Jersey has always held a special place in my heart. As home to the airport I flew from while growing up, its partially responsible for my childhood love of aviation. Its 100 plus miles of sandy coastline is often where my merry band of misfit friends would recreate, typically preferring them to the tampon and syringe-seasoned beaches of our beleaguered home base, Staten Island. I had a high school crush in the Garden State who I would sneak out in the middle of the night to see, carelessly speeding across bridges and through tunnels in various states of inebriation - risking life and limb, all in the name of fleeting teenage infatuation. Fond memories, intricate and well preserved like ships in a bottle.
New Jersey however has another side to its resume. A darker, more insidious list of traits. Like the fact that it often smells like dead hookers. And if you miss your turn, you have to drive another 30 miles past 300 RadioShacks, Dunkin Donuts and Bed Bath and Beyond-anchored strip malls to turn around. Or that the sports fans of Jersey can't seem to decide if they like the neighboring Eagles, Giants, Jets, Phillies, Yankees or Mets but all miraculously agree on one thing: being a giant pain in the ass.
CC: Joining me this afternoon for the Sit Down is high school senior, Jersey native and assistant manager of Surf Blendz Juice & Smoothies in Sea Isle City, Breeana Norton. Hey Breeana, how are you doing?
Bree: Pretty good. I spell my name with a Y, two N's and an H by the way.
CC: Well we're not going to do that today Bree, because that's retarded. What we will do is figure out what happened when I came in to have lunch yesterday.
Bree: Um okay, I don't think I remember you. Were you the guy who was all like 'RRAHH RHARR! Where's my friggin blueberry boost?!?' all red and sweating and everything? No, wait, that was my boyfriend. Who are you again?
Sea Isle City that is. It's where I'm headed for the week. For those of you who don't know, Sea Isle City is a tiny little speck of a shore town in Cape May County, New Jersey. It's inhabited mostly by families with young children and shiny guidos with hairless, sculpted muscles. My mission for the week is simple: eat crab, drink rum, pretend to be 20 years younger. My wife's mission is similar, but much more difficult. She'll be eating oysters, drinking sangria and searching deep inside her soul for what it was that initially attracted her to the sunburned albino walrus with a hairy chest who just tore his Achilles tendon trying to dive over a child's sandcastle to catch a frisbee.
