Of course you love New York. But, as Milton Glaser reminds us, everyone loves New York, and everyone doesn't feel the need to actually live here. And sometimes you start to wonder whether you really need to live here, too. When the subways aren't running right, and when it's freezing cold, and when you spend all weekend stuck in your apartment, which is a third the size of the place your friends have in L.A., or in D.C., or in the sixth borough, and which you share with two roommates, and which costs a fucking fortune, and where there's always way too much heat, or way too little, and when it's all just such a fucking pain in the ass, that's when you wonder if maybe you should move to some normal place, too.

Then the Saturday Times — bless its inky heart — runs a frontpage story headlined, "In Small Town, 'Grease' Ignites a Culture War." In which we learn about at Missouri town in which the school musical — cute, classic, all-American Grease — has been deemed inappropriately salacious. In which it is reported seriously, not parodically, that, " The teacher and her students are now ruling out future productions they once considered for their entertainment value alone, like "Little Shop of Horrors," a musical that features a cannibalistic plant, which they had discussed doing next fall."

And then you realize: You could never, ever live anywhere else in this nutjob country.

In Small Town, Grease Ignites a Culture War [NYT]

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