Oh Yeah, We're On The Facebook Now

 Just a short post to let all six of you know that you can grab our headlines and comment on our blog posts from Facebook. Our Facebook page launched yesterday, and we'll populate it with short, relevant and informative information as we come across it. The launch was rather unceremonious, and took 24 hours to upload our profile picture, but otherwise a rousing success.

So like us on Facebook, and then all we need is 24 more likers and we can start getting analytics from FB, which will show us just how many people have no idea we exist.

Should be fun.

How Does All Kinds of Awesomeness Reside In One Person?

We're late to the Twitter game, and still haven't followed this man, but if you like Hamptonyte Blog, you'll love Hamptons handyman Joe Schwenk's Twitter account. It is filled with all sorts of nuggets about the type of requests he fills and people he encounters while doing odd-jobs for the Hamptons wealthy.

New York Magazine just printed a summer wrap-up article with Schwenk, who has over 6,000 followers on Twitter, all frothing at the mouth to hear what he encounters on a daily basis. Like my favorite new term "Beachtrepreneur," which perfectly sums up these women who have hitched their star to successful men and now find all sorts of time to whittle away the hours paddleboarding, taking instagram photos of themselves eating produce, and spin-cycling.

The best. Plus he has ginormous balls to risk losing business in a region that still has an old-school privacy about them. He even mentions some staff signing confidentiality agreements when hired. For those reasons, Hamptonyte Blog feels sad around him. Unaccomplished. Quite the posers, really. We can only wish for such access to that world.

So follow him. He's better than us.
But we're funnier. So follow us too! Go.

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.

Rule #127: When commenting on a blog...know who you're defending

Many moons ago, we published in an innocuous little blog piece entitled The Worst. Press Release. Ever. It was a press release that didn't, um...release anything. It wasn't a new promotion, it wasn't an incident, it wasn't details on a new store opening. It was a synopsis of a party thrown by a rich couple, featuring amateur acts all coralled by a man in the know in the Hamptons: Tariq Alexander.

His "network" is called TSW, The System Within, and apparently it's a social network for wanna-be celebrities looking for their big break, not by auditioning, or working hard at their craft, or conceptualizing something amazing and fresh, and new. No. By going to the parties where powerful people hang out and basically throwing themselves at them. It's a form of charlatanism we often overlook in our culture. The by-product of our short-cut, American Idol, skip-the-line, skip-the-hard-work, go right to the front because you're special mentality.

The post sat dormant for months until suddenly we got inundated with multiple comments from "users" (appropriate word) of Tariq's network, The System Within.

Even though you believe the press release mentioned in the original post may not have been the most well written announcement of the Hamptons event, I fully support the spirit of what they were trying to accomplish. I have worked with TSW in the past and found it to be an incredibly helpful organization. They have always bent over backwards to help me with any problems or questions that I have encountered and have been a great resource for connections within the entertainment world. As mentioned by the poster above, the entertainment industry is incredible difficult to break into and having the resources of TSW at my disposal have made the audition process and the endless search for new contacts much easier. From my point of view, knowing the assistance that TSW has provided to me in the past, this event sounds like it was a wonderful opportunity for those involved to network and show off their talents. Although the press release did not relay what it was meant to, I think it is important to look beyond it to the important service that TSW is providing to its clients. I have fully enjoyed and appreciated the assistance I have received from Mr. Alexander and his company would urge others trying to break into entertainment to consider using TSW as a resource.

And

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with TSW. I've been using it myself for quite some time now and personally I love it. I've received a lot of helpful insight and tips that previously did not occur to me. I've also received various career and network opportunities that proved to be very useful. I've also spoke with others who have worked with the company in the past, including those I’ve recommended, all of whom have given positive feedback.

For a while we felt bad for throwing poor Mr. Alexander under the bus. But at long last, the universe makes sense again. Our last commenter dropped us a little alley-oop by way of some link love to multiple news sources reporting that Alexander's "TSW" business is under investigation for developing a pyramid scheme, whereby the number of referrals and paid users funnels money upward for not a whole lot of Return On Investment. The links are here, and here. So yeah. There's a lesson for the above commenters. Before you go out on a limb for someone, make sure it isn't rotten to the trunk. And by rotten, we mean Pyramid Schemes. And by Pyramid Schemes, we mean Tariq Alexander.