At the Shore with Ken and Billy

It’s a great time of year to go to the Jersey shore--the weather is warm even if the ocean is REALLY cold. The summer-only places are open, but the crowds haven’t yet materialized, so it’s a great time to ride a bike, walk on the beach, or even work in the yard without an audience of passers-by. And, by going in June, you miss all the dreadful Memorial Day Weekend traffic. Sitting on the Garden State Parkway when it’s doing its famous impersonation of a parking lot isn’t much fun.

Because I like a good (and sometimes even bad) small town festival as much as the next festival manager, I did some research to see what was going on in Cape May County over the weekend. It’s good to have some adventures to recount over drinks at Fred’s Tavern.

There was the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church Greek Festival in Egg Harbor Twp. It offered Greek favorites like gyros, loukoumades—I had to look it up—they're fried Greek dough wads--and baklava as well as “non-edible treats like live music”.

I had a Greek roommate in college, and no, I do not mean that in an innuendo laden sort of way. George’s recently-off-the-boat family would come to visit and while the women cooked and cleaned, the men would watch the Washington Redskins on television, yelling at the TV in Greek.

The only thing I could understand was “Sonny Jergensen”, the name of the former Redskins QB. Because I was afraid of running into one of George’s relatives and still not knowing anything about the 1970s Redskins’ offense, the Greek Festival seemed like a bad idea.

Then there was Beardfest at the Paradise Lakes Campground in Hammonton.

Beardfest isn’t a convention of women who hang out with closeted gay men who are trying to make the world think that they know more about the Redskins’ offense than they do about window treatments. Instead, it’s “celebration of self-expression, music and art” with workshops in such hot topics as: "primitive arrow making", "basketry with invasive plants", and "reflective listening and conflict transformation" and if that doesn’t work, "close combat self-defense". With a graphic scheme that’s a cross between Peter Maxx and Beavis and Butthead, it was WAY too hippy trippy for me. And it was $60 for a day pass, fried Greek dough wads not included.  Uh, I’ll pass.

Then there was the Sea Isle City Beer Festival. This event featured eighty craft beers in the parking lot of Kix McNultly’s, a mega bar in Sea Isle City that claims to be the home of the “World's Best Parking Lot Bar”. I’m not exactly sure what a parking lot bar is, but apparently the one at Kix McNultly’s is top drawer.

In addition to unlimited beer tasting, the event featured a “jumbo outdoor game area” and “craft vendors”, the hallmark of a so-bad-it’s-good festival.  Fortunately, the bridge is out between Avalon and Sea Isle City, and this made a trip to check out the world’s best parking lot bar much less attractive. I hope I didn’t miss the World’s Best Parking Lot Greek dough wads! Oh well, my loss!

Then there was the first ever Rockabilly Uprising in Historic Smithville, NJ.

This hot time in the old town is a celebration of rockabilly music and “pinup culture”. Who knew that rockabillies were so downtrodden that an uprising was in the cards? I have no idea what “pinup culture” might be, but there was going to be a pinup contest.  I don’t know if that meant that contestants were to dress up like pinups, or bring pinups that they’d been storing for years and years between their mattresses and box springs. What’s your guess? The event featured music by Dr. Void and the Death Machine and Full Blown Cherry.  No word on the fried Greek dough wads. Who needs fried Greek dough wads when there is the possibility of even a partially blown cherry?

Nevertheless, the uprising did not make the cut.
 

Farther afield were the Mullica Hill Armadillo Extravaganza, The Millville Executive Airport Flight Attendant Jamboree, and the Exit 42 Road Kill Cook-Off Sponsored by Jersey Fresh!  Alas, maybe next year!

My friend Pam and I opted for the West Cape May Strawberry Festival.

Sponsored by the West Cape May Business Association, the Strawberry Festival has become an eagerly anticipated event each spring. Strawberries abound in both edible and non-edible form.

I wasn’t sure what to make of strawberries in non-edible form but I was eagerly anticipating them.

We were fortunate to find Pope-worthy parking by a wedding store. We walked a block or two to a root beer truck and turned left into the festival. The festival was arranged along two sides of a wide street lined on both sides with white EZ-Up tents. 

Some people looked as if they were selling antiques or having a garage sale, and there were artists selling non-juried crafts too. A few exhibitors had decorated their booths with strawberry stuff but that was the exception rather than the rule. There were plenty of people about—obviously it’s a popular festival.

There even was a scab show, with someone selling paintings on a fence behind the official show. 

When we arrived, someone with an amplified steel drum On the Way to Cape May, the national anthem of summer on the shore at the bottom of New Jersey.  The song is quite an ear worm.

The food vendors were going all in on the strawberry business. There were strawberry shortcakes and smoothies and crepes and even strawberry kabobs.

And, if you wanted your strawberries still on the hoof, there were two cute twentysomethings selling strawberry plants in pots and hanging baskets. The berry ranchers and I agreed that supermarket strawberries look great and have a shelf life measured in years, but don’t taste very much like strawberries. Presumably the variety of berries they were selling actually taste like something.

Pam asked me if I’d seen the booth where the woman was selling photos of Barbie. Ack! How did I miss that? It was on the other side of the street from me.  I made a dash for the booth faster than you can say Barbie’s Dream House.

That’s when I met artist (and art teacher) Lisa Varuolo.

Lisa and her husband were selling antique glassware, collectibles, some jewelry, vintage postcards, and other stuff that public sale registers refer to as “articles too numerous to mention”.  And there, in the midst of the this and the that, were her kick-ass Barbie photos.  As we might say at State College Presbyterian Church, she was hiding her light under a bushel basket.

Lisa is a Barbie aficionado. And since she was a kid, she’s been photographing her dolls. She told me her father used to admonish her to at least get the shots focused. Lisa listened to her father (at least about that, we didn’t go into full blown therapy mode) and takes great photos.

She dresses up mint condition Barbies in mint condition vintage Barbie couture and shoots them in shore situations. At the beach, and so on.  She’s even taken them to Asbury Park for shots outside the famous Stone Pony bar.

Lisa takes a sweet photo. And she has a flair for dressing Barbie. I don’t think one of her Barbies has ever even had to think about saying “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” As you would expect, Lisa knows ALL about Barbie. I mentioned Malibu Barbie and she was as familiar with her as she would have been with a sorority sister.

Did I mention that her photos are great?!

And she’s keen on Ken too. In fact, she’s even been to a Ken-vention. I’d never even heard of a Ken-vention, but apparently there have been one or two of these gatherings where Ken fans come together to sell stuff to each other, hang out, chew the fat, talk about Barbie and Ken’s relationship (or perhaps Ken and Allan's relationship), and delight in all things Ken.

Lisa told me that the original Ken came with flocked hair, which had a tendency to rub off.

Chemotherapy Ken!

I’m not sure how amused Lisa was, but I thought it was funny.

I bet these boys know Earring Magic Ken, one of Ken's more tragic incarnations.

But seriously, don't you think Ken looks like Jared Kushner?

I can only imagine what Lisa could have done with the huge pie of naked GI Joes I saw at that garage sale last year. Perhaps she’d have dressed them in some of Ken’s old Speedos and created a Pride Weekend flash mob in front of the Fudge Kitchen? Or perhaps it would have been a “there’s something about a man in uniform” themed tableau in front of Stone Harbor’s Stephen C. Ludlum Post 331 of the American Legion?

I mentioned to Lisa that one of the things I didn’t like about South Jersey was that it didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor about itself. Here, finally, was someone who provided more than her share of it.

If there was anything I didn’t like her work, it was that it was too small. They’d make great, poster sized works. Skip the snapshots and 8 by 10s, let’s see it in 24 by 36! It’s beach house art that I’d actually like.

Lisa isn’t retired yet from teaching school kids art (I'm sure she's great at it, btw), but when she is, I hope she goes all in on the Barbie photos, if just for a summer to see how they sell. Lisa’s work is available at several antique malls in the Cape May/Stone Harbor/Avalon non-metro area. Run—even in those Barbie high heels—to get some soon!

Pam and I visited at a booth where they were promoting Cape May Stage, an professional Equity theatre just around the block. I’d heard that they put on some great shows, but I’d never been. I know about Earring Magic Ken, but I didn’t get the theatre gene. (Truly!) The people behind the counter were super friendly, as the folks doing outreach at these events are supposed to be.

The show currently running was Billy Bishop Goes to War, about Billy Bishop, Canada’s leading Ace from WWI.  A musical. In a historic setting. About pilots in uniform. What’s not to like?! The poster noted that “The music is comprised of martial arts, barracks room ditties, Kiplingesque tunes of glory, Gilbert and Sullivan-like patter songs and a bitter brew of Brecht-Weill.”

They had me at “barracks room ditties”.

I thought of the photo of my father and the other fly boys in his barracks. They looked like guys who knew some ditties.

We made a quick detour to the box office and bought tickets.

The third big hit of the Strawberry Festival was Lyle Turner and his player piano. Lyle restores pianos and also works on piano-mation, nickelodeons, and pump piano.  He had a seriously gorgeous mission/prairie style piano that he actually toted out to the festival. How crazy is that! The piano was fitted with an electronic player mechanism. In no time at all we were listening to the theme from Chariots of Fire.  Lyle was tickling the ivories with the élan of Van Cliburn, Liberace, and Ferrante and Teicher all piano-rolled into one. We had a player piano when I was a kid, and I have to admit, I think they’re pretty darned cool.

Today, the software isn’t on a roll of paper made by the QRS Corporation (formerly of Elkhart, Indiana) but is part of a web based system that can make your piano the life of the party even if you are a social leper. Lyle demonstrated a few tunes for us, and frankly, I’d buy one of his pianos if I ever hit the PowerBall jackpot.

After a quick post-Strawberry Festival lunch, we spent Saturday afternoon at the annual Stone Harbor Garden Club Home tour, a fundraiser for the Garden Club. It’s nice to know that there still are garden clubs—haven’t most been rebranded as Master Gardeners?  The Garden Club is responsible for lots of flowers around town, so its good works are easy to see.

There are typically six houses on the tour and they’re usually brand-new things that are the spiritual descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s cottage, The Breakers, in Newport Rhode, island. Less is not more if your house is on the Garden Club Home Tour.

While the homes have nothing to do with my taste or budget, props to the homeowners for making their places available for the fundraiser.

Most of the houses have been staged so they’re imitations of photo spreads in shelter magazines. It’s got to be a total pain in the ass to pick up the detritus of modern life and stash it somewhere for the afternoon. Phone charging cords, shampoo and toiletries, pet food and water dishes, and all that stuff that sits on kitchen counters—perhaps even at The Breakers—is gone.

The Garden Club requires you to wear surgical booties at each house, just like on the tour of Philadelphia’s new Mormon temple. Unlike the Mormons, the Garden Club has no army of smiling surgical bootie assistants to help you put the damned things on over your Nikes.  Given the age of most of the folks on the tour, an army of smiling Mormons surgical bootie assistants would be a sure-fire hit.

Like the missing phone charging cords, most of the owners seem to absent themselves for the afternoon, too.

It’s their way of insuring they don’t hear the litany of traipsing tourists saying “I could NEVER live here!” which in English means, “I’d move here in a heartbeat”, not to mention the occasional “My girlfriend has pillows just like those except in blue and got them on clearance at Home Goods” and my personal favorite, “It’s called a bid-day, Mildred.”

Through there are exceptions, houses typically feature lots of boring sailboat art, guest rooms that are bright and matchy-matchy, and bathrooms worthy of a high-end plumbing showroom. Except for the occasional older home that’s been remodeled, many seem like small hotels, decorated in a way that makes any Kimpton Hotel, with its metallic this and that, and enough animal prints to cover the entire continent of Africa, seem minimalist.  We’ve come a long way from the days of a simple home at the beach; I’m not sure that it’s progress.

After the tour, we wolfed down a quick shrimp and grits dinner and headed out to the Cape May Stage’s production of Billy Bishop Goes to War.

I’d never been to Cape May Stage, but it’s in an old Presbyterian Church that’s been beautifully converted to a theatre. This is not some old barn held together with mucilage and bailing twine where Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were going to put on a show.

It’s as nice as any small theatre I’ve ever been to, right down to the soap.

The play tells the story of Canada’s leading ace in WWI, Billy Bishop. Before the show, the producer told the audience that they chose the work as a way to mark the 100th anniversary of America’s entry in to the war. I did not raise my hand and say, but it’s a Canadian play and Canada, as part of the British Empire, went to war in 1914 rather than 1917.

You didn’t know I had that much willpower, did you?

Quibbling aside, the play was an excellent reminder that we're a hundred years out from the start of the war that was to make the world safe for democracy. (Yikes!)

There are just two actors in the production, Billy Bishop—played by the extremely easy on the eyes J. Max Baker—and the piano player, played by the handsome and talented Samuel Saint Ours. Both were dressed as Canadian soldiers. Though occasionally S.S.O. would sing with J. Max, the lion’s share of the production falls on J. Max’s shoulders.

Billy Bishop, more formally known as Air Marshal William Avery Bishop, VC, CB, DSO & Bar, MC, DFC, ED, was a young man from Ontario, who through run of bad luck (injuries and illness mostly) that turned out to be good luck, didn’t die in the horrific trench warfare of the early part of the war. After enough of horrific trench warfare later in the war to realize that the mud and filth and pointlessness of it all wasn’t for him, he applied to, and was accepted by the Royal Flying Corps as an observer. During a post-injury hospitalization in London, he meets an English society woman and friend of Winston Churchill, Susan Elizabeth Mary Jeune, Baroness St Helier, DBE, who helps him get a place in flight school.

His journey from unlucky colonial schlub to famous ace and gallant icon, personally decorated by the King of England, is filled with fear, doubts, injuries, deaths of friends, and more than a little of what we now call post-traumatic stress. It’s a great story.

J. Max Baker not only plays Billy, but also his flight instructors, commanding officers, Lady St. Helier, and even the King--a total of eighteen other characters! It’s really is a remarkable performance. His Billy Bishop is the incarnation of a heroic—but doubt-filled—flyboy, and he makes a darned good flight instructor, commanding officer, Lady St. Helier, and even King. I looked at the actor's website and his resume and it says that he not only has barbershop quartet experience, but also that he’s a precision whip cracker AND can belch on command. It sounds as if he’s ready for the Bryant family dinner table!

Unfortunately, the songs in the show only rise to the level of “meh”, and that’s being generous. I kept waiting for the song I’d want to hear again, but the songs just weren’t very tuneful. Sure, they were well executed, but they guys didn’t have much to work with. The "bitter brew of Brecht-Weill" was front and center and while the tuneful "barracks room ditties" seemed to be MIA. The best song in the production was a snippet of the World War I standard, Mademoiselle from Armentieres a/k/a Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous. Oh well, you can’t have everything!

Meh songs in this production aside, it was an enjoyable evening. I’ll definitely go back to the Cape May Stage.

Before we drove back to Pennsylvania, we stopped at the Stone Harbor Farmers' Market on Sunday morning. It’s a bit early in the season for the corn and tomatoes that South Jersey is famous for, but there were plenty of other vegetables, flowers, and artisanal food products for sale. There was a hip coffee truck where you could get the kind of hip coffee drink that hip people don't make at home.

I considered going in for the hot-out-of-the- fryer mini donuts. Fortunately for my waistline, I had the willpower to resist them. Had they been fried Greek dough wads, I’m not sure I could have done it.
                    
You can find the work of Lisa Varuolo at the Antiques Emporia, 405 W. Perry St, West Cape May, NJ She's in Booth 58. The shop is open daily.  

Billy Bishop Goes to War plays through June 23, 2017 at Cape May Stage, 405 Lafayette St., Cape May, NJ. 

A Hamptons Weekend

To the run of the mill Vanity Fair reader (i.e. me), “The Hamptons”, that group of towns on the East End of Long Island, conjures up images of grand shingle style houses, social X-rays, and the more substantial Barefoot Contessa and her posse of gay friends. On further reflection, my mind wanders to the thoughts of the occasional Real Housewife behaving badly; Wall Street bigwigs filing frivolous lawsuits against their neighbors; and the best looking surfing cater waiters ever. When my old friends Susan and Sara invited me to visit them in their new house, I said—with alacrity even—“Count me in!”

The weekend started in New York City on the Hamptons Jitney, which, even with the name straight out of Petticoat Junction, is a modern luxury bus. The Hamptons Jitney is the antidote to the problem of sitting behind the wheel for hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic the Long Island Expressway while you’re on your way to weekend fun. I can’t imagine Real Housewives taking it—they seem as if they’d go for stretch Hummers (insert sexual innuendo here) helicopters paid for with OPM (other people’s money).

The Hamptons Jitney is not at all like the Stone Harbor/Avalon jitney. That’s just an airport satellite parking area shuttle bus with a different paint job, no rack for luggage, and mood lighting.
 
The HJ is a full sized bus, and as buses go, it’s closer to a rock star bus than to a Greyhound. Each row is three seats across rather than the standard four. By making the seats larger and arranging them so, the impresario behind the HJ has attempted to solve two vital societal problems….manspreading into your neighbor’s seat and sitting next to someone with cooties.

"I'm glad I took my ennui meds; this wait is killing me."

The Jitney picked me and my fellow more glam than I passengers up on 40th St between Lexington and Third, right in front of the Shake Shack. There were about ten at our stop. No sooner had we stowed our bags in the bowels of the bus than we were on our way. Why hang out in a bus in front of the Shake Shack when there are bold faced names aching for your company in Water Mill and Amagansett?

My seat—reserved, of course—was right behind the driver. My seat mate was some old guy in what looked like off brand Nantucket reds and some sort of downish vest. It was a hot day; he must have circulation problems. In the two hours plus of our trip he never once acknowledged my presence with as much as a grunt. Perhaps I have cooties or was unconsciously manspreading. Note to self, the next time you ride the Hamptons Jitney, tie your knees together and wear more Axe.

His wife, in the seat across the aisle from him, was bookish in that retired art historian sort of way. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that she reads the now late Jackie Collins after the old ball and chain falls asleep at night. Out of habit that she picked up in graduate school, my guess is that she does a number on the sex scenes with yellow highlighter. She was wearing large paisley scarf/blanket sort of thing that probably turns into a spinnaker if the Jitney runs out of fuel and has to resort to sail power.

As we inched through the Queens Midtown Tunnel, a stewardess (when is the last time you were on a bus that had a stewardess?) with a decidedly mittel European accent very politely informed us that we should refrain from using our cell phones, but if we had to, we were to limit it to three minutes. Shortly afterward she offered us a cornucopia of personal service, starting with a hot Handi-Wipe that had been sanitized for my protection. I wondered if the bus had a K-Tel Handi-Wipe Heater or if the wipes had just been left on a sunny windowsill.

Shortly afterward, she came by offering us the newspaper (NYT only, they were out of WSJ).Then a cold drink. The hot drink was next. That was followed by an energy bar. Then came the ear buds. And then finally, on her last trip by, she offered to come to your house to rearrange your sock drawer.

Though I accepted most of the drinks and snacks, entertainment wise, I stuck to looking out the window since I’d just finished The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s bio of Robert Moses and here we were cruising along on Moses-built highways, passing the site of the 1964 Worlds Fair and other Moses-era landmarks. I was hoping to see people who were still pissed off about an expressway going through their backyard. No such luck on that score.

After a couple of hours we got to Bridgehampton, de-bussed and walked the few blocks to S and S’s house.

With Martha, David, Chris, and Bruce in our misspent early middle age. Back in the day when you took photos with a camera.

I’ve been to the Hamptons once, 18 years ago, to celebrate one of those birthdays that ends in zero. A friend who was out of town lent some chums from our high school lunch table her house. We didn’t do all that much except lounge and loiter by the pool. It was a great time.

On this trip I’m more jaded, and officially older, even though I lie about my age in a dating situation depending on the light level in the room and whether the other guy is legally blind or not.

My hosts, S and S, have a fantastic house, handsomely designed and the polar opposite of one of those Jersey shore houses that incorporates every architectural element known to man. Those places tend to fill the lot like a guy squeezing into clothes he’s outgrown. S and S's house was just the opposite of that; designed thoughtfully and with just a touch of humor. Were Goldilocks an architecture critic, she would pronounce their digs as “just right”.

My new best friend, Leo the Wonder Dog.

After unpacking and meeting Leo the Wonder Dog, we went over to G and R’s house (also fantastic) for tacos and poker with another two of their friends, including the first person I’ve ever met named Doreen. My father would have called her a kick in the ass, which he meant as a high compliment.  I’m not my father, a whiz at poker (and poking her), and as a result, I lost every single hand. Perhaps on my next trip to Vegas I should learn how to play cards instead of hanging out in the gift shop at the Atomic Testing Museum.

S. and I started Saturday early-ish by taking Leo the Wonder Dog slash best golden doodle ever to the beach for some exercise. It was the start of a beautiful day but there was hardly a soul at the beach. L and his two dog pals, William and the dog whose name I’ve forgotten, love the beach. They were so much fun to watch as they ran and dug in the sand and chased a ball. S. and William's owner and I talked about the Pope's visit to America.

I got to demonstrate my central Pennsylvania sang-froid when an otherwise lovely dog mom of a certain age plus some who'd joined us took off her wrap in preparation for a dip in the ocean. While she was of the age and mileage for a black one piece suit, she was wearing a white bikini that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Technically, not anything. At all. Yowza!

But as fashion transgressions go, well, there were just four of us there, counting the distant (physically, dunno about emotionally) professional dog handler for an absent plutocrat whose dogs aren’t allowed to play with others. And none of us at that exact moment was on duty for Fashion Police. Yes, it wasn’t the suit I would have picked for her, but in a way I have to hand it to her for doing her own thing.

After our tip to the beach, we had an unexpected and delightful visit from Connie, my host of 18 years ago—she just lives down the street from S. and S. C. invited us to a surfing demo, but we opted for an outing that would not involve asking people if they had a woodie and did they wax it.

The museum was designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

A little later we went to the Parrish Art Museum. It looks rather like a big (and expensive in a minimalist way) dogtrot house. It’s as slickly designed as any prime location big city Apple store but fortunately lacking the crowds of votaries waiting for the next release if the iVibrator. While the museum has a notable collection of work by William Merit Chase, I think there were only two of his works hanging in the gallery.

 

There was lots of modern stuff not really to my taste. I did, however, like Tara Donovan’s Slinky® creations but was amused that the museum sold off-brand Slinky®s in the gift shop.

I knew that Slinky®s were the pride and joy of Hollidaysburg, PA but I’d forgotten 99% of the story about the owner of the company running away to join a cult in South America. I’m sure the woman in the gift shop would have been fascinated by it before running away to join a cult in South America to get away from annoying patrons like me.

Looking at all those Slinky®s and trying to remember the jingle can make the most indefatigable cultural tourist peckish, so we headed over to Sag Harbor for some accessory browsing and a delish al fresco lunch with a dessert sized helping of eye candy. Oh and an actual bold faced name and permanent A-Lister was tying on the feedbag just a couple of tables away but she didn't come by the table to ask for autographs or anything. We passed a crime scene on the way out of town but S and I were too busy brainstorming about our idea to make a fortune with a Quonset hut restoration business to go into full Hercule Poirot meets CSI: Hamptons mode.

After a power nap (I was vacationing after all) S and I headed out in her vintage Volkswagen Beetle to hit a vegetable stand for corn and the supermarket for the other fixings for dinner. If I were to say that driving that old Beetle was a highlight of the weekend, I might seem like a toddler who gets just as much enjoyment out of the box his Christmas gifts came in as the gifts themselves. So let me just say that it was really, really, really fun to drive, even if you did have to stand on the brake with one foot, open the door and drag the other on the pavement, and release a drag ‘chute all at the same time in order to get the thing to stop.

Not only were the vegetables nice, but the spelling and typography were excellent too.

The produce gave the Garden State's best a run for its money.

Once we had the corn and other foodstuffs for dinner, we picked up G and R to go to a reception at the Madoo Conservancy, a stunning garden down the road in Sagaponack by “artist, gardener, and writer” Robert Dash.

There was no bourbon in sight, it was a red or white wine sort of thing—a real missed opportunity for the brosé marketers. It wasn’t one of those parties where you needed to know a lot about sports to chat up guys, and had I been better at chatting up guys, I am sure I would have met some interesting folks who knew The Barefoot Contessa. My hosts did introduce me to an amusingly over the top ball gown designer and his partner the charming lighting and home accessories designer with a decidedly silent film star air about him. There was a brief speech by the director of the property thanking everyone for their support.

The standout outfit of the evening was worn by the guy in the three sizes too small fleece version of a rowing blazer…blue with contrasting trim topped off with Ray Ban Wayfarers. He looked like a great British sausage. Perhaps he was the Ambassador from Hormel-on-Thames, England? Apparently the person in his household in charge of saying “You’re not going out looking like that, are you?” was out of town that day.

After the reception, we enjoyed a tasty repast of burgers and farms stand corn, just as Leo was enjoying a meal of one of my flip flops. I think he agreed that Rainbow makes the best flip flops on the market.

Early Sunday morning I was on the Long Island Railroad headed for NYC and my Amtrak train home. I listened to a woman in the row ahead of me yammer incessantly on her phone about her weekend trip. If my life were as boring as hers sounded, I’d stick my head in the oven. I watched backyard pools give way to backyard above-ground pools and then to backyards with no pools and finally no yards at all as we neared New York City.

Perhaps I just saw the Potemkin Hamptons, but the closest I saw to wretched excess was four stop signs at one convoluted intersection. It was flip-flops on the ground for 36 hours and didn’t see a single person drink Cristal out of a Manolo, Jimmy Choo, or even last season’s glass slipper. (If someone would like to invite me back for that, I'll clear my calendar pronto!)

OK, kale juice was pretty expensive at the gourmet grocery store around the corner, but as a card carrying member of the Anti-Kale Even-If-Its-High-In-Anti-Oxidants League I wasn’t going to be buying that anyway.

There were some large houses with drop dead gorgeous landscaping, but as far as "OMG would you look at that!" was concerned, my weekend was more than a quart low. Oh I almost forgot, we did go by a crime scene--now just a vacant lot--that was featured in an article in Vanity Fair, but that was it in the tabloid fodder department. I didn’t have a Barefoot Contessa sighting, or even more disappointing, one of the looksome guys she hangs with when Jeffrey’s not around. Oh well...they didn’t have a Wandering Wahoo sighting either.

In the end, it was too brielf trip to a gorgeous part of the country: it’s really easy to see why so many people like the place. My hosts were great, their friends lots of fun, and the flip flop eating dog was one of the best skinny dipping companions I’ve had in a long time. (Did I forget to mention that?)  I hope it’s not another eighteen years before I’m invited back.