CDs for the Armpit of America
Appeared, copy-edited, in The Declaration on or about 1 September 2001.
Let’s take a moment to conjure up the magical land of the New Jersey Turnpike. New Yorkers and New Englanders don’t have a problem with this, but since most of the people reading this are from Virginia and probably have not had a great deal of experience with the great jewel of the Garden State, so here’s a little description for you: Imagine a post-apocalyptic world of the near future. Bush has fucked up big time. Saddam Hussein finally got the nuclear weapon for Christmas that he’s been hoping to get for the past twenty years or so. He unloaded it on the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and then everything went nuts. ICBMs were launched across the world, from the United States, from Russia, from China–hell, even France got in on the fun. Every place on earth becomes part of the new global wasteland. Water is scarce. The only buildings left are rotting shells, scattered across the dusty land every twenty or thirty miles.
In this hopeless, desolate world, the New Jersey Turnpike would remain unchanged.
The Jersey Turnpike is 130 miles of asphalt, with service stations scattered about every twenty-five miles or so. Many of these rest stops are under renovation, so you’ve got Burger King and Roy Rogers running out of modified RVs, and convenience stores that are little more than shacks selling stale Combos and warm soda. Add to this mix the Mafia (the opening sequence of The Sopranos is James Gandolfini driving past various “landmarks” on the Turnpike), easily angered New Yorkers, and overzealous cops, and you’ve got one horrible stretch of highway. And we won’t even get started about the smell.
Basically, what I’m getting at is that the Jersey Turnpike is not the most scenic stretch of highway in the Northeast, and also that I’m bitter because I spent far too much time driving it over the course of the summer. Of course, there’s a silver lining in every clich