That is SO Hamptons 2000

While waiting for someone at the fairly freshman Ditch Plains restaurant in the Village, I stood on the periphery of a group of young blonde women straight from work (with the exception of one who had detoured to the hairdresser but arrived later to cheers of “Oh my God, I love it.”). I tried not to listen to their fabulously dramatic and yet, vacuous conversation. And then it hit me. Everything around me stopped: the other voices at the bar died, the bartender stopped shaking the pink drink that would soon fill the high-stemmed glasses of these women, the cabs usually racing down the streets, like rollercoaster cars, froze. And I heard it again and again: “Whatever, that is SO Hamptons 2000.”

I laughed, not the quiet, controlled, personal one that escaped my lips as I sat across from a man on the subway who had taken it upon himself to be the car’s official MTA mouthpiece: “Ladies and Gentleman, the next stop is 34th Street Penn Station, transfer is available to Amtrak, NJ Transit, Long Island Railroad. We ask you to be aware. If you see something suspicious, say something; do not keep it to yourself, tell a police officer or an MTA official. We also ask you to take your garbage (stress here) and newspapers with you. Thank you.”

No, this time standing in the doorway of Ditch Plains, I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help myself. It was SO perfect, on so many levels. My friend arrived shortly thereafter, I ate and drank, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind: “That is SO Hamptons 2000.” And I wondered about it. The speaker’s friends were honestly and deeply inspired, as was I. Typically any mention of the Hamptons in that tone makes me sweat and break out in the kind of hives reserved for summer on the subway platforms of New York City. I have flashbacks of an alligator-skinned bleach blonde woman backing her SUV into a crowd of people and screaming something about white trash. Could it be? But alas, that PR girrl’s antics are a relic of 2001. And so in my search to understand “That is SO Hamptons 2000,” I began to catalog the events of the post-Y2K, bottled water hoarding, computer hard drive backing days of the millennium. And this is what I found.

Notable Events of 2000, the year of the Dragon (in the Chinese calendar) and the year of the Leo (in the astrological calendar), include:
*The constitution of Finland is rewritten.
*The crazytown Presidential election and clueless Floridians unsure of how to read or complete a ballot.
*Maurice Richard, famed Canadian hockey player, passes.
*Gary Glitter is released from jail, two months before the end of his sentence for a variety of sexual offences.
*Metallica begins its whiney, “you’re stealing money out of our champagne flutes,” campaign against Napster.
*The release of NSYNC’s debut album and a second hit for Britney Spears. And on a more promising note, Coldplay hits the bar jukebox with “Yellow”.
*MI II, O Brother Where Art Thou, Gladiator, Scary Movie emerge from the artistically rich highways of Hollywood.
*Acronyms explode on the word super scene, replacing actual names, and in the world of fashion, celebrities get equally lazy about actually wearing whole articles of clothing: Lil Kim sports her famous pastie, pre-jail, pre-perjury. J Lo is duplicitous J Lo: ghetto fab, one minute rocking the backless, frontless Versace dress, the next all corn-rowed and bandana draped.
*Speaking of celebrities, the Hamptons, and the millenium, isn’t Puffy still Puffy in this time and place, I mean, Sean Puffy Combs and not P. Diddy or whatever alias he uses these days?

Despite the fact that it is SO yesterday, Ti and I wondered about this orphan phrase that somehow followed me home from Ditch Plains and crept into my consciousness. And over a bottle or 4 of Trader Joe’s three-buck chuck, we coined our own “That is SO Hamptons 2000”. We guzzled, we howled, and we revised. Hers: “That is so Bloomington ‘02.” And mine: “Whatever, that is so Buffalo ‘99.”