Saturday, September 25, 2010

A Very Serious "Situation"

If a tree falls in the forest and it lands on Snooki...would anyone give a fuck?  There's no way to know for certain.  But always remember to ask questions.

Here's another one.  Do you know who "The Situation" is?  I'll bet you do.  And I would also bet that more middle and high school students know who "The Situation" is than Ban Ki-moon.  In case you just went cross-eyed, he's the Secretary General of the United Nations.  I also know who "The Situation" is and I am not proud of this fact.

I watched two episodes of The Jersey Shore last year...the first to see what all the outrage was about and the second to see what happened when a man punched a Snooki.  Do you know what a Snooki is?


(Blogger's Note: The U.S. Patent Office denied the Snooki on the right from trademarking her name because the Snooky on the left already claimed it.  Snooky with a 'y' is a cat from a children's book who fell off a boat and made new friends at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe Snooki with an 'i' could fall of a boat? Maybe she could learn to breathe underwater and make new aquatic friends too? Maybe? Possibly?  Please?  Please?)

Moving along.  After watching the show, I became nauseous and after watching the cavalcade of popularity that soon followed, I became upset.  But witnessing the phenomenon that it has become has gotten me downright furious.

Like the rest of you, I have had the terrible misfortune of growing up through the dawn of reality television, it's bumbling adolescence and it's present state of complete televisionistic domination.  I have watched as the amount of original programming has dissipated, virtually cut in half over the course of the last decade.  I have watched as the amount of acting jobs and writing jobs have diminished significantly.  I have watched all of this with equal portions of spite, outrage and disgust.  Now although this evolution pisses me off personally because of the dwindled professional opportunities that now exist for me as a result, the greater problem lies elsewhere.

How low will we allow the bar to drop?  How little will we continue to ask of our entertainment?

Perhaps it's not fair to blame "The Jersey Shore" for the state of reality entertainment.  It has been on this downward spiral for some time now, aided and abetted by the shitty smorgasbord of celebrity magazines available at any bodega, drug store or supermarket.  Now does this show constitute 'rock bottom'?  I would hope so but it's quite possibly not. Several other programs celebrating the Jersey way of life, whatever that may be, are already polluting the airwaves.

(Personal Blogger's Note - I am from Long Island, a suburban armpit hardly worth celebrating.  New Jersey is extensively the mentally challenged cousin of Strong Island and it should not be celebrated, deified, televised or emulated in any way.  These are the facts of the case and they are indisputable.)

Is this what we want people?  Do we want to watch beefcake morons fake-baking, binge-drinking and objectifying overweight women?  Do we want to watch stupid, shallow, superficial women bicker with accents that make my ears bleed and vomit at the same time?  It sucks that the marketplace has a demand for such bottom feeding television.  But if you are watching this show and padding the ratings, you are a fucking enabler.  YES I'M TALKING TO YOU!

I tried watching a recent episode and I had to stop because as I watched, I could feel my IQ plummeting by the second.  When did we start celebrating idiocy?  When did this demand for debauchery and general behavioral apathy reach such vile depths?  When did 'dancing beach morons' become the standard by which all reality programs must measure themselves?

If at any point in my life, I started referring to myself as "The Situation," my friends would kick my ass and rightfully so. If you publicly utililize such a moniker, you are a douschebag and you should banished to an island where you are only allowed to mingle with equal or greater douschebags.  You should not be put on television where your douschebaggery is allowed to spread to the masses.

Nor could I ever even fathom dating a woman that, with a straight face, referred to herself as J-Wow.  The very fact that either of these hemorrhoids could demand and receive thousands of dollars just to show up at a nightclub represents the complete disintegration of Social Darwinism as we know it.

The Jersey Shore - morons on parade

Only the strong used to survive.  Society would root out those deemed unworthy of success. Look at the picture above.  Look at these people.  Yes, they're kinda pretty to look at if you slop enough make-up and bronzer on 'em.  But they are bringing down the property value of the human race.  And they need to be stopped.  My proposal...euthanize the entire cast of "The Jersey Shore."  Or at least sterilize them.  We do not want these people propagating, procreating and contaminating the earth with future generations of knuckleheads.  We do not want it and we cannot allow it.  The very future of mankind depends on it.

4 comments:

  1. (Personal Blogger's Note - I am from Long Island, a suburban armpit hardly worth celebrating. New Jersey is extensively the mentally challenged cousin of Strong Island and it should not be celebrated, deified, televised or emulated in any way. These are the facts of the case and they are indisputable.)

    I would strongly disagree with you on the above Personal note. it is clearly an evaluation that was made from your troubled childhood which in turn has turned you bitter, angry and well ...obscene individual.. ha. (WOULDN't HAVE YOU ANY OTHER WAY!!)

    I love New Jersey.. the Jersey I know is filled with Italian American Doctors , Lawyers, Financial Geniuses who mostly come to work in NYC to work and make pay state taxes to us that we benefit from . IT is not a mob filled .. garbage dumpster containing any "Situation" Yes are there parts of New Jersey plagued by Children of Parents who refused to educate themselves in any capacity.. OF COURSE is there a a MOB there .. There was ....any one now would be considered a wanna be..
    The Mob I knew of were class acts.. not some idiot at the BADDA BING CLUB.... you didn't know they were mob unless you knew a relative. So New Jersey and Long Island are lovely places to live grow up in... for some. It"s all a matter of perspective.. And PS I don't know and will never know what a The Situation is.. because tuning in once is caving into the hype that they consistently throw our way.. I trust it's there by the unintelligent people that give it attention.

    Keep Writing Michael.. I am loving this blog...

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  2. Ok, first of all....let's call it 'Wrong' Island, shall we? Secondly, in my opinion, television (in general) is an incredibly tremendous waste of time ( especially the way people use it today) and more importantly, it's a complete mental energy sucker, so no thanks. I'm in the 'go live life, don't watch it on some fucking box' camp. But then again, who cares, live and let live. It's all good.

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  3. There has been a limited amount of value on TV for some time now and most of what is on is a good measure of the sad and self inflated state of society, what and who we value, emulate and iconize.
    None of those on Jersey Shore ( which I watched for approx . 3 minutes to see what a Snooki was) are from New Jersey. Staten Island is a much closer relative of that area of "strong island" . The Buttafucoville's. Every state has an "armpit". At the dunes in Indiana, a traveler's destination, you have waterfront factories on either side of you when you stand in the water.
    Human embarrassments are breed and nurtured everywhere.
    New Jersey has it's negatives- Bayonne etc. and the armpit by Newark airport and that they let these cromagnums film there. But it's also the birthplace of Thomas Edison, Meryl Streep, Phillip Roth, Fran Lebowitz, Michael Douglas, and home to Stephen Colbert.
    Reality TV and it's popularity is a banner of our human failings. NJ has it's downsides as all states do but those people- the snooki situations, no no my friend. They were not inbreed in NJ.

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  4. wow...didn't realize so many people (3) would come to Jersey's rescue. Relax folks, it's just a stereotype and, like all stereotypes, is based on truth but is obviously overbroad. NY has had its share of decades of negativisim but no one is writing to the rescue. Who really gives a fuck? NJ folks...ease-the-fuck-up. The problem here is not necessarily the location (although, I dare anyone to walk on the Jersey boardwalk and not read those stupid T-shirts which promote the "The Jersey Shore" inspired crap). Michael said it right--the show celebrates a group of morons and people love it. It makes me scratch my head in wonder. What the fuck has happened to society? We're collectively like Nero, smiling and fiddling while Rome burns, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

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