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| Livin' on a Prayer in
the Badlands |
| I love New Jersey, you
got a freakin' problem with that? |
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| Author:
James Y. Yeh |
| Publication:
Michigan Review (Michigan University Newspaper) |
| Volume XXI, Issue 10 |
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Did you guys hear about this? The
town of Clinton, New Jersey wants to change its name to something
less disgraceful. Yeah, they're taking out the New Jersey
part.
Ha ha, Jay, real funny. I remember hearing that joke back during the
comedy goldmine that was the Clinton administration. Being from New
Jersey, and having lived in Clinton for a few years, I was surprised
to hear it mentioned, but I wasn't surprised to hear it turned
around to mock Jersey in general. There are some topics that TV
can't joke about, like plane crashings, AIDS, cancer or Martin
Luther King, but other topics like Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, the
L.A. Clippers, there are never enough jokes about them. And one of
those topics comics love to mine is, of course, New Jersey.
Where New Jersey picked up such a reputation is beyond me. Is it
because it's perceived as New York's younger, homelier and less
talented sister? Is it the fact that we dare to call ourselves the
Garden State when the media paints us as an industrial wasteland
that takes in all of New York's garbage, like the Jets? (My
apologies to Jets fans, both of you, maybe the Jets are doing well
now, I don't know, I don't keep up with pro football, but my last,
and might I say lasting impressions, of the Jets were the pathetic
Rich Kotite days.)
Whatever it is, people should try living there before knocking it.
You know that phrase, "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't
want to live there?" Well, you probably wouldn't want to visit
New Jersey, but you'd probably want to live there. I never really
appreciated New Jersey until coming here four years ago. I always
thought toll roads like the Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway
were just out to take our money (although it can be argued that the
Parkway has long been paid off and is doing just that), but after
seeing the third-world roads in Michigan, hell, I'm willing to pay.
Some people think Jersey is a rat hole because they claim to have
seen it firsthand. I'm willing to bet, however, that these people
were on their way to New York, and that the only part of Jersey that
these people ever saw was Newark International Airport, and the
turnpike between Newark and either the George Washington Bridge or
one of the tunnels. That part of New Jersey, I'll concede, is a rat
hole. But then again, if you came to Michigan and you only saw
Flint, or went to Indiana and only saw Gary, then yeah, you might
think that Michigan and Indiana were rat holes too.
Other than really nice roads, New Jersey has a whole slew of other
good things about it too. I can cite the fact that New Jersey has
beaten out Connecticut as the state with the highest median income.
But that probably doesn't mean anything to me, and it probably
doesn't mean anything to you either. But on to the relevant
advantages: from Central Jersey, you're an hour from Philadelphia by
car, and about an hour, hour and a half, from New York by train.
That means we've got three baseball teams, three football teams
(assuming you count the Jets), three basketball teams and four
hockey teams within two hours of us. Let's see any other part of the
country top that kind of variety. The proximity to New York and
Philly also means that you can choose which airport to fly out of.
Six Flags Great Adventure, (a theme park bigger than Disneyland, as
they shamelessly and endlessly advertise), is almost smack-dab in
the middle of the state. No one in the state is probably more than
two hours from the shore, and no one is probably more than three or
four hours away from casino gambling in Atlantic City. AC isn't just
a single Indian resort/casino in the woods, it's a miniature version
of Vegas; but instead of the desert and hookers, you get the shore
and the boardwalk (ok, there are probably hookers in AC too). With
said shoreline, New Jersey is a good home for surfers, and since the
Appalachians run through New Jersey, there's skiing too. There are
definitely better places to surf and ski, that's for sure, but how
many places in the United States can boast having both?
It's never too cold or too hot; we can thank the Atlantic for that.
Winter doesn't last more than three months, unlike some places
around here, and while it can get hot, it's not hot all summer.
Earthquakes do not terrorize us; I didn't feel my first earthquake
until I came to Ann Arbor (which is also weird.) We're not
terrorized by hurricanes, as we're too far north for them to survive
as hurricanes, but we're not too far north to be terrorized by
nor'easters.
Which is not to say that New Jersey doesn't have its faults. We have
little in terms of college football, but then again, none of the
schools in the region between Syracuse, Central Pennsylvania and
Virginia have very good football programs. College football is so
weak, the best team in the state is in the Ivy League. (Rutgers lost
to West Virginia 80-7. How on earth does a team lose 80-7? A Pop
Warner team shouldn't have lost 80-7.) Our auto insurance rates are
the highest in the country. Newark was the auto theft capital of the
United States just ten years ago. While it has dropped in the
rankings, it's still probably up there somewhere. Jersey City won
the proud title of stolen car capital just five years ago, but it
has also fell in the rankings recently. And due to its proximity to
New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey has some pretty draconian gun
laws. After getting my gun permit two years ago, I was certain that
I could've qualified to buy guns in North Korea considering all the
hoops I had to jump through and all the personal data I had to
surrender. Plus, we're at the forefront of the racial profiling
debate. And how could I forget shark attacks? If you want to lose a
limb to a shark, New Jersey is the place to go.
And now, there's anthrax. Yes folks, I don't have to worry about
anthrax coming to my hometown of West Windsor because it's probably
already there. The post office was closed to be swept for spores. My
dad retrieves our mail wearing rubber gloves (which doesn't make a
lot of sense to me, because he'll have to bring at least part of the
mail indoors anyway.) The letters containing anthrax were apparently
sent from the post office across the street from the 7-11 I went to
almost every single day after work.
But despite all that, I'm not afraid to go back. Sure, maybe I will
have to handle the mail more carefully now, and yes, every single
pistol I buy is automatically registered with the police whether I
like it or not, but that's not enough to keep me from the best
calzones in the world at Red Star Pizza in West Trenton (They're not
communists, I've checked). It's not enough to keep me from Yankees
games on television and on the radio. It's not enough to keep me
from FOUR servings of the Simpsons every single night (two from
Fox-NYC, two from Fox-Philly.) It's not enough to keep me from
wanting to visit the battleship New Jersey, on the Camden shoreline
(For those you wondering, the battleship Michigan was cut up for
scrap following World War I, so there, ha!).
No, I don't know any gangsters, although I've had my suspicions
about certain people. Life in Jersey isn't like it is in the
Sopranos; restaurants don't mysteriously blow up and guys don't get
run down and beat up in the streets. No, we don't pronounce it "Joisee."
And yes, we love Springsteen and Bon Jovi; guilty as charged. People
will do almost anything for Springsteen tickets, not just paying
hundreds of dollars for tickets, but having firefighters declare an
emergency to get people to disperse so they can get to the front of
the line for tickets. Yes, some of us can identify where we live by
which Turnpike exit we live closest to. I'm 8A, or 8, depending on
the traffic. And personally, I've never ever played skee-ball,
although I can't speak for the rest of my fellow Jersey-folk.
New Jersey is the Rodney Dangerfield of states, it gets no respect.
We get crapped on more than any state other than maybe West
Virginia, and I don't see a lot of people coming in defense of West
Virginia. We're the home of Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison (screw
Ohio, who thinks of Ohio when Edison is mentioned, really?). We gave
the world the first Trial of the Century, the Lindbergh trial, and
we've got some of the most badass state troopers in the U.S. If you
see one of them approach you in their blue pseudo-Nazi uniforms,
just relax, stay calm, and make sure your hands are visible at all
times. And if I still haven't convinced you that New Jersey is the
place to be, then screw you, and screw your mama too ñ oh wait, I
already did that.online
source: http://www.michiganreview.com/article.php?id=80 |
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