I've been watching The Wire

on DVD, and although I'm about to start Season 4, I spent all of Season 3 failing to get over the events that befell the Frank Sobotka character in Season 2.

Spoiler Alert: things don't turn out so well for good old Frank Sobotka in Season 2.

And like I was sort of haunted by it (it also doesn't help that my 1.5 year old hasn't had his hair cut yet and so his hair is long and wispy and when he's been running around all day and has gotten all sweaty, he resembles Frank Sobotka more than he resembles anyone in his nuclear family)?

And it was almost to the point where I was going to write a letter to the actor, saying: "Look, I know you are an actor, and you are not actually Frank Sobotka, but I don't know who else to address this to" even as I am aware that Larry Linville used to get letters all the time addressed to Frank Burns telling him what an asshole he had been to Hawkeye. And even as I am aware of the uneasiness I felt with the mail lady at my first job when she would stop at my desk to talk about the previous night's The X Files and she would use "David Duchovny" and "Fox Mulder" interchangeably, and sometimes discus Mulder's wife, Tea Leoni or wondered if Duchovny and Agent Scully would ever get together and the porousness of certain borders was made evident.

But I fixed it!
And if you are suffering from something similar, here is how you can fix it too:
(1) Look up the actor who played Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer)
(2) Go to his IMDB page
(3) Look at the pictures that accompany his profile
(4) Note that in the pictures Chris Bauer is tan, has a shaved head, and is wearing an unbutton shirt+suit combo.
(5) Done. If you never look at a picture of Bauer portraying Frank Sobotka again, you will be cured of empathy.

Which, who needs it?

It is probable that the Secretary Treasurer for the International Brotherhood of Stevedores in Baltimore does not require a running-mate, but if it did, then just as Obama chose Biden to fill in the [perceived] foreign policy gap and McCain chose Palin to fill in the creationist / not-a-man/ drilling-in-Alaska gap, Sobotka could do worse than picking Bauer whose IMDB profile pictures imply a chance to fill the LA douchebag gap.