Top 5 Blog Posts of 2011

Posted December 30, 2011 by armpitnj
Categories: Random, Top 5
Tags: , , , ,

Tired of all those stupid, pointless lists every single website has been needlessly churning out all this week?  Me neither.  Here are my favorite things I’ve written this past year, in no particular order.

1) The Most Surprising Thing I’ve Ever Seen in New Jersey – Come along as I uncover a little known event in New Jersey – a farm animal auction.  You’ll see a cardboard box full of roosters, miniature horses, and an Amish auctioneer.

2) My Latest Obsession: Teresa Guidice – This past year, I got hooked on Real Housewives of New Jersey.  And what was it that drew me in?  The crazy-eyed train wreck that is Teresa Guidice.

3) ArmpitNJ.com Exclusive: Snooki’s First Draft! – Snooki became a best-selling author this year, but all the credit should go to her ghost writer.  I managed to get my hands on Snooki’s original draft for A Shore Thing.

4) Killer Klowns from Outer Space: A Review – Sure, the movie doesn’t really have anything to do with New Jersey.  But it was so krazy I couldn’t resist writing about it.

5) No Escape from “Escape from New Jersey” – What better way to spend a night than playing a drinking board game?  This simple game just proves that there really is no escape from the Armpit of America.

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Drinking the Jersey Shore

Posted December 18, 2011 by armpitnj
Categories: Random, Reviews
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It tastes like burning...and Snooki

Due to a certain show on MTV, the Jersey Shore is more popular than ever.  To appease a public hungry for all things Jersey Shore and to capitalize on it, companies are selling anything related to the shore in one way or another.  So, this holiday season, you can buy the guido-wannabes in your life all sorts of Jersey Shore merchandise, like ornaments and perfume.  Just put the words “Jersey Shore” on something, and you’ll have a bunch of idiots willing to by it.

I am one of those idiots.

While at the liquor store the other night looking for something to bring to a Chanukah party, I saw a bumper-sticker-like Jersey Shore label stuck on a bottle of vodka.  Being the fanboy that I am, I snatched it up and brought it to the register without giving a second thought.  After taking it home, I realized that some things are worth deliberating.  Jersey Shore branded vodka is one of those things.

This Jersey Shore vodka has nothing to do with the MTV show of the same name.  It doesn’t really have much to do with the real Jersey Shore either.  Though the perimeter of the label is lined with the names of various party towns on the Jersey Shore, there is one glaring mistake.  Among all the locations known for their bars and crazy nightlife, like Seaside, Pt. Pleasant, Wildwood, and Belmar, appears Spring Lake, a town known for rich old people and little else.  Why Spring Lake would be included on a bottle of vodka is beyond me. Read the rest of this post »

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Eating Pizza ‘n Stuff

Posted December 10, 2011 by armpitnj
Categories: Food, Jersey Shore, Videos
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Pete & Elda’s in Neptune is a landmark bar and pizza joint at the Jersey Shore.  The place is most famous for its pizza challenge, where if you eat a whole extra large pizza, you win a t-shirt.  You can’t go anywhere along the shore in the summer without seeing at least a handful of people proudly wearing their Pete & Elda’s shirts.

Last week, the day finally came for me to earn my own Pete & Elda’s shirt.  Though my friends who have completed the challenge told me it really isn’t that hard, I still expected it to be difficult.  Eating a whole pizza definitely isn’t something I do every day.  When the pizza came, I realized I had nothing to be worried about.  The crust was paper thin, crispy, and slightly charred.  Just like matzo!  I knew I had this in the bag.  Check out the video below to see how I fared.

The challenge was a lot easier than I ever expected.  Despite the name “Double Extra Large” the pizza wasn’t big at all.  Now for a real pizza eating challenge at the Jersey Shore, I suggest eating a whole large pie at Three Brothers in Belmar.

Like the slideshow above?  I have more!

Celebrate an either late or really early Halloween by watching as I create a scale replica of Snooki out of pumpkins.

The New Jersey Turnpike isn’t a total waste – it has an IKEA!

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No Escape from “Escape From New Jersey”

Posted November 25, 2011 by armpitnj
Categories: Random
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Any person growing up in New Jersey has often felt the need to get out of New Jersey.  And while some act on this desire and move to another state, many – myself included- are fated to stay in the Armpit of America forever.  This constant struggle of wanting to get out but realizing you never will is perfectly exemplified by the board game “Escape from New Jersey.”  Not sure where else you can find it, but I got mine at True Jersey Supply Company, a store in Belmar full of all things Jersey.

As you can see above, Escape from New Jersey isn’t technically a board game.  It’s more of a laminated piece of paper that comes in a cardboard tube, so you’ll need to weigh down the corners to keep it from rolling back up.  And rather than having real game pieces, you just get cheap plastic cowboys and Indians that can’t even stand up on their own.  Yeah, the whole thing is pretty flimsy.  Flimsy, but fun. Read the rest of this post »

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The Most Surprising Thing I’ve Ever Seen in New Jersey

Posted November 5, 2011 by armpitnj
Categories: Armpit Adventures
Tags: , , , , , ,

I thought I had seen it all.  I assumed I’d known everything there was to know about New Jersey.  I didn’t think there was anything else that could surprise me.

I was wrong.

So what’s with all the dramatics?  Well, I recently visited a part of the Armpit of America that I thought existed only in my nightmares.  No, not a Jersey City whorehouse.  Not a crack den in Camden either.  Not even Chris Christie’s private bathroom.  The place of horror was a farm auction.  In New Jersey.  About 20 minutes from cosmopolitan Princeton and at the confluence of three major highways.

The place is called the Camelot Horse auction, located in Cranbury, New Jersey.  Despite being surrounded by the Jersey Turnpike, Route 130, and Route 33, one arrives at the auction by traveling over a deteriorating road through a dark cornfield to get to a gravelly parking lot.  It’s still hard for me to believe that such a place could exist so close to the typical Jersey landscape of highways and strip malls.

I was invited to such a place by some friends who are just a tad more country than I am and certainly fit in better than I do.  After meeting up, we went inside an old barn to see the animals up for auction.  The barn was full of little stables, each holding a variety of horses, ponies, donkeys, sheep, and goats.  In another room were a bunch of cardboard boxes containing various smaller animals, like guinea pigs, rabbits, and pigeons.

Something tells me this guy ended up as someone's dinner that night.

But the main attraction of the farm auction was, appropriately enough, the auction room.  This section of the barn had bleachers along the walls, a big, rusty truck full of farm equipment, and a podium in the middle of the room for an Amish-looking auctioneer.  Adorned with a straw hat and a big, bushy beard, he presided over the bidding on items like shovels and feed buckets with the typical auctioneer gibberish. Read the rest of this post »

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