What Massachusetts Is Like

I'm always interested in providing important public services.  Recently I realized that while I live in Massachusetts, most of my Facebook friends, and most of the people who might read this, are not from Massachusetts, and might have no idea what it's like here.  I also think the Facebook friends I do have from Massachusetts could benefit from seeing how it looks to an outsider.  So what's Massachusetts like? 

First of all, Boston accents aren't a real thing.  I've never once met someone with a Ben Affleck style Boston accent.  I think it's just something TV and movies made up for fun.  It's not that people here have no accents.  I have one co-worker who talks a little like Peter Griffin.  He might be from Rhode Island or somewhere.  I have a friend from about an hour north of Boston.  Her accent is certainly unique, but nothing like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, or Ben Affleck in everything.  Boston accents aren't real, tell your friends.

Also, people here are obsessed with Dunkin Donuts, to like an unhealthy degree.  When I lived in New York, Dunkin Donuts was where you would go to get cheap, serviceable coffee because you didn't feel like waiting in line forever and overpaying at Starbucks.  I've lived here for five years and I've seen two Starbucks, and one of them is on my campus.  Meanwhile, on my 10-15 minute drive home, I can pass anywhere between two and five Dunkin Donuts locations.  Everyone you meet here has worked at a Dunkin Donuts at some point.  Everyone.  Sometimes you can see a Dunkin Donuts from another Dunkin Donuts.  And nobody ever actually gets donuts. 

Speaking of food, it's mostly terrible here.  I did have good Chinese food at one point this summer, and also good Italian food once last month, but those took me five years to find.  As far as I can tell, there's no such thing as a good deli here.  When I worked in Manhattan, there was this place near work called Taco Grill.  It was greasy and horrible and delicious.  And if you wanted something a little less heart clogging, there was the Great Burrito.  You cannot get a good taco in Massachusetts.  Not anywhere, not ever.  And then there's the pizza.

The pizza here is infuriating.  I've seen such horrible things.  It's like the Vietnam of pizza.  I've seen round pies cut into squares.  I've seen pies cut into 16 slices instead of 8 for no reason other than to bother me.  I've seen "thin crust" "New York Style" pizza with crust so thick you can't even really fold it in half.  There's a place right across the street from work called Peppa's.  Sometimes, if you catch them on the right day, the pizza there is almost good.  But, most of the time, the crust is just a little too thick in the most frustrating way because it's so close.  After five years here, I finally found a decent pizza place this summer.  It's a 35 minute drive and they still cut the pizza into too many slices unless you tell them not to, but at least it tastes like it's supposed to taste.

When you live in Massachusetts, you can't just go to a 7-11 or a regular little grocery store for alcohol.  When I went to Hofstra, there was this place down Hempstead Turnpike near the hospital that just sold beer and other drinks.  It might have been called the Beverage Barn.  It also might not have been called that, I don't really remember.  Massachusetts is full of places like that.  They're called package stores.  Some people also call them packys, but you don't want to associate with those people.  They're the only place you can get beer and liquor, and they're only open until like 8PM, and I think they may be completely closed on Sundays.  I thought Massachusetts was supposed to be fun.

Especially when I was at college, there was this thing where you'd call people with Massachusetts license plates massholes and say they didn't know how to drive.  After living here for five years, I don't know if people here are bad drivers, but if they are, they certainly have an excuse.  Driving here is terrifying.  All the roads are one lane, and the roads that have more then one lane usually have at least one lane under construction.  Everything here is constantly under construction, but nothing is ever finished or even better.

About a mile or two from where I work, there's this thing called a rotary.  Five or a hundred different roads converge in a circle.  There are no traffic lights to be seen, and yield and stop signs are just sort of scattered about in no particular pattern.  You have to get from one side of the circle to some road that leaves the circle somewhere else with no assistance from traffic signs or regulations.  It's a nightmare.  This summer I tried to go through the rotary to Enfield, CT but I wound up in Somers, CT, which is a solid five miles from Enfield, because I picked the wrong road because there are no signs.  If people from Massachusetts are bad drivers in New York, you really can't blame them.  They're not used to roads that go straight and are marked.

I don't know if this is a Massachusetts thing or just a reflection of this generation of stupid parents and helpless kids, but school buses stop at your house here.  When I was a kid, we had this thing called a bus stop where you'd go and the bus would sort of meet you there.  At least I think that's how it worked, I only took the bus to kindergarten.  Anyway, here, the school bus stops at every house.  I get stuck behind it on the way to work sometimes.  It just stops in front of a house and sits there until some kid comes running out, usually with at least one parent.  Then it rolls a few houses forward and picks up the next kid.  No wonder they have no public transportation here.  People would just be sitting in front of their houses wondering why the bus hasn't come to take them to work yet.

Massachusetts isn't all bad.  For one thing, when the next election comes up, I can just vote for whatever crazy third-party candidate I want because my vote doesn't really matter here.  Also, there's a Roy Rogers within driving distance of where I live.  The people here are mostly friendly too.  You have to get used to making eye contact with people when you're walking, and even saying hello sometimes, but once you do it's actually not so bad. 

The weather here is sort of a mixed bag.  Since I moved here, I've experienced a number of things I never remember seeing once in New York.  I've seen a tornado, hail, snow in October, an earthquake (which isn't really weather but still) and a hurricane even though we're nowhere near the ocean.  On the plus side you can actually see some stars here.  I'm willing to sit through a few earthquakes and tornadoes for a good night sky.

You would probably expect that I'd mention sports at some point, but really there's no need.  Sports are pretty much the same here.  Red Sox fans, once the adorable underdogs of the sports world, are just like Yankee fans now...super spoiled and terribly whiny whenever the team isn't good even though they just won a championship like two years ago.  Celtics fans are just like Knicks fans, despondent and pathetically hopeful about this new coach.  Patriots fans are just like Giants fans in the 80s when Parcells was there...unwilling or unable to shut up about the coach and how great he is and how nobody has ever coached football like he coaches football. 

Sidenote, watching this whole deflated footballs thing unfold from inside New England was fascinating.  For the record, this was the stupidest fake sports scandal in the history of what I can remember and I can't believe Brady almost missed actual games for it, but still, people here were so defensive.  If they had found Brady's fingerprints on the inside of every football in question, people here would have been like "that's totally normal, quarterbacks always thoroughly finger the inside of the footballs, STOP SINGLING BRADY OUT!!!!".

I don't mean to be so negative on where I live now.  For all I know, it could be the second best place in the world to live.  I would definitely go to college here.  There's colleges everywhere.  At Hofstra, the only other school I can remember being near us was Adelphi, and I'm pretty sure we ignored them on purpose.  Where I am now there's like 10 colleges right around here.  I'm sure the kids are having a fun time.  Massachusetts is a nice place, it just isn't New York.  But what is?

The New Center

I have a theory. Now, I watch Glenn Beck at least a couple of times a week. Glenn has a lot of theories, I think the last one involved Woodrow Wilson secretly traveling back in time to start the slave trade. My theory isn't a Beck-style, category five crazy theory. I'm a bit more of a moderate, and that's sort of my point, this is a theory about moderation.

I've been trying my best to get engaged with the 2010 midterm elections, my efforts are meeting with limited success. The Democrats are undisciplined, somewhat cowardly and really failing to zero in on a message. Ya know, they're acting like Democrats. I can't imagine a way a party could more thoroughly squander a huge majority, but I'm sure the Democrats can.

Meanwhile, the Republican party seems to have been taken over by crazy people. Their nominee in Nevada, Sharron Angle, can generously be described as totally insane. Of course, she still has a decent chance of winning because she's running against Harry Reid's politically dynamic combination of unspeakably boring and unimaginably ineffective. Should be a real barn burner out there.

The Republicans in my current (but, thankfully, soon to be former) state have nominated Linda McMahon. Seriously, the wrestling lady. I swear I'm not joking. But she also still has a decent chance because she's got about a trillion dollars and she's running against a Democrat who kept telling people he served in Vietnam even though he didn't.

I've also noticed the Florida Senate race. Florida has the rare three-way race going. Independent and former Republican Charlie Crist vs. tea party Republican and former hair model Marco Rubio vs. a couple of Democrats who can't even poll at 20% in a pretty 50/50 state. Crist leads the real clear politics average of polls no matter which Democrat you plug in. This brings us to my theory. I think Crist is the leading edge of a big wave of successful independent candidates.

Look at where we are right now. People are rightfully fed up with both parties. The imagineers at Fox News keep telling me the Republican party will win back a majority in the house and maybe the Senate in November. How many times do you think people will go back and forth like this before they realize nothing ever changes? I think Crist wins by double digits in November, partially because he won't be weighed down by the stupidity of either party. That's why I think he should change his campaign slogan to "I'm Charlie Crist, and I don't like either of these guys". I also like that slogan because it's a little punchier than Marco Rubio's "I'm Marco Rubio, and I'll say whatever Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin tell me to say".

In the past, independents struggled because they couldn't raise any real money and they didn't have enough name recognition. Next time you go vote, take a look at the candidates on your ballot after the two major parties. It's a veritable who's who of who the f*ck are these guys. People generally aren't fans of voting for people they've never heard of, or giving them money.

But Sean, you protest, Ross Perot had money and everyone knew who he was, and he still only got just under 19% in the 1992 election. I can't argue with you there. Sure, part of what Perot was known for was his trademark bat-shit insanity, but still, he was well known. So what's different now?

As usual, part of the problem is the internets. An independent candidate doesn't need the party establishment to raise big money anymore. Even major party candidates do a decent amount of fundraising on the internet. I'm not saying an independent can get even with the big parties on money, but I think they can get close enough, if people know who they are. That brings us to culprit number two.

Cable news. People are more well informed about politics now than ever before. Well, maybe I wouldn't say we're well informed, but we're certainly more informed. I live in Connecticut and know who Marco Rubio and Sharron Angle are. Do you think I would have known who they were in 1992? Probably not.

So, here are the factors:
1) People are genuinely fed up with both parties
2) Fundraising is way easier now than it was even 10 years ago
3) Name recognition in politics is almost universal at this point
4) I say an independent is about to destroy both big party candidates in a pretty visible Senate race in Florida

Over the next five/ten years, I think we'll see a wave of moderate, reasonable politicians running for office as independents, and winning. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2020 Senate looked something like 43 Republicans, 41 Democrats and 16 independents. Of course, this means Congress will do even less than it does now. Impossible, you say? That sounds like a challenge.

Further down the road, maybe this even gets us a new third party, which will inevitably become just as corrupt and ineffective as the current two parties. I said I had a theory, I didn't say it was a good thing.