The Gabbler: Hi, Boardwalk! It’s nice to finally meet you! As a young New Jerseyan,  I’ve spent many a fine evening strolling along your boards, cheese fries in my hands, inhaling the salty smell of the ocean, watching the lights of the ferris wheel in the distance…

Boardwalk: Ah, well thank you, dear. You sound like one of the good ones. You know, in my almost one hundred years of serving as the entertainment mecca of this small town…

TG: Wait, WHAT?! You’re one hundred?! I gotta tell you, you do not have the boards of a one hundred year old. Especially not with all the water damage you must go through every year!

B: Well, thank you. I did have a nice makeover following the Great Atlantic Hurricane of ’44, which tore me up quite a bit. And of course there was that catastrophic fire of ’55. I had to be completely redone after that. Plus, every girl needs regular maintenance to keep looking spry. Especially with all this media attention.

TG: True. And how has the added media attention affected you?

B: Well I can’t say it’s been all bad. The people in my town really depend on this fragile summer tourist economy for their income. They have to make a year’s income between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And so, if sales of “Snooki’s Favorite Deep Fried Pickles” can help them pay for their winter heating bill, who am I to judge?

TG: But?

B: But it wasn’t always like this. All this about “GTL” and “guido juicehead gorillas,” whatever those are. I mean, yes, I’ve always been a safe haven for 65 year old women who want to wear skin tight leopard print clothing or people who unabashedly cover all their food in funnel cake batter and deep fry it. I’m not an opera house or a ballet company or even an all inclusive Caribbean resort. I’m fried food and carnival games and rides that spin you upside down and in circles.

TG: So it sounds like Jersey Shore wasn’t too off the mark, then.

B: But it was, you see. I’m a place where a 15-year-old girl in a bikini can proudly show off the new body that puberty gave her this past winter. I’m not the place where 18-year-old girls are derided as “grenades” and then still brought home for a one night stand and used like an animated movie prop. I’m the place where you get a beer with your cheese fries, not where you run onto the beach in slippers, drunk in the noon sun, puking all over the sand. I’m the place where children smile and laugh when they finally win their favorite carnival game, not the place where these children have to be quickly pulled aside by their parents because a mob of people is sprinting down me, looking for Pauly D in some bar. I’m blue collar family, not classless twenty something looking for their next lay.

TG: Well what do you think of the cast? Snooki, Deena, Pauly D, JWow, Vinny, the Situation, and, of course, everyone’s favorite dysfunctional lovebirds Ronnie and Sammie?

B: Oh don’t even get me started on Ronnie and Sammie. Lovebirds? I’ve seen more love between two strangers going at it underneath Casino Pier. And the Situation? What is that exactly? The only situation I see is a sad old man trying to seduce young girls with a six pack that’s almost as creepy looking as his gnarly face. Snooki was once what I believe your generation calls “a hot mess” but she’s grown up before my eyes. She lived out the modern day fairy tale. You know, of meeting Prince Charming at a club, sleeping with him before you even know his name. Then a few drunk sexts later, you’re Facebook official and you end up getting knocked up and settling down. But at least she’s settled down. The rest, frankly, bore me. What’s the big deal about gross men degrading gross women after they sleep with them? Or about women drunkly yelling at each other for no reason?

TG: But you did say that there’s been a clear economic benefit?

B: Well, yes. People have to occupy themselves somehow while they wait for the cast to emerge. Not to mention the money the borough makes from parking and beach passes. I mean, I’m just a few miles away from Island Beach Park, where admission to the beach, including parking and use of their showers and bathrooms is just $10 per car. No matter how many people you can fit in car! And yet people would rather come here and pay $5 per person for a beach badge, not to mention the cost of parking, just to be on the beach where Snooki made a fool of herself. It’s ridiculous, but it’s helped the town astronomically. I have to say, I’ll be sad to see that go.

TG: So you’re upset the show is leaving?

B: I’m upset the money is leaving. I can’t wait until they finally take down all these Jersey Shore signs. They just make me feel so dirty. It’s like MTV is a terrible boyfriend and finally after over a decade of Summer Beach Houses and True Life specials and finally, Jersey Shore, he’s leaving me with a full rash of herpes sores. But I know they’ll clear up one day. Hopefully long before another show descends on the town. Unless that show is Cutest Babies of the Jersey Shore. Because that just sounds adorable.

TG: So, Boardwalk, it’s time for the tough question. If you had to do it over again, would you? Do you think the economic benefit was worth the metaphorical “rash of herpes sores?”

B: Of course it was. Listen, I’m like a big old, wooden Mom to this town. And my kids are, mostly, doing really well thanks to Jersey Shore. And can you show me one mother who wouldn’t contract herpes if it meant her kids could maintain their livelihoods in a recession?

TG: I’m pretty sure I could. But, anyway, thank you for meeting with me today, Boardwalk. It was lovely to meet the woman behind the boards.

B: Thank you.

The Gabbler received the following letter, along with an explanatory note, via courier on Monday morning. Both were written in Italian. Luckily, friend of The Gabbler Vinny Guadagnino, of Jersey Shore fame, was able to produce a loose translation of both documents. The letter appears to be a copy of an original sent by Pope Benedict XVI to Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio. At the time of the correspondence, Bishop Blair was leading the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest group of nuns in the United States. Since the time of the letter, the Congregation has concluded its investigation and officially admonished the nuns for investing too much time and resources into health services and poverty issues and too little into the Catholic Church’s fight against abortion and homosexuality.

DISCLAIMER: The Gabbler cannot guarantee that Vinny Guadagnino’s Italian translation is correct, or even that Guadadnino is Italian. (Look, we need a translator, pronto! Capisce?!)

Explanatory Note

Yo guys,

It’s the Pope’s butler! You know, the one who’s going to prison for leaking documents? Well, I’m back with more. You see, I copied a few extra letters while the Pope was busy gazing at his ceremonial robes (he does that a lot) and when all the shit went down with the leaks back in January, I told that Benedict that he hadn’t heard the last of me! And that if he didn’t want to blow the lid off of the Vatican’s whole “we hate women” thing that they have going on (not to mention, a weird clothes obsession), that he should just let us part as friends and try out that whole forgiveness shtick that good old J.C. loved so much. But if he ever changed his mind about that, I let him know that I had some more documents, ready to leak around the world. So if you’re reading this, that means that he’s gone back on his Popely word and something has happened to me. So, sit back, grab a nice glass of red wine, and enjoy a journey into the mind of the Pope. The topic: those feisty American nuns and how to make them respect the symbolic “No Girlz Allowed” sign kept over the entrance to the Vatican’s highest echelons of power.

Peace out,

The Butler

Letter

December 12^th, 2011

Yo! Hey, Bishop Blair!

It’s the Pope! From Rome! I just wanted to check in on our little situation over there, with the nuns. You know, the women folk who want to take over our church completely and destroy everything that Christ ever stood for!

This sitch is serious, Blair. Do you know how hard I had to fight to get to be Pope and have this sweet wardrobe? Do you know how long I waited? They don’t hand over the keys to the Popemobile to just any shmuck off the street. You really have to outsmart hundreds of thousands of other men who have dedicated their lives to this church in the hope of getting their hands on the Popely regalia.

And now we have these “independent” women, flouting the Vatican’s rules. Running around, helping the poor and sick when there are gay dudes everywhere. When any woman can just abort her baby because she’s PMSing that day or however that girl stuff works. The point is, they’re not doing what they’re told and I don’t like it.

You know why, too, don’t you, bro? This isn’t a good sign. If those women rise against us, if they come after the whole ordination deal then they’ll be all over priesthood. And before you know it, we’ll have to fight men and women for the keys to the Popemoblie. Do you know how awful these crimson robes would look against a nun’s ashen skin? And these headdresses weren’t made to accommodate long hair, okay?

So you better get those chicks under control, man. Make up some bullshit about the law of the church respecting them in their proper role as nuns only. Man, that’s perfect, say that. Women love stuff about respect. Just calm them down and then get them back to their jobs: listening to the men in charge of the church and getting a real handle on the whole gays and abortions thing.

The thing is, these women are making real strides in some places with the whole helping out the poor and sick thing. And I get it, okay, I’m the Pope, I know all about that whole “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” Matthew 5:5 thing. But you know that can’t happen, right? Because the poor are the backbone of the Church. They’re the only ones hopeless enough to grasp onto every word that we say, including that whole no contraception thing. They’re the only ones stupid enough to keep producing babies for the Church, no questions asked. And they give a much higher percentage of their income to the collection plate than those stingy upper class Catholics.

Plus, they’re so helpless we can justify interfering in their daily lives no problem. Just think about it, Blair. Picture the New Testament without the helpless and the poor and the sick. Without those people to justify His good works, Jesus is just some dude running around telling everybody else what to do and what to believe. And no one wants to be that guy. Without the poor and the sick we’ve got nothing, just some whining about the gays and abortions and condoms. We’d be ruined.

Listen, man, there are great things coming to you out there in Toledo, Ohio if you can just get this done and I can stop worrying and go back to organizing my robes in rainbow order. I’m talking money, promotions, prestige. You name it. I know it can’t be all that fun being bishop in a little backwater like Toledo, even with the glory of Rome behind you, but I can help make it big. I’ll even throw in some saint’s body parts if you get it done with minimal media coverage.

Just get it done, Blair. And soon.

Peace Out,

The Pope