Cause Tonight I'm Gonna Take that Ride

For many folks my age, the "M" in MTV stands for Crap (all four letters are silent). There's a family of networks all owned (I think) by Viacom who owns, in turn, or is owned by (us elderly get confused) the same folks who run CBS and nearly all of the outlets don't have a lot to do with music videos anymore.

The flagship, MTV, was the first of the networks to jump ship on actual program offerings involved with music. On most of what they now have, the only music seems to be what's played in the background while similar looking twenty-somethings elevate self-aggrandizement to Olympian heights. My wife and I have two twenty-somethings of our own, and had either Patrick or Michelle ever approximated, much less duplicated, the behaviors I've caught of the Brat Brigade on MTV, I'd be saving a LOT of money on birthdays, if you know what I mean.

I've never seen an MTV show called Jersey Shore but someone known as the New Jersey Italian American Legislative Caucus apparently has and is more than underwhelmed. The Day before Christmas Eve, they called on MTV to stop airing the program, calling it "wildly offensive." On New Year's Eve, according to the show's website, the one hundred and fourth episode airs, leading me to wonder where the NJIALC has been for, well, the previous one hundred and three episodes. (I'm also wondering if they hollered at HBO about The Sopranos in the same manner. And that I haven't been in a diner since the show went off the air, who do I see about that?)

From what I've read on line and elsewhere, the State of New Jersey and its legislators, men and women from diverse ethnic, racial and social strata, are facing (as are many of the rest of our fifty states) daunting challenges and opportunities fraught with risk as this first decade of the New Century ends. Perhaps, former Jerseyite that I am, now living in the Land of Steady Habits, I'm jealous Connecticut didn't go after the WB for Gilmore Girls when it had the chance (Starrs Hollow? C'mon!). We do, after all, have an Attorney General with more teeth than hair who sued when schools in the Big East bailed after Big Time Football arrived at Rentchler Field.

But cooler heads, I guess, have prevailed and no writs hit the fan. Besides, Southside Johnny (I think without The Jukes), I'm told, now resides in Westport, Connecticut changing, I'd imagine, the intensity with which he does I Don't Wanna Go Home if not completely eliminating it from the live performance. As for the young 'uns of Jersey Shore, we've had the shortest (= darkest) day of the year already, but that doesn't mean Spring is right around the corner. And if surf, sand and sun is coated in baby oil for an even tan and sprinkled with a few 'youse guys' and some 'deses' and 'does', what's the harm? Okay, it's not Sayreville, but still....."'Cause nothing matters in this whole wide world, when you're in love with a Jersey Girl."
-bill kenny