What Were We Thinking: A Trip Down Memory Lane

The good people over at Online Degree sent us an e-mail, presumably after they'd read our post about the reality TV show slated to air this summer about partying in the Hamptons.

"We at onlinedegree.net recently came across your blog and were excited to share with you an article “10 MTV Shows that Make Us Long for Yesteryear” was recently published on our blog, and we hoped that you would be interested in featuring or mentioning it in one of your posts.
It has been a sincere pleasure to read your blog."

And it's been a sincere pleasure to see Jenny McCarthy once again, before she became a pain in everybody's ass. It was also nice to see Downtown Julie Brown, but it was not nice to remember that she used to say "Wubba, wubba, wubba."

So here's the part where we have to begrudgingly acknowledge the fact that, yes, there was a certain degree of innocence in those shows of the late 80s/ early 90s. Which is what our parents used to say about their television shows, when they watched Club MTV in abject horror, and we would roll our eyes and grumble how they just didn't understand. The torch has been passed. Thanks OnlineDegree.net. And to think we used to sing The Who's immortal line: "Hope I die before I get old..." (Pinches self on the arm) Still alive. Dammit.

New Web-Feature To Prove The Hamptons Is Year-Round, Proves It Isn't

Have you heard the latest development over at Hamptons.com? They have a new Web-feature now: a short video wrap-up show called The Scoop, featuring the Web site's extremely charismatic and photogenic Executive Editor Nicole Brewer.

In this first installment, Nicole insists that there's plenty to do in the Hamptons year-round, and then proceeds to prove otherwise. A 70's band? Playing live? Somewhere in the Hamptons? No way!

And she even cracks a joke. I'm not going to spoil the punchline; you'll just have to watch. Anyway, check out The Scoop regularly for updates that are not exactly about nothing...it's more like next to nothing. In other words, it's a notch above the on-location news segments Kermit The Frog used to do.

"This is Kermit A. Frog, live at the farm, where a cow has jumped over the moon, and allegedly the dish has run away with the spoon..."

Yeah, sort of like that. Only not as informative. Sigh.

Rule #122: Don't Let The Mrs. Put The 'Cock' In Cocktail

If you're serving cocktails...any kind of cocktails...at your Super Bowl party: you're doing it wrong. Wrong!

Hamptons.com posted a list of cocktail recipes (as is their wont) that hosts and hostesses can serve at their Super Bowl party this year. This is what happens when you let girls watch football. Excuse us, but Super Bowl parties are for beer and beer only. They're for complaining about how your team didn't make it, and for openly fantasizing about this year's GoDaddy.com girl, safely out of earshot of your wife. Cocktails? Do you know what cocktails at a football party means? It means your football party has gone the way of the cigar-room, the men's clubhouse, and the old-fashioned saloon. It means you have officially allowed yourself to become culturally neutered. It's bad enough your DVR is filled with episodes of "Trading Spaces" and "House Hunters."

Listen, ladies, we're not dragging a keg into your scrap-booking party, so keep your "Avion Blitz" away from our Doritos bowl.

Please, fellas. Move your mouse to the upper right hand corner of this Hamptons.com article, and click it closed. Turn in your cocktail. Not your cock.

Strong Island: The Reality Show That Was Bound To Happen

As if obnoxious behavior wasn't rewarded enough in the Hamptons, we stumble upon this ad in Craigslist: a casting call for Strong Island, a new reality show filming in the Hamptons this summer. How do we know it's going to be obnoxious? A cursory glance at the language in the ad:

"It's 2011. You've decided that this is your year.
If you are looking for fame, fortune and the opportunity of a lifetime then now is your chance."

And:

" If you think you can handle the other people in the house, the drama, the shots of patron, the long nights partying at the hottest clubs in Long Island and of course the endless days at the beach apply today."

The ad also says it's a reality show revolution, which we know it isn't. And for the record: if you wake up, go to the mirror, and say to yourself, "this is my year"...kill yourself. We recommend taking an electric shaver and pressing it hard against your wrist, for a slow death. Don't stop! Don't ever stop.

This isn't the first time a reality show decided to document how important everyone is out here. Many of you may still remember "Single in the Hamptons," which aired on the now-defunct Metro Channel from about 2000-2002. A precursor to "The Real Housewives of New York City," "NYC Prep," and "High Society," Single in the Hamptons was more of an Animal Planet-style documentary on the mating rituals of hustling, bustling, New York City know-it-all toolbags, and their victims. It wasn't a bad show, actually, although it was to that insidious and vapid Sex and the City franchise what Desperate Housewives was to The Real Housewives of Whereverthehell: its tragic and pathetic muse.

In either event, similar to the Real Housewives, the subjects would make that all-too-familiar summer weekend pilgrimage to the Mecca of their empty lives: the Hamptons. They'd have their existential crises between sipping martinis, and trying to pick up gold-digging skanks at Jet East by awkwardly mentioning how they took a helicopter to get out here. It was a cultural tour-de-force, a shrine to the money-grab of the dot.com era. Then Lizzie Grubman threw her truck into reverse and ran over the shrine. Also, 9/11 happened, and tragically one of the cast members of Single in the Hamptons actually perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
But the question for this upcoming bit of puke shouldn't be, what tragedy will befall the nation as a result, no, the question burning in our minds is: which brand of Hamptons tool will this show feature?

1. The Neptunes-going, muscle-bound, tribal tat, Axe body spray, Guido peckerhead cousins of Jersey Shore?
2. The o.m.d. watch-wearing, polo-playing, pink shirt-white slacks, overly tanned, name-dropping, self-important douchenozzles of the yacht club sort?
3. The beer-bloated, red-faced, red-headed, baseball cap-wearing, frat-boy, Boardy Barn jugheads you see forever pulled over by the side of Sunrise Highway by a state trooper?

A quick glance at their Facebook page inclines us to go with what should remain hidden behind Door #1, but time will tell. And to be honest...either way, the universe loses.

How To Begin Ruining A Good Time

An update to our recent blog post about the proposed 3-day outdoor festival in Amagansett, the East Hampton Patch is reporting that protesters now tried to get the East Hampton Town Board to pull the permits issued for the concert.

It's step one in how to ruin a good time for everyone. This reminds us of the legal acrobatic moves the people of Westhampton pulled last year when they managed to get those homeless sex-offender trailers shut down. It's a classic maneuver carried out by people who in all likelihood are lawyers by trade. They can't shut down a public gathering because it would run amok of our right to freely assemble, so now they're going to get their permit to use the land revoked. Or at least try. They failed. But step two is just on the horizon.

In related, hilarious, news: East Hampton Supervisor Bill Wilkinson still believes he's going to get $100,000 donated to a local charity as a result of this concert. Tee-hee, tee-hee-hee.

Breaking News: Hamptonyte Blog Forgets To Know What The Hell It's Talking About!

So...corrections are boring. In lieu of a correction, we'd like to explain what transpired and call ourselves out for toolbaggery. Yesterday we goofed on a local Internet publication called NabeWise, for placing an ad on Craigslist where they seemingly solicited for unpaid content to weed out prospective interns. We threw up a screen shot of a scene from Amistad and haughtily mocked NabeWise for operating under the use of free labor. It was fun. We laughed. We shook our heads. We rolled our snarky eyes.

Then we got this comment from an anonymous source:

"Interns are paid at NabeWise!"

Doh! So maybe an e-mail or a phone call to NabeWise would have been in order before we called them out for slave-driving? Maybe? But what's an anonymous commenter anyway, right? What do they know?

Then we got this comment:

"Hi, I'm the CEO of NabeWise,
Thank you for calling my attention to this issue.
I changed the ad, so that people can email us their reviews if they prefer. We really do select our team based on how they capture neighborhoods through writing.
This also allows us to screen for people who are serious, over people who just spam their resumes out to every job. We've worked hard to build a program at NabeWise where people learn a lot -and interns are more likely to have me fetch them coffee, than the reverse. :-)
Hopefully this change alleviates your concern."

So this is what a douchebag feels like. Doh! In related news...do you think I should apply for a job at NabeWise?

The Weakonomy: Write For Free--THEN Prove Your Worth

Here's a great business model for upstart publications. Launch them Internet-only and then lure aspiring writers to fill the content under the illusion that perhaps one day they'll get paid. We've been seeing more and more of these "internship" opportunities popping up on Craigslist and other job sites.

Kids...if you want to intern at a publication, try the New York Times, or The New Yorker, or Bloomberg News. Every other publisher...stop trying to get free labor out of people by pretending you have so much priceless wisdom to impart. Pay up!

Our latest culprit: Nabe Wise, at nabewise.com. They want you to submit THREE pieces to their new Hamptons Web site venture BEFORE they even agree to take you on as an unpaid intern! Now that's taking it to the next level. We've got their slogan: Nabe Wise. Thinking outside the predatory entrepreneur box.

On the other hand, if you're Charlie Brown, convinced that Lucy will eventually not pull the football away before you kick it, here's the ad on Craigslist. Now go get me my coffee!

****UPDATE****

We're dicks. Read the January 15 blog post regarding this item.

Rule #121: Hamptons.com Must Tell Us What "Inno-Trendy" Means

Does Hamptons.com actually have writers on staff? Or is it just a few trained monkeys uploading press releases to their Web site? Are they all in hibernation until the next post-Memorial Day white-party? If so, why doesn't the site just shut down for the winter?

Item: this canned release from the good people at o.d.m. watches. You know, the "internationally acclaimed timepiece arbitrators?" We don't even know what the last half of that sentence means. Nor do we know what "inno-trendy" means in the second sentence of this press release. Maybe if a Hamptons.com staffer was around to actually re-purpose the release and maybe call somebody at o.d.m. to clarify, we'd know. Naw...too much work.

Anyway, the exciting news is supposed to be that these watches (which look like the eggs from which Yo Gabba Gabba characters hatched) is now available in the U.S. Phew...we've been waiting for this day to arrive.

Amagansett Fearful Of The Great Unwashed

Nixon should have encouraged Woodstock promoters back in 1969. Encouraged them to hold the three-day festival in Amagansett, that is! Then it would have never happened, and the damn hippie lib'rals wouldn't be runnin' the country today!

Well, it's early to call this one dead on arrival, but it looks like some Birkenstock-wearing pot-stirring outside agitators want to hold a three-day festival on a farm in Amagansett, and the neighborhood is already fighting over it. The East Hampton Patch has some pretty good coverage of the town meeting, including a Letter To The Editor from the owner of Bookhampton (whom we'll try to contact for comment). The meeting was contentious and full of all the speculation one can expect from a Hamptons community that would like to vote on the color of your drapes if they could. Some residents believe that when the concert's over, the attendees will go marauding through the streets of Amagansett flipping over cars and sending garbage cans through windows like Amagansett just won the Stanley Cup.

According to this blog, the promoters weren't specific about who would play the festival, but Bon Jovi and Billy Joel have been tossed around the rumor-mill. And they're only expecting about 9,500 attendees per day? Boy Billy Joel really has seen his better days behind him!

We'll have more on this as it unfolds, and trust us, it WILL unfold. Our hands are rubbing together with glee.

A Cockeyed Guide To Self Promotion

Reynolds Dodson is winning the press release war. Y'all know who Reynolds Dodson is, don't you? Why he's the five-time NY Press Award-winning columnist for the Southampton Press. That's okay, if you didn't know who he is, you should soon, because a simple Google search of his latest self-published book A Cockeyed Guide To The Hamptons (which is self-published) turns up dozens of hits. Unfortunately those hits are all briefed by the same opening sentence to the same press release about Dodson's self-published book, which is self-published and available at Amazon.com.

You know what else is self-published? Dodson's press release! "A Cockeyed Guide To The Hamptons Offers Amusing Insight," touts the self-published headline about the self-published book by self-publisher Reynolds Dodson. Who thinks this book offers amusing insight? Self-publisher Reynolds Dodson, that's who. And who knows the amusing qualities of Reynolds Dodson's self-published book better than Reynolds Dodson?

Here's a cockeyed guide to Hamptons literary legitimacy:
1. Self-publish book
2. Draft your own press release
3. Distribute said press release on every free PR/press release wire service and local media looking to fill space
4. Draft press release in a tone that seems to imply you did not draft your own press release.
5. Bank on local media outlets being too lazy to ignore the non-story of your self-published book, or at the very least re-word the press release so it maybe seems as though they put thought into filling their editorial space.
6. Pull up a bar stool at 75 Main, order a martini, and casually drop your self-published success to the bombshell next to you.
7. Rinse and repeat

Why We Write

Because literature is the axe that breaks the frozen sea inside us. Because writers hold a mirror to culture and capture all that is beautiful and ugly about the celebration of human existence. Because writers lay down the gauntlet to challenge our preconceived notions of the cultural zeitgeist and body politic.

Or, you can just be Michael Braverman, lunatic at large for Hamptons Magazine, Contributor to Edible East End, and kids-party Ben Kingsley impersonator. He writes because...well...because he's on the east end and he wants to be the 1-millionth person to claim to be an authority on fine living. Visit his blog Hamptons Rich and Pour. Then immediately regret it.

What To Do When Your Kid Can't Stop Saying "Dildo" In School

Sue! Every so often someone leaves a window open in the house of the privileged, and this time around, that someone is Jennine Gourin, yes THAT Jennine Gourin, of the real estate executive/bearer of Jack Nicholson's love-child Gourins.

According to this extremely reliable Page Six article in the New York Post, Ms. Gourin is suing the bourgeois Ross School in East Hampton for allegedly hoisting her 13-year-old son into a hovel and only letting him out attached to a chain like "The Gimp" in Pulp Fiction.

But seriously, she's suing because the Ross School housed the future reality show ne'er-do-well in a basement apartment in Sag Harbor that did not meet Ms. Gourin's high standards when she eventually got around to swinging by the east end to check on her kid. But the real reason she's summoned her team of lawyers? Little Jimmy has been asked to leave the school because he kept saying "dildo" in class.

Sports figures routinely get fined about $50,000 if they're caught on camera cursing. The Ross School costs $56,000 per year in tuition. The lesson? It's cheaper to say dildo if you play second base for the Cincinnati Reds.

And now you know.