Spotlights

Ramping Up

Ok, I want to write a whole post about Chris Christie without mentioning his weight.

Like most Americans, I know only four things about Christie:

1. He’s Governor of New Jersey.
2. He hugged Obama after Hurricane Sandy.
3. He’s the leading Republican candidate for president in 2016.
4. He was very close to, if not directly involved with, GWBridge-gate. Or Traffic-gate. Or Fort Lee-gate. Or whatever you want to call it.

If he does actually wind up running in 2016, we’re all going to know a good deal more about him. So I want to anticipate and meet that demand before any actual facts emerge.

First, you should understand that as a New Yorker, I regard New Jersey as a convenient place to end the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. (I was going to say it holds up its end of the George Washington Bridge, but under the circumstances …) ¹

I guess the four-and-a-halfth thing we know about Christie is that he’s not exactly popular with the extreme right factions of the Republican party. His bromance with Obama after Hurricane Sandy certainly didn’t help him there. Luckily for him, he’s shown himself to be the kind of tough, steadfast leader who’s willing to fire his own staff after only a few weeks of denials.

Political pundits, prone to pre-election prognostications that can’t be proven wrong immediately, have already picked Christie and Hillary Clinton as the likely contenders in 2016. Such a contest would qualify as a subway series in baseball terms. (You’d have to count the PATH train as a subway, but hey, maybe Christie could find a way to shut that down too.)

So, in short, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Chris Christie, both his grand plans and possibly his gross misconduct. He looms large on the political horizon. Since he is massively popular in New Jersey and just won a landslide re-election there, his shoes might be hard to fill. But the enormous lure of the White House may exert its gravitational pull. He may indeed be our next president, a position of immense weight, whose impact would be felt around the world.

But I didn't say that he's fat.

¹Well, not really. Some of my best friends are New Jerseyans. (New Jerseyites?)

Summer Vacation 2013

Once again, we returned to our favorite vacation spot, Interstate 95. We spent the first part of our trip on the Connecticut Turnpike, especially in the scenic and historic Exits 30 to 38 area. It was exciting to see the new billboards and, of course, the truck rear ends provide an ever-changing pageant of ironic commercialism. The hardy New England spirit burnishes all the attractions, even the sex toy and porn shops relocated here from Times Square.

From Connecticut, we travelled to the ever popular New Jersey Turnpike, Gateway to Delaware. Here the ebb and flow of traffic is punctuated by the succession of colorfully named service areas. How can you not feel pride at seeing such great Americans as Thomas Edison, Woodrow Wilson and Vince Lombardi honored with a Quiznos?

And of course what vacation would be complete without the thrilling displays of spontaneous stunt driving? We worry that this entertaining spectacle will be made obsolete by the technology of Google’s self-driving cars. Early reports give no indication that the autonomous cars will even be able to drink coffee or talk on the phone while driving. And will their robot drivers even have middle fingers?