It’s Friday evening and work is over. Why not spend a little more time in this wading pool filled with cool, refreshing cultural afterbirth?
Fellow freelancer Andrew R Tonry emailed me today to express a similar passion for Jersey Shore and its train-wreck awesomeness. He also passed on this New York Times article profiling train-wreck conductor Snooki featuring quotable gems to beat out that controversial M.I.A. profile:
But trying to hold a conversation with Snooki is a little like getting down on your hands and knees with a child. You have to come down to her level, and sometimes you almost think you need to bribe her with a piece of candy to coax her to be more responsive. She is really only responsive to her own immediate needs and desires. She is not self-centered, but she is used to acting out and getting away with it.
and
This still doesn’t address Snooki’s strange appeal. And part of the problem is that she can’t explain it herself. She simply isn’t capable of serious introspection. She told me she has read only two books in her life, “Twilight” and “Dear John.” When we were in the kitchen at her dad’s house, I asked Snooki if she were inspired by any movie actresses. (I have this funny theory that she’s a little like Elizabeth Taylor, but more about that in a moment.)
“Movies?” she said thickly. “I really liked Brittany Murphy. Yeah. I looked up to her. She had a dorky personality, like me. It was sad that she died.”
- Not dead
Tonry also put this question to me: “What exactly does hooking up entail? What I mean is, how often is actual sex involved? Like, i got the impression that Pauly D and Angelina boned when he described it, but you thought the contrary. Anyway, something we should both try and figure out.”
I’ll put that to you, Blogtown. I’m pretty sure that any base reached by the Jersey Shore cast – whether it’s first or home plate – registers to them on the same hollow level where everything blurs together. When you have one eye constantly out the door for the next incredible gorilla juicehead (in the girls’ case) or the next vagina with a pulse (in the guys’) then I think hooking up just means whatever the other person lets you do. What do you guys think? How do you take it when someone like DJ Pauly D says they hooked up with somebody (assuming you take it at all)?
I’ll be the killjoy-
These freaks do for Italian-Americans what Bill O’Reilly does for the Irish-Americans, namely they put us back 100 years and in the toilet.
I know, it’s just “entertainment” wrapped up as reality, but it’s more or less the same as “B” porn, it titillates and makes the subject depressingly less than human. And it turns otherwise intelligent people into armchair psychologists. They’re trashy- I get it, they’re weak minded and otherwise a waste of potential. It’s like that movie “Leaving Las Vegas”…losers losing.
To these losers, hooking up isn’t far off from two rats getting in on in a sewer pipe.
I’d rather watch the rats. They have more dignity.
Sorry, Dave. I applaud your efforts to stimulate a discussion on the nature of hooking up but thinking of it in this show’s context, my brain unavoidably conjures unpleasant images of rashes, sores and lesions.
@tsw
Completely understandable. I’m pretty sure these people collect STIs like Pokemon.