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Just An Online Minute... Media Whiz Delivers The Best Of Summer Boardwalks (Freaks Optional!)

Media Whiz Summer Party, Media Whiz Boardwalk, New York
July 22, 2010

Within two minutes of entering last night's party with its wraparound deck on the 23rd floor, my +1 got sprayed down with sunscreen, I heard The Pharcyde's "Runnin'," I found a huge tub of melty nuclear orange cheese for "whiz wit" cheese steaks, and I had a piña colada in my hand. And all before 5 p.m.

Jeanine Wade, HR Generalist and Recruiter for MediaWhiz and Katie Hollis, HR Manager, met my date, Erica Levy, and I at the door, already in full party mode with little tumblers of clear liquor waiting to be shot. Katie Hollis is one of those natural hosts, scooting through the inside office and the deck with ease, making sure everyone had everything they needed to be happy while managing to party like a rockstar herself.

It's hard NOT to have everything you need to be happy when an entire deck is COVERED with serve-yourself footlongs, hamburgers, pickles galore, French fries, a cheesesteak station with ALL the fixings, boardwalk-style soft pretzels, a cotton candy mill, a friggin' snowcone machine, and my favorite addition to every party: a lobster roll station. M Booth's Alyssa Galella will be pleased to know that this time it was Luke's Lobster's portable crew.

I would like to say they were delicious, but this freak housed two huge bowls of raisin bran at around 2:30 p.m., so her stomach was one huge hill of fiber. Didn't stop me from sampling from the huge full bar complete with frozen drinks like pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris, or a combo of the two called "The 007" in Jersey and "Pain In The Ass" in Maryland. I think they call it "Breakfast" in Ohio.

What a cast of characters the Media Whiz team is. And from what I saw, they act very much like family. When one young lady introduced her boyfriend to Marc "The Shark" Loretti, who is Sr. Manager of Textlink Ads AND runs Mr. Pipes, a plumbing outfit, Marc said "You're dating my sister, you know!" while heartily shaking the confused young man's hand. Marc was a great find, a ball of "the dad next door" energy. I couldn't tell if I wanted to hug him or ask him to coach my softball team.

Kids, it was HOT on that deck. Sure, we were tucked on Broad and Beaver with cool looming buildings casting shadows here and there, but even when the sun started to sink, the night barreled forward with its city summer heat. It felt good on the skin with a cool drink in hand. The heat was the party's rambunctious trouble-making +1, inspiring dance floor shuffling early on, devolving many conversations into goofy sarcasm -- and, in some cases, bodily function talk.

One of the DJs deserves a big round of applause for spinning only vinyl that included a handful of The Pharcyde's tunes, instantly transporting me to my time bouncing between the cow fields of Mantua, Ohio and being super porter at a car dealership in Detroit. The DJ goes by the name of the McDonald's character I hate the most: Grimace. I'll let the name slide because he was fantastic!

I also met a guy with one of the most enviable jobs I've ever heard of. His name is Sam Friedman and he works for Condé Nast in photo archival. Literally, his job is to go through photos from the early 1900s until now -- I assume for organization and categorization's sake. He must be blissed out every day sifting through the history of fashion, food, politics, and unimaginables.

I also met Media Whiz's Peter Klein, Tom Lanzetta, and Chuck Shaw; Anna "Ed's Wife" Katz and Avi "Mitch Tuck's wife" Hodjat; Andrew Agnello, a student at University of Rocherster and Media Whiz intern; Chris MacMurray, Media Whiz IT dude and "har har I'm going to give you a fake name" guy; Richard Harris of Media Whiz; Abhijit Sanyal, also of Media Whiz; and Sonali Sanyal, wife of Abhijit and aspiring photographer.

Onesies and flowy shorts were all the rage at the Media Whiz party, and I was intensely coveting the royal blue shortalones worn by Flynn Stevens, Manager of biz dev and affiliate management at Media Whiz. Flynn Stevens was mingling with some dude in suspenders who introduced himself as "Zeus, like the Greek God... no last name..." which made me want to jump off the deck onto the ground below. People are so intriguing, aren't they? Not introducing herself as Diana, Goddess of The Hunt was Flynn Stevens' +1, Sarah Cimes, a paralegal. Rounding out that crew was Daryl Colwell, VP of Media Whiz.

Carrying the cutest owl bag ever was Celene Bell, whom I found lurking by the airbrush tattoo station. Celene was there as a guest of Brandon Paolin, a Media Whiz Web developer -- and she had originally planned to get a tiger face tattoo to embarrass him, which I supported.

I met a ton of people on that deck last night -- like Elie Himy, Media Whiz's design type (I can't read my notes) and Media Whiz CEO Jonathan Shapiro, who made me guess his age -- I aged him up. It made him feel better when I put "silver fox" in quotes next to his name.

Based on the handful of people swaying to the music in the lazing sun, the watery foggy eyes, and the small tiff I walked into among the cubicles (perhaps spillover from a tense TCP Reports Cover Letter meeting?), there are some hurting puppies over at the Media Whiz office today. And guess what? They are looking to add more hurting puppies to their team.

Photos are up on Flickr (with TONS more coming!)

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