New project: Garden State Variety

You may have noticed, I've been absent from this blog for a while now. That's because I'm in the process of rounding up some very talented actors and comedians from around New Jersey and am producing a show tentatively called "Garden State Variety." You can like us on Facebook by clicking this link. In Lambertville, Green Birdie Studios, has graciously agreed to host us and we'll be taping two pilot episodes "live" with an audience in mid-May.

The goal is to get sponsors for the show and if that happens: We do a live show every other Friday night. It's been my dream to do something like this since I first watched Uncle Floyd and the Channel 9 Howard Stern shows.

The first pilot episode will be about "stereotypes" where we will tackle many of the NJ reality TV shows. One bit was just filmed in Hoboken on a beautiful Friday evening while people on the street played a game on camera.

Then, we will examine "borders" in pilot two, which readers of this blog will most definitely appreciate. We filmed our first skit already on this and it can be found on my youtube channel:

Cast:

John Minus
John Devendorf
LaTice Mitchell-Klapa
Sam Grillo
Jess Sager
Jess Carpenter
Anand Mehta

Many comedians featured might even be performing near you . . .

Even the Media knows it's an East-West line

New Jersey's hot right now. So hot, we'll be boasting five reality TV shows come summer (take that California and New York). The New York Times even had a recent article on this entitled, "Going to New Jersey to find America."

But when looking at the locations of these reality TV shows - seeing a divide is obvious. Let's call it, "The Media Divide."

In, New Jersey: the Movie, we theorized the cultural dividing line in the state wasn't North or South, but East and West. We drew the line, but also mentioned the historic Keith and Lawrence lines. If you look at a map of the Lawrence Line (giving East Jersey the least amount of land) and where the reality shows are located; they all fall into old East Jersey:

You could argue that this is merely a product of East Jersey's population being much larger. You could say that East Jersey just has more Italian-Americans, which all five shows focus on. And having the Zeitgeist of "Mayberry" with the voltage and excitement of New York City doesn't hurt either.

But as a half-Italian kid growing up on the west side of this line; I always wondered why big media never focused on us. Even looking at fictional shows like, The Sopranos, and oft-forgotten, That's Life and movies like Date Night and Kevin Smith's Jersey trilogy, East Jersey OWNS NJ's media portrayal to America and they always have.

And outside of films focusing on Princeton University, all the West seems to have is Boardwalk Empire - which will most likely have its fair share of New Yorkers anyway.

West Jersey people would most likely say that they would never parade their lives on camera for lowbrow television. Maybe it's the Quaker values . . .

But it begs a question:

Are people in East Jersey just more interesting?

If you had an idea for a West Jersey reality show - what would it be?