Well, Albany has become famous. We’ve been mentioned by Glenn Beck.

This takes a little explaining. Albany is a multi-college town, and we have some neighborhoods that are largely composed of college students renting row houses. A couple weekends ago, there was a big St. Patty’s day party (AKA Kegs and Eggs) that spilled into the streets. The partiers trashed some cars and did some other damage.

Now, I hear what you’re saying, “Vorjack, are you implying that a bunch of college kids got drunk and disorderly? I find that very hard to believe.”

Alas, it is true. We know this because some of these budding geniuses took video on their cell phone cameras, and uploaded them to youtube. Everybody is angry, disgusted or both, and a number of arrests have been made.

You can see some of the videos at All Over Albany. They’ve been on permanent loop on our local news, so I no longer want to look at them. All I can say is that they don’t look like the parties I remember from my college days (because everyone is clothed and no one has sparklers.)

You may have seen that Glenn Beck has been all over the map in his response to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. He started by playing the apocalypse card, but recently he’s switched memes.

Now he wants to applaud the Japanese for their stoic response to the disaster. And for comparison, he brought up that wretched hive of scum and villainy, Albany, NY. It’s all part of a larger dichotomy between liberalism and … whatever it is that Beck is pushing.

So after lauding the Japanese for a bit, he shows one of the clips from Albany and makes his pitch:

“Look here’s the choice, gang. The world is changing [...] And we will be either this or that. But the time is now to make a choice, are we this or are we that. Which is it? One is in chaos. One destroys anything [...] And the other is based in love and compassion. Make the choice.”

(Here’s the video. Relevant portion is at the 6:00 mark.)

So there, in stark Manichean terms, is the choice. We can either be the Japanese recovering from an epic disaster, or we can be a bunch of drunken frat boys in Albany. I don’t know why it reduces down to those two options, but I’m clearly not capable of second guessing a genius like Beck.