Nothing Ruins A Good Time Like A Pregnant Lady

One of the most touching moments of Jersey Shore — before the cast became too self-aware and destroyed everything wonderful about the premise, that is — was when Snooki professed her love for Jionni, saying that she wanted to have many "guido babies" with him (I don't even think she ruined the moment when she added that she wanted them via C-section, so as not to "fuck up her vagina"). Well, according to reports, that moment has arrived:

But sources tell Page Six that MTV is worried about how to manage the news, given that Polizzi's hard-partying, booze-swilling ways have just been turned into a "Jersey Shore" spinoff with Jenni "JWoww" Farley, which has begun shooting in New Jersey.

"MTV went into crisis mode after they found out," said a source. "They're trying to hide it because it would greatly affect the creative direction of the show." The untitled new show has just begun taping and focuses on the ladies' relationship as friends and roommates — and whatever adventures come their way.

Should they be in "crisis mode"? Um, fuck yes they should be in crisis mode. They should be in dumping-Viacom-stock-like-yesterday mode, because nothing ruins a good time like a pregnant chick.

Hanging out with pregnant ladies seems a lot like hanging out with George Bush, except that George Bush is probably more mobile. And I bet he can think of better nicknames.

The only good thing about hanging out with pregnant ladies is that they can be designated drivers — until they're too big to be in the front seat, in which case then they're just useless.

Don't get me wrong — there's a lot to like about pregnant ladies. For one, pregnant ladies get a lot of free shit. We once got a free appetizer at a Japanese place after going in to pick up a bubble tea (one of Jen's cravings). No kidding — people give you free shit — just for standing there!

Then there's the preferential treatment you get from people — and if not straight up preferential treatment then at least some sort of generalized good will. Especially when you're on your first child (I've asked a couple people and they sort of agreed), it seems that everyone loves a pregnant lady. I don't know if they're thinking about their own children or what, but people seem excited.

As a guy who spent years cloaked in the urban anonymity that mixes the well-intentioned innocent with various thieves, rapists and flim-flam artists, at least in the eyes of the general public, it was a hoot to be treated so special. I never tired of questions like "How many months?" and "Do you know the sex?" I never got this much attention before.

Then there's the narcotic moral righteousness of getting on the subway and being able to stand over some able-bodied jerkoff until he or she finally gets up for the pregnant lady. All you do is stand, hushed, with dopey big eyes that say, "You're going to do this to a pregnant lady — really?" It's the best feeling in the world. And best of all, you're not the one who has to carry the weight.

(An aside: You know who always gets up for pregnant ladies? Tough looking guys who probably have a kid or two. You know who could give a shit about pregnant ladies? Single twenty-something girls and rich guys in suits. I don't know the whys or wherefores, but that's what Jen noticed.)

I already mentioned being able to drink for two, and that is one reason pregnant ladies are "fun," but other than that, no — no! — unless it's 16 and Pregnant, you just can't make an MTV show about being pregnant, at least if Snooki's pregnancy is anything like Jen's was — Jersey City is a canvas that deserves so much more than endless Netflix queues, smooshed bladders and fragile body images.

Of course, it could be very entertaining to watch a pregnant Snooki. It could be a reality show like no other. And provided she's under enough physical and mental duress, it would be self-awareness-proof. It can be more awesome than the lady who delivered her child in the art gallery.

All of which fits into Snooki's reported plans "to bankroll her mommy-to-be status into becoming 'the next Kourtney Kardashian.'" Yes — yes, and . . .

I Got Four Words For You: Evaporation

Sometime after the great Al Capone Vault Bust of 2011, in which expectations soared through the basement drop ceiling and were summarily dashed, Kawama received a 6-by-9 clasp envelope addressed to our family from the seller.

The envelope seemed sort of thick and I got excited, remembering that at the closing the seller said that the longtime owner was probably looking down from heaven thinking about us (or some such). I imagined that the envelope contained a bunch of old pictures of the house or something. Or who knows — maybe he was sending us $10,000 in cold, hard cash!

And then I opened it.

And found a water bill from DEP.

"You need to change the address on this," he scrawled on the envelope that he folded at the very top to make it fit.

I admit that I didn't think about the fact that we'd have to let DEP know that we now own the house. Couldn't they have figured that out for themselves? And given that they seem to be so uninterested in figuring that out, do we really think they care about our measly bill?

Which brings up the second surprise — Jesus, water is expensive! Actually, I'll amend that: The DEP bill is kind of expensive, since it also charges for "sewer service." For example, our most recent bill for the last three months was $142.67, divided into two charges: $57.06 for water and $90.73 for the sewer.

I understand the water rate, but what's with the sewer rate? Which is to say, Why does it fluctuate? Do they charge more when you use more water? How do they tell? It seems like it might be connected to the water usage, but why should it? What if I'm watering a lot of plants? What if I'm simmering a bunch of soup? What if I'm sweating a lot? The mind reels . . .

For a while I tried turning off the water when I washed the dishes. I sort of stopped when the weather got chilly and we hadn't yet gotten the boiler serviced — the steam from the hot water from doing dishes was welcome relief. It was the same thing with the low-flow shower head we dutifully installed: At one point I used to always switch to the low setting and now I fear I've fallen into a bad habit of just letting the water run.

It's funny — as a renter, I wouldn't think anything of just letting the water run. We had no idea what water cost. At one point the landlord asked if he could install one of those toilet-sink combination thingys whereby you wash your hands in the water that fills up the tank. In theory, sure, this was a great idea, but given that our bathroom was about 15 square feet total, we were using the space above the toilet for toiletries. Which just begged many more questions, chief of which being why stuff like hair care products have anything whatsoever to do with toilets. And then the mind really really reels . . .

Nothing Brightens The Day Like A Good Old School Shooting

The news about the school shooting in Ohio was horrible to hear about, but one bit of information stood out:

The name of the gunman, who is now in police custody, has not been released because he is a juvenile, said Tim McKenna, the Chardon police chief. Until adjudicated to the adult court, authorities will not identify him.

McKenna asked for patience and said that the investigation will be painstaking, as authorities have to conduct hundreds of interviews and listen to hours of 911 calls regarding the shootings.

The gunman was described by one student as a bullied outcast, while another spoke of him as being quiet but a "good kid."

Students who witnessed the shooting described how the gunman approached a group of friends who were sitting at a cafeteria table. One student said the shooter seemed to have targeted them.

. . .

FBI officials would not comment on a motive. But one of the students who witnessed the shooting said the gunman was known as someone who had apparently been bullied.

It stood out because one of the biggest lessons of Dave Cullen's excellent book Columbine was that so much bad information was floating around in the reporting immediately afterward. The biggest piece of bad information was that the two Columbine shooters were responding to school bullying.

Why does this matter? (Don't you love the rhetorical trope of asking the question for you?) (You know where I noticed this a lot — on walking tours in foreign countries; it seems that tour guides always say that.) The reason this matters is that in the aftermath of Columbine the kneejerk reaction was to think that schools had to "do more" to get through to kids to show them right and wrong. Let's be clear: Schools can only do so much to teach kids right and wrong and sometimes there's not a lot any one school can do to save its students from a psychopathic child.

(I was going to call this the "Jeremy" premise but then I thought to make sure I remembered that song correctly, and Wikipediaed it — it's actually about a kid who kills himself at school but the MTV censors wouldn't show that so the video unintentionally makes it seem that the protagonist of the video kills his classmates.) (I don't have the energy right now to talk about Pearl Jam, but oh, let me assure you, if I felt like spending another 600 words on it, you'd get an earful on that topic.) (I will say this, though — the lyrics are definitely oblique and specific enough to make you believe that it was about the kind of school shooter you read about in the papers.)

(Here's an unnecessarily provocative connection, though: It's not dissimilar to a big topic like global warming, where the way we conceive of the issue of global warming necessarily assumes that humans can do something to "fix" the problem.)

So it was interesting to see the first reports from the Ohio shooting state that some said the suspect "felt bullied." I want to hear what Dave Cullen has to say but his blog is stuck on January 4 (something about John McCain it appears) . . . he is writing on his Twitter, however . . .