How To Turn Suck-Up In A Single Blog Post

Meet Patrick McLaughlin. He's another one of these corporate tigers who got tired of the rat race and one day did something rash about it by quitting his job and retreating to his summer home in the Hamptons to live (gulp) year-round. For real. It's like converting to Hare Krishna, only instead of shedding all possessions, you shed only New York City possessions. It's like converting to Hare Krishna, only instead of denying the self, you promote yourself. It's like converting to Hare Krishna, only instead of meditation on spiritual matters, you meditate on where to make your next dinner reservations. It's like converting to Hare Krishna if there was a special temple for douchebags.

So McLaughlin is one of those guys. The guy who claims he's sick of it all and vows to live a simpler life, roaming around the quaint, lonesome towns of Sag Harbor and East Hampton and pointing at things to go see, do, eat, and hear. He's also a movie critic, apparently. He also doesn't know that October 13, 2010 doesn't fall on a Friday.

So he runs a blog called Hamptons Chatter, and it's all about him and his stupid observations. And apparently one of his observations is that he was quite frankly underwhelmed by Sex and the City 2. We're supposed to be so shocked by this reaction that we fail to notice we're talking about a man...who went into a movie theater...walked up to the glass window...and purchased a ticket to see Sex and the City (1 or 2, it doesn't matter).

But now he's changed his mind. He LOVES Sex and the City 2! He HEARTS Sex and the City 2, Sex and the City 2 is one of his all-time faves. Why the sudden 180? He met Sarah Jessica Parker the other night in Manhattan, and she was nice.

That's it. The only reason. Really, Patrick? You're that much of a star-f***er that you changed your opinion of a movie, simply because you rubbed elbows with one of its stars? And you want to publish that?

What's worse is that the rest of his blog attempts to list 13 other things he's "decided to be nice" about, in honor of this past Friday the 13th, which it wasn't, and the list dishes out back-handed compliments that are nothing more than masked insults. And when a commenter called him out on the fact that he claimed it was Friday the 13th (it wasn't), he told the commenter to lighten up. Lighten up...and...what, Patrick? Say it was Friday the 13th when it wasn't? I'm sorry is knowing last Friday's date a sign of being too uptight?

Sigh.

So in a blog post about being nice, he ultimately is only nice about one thing. Sarah Jessica Parker and her destroyer-of-New York City-film franchise. And that, my friends, is how to expose yourself as a suck-up in one simple blog post.

P.S.: He also Tweets about where he's going to be every five seconds in case someone gives a crap.