Plastic Podcast

The venerable and exceedingly intermittent Plastic Podcast, which has outlived the two blogs with which it was intertwined, and whose audio archives were difficult to ...

The Plastic Podcast

An audio program about movies. Listen with your iPod or computer.

Plastic Podcast

The venerable and exceedingly intermittent Plastic Podcast, which has outlived the two blogs with which it was intertwined, and whose audio archives were difficult to ...

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Daily Plastic is a Chicago-based movie blog, a collaboration between Robert Davis and J. Robert Parks, the same pair who brought you the wearable movie tote, the razor-thin pencil pocket, and that joke about aardvarks. If you know the whereabouts of the blue Pontiac Tempest that was towed from the Plastic Parking Lot on the evening of August 7th, 2008, or more importantly if you've recovered the red shoebox that was in its trunk, please contact us at your earliest convenience.

Davis was the chief film critic for the late, great Paste Magazine (which lives on now as a website) from 2005 through 2009, and he counts this interview with Claire Denis among his favorite moments. Every once in a while he pops up on Twitter. He's presently sipping puerh in Chicago, even at this hour. Meanwhile, Parks, whose work has appeared in TimeOut Chicago, The Hyde Park Herald, and Paste, is molding unsuspecting, college-aged minds in the aforementioned windy city. Media types are warned to stay clear of his semester-sized field of influence because of the distorting effects that are likely to develop.

The © copyright of all content on Daily Plastic belongs to the respective authors.

Steve Earle as Walon in The Wire, Season 1, Episode 7: One Arrest

Singer-songwriter Steve Earle pops up here and there in all five seasons of The Wire. Half way through the first season, he makes the first of several appearances as Walon, a recovering addict and a Narcotics Anonymous mentor and sponsor to one of the series' major characters. At the end of the second season, Earle's song "Feel Alright" is the prominent backdrop for the season-capping montage. (Every season ends with one; the one that closes the season about blue-collar dock workers belongs to Earle.) And in the fifth season, Earle opens every show with a cover of the Tom Waits song "Way Down in the Hole."

But the appearance that makes me smile the most is the one in which Earle's face and voice are nowhere to be seen or heard. It's buried in the tenth episode of the first season, in a familiar bit of dialogue:

Jimmy McNulty: Why New York?
Omar Little: Must be something happening out there, man. Too big a town, know what I mean?

By the way, in case you missed this tweet from Darren Hughes: Alan Sepinwall is writing detailed synopses and analyses of The Wire, episode by episode. They're a great way to revisit the show. Sepinwall is churning up lots of new ideas.

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