•August 11, 2021•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

The headline read “Seventy employees evacuated, three hospitalized after ammonia leak at Wheeling pizza factory.”
All of you anal-retentive types probably shuddered at the thought.
One of them was staff writer Russell Lissau.
“When people evacuate, they’re emptying their bowels,” he wrote to me. “When buildings evacuate, it means all the people have left. I learned that one on ‘The Wire,’ Season 5.”
For the unindoctrinated, “The Wire” was a gritty HBO cop show set in Baltimore. It spent some of its final season in a fictionalized Baltimore Sun newsroom. (The show’s creator some years earlier had been a reporter in the real version.)
I have yet to watch a full episode of “The Wire,” even though several friends with a knowledge of my cinematic and small-screen leanings have recommended it.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.