News comes from New Orleans that The Wire writer David Simon is pitching a pilot series to HBO.

Having joined the minions of white people who consider Simon's last show to be "a drama of the streets," I couldn't be more excited.

"New Orleans was knocked on its ass [in 2005]," Simon says. "And if you look at where the country as a whole is right now, and sort of what was coming ..." He stops, then starts again.

"I don't mean to make more of this metaphor than will allow, but the country's in very much the same emotional place as New Orleans. A lot of Americans are feeling very dislocated after the last decade or so. So the piece could be resonant to more than New Orleans — if it's done right, if we think about this thing in more universal terms."