the epicenter of douchebag partying

as many regular readers know, i have an great affinity for the sunday new york times. each weekend i look forward with great anticipation to it's arrival. my favorite section varies from week to week. generally i will take apart the paper section by section and give cursory glances to each in order to root out the articles on topics of greatest interest to me, thereby determining which sections i will pour through first.

the first section that i read in this week's sunday times was the "sunday styles." i knew this immediately upon laying my wanton eyes upon it. there was no great churchillian deliberation, no wringing of hands, none of the typical illogical angst that i will often be overcome with when faced with multiple, divergent articles of interest. my gut pulled me to the sunday styles with the same unrelenting gravity that a heaping mound of nose candy pulls at lindsay hohan. (speaking of hohan, have you seen the story of her snorting coke and telling her friend "i'm going to new york to fuck jude law"? classy.)

all it took for me to be reeled in was to see this headline... "Pink Shirts Welcome"...with the below picture plastered beneath it.



this screamed douchebaggery. of course, i was hooked.

now granted, the sunday styles section is often my first choice, not because i'm a closeted gay, but because it is often laden with earth-shattering douchebaggery, what with it housing the weekly parade of douche that is the new york times wedding announcements.

but this shit takes the fucking cake.

the headline and accompanying picture were part of story on the newly opened bar martignetti, or "the netti", as it's often referred to by it's regulars, on broome st. in soho.

"the netti" is owned by the brothers martignetti, tom, 26, and anthony, 28. one of the first things that i derived from the article was that tom and anthony and the clientele that they cater too seem to derive much of their identity from what prestigious prep schools and colleges that they attended.

here's anthony..."i went to trinity, which is the epicenter of preppy partying in the northeast."

here's tom..."i went to st. andrews, which is the epicenter of preppy partying in europe."

i don't know about you, but being labeled a "preppy" translates to douche in my book. labeling yourself a "preppy" is douchebaggery on the "god i hope that they're sterile" level.

the patrons of "the netti" that were quoted in the article were equally revolting.

tom cleary, a 25 year old investment banker said..."For some people who see the pink shirts, they ostracize, they say it's uncool. But just because you went to Princeton doesn't mean you're a jerk."

no tom, it doesn't. but when you state that "you don't meet girls here you want to hook up with once, you meet girls here you want to hook up with multiple times", AND you are a princeton grad who wears a pink shirt, then you're a jerk. and a douche.

at "the netti" douchey lads like tom can expect to meet well-polished douchettes like clementine crawford, 25, who described "the netti" as a place where "women come looking for their future husbands."

somebody please firebomb this place.

seriously, just get one of the many empty bottles of johnny walker blue that are thrown out with each night's rubbish and make a molotov cocktail and throw it right in.

at the very least do it so that they'll go back to the upper east side when they belong. just get these hideous asshats the fuck out of MY downtown manhattan.

i'm about as capitalist as they come but goddamn do i sometimes wonder if karl marx wasn't on to something in maybe the slightest way. i wonder if marx was subject to wealthy, aristocratic douchebaggery such as this in his day. if he was then i'll bet that such douchebaggery was what inspired him to write his little manifesto.

on another note dealing with the same subject, a couple of people that i'm close to got glimpses inside the world of extreme wealth over the weekend, my friend jewcy being one. i have previously offered a brief chronicling of my relationship with jewcy here. jewcy was hired to dress up and play cinderella at a birthday party for some brat in the hamptons over the weekend. below is a pic, posted with her permission, that jewcy took for me wearing her little cinderella outfit. she is flashing a "shocker" with her gloved hand.



jewcy said that all the attendees of the party, including the brat of honor and all of her little snot-nosed brat friends, were about as detached from reality as humanly possible, blissfully and hopelessly locked away safely inside their bubble of privilege.

jewcy said that at one point the brat of honor posed the question, "who cleans your house for you?"

"pocahontas", she replied.

the other member of my inner sanctum to be touched by the hand of wealthy douchebaggery over the weekend was my roomie, the red rocket. the red rocket often accepts weekend work at high-end catering gigs, not because he needs the money but because the red rocket looks as though he would be the resulting offspring of a jude law/ryan seacrest love affair, thus his bartending skills at such events is often clamored for.

the rocket's gig was in greenwich, ct at some ridiculous estate for some banker's 50th birthday. for the occasion, to which there were 50 invitees, there was $750,000 worth of wine on hand. at one point the guest of honor offered the red rocket a glass of bordeaux from 1918, a glass of wine he figured to be worth around $500.

curious, i asked "how was it?"

"it didn't taste any different to me than a $10 bottle of wine," he replied. "i would have preferred a diet coke with my meal honestly."

aren't there starving people in this world that could be fed with the money pissed away on such extravagances?

i wish that i could have attended one of these parties. i relish rocking the privileged world of present and future douchebags. i don't know what i would have done, but i would have done something sweet, i can guarantee you that.

maybe i would have photographed my balls in advance, placed the photo in a frame and placed the frame above the hearth where all of the touching family photos are concentrated when nobody was looking.

that might cause a stir.

at some point, either later in the evening or in the days after the party, the framed photo of my freshly shorn scrote would be discovered.

"whose balls are these?"

a full-fledged investigation would be hatched on the spot, but by this point i would have disappeared into the night like a phantom. a self-ball-photographing phantom, but a phantom nonetheless.

and with this, shamelessly, symbolically and rather sadly, i would have a brief moment of peace.