Friday, June 24, 2011

Hate Mail, and Devorah Rose's obnoxious post-Times profile reaction






After our take-down of Devorah Rose, the shameless, self-promoting, celebrity-obsessed suck-up who edits a magazine nobody has physically seen editor of Social Life magazine, we'll admit our shock to see in the comments section of the post, one of her satisfied customers, lying in a Bridgehampton motel bed, smoking a cigarette, breathing in the lingering scent of Rose's perfume long after she got dressed and headed out to be seen...somewhere other than, um, editing something. After a long drag on the cig, "CPT" pounded out this missive:

"You're clearly an idiot and clearly unhappy with your own life. Devorah and a lot of other people are out there doing things with their lives. Oh, and besides the libel, you are flat out lying to readers when you claim Devorah is "admittedly...'more interested in Social Life's parties..." - the biased NYT writer said that, it was not a quote from Devorah. Get a clue, you miserable hack."

Oh, little friend...there are quotes and then there are quotes.

“The first event I went to, the paparazzi were there, and I had my photo taken,” she said. “After that, people started sending me clothes.”

"Ms. Rose bubbled with pride as she described the celebrities at the party."


"When Mr. Stern showed up, Ms. Rose said she nearly cried. “It was the highlight of my night,” she said."

The highlight of her night. Not that she'd written a successful piece, or that she'd discovered something about Beth Stern that was unique and difficult to ascertain, or that she'd put together a solid issue of stories with journalistic integrity. No. She met Howard Stern. So, um...yeah, Devorah Rose is admittedly more interested in Social Life's parties than its content. The libel case against Hamptonyte is hereby...dismissed.

But what's more infuriating than this sycophantic dipshit supporter defending her? Her post-NYT profile Q&A with Abe Gurko, that's what. In it she kvetches about how she was duped into believing that the NYT writer was going to put together a glowing, suck-up review of her life and nonaccomplishments. She thought the profile was going to be all hyperbole and promotion, and chock-full of flattering and congratulatory paragraphs. In short, she thought the profile would be like most of the celebrity profiles that get published in Hamptons magazines! Then this horrible NYT writer goes and ruins it with her "agenda." You know, her agenda. Like being objective. Like not taking Rose's word at face-value. Like reporting the truth when Rose tries to sneak some bullshit through. That agenda. In J-school it's not called an agenda, so you might be more familiar with its other name. Reporting.

Some lines from her Q&A:

"DEVORAH: I was hesitant at first but she put on a quite an act. It wasn’t until right before the article came out that I realized she did, in fact, have ulterior motives" (By ulterior motives she means journalism.)

DEVORAH: The tone of the article does not seems fitting for The New York Times
(Devorah wouldn't know what "tone" is anymore than she knows what "ammonia" is; she's not a journalist.)

DEVORAH:Seeing the photos felt great…but then I read the article. I never knew “self-made” could be a pejorative term. (Self made? One of the most irritating descriptions anyone can assign to themselves. From the NYT piece: "her mother, a physician, moved to Newton, a predominately upscale Jewish suburb of Boston"... "She later said [her father] was a businessman who split his time between Bogotá, Colombia, and Boca Raton, Fla"... "Ms. Rose met Mr. Mitchell at a soiree at the Museum of Modern Art in 2001. “If you start a magazine, I will edit and write for it,” Ms. Rose recalled telling him. He agreed."

Ah, that's so self-made!

DEVORAH: Well, let’s focus on the positive – which requires ignoring High Society

(No. You don't get to needle and scratch backs and wheel and deal your way onto reality shows and then turn around and ignore the very vehicle that landed you the notoriety you have.)

But that's Devorah Rose in a nutshell. As opposed to falling to her knees in disbelief at the good fortune she's had, disproportionate to her talent, she besmirches the few venues she's managed to trick into believing she's worth turning the camera toward. Like The New York Times.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Abandoned Virginia Fort yearns for white slacks and pink sweaters






Virginia's Fort Monroe is due to be abandoned by the US Army this coming September. Located on the southern tip of the Virginia penninsula, the fort, with sheer white walls emerging from the water in carved out, octogonal shapes, looks in no way like the Hamptons. But that's not stopping the Virginia Film Office from trying to convince movie-makers that Fort Monroe can easly replicate the Hamptons at a fraction of the cost.

According to Mary Nelson, communications flack at the Film Office, "the white homes at Monroe could easily be used to depict areas in New England or The Hamptons."

Sure, the Army's white barracks are almost exact knock-offs of what people live in in East Hampton. As much as I'd like to see the Hamptons get invaded and sacked, even I can't go along with this premise. Besides, if you insist on drawing similarities, it'll only be a matter of time before The Real Housewives, Alec Baldwin, and Devorah Rose show up, and then you'll be wishing you'd seceded from the Union.


On the other hand, I think the only recourse is for the Hamptons Film Festival to start offering the region as an ideal place to make a war movie.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

When good trend stories lead to arrests



I distinctly remember one of the worst days of my teenage life, when a Newsday article ran about my local deli selling alcohol without proofing the buyers. That deli was the lone source of my increasing demand of 40oz. St. Ides, an oasis in the desert of suck called the working class suburbs. The article ran, and the next day, Haziz was asking for my ID. Goddammit journalists! I remember screaming as I walked out with nothing better than a can of Jolt and some Pixie Stix so I could at least get a sugar high.
That was then. When newspapers articles at worst caused the wrongdoer to straighten up and fly right. Now, they can get you tossed in the clink.

So 27East ran a trend piece entitled "Prom Season Brings Wave of Illegal Party Rentals," an expose on the unsupervised droves of teenagers whose desperate to still be considered cool parents allow to rent houses in the Hamptons for post-prom hi jinks.

Guest of a Guest mocked the piece. It was so old fashioned, so square...stupid adults with their stupid curiosity making a silly issue for no stupid reason, the stupid-heads. Besides, the rentals are totes nothing more than answering to supply and demand. Whatta you got against profit, 27East, what are you communists or something?

It was all "laughable" and so mock-worthy. Until the cops showed up. Since the piece ran, four arrests have been made in the Hamptons for violation of the social host law. The first in Eastport, and the second in Remsenberg. In the case of the latter, cops investigated after a kid had to be rushed to the hospital when he started puking up blood. Guest of a Guest could not be immediately reached for comment regarding whether they believe puking up blood to be a bad thing.

What have we learned? Despite the doomed fate of print journalism, you should read the newspaper. Or you may find yourself chained to a metal bar right next to a rapist.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

NYTimes profiles most transparent fameball in history









You owe it to yourself to welcome Devorah Rose into your life. If you don't know who she is, well...that upsets her greatly. No outfit to date has put together quite the chronology that Gawker has, about this particularly persistent fameball, but to the uninitiated non-Gawker-reading public, The New York Times has kindly profiled her in the June 8 Sound & Fury Fashion & Style section.

Her trajectory that led her to this nearly 2,000-word profile is torn straight out of the "shotgun blast" approach to fame and success: do everything (writer, actress, model, editor, novelist, reality TV star, casting call hound), be everywhere (Upper East Side, openings at the MoMA, Hamptons in summertime), and sooner or later people will notice you. Despite her multiple forays into every form of camera-chasing possible, alas, she's mostly known as the Editor of Social Life magazine, a glossy Hamptons mag that, similar to Loch Ness, I've only heard about...never actually seen. (And I live out here. Very weird.) Aside from that, she enjoyed a brief splash of small-screen notoriety as the girl who ran out on her spindly legs and tossed her drink at another girl at one of her stupid, self-congratulating pool parties on the one-and-done show High Society.

The profile attempts at objectivity and even a little snark. It calls her out for lying about her 100% involvement in all her cover shoots (apparently Beth Ostrovsky Stern supplied Devorah with this month's cover photo for her silly magazine Social Life)

But all the snark in the world can not rescue the Times from the simple fact that the publication of record, The Gray Lady itself, actually went and profiled the worst person alive this phony, fame-starved asswipe.

Nothing about her is impressive, or entrepreneurial, or even interesting. She's the girl we all knew in high school who did two things: 1. found out where the popular kids hung out. 2. her hair. Now she rubs elbows with the beautiful people and pretends that all the hatred and bad karma that continuously befalls her is merely testament to her importance. It's the grossest case of incestuous legitimacy since Julia Allison. From having enough money to attend fiction writing classes in the extremely-difficult-to-get-into Columbia University MFA program, to meeting her publisher at a museum and blowing him promising him to edit his magazine if he launches one, she's nothing short of every other attractive woman who manages to convince guys to give them what they want. If she were reading this blog post (and she's not) she would stop right here to glory in the fact that I called her "attractive." She's Anna Nicole Smith without the stripper pole. Nothing more.



One of the more poignantly obnoxious moments in the NYT piece? When the reporter asks about her family background, she pulls a celebrity diva act and waves the question off with a hand, stating "I think we can move on." Why the reporter didn't get up and say "I think I'll move on too, to someone who's actually done something and wants to share their story" is beyond me.



So thanks, New York Times. Appreciate the legitimacy you just gave a girl who admittedly was "more interested in Social Life's parties than its content," launched by a guy who started the magazine because he also liked going to parties.



Read the profile yourself. Then wonder if the world didn't really end on May 21, 2011 after all.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Grazia plays 'pin the tail on the cliche'















So without intending to, Grazia's fashion section has highlighted one of the things that make the Hamptons such an eye-rolling place to visit between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Spotting the Walking Hamptons Cliche.' Never mind the traffic, the real indication that it's summer in the Hamptons is when you see these chicks walking around in multiples.

Grazia just hearts the daylights out of Morgan, 25, and her white blouse, cut-off jeans, and they're coocoo for Sofia's lesbian gym teacher look, pink pants and all. Morgan and Sofia are the names they were given when they got on the Jitney. What they've done is compiled quite a portfolio of women who watched too many 80s movies about the Hamptons and then did that.

If you want to meet Sofia or Morgan, you can! Just wait until this weekend, drive out to Southampton, and there will be octuplets of them. Chances are...they'll ignore you. Unless you have on a navy blue blazer, linen pants, and designer stubble.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Graduating from high-end prep school still means doing the 'Shocker'



The other day the Statue of Liberty welcomed behind its trailblazing torch the next line of America's white hope: East Hampton's Ross School graduating class of 2011.

The apple-cheeked and nightmare-free hopefuls will be going on to a palette of promising colleges in the fall, from American University, to Northwestern, to Columbia and Tulane. A testimony to how exclusive prep schools create an environment in which intellectual challenge can be fostered through peer success and influence. Rich parents don't hurt either.

But what's most disheartening heartening to see is that the hallowed ivy walls of privilege and circumstance, the thick, protective hedge of intellectual discourse and high-profile instruction, couldn't keep out "The Shocker" in the culmination of four years of hard work: the official graduating class photo.

Check out the kid in the front row sitting on the floor on the farthest left. One shocker wasn't enough. He had to do a double.

He's also my new hero.