.

So those are my top five tips. Since I’m posting all my scores this year on-site, here’s the golf trip stack:

Bonita Bay Creekside

Bonita Bay Cypress (2x)

Shadow Wood North

Bonita Bay Creekside

screen

Luther – Season One

Post date 2012/06/24

Idris Elba rocked The Wire. Who knew he was a British stage and screen actor? Not me. But G and I are stuck on the watch it now content from the BBC with our streaming only Netflix plan so we are slowly discovering this stuff. Elba plays Luther, a London cop with anger management issues and a general disdain for authority.

I’m baffled a little by the pop-culture norms of the UK. I think of the BBC as something akin to PBS: Not-for-profit and devoted to education and the arts. Clearly I’m wrong about that education and arts part because this is a graphic, violent cop show that feels more like something you see on HBO or Showtime in the US, sans naked people.

It’s full of nasty, twisted murderers and intense action scenes. Oh yeah, and they’re not afraid to kill off key characters. I don’t watch any current network TV shows in the US so I’m not that informed on what’s out there, but this doesn’t feel like free TV in America. These BBC people are doing whatever they want and they’re doing it with taxpayer dollars. Aren’t they? Maybe not. When you’re looking at things from a global perspective, BBC America may be for profit. I don’t get it, but I don’t really care.

The first season was six episodes and the second season is four episodes. They’re more like miniseries than they are serialized shows. The last episode of season one ended with quite a cliffhanger so G and I are fired up to get this going again.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Luther, much like Stringer, is an imposing force. Both characters know what the end result should be and are not afraid to buck the system and embrace new methods. Stringer was a drug dealer who went to business school and tried to use Robert’s Rules of Order to run meetings with drug kingpins. Luther is a cop who’s not afraid to team up with sadistic murderers if it’s the quickest method to crack a case. Same but different. Both badasses.

Elba may be the only way I’ll be able to get G to watch The Wire. She seems smitten with the guy’s screen presence.