“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

Announcing the newest candidates for Gross Baboon of the Year Award, Real Housewives of New Jersey, Teresa and Joe Guidice. Reading about their spendaholic, bankruptcy-inducing shenanigans made me really angry. As someone born in that fair state, the recent bevvy of Gross Baboons with New Jersey blazoned on their foreheads is enough to make anyone lie about where they hail from. We now have The Real Housewives, that lame show Jeseylicious, and even the cast of Jersey Shore, though none of them are from there, but MTV has managed to muck it up anyway. Until recently, it was Woody Allen who had make it difficult to admit that I was originally from there. Here is an excerpt from my book explaining why that is:

LAST FIVE MINUTES OF FAME

I will never forgive Woody Allen. No, not for what he did to Mia Farrow by taking Soon Yi, her adopted daughter, as his lover and then, wife. That transgression was much easier for me to excuse compared to what Woody Allen did to me, personally, being a resident from the state of New Jersey. Let me explain. Back in the 1970’s, Woody Allen made movies people actually went to see. His classics like Sleeper, Play It Again Sam and Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex were brilliant, however, these films contained condescending (and yes, perhaps humorous) references to my home state. These scathing digs made audiences howl with laughter, and he ingrained into pop culture the notion that people from “New Joisey” were disadvantaged. Sitting there in the dark sold-out Baronet-Coronet theater, I would slink down deep into the burgundy, polyester, uncomfortable seat, covering my head with the large tub of extra buttered popcorn as though a flashing neon arrow identified me as the lone resident from that sad little state. Seething, I vowed to get my revenge on Woody Allen one day. He’d made it so that I wished I had never heard of New Jersey, let alone being a resident. This surely was a conundrum. How was I going to achieve greatness along the lines of Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy or Mahatma Gandhi? How was I going to become a member of the fabulii? Once they discovered where I was from, was my membership to the fabulii at risk of being canceled? (Sigh.) Somehow, someway, I was determined to wiggle my five foot-by-five foot frame into the pop culture vernacular and once there…happily crush Mr. Allen like a bug.

To be continued….

Back to The Guidos, I mean, Giudices. According to the New York Post, they earn $79,000 a year, however, they live in a multi-million dollar home and are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt on credit cards. According to court papers, they are eleven million dollars in the hole. $11,000,000?!? How does that even happen? Both them and their banker should be pussy whipped. Well, Joe must be already, so we can just bitch slap her and the banker. The excesses of the 90’s and 2000’s is long over. And seeing the residual effect of that time is enough to make my skin crawl. It is the selfishness, greed and pretense of the Giudices that is systemically wrong with our culture. How are these people going to keep up with the Jones’ of their own mind? Hence…nominees for Gross Baboon of the Year Award.