No, I don't mean our military men and women in Iraq, but rather me, in my living room, and the prospect of being transported to Lejeune or Baghdad.

I lived with a former Marine for many years. He affected a kind of warped sense of humor in day-to-day interactions, for instance, noting which of the kitchen utensils where lethal (all of them). He would tell me how the NSA agents he worked with in Signal Corps smoked a lot and talked a lot about the weather and nothing else. We would joke that he was someone you wanted on his team when the zombie apocalypse came.

But I could tell that he always, as open and as generous a person he could be, had compartmentalized his experiences and that there was a certain lethal side to him that I could never fully come to understand. It was because of his openness that the existence of secrets kept close to the vest were as apparent to me as dark matter is to an astrophysicist.

So, it is with a great degree of interest that I will be watching Simon and Burns' latest project: having over 5 seasons gotten so much right about the corner, cops, addicts, politicians and children inhabiting mythical Baltimore (I still think the newspapermen were a little cartoony, but I'm sure subsequent viewiings may soften my disappointment with the final season of "The Wire").

Also, thanks Heather for reminding me to put it on my Season Pass.

The dialogue from "Heat"? That was legendarily bad dialogue.

Maybe to a civilian with zero experience with big score conmen, cops and Negroes, sure, but the real guys recognized the banter and the prioritizing that went on in 'Heat'.

I was the sole guy working the Friday afternoon-Monday morning period with guys who had 'worked their way down' to minimum security, and were in our place for drug rehab. I brought in Heat one evening and the entire crew was in the basement, riveted. Right when the crew is exiting the Bank, one of our inmates said, "Everybody got your boners?"

Shit, the dialogue even made Pacino look like he knew a thing or two, which is no mean feat, since, in real life, Al is right up there with a box of rocks, brain-wise.

Anybody who volunteers to be trained to be a killer is, by definition, not a good man.

Whatever blood-soaked sacrifice the high priests of Salon made to bring Heather Havrilesky into being, it was worth it.

When one enlisted officer says to another, "We need to make sure the stupidity in this company doesn't roll down too hard on our guys,"

Hey Heather,

What's an enlisted officer? Why don't you get in your Prius, drive down to Camp Pendleton and learn the acquaintance of a few real "Warrior Poets"?

It might not be who the marines are but college benefits is one of the main reasons a lot of people sign up. If you're poor and you can't net a scholarship then joining the army is about the only way to pay for college. Marines are mostly doing the job they've always wanted but the regular army are often doing it as a way forward in their lives.

"Maybe to a civilian with zero experience with big score conmen, cops and Negroes, sure, but the real guys recognized the banter and the prioritizing that went on in 'Heat'."

You do realize that Ed Burns served in the Baltimore Police department for twenty years, many of those as a homicide detective, right? You also realize that he also wrote a book where he spent a year on a inner-city corner following the lives of dug dealers and addicts, right? I think the dude has seen a lot more of the street than a CO who works the weekend shift in the minimum security ward...

On the front page of yesterday's NY Times (7.6.2008) there is an article about Ed Burns.

The article about Ed Burns is on the front page of Sunday's NY Times "Arts and Leisure" section!

I think [Ed Burns] has seen a lot more of the street than a CO who works the weekend shift in the minimum security ward...

The comment about Heat was Havrilesky's, not Burns. The bold text is her questions.

That said, it's possible for dialogue to be both authentic and crappy. If you had a movie in which two people sat around and said, "like, um," and rambled on and on as often as people do in real life, it would be very authentic, and very very unwatchable.

I am glad people as competent and honest as David Simon and Ed Burns have been given the opportunity to make this work. I read the newspaper everyday and still do not understand what our military are expected to do in Iraq. I hope "Generation Kill" receives a wide audience.

i call them ape-men.

Getting sick of this trend of post-9/11 storytelling where filmmakers tell the "small stories" of the "little guys" because there is a blanket ban in the propaganda-ridden USA on talking about the big issues.

Stone's 9/11 movie, the United 93 film were such "tales of individual heroism" when the big picture of Administration negligence and capitalizing on tragedy is a whitewashed lie.

Even Errol Morris's movie about the small fry at Abu Ghraib fits this trend.

More dramatizations of Cheney spreading out the Iraq maps with fellow oil execs, please!