The New Jersey Odd Blogger's Local #4

My Sundry Best
By Robert MacMillan
Washingtonpost
Staff WriterFriday, July 15, 2005

The New Jersey Odd Blogger's Local #4

Regular readers might notice my affinity for all things Garden State. Who can blame me? I lived near Cherry Hill for years ( Haddonfield Memorial High School '91, for those of you who know what that means), and I grew up on a regular diet of dairy bars, the Cowtown Rodeo , trips to the shore (not beach) and the Jersey Devil .

That's why I enjoyed this article from the New York Times , "In New Jersey, Blog Carnival Is WWWeird." The story profiles New Jersey's finest oddball specimens such as Sluggo of Sluggo Needs a Nap , Smadnek's "Cripes, Suzette!" entry and the great reference to one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, " If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn-mower ."

The best I can say is that you're in for an treat that feels half "Sopranos," half "Fellini Satyricon."

As the Times's Peter Applebome wrote, "The state is small enough that whether you live in Bergen or Hunterdon you still have an opinion on the best pizza or sausage and pepper sandwich at the Jersey Shore, drive on the same turnpike, and both contribute to the Jersey Joke syndrome and bristle at it. The politics are so obviously dysfunctional everyone shares everyone else's pain. Everyone has an attitude. And over the past decades, almost without people realizing it, the pop culture New Jersey of Springsteen/"The Sopranos"/"Garden State," etc., has changed the way people think about their state." Abbondanza!