Knew Jersey

	Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

New Jersey has come a long way, as this Morning Filer knows, being a native son. Receding are "landfill of opportunity" and all those other hackneyed jokes. (We're from Exit 18, by the way.) In recent years, Jersey has even achieved respectability as the set for the popular TV show "The Sopranos." But here's a recent setback. People entering the state from Delaware are being greeted by this billboard come-on: "Welcome to New Jersey. A horrible place to do business." We know, the Garden State will stop at nothing to promote itself. But it turns out it's the work of William Juliano, a developer upset that environmental regulators are thwarting one of his projects. State officials say he has no case, The Associated Press reports. While we won't take sides, The Morning File notes that those swamps -- correction, wetlands -- that doubled as Mob burial grounds have been disappearing under the watchful eye of those regulators for decades. Back to Juliano: Within a few weeks, he plans to put up two more signs along the New Jersey Turnpike.

Where's Sinatra?

What do the following famous people have in common -- Vince Lombardi, James Fenimore Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, Joyce Kilmer, Grover Cleveland, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Edison, Molly Pitcher, Walt Whitman and Clara Barton? Good guess, but as far as we know Clara Barton never won a Super Bowl. Nor did she say, "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." As every New Jersey schoolchild knows, it was said by Woodrow Wilson arguing for the League of Nations. No, this is a list of New Jerseyans who have been awarded the state's highest honor: having a turnpike rest area named for them. Virginia-born Wilson got in on a technicality -- he lived in N.J. while president of Princeton.

Was Sartre from Jersey?

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason magazine: "To grow up in New Jersey is to grow up an existentialist, to realize the world is indifferent, if not downright hostile. You have to be on the lookout for other people's bull____, because you're constantly being told that where you're coming from is useless. After a while, you realize that a lot of political and social distinctions are not about reality and truth, but about people trying to put you in your place so they can better regulate your behavior."

Next: Joe Pesci rest area

Nominees for future turnpike rest areas: Meryl Streep (Summit), John Travolta (Englewood), Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson (Neptune), Tom Cruise (Glen Ridge), Joe Pesci and Bruce Willis (Penns Grove), Jerry Lewis, Eva Marie Saint, Connie Francis, Whitney Houston and Philip Roth (Newark), Robert Blake (Nutley), Tony Soprano (North Caldwell), Peter Leo (Teaneck), Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon (Hoboken), Bruce Springsteen (Freehold), Dionne Warwick (East Orange), Jon Bon Jovi (Sayreville).

Fugetaboutit

Pennsylvanians associate New Jersey with ocean vacations and gambling. But there's so much more. Corruption, for one. New Jersey usually ranks high in informal polls. But last year, the Corporate Crime Reporter, a Washington-based newsletter, devised a corruption gauge based on the number of government convictions over the last decade per 100,000 residents. The results were shocking: New Jersey finished a disappointing 16th. Pennsylvania was deemed more corrupt at 14th, Ohio 11th. Mississippi was No. 1.

Identity crisis

Elise Patkotak, free-lance writer who lives in Anchorage, Alaska: "I grew up in New Jersey. It's a long, thin state that has a gambling mecca at its southern tip, huge industrial wastelands once called cities to the north and in between an area called the Jersey Pine Barrens that contains folks for whom 'Deliverance' is a comedy. So to take away from Jersey its one claim to fame -- being the most corrupt state in the union -- seems terribly unfair and unnecessarily cruel. So now what is Jersey left with? A reputation as the smelly, smog-filled state you have to travel through to get to Manhattan? . . . There is no going back and recapturing the crown of corruption for this year. All us Jerseyites and ex-Jerseyites will just have to wait till next year. Because if there is one thing we know for sure, it's that when it comes to corruption, New Jersey will not sit complacently by and accept 16th place as long as there is an official anywhere who can be bribed to bump us up higher in the rankings."

Best Sopranos malapropism

In a flashback to Tony Soprano's youth, his mob father and mother have an argument about moving to Las Vegas.

Johnny: "After Rocco gets the book up, he's gonna open a new supper club, he wants me to run it."

Livia: "A supper club? Are you drunk?"

Johnny: "(Expletive) albacore around my neck! Every time I try to do something. Me and the kids will go without you."

Livia: "They are not going anywhere! I'd rather smother them with a pillow than take them to Nevada."

Jerseyite or Jerseyan?

You hear both, but the linguini purists, like the late Johnny Soprano, go for New Jerseyan.