Jersey Shore

I finally watched an episode of Jersey Shore the other day. Sure I had claimed to have seen it before but I’d never actually watched an episode of it. Youtube clips and a few snippets of the show here and there are one thing – and they’re admittedly very funny, but having to watch the show in its entirety is kind of like having to hang out with real guidos at a real guido place at the shore in NJ. Now, I have nothing against Italians, or even Italian-Americans, but I’m extremely biased against people that only concern themselves with their appearance, hitting on members of the opposite sex, fighting, and their unbelievable beer bong streak from last night.

But it’s more complex than that, I do enjoy guidos in small doses. They are fun to hang out next to because they often start fights which can be amusing to watch. I can usually tolerate guidos on an individual basis for a few hours but, in groups, they usually get old after 15 minutes or so. Call me elitist but I like talking about stuff this is going on or hearing people’s reactions to stuff. Hearing someone drone on about the really crazy fight they almost just got in or the really smoking hot girl they totally hooked up can only be recycled so many times before you realize the stories are all the same. (And guidos loathe self-deprecating humor so they wouldn’t tell you if anything actually interesting happened... like they got beat up for acting like an over-aggressive guido). So, as a result, I try to only associate with guidos on the most superficial levels. I think guido-land is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

My early experiences at Belmar (the cultural epicenter of the post-college scene) were mainly confined to Bar A’s (A stands for ‘Anticipation’) outside areas – large sandy volleyball courts surrounded by multiple bars with room to move around. I avoided the jam packed dance rooms filled with guidos in wife beaters pumping their fists to whatever 10-15 techno dance remixes were hot that summer. But I think the karma gods noticed that I was making too many guido jokes without ever having really hung out in a guido place so they subjected me to DJais… on a Sunday afternoon… after Italy had just won the World Cup. A friend dragged me there and I figured I could stand a few hours of fake Italian nationalism but that place was miserable. Luckily the obscene volume of the techno music made normal conversation impossible so I wasn’t required to actually talk to anyone. The dance floor was a sea of fake boobs and fake muscles. (C’mon, if you are a guido who cares about your looks and you aren’t taking steroids, are you really trying?) Someone had on an “I Like Fighting” shirt - naturally in the colors of the Italian flag and naturally many sizes too small for them. (I did not just make that up.) The drink of choice was Redbull and vodka which seemed redundant as nearly everyone looked like they were on heavy doses of cocaine but guido logic (and cardiovascular health practices) don’t always make sense. Nevertheless, I survived this encounter and, from that day forward, no longer felt even a twinge of guilt at making guido jokes.

I write this not to poke fun at guidos (though that’s definitely a nice perk) but, rather, to educate the average person about the environment that is the Jersey Shore. Think of it kind of like the Serengeti… it’d be an interesting place to visit and a wonderful locale for a TV special but you definitely don’t want to live there. Oh yeah, and if you have sex, you’ll probably get AIDS.