Brown Publishing's Papers: The May 14 Recap

By which we parse that parrot cage lining people call "Dan's Papers" (but is really Brown Publishing's Papers, or Jimmy Finkelstein's News Communications Papers) for all its subtext and stupidity. Mostly stupidity.

"Put your little hand in mine/There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...

OK campers! Rise and shine, and don't forget your booties, cuz' it's coooolld out there today! It's cold out there every day, what is this Miami Beach?"

This week Dan was short-staffed. David Lion kept running around the newsroom waving a No. 2 pencil in the air, swearing that he'd snapped it in half the night before. And now, having written the same exact Police Blotter as the May 7 issue, he was convinced he was having the same day over and over. Ned Ryerson, an old acquaintance from high school, Needlenose Ned, Ned the Head, kept running up to him on Main St. in East Hampton.

"Don't tell me you don't remember him, dad, cause he sure as heckfire remembers you!" Lion said.

But Dan knew the boy must be reeling from the effects of living beneath telephone lines his whole life. 'Imagine life without telephone poles' Dan thought. Gnom, gnom, gnom... Then he went back to Googling himself to find out what sort of nasty things were being said about him and his bankrupt newspaper. "I'm not gonna live by their rules any more..." he heard Lion mutter to himself before he headed out of the office. 'The boy's unhinged,' he thought. No matter.

The Southampton Press reports inaccurately and their commenters are all doo-doo heads, Dan wrote in his splash article "Eavesdropping." It was a re-post of all the hatred and celebration the commenters at 27East.com were unleashing upon news of the coming demise of Brown Publishing's Papers. But they would have no such satisfaction today. No sir. Brown Publishing's Papers is celebrating their 50th and nobody is going to crash that party. They're here to stay! The office rejoiced. Dan rejoiced. David Lion kidnapped a groundhog and drove off a cliff. Edward R. Murrow rattled his chains and moaned. The flames tickled his elbows.

But there was work to be done. Blond sock-puppet and News12 famehound Gina Glickman had to schlep all the way out to Tribeca for a story on the film festival. Unlike the glorified YouTube channel known as the Hamptons Film Festival, this one's real. And full of celebrities! So Glickman simply had to be there. And had to insert herself into the writing as much as possible without making people wonder if she was even there. It's a technique that crosses over to her "hit" series on News12 Long Island, "Stalker In The Hamptons," or whatever. Most viewers who watch that show, or read her columns think the important part is what the celebrities are saying, or what they're in attendance for. Perhaps even what they're promoting. Nuh-uh. No way. What's important is that we all know Gina Glickman actually, really spoke to these people! In person! She even stood next to them! And danced at their parties! Maybe even one will ask her on a date! Oh Gina, don't you know that your columns are the destroyer of worlds?

Anyway, back at the top of the cliff, David Lion clawed his way up the steep incline and sniffled. He coughed. Then he hurried back to the newsroom to write about his snifflecough and see if it appeared again in Brown Publishing's Papers. It did! Why is this happening?! he screamed. Then he figured since there's no tomorrow, he might as well write a column telling fat and ugly people to suck it up and lose weight or quit their bitching and leave the Hamptons for good. That also appeared in the newspaper. He covered his ears. He couldn't stop that polka that kept playing in his head. Strike up the music/the band has begun/the Pennsylvania Polka...

Dan strode past his son and shook his head. Then he sat down to answer a cease and desist letter from the State of New Jersey. "Stop claiming Jon Bon Jovi," the letter stated. Never. He'd never relent. He'd never give up Jon Bon Jovi. He's from East Hampton and I don't care what anyone says, he wrote back. Then he counted Madonna's bushes and put that in his South O' the Highway column. Marcia Gay Harden is going to act again! And in a show about the Hamptons! She hasn't done that since Pollack. Also, Sarah Jessica Parker is treating Sex and the City 2 like it's a matter of national security, shooting fake scenes, and threatening cast and crew members with things she has no legal authority to enforce, and kidnapping everyone's moms until the movie comes out, because when this movie comes out everyone needs to be mutually shocked and mystified by its complex and enigmatic ending. "There's simply too much at stake. If people get any sort of sneak peak at this vapid apologia for self-aggrandisement and entitlement, grandma will simply have to die," she said. Also, Joy Behar ate. Alec Baldwin did Alec Baldwin stuff. Steven Spielberg needed to take media blackout tips from Sarah Jessica Parker, and Christie Brinkley totally didn't slide into the operator's chair for a quick face-change when her daughter went under the knife to stop looking like her father. Come on, you know she did. All in all, the column was its usual success at linking people who call the Hamptons their 4th home.

Then Dan tossed out New Jersey's playa-hatin' letter, only to reveal beneath it more hate-mail from Patchogue. "Damn, son," he yelled, "all these places are gettin' all up in ma grill, like furreals, son, don't be drinkin' that hatorade, Patchogue, I love my homies in the gitto, don't be skerred." Patchogue wants Brown Publishing's Papers to know that they're not friends. Well, they won't be friends until Dan takes back all the mean things he's said about Patchogue. Like completely ignoring their press releases because Alec Baldwin wasn't going to be there. And for saying Patchogue is stabby and likes to stab immigrants, so they're immigrant stabby. So Dan apologized, with his fingers crossed behind his back. Good thing Pete Lutz wrote in to Dan while high on blood thinners to brighten Dan's day! Yay, Pete's back. And he's laying in a hospital bed with a "tempter" wiggling her hips in front of him, but the fat, ugly nurses keep coming in to take his tempter and he wants out! Also Times Square has a bomber, the fishing industry is oily, he needs all sorts of work done on his house and no poors to do it, the earth is always turning, stewardesses aren't RN's anymore and can't get any guys but fat ones, and they only speak one language, and the damn rich people are moaning about sex offenders when they should be getting them jobs. Ahhhh! he yelled.

"Ahhhh!" David Lion yelled back. He was still covering his ears.

"Can you all keep it down!" TJ Clemente screamed. He was trying to finish his article on ticks. There's just so many ticks in the Hamptons. This is true. And there's just so much Lymes Disease. Everyone has it. It's like a rite of passage now. We don't have Lymes Disease, and when we get pulled over by cops in East Hampton they know we're not from there. Oh, there's just too much Lymes Disease everywhere you go in the Hamptons.

So there was Dan, answering his mail. There was TJ pulling a Lymesy tick off his arm. And there was Gina Glickman, twirling her hair with the end of her pencil. It's what pencils are made for. She rested her chin on her hand and stared dreamy-eyed into the photo of Puff Daddy. Why won't he return my calls? she wondered. Didn't he get the joke when I pinned that doll with the severed head under his windshield wiper? I thought it was funny. He did too, I'm sure. He's just busy planning his white party. Hmmm. What should I wear to his white party?

And then there was Pete Lutz. Poor, forgotten Pete Lutz. The patterns on the ceiling above him were conspiring to strangle him with his IV tubes. He knew it. Plus, the jello had long since stopped asking permission from the carrots for everything it did. And his sheets are being lazy again. The whole world is gone to hell, he thought. It's like you can't even be a giraffe anymore.

Jill Zarin Proves Even in Reality Show Purgatory, She Can Still Be Huge Pain In The Ass

Sorry, but we thought that when Jill Zarin was banished to the Phantom Zone along with General Zod, Ursa, and Non, it would be the last we'd hear from her. She'd drift off into the galaxy entrapped in that pane of glass for the high treasonous crime of...being annoying.

We were wrong. Somehow she escaped, and caught the attention of our favorite Bubble Guppy Gina Glickman-Giordan. (And I get compliments on the hyphen)

You see, when Jill and her daughter Ally, (whom she shipped off to fat camp and documented the whole awful exchange on "Real Housewives of the Vacant and Soulless New York City") were out modestly contributing their time and money at the Super Saturday bargain sale for Ovarian Cancer Research, Jill apparently felt she hadn't adequately embarrassed her daughter enough.

While walking the press line, because, you know she doesn't show up for these things because of the press and all, she "suddenly stopped mid-sentence and shouted in her signature NY accent across the field 'Oh! Wait! Wait! Who is that cute boy? Zarin proceeded to ignore the cameras that were rolling mid-interview and shouted: 'He's cute! Wait! Wait!' As Zarin crossed the red carpet to jump over the velvet ropes she instantly got the attention of a longhaired teenage boy," Glickman gleefully reports.

Oh that crazy Jill. Always doing hilariously crazy, funny things. And yet still is so fabulously fabulous? How does she do it?

Dragging the poor boy across the red carpet like Grendel's vengeful mother, Jill introduced the kid to Ally. We wonder why Jill didn't just go all the way and tell "Zach" (of course that would be his name) that Ally is fresh off the farm from fat reality boot camp.

So yeah. Now Jill thinks she's a matchmaker, fit to give another reality star a run for her world's most shittiest person money. "See I do this! Sorry Patti Stanger," Jill reportedly said. "By "this" she means make an obnoxious spectacle of herself in front of cameras by being rude and turning an event about cancer into an event about Jill Zarin.

Take away lines from our blonde sock puppet:

Zarin proceeded to ignore the cameras that were rolling mid-interview... Really? Are you actually clueless or do you just play one on television? She did this BECAUSE of the cameras, not in spite of them.

Zarin who is a reality pro was immune to the hundreds of bystanders documenting her exchange... A reality pro? What's a reality amateur, someone who doesn't exist? And again, immune? You spelled "spurned on by" wrong, Gina.

The cameras didn't faze either one of them. It was as if they were in the process of shooting a new reality series. Not a bad idea?...Here Glickman probably gets the closest to the truth by accident than she ever will in the history of this awful, suck-up column. And for the record: YES it IS a bad idea. A very bad idea.

Oh, son of Jor-El, can you please banish her once more? It didn't take.

Brown Publishing's Papers: The June 4 Recap

By which we parse that parrot cage lining people call "Dan's Papers" (but is really Brown Publishing's Papers, or Jimmy Finkelstein's News Communications Papers) for all its subtext and stupidity. Mostly stupidity.





Like Lucy stuffing chocolates into her mouth as they come out on the conveyor belt, we can't keep up with all the possibilities of how to recap Dan’s Papers before another one rolls out.





By now Dan has probably made it a habit of wandering the streets of the Hamptons looking for unmanned tables of food to swipe from, but this week was different. Well, Main Street was different, and after Dan read from his Memoir "Nobody Cares, Again" he stepped down from his soapbox and discovered boutique and ritzy stores all over East Hampton just giving food away. They probably put it out for him. He's been known to stray and run off into the woods, chasing celebrities up trees, but nobody had heard from him since last week's terrible debacle at the Potatohampton MiniFAIL. So, local businesses put out food in case he got hungry. And he did. He got very hungry. And nostalgic. Remembering when the Hamptons was...(fill in the blank). Which made us all wonder, when was the Hamptons ever what Dan remembers it to be? It seems since time indefinite the Hamptons was a place for privileged, accomplished, renowned, and uppity New Yorkers to get away from people and ride horses, or plant corn. They brought poors with them, sure, and perhaps the poors gave it that "blue collar" feel, but simply judging by the age of the mansions and estates to be found out here, it seems pretty clear...all these boutique and ritzy couture shops and high-end clothing stores now invading Main Street are just the offspring of some pretty well-heeled forebears. Dan would be better to take that "remember when" schtick to Williamsburg, Brooklyn or Hell's Kitchen.



Or Twitter and Facebook, which Dan's next big article informs us of his inability to maintain, even when his imaginary invites from Madonna and David Letterman are piling up in his social media inboxes. He needs to hire someone less important than himself to sort through all the ways people are clamoring to talk to him.

Which is opposite of David Lion's 20 Something woes. Nobody wants to talk to him. They just don't have the heart to tell him. So they're blaming it on the cell service provider and so far he's buying it. He keeps trying to make plans with his buddies and they just keep cutting out. Making that khhhh...khhhhh noise, hoping he doesn't pick up on their breathing. He bangs his cell phone on the hood of his car. "Hello? Hello?" Nothing. Just that ceaseless khhhh noise. "Hello?"

Meanwhile, South O' the Highway, Sarah Jessica Parker is still from the Hamptons. Calvin Klein is buying houses like he's playing Monopoly and someone needs to tell him he can't collect money from people who happen to stroll by his properties. Tennis stars from all over visited the very poor and deprived Ross School to speak to some underprivileged, tennis playing kids. Russell Simmons threw a party. Bryan Greenberg of "How to Make it in America" went to one, and consequently started a bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred catfight outside of the Axe Lounge. (though Dan doesn't make mention of this little inconvenient truth). Also, blah blah blah, Howard Stern, Jerry Seinfeld, Phony Countess Housewives, and Alec Baldwin. Always Alec Baldwin. Forever and ever. Love Dan.

Walking, talking Bratz Doll Gina Glickman took on the tough assignment of inserting herself into nightclubs all across the east end and was lucky enough to score an exclusive interview with Real Housewives of New York City's Alex McCord and her slave Simon Van Kempen, which was a genuine stroke of luck because we all know Alex and Simon hate press coverage. Her and her slave were celebrating their 10th anniversary together when Gina's head flapped open and shut like a muppet as she ran for them. Alex told her she'd gone through a transformation, which is good, while Simon sat beside her and wondered if his 10th anniversary present was actually going to be that Alex finally takes on his last name like she promised. It was the year 2000. They were sitting at an outdoor tiki bar in St. Barth's. They were just sitting through a long moment of uncomfortable silence after Simon brought up the name change. "Tell you what," she said. "If we're still together in 10 years, we'll take a ride down to the DMV." He clapped and went shopping with her.

Now 10 years has gone by and still he's heard nothing. He's afraid to ask. He's afraid to get what he already knows is the answer. "Listen, Simon, I know what I promised. It was the year 2000, we all thought were going to die." And that was true. So what could Simon do about it, really? Still...(he dropped his head down in shame) Gina didn't notice. Her back was turned so the photographer could get her in the shot with Alex.

But the parties Gina didn't make it to, Dan was sure to cover anyway, and get lots of photos of celebrities holding up glass dildos at the Drama Desk Awards. Also, he was sure to capture the sleazy, smarmy, slimy, oozing, creepy (please comment with more adjectives) Coerte Felske, an "author" who managed to camera-bomb The Real Housewives to promote his sleazy, smarmy, slimy, oozing, creepy..."book" he's been carrying around. So far it's paid off in dividends because he managed to sneak into Engel & Volker's "Toast to Fake-Famery 2010 Gala" in Southampton. Without any irony, he actually turned up with two models on either side of him. The whole thing was sleazy, smarmy, slimy, oozing, creepy...

"Hello? Hello?" David Lion kept calling into his cell phone as he passed the gates of the party. He was heading back to the office to complete his police blotter. Someone actually paid to have lab tests done on his pool water and found gallons of urine in the water. (We think this didn't happen.) Also a watch caused a truck to break down. (We think this also didn't happen). A Hummer flipped upside down and crashed into trees, a fight broke out in Montauk (no shit?), cops handed out 7 tickets on Shelter Island, a land mass with a population of...7. Also, guidos got pinched in the largest guido sting ever recorded in human history at Neptunes, a young man somewhere in Southampton got high, and the dead Chinese kayaker who was found dead on the beach in Amagansett is still dead. Tune in next week (er, this week) for when David Lion has more dead bodies wash up on shore, and then oddly makes ZERO mention of his pet peeve...the arrest of Sonja Morgan (Real Housewives of New York City) for DWI.

Perhaps he hadn't heard the news. Perhaps nobody has told him yet. "Hello? Hello?" he yells into his cell phone.
Nothing.

Brown Publishing's Papers: The May 28 Recap

By which we parse that parrot cage lining people call "Dan's Papers" (but is really Brown Publishing's Papers, or Jimmy Finkelstein's News Communications Papers) for all its subtext and stupidity. Mostly stupidity

This week Dan was out on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton. He was stretching out along with literally dozens of other runners getting ready to start the 4,000th Annual Potatohampton 5K Mini-thon. Yeah, the 4,000th. It predates the Greek games.

As he was stretching he heard it in the distance. He didn't believe it, but others heard it too. It was the song that intros the entrance of Darth Vader. They were coming. They were here. It was Memorial Day weekend and the fancy cars were cruising down the Montauk Highway stuffed with pretty boys and girls and Prada handbags, and cocktail shakers, and hope, and crazy, faraway daydreams, and painted toenails, and pretty thoughts, and a slave in the trunk to watch the kids while all the pretty boys and girls dance their pretty dances, and shoot their pretty insults at the wait staff, and give pretty answers to all the reporters and photographers trailing after them to capture all the pretty. And it reminded Dan, to call his photog. Because, after all, these people can't be ignored.

But there was no time. Tens of people were lining up to cheer on the runners. The gun went off. Accidentally. Some ran. Some stayed frozen in their places, as though they'd forgotten how to run. But this wasn't going to be like last year, when the pace car designed to guide the runners through the course took a wrong turn and everybody ran straight off a cliff and fell into the bay, no. This was more organized than that.

Except it wasn't. Apparently the digital clock didn't start until a minute into the race, which meant that runners crossing the finish line filled with glee that they'd set a new record had to be told they didn't. They weren't special. They were their usual dull, slow, non-record-setting selves. They wept on the side of the road.

Also, the winner of the women's class was Alexandra Jennings, 29. But really she wasn't. Really she finished second. The winner was Barbara Gubbins, who was accidentally mistaken for a man. After a genetics test revealed Gubbins to be a woman, she was award first place in the Minithon. But last place in life. Also, the cheating, lying, posing Alexandra Jennings (who is now second place, or, the first loser) kept running. She ran past the finish line, across the monument in Bridgehampton, down the Montauk Highway, pumping her fists in victory. She ran and ran, and nobody has told her yet. Nobody has caught up to her to do so. She made the decision that she'd never stop. She'd keep running. And tell everyone she encountered that she'd won first place in the Potatohampton Minithon, and nobody...nobody, could take that away from her. Dan watched the flash of her track shoes disappear around the corner, but there was nothing he could do. At least, he thought, the folding chairs arrived on time. And at least the digital clock counted in seconds, and not years. So that was good, he thought. Then he actually wrote: "Thinking about things profoundly like this every once in a while is good for the soul in my opinion."

Yes, Dan. In fact, it is your profound thoughts that keep us all alive. We're forever grateful. Now get back to organizing next year's Potatohampton MiniFAIL. We can hardly wait.

Just up the street, Susan Galardi was sitting down to write a profile of Madonna without any cooperation, input, or knowledge from...Madonna. The profile was scathing. By which we mean, Galardi didn't intend for it to be scathing, but it is. From this piece we learn that Madonna is a high-maintenance, pouty, horse-snobby, reclusive, fly-by-helicopter, piece of egotistical work. And this was supposed to be a sycophantic, welcome-to-the-neighborhood article? The last sentence really pops in its unintended hilarity. We like to protect our local celebrities.

Unlike Gina Glickman, who likes to stalk our local celebrities and then tell everyone where they were spotted. Also, her friend's lame Led Zeppelin cover-band was playing at Stephen Talk House, so she gave them a fair amount of ink, while waiting to get that all-important invite to something better. We'd like to further recap Glickman's "Whispers," but, well, she whispers, and we couldn't hear it.

Sitting behind Glickman was Sharon Feieriesen. Of the too-many-vowels Feieriesens. She put together a wrap of all the charity benefits being held in the Hamptons this summer. Well, not all the benefits, that would be lunacy. Because every party that's held in the Hamptons is dedicated to some charity or another, how else will they bribe pretty people to show up? Duh. So there's the Annual "Soup Cans for the Ugly" Benefit, the "Summer Without Bad Hair" Benefit, the "Bring Your Dog Everywhere You Can Possibly Go" Benefit, and the "Mad for Meds" Benefit, all which got completely ignored by Feirereideseien. But in development: the "Getting Actual Meaning From a Novel" benefit, whose honoree will be Rebecca Schiller.

Schiller's review of "I'm Ten Years Late To The Chick-Lit Dance" by Diane Meier did not go well. A novel about renovation, forbidden love, personal growth, and the rediscovery of identity, and what did Schiller pull from it? Totally bitchin' decorating tips! Yay, book reviews.

Dan sent his photogs to both New York City and the Hamptons to cover people drinking wine. The highlight was the Einstein Spirit of Achievement Awards. You know, "spirit of achievement" as opposed to "actual achievement." But hey...everybody looked fabulous, and that's all that ever counts.

And there there's David Lion. Who spent the whole week wandering around trying to eavesdrop on conversations for his "20-something" column. He just couldn't come up with one. Then someone suggested they put Jimmy Buffet on the cover of the Montauk Pioneer this week. Someone climbed a tree and got a photo of him eating lunch. Perfect for the cover! And since Dan had already decided on his Monty-Python's-Flying-Circus cover, replete with a large breasted woman with hairy arms in a shower cap flying up from the ocean, while a dog swoops down like deus ex machina to save her from beach balls, this cover would actually be about something. But no. It couldn't be countenanced. The people of Montauk would revolt. They'd take to the streets. Putting a celebrity on the cover! That's crazy-talk! Because, as David explains, people from Montauk, though just as famewhorey and caught up in celebrity as the rest of us, like to pretend they're not, so to see a mega-star like Buffet on the cover would undermine the very tone of Montauk. That's the conversation he had privately with his staff. Then he took that conversation and wrote a "20-something" column about his intention to use that conversation for his "20-something" column.

Which allowed him to concentrate on the body count in this week's Police Blotter. Two, in total, which is probably the highest body count of any Police Blotter to ever appear there. One body washed ashore from Connecticut, and a youngster was killed during a high-speed motorcycle chase from Southampton police. We'd have something funny to say, but there's nothing funny about a 19-year-old girl going off of her fiance's bike while the stupid fiance is trying to outrun the cops because he had something as minor as a suspended license. It's terrible, and the fiance is in deep trouble. But for the rest of the blotter, we learned that people shouldn't own dogs. Because the dogs fight, and then the owners fight. Because everyone involved is unhinged. Dog owners are unhinged, that's what David Lion is saying in this blotter. Also, rich old women get to lay claim to every bench in America. This rule was not honored last week, and the rich old woman went ballistic. However...video please, or it didn't happen. Also, a woman's car was kicked. She can't prove it, but she called the cops anyway. Ah, tax dollars. And another woman in Hampton Bays tried to run off with a cart full of groceries. So basically, women were crazy last week. We'll see how crazy women act this week before we declare an epidemic.

Then of course, Dan got to his Letters. Ah the letters. And they keep pouring in from the Tea Party movement, some of whom aren't sure which convention they should walk into: the Democrats or Republicans. Like little kids trying to ascertain the male/female graphic on the doors of the public restroom, some think Dan is a dopey Democrat, some think he's a dopey Republican. He's only confessing to the dopey part. Then David took a lashing for saying he was half Irish/half Jewish, because for some people Jewish is only a religious identity. David said, And there's Isreal. So, yeah. There's David sticking up for his right to say he's Jewish, and there's Dan sticking up for his right to be a lightning rod for political kooks. There's Gina Glickman rolling her eyes at the staff and waiting for TMZ to call her for a job. Blowing her bangs away from her face.

And there's Alexandra Jennings. Poor Alexandra, running off into the distant sunset of what-could-have been. She's at a job interview in Manhattan, clutching her recently updated resume. In gleaming black ink, like a beacon of achievement, there it states: 1st Place Potatohampton Minithon. And no one has told her yet. And maybe never will. Maybe she'll move up the corporate ranks of that job. Become a manager, a director, straight on to the C-suite, CMO, CFO, eventually CEO. Still running that race, in her mind. Eventually running for President of the United States. Running on the ticket of her success. And then...the truth will come out. Dan will write an article about how he knew her when, and suddenly a storm of controversy will sweep her out of the race. Alexandra Jennings. The liar candidate who lied. The lying candidate who didn't win the Potatohampton Minithon, as was thoroughly documented in the book Unclean To Command: Why Alexandra Jennings Should Never Run For Anything by Babara Gubbins. The Tea Party's first legitimate candidate, undone by Dan. And from then on, the Potatohampton Minithon will be watched. Oh, it'll be watched like a hawk.

Alec Baldwin's Wife Must Have Had A Shitty Dad

In another installment of Human Bratz Doll Gina Glickman-Giordan's hard-hitting investigation of the Hamptons we all know as "Whispers," our favorite brown-noser bopped all the way to "Yoga Gives" in Southampton and went all gonzo journalism on us.

Embedded in the dark trenches of an underworld known as Yogis, she braved degradation, humiliation, perspiration, and possibly even death to deliver us an insider's look at how the rich exorcise and cleanse from the horrors and stresses of being rich. Hunter S. Thompson would have been proud. Proud that he refrained from shooting her.

In either event, after dropping the very important fact that she was not wearing Yoga clothes, she was wearing her "Lululemon finest yoga attire," she got into the purpose of her visit. To seek out and delve deeply into the life and times of Hilaria Thomas Baldwin, newly minted wife of actor Alec Baldwin.

What did we learn? First and foremost that despite our constant urge to finish her name with an "S" by calling her "Hilarious," it's actually pronounced Ee-larry-ah, which, we also learned, is Spanish for Golddigger "happy."

We also learned that despite Eelarryah's seemingly cest-la-vie attitude and folksy aw-shucksism, she, like most wealthy women in the spotlight, is just as absorbed and cooky, and control-freaky about her body image. When she was apparently accused of donning a "baby bump" at a recent charity event, she tried to control her apeshit, but couldn't, and took to Twitter with: "Shld rumors that I’m pregnant give me a complex about my waistline? How slim do u have to be? This is a serious problem in society.”

Well, really it's just a problem for you, fatty. And clearly you already have a complex about your waistline. Enjoy your beer gut.

We also learned that putting a person's name in bold-face type doesn't make them a celebrity. Who knew?

But most importantly, we learned that Hilaria must have had a really lousy father. "I think anybody would be so lucky to have Alec as a dad.” (Bold-type Gina's, not ours. Of course.)

"I think anybody would be so lucky to have Alec as a dad.” Aw. We can understand where she's coming from. Just check out Alec's new line of Birthday Cards for Children Whose Age You're Unsure Of, Or If In Fact They Are Children At All below:



 Bold-type...Ours.

Celebrities Attempt to Wrap Brains Around Tragedy: Realize They Have No Brains

The real tragedy is in the asking. When Professional Blonde Muppet Gina Glickman-Giordan (whose metamorphasis into pretentious Hamptonyte is now complete with the hyphenated name) asked a room full of VIPs at the Bridehampton Polo Club what they thought of the Aurora, Colorado "Dark Knight" shootings, our only explanation for the answers she got was that they were all high. Someone left the valve open on the helium machine. Someone brought in some special-baked brownies. Our only explanation for Dan's Papers actually publishing the responses is that the newspaper hates them.

The only "celebrity" but sort of isn't one  who came close to a reasoned response was Polo Player Chris Del Gatto, who said "The first thing we think about is our children and that you could be some place as innocuous as a movie theater taking them out for a family evening and something like that happens." If you're looking for clarity after that the closest you can come is Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, who started out on solid footing and then gave us every reason why we should take away her fame. "I think it's terrible and I feel so bad for the families. I have children and everybody has children that they are connected to those people that were there."
Huh? But that was not to be topped by the absolute beauty pageant answer we got from Donna Karan's neer-do-well daughter (whom Glickman felt the need to run down her resume as though she gained all this by herself) Gabby Karan:

"It breaks my heart. I think that we just have to change in our soceity and try to give back a little bit more."

Who knew charity and soup kitchens can stop mass murder?
What this column truly exemplifies is something that sort of strikes at one of the pillars of why we launched Hamptonyte Blog. Just because you're a celebrity, does not mean you should be tapped to give opinions. In fact you probably shouldn't. Because you're a brand. And brands are very touchy not to say anything that even smells of controversy. Okay, that's too long of a pillar, but the lesson stands all the same.