As We See It

[Neon Eden]

Why the stars of ‘Jersey Shore’ need to film a season in Las Vegas

Image
A Shore thing: DJ Pauly D already has a DJ residency at the Palms—why not bring the rest of the cast here with him?
Photo: Christopher DeVargas

MTV: Please just get it over with already and do a season of Jersey Shore here in Vegas.

DJ Pauly D has a regular gig at the Palms, recent editions of the Weekly have advertised club appearances by The Situation and JWOWW (is that a new face or just Photoshop?), and Snooki is all over town lately, at Pure and Wet Republic.

Why anyone would want to go to a club because there are some famous douchebags pumping their fists in a VIP section is beyond me, but regardless, it’s happening. I can feel it, like in 2002, when I knew war with Iraq was coming when I read the leaked WMD scare stories on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Okay, not the best analogy, but you get my drift.

My best guess is that this will happen at the Hard Rock or the Palms, especially given that Pauly has his DJ gig at the latter—but who knows?—maybe a dark horse will make a play for the publicity, perhaps Caesars or Trump or the Tropicana.

I don’t intend this to be some elitist lament about them coming here. I’ll admit to having dialed them up on Netflix, junk food at my side, junk food in my eyes. I love to loathe Sammi Sweetheart’s manipulations of Ronnie, and The Situation’s presumptuous tyranny of his housemates. While at Rehoboth Beach—Delaware’s minor league version of the Jersey Shore—this summer, I almost bought a T-shirt that read, “Come at me bro!”

And I’m partial to the actual Jersey Shore, where my parents were living nine months before I was born. The East Coast beaches, with their bumper cars and salt water taffy—the ocean almost an afterthought to the whole experience—will always feel like home.

It will be fun tracking the Jersey movements around Vegas, like tagged chimpanzees, and you know there will be one or more incidents involving Metro—a shooting?—and perhaps a rival gang from Orange County.

In a way, Vegas is sort of their true home, the place where illusion and reality go hand-in-hand, where anti-intellectualism is, for some, a badge of honor (with apologies to the college graduate and least hyped, most normal character Vinny.) And, of course, Vegas is where gym-tan-laundry and fake breasts and poofy hair are theological precepts for so many. (I imagine the Las Vegas Athletic Club on Eastern and the 215 could be a great place to find extras.)

So yes, let’s welcome them. But let’s at least try to wink and nod to the rest of the country that we’re in on the joke, that we welcome the suckers but don’t count ourselves among them.

We here in Vegas know the explosion of vapid, talent-less celebrity, and we know it isn’t new. As the sociologist Daniel Boorstin wrote back in the 1960s, a celebrity is someone who is “famous for being famous.” I was reminded of this by Leo Braudy, the USC professor and author of the authoritative history of fame, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, who pointed to Zsa Zsa Gabor as the historical analog to Snooki.

Braudy acknowledged, however, that reality TV and the Internet had increased the quantity of this dreck. And, he noted the difference from past to present exemplified by Las Vegas: “It’s an interesting thing to see, the decline, from the Rat Pack to Jersey Shore, which is, in a certain way, a degraded imitation.”

Indeed, the Rat Pack was the Jersey Shore of its time. Except if you listen to Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours,” you feel a longing and sadness that is universal and timeless. Whereas Jersey Shore cast members will no doubt be on a celebrity rehab show by the time we have our first Mormon president.

So bring on Jersey Shore, but let’s go find the new Rat Pack, too. And by that I don’t mean an imitation of the Rat Pack. I mean great art and entertainment. Our superstar DJs and Absinthe and its parody of self-seriousness qualify.

Las Vegas is about more than just douchebags from Jersey. And Orange County.

We are, aren’t we?

J. Patrick Coolican is a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun. Follow him on Twitter @jpcoolican or email him at [email protected]. His Neon Eden radio show airs Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. on 91.5 FM.
Share
Photo of J. Patrick Coolican

J. Patrick Coolican

Get more J. Patrick Coolican

Previous Discussion:

Top of Story