Poet Harvey Shapiro: 1924-2013

We were a little bummed out to learn that noted poet and sometimes East Hampton resident Harvey Shapiro has died. The 88 year old was just a couple weeks shy of his 89th birthday. He was one of the old-school artist yeoman, an editor at multiple print publications and was devoted to letters.

I had the privilege of meeting Shapiro when he visited Southampton College to read in the mid-1990s. He committed a lot of his poems to memory and was a very open and inviting guest poet. He sat with us as young writers and was not in the least bit condescending. In hindsight, after reading his obituary in the New York Times and the East Hampton Star, I'm sort of glad I didn't realize (at 22) how important he was to literature because I probably wouldn't have mustered the courage to speak to him. As it was, we had a great conversation and he left an impression on me.

The two obits are well done. Give them a read. As for Harvey...thanks for leaving your mark before leaving.

Sex offenders ring in the New Year: Hamptons Style!

If you're looking to party with the hottest, sexiest, trendiest sex offenders in the world, look no further than toney Southampton Town! That's right, these totally fabulous fingerers decided to hit the town for New Year's Eve, as their residency in mobile homes parked in Westhampton appear to be staying put into 2013.

County Executive Steve Bellone was supposed to pass a measure to move them out of Westhampton by year's end, but...oops. He totally forgot! Now they're here, they're fierce, and they're ready to party it up, Hamptons Style!

Check out Pat McGroin's definitely 2013 neckware he snagged from the mannequins at Cynthia Rowley's Montauk Shop. Holden McCrotch is absolutely fabulous and forward in this matching popped collar from Ralph Lauren. And he accessorizes! Nothing attracts the kiddies like his candy bracelets from Ralph's fabulously lovely, and totally not entitled princess daughter Dylan!

So where were these heavy-panting hotties tongueing down the toddlers at midnight on December 31? Our sources don't know. And they'd never kiss and tell...that would be soooo last year!

Special election to decide if we should save homes built on sand

This isn't so much a class warfare piece, because the taxes it would affect are only for those who are directly effected by erosion, but Newsday ran an interesting news story about a vote coming up in February to decide on two $13 million plus tax levies that would pay for emergency sand drops on properties threatening to wash away in future storms.

The two votes are for districts in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack, each calling for a little over 13 million in tax increases.

Question: Where are they getting the sand from?
Answer: Beaches where poor people live.

OK, now it's a class warfare piece.

Unintended hilarity of the story: the amount of absentee ballots that will need to be sent because the vote is being held in February and rich people don't exist in the Hamptons in February.

Right-Wing Jabrone of the story: This guy-- Snafu803: Of course they should get it. They work hard and everyone is jealous they get nicer things then the average person. Who wants to go to jones beach with all the drunks and city trash. I say close jones beach and give it all to the hamptons where it will be appreciated

Hamptons deer population, sick of everybody's shit too

 We've got helicopter noise ruining everyone's life. We've got Twitter accounts documenting rich people's problems (which aren't really problems at all). We've got blogs dedicated to calling out douchebags for their douchebaggery; we've got the term "citiots." And now...the deer are getting pissed off too.

And they're droppin' many suckas, one by one. According to this East Hampton Star report, the deer out there have turned kamikaze, diving out in front of cars left and right and disabling a 2008 Porshe driven by a person who uses an acronym for a first name.

Rule #376: If you use an acronym for your first name, or if you hyphenate your last name and you drive a Porche and it gets crushed by a deer...good!

A Dodge also got jacked up. One of five other car vs. deer incidents, according to the article. The story led off with a related police report about someone it was totally a deer who abandoned a Jeep SUV on the side of the road near Stephen Hands Path. When police arrived at the scene the Jeep had been used as a battering ram for utility poles and trees. They heard a rustling noise in the woods, as though the driver of the vehicle was escaping. No human suspect has been apprehended.

Lesson to take away: Deers are totally rippin' shit up out there!

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.