COLUMN: "Under the Siege"

From John Lennon's "Stepping on the Big Man's Toes," Spring '92. "Cancun!" she said, beaming. "How about you?" "Camden," I said. "Oh," she replied, edging quietly out of insane-raving-meat-cleaver-slashing range. For some reason, this has been a common reaction. But let me tell you, I got something out of my Spring Break experience that all you hedonistic, brew-swilling, frequent-flying, sunglasses-wearing skin cancer magnets didn't: DP column fodder. And it only cost me $30 billion dollars, including bridge tolls. Here's how it happened. Last Friday morning, I woke up with a burning desire to stare at some fish, and realized with sudden and startling clarity that I had better go back to bed until I got some other, more socially acceptable desire, like for Fig Newtons or sex. But like the dazed and disheveled hangers-on in the dying hours of a particularly gruesome keg party, it just wouldn't go away. I had to find an aquarium. I was, of course, in luck. The New Jersey State Aquarium at Camden had just opened, complete with a blizzard of mass media publicity: Hey! We've got these fish! Come look at them! screamed the advertisements. So off I went in my trusty Toyota, in search of a good time, fishwise. Of course, it was a complete disaster, or else I wouldn't be writing about it. The essential problem with the aquarium is easily ascertained by examining this helpful chart: Amounts of Various Things Found at New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden, in Descending Numerical Order 10. T-Shirts with pictures of fish on them: 7 billion 9. Square footage of gift shop selling T-shirts with pictures of fish on them: 6.5 billion 8. Dollars I paid for my ticket to see fish: 3 billion 7. People in line in front of me to buy three billion dollar tickets to see fish: 2.7 billion 6. Little screaming kids with peanut butter smeared on their fingers obscuring my view of printed information about fish: 2 billion 5. Tasty prefabricated entrees available at thematically fish-related restaurant: 1.3 billion 4. Decibels generated by swarming crowd attempting to view fish: 600 million 3. Aquarium pamphlets on how to find fish, written in Spanish: 200 million 2. Fish: eight 1. Parking spaces: none Here we see that the "Things You Might Actually Want / Things Nobody In Their Right Minds Would Want, Unless Maybe They Were Gruesome Sadistic Space Aliens" ratio is horribly skewed. What kind of twisted way to run an aquarium is this, I ask? What I figure is that the aquarium people got together and had this big meeting to decide what to do, and it went something like this: Scientist #1: So I think we should get all these fish, you know, and put them in this building, and people will come and look at them. Scientist #2: Yeah, exactly. A bunch of fish would be great. New Jersey State Government Representative: Well, how about this: We build this restaurant and this gift shop, and a big parking garage, and maybe buy a couple of fish, and then we get a bunch of uniformed people to stand around and scowl, and we fill the entire parking garage with cars, but keep waving motorists into the thing when they come to eat and shop, so that they can't even leave to pay their four billion dollar parking fee without sitting around for three hours and getting carbon monoxide poisoning. Scientist #1: Um, well . . . And that was that, although the scientists did win one concession, which was changing the name from The New Jersey State Gift Shop And Fish-Related Restaurant to the name we know today. I will admit, though, that there were a few nice things about the aquarium. For instance, the western side of the building is a great big window, which gives visitors a nice view of Philadelphia, which is in another state. "Gosh," you can sigh to yourself as the sun sets over the picturesque Philadelphia skyline, "Get me the hell out of Camden." Also, going to the aquarium means that you can drive over the exciting Ben Franklin Bridge, which basically consists of eight lanes of traffic whizzing by in opposite directions with nothing but a white dotted line separating you and instant, violent death at the hands of a hefty bearded truck driver named Earl. Finally, the aquarium is about three blocks from Walt Whitman's house at 330 Mickle Street. This is where I spent the rest of my afternoon, whimpering quietly from the effects of post-traumatic aquatic wildlife ripoff disorder. Walt's house was reopened to the public less than two weeks ago, and is free to visitors. The curator there is named Doug, and he's a swell guy, although you won't be able to buy any Walt Whitman T-shirts or dine at the "O Sandwich! My Sandwich!" Walt Whitman restaurant. From the porch, though, there's a really nice view of the New Jersey State Aquarium Parking Garage. John Lennon is a senior English major from Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Stepping on the Big Man's Toes appears alternate Mondays.

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