Hamptons Restauranteur Gets Ugly With Commenters

Our favorite, clueless, and harmfully unhinged restaurant owner Bruce Buschel is currently engaged in a cyber-smackdown with commenters on his New York Times blog "You're the Boss: the art of running a small business."

Buschel is a recovered writer, editor, filmmaker, and whatever else draws him attention. We're still waiting for him to release his own fragrance: Eu de Poorly Run Restaurant. He owns "Southfork Kitchen," a fish-house located on what is locally referred to as the Bridgehampton Turnpike: a double-yellow stretch of highway that bypasses all the cops and the need for safe driving. His restaurant doesn't need a menu-change: it needs an overpass!

Anyway, since he opened his fish-house, (local fish only, so we hope you like Ling and Porgies) he's had the unique luxury of blogging about it in the NYT (he even had the gall to review his own restaurant!) He's an absolutely perfect specimen for the Hamptons. Except...his blog posts are kind of obnoxious. And his ideas on how to run a restaurant are kind of um...idiotic. His commenters think so, and this week Bruce decided he'd had enough, and got cunty with em'.

Exhibit A:
Dear Wasting time,
I see how you earned your name. We had 60 people coming for dinner and six staffers protesting. You would have called the guests? People get hurt on the ski slopes. You would close them down?

Exhibit B:

Our first general manager left after four months of work, one month after we opened to the public. The current manager has been with us from the git-go. Thanks for paying attention. No, really, thanks.

And:

If people put their passion and time and money into a project, who determines if it’s a hobby or a business? I have an idea that might please you: Stop reading.

Ooh, burn. So we're trying to decipher Buschel's tack here. Either he has no concept that bitching out commenters on his blog is sort of a bad PR strategy for his restaurant, OR...he's trying to channel the success of McSorley's Ale House on 7th street, which is famous not only for its microbrew of the same name, but for its notoriously cranky bar staff. Either way, he has learned one effective strategy for running a Hamptons restaurant in January/February. Close down.

Rescue An Underprivileged Hamptons Partier Today!

It's rare that you get an opportunity like this. To help a team of struggling fame and namewhores, whose only dying wish is to repeat the glamorously good time they had last year! Guest Of A Guest (GofaG) is appealing to corporations' sense of philanthropy, by advertising for someone to "sponsor" their Hamptons party-house rental this summer.

That's right, folks. They had an amazing time last summer. Headbanging to Bon Jovi at the Talkhouse. Pretending to understand Polo in Bridgehampton. Toasting to the good life, and mainlining Bicardi and cocaine with Mary Kate Olsen until she suddenly hopped the fence and started eating her neighbor's bushes.

Now they want a repeat. A do-over. And for just the price of a cup of coffee, you can help this poor group of illiterate, and helpless souls realize their dream. A cup of coffee! A dollar a day.

We know, we know...you're thinking: 'Why should I? What's in it for me?' GofaG has that answer!

"We are excited about a possible partnership that would bring innovative ideas to the table, and is also excited about the value we could hopefully ad to their brand."

There you go. They'll "ad" to your brand, even if they can't spell "add."

So dig deep, friends. Don't be desensitized. Don't click off this blog post because you can't emotionally handle the heartbreak. These people need your help. Think about how sad you'd be if no one came forward to sponsor your parties.

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.