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By Root 292 0

would not be able to credibly pass as a body double for Conan the Destroyer–era Arnold Schwarzenegger. The show’s biggest star’s nickname, as we’ve previously discussed, was born of an almost hermetic dedication to the whaling-upon of abs. Accordingly, the show’s female cast members have repeatedly expressed visceral attraction to “juiceheads” (and their even more extreme cousins, “gorilla juiceheads”), a none-too-veiled reference to the chemical assistance one needs to realize one’s full muscular potential. In this primary aspect of Guidodom, I am a spectacular failure; the closest I’ve come to a gym in about eight years is considering a discount Gold’s membership in the fifteen seconds immediately following my discovery of yet another ad dangling from the handle on my front door, a decision-making process that ended with the 20-percent-off pitch in a nearby waste basket. When I lift my T-shirt—much more likely to bear the name of some indie band than a creation from the fevered imagination of Christian Audigier—there is definitely a situation happening: one of shapelessness, hopelessness, and despair. In the mirror, my navel seems to be smirking at me with disappointment, whispering, “Not so good, bro,” before I yank down the shirt to silence its condemnation.

We are not off to a great start.

TAN

As the Shore demonstrated over the course of its maiden season, the maintenance of one’s tan is paramount; no one loves a pasty Guido. And so our new friends put in their time each day in a UV-ray-beaming womb. “The tanning salon, you don’t miss…five, ten minutes later you got your color, you go do what you want the rest of the day,” explained the Situation on the Shore’s reunion special. (Though one can overdo the tanning thing—Snooki’s too-artificial coloration resembles that of a perfectly roasted Thanksgiving turkey.) Here, once again, I am lacking. Despite a natural olive complexion, I haven’t had a proper tan since a trip to Hawaii two summers ago, and even that was an utter fiasco involving a partial lobster-level burn brought about by an utterly inept self-application of sunscreen. Too often, I settle for the incidental tan of the beach-phobic, which, while pathetic, is pretty easy for a writer to maintain through brief exposure to sunlight on procrastination trips to the coffee shop. Often, upon returning home to New York, I’m asked by family and friends, “Isn’t it sunny in Los Angeles all the time? Why are you that color?”

Yeah, this is getting bleak.

LAUNDRY

Perhaps the most underrated aspect of the Guido formula, the daily laundry run, is nonetheless crucial; after a sweat-soaked night dancing at the club followed up by a soak in the hot tub, one needs to hit the laundromat to refresh one’s supply of Ed Hardy shirts and swim trunks in preparation for another hard day of partying. There might be a temptation to cut corners with a liberal spritzing of Febreze but there’s simply no substitute for a basket brimming with clothes fresh from the full complement of wash/dry/fluff/fold services. Cleanliness, after all, is close to Guidoness. And here, finally, I can claim something approaching Guido bonafides. Enjoying the relative luxury of a washer and dryer inside my home, I could, theoretically, achieve Full Guido Laundry status. Unfortunately, though, a daily running of the laundry gauntlet seems excessive, and I settle for more of a once-a-week schedule that keeps me well-supplied with fresh T-shirts, socks, and boxers—a compromise I think is more than acceptable considering the infrequency with which I spend evenings throwing down to dope beats. The dog seems pleased enough with this arrangement, even if I don’t wash the tattered hoodie I write in as much as he might like. And so in this arguably least essential phase of the Gym, Tan, Laundry program, I claim a proud, albeit qualified, victory. That will have to be enough.

So what have we learned through the identity experiment that was my time with the Jersey Shore? That I am a spectacular failure as a Guido hopeful, often failing to achieve in a calendar year