A couple of people have taken quiet exception to my characterization of the North Fork as the "Loser Fork" in yesterday's post. That was said, of course, with the greatest irony. It's a quote of a comment overheard by one of my Rancho Obsesso housemates when he was on the Other Fork, the Hamptons Fork, waiting for the ferry to hie hinself back here. A man and a woman, saying goodbye at the dock, were having a loud lovers' quarrel, at the apex of which she told him, "Go to hell! Get out of here! Go back to your loser fork!" and stalked off. She tore out of the parking lot in her BMW, and he got on the ferry, well rid of her if you ask any of us here. We, of course, consider this quite the Winner Fork. Nothing that makes people like her smug about the South Fork (which doesn't include all South Forkers, but ever so many) exists up here -- no celebrities, no scene, no outpost branches of Manhattan restaurants or high-toned shops. Which, believe me, makes us even smugger.

I hope that sets the record straight.