During a recent interview with This American Life host Ira Glass, I asked about his favorite storytellers. Here's his list...
Errol Morris
Michael Lewis ("especially The Blind Side")
Malcolm Gladwell
Jack Hitt
David Sedaris
"The guys who put together The Wire" (David Simon, Ed Burns, etc)
"The guys who did Battlestar Galactica, which is a work of genius storytelling and, sometimes, [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Like many kids in the late ‘60s, I would run home from elementary school to catch soap-opera phenomenon Dark Shadows. A daytime serial that combined horror (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man) and classic Gothic fiction (Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Taming Of The Shrew), Dark [...]

Millard Kaufman, who created the Mister Magoo cartoon character, passed away a few days ago. Kaufman, who grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Hopkins, also wrote the screenplay for Bad Day at Black Rock, which earned him an Oscar nomination in 1955. McSweeney's published Kaufman's debut novel, Bowl of Cherries, in 2007. At the [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
The most influential artistic experience of my life was seeing the original Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo at the Lyric when I six years old. It was the singular event that made me 'know' that I wanted to perform on stage as a [...]

M.I.A., the British/Sri Lankan songwriter/producer/designer, has teamed with Baltimore DJ Blaqstarr for this take on The Wire theme song, "Way Down in the Hole." It's the latest version of the Tom Waits-penned tune, which has already been covered by The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Neville Brothers, Steve Earle, and DoMaJe, a local gospel group. [...]

I just spotted this item about Wire cast members campaigning for Obama in North Carolina. Maybe they're returning the favor—Obama says The Wire is his favorite television show. And if Obama really wants to anger the right/GOP, he could get David Simon to write a few speeches.

Baltimore native Matthew Weiner picked up a pair of Emmys Sunday night for his work on Mad Men, which won for "Outstanding Drama Series." In the "Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series" category, Weiner beat out Baltimore's David Simon and Ed Burns, who were nominated for The Wire.
Shame on The Emmys for giving The Wire [...]

David Simon's latest project, Generation Kill, premiered last night on HBO. Based on Evan Wright's book, the seven-part mini-series follows a battalion of Marines through the first 40 days of the Iraq War. I can just imagine the sigh of relief coming from some local politicos and civic cheerleaders now that Simon has set his [...]

  A few months ago, I wrote a short piece in the magazine about Howard Markman, a local singer/songwriter who'd placed a song in the 10-part, Mel Gibson-produced, PBS documentary Carrier. While working on episode nine—in which the aircraft carrier Nimitz is steaming towards home after a six-month deployment in the Persian Gulf—the show's editors needed a tune [...]