Jersey Shore: Melancholy and the Vin-finite Sadness
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Last night during the greatest sociological experiment of our time, we had to deal with the most threatening psychological illness of our time: anxiety. Yes, Vinny, of the carefree manner and enormous schlong, was dealing with a crippling case of ennui.
We started our dispatch by observing Vinny who despite all his rage felt just like a rat in a cage. He couldn't sleep or sit still. He missed his family. Not his fake reality family, his real family back in Staten Island that cooks and cleans for him and keeps him in fresh (and mildly offensive) "guinea Tees." Oh, poor Vinny, poor poor Vinny. It is such a struggle, this life of his: a permanent paid vacation where he gets shuttled around the world to drink and party. The experiment is becoming too much for him.
Now is usually the part of this little scientific abstract where I would pause and give you all a lexiconigraphic display of the words of the guido species that we learned this week. However this week, there are none. This means that either the guido culture has stopped evolving and creating new phrases to encapsulate the strange way that they experience the world, or that we have learned all there is to learn about this culture and it is now time to shut off the box, put down our clip boards, and find a new species of people to investigate, like those who amass so much junk in their homes that it nearly suffocates them or the wacky mothers and daughters who are involved in the regional beauty pageant circuit or those who drive trucks on ice. Maybe it is time.
But right now let's still concern ourselves with our favorite subjects. There is still some strangeness brewing between The Situation, Snooki, and Jionni. Mostly it is Sitch being an asshole to Jionni, and the way that Sitch is an asshole is by being nice. This only seems to make sense in Sitch's head, like if he pretends to be nice to Jionni's face but is mean to him behind his back that is somehow the ultimate embarrassment. No, the ultimate embarrassment is acting like a 12 year old, but that seems to fly over his head.
After getting stuck in the rain, Jionni borrows a shirt from Sitch, who insists that Jionni also take a pair of his underwear. No, it's not dirty, it's still in the box. It appears that Situation, with all of his millions, is now only wearing underwear once and then discarding them, because he finds nothing as glamorous as waste. He gives Jionni a pair, and, in exchange, Jionni offers to cook a drunk snack for Sitch and everyone else. However this makes Snooki uncomfortable, because she knows that The Situation is never nice for no reason and his gracious nature is really him continuously bitch slapping Jionni in the face. She leaves the room and Jionni follows her, but there is still one passive aggressive smack. He bring Jionni up some of the food, again couching his annoying behavior (busting up J&S smooshing) with a noble gesture.
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I've got some bad news, guys: DJ Paulie Damaged his burned his fucking face off! Yes, it appears that the leathery hide of the guido isn't completely impenetrable to UVA and UVB rays. I hypothesized that the guido had morphed its biology through years of excess tanning and mutation to have a completely sun-resistant hide. It seems that I was wrong.
Either that or his stint in Italy, away from the sun of New Jersey and the strange blue-tinted machines that keep their dark coloration has somehow altered his physiognomy to that of a normal human. Or maybe a guido isn't all that different after all. No, that can't be the case.
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There is continued trouble brewing between Snooki and Jionni. The funny thing is, while months has elapsed between our watching Snooki and Jionni have the most Shakespearean of meltdowns in Florence, it has been only weeks for the two of them. However, the alcohol seems to have effected Snooki's higher brain functions, because she does not remember the incident at all.
While dressing to go to Karma for the first time, Snooki decides to wear underwear with "Jionni's" emblazoned on the ass so that when she shows everyone her junky trunk they'll know whom she belongs to. JWOWW intervenes (like the saint that she is) and says, "Um, isn't the reason Jionni left Italy because you were showing off your ass to everyone?" Finally it sinks in that Snooki might want to change her behavior, and she takes them off.
But then they get to Karma and the guidos do what the guidos always do: get super wasted and start babbling incoherently about "chicken cutlets." Jionni's problem is that he is trying to change a pattern of behavior that is so codified that it is nearly impossible to defeat. It's not so much something Snooki wants to do, but a social and biological imperative. She has to keep her organs pickled in the cheap booze of Karma in order for them to survive in that strange brine of alcohol, pickle juice, and Red Bull that fuels these giant mitochondria that we call guidos.
Naturally Jionni gets upset when Snooki starts acting like a drunken fool in public again and that starts off their drunken tango. This part of their relationship is just like trying to get a drunk person out of the bar. He's trying to force her, but her body is so limp that it defies guidance. She wants to get out, but is so wasted that it is beyond her control. That's what their relationship is like, a push and pull that will never come to an end, nothing changing until they eventually are broken up and a bouncer takes pity on the poor girl and carries her out to her car.
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DJ Paulie Dope has more luck at the club and brings home a rather attractive young lady named I Don't Remember. I'm going to call her that because I Don't Remember her name and I'm sure DJ Paulie D won't a month from now either. She's just some stupid trick. Whatever.
He brings IDR home and goes into the Smoosh Room for the first time ever to give a very bumming Vinny some space so that he can cheer up. But DJ Paulie Displaced does not like the Smoosh Room, because, unlike the other guidos, he finds something offensive about stewing in the juices of his friends. He's weird like that.
After hooking up, DJ Paulie Dapper goes to call the girl a cab and get her out of there and leaves her alone with his diamond chain which she puts in her Daisy Dukes and runs off with it. I mean, come on, this girl knew she was stealing it. She even looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was coming. That is some crazy shit. When DJ Paulie Diamond Chain mentions to Snooki he can't find his chain she says immediately, "That girl took it. That's what I'd do." Snooki has such insight into the mind of the guidette that she knew immediately what was happening. Do they all think like this? Do they all only have the same three tricks that they continuously use to fool the boys? Do they never learn from these tricks? As we've discovered by following Snooki herself, it seems like the guido can not possibly learn a thing.
Just when you think IDR is at the pawn shop getting a nice payday for putting out, she shows up at the door wearing the diamond chain. As soon as she walks in the door, Snooki says, "She stole it so she could come back and fuck DJ Paulie D again. That's what I'd do." And she's right, she gets to spend more time with DJ Paulie Double Dip, even though they don't fuck again.
But this just shows you the warped mind of the guido. In most cultures a woman would leave something behind after hooking up as an excuse for hooking up again. It leaves something for the man to remember her by and gives her an excuse for a second encounter. But the guidette, she commits a crime to force the same scenario. She doesn't seem to think twice before pilfering from her man so that she can come back and be like, "Oh my god, I have no idea how I ended up with your very expensive jewelry in my panties. It just happened! Aren't I silly!" Maybe it's because a guidette thinks that a guido wants a woman who is capable of committing a crime but likes them enough to confess to it immediately. That must be it.
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Now we get to Vinny. Poor, poor Vinny who has anxiety. Apparently this isn't the first time he's grappled with the psychological ailment, but usually he can just laugh it off and get over his little panic attacks and go back to his life of boozing, snoozing, and bruising. But not this time. His energy stores have been depleted since coming back from Italy and, like DJ Paulie Dermatology's skin, he is weak.
The funny thing is that Vinny and Snooki are having similar troubles. Vinny wants to take it easy and relax for a bit and get his head together, but the thought of not going out to the club and not drinking is so antithetical to the group that he gets nothing but their scorn for even suggesting it. Snooki and Deena even mockingly say that they're going to go out and not drink on more than one occasion. How do you think that makes poor Vinny feel?
But to the group's credit, nothing could cheer Vinny up. Not the board walk, not the amusement park, not getting wasted at Karma, not sleeping all day, not even confessing his woes to boss man Danny. Nothing. Not even Sammi, being sweet and selfless for a change, telling Vinny, "If I can get through this, you can get through this." That didn't even work, mostly because Vinny already knows he's better than Sammi.
So they left him, they all left him alone with his non-sexual boyfriend DJ Paulie Dispirited and they went to club. As soon as they were gone, Vinny prostrated himself before their household god, The Duck Phone, and asked for deliverance. He asked for some chariot to come and scoop him up and take him away from all this, the noise and the bother. He wanted to be whisked. It's like he, as the smartest of the whole clan, had finally achieved some sort of self-awareness and finally asked, "What am I doing here? What is going on? Is this all I want?" He is now wise enough to ask the question, but not wise enough to divine the answer. That is Vinny's epistemological dilemma.
DJ Paulie Dissed was beside himself. He is a creature of happiness and joy and he did not know how to process this sadness, how to draw Vinny out of the deep dark well of his own mind and bring him back into the daylight, back into the fun. He does not know how to be serious, but watching him try was heartbreaking. Watching him try to keep his smile while being destroyed from within.
Then the cab came, and Vinny stuffed himself in the back, his stomach finally settling and unknotting knowing that he could escape, that he would go home. As the cab rolled down the lumpy pavement of Seaside Heights, leaving DJ Paulie Depressed behind it, passing all the other guidos baring their private parts at Karma, away from the Tee-Shirt shop and the boardwalk, the fried pickles and the hot girls, it started to knot again. Was this the right thing? And what was waiting for him at home? How would he make it all better? You'll never have the answers, Vinny, just this, just this gnawing uncertainty, this growing dread. That is what it is like to be human, and today you are a human indeed.