7/5/06
Hi everybody it’s Hampton! First of all, I am so grateful to be blogging on this blog. I mean, look at my predecessor. I want to say hats off to my predecessor. This is a guy who—this is a guy who two weeks ago was just a guy living under the desk at the n+1 office, who’d never read a book his entire life, he had problems in the head, he had no girlfriend—and he started a lit-blog. Look at him now! As far as I can tell, he never actually discussed an actual work of literature on his blog; never performed anything even remotely analogous to literary criticism; betrayed no interest in or idea about how literary criticism would be done, by someone who knew how to do it; wrote, if I’m reading correctly, mostly about his own insecurities, his own insufficiencies—I mean, thinly veiled—and now look at him: he’s taking over the New York Times Book Review. That is what I call using the blog. That is blog-power. Hats off. Me, I’m Hampton (!), as I’ve said, and my interests are different. I’m not such a high-brow, for one thing. I’m more of a cultural consumer, you might say. Here is a delicious irony for you, to start us off, and that will complete my first, I hope tantalizing, post on this site. OK, ready? I hate celebrities—and yet I am also weirdly fascinated by them. Mm? Perhaps, at some deeper level, I blog for you?
7/6/06
Wow, the reader mail has already started to pour in. Let’s look.
Reader: Yo, Hampton, this blog rocks! Keep up the good work!
Hampton: Thank you.
Reader: Yo, Hampton, wassup! Love the blog. So, listen, what you’re saying is, it’s going to be a blog about celebrities, with lots of celebrity photos and party photos and stuff, but it will also make fun of celebrities? Is that what you’re saying?
Hampton: Yes.
Reader: That’s awesome! Rock on!
Hampton: Thank you.
7/7/06
OK, time to start blogging. Here goes.
Angelina: Anorexic?
Jessica: Missing a tooth?
Jennifer: Whoa!
George: My old college roommate!
Adam Moss!!
Bill Keller.
Phew. OK. Those aren’t real links up there. Except the one to Yale. I’m still figuring out how to do links.
TO DO THIS WEEKEND:
n+1 Announcements Page Digital Camera Fun Party Shoot!
And in the meantime, you litigants, you complainers, know this: I will not stop blogging. I will not stop viciously tearing down celebrities, those hypocrites, those lechers. I will continue to wreak havoc on New York media insiders. And outsiders. Until I get a book deal. Or a job at New York magazine. Mark my words. I have a PhD.
7/11/06
So I headed out this weekend to take my first series of party photos. I know my readers know I am the man when it comes party photo-taking, and I did not want to disappoint.
What cruel disappointment indeed, then, when I show up at all the hot clubs in Soho, Noho, Bobo—and don’t get in! It turns out no one’s ever heard of the n+1 Announcements Page Blog. In fact, a lot of the people working the door at these places haven’t even heard of n+1.
Which is weird.
So, no party photos today, I’m afraid. To keep this from happening in the future, I am changing the name of this blog to Fun Photo Party Photo Blog.
Update: Neither Angelina nor Jessica has responded to my posts the of the other day. If you’ll recall, I suggested that Angelina may have a bit of an eating problem, and Jessica might be missing a tooth.
Right now? Silence on the other end. Hm.
OK. I am changing the name again: It’s going to be Fun Photo Party Blog Photo Orgy Blog. Yes, that’s the one. I’m Hampton and I’ll see you blogsters later.
7/12/06
Hello! Welcome back to Fun Party Photo Party Orgy Blog! It’s really hot these days in the n+1 office, where I’m still staying until I get back on my feet, possibly by selling this blog to a major media consortium (hint, hint). So this is going to be a short post.
Sometimes people ask me: Hampton, how did you get into this racket? I mean, you went to Yale, you studied Russian literature, and then you continued your studies, also at Yale, in the field of Comparative Literature, after which you furthered your work, this time at Princeton, in the Princeton Society of Fellows, as a Fellow, after which you were appointed to a Lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge, followed thereon by a Fellowship, at said college, after which point you gave a series of seminars—short, but devastating—at the Free University in Berlin, reprised those seminars at the Vrije Universietet in Amsterdam, then annotated and expanded them at the Libera Universit? di Bozen-Bolzano.
Now you run the Fun Party Photo Party-Orgy Photo Blog out of the n+1 office, where you sleep under the desk. And what I guess I’m asking here is: How did that happen?
And I just (this is Hampton talking, now)—I just don’t think that’s a polite question. Also, I do not sleep under the desk; I sleep on the settee. Have a nice day.
7/14/06
Dear Readers! You may have noticed, and grown suitably angry, when I didn’t post yesterday. And have been a little spotty in general, let’s face it.
Well, there’s a reason. Fun Party Photo Party Orgy Blog has been receiving a lot of attention, in the blogosphere, for its groundbreaking photo and party-orgy work, and so, well, I’ve been taking meetings. With publishers. Over lunch.
Let me be clear: I did it for you! Now I can bring the dish on the inside of New York’s most premier publishing houses. Here’s how the meetings went:
“Hampton! It’s so good to meet you at last!”
“Thank you.”
“I admit—should I admit this?—I admit I was expecting you to be a little different. More—I don’t know—how much do you weigh?”
“240. 250.”
“Yeah. Geez. I guess I expected someone more—”
“Is your assistant going to eat that?”
Assistant: “Actually I was just—”
“Give it to him.”
“Thank you.”
“So, Hampton. We’ve been—all of us here, isn’t that right?—”
Assistant: “Yes. All of us.”
“We’ve been dying to meet the man behind Fun Party Blog!”
“Fun Party Photo Party Orgy Blog, actually.”
“Yes, Fun Party Photo Blog!”
“Fun Party Photo Party Orgy Blog.”
“Right. That’s what I said.”
“I wish that had been what you said.”
“Hampton, I’m sorry, but can we move on?”
“Yes.”
“So, as I was saying, we’re all very excited to work with you in various creative ways!”
“Great.”
“Because, you know, we’ve all felt for a long time that what the world needed was a blog that, like, it got inside the world of celebrity, you know? With photos and stuff? As you have on your blog. But was also, like, critical of the world of celebrity, you know? That took, you might say, a meta approach to it? And also to the media. Let’s not forget that we live in an—to quote Debord—an age of spectacle. That the, you know, superstructure of culture has become the base—and so our great heroes are going to be, like culture heroes. That is to say bloggers. Don’t you think?”
Assistant: “That’s so true.”
“So, Hampton, though I’ve never actually read your blog, from what I understand—”
“Excuse me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, I didn’t quite understand that.”
“Which part of it didn’t you quite understand?”
“The not reading my blog part.”
“I said: I haven’t read your blog, yet.”
“I see. I see. What do you read?”
“The New Left Review. Mostly.”
“But you want to give me half a million dollars to describe my life as a celebrity blogger.”
“Exactly!”
“Are you going to eat that?”
“Well. Uh. I just started—I mean—I’m all done. It’s all you. You the man.”
“Thank you.”
So. That’s where we are, readers. Naturally I am very excited to be working with Big Media Publishers on this exciting project. I think they really have a vision and I admire people with vision.
I want to kill myself.
7/17/06
After lunch, I was a little groggy. I had after all eaten my own lunch, the lunch of my publisher’s assistant’s, and most of the publisher’s lunch as well. So you might imagine why, stumbling down Broadway afterward, I would have felt a little unsteady, and wanted to talk to my agent.
My agent is the man. A lot of people think of agents as these really tough go-getting people who’ll do anything for a buck, will sell any book, stoop to anything, to sell a book.
My agent isn’t like that.
“Hampton,” he said when I took a seat, heavily, before him. “You have to understand the realities of the cultural moment we’re in. Back in May, probably even into June, hell, well into June, I think the memoir of a celebrity blogger could have fetched a lot of cash. I mean, easy street. But I think people aren’t as far-seeing, they’re not as visionary, as they were in May, and part of June. Much of June. I don’t think they understand how valuable and important your work is on Fun Party Photo Party Orgy Blog.”
“They offered me half a million dollars.”
“They did?? We should take it.”
“Are you sure? They seemed a little—I don’t know—they hadn’t even read my blog.”
“Half a million dollars, Hampton! You’ve been blogging for a week! You’ve never even posted a photo on your blog! You don’t—you don’t even know how to do links! You suggested that Jessica Simpson was missing a tooth! Where did you even get that?” My agent was standing now and pounding his fist on the stack of unopened manila envelopes before him. “That’s not blogging, Hampton, that’s just—just malicious slander, frankly. And, my God, you live under the desk at the n+1 office. They’re offering you money to write your memoir. Take it!”
“I live on the settee.”
“Whatever!”
At this point we were joined in my agent’s office by his client and our mutual friend D., a literary writer of some repute, the author of several obscure but important novels, a man of towering intellect and distinguished taste.
He heard out the tale of my dilemma.
“He’s not sure he wants to take the money,” my agent summed up, pleadingly, to the great gray-haired author.
The great man, who had sat, now stood again to his full height. He prepared to speak.
7/19/06
My adventures in publishing to be continued soon, but in the meantime: Jessica Simpson has still not responded to my accusation that she is missing a tooth! What is she afraid of?
Debate me, Jessica Simpson!
7/23/06
Dear Friends: It is with some sadness that, after two glorious weeks of blogging, we bid farewell to Hampton. And make a confession.
The truth is, I started this blog in order to make fun of lit-bloggers. Then I discovered the Alexa traffic rankings—and the Indian government, incredibly, actually blocked the blogspot domain. Making fun of lit-bloggers seemed like a fairly silly thing to do, all of a sudden. The world was doing a fine job of it on its own; as was the Indian government.
So we hired Hampton to make fun of celebrity blogs like Gawker. Now these were some objectionable people! But then Gawker changed its management or its writers or whatever and somehow became a lot less offensive. I don’t even read the thing anymore.
The truth is, there was no Hampton. There was no other guy, either, who got hired to run the Times book review. No one lives at the n+1 office, except our office manager, Isaac Scarborough, and only during the day. Well, also our landlord seems to live there. And I’ve lived there on occasion. But Hampton was a made-up person. For the record, however, he was a very big made-up person. Hampton was like 6-4, 250. He once ate an entire barbecued pig at a barbecue. This was at Oxford.
This portion of the site will now go back to the n+1 core mission of examining the problems with the New Republic and demanding that anyone going to a foreign country should contact Greg Jackson, international distribution tsar. Until then.
