You're Dead To Me: Jersey Shore

"You're Dead To Me..." is a new, recurring feature of "Where the Wild Things Were Last Thursday Around 8" chronicling the Hindenburgesque fall from my good graces of various pop culture icons.

I know, I know. Taking potshots at Jersey Shore at this stage in the game is pretty old hat. It's so easy. So simple. So... something else that would be funny if I had the brain power to think of it right now. See, this is the problem, just thinking about Jersey Shore makes me one tenth more of an idiot than I already am; which is deadly since I'm pretty stupid as is. While I think of where to take this post please look at this picture and gauge your ire accordingly.

Back Row (left to right): Grandpa Face, Pinky, Moose and Derek Jeter
Front Row (left to right): A lady I'm scared of, Dumb, Dumber and Hatchetface

This is tough to admit, but I used to love watching Jersey Shore so much so that I would mend my schedule around it to avoid missing one, soul crushing instance of morbid stupidity. I could not wait for Thursday nights to roll around so I could lavish in the sheer dumbassery taking place in Seaside Heights (which I have been told is a real place and not, in fact, purgatory for the tanned). I would explain my fascination away with the trite, ubiquitous explanation that everyone who is too smart to enjoy Jersey Shore, but does anyway gives, "it's like watching a train wreck!" And to some extent it is. There are body parts strewn about chaotically and there's a good amount of blood left on the boardwalk whenever Ronnie (Moose) goes on a cocaine, steroids and rum fueled bender, but that's about it. The problem is, I've never actually watched a train wreck and can only imagine the metaphor is inappropriate based solely on the fact that, from what I've read on the internet, train wrecks are in no way entertaining and in every way a horrible tragedy.

Being the intellectual sort that I am (he writes while thinking where to place a fart joke in the post later on) I decided it would be in my best interest to stop watching Jersey Shore and start studying the ever loving shit out of Jersey Shore. Off I went into a world where I tried, pathetically, to come up with some logical reason why Grandpa Face (The Situation) and the rest of the home for tortured Italian stereotypes was so captivating not only to myself, but the world.

My findings were less than pleasing. Here is a picture of a kitten for your sanity to hide in while I continue:

Aww.

Turns out, everyone on the show -even Vinny, the lovable scamp- is a gigantic pile of douche with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They just are. Seriously. Look at the picture of the cast from earlier in this post and point out one non-douchey thing happening in it. You can't, because these people are soulless douchebots sent from the future to rape our minds with their narcissism, stupidity and three letter acronyms. They have single-handedly turned me off of working out, being in direct sunlight or putting my clothes in the washing machine (I can't even look at the dryer anymore). Having said that, I would like to point out that this does not apply to JWoww, as she scares me more than Ray Lewis riding a T-Rex. (If you ever read this Jenny, and you won't because you probably can't read anything that's more than 140 characters long, please, please do not use your heightened senses to track me down and murder me for sport; that would be very un-Woww.)

This had better not be the last thing I see before I die, or I am so kicking God in the junk.

If I'm in the mood to be fair, and I sort of am, I could blame the entire fiasco on MTV and whatever dickface in a suit over there came up with this idea, but I'm not in the mood to be that fair since the cast obviously cannot get enough of themselves and will never leave our society alone until they punch themselves to death over a hair straightener or some equally dumb object that should not ever be fought over, or the show stops getting millions of viewers every week (fingers crossed for the punch fest to the death). So, really I blame myself and you (mostly you).

To further illuminate why this is all of our collective faults, let's take a person by person look at the cast, shall we? We mother f_cking shall!

Grandpa Face (AKA The Situation) - He has abs that are nice. Just ask him, he'll show you whenever and wherever. At your wife's funeral and need some cheering up? Just whisper "The Situation" five times into a mirror and Grandpa Face will show up and show you his rock solid abs; there may be a high-five involved, but I'm not positive.

JWoww - Just a sincerely wonderful woman that I have nothing bad to say about.

Pinky (DJ Pauly D) - The one with the hair. You know, the hair! Anyway, he is a DJ in Rhode Island; which I guess is a thing.

Snooki - this vacuous shrew is a mix between a troll doll, a half melted barbie doll, some sort of Chilean wildebeest and pure, unsaturated stupidity. She was punched in the face by a guy. Also, she is the "star" of the show. Go figure.

Moose (Ronnie) - Cocaine. Steroids. Bad Decisions. Lots of Rum. Shake. Stir. Serve hot and bothered inside TV sets nationwide.

Sammi - Have you ever looked at someone and known without a shadow of a doubt that they are going to be a downtrodden housewife with love handles and shitty kids in about 10 years whose husband probably beats them and her because he was over shadowed by The Situation when they were on Jersey Shore together? No? Well, meet Sammi.

Vinny - Of the entire cast, Vinny is the most likable. He is still a mesmerizing master of douchebaggery, and his super stereotypical Italian Uncle Nino (or something) makes me hate myself for some reason, but he's not the most terrible person on the show.

Hatchetface (Angelina) - Speaking of the worst person on the show, the self proclaimed "Kim Kardashian of Staten Island" is the worst person on the show. Everything she does bothers me on every imaginable level. Literally. I am metaphysically fuming whenever she opens that miserable hole in her face she thinks is a mouth, but is secretly a portal to hell... and herpes. Mostly herpes.

If you read any of that and thought to yourself, "hey, this show sounds fun," then you haven't been paying attention, and probably can't read anyway, so how are you reading this right now? I could say anything and you'd just giggle and say "look, those squiggly lines on the computer box are trying to tell me something, LOL" and then you'd fart and lay around in your own self loathing until someone, somewhere came to your rescue and got you that job at Denny's your parents wanted you to get because they needed you to move out of the house, because it was embarrassing every time one of their friends came over and they had to explain why their 29 year old son or daughter was still living at home, didn't have a job and watched MTV all day.

If you read the above paragraph and thought, "holy shit, Jim seems especially pissed off today," then you'd be correct and literate; which is a plus and means you have absolutely no reason to watch Jersey Shore ever again. It means that you, like myself, have the cognitive facilities available to you to help make the decision to just stop giving a shit about the antics of the aforementioned horrible people on this show. It's not worth it, and I've already done the leg work for you, my dear, dear reader, so please when you're sitting at home alone Thursday nights with a tub of ice cream balanced on your belly, wondering what to do with your life or what to watch on TV, just put on Mad Men or Breaking Bad or any other show that makes actual damn sense, and stop giving these talentless whores the attention they need to live. Except JWoww, because she will beat the shit out of you.

That is all.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Jersey Shore; which is now dead to me.

Yes, I Was Adopted.

From time to time it becomes incredibly obvious that I was adopted to someone I work with, am friends with or know via some other tenuous connection.

It usually hits them when they see this picture of my Dad and I.

It's not that I won't talk about it if you bring it up, and I don't hide this fact about my life from the general public because I'm not ashamed of it, but when some people find out they take it upon themselves to be as aggressively intrusive as possible into my personal life and feelings on the subject. So, to dissuade anyone from making me want to punch them in the future because they won't stop asking me questions about things I have no answer for, I'm going to answer the most asked adoption questions right here, right now, for you my beloved reader.

Do you know who your parents are?
Yes, there names are Jim and JoAnn LeChase and they adopted me when I was 3 months old, and they are awesome people that I love very much.

No, we meant, y'know, the parents who had you..biologically?
Oh, you mean the woman whose vagina I came out of and the man who put his penis inside her during sexual intercourse, thus impregnating her? No. I do not know them at all.

Do you know anything about them?
I know they were young (about 18) and did not have an abortion. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

Do you want to meet them some day?
Not at all. I have never had a desire to meet them, nor do I predict my mind will ever change about that subject... unless I need an organ transplant of some kind (probably my liver), at which point I will play the "long lost son" card like it's my job, ingratiate myself into their lives, play to their every emotional weakness and, after a few weeks of this, casually mention at dinner one night (probably at Arby's or some other depressing fast food restaurant that the sperm donor and human incubator that are my biological parents probably think is haute cuisine) that I need a liver. One of them is bound to step up, riddled with guilt at my plight and their lack of involvement in my life, hoping that I will live longer just to get to know them even more. Only to see me check out of the hospital a day early and move to Montana, where I will start a small business that specializes in duping biological parents into giving you, their unwanted spawn, their organs ("Adopt A Liver").

You seem bitter.
I'm not bitter at all, that's exactly what I would do.

Was it difficult growing up, knowing you were adopted?
Uhm, no. My parents were f_cking awesome and did everything they could for me, not to mention they never brought my adoption up, like, ever. It was just not a thing. I was their son, they were my parents and that's how it went until my Mom died 3 years ago. Now my Dad apologizes for my very existence on such a regular basis that I'm starting to suspect my adoption was not his idea. (Kidding... obviously... he's been apologizing for me my entire life)

Is it weird having siblings that weren't adopted too?
Weird? No. I have 3 sisters and have towered over them most of my life and they are all older than me by at least 7 years anyway, so our lives didn't really start to overlap until I was old enough to ask them to sneak me into bars (about 8, 9) at which point we got really close until I was 21 and did not need them anymore. Now I forget most of their names, but I'm pretty sure 1 of them starts with "J" or "L" but it's been so long since we've talked I can't really be sure.

Wer..
I just remembered one of their names, it's Susan.

Great. We were going to ask you if you were ever made fun of for being adopted.
Oh, all the time. Seriously. In grade school once people found out it was like there was a bounty on my head. Whoever could make me cry the hardest would win some ribbon candy, or something, but to be fair I was a giant pussy when I was younger. Aside from being the tallest kid in the entire school between the ages of 6 and 13, I was also the second kid to start reading, the first kid to get into comic books; which did not bode well for me socially. I once burst into tears because someone asked "how's the weather up there?" After I was done pummeling him, I pulled myself together and decided "hey, I really don't need to take this shit anymore. I'm freaking huge compared to these people." And that's when I became a bully.

Really?
No, I was never a physical bully, but I did master sarcasm at a very young age as a way to deflect ever really getting to know anyone or talk about anything of substance. This threw a lot of people off and I started to have a reputation as the "funny one" in class who made teachers laugh and the like, but what they didn't understand was that, for the most part, I truly despised almost all of them. Except my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Kirwin, he was awesome.

Oh, that reminds me, in 6th grade I had 2 teachers that all of my sisters had before me, and on the first day of school one of them introduced me to the class as being "the adopted brother of the LeChase girls;" which was nice. Once I was done pummeling her I thought to myself, "hey, maybe I have too thin a skin." And that's when I became an even bigger pansy than I was prior to becoming a bully.

If you could say one thing to your biological parents, what would it be?
I really can't stress this enough, because it's the only thing I could imagine saying to them that would be earnest and sincere and straight from my heart to theirs with every ounce of feeling that I could muster in that situation; "thanks for not having an abortion."

Equal Grounds Stand Up Comedy Extravaganza!

TONIGHT at 9! All you need is $5 and a sense of humor!



Because I dropped the ball and submitted the event too late to some of the local papers and web pages that promote things of this nature, I've taken it upon myself to do a little something here on my web page to support my friends and fellow comedians who will be appearing tonight at Equal Grounds Coffee House and Gift Shop in Rochester, NY (750 South Ave.).

Bryan J. Ball, Making With The Funny

The host of tonight's show is none other than my friend, neighbor and insanely funny comedian Bryan J. Ball. Bryan has been doing stand-up in Rochester and beyond for a little more than a year and he is honestly one of the areas biggest rising stars. He hosts the weekly open mic at Boulder Coffee Co. on Sunday's; which are not to be missed if you are a fan of comedy, and is also the areas longest running event of its kind. If you like smart, charming, creative humor you really do not want to miss out on seeing Bryan perform tonight. Not to mention he is an incredible host who manages to bring a room up and down with him at the drop of a hat. I really can't tell you how highly I think of Bryan (very).

You know what's hard to find on the internet? A picture of Vinnie Paulino.

Tonight's featured comedian is, by and large, one of Western New York's best stand-up comedians, Vinnie Paulino. Regularly hosts at The Comedy Club in Webster, NY, Vinnie shows a wide range of amazing comedic skill that can be at times charming, disarming, genius and goofy, but he's never not funny. I've had the pleasure of seeing Vinnie perform on numerous occasions and he's never disappointed the crowd or his fellow comedians with the way we can absolutely command a room with his charisma. No other comic in Rochester has his way with crowds as often or as easily as Vinnie, mark my words: you will laugh your ass off.

I am staying up way past my bedtime just to see Ms. Becker perform tonight, you should too.

Tonight's headliner, Kristen Becker, was a semi-finalist on Last Comic Standing and named one of CURVE magazines "America's funniest lesbians" and started and still hosts the "Doin' Time Comedy Showcase" at Nietzsche's in Buffalo, NY (one of the Rust Belt's premier stand-up open mic destinations). Now, I have never had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Becker perform live (because I am a hermit who hates leaving his house unless there is a zombie apocalypse or meteorite headed right for me), but I am more than excited. Every comedian I have talked to has described Kristen's shows as "can't miss;" which, coming from other comedians is basically like being anointed as the second coming of all things comedy. So, am I excited? Yes, incredibly so. If you live in Rochester you really need to find a way to get to Equal Grounds tonight and check out Kristen's comedy, she doesn't get around here very often, so you really, really, honestly, truly, literally do not want to skip out on this opportunity to see her live in a small venue before she is selling out entire stadiums.

TO RECAP:
Tonight's show starts at 9, but get there early so you can get a good seat. It is at Equal Grounds Coffee and Gift Shop, located at 750 South Ave. in Rochester, NY and costs $5. Hosted by Bryan J. Ball, featuring Vinnie Paulino and headlined by Kristen Becker, it is sure to be something Rochestarians will not want to miss. I promise.