Sh*t We Don't Understand: The Beach

Memorial Day is approaching, and with it the unofficial start of summer. Cue the flocking of people to shore towns all over the country for some good old-fashioned fun in the sun. Come Thursday we'll be inundated with "MDW...going to the BEACHHHHH!!!!" Facebook statuses. I'm sure all things Memorial Day and beach-related will trend on Twitter as well. While I'd be either out of my mind or downright inhuman to not welcome the beginning of summer with open arms, I'm going to have to get on the soapbox for a few minutes. If someone wants to sit me down and explain it all to me, then they can surely go ahead. But I just don't get why the beach is apparently so awesome.

You know that feeling you get when you're at some place and everyone else seems to be having a lot more fun than you? I hate that feeling. It's like you're at a party that you weren't invited to, a feeling rivaled in suckiness only by that of being sober in Philly's Olde City on a Saturday night. That's the feeling I get at the beach. Every time I've been there in my adult life, I've wished I were somewhere else. Someone had to finally take this stand. Kevin, John, and I originally planned to publish a roundtable-type discussion on this topic a year or so ago, but circumstances prevented it last summer. Now that the matter is relevant again, I can no longer wait. Having lived in New Jersey my entire life and spent the summers of 1989 through 1993 exclusively at the shore when my parents owned a motel in North Wildwood, I consider myself as qualified a judge as any.

Let's first get it out of the way that I don't hate the beach. I just don't love it the way so many people seem programmed to. I've had my share of fun on the beach in my life, but here's the thing: all of the actual "fun" things that there are to do on the beach can basically be done anywhere. What do I want to do if I find myself on the beach (besides the requisite ogling like any man is wont to do)? I want to throw a baseball or football around, get a game of wiffle ball going, read a book or newspaper, maybe listen to the iPod, take a quick dip, etc. Take any of these activities away from the setting of the beach, and guess what? They're no less fun or enjoyable. You can swim in a pool, you can play ball at any open field nearby, and you can read or listen to music basically anywhere. Is there anything inherently fun about the beach itself? To get to the beach, you've got to sit in traffic, find parking, overpay for the parking you find, deal with all the Ronnie and Sammi clones running around (although I'd find the real thing thoroughly enjoyable), and, most of all, immerse yourself in sand and the stench of seaweed all day. There are other ways to enjoy the outdoors and get a tan, people. Unless you aspire to be a fragrance millionaire, there are very few activities for which the beach is actually an immediate prerequisite.

But some people may say to this, "Wait a second, going to the beach is about enjoying putting your toes in the sand and being able to lay there and do nothing all day and listen to the crash of the waves! It's so great!" No, it's not great. I'm sorry, but sand f*ing sucks. It gets everywhere and makes your skin bone-dry. And doing nothing all day? Well, that also f*ing sucks. I'm not burning my free time just laying in the sun when I can be actually doing things in the sun. That eloquent crash-of-the-waves soundtrack? It's likely going to be drowned out by a mixture of seagulls and little whiny kids begging their parents to buy them an ice cream sandwich. Maybe I just lack the ability to turn my mind off like that, but I'm irked by people who are able to just lay there on a beach doing nothing without ever feeling supremely bored.

Some people may also say "Well, of course you don't like the beach that much. The Jersey Shore is a dump anyway." I can't disagree with that, but I would offer the rebuttal that I've set foot on some exquisite beaches in North Carolina and Cancun (which had blue water, I shit you not) without ever getting that overwhelming feeling of awesome that I'm apparently supposed to. When I was in Cancun on spring break in college, the novelty of it being 85 degrees out while it was 40 degrees back home wore off in about half an hour. Yet somehow the group of 16 girls we were on the trip with religiously laid out there, hour after hour, day after day, like they were auditioning for a Corona commercial. Meanwhile the rest of us guys hung out at the poolside bar getting to know people from all over the country, one tequila slammer at a time. I'd like to think the latter is a much better way to spend a trip than basically sitting in an outdoor tanning bed for 5 days.

One of this blog's values is that we'll give you our straightforward, (relatively) uncensored opinions and in the next breath acknowledge that those opinions aren't necessarily gospel. The reader can take in whatever we have to say and make what they want out of it after that. I'll freely admit I have more than my share of anti-beach biases. Like I said before, I spent five full summers at the shore as a kid and hated the fact that I was away from all my school friends. Even worse than my well-documented disdain for sand is my inability to avoid getting horribly sunburned. For a while I dated a girl who, despite an apparent love for laying on the beach and being a complete waste of humanity for hours on end, shifted her bitchiness into 6th gear whenever we were actually there. And finally, if I'm at the beach then there's a fair likelihood that I'm missing a Yankee game, which is a huge, huge strike from the get-go.

I leave you this evening with the reminder that no, I do not "hate" the beach (at least, not as much as this guy does). I just don't love it. For the record, I very much enjoy living in a coastal state and couldn't imagine living in an area of the country that would require a plane trip just to see the ocean. But this whole idea of "ohh I really need to go to the beach, I hate the winter because I can't go to the beach, I can't exist without the beach, blah blah blah" that you see so many people conveying? It just strikes me as utter nonsense. You know that Jimmy Buffett quote "if there is a heaven for me, I'm sure it has a beach attached to it" that you saw displayed on every single girl's bedroom wall or AIM profile back in college? Well, with due respect to the mayor of Margaritaville and his devoted Parrotheads, I ain't buying that. You know what, hold that thought for a minute. Maybe my heaven will have a beach after all - as long as there is a golf course and a casino attached to it.

In Defence of Trash TV

I may sound like I'm contradicting many of the things I've written in this space, but hear me out. As Jersey Shore's second season has premiered this week, the venom spewed last winter from atop many a pulpit and high horse across the land has been renewed as well. I can't say that the opinions of the show's detractors are exactly unfounded. I get why people scowl at the show. Many people who know me are probably surprised that I am a pretty big fan of it. So allow me to play a little devil's advocate and present my defence of Jersey Shore (yes, I used the British spelling of the word there and in the title, just for fun),

When I turn the TV on these days, probably 80% of the time it's either to watch sports or to laugh. To take something like Jersey Shore past face value is like asking for the nutrition facts of that 1/4 lb hot dog you just got from 7-Eleven. You really shouldn't do it. Being from New Jersey my whole life, I get a kick out of the show. Even though the trashiness of some of the characters is played up as the show's biggest asset (or, on second thought, maybe it doesn't need to be played up), it doesn't offend me. I've never been concerned that I may meet someone from another part of the country and they'll automatically associate me with Ronnie or Mike "The Situation" just because I live in New Jersey. Why should they? I don't have half a can of wax in my hair, I don't have any tattoos, my sunglasses only cost about $20, and (despite being an avid weightlifter) I don't own a wifebeater.

What I don't get about the outrage over Jersey Shore is that the show isn't a lie or a gross embellishment. If you put cameras in any random house in Seaside Heights even without MTV selecting a cast, the end result would not be terribly different from what we got in Season One. I know it may piss people off that Jersey Shore makes it look like the only things in Jersey are guidos, blowouts, and gold chains. But the fact that some of the finer parts of the shore and the state in general are downplayed and/or ignored on the show, that doesn't make it any less true about what does go on in Seaside. The place is a summer-resort version of Hamsterdam and has been for a while.

Here is what my main case for Trash TV boils down to - we all need some sort of outlet from our daily grind, a chance to turn our minds off for a while. Deep down, everyone has the same facets and angles to their personalities, it's just a question of which sides we let out the most often. Some choose to feed the intellectual side more, some choose to feed the humorous side more, and some choose to feed the crude and base side more. So even though I've hated on shows like Oprah, The Bachelor, and The Bachelorette, as well as celebrity gossip of all shapes and sizes, what my annoyance really comes from is when people treat such things as their most worthwhile form of entertainment. It's not the worst thing in the world to watch Trash TV, as long as you're able to admit how stupid it is. So go ahead and feed the crude and base side of your mind for a little bit. Just keep the appetite within reason.

The Trite Utterances of Subpar Sports "Fans," Volume Two

(Before reading this, take a gander down at our Bracket below and provide some input, as much or as little as you want. And remember it's all in good fun and that you can't have a blog in March without having some sort of tournament bracket.)

I would have included this in the "Saturated" post from a few weeks back, but today's issue has grown to warrant its own space. For years we've been hearing the "professional athletes are overpaid, blah blah blah blah blah" refrain, and I don't know about anyone else, but this garbage makes my ears bleed. It's a major go-to phrase for those who make a pastime out of complaining about things they are never going to be able to change. It's a major go-to phrase for those who wish to treat all levels of sports like they are tee-ball and refuse to accept the fact that pro sports are businesses - hence the use of the word "professional."

Of course, that's not to say that there aren't individual athletes who are overpaid. I'd be stupid to try to say that. But you can find people who underperform their compensation at any workplace. I'm talking in general terms, not of individual athletes but of the overall salary scales of pro sports. The vast majority of these guys really do earn their money. Even a dream job is a job. There are levels of pressure and expectations that you or I do not see at our offices. Too often we watch a game for 3 hours out of the day and think that's all there is to it. We forget about the hours spent practicing and training just to get to this point, and how the work only gets harder once you're there. We've all had bad days at our jobs, but I doubt we ever got booed by 50,000 people or had scathing articles written in the paper about us the next day as a result.

Simple business thinking dictates that employees are paid based on the value of the efforts and services they provide. Why did Peyton Manning get paid $14 million this year for his endorsements alone? Because up on a high-floor office somewhere at the headquarters of Mastercard/Sprint/Gatorade/DirecTV, groups of people sat in a room and agreed on the projection that paying Peyton Manning $x to do commercials for their products would ultimately generate $x + $y in additional revenue, with "y" representing a worthwhile profit margin. It's just like how a film studio chooses to throw $20 million at Tom Cruise for a movie on the thought that his name and performance will put at least another $20 million worth of asses in the movie theater seats to go see it. Remember, whether you are a master at throwing a football or bringing a written character to life on screen, it's all entertainment. All in the game, right?

On the same note, a teacher making $45k a year is paid such an amount of money because the numbers dictate that his or her teaching services are worth in the neighborhood of $45k a year to the town and school district. That number is found essentially in terms of the town's basis of tax revenue, as well as the intangible "good name" asset for a school district that a well-performing teaching force creates. You become known as a town with very good schools, and guess what - more families want to live there, thus generating more tax dollars, and allowing the township to charge higher tax rates in the future and being able then to pay its teachers, police, firefighters more. That sound you hear is supply shaking hands with demand.

What I'm really tired of is when people give the old "(insert athlete name here) makes more money in a week than a teacher or patrol officer do in a year!" argument. Listen, no one is saying that teachers, firefighters, police, etc. don't perform a much nobler task than pro athletes do. It's the replaceability factor, technically known as opportunity cost. If I decide to leave my job, it is not going to break the company's back to hire and train a replacement. Same goes for a bus driver, construction worker, or stevedore. It's not that the hard-working everyday Joe is of little worth and easily dispensable, it's just that, when it comes to our own individual lines of work, none of us possess skills to nearly as a high a level as professional athletes do.

Think about it. These athletes are among the several hundred best in the world at their craft. What do you think the world's few hundred best lawyers make in a year? Or the few hundred best investment bankers? It's got to be on par with the few hundred best baseball players or football players. So let's not treat athletes as if they're the only ones out there making tons of money. What it comes down to is, enough people place sufficient value on the display of athletic excellence and top-level competition that they decide to part with considerable money in order to spectate.

You personally may think ticket prices are too high, but no one's holding a gun to your head and making you order season tickets. Because if you don't want to pay those prices, I'm sorry, but there are droves of people standing behind you in line who will, provided the product is good. That's how Major League Baseball last year achieved the fourth-highest regular season attendance level in its history despite poor economic conditions. At least with sports there are low cost viewing alternatives like TV and radio, unlike Broadway, where the only way to see it is live so if you don't want to pony up half your next paycheck for tickets, you're S.O.L.

So before this gets too long (as you can see I'm not into the whole brevity thing lately), I leave you with this: find something to complain about other than professional sports. These salary amounts didn't come from nowhere, but not one dime has to come from your pocket if you don't want it to. But before you get to saying, "why don't we pay our teachers $2 million a year?" just remember that if we ever chose to, then get ready for a tax bill so big it wouldn't be able to fit in your mailbox. Just throwing that overlooked nugget out there.