Happy Hanukkah!

Six Degrees Of "The Situation"

Five mutual friends! And one of them is my cousin!

Perhaps this show reflects more poorly on Jersey than I originally thought.

Unarrested Development

Chuck Klosterman has a great interview online in promotion of his new book, which I'm pretty excited about. In it, he makes an excellent -- and sadly overlooked -- suggestion:

I once wrote about Arrested Development when it was going off the air, and they were running out of money, and my thing was, “You know, what they should do is have every character wear a [name brand soda] t-shirt all the time. And they should drink [name brand soda] constantly,” because they could have gotten away with it. It would have seemed funny. It would have been the exact same show, but they would always have those shirts on. And [the soda company] would have paid millions and millions of dollars for that, simply for the amount of attention the show would have gotten for doing it.

Whorish? Unquestionably. But I definitely would have watched it, and a world with Arrested Development in it is worth some blatant product placement.

No Words

I'm not even going to bother explaining or going into detail, but that just happened. True story.

Incredible.

Bad For The Jews

Orrin Hatch wrote a Hannukah song. Let me write that again. Orrin Hatch, Mormon senator from Utah, wrote a Hannukah song. You know what they say: write what you know. And spoiler alert: it's horrendous.

We give the goyim Bob Dylan, and who do we get? Orinn #$!@ing Hatch. Someone botched this trade badly. According to the New York Times, "Mr. Hatch speaks of 'Eight Days of Hanukkah' as a gift to the Jewish people." Can we re-gift?

The "idea" for the song apparently arose because The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg was complaining about "the general lameness of Hannukah music." And this, it seems, is the antidote. Truly, all hope is lost. Haven't we suffered enough?

And it appears Hatch wrote only the lyrics, which are perhaps the worst part of a piece of music so dreadful it was immediately nominated for five Grammys. I believe will.I.am is covering it as we speak. Though a difficult choice, I'd have to say my favorite lyric is, "They lit the Menorah / In the holy place." "The holy place"? Really, Orrin? Couldn't even bother checking Wikipedia for a more definitive locale? Looks like someone missed that day in Hebrew school.

They really seem to be just letting senators do whatever they feel like these days. I'd complain that distractions like this are why health care reform hasn't been passed yet, but there's no way this thing took more than five minutes to write.

And then, there's this: "Hatch said his ultimate goal would be for his idol, Ms. Streisand, to perform one of his songs." Wow. Larry Craig. Charlie Crist. Orrin Hatch. It's high times for the Log Cabin Republicans.

Hatch told the Times, “Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do." How about no more Hannukah songs and we'll call it square?

Down The Shore

Yes, I watched Jersey Shore. I wasn't going to, but then I remembered that I'm obligated by birth to watch anything with the word "Jersey" in the title. Well-played, MTV.

People in Jersey have gotten pretty upset about the portrayal of the state on the show. I take an opposing view. To me, Jersey Shore is an affirmation of what I've been saying for years: that the poor reputation of New Jersey is not New Jersey's fault. Hear me out.

First things first: the show is set in Seaside Heights. But no one in New Jersey think Seaside Heights is nice, and we certainly don't expect you to. I'm conceding that one right off the bat. I will not have a place lovingly referred to by locals as "Sleaside" held against us.

More importantly, let's take a look at where all the cast members on this debacle come from:

Staten Island, New York
Franklin Square, New York
Staten Island, New York
Marlboro, New York
Johnston, Rhode Island
The Bronx, New York
Hazlet, New Jersey
Staten Island, New York

I'm not exactly sure how Rhode Island snuck in there, but only one -- one -- of the cast members is actually from New Jersey. Every summer, all these morons from Staten Island come to the shore, and everyone assumes they're from New Jersey. Jersey Shore is definitive proof that they are not. Staten Island, you have stealthily sullied the good name of New Jersey for the last time.

Final thought: when did the word "guido" stop being considered offensive, and now that it's linked so closely with these people, can it please be again?

Afternoon Delight

Afternoon. At 9:49 AM.

I'm starting to recognize an east coast bias that I never fully appreciated.

The Grammys Still Exist

While I was busy starting my career as a real person, the Grammy nominations apparently came out. I had assumed that my annual bitching had finally led to their cancellation. No dice. I think at this point I'm doing more harm than good.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- everyone together now: this year's nominations are the worst ever. All I can say is that any organization that honestly believes that the Black Eyed Peas released one of the five best albums of this or any year does not deserve to exist. And Taylor Swift for Album, Record and Song of the Year? I'mma letchu finish, but kill yourself.

Let's scroll down the nominations list for a moment. Best Comedy Album. The nominees include both George Lopez and Kathy Griffin. It's like nominating Pauly Shore for an Oscar. Were there no other comedy albums this year? I'm confused.

Now let's take a moment to check in with my favorite Grammy category:

Best Zydeco Or Cajun Music Album

• Alligator Purse
  Beausoleil Avec Michael Doucet
  
  
• Lay Your Burden Down
  Buckwheat Zydeco
  
  
• Stripped Down
  The Magnolia Sisters
  
  
• Live At 2009 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
  Pine Leaf Boys
  
  
• L'Ésprit Créole
  Cedric Watson et Bijou Créole

Excellent. Great to see Buckwheat Zydeco back on top. I love him/her/them/it.

Other points of interest: Tia Carerre -- like, the one from Wayne's World -- is nominated for Best Hawaiian Album. I'm not sure whose continuing existence surprises me more: Tia Carerre or this category. At least now I know why I haven't heard from her in 15 years.

It doesn't look like any of the top nominees are near death this year. Consequently, I have absolutely no clue who's going to win. I'd pretend I'm not going to watch again, but I think we know how this story goes.

Tax-Free Bigotry

On the long list of things I failed to write about in a timely fashion is New York's defeat of same-sex marriage last week. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised anymore, but I was struck by one line in the Times article on the vote.

The state’s Roman Catholic bishops had consistently lobbied for its defeat, however, and after the vote released a statement applauding the move.

Can someone explain to me why we're providing tax-exempt status to an organization that's blatantly political? According to Wikipedia -- it's a legal resource, you may not know it -- 501(c)(3) status does permit some limited lobbying from tax-exempt organizations, but prohibits campaigning for elected officials. I really don't see the distinction in a case like this.

New Jersey, fix this.

Better Luck Next Year

It was fun while it lasted. Despite a late surge, I failed to make the playoffs in one of my fantasy football leagues. I'd just like to go on record that I'll be holding this failure against Marshawn Lynch personally.

The good news is, now I'll have time to pour myself into my other team. Oh, and work.

Yeah. Work.

Duly Noted

Good to know. Very good to know.

Coffee Break

An open letter to society: no, I don't drink coffee.

I know that's hard to believe. Believe it. And stop telling me I'm going to start. I heard that in college. I heard it in law school. I think I can now confidently say that I'm not. I'm really not.

Coffee sucks. Deal with it.

Taking Back Sunday

I just remembered what it was like on a Sunday night when you have work the next day.

This sucks.

The Toilet Bowl

And Rutgers accepts a bid to the St. Petersburg Bowl. When the PapaJohns.com Bowl is actually a step up, you know things are bad. I didn't even know they had any bowl games in Russia.

We'll be playing the University of Central Florida, which is apparently a real school. Oh, and the game is in less than two weeks. This couldn't be more embarrassing.

Let's just chalk this up as a win and agree never to speak of this again.

The Legend Of Tim Tebow

“To the fans, the Gator Nation, I’m sorry. Extremely sorry. But I promise you one thing: a lot of good will come from this. You will never see a player, in the entire country, play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season. And you will never see a team play harder than we will play the rest of the season. God bless.” - Tim Tebow

So I guess that was just last season? Maybe that's why you don't engrave things into the walls of your stadium until after the player leaves.

On a related note, I think I finally found a redeeming purpose for Twitter: mocking Tim Tebow.

 

0-15

The Rutgers game started here at 9 o'clock this morning. Having to set an alarm to watch a televised football game is unnatural. Sadly, I wish I hadn't bothered. I'd like for Rutgers to beat West Virginia at some point before I die.

It looked pretty cold at Rutgers Stadium today; I've been told it's now snowing back east. If it makes you feel any better, it's partly cloudy here.

Snowsuit Up!

Hi-larious.