Brown Publishing's Papers: The May 21 Recap

By which we parse that parrot cage lining people call "Dan's Papers" (but is really Brown Publishing's Papers, or Jimmy Finkelstein's News Communications Papers) for all its subtext and stupidity. Mostly stupidity.

This week Dan got lost in the Metropolitan Museum. He wandered around the hallowed halls of the museum trying to the remember the name of an artist a gracious girl had gone out of her way to give him.

Well, really, he creepily slithered up to her and made a subtly racist pass.

"You look like a hot little Oriental, tell me. What's your favorite painting in this here museum? I mean besides the artwork and weaponry of the heathen Chinee?" he asked. She rolled her eyes and told him. Then he asked her where it was. She told him. Then he asked what floor. She told him. Then he asked what room. She told him. Then he asked the dimensions of the room. She told him. Then he asked the cieling height. She told him. Then he asked where in the room it hung. She told him. Then he asked how to get there. She shot him.

Turns out, after much searching while he held in the blood of his bullet wound (he seriously went back downstairs to find her and asked her to write it down, and then went back upstairs) he stood in front of the all-too ellusive painting. His reaction? Meh.

He decided to stalk through the museum, find the girl once again, and actually tell her how underwhelmed he was by it. And the angels in heaven cried out: "Run, you poor volunteer at the Met, run like the wind!" And she did, because he couldn't find her. But he'd be back. Oh, he'd be back to tell her what he thought. And when he does, you can rest assured of her reaction. "Huh?" She'll say. Then she'll shoot him.

But back in Bridgehampton all sorts of things were going on not in the Hamptons. Barbara Walters was recovering from surgery, Alec Baldwin was boring swaths of graduates at NYU, Gwyneth Paltrow was consulting a raging drug addict about happy marriages, another novel came out about the Hamptons and shockingly it covers the wealth of the area, and Dan's due to read from his Meh-moir as soon as they find him wandering out from behind the Temple of Dendur.

He kept trying to reach his son's cell phone, but David Lion had his devil horn fingers pumping in the air and was too busy rocking it out to hair bands in Montauk. "What!" he yelled to his friend beside him. "My bone is singing?! Oh, hell yeah! Woo!"

For David Lion it was all the calm before the storm. Before the droves came like locusts and descended upon the Hamptons. It was a time to reflect. Get a few things done. Like empty out the bay with a hand pump. He was devising a new strategy to deal with the oil leak in the Gulf. He just couldn't understand why, when he sucked the bay through one end of the hose, and dumped it back into the bay on the other end, why oh why, didn't the bay drain already?

He gave up. And fell into the slumber of a king. He let his poors fill out the police blotter. They filled it with jokes. Incidents they'd seen at the supermarket. David slumbered. "andamememememe..." while his cell phone rang and rang.

Finally outside the Metropolitan Museum, lonely, tired and disoriented Dan closed his phone. That painting sucked, he thought. She sent me up there on purpose so she could do her Oriental hoo-doo and switch around the museum on me so I can't find my places to write. It's all a big joke to those slanty-eyed people, he huffed. Then he kicked a Central Park carriage horse in the ribs. The horse neighed in pain.

"Aw, knock it off," Dan gruffed. "You like the hustle and bustle of the city, you little bitch!"

Young Filmmaker Returns to His Roots

One of the reasons Hamptonyte Blog was launched is because its founders grew up near the Hamptons, studied in the Hamptons, worked in the Hamptons, became aspiring artists and writers in the Hamptons, and ultimately became fed up with the usual suspects and closed-door policies of many of the arts venues in the Hamptons. Mostly, Hamptonyte Blog has reported snarkily on the "cultural" happenings and "artistic" events going on, particularly in the summer. We're sorry...Countess LuAnn de Lesseps is not culture, and Alec Baldwin being cast to lead Equus is bleh. And fashion shows from fameballs gouging into their trust funds to live out some self-absorbed, creepy, Sex and The City fantasy is poo. We're calling it out every time.

This is not to say that Alec Baldwin doesn't have the right to participate in the Hamptons' artistic community, in fact, he's earned the right, as have many other celebrities we may goof on here. But we'll always be convinced that there is a well-spring of uncelebrated artistic talent with modern voices and important things to say about the world around us.

Meet Grant Curatola. He's representin' for the gangstas all across the world. Well, not really, he's a graduate of the Ross school, a fairly posh private school built in an idealic East Hampton setting surrounded by 140 acres of woodland. He's gone off to NYU and is studying film there, and there's an interesting article on him at Hamptons.com

Maybe Grant isn't the best example of a young artist struggling to build an audience and create a platform on the east end. After all, he did attend a posh private school and is now attending another posh private school. But Hamptonyte Blog has to admire that he seems to be trying to add a fresh voice to a very stale east end arts community. He could shoot his indie film anywhere, yet he returned to his old back yard. He's even considering submitting the film to the Hamptons Film Festival (which is a stroke-fest, but at least Grant's entry makes sense). We're not class warriors, after all. And we're keenly on the lookout for aspiring, unheralded artists who are trying to be seen, heard, read, discovered while working in the Hamptons. E-mail us if you know such a person who could use some ink. Or, in this case, some link.

Students Don't Get Mad Anymore, They Lawyer Up!

So it's not exactly storming the college president's office and hijacking the entire building circa 1969, but let's give a standing O to Stony Brook Southampton students who slapped a lawsuit against SBU's president and decider Samuel Stanley Jr. for allegedly cutting the undergraduate program at the Southampton campus because he felt like it.

The lawsuit has the support of local politicians. The students are hoping the lawsuit will cause enough distance and irritation for Stanley to reconsider his move to pull out of Southampton and leave the school vulnerable to the carousing wiles of the two graduate programs slated to remain, one of which is the very unruly and unpredictable Creative Writing program. The message? Don't abandon the campus to a bunch of drunks!

I'm sorry, were you expecting Kent State? These are students majoring in "environmental sustainability," people, cut them some slack.

Cynthia Rowley to Montauk: "Shut Up And Be Chic!"

Here's a little vapid fashion wrap to thrust us officially into the deep (or should we say shallow?) end of summertime in the Hamptons.

Cynthia Rowley is opening a boutique shop in Montauk this summer. Fisherman with chum guts under your nails? Go wash up! Surfer not completely sure if you've showered lately? Put this on! Ornery barfly at Salovars or the Lucky Saloon? Now you can lament life in style!

We can't think of a worse place to put a shop that will sell wares from a designer who holds a Perry Ellis Award, and neither could Rowley. In an attempt to maintain the drinking town's austere, alcoholic, and depressed image, Rowly is simply putting a sign that says "Shop" on the awning. And she's placing it next to the Memory Motel. And she's hosting a summer concert series at the Memory. So, you know...treat her like a little sister, Montauk, even is she is trying to dress you up like her dolls and make you all fabulous.

In other news, Hamptons.com did 22-year-old apple-cheeked and well-connected fashion designer Lauren Gabrielson no favors by pretty much printing Gabrielson's press release wholesale on their web site. Gabrielson, if you've never heard of her, is Ginny Hilfiger's hand-crafted puppet who came to life and launched her own line. That's her on the right in the picture above. Note Ginny's hand is in position to operate Lauren's mouth and moveable parts. Anyway, now Ginny is helping her open a boutique in Sag Harbor called? Drum roll, please....LaurenG. Stunningly, Lauren Gabrielson's PR team has really glowing things to say about Lauren Gabrielson.

"Gabrielson is a 22-year-old designer ready to make her mark on the industry."

"Gabrielson's trademark style has an influence of vintage lingerie, mixing femininity with soft, silky colors (which is masculinity?)"

Welcome Gabrielson at her open-house event on June 5 at 4 p.m., and get a chance to operate the human-size puppet yourself! The address is 112 Hampton Street, on the corner of Route 114 and Jermain Avenue. And godspeed, Lauren Gabrielson, 22, and ready to make your mark. Godspeed.

The Worst. Press Release. Ever.

There will probably be others, and perhaps we'll hold a contest, but for now...This is. The worst. Press release. Ever.
I heart PRLog. I heart them forever, for posting this release and distributing it over their wires and actually allowing people to accidentally read it. It brightens even the most cantankerous of dispositions.
In short, TSW World Entertainment Network has a CEO. Tariq Alexander. Tariq Alexander has a couple friends. Namely, Joan and George Hornig. Joan, a bored housewife who whittles away the remains of her day making jewelry and using her husband's money to foist it on people, invited Tariq Alexander to their home in the Hamptons. They also invited on recommendation, some young wannabe performers to showcase their talent. Tariq Alexander, CEO of TSW (which stands for "The System Within," a business name fraught with meaning to Tariq Alexander and only to Tariq Alexander) wrote a press release about the party. Then he solicits your business at the end of it. And that's the news.
The worst. Press release. Ever.

Get Your Snob On!

Some blogs know us better than we know ourselves. They're in our heads. Earlier this week, suck-up blog Societe Perrier, which is French for "Slavery Will Return," posted this little snippet about a soon-to-open restaurant/lounge/club/nirvana/impervious-to-God's-wrath-sanctuary in East Hampton, and somehow we're already feeling the coming change to our lives because of it.

"With less than 2 weeks until Memorial Day weekend, everyone is starting to buckle down and decide how they will spend their weekends out east." We are?
"The question on my mind is what will Derek and Daniel do?" Who?
"Whether you're parking or docking, once you are inside it is the same crazy brunch you've come to know and love." Crazy brunch I've come to know and love? It's brunch, people. When I think brunch, I don't think crazy, I think, run the other way because someone's trying to get me to wear boat-shoes.

Derek and Daniel turn out to be Derek and Daniel Koch. Ahhhh. Of course! Derek and Daniel Koch, yeah I still have no clue. But they've teamed up with Michael Wainstein. You know, Michael Wainstein? Nothing? Yeah, me neither. But he climbs into the hyperbolic chamber with Societe Perrier.

"Being on the water this year, we're setting sail with an even bigger concept and bringing the yacht party ashore; whether they arrive by land or by sea, we're sure they're going to have a unique experience," says Michael Wainstein.

And that in no way sounds like a canned quote from a press release. Congrats, Societe Perrier, you've succeeded in writing a post that actually makes people hope the SS Koch Twins sail a bit too close to starboard of a band of Somali pirates.

Brown Publishing's Papers: The May 14 Recap

By which we parse that parrot cage lining people call "Dan's Papers" (but is really Brown Publishing's Papers, or Jimmy Finkelstein's News Communications Papers) for all its subtext and stupidity. Mostly stupidity.

"Put your little hand in mine/There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...

OK campers! Rise and shine, and don't forget your booties, cuz' it's coooolld out there today! It's cold out there every day, what is this Miami Beach?"

This week Dan was short-staffed. David Lion kept running around the newsroom waving a No. 2 pencil in the air, swearing that he'd snapped it in half the night before. And now, having written the same exact Police Blotter as the May 7 issue, he was convinced he was having the same day over and over. Ned Ryerson, an old acquaintance from high school, Needlenose Ned, Ned the Head, kept running up to him on Main St. in East Hampton.

"Don't tell me you don't remember him, dad, cause he sure as heckfire remembers you!" Lion said.

But Dan knew the boy must be reeling from the effects of living beneath telephone lines his whole life. 'Imagine life without telephone poles' Dan thought. Gnom, gnom, gnom... Then he went back to Googling himself to find out what sort of nasty things were being said about him and his bankrupt newspaper. "I'm not gonna live by their rules any more..." he heard Lion mutter to himself before he headed out of the office. 'The boy's unhinged,' he thought. No matter.

The Southampton Press reports inaccurately and their commenters are all doo-doo heads, Dan wrote in his splash article "Eavesdropping." It was a re-post of all the hatred and celebration the commenters at 27East.com were unleashing upon news of the coming demise of Brown Publishing's Papers. But they would have no such satisfaction today. No sir. Brown Publishing's Papers is celebrating their 50th and nobody is going to crash that party. They're here to stay! The office rejoiced. Dan rejoiced. David Lion kidnapped a groundhog and drove off a cliff. Edward R. Murrow rattled his chains and moaned. The flames tickled his elbows.

But there was work to be done. Blond sock-puppet and News12 famehound Gina Glickman had to schlep all the way out to Tribeca for a story on the film festival. Unlike the glorified YouTube channel known as the Hamptons Film Festival, this one's real. And full of celebrities! So Glickman simply had to be there. And had to insert herself into the writing as much as possible without making people wonder if she was even there. It's a technique that crosses over to her "hit" series on News12 Long Island, "Stalker In The Hamptons," or whatever. Most viewers who watch that show, or read her columns think the important part is what the celebrities are saying, or what they're in attendance for. Perhaps even what they're promoting. Nuh-uh. No way. What's important is that we all know Gina Glickman actually, really spoke to these people! In person! She even stood next to them! And danced at their parties! Maybe even one will ask her on a date! Oh Gina, don't you know that your columns are the destroyer of worlds?

Anyway, back at the top of the cliff, David Lion clawed his way up the steep incline and sniffled. He coughed. Then he hurried back to the newsroom to write about his snifflecough and see if it appeared again in Brown Publishing's Papers. It did! Why is this happening?! he screamed. Then he figured since there's no tomorrow, he might as well write a column telling fat and ugly people to suck it up and lose weight or quit their bitching and leave the Hamptons for good. That also appeared in the newspaper. He covered his ears. He couldn't stop that polka that kept playing in his head. Strike up the music/the band has begun/the Pennsylvania Polka...

Dan strode past his son and shook his head. Then he sat down to answer a cease and desist letter from the State of New Jersey. "Stop claiming Jon Bon Jovi," the letter stated. Never. He'd never relent. He'd never give up Jon Bon Jovi. He's from East Hampton and I don't care what anyone says, he wrote back. Then he counted Madonna's bushes and put that in his South O' the Highway column. Marcia Gay Harden is going to act again! And in a show about the Hamptons! She hasn't done that since Pollack. Also, Sarah Jessica Parker is treating Sex and the City 2 like it's a matter of national security, shooting fake scenes, and threatening cast and crew members with things she has no legal authority to enforce, and kidnapping everyone's moms until the movie comes out, because when this movie comes out everyone needs to be mutually shocked and mystified by its complex and enigmatic ending. "There's simply too much at stake. If people get any sort of sneak peak at this vapid apologia for self-aggrandisement and entitlement, grandma will simply have to die," she said. Also, Joy Behar ate. Alec Baldwin did Alec Baldwin stuff. Steven Spielberg needed to take media blackout tips from Sarah Jessica Parker, and Christie Brinkley totally didn't slide into the operator's chair for a quick face-change when her daughter went under the knife to stop looking like her father. Come on, you know she did. All in all, the column was its usual success at linking people who call the Hamptons their 4th home.

Then Dan tossed out New Jersey's playa-hatin' letter, only to reveal beneath it more hate-mail from Patchogue. "Damn, son," he yelled, "all these places are gettin' all up in ma grill, like furreals, son, don't be drinkin' that hatorade, Patchogue, I love my homies in the gitto, don't be skerred." Patchogue wants Brown Publishing's Papers to know that they're not friends. Well, they won't be friends until Dan takes back all the mean things he's said about Patchogue. Like completely ignoring their press releases because Alec Baldwin wasn't going to be there. And for saying Patchogue is stabby and likes to stab immigrants, so they're immigrant stabby. So Dan apologized, with his fingers crossed behind his back. Good thing Pete Lutz wrote in to Dan while high on blood thinners to brighten Dan's day! Yay, Pete's back. And he's laying in a hospital bed with a "tempter" wiggling her hips in front of him, but the fat, ugly nurses keep coming in to take his tempter and he wants out! Also Times Square has a bomber, the fishing industry is oily, he needs all sorts of work done on his house and no poors to do it, the earth is always turning, stewardesses aren't RN's anymore and can't get any guys but fat ones, and they only speak one language, and the damn rich people are moaning about sex offenders when they should be getting them jobs. Ahhhh! he yelled.

"Ahhhh!" David Lion yelled back. He was still covering his ears.

"Can you all keep it down!" TJ Clemente screamed. He was trying to finish his article on ticks. There's just so many ticks in the Hamptons. This is true. And there's just so much Lymes Disease. Everyone has it. It's like a rite of passage now. We don't have Lymes Disease, and when we get pulled over by cops in East Hampton they know we're not from there. Oh, there's just too much Lymes Disease everywhere you go in the Hamptons.

So there was Dan, answering his mail. There was TJ pulling a Lymesy tick off his arm. And there was Gina Glickman, twirling her hair with the end of her pencil. It's what pencils are made for. She rested her chin on her hand and stared dreamy-eyed into the photo of Puff Daddy. Why won't he return my calls? she wondered. Didn't he get the joke when I pinned that doll with the severed head under his windshield wiper? I thought it was funny. He did too, I'm sure. He's just busy planning his white party. Hmmm. What should I wear to his white party?

And then there was Pete Lutz. Poor, forgotten Pete Lutz. The patterns on the ceiling above him were conspiring to strangle him with his IV tubes. He knew it. Plus, the jello had long since stopped asking permission from the carrots for everything it did. And his sheets are being lazy again. The whole world is gone to hell, he thought. It's like you can't even be a giraffe anymore.