South O' the Highway (and the North too)

Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theatre announced its 2008 Target Mainstage Summer Season this week. Hamptons histrionics fans will be treated to Charles Busch's hilarious comedy Shanghai Moon from June 3-29, Noel Coward's Private Lives, featuring Alec Baldwin, from July 8-27, and musical favorite Ain't Misbehavin' with the sounds of Fats Waller from August 5-31.

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This week's featured Christmas Dan's Papers cover is by favorite Hamptons-based artist Michael Paraskevas. Michael and his mother Betty are working on a new animated series called "Peter Pepper's Pet Spectacular" as well as producing the popular "Cheap Show" for Plum TV. Their work is available online at www.thecheapshow.com.

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Ninety-two-year-old Hamptonite Eli Wallach is making a miraculous recovery at Lenox Hill Hospital, where he went last week for a necessary hip-replacement upgrade. The actor is already getting back to work on his two upcoming films, a comedy with Jon Heder and Silence with Federico Castelluccio.

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Another Hamptons classic, Lauren Bacall, sass kitten that she is, is also hard at work on a highly-anticipated film. The actress has a starring role in Paul Schraders upcoming The Walker, in which she plays a jaded Washington, DC socialite with Lily Tomlin, Kristen Thomas and Woody Harrelson (boldly going gay), who gets entangled in a murder plot.

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Hamptons beach boy and critically-acclaimed director Sidney Lumet was honored last week with the New York Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, after this year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, his smart and exciting film that Rudy Giuliani caught recently in East Hampton. Oscar buzz is already growing for this deserving director.

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Amagansett's own beautiful blonde Kathleen Turner will be taking her toughness to behind the curtains on Broadway, directing a revival of Crimes of the Heart.

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Photographer Patrick McMullan had a harem of beautiful women with him in the Valentino store in Manhattan last week, which, perhaps, is par for the course for McMullan, but this time he was behind a book instead of a lens, signing his new coffee table anthology Glamour Girls. Women of the East End were representing in full effect, including Cynthia Lufkin, Somers Farkas, Debbie Bancroft, Cornelia Sharpe Bregman, Fe Fendi, Bettina Zilkha, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Paola Schulhof, and Joanne de Guardiola, many of whom are featured in the book's glossy pages. Consider it the elegant Us Weekly.

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Jonathan Shapiro, East Hampton High School class of 1999 graduate and son of Linda Shapiro, sold his company Cinematic Music Group to Sony/Epic Records. Jonathan is the manager of today's biggest international pop star Sean Kingston and other rap, hip-hop and pop artists.

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Kathy Rae of Westhampton has been named Publisher of Dan's Papers beginning with this issue. She replaces Dan Rattiner, who is stepping back from day to day operations of the publishing end of the newspaper, but will continue on as Founder and Editor. Kathy has been with Dan's Papers for nine years, and her most recent title was Director of Advertising and Associate Publisher. Before that, she was in charge of sales in the East Hampton territory, and before that she worked here in the front office as the operations manager. Before coming to Dan's, she ran a video business, covering weddings, bar mitzvahs and depositions for the court system. She is a dynamic salesperson, a great organizer and we all wish her the best. As for Dan, he has an agreement to stay with the paper for the next three years, overseeing the editorial tone, and will be writing at least three of his columns every week. He is also beginning a career as a writer, and his book In the Hamptons, a memoir of this community, will be published this spring by Harmony Books. He is already working on a second book.

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