If you know anything about me you know I love going down the shore.
Each shore town has its own personality, whether Asbury Park (decrepit burlesque dancer), Ocean Grove (tent revivalist bible banger), Atlantic City (depressed gambler with a positive outlook), Ocean City (teetotalling dullard), Stone Harbor (textbook prep), Point Pleasant (Lilly Pulitzer), Sea Isle City (Irish-American from Philadelphia), or Wildwood (party animal and/or Mummer - wait, same thing.)
Seaside Heights feels like something in between Point Pleasant and Wildwood. When we went there as juveniles (and we did so because it was the closest beach with a happenin' boardwalk) we called it Sleaze-side Heights. It has probably gone through much of the same redevelopment that Wildwood has, so I'm sure it's not as sleazy now. I hadn't been there in many years.
Until I visited through the magic of television, with MTV's newest gem "Jersey Shore." Its premiere last week was TWO HOURS of mild drama, jaw-dropping fashion faux pases, and priceless sound bites (eg. "I'm a bartender I do important things") with eight strangers who may as well all be related. They're thrown together in a tacky shore house -- not cool tacky, not shore tacky, just flippin' tacky -- and are forced to work in a cheesy t-shirt store on the boardwalk as they get voted off one by one as they perform embarassing stunts for aging rock stars. No, I'm kidding on the last part.
These eight 20-somethings all are Italian-American, self-proclaimed "guidos and guidettes." Princess girls with poorly styled hair, oompa-loompa tans, shorts that are too short and tops that are too low, who dig on gym-rat juice-head sexed up guys with crunchy hair and waxed chests.
The show is AWESOME. It's like watching an anthropological experiment. A test tube of frosted lipstick, protein powder, sparkly bronzer, Ed Hardy and Miller Lite, ready to explode!!
I visited central New Jersey this past weekend, attending a party with people from all over the state and a few of us from across the border. The reaction was the same, especially among the Italian-Americans who live at the shore, present at the party - that show is so not the Jersey shore. The people aren't even from Jersey! The girls are completely unlikeable! Italian-Americans are not like that -- except for the good looking dinner of sausage and peppers. And what's up with the Cadillacs?! Why can't we stop watching it!?!
Then the DJ at the party started cranking out Sayreville's very own Bon Jovi with Livin on a Prayer, and we all jumped up and down and pumped our fists in the air, thereby proving one of the Jersey stereotypes.
Umm...did I hear correctly there is a guy on the show that references himself as "THE SITUATION"? Is this true? I need to start calling myself that, that is magic.
Posted by: jeremy | 08 December 2009 at 10:21 PM