Promoters: the species of social leeches endlessly harassing us for our free time. I love writing about these New York party organizers because I find their tactics (mass text messaging, Evites, mass emails, personalized emails, facebook harassment, casual texts, guilt-trip texts, phone solicitation) endlessly fascinating. I thought I’d seen it all. I thought no promoter text message could have the power to shock me.

I was wrong.

I wrote a past article about fromoters (deluded friends who harbor the illusion they’re a hot city promoter, doing this dirty job voluntarily, sans pay). I’d like to introduce another category: The no-moter. This is the promoter you’ve said no to a thousand times. The promoter you perhaps never even went out with in the first place. Who you perhaps don’t even know! How they even have your number remains an enigma. Yet they text you daily anyway.

I’m doing a [insert famous sports team] celebrity event tonight with [insert semi-celebrity name] and [insert a rapper’s name] performing at [Marquee / Tenjune] with [insert DJ you’ve never heard of] from San Tropez. Say my name@door, tons of bottlezz. Are you coming?

You’d think after sending a target messages like this for 367 days with no response EVER, the promoter might remove the prey from their phone’s intricate mailing system and save everyone the AT&T charge of ten cents. But no. Promoter lists are kind of like a tramp stamp. They’re with you for life. And don’t bother texting the no-moter about getting yourself removed from his mailing, because not even he knows how to remove you. His phone’s hooked up to computers which are hooked up to interns which are hooked up to facebook which relay some technical code which births crazy digital mailing lists that only an IT guy from India could understand. Finding a needle in a haystack while drunk and blindfolded would take less time than locating your name in this jumbled promotional spamming method.

I’d like to preface the following incident by reiterating that no-motors are not bad people.

They’re just people you don’t know. I, like many, happen to have very close friends who promote. My loyalties are therefore tied. The ‘no’ answer (or rather non-response) isn’t because I think I’m too good to go out with you, I just have a prior allegiance to people I actually know.

In an iPhone mishap in which I meant to call a friend of mine we’ll call Tim, I accidently called no-motor Tim. It took a solid five minutes of me positing ‘why does your voice sound so different?’ and ‘why do you keep harping about Pink Elephant?’ until I realized I wasn’t talking to my friend Tim, but Tim the promoter I never go out with. I explained to no-motor Tim in the nicest was possible that I’d actually contacted him by mistake, yet he still interpreted my phone call as me finally coming around and craving to go out with him that night.

I’ve only met no-motor Tim a handful of times, but he seems to take the constant rejection of promoter existence more personally than his younger, hotter promoter counterparts. While I’d definitely be open to going out with him, partying doesn’t pay me. My two jobs pay me. So I need to be energized and lucid which translates to only go out occasionally. And when you’re going out occasionally, chances are you’re going to want to spend it with your friends.

Despite my best efforts at clarification, no-motor Tim insisted that I was making an appearance at his party that night, which of course I didn’t because I had plans with my friend Tim, the person I’d actually meant to call. No-motor Tim consequently got angry.

The promotional text I got the next day:

MB, I heard from a girl that you gained weight. I’m deleting you from my phone list. I’m sorry. Clubs want me with skinny girls only.

Woah! Low blow!

Will he actually delete me from whatever jumbled promotional spamming method he uses?

At this point, I could only be so lucky.

Yesterday I found myself the only girl in a room full of caveman-like boys, who intently watched the All Star game with beer in hand. Most were still in corporate attire, but ties had been loosened and shirts un-cuffed. I sort of felt like I was inside one of those National Geographic specials. I was the explorer in a cute tan outfit with a camouflage hardhat and a necklace of binoculars observing a watering hole of man beasts alone in their natural habitat. I thought I might get a sneak peak into the inner workings of the male mind and come out of the situation with the inside skinny on what guys talk about when they’re alone (How much they trash talk their girlfriends? What they’re really think about during your heart to heart talks? How to decipher the male grunt?).

Sadly, this didn’t happen. I had to prop my head up with pillows just to keep myself from passing out in boredom. All they talked about was their jobs, the economy, the stock market, the baseball game, the players’ stats and personal histories and this website called Where the Hell is Matt.

Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzzz.

So I started asking questions about game to keep myself awake like, “Why is that player so much larger than that player?” and “Why are they all wearing jerseys from different teams?” and screaming, “This is so confusing!” At which point the host locked me in his bedroom with his Guitar Hero so they could watch in peace. Anyway…this entire boy experience reminded me of an apartment party I attended a few weeks ago, a party pad I’ve titled, “Where Good Boys Go When They Die.”

Observe below, the ultimate, New York men’s entertainment loft. If this isn’t boy heaven, I don’t know what is:

Pool, foosball, plasma. (Yes, there’s darts in the corner as well)

Funky, old-style arcade games. Some as primitive as packman, others where you have to blow stuff up wearing a cool mask.

Three more plasma screens (watching all sporting events, in every time zone in the world, all at once, is a must). A pinball machine (The Sopranos, you even get to shoot the ball between Dr. Melfi’s legs) and another arcade game in which you hunt grizzly bears.

Beer on tap.

Beer with its own fridge.

Grub! Grub! Grub! Lot’s of grub! (And a plasma screen.)

part 2 here

According to Long Island royalty, Hamptons clubs are strictly B-list since born-and-bred Hamptoners only attend private parties and tastefully catered charity events. My source divulged that real blue book natives even consider restaurants a step down, since frequenting one implies you don’t have a chef.

Our house party shindig involved a $3,500 alcohol delivery from the local store, shrimp skewers, insalata caprese, potato salad, steak, charred hot dogs and gourmet burgers (marinated in a French sauce before being grilled to perfection) for around sixty people. These BBQ socials tend to take place during the day. It’s therefore customary to take your guests out for a ride on your boat (located just down the lawn, on your private dock, of course).

The boys in our house had purchased a powerboat mere days before, meaning no one really knew how to use it yet. Our excursions so far had involved

1) ‘Christening’ i.e. swigging Crystal on the boat while it was parked at the dock

2) Driving the boat at full speed in reckless U-turns in a frightening adult version of Disney Land’s tea cup ride (yes, people were screaming ‘whee’ and getting splashed)

3) Trying to anchor on a nearby beach before realizing we didn’t have an anchor. One of our friends did hop on shore however to offer some of his Rose Brut to local crab fisherman

4) Boarding the boat the next day, launching off, and noticing that the battery was dead. While this was somewhat disappointing, no one really seemed to care. We fortuitously floated to our neighbors dock, tied up, and jovially left the boat at their house with no explanation, no note, and no concerns

5) Motoring over a sandbar, oops (the bay’s both shallow and confusing, especially while intoxicated) and making our motor sound like a grunting old man on his death bed

Despite these minor troubles, overall the toy was a huge success. Guests were taken for a ride in shifts as we played oh-so-mature water games like ‘drive directly into a nearby wave,’ ‘speed and halt,’ and ‘wipeout.’ I’m sure the locals in their canoes and kayaks really appreciated our wake.

A pleasant yet less active element of the house party involved (shocker!) actually getting to talk to people. It’s hard to assemble a meaningful conversation in the thumping madness of a club. In the Hamptons however, you don’t just meet up with your posse for drinks at 11 in the evening and put them in a cab at 3 AM. You live with your entourage, bonding on a much deeper level than you would in the city (example: “Who clogged the toilet in downstairs bathroom #3?” “Who farted in my bathrobe?”)
For me, the entire Hamptons experience and house party existed as a modern day version of The Other Boleyn Girl – a renaissance court in which the activity is the pursuit of leisure, pleasure and power.

Everyone’s trapped in a large estate or share house (much like the royal courts of France and England) with the intention of relaxing while simultaneously battling for the best living quarters, rooms, and beds. If you’re the guest in someone else’s home, the home’s owner in many ways assumes the role of king. The guests seek his permissions, whether it’s taking the new jet skis out for a spin or inviting five more people to sleep at the castle.

Socially, at least in the Hamptons, not that much has changed in past centuries. The men are just playing touch football instead of jousting, and the women are wearing bikinis instead of ball gowns.

part 1 here

About the chef: Our house had a sour-puss chef called M who hated the cruel circumstances he was forced to cook in. M was previously our host’s mother’s cook, before that, he cooked for two presidents. He now found himself in a houseful of forty drunk twenty-year-old and immature thirty-year-olds who’d happily eat Doritos indefinitely and didn’t know the difference between fennel and watercress. Most of the heated arguments centered around the fact that he’d prepare dinner to be served at 9 PM and no one would sit down until 11 PM. If cooking is your life’s passion and food needs to be served hot, I understand how this could be frustrating. M was also fielding questions 24-7 like:

Will you teach my how to make soufflé?

Have you seen my baggie of weed? Oh, are you making brownies? Because if you’re using it for that, that’s cool.

M will you make us Margaritas? I’ll get the blender. (Question asked at 10 AM)

That quiche you made for breakfast was better than the orgasm I had last night. I loved the bacon bits.

Can I lick the bowl?

(Drunk girl) Thank you SOOOOOO much. Can I give you a hug?

(Me watching oven timer) Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, cookies!

Can you call the liquor store and order fifteen more crates of Rose? Just tell them we’re averaging 23 bottles of champagne a night.

Your egg salad is seriously kicks ass, man.

Are you married?

Do shots with us! M, you have to do shots with us!

So upon further analysis, it didn’t surprise me at all that the chef was one of the crabbiest humans I’d ever met who scowled at our compliments as if we’d tossed dog poo at him. On the contrary, this guy deserves some sort of culinary award for cooking in extremely immature circumstances.

About Dune: Night number two we traveled to Dune, the nightclub I wrote about in disdain last year. Nothing’s changed.

Unlike Pink, Dune doesn’t boast an outdoor space. And while at Pink tables are a foot and a half apart, at Dune, they’re six inches apart. I’ve started calling Dune the sweat shop, because in essence, that’s all it is: A sauna in which you can never get comfortable and you’re constantly battling the person next to you for elbow space. The music brings a whole new meaning to the word cheesy.

The basic ambiance – the ropes, shells, tacky ceiling – all looks like a pirate theme in a dive bar. And I know we’ve gone beyond hoping for elegance in Hamptons clubs, but couldn’t we at least hope for something more than creaky, saw dusty, wood floors?

From my limited experience, Dune also seems to have the sloppiest partiers. Maybe patrons let themselves get too drunk to walk because they know at Dune falling down is an impossibility: The tightly packed crowd will hold you upright. One girl in the very center of the club swayed and spun around on top of a banquet like an unbalanced swivel chair, a dangerous accident waiting to happen.

Later, she poured an entire flute of champagne onto a boy (ex-boyfriend’s?) head below. He proceeded to wail and shake the champagne out of his long hair much like a wet dog shakes himself off after a swim.

So if you get off on that kind of thing at $5,000 a table with an extreme crowd and rowdy fun, Dune might be the place for you. Personally, I prefer to be somewhere a lot less sweaty.

We stayed a good forty-five minutes before piling back into our black vans and heading toward the house. There was a lot to prepare for since on Sunday we’d be hosting the house’s very first BBQ / house party of the summer.

To be continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com