Lately, I am watching Chelsea!

Chelsea Handler

This is not the normal blog post. This one is part confession, part guilty pleasure and part Jersey boy pride!

I’ve recently become captivated by Chelsea Handler and her nightly talk show, Chelsea Lately, on E!  Six months ago I didn’t know who Chelsea Handler was, until one day she sat at the table with the ladies of the view, and her wit, humor and boldness definitely caught my eye.  But Handler had developed a following prior to the View appearing on the Oxygen network show Girls Behaving Badly, on the E! Channel as a regular commentator, on the Tonight Show as a Tonight Show Correspondent.

I would describe Handler’s nightly show as the View on speed. A nightly trio of comics and Hollywood writers join Chelsea and her assistant Chuy for a couple of rounds of adult-orientated hot topics laced with razor commentary and humor. The second half of the show is a sit down with a nightly guest, still delivered in Handler’s deadpan wry wit. Whatever the mix – it has become my guilty pleasure each night. Who needs to watch the 10:00PM News anyways!

I don’t know what draws me to watching Handler and Lately. E! is not a typical selection for my television viewing and there are only so many talk shows one guy can watch in one day. But it has become appointment television.

I think the attraction is Handler’s New Jersey attitude and personality – something she hasn’t forsaken for Hollywood.  Handler and I grew up miles apart in North Jersey. She grew up in Livingston, and I was going through puberty just down Route 46 in Parsippany. Handler is a Jersey girl like many others I grew up with. Jersey girls boldly speak their mind, mix in a sarcastic vibe, and deliver it all in a sexy flair only found in the Garden State.

Living these days in the cordial and polite Southern United States, I’ve got several friends who are caught off guard by Handler’s personality and humor.  I guess that they have never spent time in Jersey. They haven’t been driving the Turnpike or weekending at the shore. I’m probably the only Jersey Devil they have ever met!

But Chelsea brings me back to my roots in some garden state toxic waste dump and for me that’s thirty minutes well spent every night.