Thursday. It came so fast I don’t think anyone was truly ready for it. Even the most professional organizers don’t have much experience dealing with 3-day weekend scenarios in which Friday’s the day off. So after countless emails and what felt like hundreds of debates via MSN, someone in my Hamptons crew made the executive decision that we’d all leave for Long Island post-clubbing at 2:30 AM to avoid traffic. Making this plan possible were two sober drivers and a car service. The most amusing part of our time spent at Kiss & Fly (which wasn’t promoting any 4^th of July party but was just its normal, crowded, cone-filled self) remained that every time the word “Hamptons” came up you’d hear a resounding chorus of, “Yep! We’re leaving right after this!”

So apparently our ingenious idea of partying in the city and driving to Long Island post-club in the middle of the night was something other East-bound fun-seekers had thought of as well. In fact, the more people I spoke to, the more it became apparent that all of Kiss & Fly was heading to the Hamptons as soon as the party winded down. Instead of cruising down a desolate LIE, I realized we could very well be entering some sort of packed, party highway.

So much for avoiding the crowds.

After Kiss & Fly, it took awhile to get everyone regrouped in our ringleader’s SoHo apartment. He tried to sober people up with homemade pressed Paninis, a sandwich that’s easily up for grabs for the title of “best Panini of my life” since it was crisp, meaty and oozing with Dijon. When finally car-bound, we wrestled over who got to utilize the one pillow available in the backseat. Someone upfront with a potent chip craving instructed the driver to stop at a gas station, where they proceeded to buy one of every kind of potato chip known to man. Cape Cod – Doritos Nacho Flavor – Lays BBQ – Doritos Cooler Ranch and Cheetos were consequently passed around until everyone fell asleep sitting up, inhaling crumbs. When I startled from slumber, I realized it was because our car wheels were crunching gravel instead of gliding over pavement i.e. we’d arrived at our house’s driveway in the shortest Long Island travel experience of my life. If only I could be unconscious and high on snack food’s artificial flavorings for all such journeys…

As our group stumbled inside and proceeded to claim couches / beds / lawn chairs / sections of the floor, the head of our house received a message from producer friends interested in pitching a reality TV program / documentary centered around the life of a friend of ours in the house who is launching a noteworthy business venture in coming months. Their idea had been to come to the Hamptons for the long weekend to get some trial footage. The text they sent resembled something like:

“We’ve decided to come. See you all tomorrow. I hope there are enough beds for us and the camera crew.”

To which our first reaction was, “camera crew!?!!?!?” and our second reaction was, “beds!?!!??”

We wrote back that we hoped the camera crew would be okay with sleeping outdoors on lawn chairs, since every Hamptons house on holiday long weekends is PACKED, PACKED still being an understatement.

So we drifted to sleep plotting how to best avoid the oncoming camera and fake an accident in which all the necessary electrical equipment might get destroyed in the pool. The adventures to come…

Unreal!

Remember Dirt Nasty’s comedic video, posted last week, which pokes fun at everything eighties? The vid took Youtube junkies by storm, but now seems to be influencing real life fashion decisions.

I, for one, didn’t know whether to scream in delight or horror when I saw this young gentleman at Hampton’s Dune Saturday night wearing the gold chain a.k.a. Donkey Rope that Dirt Nasty wears and continuously references in his rap lyrics. Who wants to holler, “’I’m radical, T-shirt say party animal,” first? [Note chain similarity!]

Did our Dune dude wear the chain to the club as a joke? As a Simon Rex homage? As a reference to the video? Or is that really just what he considers a classy look to pick up broads on Long Island?

Who knows!

Also under the category of crazy, I felt it appropriate to exhibit this delightful photo. I’m deeming it the ultimate share house lifestyle photo of the month, complete with ‘guy passed out on couch.’

It’s never pretty the day after.

This week’s nightlife crazy award goes to the lovely narcoleptic boy I saw in Chelsea. The young lad managed to sleep through the night undisturbed, despite his bed being the rowdy, center floor table of Cain. The music wailed at deafening megawatts while drunken revelers celebrated Friday’s long anticipated arrival with stomps and cheers. Neither this, nor the bountiful leaps of the young man in red and white sneakers beside his head, woke our Rip Van Winkle.

Napping boy was evicted onto the 27^th street sidewalk around the same time my roommate and I voluntarily left. He was still half-asleep and seemed ready to spoon with the nearby dumpster. Having drank, danced, and hovered over his snoozing body for the past two hours at the adjacent table, I felt a kinship toward the fellow and tried to halt the trash can spooning process and help him into a cab.

Every time my roommate and I prompted the boy with questions like, “Where do you live?” and “Can you say your address?” he would only slur back crudities and bark that he wanted to be left alone. He consistently mumbled something about “calling Jim” and in clumsy slumber, immediately dropped his cell phone the moment he located it. Even after we retrieved and returned his phone, Rip Van Winkle continued to rudely shun our assistance. At this point, we gave up and scurried into a taxi ourselves, hoping this “Jim” character wasn’t an utter deadbeat and might eventually come to his friend’s rescue.

If you saw a sweet blonde boy sleeping with a trashcan on 27^th street this weekend, you now know the whole story.

The folks at SoHo hotspot Upstairs on Spring Street just refused to be discouraged by cop raids and the fact that their bar has been shut down for weeks. They continue to merrily sell bottles (raking in cash) and force patrons to walk downstairs to Café Bari should they want to purchase a drink. The latest development is that they’ve moved the DJ booth (previously on a folding table off to the side) into their empty bar space for kicks. Dynamic restructuring!

To me, these absurdities are further testament to how much New York partiers love this establishment. What other locale could get away with a seemingly-permanently closed main bar and upstairs-downstairs trips should you want to open a tab?

At this point, if they finally get their liquor license, the place might lose half its charm.

It’s common fact that a house party is only as good as its bar. It’s also a common fact that your house party will continue as long as liquor in any form is present.

Mathematical equation: Party longevity is in direct correlation with your liquor stash.

The above photo is noteworthy because it represents the most stocked, complete, casual house party bar I’ve ever seen. Visualize that this is just a section of one table and that there were three tables at this shindig.

Let’s observe what makes whoever put this spread of debauchery together, the party guru version of Yoda:

1. Every kind of liquor known to humans is represented on this table: We’ve got wine for the boring people, beer for the relaxed people and over a dozen bottles of vodka for the “I like my drinks to have a 40% proof” people. The mixers are countless.

2. One of the key ingredients that help people enjoying getting drunk, limes and lemons, which are often forgotten about at house soirees, are omnipresent.

3. This host is also prepared for imminent disaster – note the paper towels at the centerfold of his buffet.

4. There is also a very high stack of plastic cups at the bottom left-hand corner of our photo.

You think running out of ice or mixers kills a party?

Running out of cups will assassinate it faster.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I threw a 150 person holiday party and therefore thought that around 150 blue and red plastic Duane Reade cups would be enough.

Newsflash: The average house partygoer in a lost stream of drinking, dancing, and dishevelment, goes through at least 3 cups a night. So take your party expectancy, add 40 party crashers for good measure, and multiply that number by 4 for safety, and that’s the minimum number of cups you’ll need to get.

Since I sensed the foreboding cup crisis early in the evening, I spent a chunk of the party running around with a sharpie writing names on people’s plastic glasses in the vain hope that they might reuse their cups. These kinds of tactics only work with intelligent beings like kindergarten students, not with festering, drunk, adult New Yorkers. This exercise was useless.

Later, things got desperate and I found myself above the sink like a scullery maid washing plastic drinking vessels. The whole point of plastic stuff is that you never, ever, should have to wash them. I did my best and pawned off the second time around Duane Reade glasses like a watch peddler in Chinatown. Yes, the sanitary police should come and shoot me.

Learn from this photo folks. It’s only a matter of time before you’re the stressed out host sending champagne SOSes and ordering innocent people on ice runs. Preparation is the key.

Just when you’re trying to enjoy yourself at a space saucer like Mansion where the music’s intense, the disco lights are trauma-inducing and it takes twenty minutes to scale the six staircases to the bathroom, the club fades to black and a girl with butterflies in her cascading hair starts busting out some opera. Because isn’t this why we all go to clubs? To hear whacky versions of Verdi?

I’m confused.

I’ve known Mansion is into doing shows: Last time, I witnessed some electronic string quartet jam along with the DJ. Naturally, everyone remained bewildered about whether to continue dancing or to give the string instruments their full attention while sitting attentively feigning an interest in art. This is what I don’t get. Mansion is as clubby as a club gets. No amount of luxury renovation can kill the Crobar spirit that permanently haunts this space. Why the bouts of Lincoln Center?

Are they trying to pull a theater thing like The Box?

Are they trying to culture the club experience?

Do they consider such spectacles a selling point?

How much is this costing them on top of their frightening rent?

I’m thirsty for theater as much as the next overworked New Yorker, but is when I’m chilling with my fifth cocktail really the time I want it chucked in my face?

Next time at Mansion, I’ll consider packing both earplugs and opera glasses.

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

Once you’ve lived in New York five years, you think you’ve seen the maximum douchiness this city has to offer. Alas, no. This past weekend at Upstairs a promoter who’ll I leave nameless thought it would be fun to toss stacks of single dollar bills into the air like confetti to swirl down around his table every time they purchased a bottle of champagne. This occurred not once, but twice.

Patrons were unsure whether to cheer, drop to their knees to pick up the stray cash like peasants, or shield their drinks from the down-pouring greenery. While I did appreciate feeling like I was momentarily in a Cameron Crowe movie, this kind of uncalled for ostentatious behavior is hard to justify. Now if they were throwing hundreds and which I could actually keep, that would be a different story.

*Note: As a dedicated journalist, I tried to capture this horrific nightlife moment on my camera. Come to find out, taking action photos of swirling cash in a dark club without warning is extremely challenging. Needless to say I failed, but the image remains forever imprinted on my brain.

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

A Man Hole and Stolen Shoes…

On our last day in the jungles of Brazil, we were scheduled to attend a traditional ‘white party,’ hosted not at the marina, but at someone’s private home on the other side of the lakes outside the condominium. Since my friend the Argentine wanted to triple check that the party’s host (we’ll call him X) was okay with putting three foreigners he’d never met on his uber-exclusive list, we went to visit the house pre-lunch to schmooze and offer him gifts of Moet and Johnny Walker Blue Label (pre-purchased at Duty Free for this exact purpose).

Trucks of lighting equipment, toilets, and speakers surrounded the house which was already abuzz with pre-party activities. My roommate and I soaked up the sun by the lake and in mere moments one of X’s many employees came over to us with a bottle champagne and two flutes on a tray, eager to pour. We simultaneously screamed, “NO!” and waved our arms in rejection as if he were approaching us with a machine gun. Unintentionally, we almost scared him over the deck into the lake. We were still so hung-over from the night before and it wasn’t even 1 PM. Cocktails were not happening. We tried to apologize and eventually, the poor waiter slumped away confused.

X the host had no problem allowing three New Yorkers to join his party and hurriedly tried to make friends with us – an unforgettable interaction since he spoke zero English. The much larger issue was the weather. Unexpectedly, a light, tropical rain was spattering the pool and electrical equipment, which party-workers in the dozens were quickly transporting up a massive hill to X’s wrap around porch.

Would the party be cancelled?

NO – of course not, because things like that just don’t happen in Brazil. The festivities, which we supposed to start at eight, were delayed until around midnight. No big deal since that’s what time Brazilians eat dinner anyway. And by the time we arrived at eleven thirty, the entrance was already a mess.

Partygoers were herded in and out of metal gates and then separated into individual lines for men and women (creepy, because at time it felt more like being admitted to prison). IDs were handed through an elegant iron gate to two men in suits and shown to a woman with a binder, who individually checked everyone’s name and ID number. I leave you to imagine how long this process took…so long, in fact, that partiers already inside would sneak drinks over the walls and through the gates to their friends standing in line. Considerate.

Keeping things interesting was this large manhole amidst the entrance. It plunged seven feet deep and I saw at least one man disappear inside before being hauled out by his friends.

The Argentine explained to me that construction jobs in Brazil often go unfinished, and that workers had probably exposed the hole to fix some pipes and then just forgotten about it. We all made mental notes to avoid the man hole when leaving and drunk.

Inside, the party took place between the pool and the lake, beautiful and somehow more relaxing than the massive rave-filled tent parties we’d been to before.

All our worry about the host X not wanting Americans on his list proved to be unnecessary. We not only entered seamlessly, but X fell head-over-heels in love with my roommate. I’d see them zooming through the party, my roommate’s hand always tightly incased in his, X’s body guard always a few steps behind them.

“He’s decided I’m his girlfriend for the night,” my roommate explained helplessly. “We can’t talk, but he really wants to communicate with me. He’s been acting out stories.”

Acting out stories?

I was about to say, “Excuse me?” when X scurried up, took both my roommates hands and began this over-the-top pantomime that somewhat resembled charades. Between him pointing to himself, enacting a sobbing motion, then pointing to a woman across the room, then tracing a heart in the air, we disjointedly learned the story of his ex-girlfriend. The performance was cut short since X saw another one of his guests and jolted my roommate away until they were both swallowed by the crowd.

Since I’d been wearing heels for a week straight and knew this party would be taking place on damp grass (not conducive for stilettos) I’d brought flat sandals in my bag. Half way through the night, I changed and left my high heels behind the Jacuzzi near one of the bartenders. Security encircled the entire area so I figured my abandoned shoes in the grass would be fine.

I spent the majority of my evening conversing with a gorgeous Brazilian (the first man I’d met on the trip who spoke English) who, naturally, was a professional water-skier (what else would a gorgeous guy be in Brazil?). You’d think that because we spent most of our evening on the boardwalk away from the party that we wouldn’t be wasted. WRONG. Because you don’t need to go to the bar to get drinks in Brazil. Clearly they hire men with trays of vodka and Brazilian Redbull strapped to their chest to encircle the party at all times. So we probably consumed five drinks each without ever once having to move. Dangerous.

When we rejoined the party madness at five in the morning, my American guy friend bounced up to me and announced, “Dude, I’m not leaving tomorrow. There’s no way,” and bounced away again. (We were all scheduled on a mid-morning flight.) “Great,” I thought. Typical last night chaos.

Since my best girlfriend had been abducted and the boys had lost all sense of reason or responsibility, the water-skier took pity on me and offered to drive me home. Despite the fact that I’d checked on my shoes twice, when I came to recoup them at the end of the night they were gone.

?!!?!?!?!?!?

Thus ensued a pantomime story in the overly dramatic style I’d learned from our host in which I attempted to relay to the nearby security guard what had happened. Of course that failed miserably, so I went to the other side of the party and retrieved the water-skier, figuring he’d be nice enough to translate. Kindly, he snuck into the behind the bar with me and had a lengthy chat with security. He then turned to me:

“He said a bald man wearing jeans and a white t-shirt came and took your shoes five minutes ago.”

Me: “Someone who works here?”

“No, just some guy at the party.”

“And that’s the best description he can give us?” I surveyed the crowd: everyone was wearing white and 60% of the men had shaved heads.

Utterly perplexed I asked, “Why would a man want my gold platform heels?”

The water-skier shrugged, “Probably really drunk.”

Me: “So the security guard witnessed all this but didn’t stop him?”

“Maybe he thought he was your boyfriend.”

I shook my head trying to ingest the absurdity of the entire situation. “My shoes!” I muttered helplessly.

The water-skier just smiled, took my hand, and began leading me to the car, “Welcome to Brazil.”

Crazy.

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