If you were out holiday-partying it up last night or attempting to shoplift Axe body products, and, in doing so, missed the new episode of Jersey Shore, may you die in house music battle laced with the stench of sweat, hair gel and bad cologne, because nothing should come before the Shore. EVER.

Let’s get right to it with a few random thoughts:

-Did you notice again last night that Ronnie, when he sleeps alone anyway, sleeps with a towel around his waist with nothing underneath? Is this a common thing that I’ve been completely ignorant of? As a guy, I typically sleep with my underwear on or nothing at all. But a towel? WTF?

-If there’s one thing that most people with knowledge of guido culture probably didn’t expect to ever happen on this show, it would have been for a guido and guidette to end a night out with a pool of tears after an outpouring of emotions like Ronnie and Sammi did last night. And then they “smushed” apparently. May this never happen again. It was disgusting and unnatural, kind of like watching a cobra and a mongoose sharing a lump of swiss cheese or something.

-After three episodes, I have to say that probably the most entertaining aspect of the show, hands down, is any scene where The Situation and Pauly-D interact with girls who don’t live inside the shore house, as these interactions are all about one thing — getting laid at all costs– and usually end in some sort of catastrophe. You get the feeling that on his own, Pauly-D could be quite the swordsman, but The Situation, for all of his smooth-talking abilities, is a complete tool who can turn any seemingly can’t-miss opportunity to fuck into a complete farce. Like, these guido women find him attractive physically and seem intrigued by his ridiculous bravado, enough so that they’ll go back to the house with him, but things always seem to fall apart in the end. Basically, I don’t think The Situation is a closer, whereas Pauly-D, left to his own devices, would probably do much better on his own because he’d just let his cock-piercing do the talking for him, which is always the better option. Like, The Situation always insists on getting the girls into the hottub, even when he already has them in his bedroom. Dude, JUST FUCK THEM! Stop dicking around with stupid jacuzzi and fuck them! They wouldn’t be there in the first place if they weren’t interested in fucking you, so stop wasting time with all the “but I don’t have a bathing suit” nonsense and just get to it in the bed. Geez.

-Out of the first attempt last night by Pauly-D and The Situation to get laid came two of the best lines of the night. The first came from Pauly-D: “I couldn’t have sex with my girl because she had her period. I go to take her pants off but she wouldn’t let me…no big deal.” The second came from The Situation: “I’m hookin’ up with my girl, Pauly’s hookin’ up with his girl…we’re gonna have sex. So ugh, that’s a situation.” These two are friggin’ quote machines.

-Ever stop and wonder what J-Woww’s gonna look and sound like in 20 years? Yikes.

-The trip the boys took to the barbershop, gym and tanning salon to stay, in the words of Pauly-D, “fresh to death,” was just priceless. Vinnie and The Situation jawing at each other over everything from their tans (“You need a little touch-up on the paint job.”) to the shore house pussy scorecard (“Mike would bang a Gatorade bottle if it had a pulse at this point.”) felt real and was quite funny.

-The scenes with Snooki, who will come to your party for $2000, and her mom, or “that girl,” were actually…heartwarming? Like, you could tell that it was a real human relationship on some levels. Weird.

-If there’s anything greater than Snooki flashing her crotch all over the place on the dance floor, it’s J-Woww being nearly moved to tears by the valor she displayed in doing so: “She was phenomenal. It just made me so proud of her. I can’t explain how fucking amazing that was.” Some cultures look up to artistic achievement, service of country, etc. Guidos look up to retarded gyrations on a dance floor. Relive the magic…

-Last night’s Jersey Shore featured one of the greatest scenes in the history of reality television…the “beating up the beat” scene, where the crew gathered in a circle to pound the floor in rhythm with the intensifying house music. This scene also helped to explain the guido’s heretofore mystifying penchant for fist-pumping. Said Pauly, “That beat’s hittin’ us and we’re fightin’ back, it’s like we beat up that beat.” You can’t make this shit up.

-The Situation had a fleur-de-lis on his shirt. Kill me now.

-What girls with even an ounce of self-respect would still pursue two guys who’d dumped them on the street for two hotter girls they saw driving a Mercedes? Just asking.

-It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Vinnie is either the biggest, stupidest vanilla wafer EVER or the other cast members of the show are so uber-compelling that everything the kid does and says ends up on the editing room floor. There was about a half-hour stretch of last night’s show where Vinnie was completely gonzo, just gone altogether. For I while I thought he lost his life in the house music battle or something.

-Last night’s episode was enhanced greatly for me personally by The Situation’s running Twitter commentary throughout…

-You gotta love Snooki rescuing her girl J-Woww with the “we were dancing to house music” defense after her boyfriend caught wind of the fact that she’d been seen gyrating with “the toolbag with the blowout.” Apparently, there are no rules involved with dancing to house music and no one can be held accountable to any crimes, natural or unnatural, committed during the act of dancing to house music. And now you know!

-For a while I thought that the guy hooking up with Snooki, Russ, was gonna be the one to punch her out when he kept calling him Ron.

-Speaking of the guy who punched Snooki out…HE SIGNED THE MTV RELEASE FOR HIS FACE TO BE SHOWN? Are you kidding?! First it was Angelina’s married boyfriend last week, and now this guy. Who are these idiots?

-Finally, it was so classy of MTV to put up an announcement about domestic violence at the end of the show, wasn’t it? The end of the show where they didn’t actually show the punch after showing it in promos for 3 weeks. Way to take the high road through the back door, MTV. Very nice touch.

Overall I have to say that this episode was pretty amazing, much better than last week’s, that’s for sure. I give it an A-. Looking forward to the J-Woww girl-fight in the next one. Y’all have a good weekend.