That's it. I'm old

I once caught about half of the tail end of an episode of "Jersey Shore." Knowing it to be a cultural phenomenon, I elected to keep watching once I figured out what I'd found.

I do not understand the appeal of this show on any level. It is poorly-made and edited, with awful production values. It features characters who are not merely boorish and stupid, but are boring to boot. Nothing even remotely fascinating happened, and the only thing I learned is that apparently "smoosh" is the euphemism for fornication favored by a certain subpopulation.

The world does not make sense to me. From the Times:

MTV’s “Jersey Shore” set yet another viewing record Thursday night and once again crushed every competitor in television in terms of reaching younger viewers.

The latest episode of the hit reality show attracted 8.9 million viewers, a new record for any series ever on MTV, up 300,000 from the record the show set a week before.

More viewers watched “Jersey Shore” from 10 to 11 p.m. on Thursday than watched programs on both NBC and ABC. Only the CBS drama “The Mentalist” had more total viewers, with 14.8 million. But “Jersey Shore” had almost double the number of viewers in the advertiser-preferred group of 18 to 49 — 6.2 million viewers to 3.7 million for “The Mentalist.”

The only explanation I can concoct is that some process within my brain has occurred, on some kind of time-released basis. I must have passed a threshold at which point my neurons or endocrine system or something must have stopped synthesizing whatever compound is necessary to enjoy entertainments of this kind. Where I see a collection of louts whose stupidity and crassness are exceeded only by their banality, those lucky people with this mystery hormone or neurotransmitter still in their systems must see a troupe of lovable rascals, whose jolly exploits never fail to captivate and amuse.

Well, nothing to be done about it, I suppose. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go boil myself an egg, leaf through a nice back issue of Reader's Digest, and lie down for a while.