Chace, back when he was a nubile young man.Photo:
The jellyfish are still attacking, and are now being counterattacked with salt-water-and-vinegar spritzers, which, incidentally, helps when they have that not-so-fresh feeling. But the threat of getting stung did not put a damper on Chace Crawford’s 23rd-birthday bash — which was attended by Blake Lively, Penn Badgely, Lydia Hearst, and, apparently, Emily Brill — or all these other fancy parties. Meanwhile, while Obama summered in Afghanistan, John McCain held fund-raisers here Saturday at Ron Perelman’s and Bill and Phyllis Mack’s before heading to Maine to do more of the same. (But Caroline Kennedy may host an Obama fund-raiser August 16 at Ross Bleckner’s place.)
Aretha Franklin left the Hamptons for Detroit by bus after spending two weeks here, partying at Russell Simmons’s Art for Life fund-raiser but not once going to the beach! She’ll be back August 23 to play a benefit for the Ross School. Speaking of Art for Life, even though an economic slump is cramping the Hamptons fund-raiser scene this summer, the party still erected expensive, pole-free tents. But likely with fewer illegal immigrants, who are allegedly being cracked down upon here and harassed outside the 7-11 by anti-immigration types while they wait for work. In other labor-abuse news, putting together the all-important September and October issues is keeping the drones at the women’s magazines from getting on the Jitney early on Fridays.
Howard Stern and his fiancée Beth Ostrosky are so tall that “cameramen had to hold their equipment at steep angles” to shoot them at a crowded party. Judy Licht gathered up all the tickets incurred by guests who parked on the street during a brunch event at her spread — not just to graciously pay them, but to file a class-action lawsuit against the mass ticketing. Don’t feel too badly for cheated-on divorcée Christie Brinkley because she owns eighteen properties out here as part of an $80 mil real-estate portfolio, and she’ll probably be getting some nice TV gigs too.
There’s a new, Seinfeld- and Zuckerman-funded baseball team here, the Hamptons Whalers, made up of top college talent and patterning itself after the Cape Cod Baseball League, which has sent many players to the pros. The numbingly ubiquitous Jill Zarin (and that countess, too) will be among the guests at a Water Mill benefit this Friday for orphans worldwide.
The co-founder of Nine West shoes will aim to sell Villa Maria, a fifteen-acre estate and former nunnery in Water Mill, for more than $100 million. Guys, you can upgrade your Hamptons housing this summer if you don’t mind sexually pleasing a woman and her probably-gay boyfriend near West Hampton.
Isn’t Dan Rattiner so funny with this boldly satirical faux-report on rocket-packing from one benefit to another? All laugh! And if you can endure this video of some Eurobrat named Luigi Tadini planning his birthday party at Montauk’s repulsively trendy Surf Lodge, you are then allowed to sedate him and submerge him in a tub of killer jellyfish.
