David Rattiner: 'Hamptons in the winter rain isn't boring'

Then he proves that it is. Check out David Lion's blog post he was apparently forced to write at gunpoint. It's a true confessional, a treatise on a life lived, spilled out on the page in all its whogivesashittery.

The Hamptons isn't boring in the winter when it rains, he posits. Shoot, I go to the movies! I'll even plan to go to one movie (Les Miserables') and then suddenly change my mind and see Django instead; that's how off the chains I am in the Hamptons. Or I'll read a book. Or work on a novel. (Please don't.)

We think David should open up a suicide hotline that convinces people ordinarily not contemplating suicide to go ahead and do so.

Also, David...Les Miserables'? You're fired from manhood. Turn in your testicles before you leave.

Hamptons homeless now visible without leaves to hide behind

We're not sure how to take this 2-page feature by the Associated Press, which was republished by ABC.com. On one hand there's the WhatTheFuckery of this:

It's not that the homeless don't exist in the string of famously exclusive waterfront communities on the eastern end of Long Island — they just blend in more easily when it's warm.

But then there's the delicious, CueTheGuillotinesery of this:

"The privet hedges, the beaches, the resort community, the gigantic homes that are used 12 weekends out of the year," she said. "Every time I drive past one of these homes that for the most part are empty, I'm thinking, wow, how many people could we house in this place?"

The profile is of Maureen's Haven, a nonprofit organization that provides shelter to homeless people on the east end. Their home base is in Riverhead, but appparently they house a lot of day laborers and minimum-wage workers in the Hamptons.

The story is interesting in that it addresses something that all of us here on the east end know already: that folks is brokes. I'm not sure what camoflogue the homeless are using in the summer, but I will admit I've never seen a homeless person the way you see them in New York City, where, for the record, you can spot them year-round.

Ours don't lay on benches I guess? Ours don't lean against buildings or sit on the ground? Ours know better? Hmmm.

Getting back to the last statement in the story, we love the idea of raiding these beachfront houses and stocking them with smelly poors. We already have one douchebag on our list of whose home to invade first.

Albanian immigrant arrested for wrong reason

Meet Praq Rado. His story is told by Taylor Vecsey in the East Hampton Patch in an article that went up last week. Rado is awaiting his fate in Los Angeles while the American government decides whether or not to deport him back to Albania, from which he fled 11 years ago.

Rado had been happily bobbing along, modeling, acting, writing, dancing in gay bars...until one day he made the all-too-common mistake of taking the Hamptons International Film Festival seriously. He put together a 25-minute short film about his immigration experience and then accidentally entered it into the HIFF.

He further compounded his mistake by trying to attend the HIFF in October, and was summarily scooped up by immigration police and is now out on bail pending a decision. His lawyers are arguing that he should have been arrested for impersonating a serious person who entered his film into a serious film festival.

According to the article, which is well-written by the way, Rado belongs to the minority Catholic population in the largely Muslim Albania, and we needn't think about what might happen to Rado if he should be returned there, after living out of the closet for so long.

So yeah. We pray for Rado. And we hope the story inspires in all of us a lesson about the Hamptons International Film Festival.

If forced to choose between entering and attending the HIFF or being sent to Muslim-controlled Albania...

We would have to think on it for a while.

Jerry Della Femina's Problems Would Make Jesus Christ Want To Murder Him

Jerry Della Femina's idea of poverty is so rage inducing we saw the Dalai Lama read this Business Insider article and then immediately turn around and punch an infant in the face.

Della Femina, the sleazy, slimy lying gold-toothed creep ad man was one of the few Madison Avenue execs who amassed his fortune and didn't manage to blow it on a coke habit in the 80s. He's been a permanent fixture in the Hamptons since forever and even opened up a successful restaurant with the money he made convincing people with money they don't have to buy shit they don't need.

Now he's sold his house because, well, because his poor unborn great grandchildren may not be able to sit by a pool lined with the skin of Mexican day laborers while doing lines off a blonde co-ed's back. Or as we used to call it: The American Dream.

That's right, a man who lives in America in 2012, with full knowledge of how high the unemployment rate is, who no doubt had to lay off some of his own workers at his various business ventures, who flies his helicopter over thousands of foreclosed homes, has the balls to complain that he's selling because he refuses to pay more taxes under the Obama administration.

Taxes? Really? Taxes? You do realize, Della Femina, that your tax bill is probably quadruple the monthly mortgage of the average home just west of where you live, right?

Instead of feeling fortunate that he even has the money to PAY those taxes, he's selling low just to avoid them. His ginormous, disgustingly lavish, and grossly unnecessary oceanfront house went for $25 million. He wanted $40 million. But he's settling for 25. A fact that makes us just...so sad.

“I want the proceeds of this sale to go to my kids and my grandkids,” he told The Post's Jennifer Gould Keil and Selim Algar. “I don’t want my money going to Obama, and that’s what’s going to happen in the New Year. That’s why I sold right now, that’s why I wanted to get this done.”
“I’m basically the loser in Obama’s class warfare,” he added.

Wow. That really gets us...right around...the chest/heart region or thereabouts. Another loser in Obama's class warfare, according the article, is Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav, who inherited Della Femina's meager 8 bedroom, 6.5 bathroom, heated pool-even-though-there's-a-literal-ocean-500-feet-away, mansion that sits on 1.7 acres.

On a side note, we'd like to know how an advertising/marketing guru can be this culturally tone-deaf. On a sider note, we'd like to know how Della Femina's brain didn't say to him: 'please don't call the NY Post and...say anything like what you're about to say.' On an even sider note, we'd like Della Femina to eat a bag of dicks.

What We Need: More Suckup Hamptons Journalism

We noticed this in the "Goddammit" File of our RSS feed earlier this month and thought we'd share. Empty, vacant, and generally predictable Hamptons magazine is going to have some competition this coming summer, as yet another empty, vacant, and generally predictable suckup magazine is poised to hit the stands.

Manhattan Media, the owner of Dan's Papers, has hired Mark Drucker to publish a new title called...wait for it...Avenue At The Beach, a glossy magazine that will shockingly target the wealthy in the Hamptons. And by target, we mean literally follow them around to all their various charity events and take photographs of their fabulous fabulosity.

The New York Post broke the story a while back. Drucker was once the publisher of the now defunct because nobody cared then either Plum Hamptons. According to reports, Manhattan Media is supposed to be on the auction block, but they're going full speed ahead. And why not? It's not like there's a sad history of glossy magazines covering the Hamptons that have gone belly up.

Or...hmmm. Wait. Scratch that.

Anyhoo, we'll look forward to what this new magazine has in store for us. Our guess is that it will read something like: "Stunningly gorgeous, classy, elegant, fabulous inventor of puppies and rainbows Christie Brinkley was on hand to..."

Matter of fact we'll send that line to the staff at Avenue At The Beach as boiler-plate. Just swap out Brinkley's name for every other person they profile in that damn magazine, et viola!

According to The Post:

He’ll be competing with a former colleague, Cristina Cuomo, who was the editor of Plum Hamptons and is now the new editor-in-chief of Modern Luxury’s Manhattan magazine and will also be overseeing Modern Luxury Hamptons.

Oh my God, now there's TWO of these new magazines? Somebody got the douche-Gizmo wet. Somebody fed them after midnight.

Who knows, though, right? Maybe this magazine will turn a profit by offering content that will make people want to part with their dollars at the stand.

Avenue at the Beach will start modestly, sending 25,000 free copies out East in the June, July and August.

Sonofabitch.

East Hampton Star Tries to Say With a Straight Face That The Rich Are Genuinely Philanthropic

Exclaiming "In your face!" in its opening line, this East Hampton Star article wants you to know it will be every bit as obnoxious as...well...as its opening line.

The "in your face" taunt is aimed at HuffPo and CNBC, presumably because they are the Sean Penn and Tim Robbins of journalism--perennial bogeymen of the paranoid right. According to this piece, the national survey (reported on by HuffPo and CNBC, because...well their job is to report) about the lackluster charity offered up by the wealthiest 1% is wrong because East Hampton's 1% give more than the middle class in the same area. The article, entitled The Rich Really Do Give More, by Larry LaVigne III, is a clinic in how to manipulate statistics. And also how to be a douche. A douche, yes, but not a huge douche, for the article does have its caveats.

Anyone who lives out here knows exactly why and how the wealthy in East Hampton spend "8.5%" of their discretionary income on charity. SWAG. STEP AND REPEATS.

At the very least, this article brings in one expert who, at the very least, hints at this reality.
“The strong and welcomed presence of nonprofits and the causes they support may keep charity top-of-mind for residents, and at a certain level of income and lifestyle, philanthropy becomes a regular part of social life.”

Lavigne tries to downplay this very poignant remark by referring to these lavish parties as merely a stab at some free drinks.

 "But is it more than an open bar of top-shelf cocktails in exchange for a five- or even six-figure ticket?"

Yes it is more. It's a LOT more. And you know this, LaVigne. We've heard of some cases where the free gift bags handed out at charity events added to a total value of $15,000. Add that to the allure of being photographed by local and national press, and rubbing elbows with famous actors, musicians, reality TV stars, and you can clearly see why the well-heeled turn out in droves. And arm flab. 

Care for more BS?

Quote: “A lot of Alec Baldwin’s fans come out to show support when he is tied to an event, but we have soooo much diverse talent that works with Guild Hall,” [Barbara Jo Howard, director of marcomms at Guild Hall] said."

Translation: Alec Baldwin's draw represents 99% of the money raised, while every other program running there suffers from Giveashit-itis.

Put simply, if East Hampton's rich were so giving of their discretionary income, why does EVERY SINGLE charity event held in the Hamptons have to wheel some celebrity out in front like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs? Answer: Because nobody would go otherwise. It's not supernatural.

What? MORE BS?

Quote: Even though the wealthy may give a lesser percentage of their income elsewhere, the study finds that the richest Americans still contribute the vast majority of dollars to charitable causes.

Really. You know, I would have given my $10,000 to Save the Beleagered Manatees, but somehow my invitation to the Gala in East Hampton got lost in the mail. There's a reason why the rich give to charitable causes, because charitable causes ASK them to, you dolt!

Oh, East Hampton Star. You make me want to beat an angel to death with a little girl's puppy. 

Reynolds Dodson: We Goofed On You, But We Didn't Want You To Die

Credit: The Southampton Press

Some sad news coming out of the land made of happiness cocktails and bunnies' noses. Columnist for the Southampton Press Reynolds Dodson has died, after battling cancer. He was 74.

Dodson lived in Water Mill with his wife Susan, and contributed a column entitled "The View East," which won six New York Press Awards, according to this obit in the Press.  He also authored a number of books and edited numerous magazines, including Family Weekly and Reader's Digest.

But it was his last book A Cockeyed Guide to the Hamptons that got our attention last year. We goofed on him (here) for the silly press release announcing the book, which was plastered on every free PR distribution site in existence. It spawned a checklist of how you too can be fakin' it till you're makin' it in the Hamptons. The release was clearly written by Dodson himself, and more than likely distributed himself. The book was self-published, self-promoted, and completely not self-aware, as it makes fun of people with pastel-colored shirts who carry dogs. (Umm, see picture above that ran in his obit.)

But...however hard we goof, however strongly we might seem to resent a person or their actions, however badly we may trample them for their seeming self-absorption, incestuous legitimacy, and fakery...we are not so heartless that we can't recognize that a human being who was loved, who was somebody's husband, son, colleague, or maybe even inspiration...has died. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Hamptonyte Blog...the bell tolls for thee.

Except Ramona Singer from Real Housewives of New York. Fuck that bitch.