The Summer in a Nutshell

OK, gentle readers, I've been noticably absent from the blogosphere since, well, before Memorial Day. And now, it's almost Labor Day and there's been so much going on this summer that to condense it into one post seems almost obscene. Well, tough. I'll do it anyway.

1) The Hamptons House Experience. We "bought" in Bridgehampton this year, instead of Westhampton, logic being that the guido riffraff that spent all of 2005's summer months doing cannonballs off our roof, chucking plastic lawn furniture into the pool, and fornicating in the hot tub would be priced out. Yes and no. The guido riffraff that lives on Staten Island with their parents and works in landscaping would be priced out, but the guido riffraff that lives in Murray Hill and works at Morgan Stanley would not be. I arrive at the house to find the same God-awful mixture of techno and reggaeton blaring from the speakers that you'd hear at 11th Avenue's worst clubs. The leader of the pack, reclining in a blow-up pool chair with a bottled blonde sporting a "bulls-eye" tattoo on his lap, seems to be playing deejay. I naively ask him to change genres of music to something more daytime-friendly but just as cheerful; maybe The Cure, Dire Straits, Journey, Jimmy Buffett and the like. He snidely grunts, "If you ask anyone here, they'd much prefer house and hip-hop to that shit." And ask I did, which started a "music mutiny" resulting in one of my mix CDs being played, and our deejay hopeful fist-pumping to Track 17 (Top Gun Anthem, no less). But I expected no less from one sporting fake Ray-Ban aviators.

2) World Cup Football. Sorry, I just can't call it "soccer" when it's the World Cup. The game that kids play during recess with their classmates is soccer. The World Cup is football.


Now, for the highlights. With that ballstomp (for video footage click here), Wayne Rooney catapulted well into the ranks of Future Husbands of Plain Jane Jones (don't worry, it's a rather long list). Bad sportsmanship makes for good television, and there's nothing more entertaining than some surly Englishman pounding some Portuguese pretty-boy in a rather tender spot. Other than that, it was very entertianing watching the tourists from flyover America get baffled as to why the English fans were singing "My Country 'Tis Of Thee". The end was arguably the worst part and the best part, depending on whether you could find unintentional humor in Guido Nation (most of whom have probably never been to Italy) and their display of Guidocentric pride after the conclusion of the final. I felt like Margaret Mead amongst the pygmies witnessing this display, which rivaled only the Puerto Rican Pride day parade in, well, you just have to be there to understand.

3) Those Snakes, That Plane. So it didn't do as well as we all expected or hoped, but that's the nature of cult movies. Its fan base is comprised of urban twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, some hipsters, some film geeks, some just curious as to witness Samuel L's next step into BadAssNess. Not since "Rocky Horror Picture Show" has moviegoing been as much as who is in the audience as what is on the screen. Hearing the entire cinema theater join Sam in saying "that line" was worth the price of admission itself. However, I doubt the experience would be the same in the flyover states. Sure, in college towns - the Madisons and the Ann Arbors and the Austins - would SOAP fever be at as high of a pitch, but in places like Grand Rapids, MI or Beaumont, TX, don't expect Mommy to drop her knitting needles to fork out $10 a pop to take her daughter to see a movie where snakes bite off passengers' private parts and a black man says "Fuck" a lot.

3) Not Another 9/11 Movie: I don't care if the only movie critic I trust, Napalm Jones, gave "World Trade Center" 4 "stars" (his ranking system doesn't use stars, but he gave it the equivalent). Nicholas Cage is a weepy nebish who makes James Blunt look like John Wayne, and I just can't see this movie (I do think "Great New Wonderful" would be good, though).

4) People Who Need To Die. OK, not seriously die, so no one should take this as an actual call to assassinate these people. But, for the sake of hyperbole:

-Jessica Simpson. Get over yourself. Your billboard in Times Square makes you look like some fake tanned sorority whore who just rolled out of someone else's bed with a legendary hangover obtained from a night of drinking too many Midori Sours. Since your MTV show got cancelled, and since your Oompa Loompa complexion robs you of any sex-symbol status (outside of, probably, the Bible Belt) you no longer provide us with unintentional comedy, hence your purpose on this earth has come to an end.

-Paris Hilton. It's called hubris, bitch, and you're reeking of it. You were entertaining when you dabbled into reality television, but when you start recording self-congratulatory "music" that, according to you, is, like, so good, it makes you cry, that should be God's call to raise his right hand and smite you.

-James Blunt. How someone could graduate from the most elite and rigorous military academy on the face of this earth (sorry, Westpoint) and turn out to be such a fruit basket is beyond me, even though it probably shouldn't be. The British government should apologize for turning such a scourge loose on the rest of the unknowing world's populace. He's apparently on a world tour, where he will sing all of his four singles, over and over again, until the world implodes as a result of the sheer sucktitude of his music. Reminds me of that South Park Brown Noise episode, except without the pooping.

I need to die, it's true

-Men Who Can't Get Over Their Ex Girlfriends. OK, this gets personal. I meet a guy. He's the first person I got really excited about since I moved here. Cute, entrepreneurial, 29, a bit short but his bright blue eyes made up for it. We met at a happy hour, then we corresponded for 2 weeks while he was on holiday in France. We had two great dates when he randomly emails me saying, "I need some time off from dating girls. I still have feelings for my ex-girlfriend who doesn't want to be with me. It's still breaking my heart." Cry me a river, Timberlake. Write some fruity love songs about it. Take some Zoloft. But don't try to sleep with me - not once, but twice - to get some tail inbetween weep sessions.

And that's it.