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?

Round Two

This is very exciting.  Tonight's debate is being held at my alma mater, Hofstra University.  I assume the candidates will be expected to address important Hofstra issues like "can you still call it a unispan if there are three of them?" and "why didn't they have a Nathan's when I went to school there?" and "Is Hofstra red a real thing?". 

Tonight's debate is a town hall.  Yuck, these are always murder.  If professional grown-up journalists like Jim Lehrer can't even do a decent job of asking questions, what makes you think random people off the street (off the streets of Long Island, no less) can do it.  Maybe someone will get lucky and trip Mitt Romney up with a trick question like "Can you give us some specifics on your policy proposals?" or "I'm not wealthy, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does that make you hate me?".

During the last debate, Dave suggested these things should be scored like boxing matches, and I couldn't agree more, so that's what I'll be trying to accomplish tonight.  Since I'm the only person left in the world who actually watches boxing, a quick review of boxing scoring is in order, so let's go to HBO's Harold Lederman...

"OK Jim, the Barack Obama/Mitt Romney fight is scheduled for 10 rounds using the unified rules of the association of boxing commissions.  There is no three knockdown rule and a fighter cannot be saved by the bell in any round, including the 10th and final round.  Scoring is based on four criteria; clean punching, effective aggression, defense and ring generalship, with an emphasis on clean punching."

9:00PM: Tonight's moderator is CNN's Candy Crowley.  This is a perfect match for a town hall style debate since CNN gave up on journalism years ago and now basically just re-tweets the "news".

9:00PM: Once again, CNN's John King provided some piercing pre-debate insight by pointing out that the candidates shouldn't insult the people asking the questions.  Good tip John.  Also, they should try not to set anything on fire and they should definitely not take their pants off.

9:03PM: Romney says he knows what it takes to create good jobs again.  He didn't tell us what it takes, so you're just going to have to take his word for it.

9:06PM: Obama comes out swinging, mentioning the 5 million jobs created since he took office and laying out three specific points on job creation.

9:09PM: Romney accused President Obama of "taking Detroit bankrupt".  Dave asks "can you take something bankrupt?".  Mitt Romney can.

9:10PM: Obama says Romney doesn't have a five point plan, he has a one point plan, to let people at the top of the economy play by different rules.  I'm going to call that clean punching and effective aggression.  Round 1: 10-9 Obama.

9:12PM: Some guy just asked the President if he agrees that it's not the job of the Energy Department to lower gas prices.  Sigh.  In what way do people think the government controls gas prices?  Are these guys running for President of OPEC?

9:15PM: Romney says that the rise in oil production under President Obama hasn't come from federal land.  Does oil from non-federal land not make my car go?  I don't understand this criticism.

9:16PM: Mitt Romney is in favor of the energy sources of the future, specifically, future coal.

9:17PM: Obama "very little of what Governor Romney just said is true".  Ha!  He followed up immediately by citing something Mitt Romney said a while back and pointing out how it's completely different from what he just said.

9:18PM: Romney says oil production is down on Federal lands, Obama swears it's not.  They can't both be telling the truth.  If only there was some kind of journalist around who knew stuff and could tell us who was lying.

9:20PM: Romney says he will fight for oil, coal and natural gas.  That sounds 100% true to me.  If that's the President you want, go ahead and vote for Mitt.

9:21PM: Obama makes the most important point about gas prices, which is that they were just about where they are now in early 2008, then Bush detonated the economy and gas prices were almost cut in half, then Obama took office.  Round 2: 10-9 Obama.

9:23PM: Candy Crowley has already lost all control.  This is going to be a mess.

9:24PM: Romney says the middle class has been buried over the last four years.  He means the last 32 years, but who's counting?  Then he, once again, claims that he can cut everyone's taxes without anyone having to pay for it because he's a wizard (OK, I made up the last part).

9:27PM: Romney promises to cut the capital gains tax to 0% for middle income families.  He seriously doesn't understand that regular people don't have capital gains.  I don't have a joke for that one, that statement is its own joke.

9:30PM: I don't know why Romney continues to claim that he doesn't want to cut taxes for wealthy people.  That's literally the only thing his party believes in that isn't named jesus.

9:32PM: Mitt Romney is not going to stop talking until you acknowledge his five point plan.  It has five points!  Why aren't you listening to Mitt?  Five points!

9:34PM: Obama just called Romney's tax plan "a sketchy deal".  Zing!  Round 3: 10-9 Obama.

9:36PM: Romney says 4 trillion dollars in deficits is math that doesn't add up.  Actually, it adds up to four trillion.

9:37PM: My reaction to the girl asking the question about equal pay for women was "oh, that girl's cute".  I think I probably feel bad about that, though I'm not 100% sure why.  I'm not saying I wouldn't give her equal pay for equal work, I'm just saying I also think she's pretty.

9:40PM: Romney on equal pay for women; "bitches be trippin".  OK, he didn't really say that.  He actually told a story about how he tried to hire some women when he was Governor of Massachusetts and how he worked with them on flexible hours so they could get home and take care of their lady problems while the men kept working.

9:42PM: Obama takes the equal pay question as an opportunity to talk about contraception.  I'm going to have to deduct a point for that.  Round 4: 10-8 Romney.

9:46PM: Mitt Romney is really concerned about the rules of the debate, not really a good look for him.

9:46PM: An Obama campaign staffer, er, I mean, an undecided voter, just asked Romney how he's different from George W. Bush.

9:47PM: Mitt says his plan is so much different that what George Bush would have done.  Yeah, I mean, for one thing, Mitt's plan doesn't have a goofy Texas accent.

9:49PM: "Pioneer of outsourcing" was actually Mitt's nickname in high school.

9:51PM: Obama just suggested that Romney is actually worse than George Bush.  Ouch.  I'm scoring round 5 9-9 after deducting a point from Obama for the low blow.

9:52PM: Obama says he passed the toughest Wall St. reform since the 1930's.  He added "the implementation of that whole thing has been a clusterfuck, but hey, we passed it".

9:54PM: Not to agree with Mitt's incessant whining about the debate rules, but Obama is dominating the time of possession here.

9:55PM: Romney; "we can't afford four more years like the last four years".  That's basically his only point, and that's OK, but we also can't afford four years of stupid Reagan economic policies, so I feel like we're kind of at an impasse here.

9:58PM: Romney is sternly lecturing Obama on what a terrible President he's been.  I thought he was leading up to firing him.  Round 6: 10-9 Romney.

9:58PM: Oh, they got a Latina lady to ask the immigration question #classy.

10:01PM: Me: "wouldn't it be fun if they got a white person to ask the immigration question for once?".  Dave: "what, like a Canadian?"

10:02PM: I stopped listening for like 10 seconds and all of a sudden Obama was talking about gang-bangers.  OK, OK, I'm awake.

10:04PM: Romney just answered Candy Crowley's question by saying "no" and then making up his own question to answer, which included him defending the fact that his blind trust has invested in companies in China.

10:05PM: Romney to the President "have you looked at your pension?" Obama "mine isn't as big as yours so it doesn't take as long".  He got a good laugh out of the audience for that one.  Round 7: 10-9 Obama.

10:09PM: Obama started the Libya question by pointing out that ambassadors aren't some political football for him, he actually knows these people.  Honestly, that's the only thing I wanted to hear on this question.  Round 8: 10-9 Obama.

10:11PM: Romney says he feels deep sympathy for the families impacted by the Libya attack.  That didn't stop him from trying (and failing) to use it to score political points.

10:14PM: Obama is legit angry about having to keep talking about this Libya thing.  I have to say I'm happy to see him not being afraid to seem a little angry when anger is called for.

10:16PM: Mitt said Obama didn't call the Libya thing terrorism for two weeks and Crowley actually corrected Mitt and pointed out that Obama called it terrorism the next day.  Look at someone from CNN acting like a real journalist!  Blitzer must be so proud!

10:18PM: Question about the 2nd amendment and assault weapons.  Obama failed to point out that the 2nd amendment was written long before assault weapons were invented, but he did talk about trying to re-introduce an assault weapons ban, so that's better than nothing I guess.

10:20PM: Mitt says he isn't in favor of making new legislation about guns or taking guns away.  Another moment of honesty from Mitt, but then he somehow jumped from gun control to talking about how we should encourage people to get married if they're going to have a kid.  I'm counting that as a knockdown for Obama.  Round 9: 10-8 Obama.

10:24PM: Obama points out that Romney was for an assault weapons ban before he was against it.  That line works better if you get him to say it about himself like John Kerry did.

10:25PM: Obama jumped from guns to education.  Well, that's closer I guess, but I still don't really get it.  Crowley, as she did with Romney, jumped in and pointed out that the question was guns.  The candidates do not care.

10:27PM: Romney says he's going to make America more attractive again.  I feel like Romney's idea of more attractive would be lots of make-up, new expensive clothes and maybe some fake boobs.  I'm really more into a jeans and t-shirt, comfortable, casual looking America.

10:29PM: Me: "is this debate going to run long?  Is that even allowed?".  Dave: "No, res life has the room reserved at 11 for an in-service training".  I wouldn't include that joke, but so many people who read my blog were RAs or RDs at some point that I feel like everyone will get it.

10:31PM: Obama says Romney's company invested in "pioneers of outsourcing".  He says that's not his phrase, reporters said it.  Well, if reporters say it, it must be true.

10:32PM: How would Mitt Romney convince a company like Apple to bring jobs back to the US?  Come on, you know this one.  That's right!  The magic power of tax cuts!

10:33PM: Obama; "Candy, there are some jobs that are not gonna come back."  That's 100% true, but I feel like he's going to regret saying it.  Round 10: 10-9 Romney

10:34PM: Some guy just asked Romney what the biggest misperception about him is.  That's the same question I ask graduate students when I interview them for a job.  I guess I'm saying that I should be allowed to moderate the next debate.

10:36PM: Mitt says he believes in god.  Good for you champ.

10:37PM: Mitt says we're all children of the same god.  He added "I mean, not homosexuals and immigrants, but, ya know, regular people".

10:38PM: Obama "I believe Mitt Romney is a good man".  That's not going to poll well.  I'm not sure Mitt Romney believes Mitt Romney is a good man.

OK then, no closing statements.  My final score card has it 95-92 Obama, and as arbitrary as my scoring system was, I feel like that's pretty close to the mark.  Obama was tougher and more active this time.  I honestly think being out from behind a podium and being able to walk around like a normal person was good for him.  Romney only came armed with his one talking point about how bad the economy still is, and it got old after a while.  I'd call it a solid win for Obama, which is good because the third fight is already scheduled and nobody wants to see a third fight if the same guy wins the first two.