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A mind is a terrible thing to waste, or: One week in July at the Jersey shore
Searching for intelligent life at the shore
AJ Sabatini
A seashell village, complete with a seashell garden, glistening park benches the size of a fingernail, a gazebo with enough space for one bee, a snailshell courthouse. Driftwood things: a paperweight with a clock, a spoonrest, tangled branches the color of rye toast tendrilling around a handheld mirror, emaciated arms of dark pocked wood winding up from a turquoise platform, topped with a prim, beige lampshade.
Mermaids in clear plastic buttons mini-chained to a key ring and smiling lobsters in yellow tank tops key rings. Lifeguard stands on the edge of opal blue ocean key rings, and whale, crab, beach umbrella, anchor, sailboat, sailboat, sloop, seaweed, surfboard, sandcastle, seagulls, jet ski, dune and dolphin imagery stamped, imprinted, painted and pressed onto faux leathery swatches attached to the absolutely necessary accessory for modern life: key rings.
Did the ancient Greeks have them?
So you, slightly sweating, have spent ten minutes of your life cataloguing the iconography of seaside sights on items that ordinarily remain as far from your usual attention as fleas are to ice fishermen. You glance over your shoulder at nets and, yes, there's no doubt that in this sunny realm of butterflies in flight, shuttlecocks a-flying, crabs a-crawling, blue fish hooked and flapping around the side of a boat, insatiable mosquitoes, menacing bottle flies, and screened-in back porches, real nets are needed, and not the kind you find on the worldwide web.
Seasonal stuff
And, still, you wait for your partner to buy a hat, shirt, sunglasses, shorts, socks, sandals— seasonal stuff that's somehow more current than last year's seasonal stuff.
You're down the shore. You have six days to go.
It's fascinating that in vacation towns, small shops (why do they spell them Shoppes) specialize in the sale of miniaturizations of their environs. It's as if the glorious expanse of the sea and sky, the tangy snap of the salty air and the promise of fresh seafood"“ which is why you came in the first place"“ aren't sufficient to enjoy, so everyone needs to gawk at gewgaws in window displays that recreate the very beachscape you spend your days on.
Look: a tiny overturned rowboat with peeling paint and tarred rope looped around a lobster trap glued to a clamshell that fits in the palm of your hand, for $8.99. Or here's a six-mast clipper ship-in-a-bottle perched on a bookshelf (with no books), which, although ubiquitous in weekly rental homes, has never been seen in any major city west of Scranton. Show someone from Indiana a sailing ship-in-a-bottle and he might believe the Atlantic Ocean could fit in a bathtub.
Tweens and bankers
Day Three: Did the inventor of Velcro envision awkward 'tweens flinging radish red-and-lime-green-striped tennis balls taped with Velcro at each other's skinny kneecaps, only to be scooped with a pie plate lined with blue and grey Velcro?
(Is this a thought or a perception? When were "'"'tweens" invented? Who is smoking a cigar on the beach? Christ, flesh flashing at five o'clock. Is that a bosom I see or Asbury Park?)
Day Four: Who cares if she killed him? The husband is a stockbroker hustler and should be whipped with a Wall Street Journal soaked in absinthe until he admits the entire mess in this country is the result of incompetent bankers and hedge fund managers who think they should be allowed to continue playing masters of the universe as if it were someone else's fault.
What? It's 30 or 40 SPF, smells like shea butter. Who knows, under the towels and there's sand all over it, because we're at the beach on the sand and there are jellyfish today.
Here, you can read it. The husband is a jerk. I brought my iPod anyway. I know there is sand in my ear. Thelonious Sphere Monk. Thelonious Sphere Monk. Sphere. It's hot. Hazy is a wonderful word.
Gulliver of golf
Maybe the impulse to miniaturize derived from miniature golf, where world-roaming fantasies collide in tacky constructions behind a grey linked fence on a half-acre? Just what you need on vacation: an entire landscape to lord over, where everyone becomes a traveler, a Gulliver of Golf, a Ulysses putting for the Cyclopic hole-in-one.
Putt through the Sirens, dude. Might as well travel as long as you're here for two more days.
Why is that kid screaming? Is there a themed Odyssey Miniature Golf Course? If they called it Homerland, would the creators of "The Simpsons" sue?
Checkout time
Fie Day. Dayfidie. Friday, firday, od-de-do. Did we finish that flounder fish, tha' dish of chips, dat Finnish vodka already? Oh, fireflies. Right. I thought they were moving pretty fast and low to the ground for stars. Is there enough grapefruit juice left for breakfast? See, no one eats that pumpernickel raisin bagel.
What do you mean? Can't we go to the beach first? The water is a spectacle, the beach brilliant as a pearl. No jellyfish. It figures. I know we have to check out by 11.
Anyway, don't forget to pack the backscratcher made of driftwood from a real pirate ship. Looks like something from outer space. Or, right, New Jersey.♦
To read responses, click here.
Mermaids in clear plastic buttons mini-chained to a key ring and smiling lobsters in yellow tank tops key rings. Lifeguard stands on the edge of opal blue ocean key rings, and whale, crab, beach umbrella, anchor, sailboat, sailboat, sloop, seaweed, surfboard, sandcastle, seagulls, jet ski, dune and dolphin imagery stamped, imprinted, painted and pressed onto faux leathery swatches attached to the absolutely necessary accessory for modern life: key rings.
Did the ancient Greeks have them?
So you, slightly sweating, have spent ten minutes of your life cataloguing the iconography of seaside sights on items that ordinarily remain as far from your usual attention as fleas are to ice fishermen. You glance over your shoulder at nets and, yes, there's no doubt that in this sunny realm of butterflies in flight, shuttlecocks a-flying, crabs a-crawling, blue fish hooked and flapping around the side of a boat, insatiable mosquitoes, menacing bottle flies, and screened-in back porches, real nets are needed, and not the kind you find on the worldwide web.
Seasonal stuff
And, still, you wait for your partner to buy a hat, shirt, sunglasses, shorts, socks, sandals— seasonal stuff that's somehow more current than last year's seasonal stuff.
You're down the shore. You have six days to go.
It's fascinating that in vacation towns, small shops (why do they spell them Shoppes) specialize in the sale of miniaturizations of their environs. It's as if the glorious expanse of the sea and sky, the tangy snap of the salty air and the promise of fresh seafood"“ which is why you came in the first place"“ aren't sufficient to enjoy, so everyone needs to gawk at gewgaws in window displays that recreate the very beachscape you spend your days on.
Look: a tiny overturned rowboat with peeling paint and tarred rope looped around a lobster trap glued to a clamshell that fits in the palm of your hand, for $8.99. Or here's a six-mast clipper ship-in-a-bottle perched on a bookshelf (with no books), which, although ubiquitous in weekly rental homes, has never been seen in any major city west of Scranton. Show someone from Indiana a sailing ship-in-a-bottle and he might believe the Atlantic Ocean could fit in a bathtub.
Tweens and bankers
Day Three: Did the inventor of Velcro envision awkward 'tweens flinging radish red-and-lime-green-striped tennis balls taped with Velcro at each other's skinny kneecaps, only to be scooped with a pie plate lined with blue and grey Velcro?
(Is this a thought or a perception? When were "'"'tweens" invented? Who is smoking a cigar on the beach? Christ, flesh flashing at five o'clock. Is that a bosom I see or Asbury Park?)
Day Four: Who cares if she killed him? The husband is a stockbroker hustler and should be whipped with a Wall Street Journal soaked in absinthe until he admits the entire mess in this country is the result of incompetent bankers and hedge fund managers who think they should be allowed to continue playing masters of the universe as if it were someone else's fault.
What? It's 30 or 40 SPF, smells like shea butter. Who knows, under the towels and there's sand all over it, because we're at the beach on the sand and there are jellyfish today.
Here, you can read it. The husband is a jerk. I brought my iPod anyway. I know there is sand in my ear. Thelonious Sphere Monk. Thelonious Sphere Monk. Sphere. It's hot. Hazy is a wonderful word.
Gulliver of golf
Maybe the impulse to miniaturize derived from miniature golf, where world-roaming fantasies collide in tacky constructions behind a grey linked fence on a half-acre? Just what you need on vacation: an entire landscape to lord over, where everyone becomes a traveler, a Gulliver of Golf, a Ulysses putting for the Cyclopic hole-in-one.
Putt through the Sirens, dude. Might as well travel as long as you're here for two more days.
Why is that kid screaming? Is there a themed Odyssey Miniature Golf Course? If they called it Homerland, would the creators of "The Simpsons" sue?
Checkout time
Fie Day. Dayfidie. Friday, firday, od-de-do. Did we finish that flounder fish, tha' dish of chips, dat Finnish vodka already? Oh, fireflies. Right. I thought they were moving pretty fast and low to the ground for stars. Is there enough grapefruit juice left for breakfast? See, no one eats that pumpernickel raisin bagel.
What do you mean? Can't we go to the beach first? The water is a spectacle, the beach brilliant as a pearl. No jellyfish. It figures. I know we have to check out by 11.
Anyway, don't forget to pack the backscratcher made of driftwood from a real pirate ship. Looks like something from outer space. Or, right, New Jersey.♦
To read responses, click here.
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