"The days when Sag Harbor was known as a writers' colony are over," says a local estate agent. "They can't afford the rent any more." Indeed, to rent a three-bedroom cottage from Memorial Day to Labor Day (the period that constitutes the summer in America) now costs at least $75,000.

Part of the problem is that the book-publishing business is in dire straits...

According to one New Yorker staffer, "It is becoming increasingly tough to score a decent advance, even as a household name."

Luckily Toby Young was able to use a tiny fraction of his movie money to secure a spot on the front lines of the Hamptons to bring this news to the people of the UK. Meanwhile Adam Gopnik can't even get $250K for his next book of essays on raising children like the French! Where's the justice?

[Independent UK. Toby Young's most notable contribution to American culture was actually just to play party host to our own Ian Spiegelman.]

Jill and daughter.

Jill and her "gay husband" (Barf.) Correction: There is a gay husband, and he was there, but this is not him. This is her actual hubby.

The ladies who lunch at the second most expensive restaurant.

"Later on I'm going parasailing."

"I'm still heeeere."

Pool partay!

It's about balls.

She's not married and has a job, and yet she's still a housewife.

Ghosts of guests.

“I do have clients who worked at Bear Stearns—husband and wife both worked there,” says Lynda Ireland of Prudential Douglas Elliman. “They’d finally found a beautiful home they loved, and they bought it.” The house is in Bridgehampton, in the $2 million range. “Now they may have to sell it. They’ve told me it’s not that they’re afraid of being foreclosed upon. But they’re frightened. They have a big apartment in New York, and they feel they have to choose between New York and out here—they can’t carry both. And they have small children, so they want to be in New York for the kids. It’s very sad.”

We can relate! Since our own recent budget problems, we have been forced to choose between pawning our complete Showtime Pizza animatronic puppet collection or giving up our controlling stake in Dreamworks.

But actually the $20 million and up sector of the market is still doing just fine, thank you, thanks mostly to a man who everyone thought was Tiger Woods but who turned out to be a different guy named "Tiger" and then turned out to perhaps be a shadowy LLC that may actually belong to Tiger Woods. Also Sag Harbor is filled with 100-foot mega-yachts (everything is so mega!), movie stars and James Frey are still hanging out in Amagansett, and various hermits and bloggers have a "colony" in Montauk. Some rich people even have (ironic?) double-wide trailers!

In conclusion, the market is still crashing but we haven't hit the bottom yet but maybe there won't even be a bottom because of Barack Obama but on the other hand the wealthy may just begin burning their giant houses to the ground, which will actually be pretty awesome.

"HamptonsUndercover offers, through its online marketplace, the ability for members to share rides, find luxury accommodations, check out weather and traffic conditions, or browse Hampton offerings—-whether they be private tennis lessons, extra dinner reservations, or singles looking for a date.

"Membership is free however all users must subscribe and create a profile to have access to any of the site's unique features. The exclusive nature of the site allows for an intimate community feeling and ensures secure networking as HamptonsUndercover is monitored daily.

A synagogue in Westhampton Beach asked permission to put up an eruv. An eruv is a symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to do stuff during Shabbos. It is literally a tiny wire that can go up along telephone poles or other failry unobtrusive places. Naturally, the residents of Westhampton want no part of this terrible Jewish plot.

Some Westhampton Beach gentile residents oppose the eruv because they fear it will attract more Orthodox Jews to the area.

Now the Post doesn't like "name" or "quote" anyone, and there's no evidence that they did any "reporting," but we're still more tha willing to buy the story. Because everyone hates the Jews again!

Like Cal State Long Beach psych professor Kevin MacDonald, who wrote a three-volume "critique of Judaism as a 'group evolutionary strategy'" that threatens "Europeans." MacDonald has a plan: ban Jews from college and up their taxes. Certain others have taken MacDonald's views to heart and recommended more efficient options of dealing with The Jewish Question. These political mavericks have a crazy plan to "exterminate" all the Jewish people! Though MacDonald is pretty sure the Jews just made up the Nazis to get people to be nice to them.

God it sucks when professors prove frothing anti-academia nutcases right.

Alec is a hypocritical sneak, posting Rick Murphy's column online without mentioning his real motivations, which have nothing to do with racism. Rick exposed Baldwin for a fool during his embarrassing East Hampton political debut, publishing articles in the Times and other publications, pointing out gaping factual flaws in Baldwin's error packed, pompous, bloviating newspaper letters.

Baldwin fans the flames of this incident as the showpiece flack of the East Hampton Democrats, who despise Rick, a brilliant investigative journalist, who makes life unbearable, exposing their arrogant lack of ethics, now under investigation for serious charges of corruption and mismanagement of public funds.

Alec, get the facts straight! Rick supports Hillary Clinton and Bill. He doesn't support a local party headed by shameful failure Bill McGintee, a Republican who conveniently switched parties.

As for charges of racism, Rick has expressed profound regret on the front page of The Independent for grave misjudgment in what was intended as a satirical column. He'll be apologizing for a very long time. His award winning humor column, Low Tidings, is loved by a many for its provocative edge. Even on a mild day, it isn't for the fainthearted. But he is no racist. Everyone from Mother Teresa, to Anna Nicole Smith gets their turn. His column has the joyous poke in the eye spirit of that freckled little fuck who lived next door when you were growing up. You loved him. You hated him. Wonder what ever became of him? Reader, I married him. The hardest part of this whole sorry episode for him, is hearing angry callers and realizing he's caused much pain.

Now it's Alec's turn to come clean for hiding his real motivation. As for a Public Person doing things they come to regret, I suggest Alec go to youtube and search "Alec Baldwin Answering Machine Rant to His Daughter." Note to Alec: calling any woman a pig is not only abusive, it's sexism, just another form of racism.

And no one asked me to write this. So don't grab at that pathetic straw Alec.

Bernard Legeros, the former Crispo employee, is eligible for parole in 2010, but got married to this chick while in prison and she wanted to "bond on the molecular level by having a baby" and so she had some conjugal visits and then immediately divorced him after giving birth? Also she says his brother shot her cat with an arrow! And she says that Legeros is also sleeping with the wife of the guy who, in 2001, bludgeoned Hamptons millionaire Ted Ammon to death.

These people are complete loons.

Crispo himself is not currently in prison (and beat the rap for ordering Legeros to shoot the kid back in the 80s). Plus he got some weird light sentence for the whole would-be lawyer-kid kidnapping thing.

And yet from time to time, we hear ugly stories about him, though they've decreased in frequency recently. (He is aging—he's somewhere near 60 at this point.) From what we hear, he cruises for guys online or on the phone sex lines; once a pal of ours showed up at his house and Crispo said "Do you know who I am? Are you scared?" Creepy. To which our friend said "I'm not scared of you but I'm sure not coming in anyway."

Other gays report weekend-long meth and crack-fueled sex parties of beyond-Caligulan degradation. In fact, a trip to Crispo's apartment is usually the number-one indicator that someone is on his way to rehab. Those with stories are encouraged to email them in; confidentiality assured.

'80S FIEND IN TUG OF LOVE [NY Post]

Tonight is Kol Nidre; tomorrow, the Jews of the world apologize to anyone who will listen about all their conniving heeb behavior during the previous lunar year. On Saturday, city and state machers (and anyone who shelled out $150 for the honor of dovening next to Gov. Spitzer) can be found self-flagellating at Temple Emanu-El. Observant lesbians will be found beating their hoary bosoms at the prestigious Park Slope Jewish Center. Hipster Jews in pink tights will like pray or whatever at The Shul of New York, the Mr. Black of synagogues. So in the spirit of atonement and definitely wanting to end up in the Book of Life , here's a list of individuals to whom I'd like to apologize.

Their street can be thought of as the Further Lane of Bellport. On it, every house is beautiful and large, by local standards—which is to say, each house is smaller and more dignified than those built to the standards that guide the East Hampton egotists nearly 50 miles further east.

Eric Shawn, the Fox News correspondent and UN-hater, lives across the street. Not too far away lives Lucy Danziger, the editor of Self. And while William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, lives in a massive white clapboard affair on the beach, the Newhouses live a little inland. (In our next installment, we'll be visiting some of those neighbors!) The Newhouses make up for their lack of coastline with their mega-lot.

On one lot sits the house, flanked by magnolias and Japanese maples. There is a little garden, chicken-wired off. On another lot is Victoria Newhouse's studio. On the third sits the guest house.

The erection of the copper-clad studio was as large a scandal as Bellport has seen in recent years. The town's conservative architecture review board were wary of the gleam and the modern design. Victoria is an architecture critic and historian. And by now, the copper has faded into a rich autumnal brown and the angular architecture melds nicely with the late-summer foliage.

i just wanted to thank you for makin us look like a bunch of fuckin idiots and assholes...next time you come to our town dont even bother talkin to us...no one will ever understand..look at all the comments people wrote about us..all that bullshit that they have no clue about...most of us there have full time jobs..while your sittin there takin our picture i had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket..people get the wrong idea and its people like you that make us hate city fuckers even more...we wake up every day give it all weve got and then some and its good enough for us but never good enough for assholes who write comments about us like that...next time get a real good picture of us and about our lifes..not with your fuckin camera either...take a mental picture of what it just might be like out here because we dont sit in an office and push pens around and get paid millions...like i said its good enough for us and we dont blow our parents money away...our mommy and daddy arent rich we make it on our own and support ourselves...not everyone out here is rich..thats the summer assholes...you see why we hate you fuckers so damn much..and as far as that fts tattoo..it was in memory of my best friend and she happend to pass away in a car crash...most of us in that picture have gone through more shit in our lives by the time we were ten then most adults do in a lifetime....quote me all you want word for word on your fuckin website...i dont have to defend me and my friends...maybe well never drive a fuckin mercedes or anything like that...but were all makin it the best we can and so far its workin because what we have out here is more important than money...its called honesty loyalty trust and respect...if you have that anything you need in life will come your way...even when you have a couple of pennies and a ball of lint and thats it...we are all there for each other till the end....and thats something money will never fuckin buy...thats the mentality out here

To us, the Hamptons appeared as wild and untamed as they must have to Lion Gardiner when he "settled" the area in 1635. For us, after two whole weekends of work and discovery, the Hamptons bramble had resolved itself into a series of dichotomies. We knew what South of the Highway meant, both literally and sociologically. As opposed, you know, to North of the Highway. We began to see shades of social standing painted on those individuals who lived in Bridge or East Hampton as opposed to South. We knew Richard Johnson lived in the Hampton Bays, adamantly not in the Hamptons. We knew where to be seen, even if we weren't usually seen there. We had witnessed the scions of the dynastic Hamptons families blotto'd and some of the nation's wealthiest individuals with the sheen of sweat and vodka and cream covering their unnaturally smooth faces. Our wrists were rubbed raw by VIP bracelets. Aging idol Billy Joel had crooned to us and Donald Trump had handily dismissed us. Deb Schoeneman had let us into her home and Peggy Siegel had harangued us in a crowded restaurant.

The Hamptons are a perpetual and elongated Meatpacking district on one hand, and a media confab get-a-way on the other, a Monopoly board on the marsh. Now we understand the local code and we know not to ask about money or jobs or plastic surgery or age or where someone lived or whether they rented or if their phone number was a 631 or 283, a 287 or 329. The best questions should not be asked.

As we began to comprehend the Hamptons more, we understood less and less, until finally the East End shimmered in sharp and unknowable detail, an optical illusion. Now that the summer is almost over, when we close our eyes we see Main Street, we see Brooke Shields, we see our one-time landlord Brenda. And though these are things we never want to see again, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

In the front, there's a handy editor's note and a few legends. They include a useful guide to college abbreviations.

Harvard is denoted with a lone H; Yale a Y. Lesser known schools like Hamilton are abbreviated to Ham. But the more important page is the list of clubs.
.
The only letter that really really matters here is the M, which stands for the Maidstone Club. Robert and Alexandra Gardiner Creel Goulet (who own, with Robert Gardiner, Gardiner's Island) are members. Jay McInerney and Anne Hearst aren't. He's a member of the less illustrious Southampton Bathing Corporation.

The most useful service the book provides is endless hours of mocking the names the rich choose to bestow upon their scions—Preston Ford, Megan Storrs, Devon Vance, Sloane Elizabeth, Preston Ford and Brooke Sutton (this all from one well-known Bridgehampton family)—and their houses—Bittersweet, El Paraiso, Maya, Nid de Papillon.

And take the Mortimers, the clan from whose overactive loins Tinsley spilled. Or really, whose loins she married into. Trying to untangle the complex Mortimer web is difficult because they keep on naming their kids the same names. Seriously people, there are more names than Grafton and Richard and Peter! It does, however, explain how ridiculous nicknames like Topper and Tipper pop up.

There a group of young men in striped shirts and Pumas; On the other side of the velvet rope, lurk the young men in t-shirts with gold block letters and woolen skicaps. In one corner, wearing flared jeans, fedoras at rakish angles and boxy bright white shoes are the Ambiguously Gay Long Island Crew. In the center of it all, the D.J. is playing an Organica remix of Billie Holiday's version of "Summertime" and shouting, "Can you dig it? Can you DIG it?"

We hit Star Room a bit before midnight on Saturday night. Turning off the highway into the parking lot of the Star Room is to enter into an eternal sunshine of the mindless spotlight. Suburbans, Escalades and Mercedes' pull in to the blinding parking lot and spit out girls in short, short dresses. Also one guy in a pink silk ascot. Depending on the size and affect of the group, they'll wait anywhere from zero to 20 minutes for the privilege of entering the Star Room. The extraordinarily kind and lovely head of security, a gentleman by the name of Gino, was nice enough to lead us inside.

The Star Room is actually made up of two rooms but no stars. The bouncer did say that Adrian Grenier had stopped by some days earlier. Bottles of champagne sat in melted ice on the low tables surrounding it. On the floor itself—a floor the camera's flash exposes as stained and scuzzy—couples ground. It was all very high school and a bit innocent.

In the main room, a two-story barn-like structure, the crowd was more dense and a bit older. Here the mental calculus of the ladies seemed written on their made-up faces. Booze, libido, and fiduciary considerations determined how close she would cuddle and how much he could touch. The upstairs is the VIP area—a place, in the words of the bouncer, where ladies often "experiment" with each other—just like Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulaski!

It was cold out. Soon the drunken patrons would climb behind the wheel of their shiny new cars. How many fenders would be dented that night? It's a Catch-22, isn't it. To get there you have to drive and to stay there you have to drink.

East Hampton has its share of year-round locals, 12.5% of whom live below the poverty line, according to the census. The kids were remarkably temperate about the New York summer invasion. "We don't have that many problems with them. They leave us alone and we leave them alone," said Justin. "But if someone comes up here and acts all 'gangster' well then there'll be a problem," said the soft-spoken girl next to him.

One of the kids, who actually turned out to be in his late 20s, asked us where we were headed next. "Wainscott," we said. He wanted a ride to Montauk. "Hitchhike," we suggested.

Leaning close to us he said, "Naw, man, that's not safe around here. I don't know if you're gay but there's a lot of them around here. You'll get in a car and all of a sudden you'll be lost and a hand is on your leg." Whoa, we thought; this is about to get awkward. Then we wondered: Why was a 29-year-old hanging out with 13-year-olds anyway?

One of the burger competitors (and sharemate with Leventhal) was Mo Koyfman, who kind of serves as a chaperone to College Humor on behalf of their boss, Barry Diller. It's weird that he was grilling cheeseburgers, since he's supposedly kosher. Anyway, he lost.

Schoeneman even brought her gay albino housecleaner Marco, who cleaned during the party. Momofuku's David Chang was there with Frankie's Spuntino owner Frank Falcinelli as a judge, as was Peter Meehan of the Times. Ken Friedman of the Spotted Pig showed up too late to judge anything. This girl I went to N.Y.U. with was there and now she is married to Bob Vila's son, Chris. That made me feel old. [Ed. Note: Jesus Christ, you're like 12, Josh.]

That goofy-looking actor from 30 Rock, Lonny Ross, was there with his cute girlfriend. And though the party was first reported on New York magazine's Grub Street, its editor Josh Ozersky was noticeably absent, or not-invited. Chalk that up to the fact that David Chang and a few of the other attendees absolutely hate him.

[Photo: Ricky Van Veen/Flickr]

In the opposite corner Star Jones was being filmed, her face dancing a jig of a thousand expressions, each one seeming more grotesque than the one before it.

"Donald, Donald," called out a man on the far side of the velvet rope. Donald approached warily. The man extended his hand. His face was a marshland of splotchy red, and looked like it had been lifted no more than an hour ago. Instead of eyebrows, he had two smears of white cream. "It's me, Abe Wallach!"

Wallach was Trump's head of acquisitions for more than ten years before retiring. "Abe?" Trump said, incredulously, "I don't recognize you! You look 25 years younger." Trump turned to the security guy: "Let him in." The security man said," Sorry, Mr. Trump, but he needs a wristband." Trump turned to face the guard, his eyes somehow narrowing further. "You know who I am, don't you?" he hissed. "I do, sir. But he still needs a wristband." Trump unhooked the rope from its stand and in went Abe. Trump continued to insist, somewhat tactlessly, how he could not recognize Wallach. "Ha, that's what retirement will do," said Wallach, laughing uneasily.

When we finally got a hold of Trump he was hot and annoyed. "''Scuse me, Mr. Trump. Let's talk about a woman we both know well. Do you feel any sense of victory now that Rosie is out of The View?" He assessed for a split second before saying, "I don't want to talk about Rosie. She's a sleazebag, what more is there to say? I'm not going to talk about it."

Sensing our Trumpian moment was passing, we asked, "Ok, let's talk about ponies." "No," he said, moving on, "you're done." His newest wife, Melania, shot us a sympathetic look as she trailed her husband. We shot her one straight back, since she was the one that had to let him bed her routinely.

We never got to ask him about how he freaked out at that golf tournament last weekend—we hear he was partnered with some teenager, and near the end of the match, thinks went south and Trump stomped off and got in his car and just left. But now we'll never know for sure!

In the big tent for the poorer, the plastic surgery was a lot worse than even Mr. Wallach's. On the other hand, the crowd was pleasingly rowdy. In the far end, two "rocker dudes" were standing around. One had a choker on. They told us they were in the band Rammstein; obviously we didn't believe them. So we gave them a hard time. Who would pose as a German industrial band? Later it turned out they actually were in Rammstein! Oops, our bad.

As the Polo match wound down, Rocco DiSpirito could be seen wandering around dispirited and lonely. The ponies were being loaded back into their trailers; who would load Rocco into his trailer? The plastic faces and breasts of the polo goers sagged in the heat. Only Donald Trump, his hair an island of placidity, seemed unfazed. He took the mic and began to speak. Through the loudspeakers and echoing across the now empty field, the voice of Trump echoed, "Trump, trump, trump, trump, trump."

Burt Randolph Sugar, the legendary boxing raconteur, was calling the game. He did so ineptly but with great passion. To his immediate left sat James Lipton, the sycophantic host of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio. A gnarled misshapen demon of a man, Lipton brushed aside a child's request for an autograph with a wave of his hand. He was too busy eating hot dogs, his face distorted by the meat, his dark feral eyes gleaming misanthropically into the field of play. As the writers went up to bat, Sugar read from a roster. "Mort Zuckerman, the pitcher and owner of the Daily News...." or "Rick Leventhal, from FOX news..." When the artists went up to bat, the introductions went something like, "Jeffrey Meizlik's sculpts in bronze. Some say his work deals with issues of life and death..."

On the writers squad, Zuckerman was the star and star pitcher. His teammates gathered around him, patting him on his back after every inning, though he gave up countless runs. Ad-man and egotist Donny Deutsch, who later played second base, and the New Yorker's Ken Auletta paid homage to the master.

I timidly patted the man on his back as well, and asked him for any words of advice he might have for Jared Kushner, whose New York Observer is still trudging down that long road towards profit. "In the publishing game," Zuckerman said, "the definition of genius is lasting five minutes longer than the other guy."

We nodded because we wanted him to think we understood; also because we thought we understood. Only later, during the 6th inning, while the writers were on their way to a crushing defeat, did we realize we didn't know really know what Mort meant. While we were pondering, the very athletic Daily News-man Mike Lupica, over at second base, dove to catch a line drive, a nimbus of dirt enveloping him momentarily until out of the cloud, his glove appeared: Ball firmly in mitt.

It was too late. Perhaps if Jerry Della Femina (along with Mort, he is one of the Four Horsemen of the Hamptons) or Giuliani had showed up for the writers, things would have ended up differently. Or maybe it was that Alec Baldwin was a no-show for the artists that tipped the game in their favor. Either way, Zuckerman's looked defeated as the two teams lined up for the post-game handshakes. This time, it seemed, the other guy had lasted five minutes longer.

In five hours, 12 guests were scheduled to show up for a barbecue — 12 whose ranks included several names of the boldface variety: Vera Wang, the bridal-gown designer; Patricia Duff, the political fund-raiser and bridal-gown wearer; Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd singer and bass player; Robert Wilson, the experimental theater director; and Sarah Jones, who wrote and starred in the Tony Award-winning play "Bridge and Tunnel."

And in the "possibly" category: Kelsey Grammer (known for his role as television's Frasier, he of the tossed salads and scrambled eggs) and his wife, Camille. "Kelsey hasn't told me yes or no for sure yet," Mrs. Bancroft said with a sigh. "I called him again yesterday to check, and some man answered, and I waited on hold for five minutes. I could try him again, but at a certain point, dignity kind of kicks in."

A Hamptons Barbecue, Aglow With Star Power [NYT]

Shark Hunter of 'Jaws' Fame Is Back as an Old Man of the Sea [NYT]

Reading fell into four major categories. Since we went on a Sunday, nearly every towel was accompanied by a copy of the New York Times. With the exception of Dick here, the Week in Review went mostly untouched, as did the Metro section. People went deep on Sunday Styles. But, as one man told us, you can only read the Sunday Times once. (True, but it takes like 20 whole minutes!) After the Times, most people turned to the peculiar genre of magazines devoted solely to living in the Hamptons. Per capita, the Hamptons probably has more magazine titles per reader then anywhere else. You have Hamptons, Hamptons Style, Dan's Hamptons Paper, Social Life, and Hamptons Cottage and Gardens, to name just the big ones. The value of these magazines, as far as we could tell, is that they are full of pictures of the very people who are reading them.

But for those who find the Times or themselves too boring, there was always Harry Potter. And for those who thought themselves above J.K. Rowling's masterpiece, there was Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns," which let others know that the reader was a serious person with intellectual heft and a liberal interest in "minorities."

And then there were those for whom no books were needed. The beach is why God made BlackBerries.

The party was north of the highway. That should have been our first sign that we weren't going to see anyone famous. In the car ride over, Brenda was telling us how she was so European and how she spoke 7 languages (Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French and English). Also that her ex-boyfriend looked just like Bon Jovi. Jon Bon Jovi, we assumed.

At one point we pulled up to a different house crowded with cars. "Let's go here!" said Brenda. But I didn't want to miss Fred's, so we kept trudging onwards. When we finally found the house, we had to walk five minutes in pitch black with only the pulsating beat of house music to guide us. The house itself was quite large. In the living room there was a large folksy mural that said "Sanctuary." Underneath it, a couple of dudes sat on the couch, smoking a bowl. In the backyard, older couples humped each other on deck chairs and a DJ spun records off his Dell laptop.

Back inside, we scouted out the house. There were no books anywhere. Instead, we found an Emmy from the Martha Stewart show. Also a very pretty girl who wasn't wearing many clothes. "How old are you?" we asked. "Twenty-one," she said inaccurately. Her name was Gennylee and throughout the night, gentlemen in their middle ages would approach her, whispering something into her ear. Usually she'd just smile and walk off.

We headed into the backyard. Around the firepit in the back were a number of teens in various stages of stupor. Bobby, a kid from East Hampton, pointed us to the woods. "Check out the bed, man. It's crazy." We headed into the woods. He was right. Nestled in the pines, Fred the lawyer had built a gazebo with a canopy bed. A multi-colored fake fur blanket covered it and mosquito netting enclosed the love nest. We lay down. It felt bad.

Our guide Brenda came upon a 21-year-old kid in a t-shirt. "Oh my god," she whispered as the two of them headed upstairs, "he wants me to adjust his neck." Bored, we went down to the basement. It had that musty carpet smell. We saw a blue and white blur. It looked like it was humping. It was a pair of seersucker slacks, on a man, making Hamptons love to some poor girl.

We couldn't find Brenda and her boy. They weren't on the dance floor, where a East Hampton art dealer wore a t-shirt reading, "I fucked your girlfriend." He was dancing with Lu Berry, a swimsuit designer. Brenda wasn't in the gazebo bed, as it had since been occupied by another couple. Brenda wasn't smoking weed in the kitchen. Brenda wasn't doing coke in the bathroom.

Brenda did come out of a bedroom. "He offered me sex in exchange for a massage," she said. Did she cut that deal? She said she hadn't. We weren't sure we believed her.

Page Six honcho Richard Johnson, who resides in Hampton Bays, was among the first to arrive. He looked like he had just walked out of a screening of "The Sorrow and the Pity." "That was the longest beheading scene ever!" he said. Johnson was accompanied by his hobbledehoy son and a svelte blond nanny who wasn't much older but was suspiciously beautiful. Richard sat in the backyard garden, which is kind of like the kiddie table at the seder.

A table of beautiful Argentinean models sat at table 17. Among them was Delfina Blaquier, the wife of star polo player Ignacio "Nacho" Figuera, the polo player. They hadn't seen the movie either. But we all agreed to say that it was "action-packed."

D.Scho was chatting with Sandra Ripert, the saucy wife of Le Bernardin's Eric Ripert. "Oh my God, he was calling me during the whole movie!" Sandra said. "He's in Aspen being a judge for 'Top Chef!'" Talk turned to the breakup of "Top Chef" hostess Padma Lakshmi and Salman Rushdie. "I knew the marriage was on the rocks," Sandra said. "We sat next to them during the Beard dinner. Padma was all like, 'What party are we going to hit up next?' and Salman said, 'We're not going to any parties. It's late!'"

Inside, Rick and Kathy Hilton had some salmon. And then we saw Julia Allison approach the table. But as the blur of cleavage and brown hair got closer, we realized it wasn't her at all, but instead her somewhat classier and more successful doppleganger, ABC News correspondent Gigi Stone. She was trying to work up the nerve to say something to Zucker. He was chatting with some old people a few tables away. "I know we have a special connection," she said. "But he is the boss of my rival station." They don't call them stations anymore though. Her breasts were large and overwhelming and pushed up. They would have been at Zucker's eye level.

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The first order of business was finding our house. Despite our plea to the masses on this site, we had to rely on Craigslist to find a place to stay. This might be a good time to mention that that is almost always a bad idea. The posting said, "charming unique farmhouse" or something similar. There were four pictures with the listing including a palatial pool, a bathroom filled with candles and an elegant albeit modest bedroom. It was in Southampton and it only cost 300 dollars. Whatever. We were there.

Upon entering the house one couldn't help but notice the preponderance of candles and native American-themed artifacts in the living room. Though the East End is, technically, home of an Indian reservation, these were of a Southwestern sort and their plenitude bespoke a craziness on the part of the innkeeper. Amethysts, crystals, a tower of wicker baskets sitting atop Russell Simmons's self help book, a quiver of arrows hanging over the fireplace. A small brown dog barked at me. Somewhere Craig Newmark let out a malevolent cackle.

My son's roommate Sheff was working the BFP of the week in the Hamptons on Saturday night. Nobody knows what disease it was for, but anyway, Nicholson was there and at one point he wanders over to a fairly deserted bar being tended by Sheff. (Basically Sheff is pouring wine and fetching kegs and stuff.)
Nicholson says:"Workin' hard kid. I can see."
Sheff nods.
"So, lemme try a glass of that wine."
Sheff pours the wine. Nicholson walks away. Stops. Takes a sip of it. Stands for a moment and turns back to Sheff.
"Listen kid," he begins. "I don't wanna tell you how to do your job or anything, but this is the pussyest glass of wine I ever had."