Titus Andronicus, "No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future"

Strangely, Titus Andronicus’s new video about the popular topic of rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike doesn’t include any of the 200,000 solar panels the state’s Public Service Electric Gas Company is putting up on telephone poles everywhere. (It must have been very challenging, since, as the Times reported yesterday, “If they were laid out in a solar farm, the 5-by-2.5-foot panels would blanket 170 acres.”)

Being from New Jersey myself, I have some feelings about this. 1) This song is good, and with its refrain of “You will always be a loser,” and its final, soothing sentiment of, “but that’s okay,” it makes for a fine new state anthem. 2) If the singer Patrick Stickles shaved his beard, he would look just like actor Michael Shannon. 3) People who live in places where the solar panels are going up and are bothered by them should just pretend that all the telephone poles are wearing giant wraparound Revo sunglasses. Surely no one in New Jersey would mind that. Just put a backwards pastel Nike visor on the other side, and you’re set.