Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

If the Munchkins have been subjugated for so long, how come Munchkinland looks so pristine and pleasant? These guys have been serfs for however long, and yet they’re looking dapper and well-dressed.

Why doesn’t Glinda team up with the Good Witch of the South and just wage battle against the Wicked Witch of the West?

Where are the rest of the guilds? We just get the Lullaby Guild and the Lollipop Guild. Is there a Buttercup Guild? A Cinnamon Roll Guild? A Teddy Bear Guild?

Where does the red brick road go? The uh, Topaz City?

I know the Scarecrow doesn’t have a brain (even though, spoiler alert, he’s the smartest one in the group), but he doesn’t know about the Wizard of Oz? The Great Oz is like, the ruler of the world the Scarecrow lives in!

This is picking nits, but once the Tin Woodsman gets a heart, shouldn’t he the ask for a stomach? Lungs? Any other organs?

Why isn’t the portion of the Yellow Brick Road that goes through the Cowardly Lion’s territory better maintained? Is that like the Camden of Oz?

Does the Wicked Witch really need to enchant the poppy field? That’s straight up opium already!

Look at how expansive that poppy field is. What is this, Afghanistan? Ba-dum-cha!

They didn’t dye all those horses, did they?

You DARE to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk! No question here, I just love that line.

Why do the Wicked Witch’s soldiers look just like her? Isn’t that weird?

Again, not a question, but I love how everyone refers to the Cowardly Lion as, well, the Cowardly Lion. “What about the courage you promised the Cowardly Lion, or the heart you promised the Heartless Tin Man, or the brain you promised me, the Brainless Scarecrow, or the trip to Kansas you promised Homeless Dorothy?”

Thixotropic

9) The Low Life, Thixotropic (2003?)
I took a writing workshop about music in college, and apparently I learned nothing, because I’m having a hard time describing Thixotropic on the merits. (This will be a recurring theme in the days to come, precious reader. My apologies in advance.) The vibe I get from The Low Life is that sound like a homeless man’s Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Here, I’m not talking about the hits, but rather the deeper cuts from albums like Californication and By the Way. [Why, the astute reader might ask, did I choose "a homeless man's Red Hot Chili Peppers" when that band, in fact, put out a couple of pretty good albums in the 00s? Well, to paraphrase Robbie Hart, I have the blog, and you don't, so you will listen to every damn word that I have to say!])

What was I saying?

Yes. Thixotropic. Tremendous album. As you might recall from last post, I struggled to whittle down my list of favorite albums to a manageable 10. Consequently, any outside factors that could help sway my decision were welcomes. Hence The Low Life’s appearance. Allow me to explain.

It was a more innocent time, the summer of 2003. A pal and I were driving down the shore, and she threw in a CD, and the first track was wicked catchy. So was the second. Then the third. And so on. How often do you hear a random band that turns out to be awesome? I’d certainly never heard of The Low Life before. And to boot, my friend only knew about these guys because someone handed her a free CD outside a rock club. Or something like that. Anyway, that CD was Thixotropic. I’ve had it with me for a long time.

The band, native to the DC-Baltimore area, has since broke up, leaving behind this album and the follow-up Daisy Cutter. Their website used to say something along the lines of “The Low Life is a robot killing machine sent back in time to save the future by destroying the present.” I’d say that describes their sound pretty accurately! The aforementioned first track, “In My Bed,” sets the tone for the album, both musically and lyrically: breezy guitars, jazzy basslines, and just the right sprinkling of bongo drums, coupled with a fairly grim view of relations with the fairer sex. Female readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun might recoil at lyrics like “Zip off your boots, spit out your gum. / Get in my bed. / Just because you’re pretty doesn’t make you dumb,” but the song’s protagonist, and indeed most of the album’s protagonists, are boorish enough caricatures that their critiques must be taken with a few requisite grains of salt. Notable and telling exceptions, though, include the album’s closer, “Four Walls,” a tender and melodic little acoustic tune that frontman Evan Bliss seemed to like so much that he reprised it on his first solo album, Pour-Soi en Soi. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand that I wear my heart on my sleeve, so sweet lyrics like “This is where we’ll call home. / Got four walls and a burning stove. / I can’t buy you gold when push comes to shove. / All you’ll have around your neck is my love,” are right in my wheelhouse.

Signature track: “Bag of Money”

True confession, guys: “Four Walls” is actually my choice for signature track, but unfortunately there aren’t any decent recordings of it out there on the Intertubes. No matter, though! This wouldn’t be a top 10 list if there weren’t an almost equally great song on deck. That song is “Bag of Money,” which tells the story of a bank-or-convenience-store-but-the-distinction-is-inconsequential robber who falls in love with one of his victims. (”Let’s leave our lives behind. / A bag of money and the car’s still running. / No time for acting shy, / Losing time with the cop cars coming.”) It’s all relatively straightforward, but you know I’m a sucker for a hooky song, and one that has a lot of different, catchy melodies. “Bag of Money” is where it’s at.

Since I sort of cheated you out of a signature track, let me make it up to. Click here to listen to a live performance by The Low Life from 2004, courtesy of the Internet Archive (which is a just dynamite resource for live music. Really amazing, actually.) I saw these guys one time at the legendary Crossroads in Garwood, New Jersey. I was the designated driver that night, and I remember being so antsy not being able to drink at a rock show at a club that I bought a pack of cigarettes. So yeah, you could smoke in a bar. That’s how long ago it was!

It’s almost the end of the year, and the end of the decade. (Which I won’t bother trying to name. Seek other commentators for that discussion.) I wouldn’t be a worthwhile blog-writing guy if I didn’t take a stab at an end-of-the-decade list, and since I write about (or at least pass along) music quite a bit, well, here we are. This wouldn’t be Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, though, if there weren’t an introductory essay.

This is not a comprehensive list, which will become clear as the days go by. I’m sure Kid A and whatever drivel the Arcade Fire have put out in the past ten years are fine albums. I wouldn’t know; I never listened to them! So I’m not going to pull your leg and pretend that you’re about to read an authoritative list of the ten best albums of the decade. Rolling Stone or Pitchfork are doing that kind of thing. I’m only writing about what I’m qualified to write about.

As I was going through my music, though, I realized that I don’t actually own a ton of albums that I regularly listen to. Or, at least, listen to enough to say “this one is better than that one.” I pretty easily came up with around 25 albums to choose from. (There were still a lot that didn’t make even the first cut. I have like, every Modest Mouse album, and I’ve listened to exactly zero of those songs. Thanks, MyTunes!) This makes sense, though, right? I don’t steal a lot of music these days, so if I’m going to own an entire album, odds are it’s going to be by an artist that I know I already like. It’s a recession, after all. If I find an individual song I like, I’ll splurge, but for the most part, I’m not rolling the dice on unproven albums.

The big question is, is the record industry going to roll the dice on albums? I’m not going to make any dire predictions about the fate of the record industry: like I said, it’s a recession, and a lot of industries are in decline. However, the thrust of this Financial Times article looks not so good:

Only one album released after 2002 has made it in to the decade’s top 10 in the US, according to research that highlights the record industry’s decline since piracy and single-track digital downloads began to erode the once lucrative format.

Again, I’m not a business expert, or a record executive, or an artist, or anything like that, but it makes intuitive sense that in a world where you can easily buy any individual track you want, or steal it, or listen to it on-demand over the Internet, the market for full albums, collections of songs meant to convey a singular artistic message, would decline, on both the creative and the business side. All of this is to say, this could be the last Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun Decennial Album Retrospective you ever read!

A quick note on methodology: I limited myself to one album per band on this list. Otherwise, it would come to be dominated by what the Official Washington Correspondent of DD&U refers to as LIEWS. That is, Long Island Emo With Screaming. I’d like to appear a little more broad than that. In that spirit, here’s my tenth favorite album of the decade, a little New Jersey Emo With Screaming.

War All the Time

10) Thursday, War All the Time (2003)
Ok, so “emo with screaming” isn’t the most apt description. Thursday counts as a post-hardcore band, if that sort of label means anything to you. (It doesn’t mean much to me.) War All the Time is Thursday’s second full-length studio album, and it’s a doozy: loud, intense, and grim. You know I’m a stickler for starting a record out right, and the first track, “For the Workforce, Drowning,” does the trick: I’d argue it’s the most potent commentary on the existential terror of the rat race in the last 25 years. (Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds / tossing and turning. / Tomorrow we’ll get up, / drive to work, / single file. / With everyday, /it’s like the last. / Waiting for the life to start, / is it always just always ahead of the curve?) Right on those heels, we’re confronted with what passes for a ballad on a Thursday album, “Between Rupture and Rapture,” dread-inspiring imagery and all. (Without a second opinion / The chemicals saturate to counteract the code. / Through the double helix we are twisting / Too scared to let this go. / Someone call the head nurse. / She’s coming to the capitol / To wrap us up and throw us in the dirt / With a dream that’s turning off.) It’s a ferocious-sounding album from front to back, but the endearing quality of Thursday is the heart and feeling that goes into their lyrics. I don’t want to blow all my material before I get into the signature track, though.

Signature track: “War All the Time”

Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly is on record as saying that the album’s title and theme were inspired by a Charles Bukowski poem called “Pace Is the Essence,” which I’ll go ahead and reproduce here in full, probably in violation of all manner of copyright laws. Sorry. It’s a good poem!

as the mailman walked up the hill
he laughed
when he saw me.
I laughed too.
“yeah, Harry, I know:
just an old man with a hose
watering the parkway.
you got me…”

those guys think it’s got to be
war
all the time.
I’m just taking a
rest.
when I finally press that red
button
they’ll wish I was
back watering the
gladiolas.

“It’s about love, this record is really about love,” Rickly said about War All the Time. “I’ve never written a song about love before, the whole record is about love lost and faith lost.” Which, you know, we have to take the man at his word, to an extent. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun will recognize, however, comma, that I’m a pretty enthusiastic proponent of the reader-response school of criticism. The band has said, in a number of venues, that the title track of their album isn’t actually about September 11th. But it’s very hard not to complete the meaning of the text through interpretation, so to speak. And when I hear lyrics like “War all of the time / In the shadow of the New York skyline. / We grew up too fast, / Falling apart / Like the ashes of American flags” and “We don’t know where to land / So we kiss like little kids. / We used to be very tall buildings. / We’ve been falling for so long,” it’s hard not to imagine an allegory for what happened that day. I won’t bullshit you, dear reader: six years later, I listen to this song, and I get a couple pieces of dust in my eye.

Rickly and his bandmates have an interest in removing their tune from the collection of songs that can be categorized as “About 9/11,” since so many of them, especially those written in the most immediate aftermath, come from a place of fear, hatred, and irrational groupthink. They have an even greater interest if, in fact, they didn’t mean for the song to be even remotely considered for that category in the first place. What I’m trying to say is that even if you inadvertently create a piece of art that can, in a meaningful and artful way, take people back to a place that they would rather forget, but are better off not forgetting, and think critically about it, that’s probably something to be proud of.

I don’t mean to be flip in that title. Health care reform IS a big effing deal. I haven’t written much about Congress’s effort to pass comprehensive health care reform because honestly, things are changing every day, and while I get worked up about every little development in real life, I don’t feel compelled to expose you, my precious and treasured readers, to that sort of madness.

But it’s definitely worth taking a step back and looking at the larger effort, how it’s progressed, and what the consequences are. This is where my ambivalence comes in. Because, on the one hand, it’s become painfully apparent to liberal supporters of reform that most of the store has been compromised away. Even though any reasonable objective observer will recognize that a Canadian-style single payer system would be the most effective way to achieve both universality AND cost control (notice I said “reasonable objective observer,” which disqualifies pretty much every Republican critic of reform), that idea wasn’t even put forward as a serious starting point for debate. Consequently, the so-called public option, the next-most-progressive idea for reform, got whittled down and exposed to ridiculous right wing obfuscation and misinformation, to the point that even the most feckless shadow of the public option became anathema for conservative and moderate Democrats. Here’s the inimitable and heroic Matt Taibbi discussing the latest compromise, a proposed expansion of Medicare to folks age 55 and over:

I get that some people think this is a good idea, and it’s hard to argue that any kind of expansion of Medicare is a bad thing, given that the program has been popular and successful throughout its history. But this move just smacks of the bass-ackwards Solomonesque bargaining that has marked this whole health care effort from the start. If expanding Medicare is good for people aged 55 and up, why isn’t it good for everybody? Why isn’t it a good idea to provide cheaper insurance for people in their preventive care years, so that they cost Medicare less as they do get older?

Answer: because it’s a political non-starter, because hospitals and doctors won’t tolerate having to take Medicare rates from everyone, nor will the pharma companies or the insurance companies tolerate having to compete with Medicare for their most profitable customers.

So what they’ll do instead is expand Medicare for people aged 55 and up in exchange for the preservation of subsidies everywhere else in the system, as well as an individual mandate that increases the revenue flow for private insurers by forcing millions of new (and relatively young and healthy) customers their way. This isn’t a health care strategy, it’s a big baby that’s been hacked up into parts and fed in descending size order to the administration’s weightiest political lobbies. I almost can’t wait to see what the next “compromise” is.

It’s hard to argue here. If you start from a position where you have to appease doctors, insurers, the pharmaceutical industry, and the conservative members of your own party, it’s very difficult to construct meaningful, coherent reform.

But then you’ve got the equally inimitable Ezra Klein taking a different sort of long view, and discussing liberal ends versus liberal means:

The first year of the Obama presidency has been a long tutorial on the difference between liberal ends and liberal means. If I told you America has a president determined to pass large amounts of Keynesian stimulus spending (that’s particularly concentrated in impoverished areas), a near-universal health-care plan, and a bill addressing climate change, you’d say liberals had recaptured the White House. Ambitious liberals, even.

But though Obama’s program is quite liberal, he doesn’t seem to care much how it’s achieved. A public option would be nice, but if it’s not there, then that’s fine, too. Full auction of permits is a good idea, but if most get given away to corporations, then that’s how it goes. Infrastructure spending is good, but if tax cuts are the price of passage, then tax cuts there shall be. The best description of the administration’s ideology probably came from Rahm Emanuel when he said, “The only nonnegotiable principle here is success.”

He’s sort of right. The stimulus may not have been everything liberals hoped for, but it passed. Health care reform will pass, and while it may not include a state-run system, it will result in meaningful regulation of the insurance industry and coverage for millions more Americans. I’m a zealot, so I want the most liberal possible program with a trail of broken Republicans behind it. But at the end of the day, Obama is enacting a pretty liberal agenda. This is not to say that we should just sit back and be satisfied; Obama is a pragmatist who needs to be prodded from the left at every turn. But things might not be as bad as we think.

In the meantime, it’s important to look for silver linings wherever we can. In that spirit, here’s another writer with upper management written all over him, Atul Gawande, writing about how the Senate draft of health care reform, with its mish-mash of pilot programs and wacky ideas, might actually succeed in controlling the cost of health care. It’s not much, but it’s a tiny ray of hope. We’ll see what happens.

Guess who’s back? Back again? The Gossip Girl Running Diary is back! It’s your friend! Let’s get this party back crackin’, shall we?

9:00 Nice hat, Trip.

Were those wolves in the middle of the road? Coyotes? Are Serena and Trip in like, New Mexico?

9:02 I’ve been away for a while, so I haven’t had a chance to say, when the hell did Chuck Bass become the voice of reason on this show?

Coats for Kiev! Vanya is the man.

Is Lily upset that Rufus is like, a shiftless layabout who is free to do anything at any moment because he’s got no life?

9:04 Trip is taking calls from “Bayonne” Barney Frank from his illicit love hideaway? Actually, I think the esteemed congressman from Massachusetts would have a certain appreciation for young Trip’s plight.

9:06 And Chuck is seeing visions of dead people. I hope GG doesn’t find out!

9:10 Come ON, Eric! You’re better than these cheesy plots to unseat jenny. Haven’t you learned that she’ll always hoist herself on her own petard?

9:11 Nate’s faith in Dan as a formidable player in the marketplace of desire is fun, but ultimately probably misplaced.

9:14 If I were Serena, I’d be scared ess-less that Maureen would sneak into the house and like, murder me.

9:14:30 But because she’s on the side of the road with trip, that’s sorta kinda impossible.

Am I the only one who thinks that Serena couldn’t stand a chance in any sort of stand-off with Maureen?

9:16 Nice try, Bart. But you can’t be disappointed in your son. You’re dead!

Did I speak too soon w/r/t the whole “Chuck is the voice of reason” thing? Now he’s hearing voices? And listening to them?

9:18 Serena: I prefer Fitzgerald to Hemingway
Nate: Uh, I’ve never read either.

9:19 “It’s a time-honored political tradition.” Oh, Maureen! You’re so despicable! And how serendipitous that you happened to find that letter from Dr. Van Der Woodsen in Lily’s coat that happened to look exactly like your coat. You guys know me. I like my melodrama fueled by only the most hackneyed of plot devices.

9:21 Hey, how about this Pyrex whisk that has the little fins that scrape the bowl? How nifty is that?

9:25 Real life conversation with the Official Girlfriend of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun:

Me: you said you never watched the OC, right?
OGFDD&U: right
Me: that was a great show
the john the baptist to gossip girl’s jesus, if you will
OGFDD&U: hmm
that sounds blasphemous
Me: to who? jesus, or the OC?
OGFDD&U: undecided

9:32 We’re supposed to take Matthew McConaughey seriously as a pitchman? He’s wearing a shirt in this commercial.

9:33 Oh, Gossip Girl, exploiting every stereotype about drama girls that every freshman ever harbored. Bravo.

9:34 Serena fouling everything up and needing to run home to her mommy? We’ve never seen this before.

9:36 Serena: “I can’t even look at you” . . . in that silly hat!

9:37 You call MAUREEN first? God dammit, Trip, you’re the most feckless loser on this show since Aaron Rose.

9:43 There ain’t no way Trip like, put Serena in the front seat, right? Because, you know, it would be tough to explain away the Serena-shaped hole in the windshield on the passenger side.

9:46 Maureen, please see my time-stamped statement at 9:43. Also, GG, “you just got vetoed”? You’re better than that. How about “your face just got filibusted”? or “Nate just majority whipped your ass”?

9:49 “I had to learn the hard way.” Serena, all you ever do is learn things the hard way!

Also, Blair, you’re complicit. You told Serena to go with Trip! You knew it was a bad idea!

9:51 I’ll ask the corollary to the question I asked at the beginning of this recap: when did Chuck like, double-lap everyone else in terms of characters I actually give a shit about? If this was basketball on the playground, they would have switched teams by now. It’s not even close.

9:53 Also, I kinda like this song.

9:54 Jenny, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be completely unrespectable, and then hope to have the respect of your brother.

954:30 Or Eric can be a complete pushover.

9:55 I don’t know what this letter says, but Rufus should know from being on this show for two-plus seasons that when someone from the Vanderbilt family comes to you with news, there’s always some sort of nutty misunderstanding at play

9:56 Also, V? “Sometimes people say things they don’t mean” is NEVER the right reaction.

9:57 Oh, Jenny’s kingdom is a narco state? Now we are having fun.

9:58 Get

9:58:30 The fuck

9:58:45 Out of here!

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand that MTV’s Jersey Shore, which is a lot like the Real World, except with all guidos and in Seaside Heights, is the exact type of show that I would watch and love. It premiered on Thursday, and lived up to every expectation I could have ever had, but since tonight also marks the triumphant return of the Gossip Girl Running Diary, I won’t subject you to a blow-by-blow accounting of my impressions of the show. Instead, let’s discuss a fascinating real-world subplot involved with the show. Namely, Italian American groups lambasting MTV and encouraging boycotts of the show’s sponsors.

I’m not sure what it was like where you all grew up, but back in Bayonne, ethnic identity was a big deal. It was never uncommon to be asked “What nationality are you” or, more often, just “What are you?” In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that most people had a definitive answer to that question, since it had to be asked in the first place. If you came across Tommy O’Sullivan over in Dublin, there’s no doubt as to “what he is.” Whereas if you came across a guy by the same name back in Bayonne, he might tell you that he’s half-Irish, half-Italian, or half-Irish, a quarter Polish, and a quarter Scottish. Or some other melange. Everyone was interested in what you were.

Which I understood, but also found a little odd. I mean, when a kid told you he was half Irish and half Italian, what he was really saying was that his grandparents or great-grandparents on one side of the family came over here from Ireland, and his grandparents or great-grandparents on the other side came over here from Italy. Is that kid really Irish? Or Italian? Or both? It always seemed to me that a kid like that was American more than anything else. Incidentally, that’s how I saw myself (you know, American), but I would never say that. For some reason, saying you were American was a dodging of the question. All I knew was that my ancestors must have left Poland, or Lithuania, or Czechoslovakia, or whatever other Eastern European backwater, for a reason.

Which is not to dismiss anyone’s sense of ethnic identity. If that’s the sort of thing that’s important to you, that’s fine. And it’s true that there are people who took their ethnic heritage seriously. (An important sidenote here is that I’m talking mostly about the white ethnic heritage of third- and fourth-generation Americans; I also knew plenty of kids from Asia and Latin America and the Middle East who were living lives much closer to the original immigrant experience.) All I’m saying is that this strong sense of ethnic identity isn’t something that I personally grew up with, but I saw it plenty.

Why I find this flap with UNICO and the National Italian American Foundation so fascinating is because it speaks to a favorite pet issue, which is the conflict between a prescriptive or a descriptive view of culture. On one side, you’ve got these organizations representing the established view of a monolithic Italian American Culture. On the other, you’ve got a group of young kids (I’ll use the term “kids” even though Pauly D is 29 effing years old. Oof.) actually out there living what they see to be Italian American Culture.

Don’t mistake my criticism here. I think UNICO is right to be upset if it feels MTV is exploiting a particularly offensive caricature of Italian Americans. I happen to think that claim is a little off-base, but it’s a valid complaint for an organization like UNICO to make. My bone to pick is the statement that UNICO’s president, Andre’ DiMino, made: “[The cast members] are an embarrassment to themselves, their heritage and their families.”

Pardon?

Mr. DiMino may see the kids on Jersey Shore as an embarrassment to their heritage, but they’re also his legacy. I mean, this is the younger generation of Italian Americans, identifying as Italian Americans, living what they see as Italian American lives. Ethnic heritage is something that gets passed down, and if the older generation isn’t pleased with how the younger generation lives out that heritage, well, they bear a certain amount of responsibility for that.

The gripe that not every young Italian American is like the kids on this show seems sound, but it’s a straw man. It may be MTV, but I sincerely doubt there are many people out there in TV land thinking that they’re watching a serious documentary on Italian American life. And while the cast of Jersey Shore is obviously composed of the most extreme examples of the so-called guido subculture, it’s not like that subculture doesn’t exist. Anyone that’s been to Belmar or Point Pleasant Beach or Seaside Heights knows that many people like the people on Jersey Shore exist. That’s not a value judgment. It’s just a statement of fact.

What you’ve got here is an older generation of gatekeepers prescribing what a particular culture should be, and a younger generation out there living a culture despite those prescriptions. As I’ll someday flesh out more when the David Foster Wallace Fortnight recommences, I’m a descriptivist. The fact is, the guys that run UNICO got their chance to define what Italian American culture is. And they’re in a seat of authority now, and of course there’s a back-and-forth between generations, and these younger kids can take what their elders say into account. But by and large, it’s the kids’ boat now. The culture is their’s to define for their generation. That’s the way it’s always been.

And honestly, I wouldn’t be too worried if I were the elders of the Italian American community. Bad haircuts, bad clothes, bad music, and bad attitudes toward socialization aren’t exclusive to Italian Americans, and they certainly aren’t exclusive to the youngest generation. Meanwhile, and you all will think I’m crazy, I think there’s a lot that’s positive in the kids on Jersey Shore. We laugh at them because they’re clowns, and they are clowns. And the way they socialize and hook-up could seem grotesque. I don’t think the men on the show have a particularly healthy attitude toward women, but the truth is, the women on the show play the same game as the men, so let’s consider the gender politics to be a wash. The women, for the most part, are strong, in the “I don’t take shit from anyone” sense. And everyone has a strong sense of loyalty to their family and friends. In the end, the haircuts will get more acceptable, the jobs will get more legit, and the important stuff like loyalty and strength of character will remain, and what you’ll have is another generation of grumpy old folks complaining about whatever it is their crazy kids are running around doing. Happens every time.

To do the right thing, that is. The New Jersey state senate will be considering a gay marriage bill in the coming week, with a vote possible late in the week.

There was a bit of scuttlebutt after the recent gubernatorial election that some Democratic lawmakers were uneasy about going through with the gay marriage bill. You see, outgoing governor Jon Corzine is in favor of marriage equality; incoming governor Chris Christie has promised to veto any such bill. And, you know, this is politics, so it would be unseemly for a Democratic legislature to do anything that would appear like they were trying to pass a bill at the eleventh hour before the opposition took control of the State House. Because it’s more important for Democrats to reap the rewards that come with decorum and proper comportment than actually, you know, do their fucking jobs.

Here’s the thing: at the end of the day, nobody CARES what manner good bills are passed in. And about this there can be no debate: a marriage equality bill is a good bill. Not just good, but entirely necessary and overdue. This isn’t some routine appropriation. This is civil rights. Please, New Jersey, do NOT fuck this one up.

Or, in other words, make New York look stupid for not doing the same thing last week. As Daily Intel says:

How would a huge defeat for same-sex marriage on Wednesday create momentum for the bill’s prospects, and not against them? Maybe it’s the irresistible opportunity to show New York what a progressive Northeast state with balls looks like.

Blah. So it was a long holiday weekend, and then I wound up catching the flu, or some similar kind of supervirus. Anyway, that’s why the blogging has been at a minimum. I’ll try to do a better job of tossing some nutty stuff up in the next few days. In the meantime, here’s Butch Walker’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” that’s been burning a hole in my iPod. Enjoy!