Trask Avenue

Being from New Jersey can be downright challenging. The constant barbs and insults are enough to make one think spending three hours a day at the gym, an hour in a tanning bed and another hour sculpting your hair is, perhaps, not the best use of one’s time. Pretty ridiculous, right? Yet it seems as if people everywhere are putting Jersey down, making fun of this cute little profile-shaped state. Let’s face it. Something is amiss when Alabama makes fun of you. Now calm down you lovely Alabamans out there. Y’all are a fine and upstanding people. Except when you drink so much rotgut whiskey that Kentuckians look at you with a skewed eye. Anyone who drinks that much…well, it becomes physically impossible to remain upstanding, doesn’t it? When an Alabaman cuts loose they end up on their back weeping about the one point loss to Michigan in the 1999 Orange Bowl or slurring the wrong lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama. Remember booze-addled singers: Muscle Shoals has got the “Swampers,” not the Swatters, whatever the heck they are.

And any Kentuckian who takes offense to the implication y’all consume such copious amounts of moonshine that you are shocked others may toss back even greater quantities, remember this: all those makeshift stills tucked away up in the hills are not distilling product for Jack Daniels. Anyway, there is a reason consumers like to see their bourbon hail from Kentucky. Kentucky has a heritage to uphold. Remember Kentucky, you spend June through April concocting new and more perfect Mint Julep recipes to impress visitors who invade your bluegrassian state for a mere two minute horse race in May. Now that may not be moonshine you are serving at Churchill Downs, but it ain’t holy water either.

By the way, as jazzed as you get for that derby thing the citizens of Indiana cackle if you believe for one millisecond your May horse race is even close to as exciting as their May car race. Heck, Indianapolians … ummm … Indianapolites …ummm… Hoosiers … yeah, that’s it … Hoosiers look at your equine event and giggle at its brevity. Wham bam thank you ma’am. You. Are. Done. Satisfaction in two minutes is not a reality. Ask 51% of the population. However, at the Speedway cars scoot around and around and around an oval track with an exhausting stamina that borders on priapism. Three hours, baby! Some may say the same repeated, rote action which never varies for three freakin’ hours lacks imagination. People in California (with the exception of Peter Jackson) realize that if anything goes on that long it is inevitable at some point someone involved will start mentally planning out next week’s errand list, despite all outward appearances. Yet California should also be careful tossing around disparaging remarks about other states. Need they be reminded they elected an ex-Mr. Universe as Governor on the platform of…what exactly was his platform? Something to do with protein shakes and “being back”? So yes California, you also have your less than stellar moments.

Actually, it is increasing clear Jersey is not all that bad. Our college football teams may bring little distinction (okay, they suck), we don’t have a Garden State version of Uncle Cletus’ Muhlenberg Saturday Night Special brewed deep in the backwoods, the only speedways which matter have speed limits (ignored as they may be), and any shaking you see from our Governor has far more to do with gravity than protein. But really, how important are those things? They hardly compare with thin crust pizza blessed by the gods or skies which touch upon every hue on the color wheel, especially in the vicinity of oil refineries. To argue otherwise would be silly.