Disclaimer: All quotes from Thom Yorke were spoken in a British accent. We advise the use of your imagination.

• Alec Baldwin asks listeners: “What’s in your wallet?” (A whopping $2, Al, what’s in yours?)
• Radiohead “thumbs its nose” in stuff. (What does that mean?)
• Thom Yorke has a new band, Atoms for Peace, but he doesn’t like to do press. (Oh. Oops)
• He emailed some friends, like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to get the project going. (#Casual)
• Mr. Yorke has a troubled relationship with his guitar. (At least he’s doing better than Lindsay Lohan)
• Mr. Baldwin throws some stones at the Stones and the Yankees simultaneously; both birds are killed. (“[The Rolling Stones have] changed partners over the years like they were the New York Yankees, you know, there’s somebody else playing third base every four or five years.”
• Mr. Baldwin fondly recalls the knowledge imparted to him by Paul McCartney: “Even the Beatles got tired of being the Beatles!” (First world problems are always exhausting)
• Radiohead songs bring Al closer to spirituality. There’s a “vibe.” (*Crickets*)
• Mr. Baldwin: “The studio is a whole different animal.” (Like, a spirit animal?)
• Mr. Yorke, on his not-so musical family members: “My great-grandmother she’s get really hammered and then stay up playing her pump-organ thing downstairs, all night. And keep the family up. That’s it.” (Kid [A] got it from his Grandma.)
• Mr. Yorke started his first band at the ripe age of 11, but they broke up due to creative differences: “That sort of fell to bits; I kept fighting with the drummer.” (Over what? Legos?)
  • Mr. Yorke then describes how, at 16, he put Radiohead together and made it a thing. (Pull Quotes:)
    • “I got Ed cause he was dressed like Morrissey and he had some cool socks.”
    • “I got Colin because I knew he could play very well, and I needed a bass player who could play very well, but he had never played bass before.”
    • “[Colin’s] his brother Jonny was this mythical, musical prodigy.”
    • “Phil was the only drummer we knew anyway—and he had a house down the road that we could rehearse in.”
    • (Voila)

Then Thom Yorke says something about “bollocks,” which are like balls, but more British.

Nancy Shevell and Paul McCartney (Getty Images)

Nancy "Trucker Girl" Shevell has stepped down from her position as a board member for the M.T.A., reports AMNY.

During a Wednesday morning meeting, Ms. Shevell gave her parting remarks: "In my 30-year professional career, this has been the highlight for me... Thank you so much. I am so very emotional and sad right now."

Ms. Shevell will now be splitting time between New York and London, home of her Beatles husband Paul McCartney lives.

Born into the New England Motor Freight haulage dynasty, Ms. Shevell began serving the city in 2001. Her term on the M.T.A. board actually expired last year, but she had remained the head of the bus committee.

“She plays for the company team,” said Gene Russianoff , longtime spokesperson for the Straphanger’s Campaign during an interview last year with the Observer. “During her tenure as bus committee chairman, they eliminated 570 bus stops, which led to worse service. She didn’t publicly fight the budget cuts. She’s not a thorn in the side of the M.T.A.”

"Ocean's Kingdom."

The cows in Stella Gibbons’s immortal Cold Comfort Farm are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on Ocean’s Kingdom, the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney. (Sorry—Sir Paul McCartney; no P.R. release or press mention omits the knighthood.) If only Gibbons had given us a fifth cow: Endless.

The main problem isn’t Mr. McCartney’s music, which is generic, good-natured, old-fashioned pastiche, with no particular vocabulary of its own, no structural sophistication and no sign of the remarkable gift for melody he demonstrated in his Beatles days. But it’s not a disgrace to the neighbors. I can’t imagine anyone choosing to choreograph it if it weren’t by a hugely famous figure, yet who can blame Mr. McCartney for aspiring to the classical? He’s earned the right to try, and he’s been touchingly modest about it.

But whereas he may be grateful to City Ballet for giving him this chance, it’s hard to see Peter Martins as anything but opportunistic in giving it to him. And Mr. Martins has been duly penalized: the McCartney score and libretto have led him to one of the weakest choreographic performances of his long career. He can be so much better than this that I can only assume he was depressed by having to deal with music clearly uncongenial to his talents, and a particularly vapid and clichéd libretto. Mr. Martins used to be good at telling a story through dance. This story is so poorly, so confusingly, told that you can’t follow it without the printed synopsis.

There’s an underwater princess (Sara Mearns) and a terrestrial prince (Robert Fairchild) who meet beneath the waves, without benefit of aqualungs, and—just like Romeo and Juliet—they’re off and swimming. Well, no—there’s no simulated swimming in Ocean’s Kingdom, just endless vamping. The lovebirds (lovefish?) engage in four more or less identical love duets—posturings, swoony lifts, facial ecstasy—without a single original moment. Talk of generic! And talking of generic, what about the poor corps, who either wander around the rim of the action, pretending to be interested, or are running on and off the stage, pretending to be part of the plot?

Prince Stone’s wicked brother, King Terra (Amar Ramasar), wants Honorata for himself, abetted by the wicked (until she mysteriously turns good) Scala. In the second scene everyone goes topside for a divertissement of no freshness or excitement—even the usually irrepressible Daniel Ulbricht is somewhat muted in his standard routine of jumps and splits. The humor element: three Drunken Lords. Terra abducts and imprisons Honorata; Scala (the highly charged Georgina Pazcoguin, the only dancer who comes off well in this farrago) rescues her from her prison (cleverly suggested by columns of white light); a quick combat, and the baddies are defeated, the lovers reunited. Scala, according to the synopsis, has been killed holding off the baddies, but I missed it (I must have blinked). A big moon rises in the final scene. That’s it. Oh, yes—there are the costumes, by Sir Paul’s daughter, Stella, the highly successful fashioner designer. Alas, no one has explained to her that fashion is different from ballet—her costumes are particularly destructive to a dancer’s line, and generally klutzy. Hint: horizontal stripes aren’t usually flattering.

Ocean’s Kingdom is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance—it’s not about anything except its water-logged plot. And there’s absolutely no characterization, except for what Ms. Pazcoguin brings on her own to Scala. The superb Sara Mearns has nowhere to put her all-out expressivity; instead, her hair swirls, her dress swirls, she herself is swirled. Good-natured Robert Fairchild, the swirler, is essentially a prop. As for the Water Maidens, the Handmaidens, the Terra Punks and the Courtiers, like everyone else, they’re utterly at sea.

You have to feel sorry for City Ballet: every one of its recent gimmicks—the drab new version of The Seven Deadly Sins, featuring the miscast and floundering Patti Lupone; the multiballet collaboration with the celebrated architect Santiago Calatrava, whose neophyte stage work mostly undercut rather than enhanced the poor choreographers he was supposedly working for; the empty, vulgar double-bill from Broadway choreographer Susan Stroman—has been an artistic mess. The telling thing about all these expensive fiascoes is not that they failed, but that Mr. Martins has dragged in ballet outsiders to score publicity coups and stimulate sales. But, hardly surprising, these naïve and exploited amateurs haven’t known what they were doing. And the audience catches on. There may have been an ovation at the Martins-McCartney gala premiere, but at the other performances to date, the applause has been polite and pro forma; it was Balanchine’s amazing Union Jack that got people excited.

The company’s only keeper from the past few years has been Alexei Ratmansky’s ingenious—and semimarine—Namouna (he managed to duck the Calatrava décor). And the most brilliant and successful City Ballet performances over this season and the last have been the Balanchine abstract “black-and-white” programs: Episodes, Apollo, The Four Temperaments, Agon etc. Broadway stars, fashionable architects, titans of pop turn out to be no substitute for the real thing.

As it happens, the first dance review I wrote for this paper, a dozen years ago, was of the premiere of Peter Martins’s full-evening Swan Lake. It returns regularly, and the audience returns for it. (Swan Lake is invariably a hit; that’s why Balanchine made his one-act version back in 1951.) It’s not an easy ballet to get right—the text is a scramble, and the story lends itself to every kind of misinterpretation and overinterpretation. Yet there it is—the quintessential ballet; you can’t get away from it.

The score, of course, is a glory, and sounding better than ever at the Koch/State Theater since the acoustics have been so vastly improved. (The orchestra was at its best under A.B.T.’s David LaMarche; the company’s musical director, Fayçal Karoui, seems impatient with Tchaikovsky’s high Romanticism.) But by emphasizing the emotional impact of the score, the improved sound only underlines the fatal absence of feeling in the Martins version. He establishes no romantic connection between Odette and Prince Siegfried; there’s no pathos, no high drama, no tragedy, no grandeur. It’s all efficiency and vacuity. Worst is the first act, Siegfried’s supposed birthday celebration: hideous to look at—a pale-vomit Danish-Expressionist set, with streaks, and bilious Day-Glo costumes. It’s all so boring—the interminable corps work; the gratuitous intrusion of adorable children; our attention centered on the maddeningly relentless jack-in-the-box Jester rather than the Prince.

There’s no sense of Siegfried’s restlessness to justify the lure of the Swan music. There’s no profound meeting of souls at the lake when Prince encounters Swan, and no tragic threat to their love, only a ludicrous Von Rotbart getting in the way. The black act is conventional, with a botched climax. Only in the short, final scene does Mr. Martins make something happen—the fluidity of the swan choreography, the heightened feeling of the pas d’action among the principals and the corps are the best things in the ballet, spoiled by the ridiculous antics of the orange-caped Von Rotbart, who disappears in a puddle and creeps offstage, hoping he won’t be seen by the audience. His defeat, though, doesn’t lead to transfiguration. Never mind—the audience thinks it has seen Swan Lake.

This time around I took in two casts. Ashley Bouder’s Odette wasn’t plangent or tragic; instead, she was super-agitated—a very upset bird. Ms. Bouder is many wonderful things, but lyrical isn’t one of them. Her Odile, though, was compelling. She has the speed, the attack, the brilliance, the command. She nailed the notorious fouettés. And in the final scene she found some moving stillness in the midst of all the frenzy.

Ms. Bouder’s compactness is in almost demented contrast to Teresa Reichlen’s great height and hyperextended legs and arms. Ms. Reichlen is cool in contrast to Ms. Bouder’s heat, and although she showed no feeling in the first lake scene, she dominated it. As Odile she’s a nonstarter: She’s a deliberate dancer, without fire or glitter. She’s technically strong, though, and she made it through the fouettés even if they had a tendency to wander.

Did either ballerina animate the Martins ice swan? No, but I’m not sure Pavlova or Fonteyn could have manage to either. As usual, Swan Lake drew crowds, who applauded absolutely everything with equal enthusiasm—except the first entrances of the principal performers. This apparent lack of familiarity with the most famous of all ballets is a bad omen. City Ballet could once count on a discerning and committed congregation to keep it honest. To be fair, though, they did prefer Union Jack to Ocean’s Kingdom.

editorial@observer.com

Nancy Shevell and Paul McCartney. Photo via Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

On a recent morning in the fifth-floor conference room of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s brick and limestone Madison Avenue headquarters, a public meeting of the board was called to order. The various members representing the audit, governance, bridges and tunnels, finance, and other committees listened patiently as Mark Shotkin, a member of the transit-riding public, made a statement. “Jim and Andrew, your ties are very nice,” he began, spreading a little sugar around the room. “Nancy, your-your-your jacket is very nice,” he added, grinning at Nancy Shevell, the bus committee chairman. Then he got right to the point: “Good morning, everybody, um, garbage and graffiti on platforms and trains—totally disgusting.”

Ms. Shevell, who is tall with raven hair that swings glossily from side to side, wore a striped gray and white sweater, black jeans and sandals, along with an indulgent smile. Having served on the M.T.A. for 10 years—spanning four governors—the trucking executive was plainly at home in the boardroom. There was little indication that she is living something of a Cinderella-at-the-ball moment these days. The New Jersey-born daughter of a trucking company owner, she is now betrothed one of the world’s top recording artists, Sir Paul McCartney. Except for the 1925 Cartier solitaire diamond engagement ring (said to have set the Beatle back some $650,000) sparkling on her left hand under the stark fluorescent lighting, however, the future Lady McCartney still seemed like a Jersey girl—an exceedingly self-possessed, relaxed, collegial and well-manicured Jersey girl, but still.

You don’t meet a prince without a fairy godmother, and Ms. Shevell’s romantic coup—he may not be John Lennon, ladies, but he’s not Ringo, either—is said to have been engineered by no less formidable a yenta than The View’s Barbara Walters, who happens to be her second cousin. “Barbara was her emotional confidante and played matchmaker,” a friend of the couple told The Observer. “She gave numerous dinner parties for them and always made sure to invite people she knew that Paul would want to meet.” The friend added that the broadcast vet also coached Ms. Shevell on how to behave around the musician, helping her to beat out a number of other aspirants for Mr. McCartney’s eye, including Rosanna Arquette. Ms. Walters’s strategy was clear: Look at Heather Mills, and do precisely the opposite. “They took a page from the old regime and made sure not to make the same mistakes.” Among other shrewd moves, Ms. Shevell has made a point of wearing Stella’s designs to various parties, ensuring maximum press coverage (Ms. Mills had done the same thing, but Ms. Shevell is said to have done it with more sincerity and panache). She has also pulled back when the media attention heated up. The couple shunned the press at the recent Costume Institute Gala, and at a New York City Ballet party (Sir Paul has collaborated with Peter Martins to write the musical score for a ballet debuting this fall), she tried to steer clear of photographers, one told The Observer. “She told me that she didn’t like to have her picture taken with people she didn’t know,” he said. “And she mentioned that she wasn’t used to the attention.”

Ms. Walters was asked about her role as matchmaker. “We are very close,” she told The Observer, somewhat coyly. “Nancy is like a second child to me. Her two aunts died of cancer. She’s struggled in her life.”

More than that she wasn’t saying. “The thing about Nancy is that she doesn’t want this article,” Ms. Walters explained in her legendary lisp. “She doesn’t want anything to do with publicity. She’s turned down a piece in Vogue.  She doesn’t want anything to do with music.”

No wonder Mr. McCartney likes her.

Nancy Shevell grew up in a Jewish family in Edison, N.J., the middle daughter of Myron and Arlene Shevell. Myron is the owner New England Motor Freight (NEMF), a large haulage company that does more than $400 million in annual revenues. Like Paul’s first wife, Linda McCartney, Arlene fought breast cancer (she died in 1991); Nancy is a survivor of the disease.

The Shevells have been in the trucking industry since the 1920s, when the family business transported seafood from the New Jersey coast to New York (shades of Boardwalk Empire). During the 1960s, Myron started his own business with his brother, Daniel, but they ran afoul of government investigators, and in 1975 were charged with fraud for alleged involvement with the Mafia. The case never went to trial, but the brothers were forced to surrender control of company and went bankrupt. Later that year Daniel Shevell, aged 39, fatally shot himself. In 1988, after buying the struggling trucking company NEMF, Myron Shevell was accused of colluding with Vincent Gigante, the head of the Genovese crime family. It was claimed in a racketeering lawsuit that Mr. Shevell made illegal pay-offs in return for a deal that would allow his company to skirt union rules. Again the case never went to trial, but Mr. Shevell was barred for five years from engaging in union negotiations.

Despite these difficulties, Nancy gravitated toward the family business. According to the one and only interview she’s ever given, a 2002 sit down with the The Newark Star-Ledger, she loved it when her father brought her toy trucks as gifts. “I used to line them up in my room, right next to my Barbies,” she said, adding, “While other kids would go feed ducks at the park, we would go to my father’s truck terminals, to places like Pennsauken, every single weekend.”

A tomboy streak appears to have persisted into high school, where Nancy played for her school’s all-girl football team. Her interests, as listed in her 1977 yearbook, were skiing, flying, Vermont and, curiously, “boobs.” She went onto Arizona State University, where she majored in transportation—the only woman to do so at the time—and met her ex-husband, attorney Bruce Blakeman, with whom she has a son, Arlen, 19.

Mr. Blakeman couldn’t offer a sharper contrast from her current beau. A die-hard Republican who challenged Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010, Mr. Blakeman is probably best-known for an eccentric political ad which featured a “pitch” from his talking pet dog during a short-lived campaign for mayor in 2009. When contacted about Ms. Shevell’s wedding plans, he was gracious. “I wish Nancy and Paul well, and that’s it. Nancy’s a great mother, and Paul treats my son very nicely.”

Ms. Shevell joined her father’s company in 1983, becoming VP for administration in 1986. As a woman in an overwhelmingly male industry, she was put through her paces. In The Star-Ledger, she recalled one dramatic throwdown with a colleague, adding pointedly, “I don’t know where he is right now but I know where I am.”

Ms. Shevell was appointed to serve on the M.T.A. board in 2001 by then-governor George Pataki, an unpaid post. Though her 10-year tenure came to an end in June, so far no seems to be in any rush to replace her.

According to other board members, Ms. Shevell is well-liked by her colleagues, despite having missed a number of the monthly meetings and openly texting in others. She breezes through her agenda items with a certain practiced efficiency and a firm grasp of Robert’s Rules of Order. Eschewing a driver, Ms. Shevell generally takes the bus to M.T.A. meetings, traveling down Fifth Avenue from her apartment on East 83rd Street. Noted one former board member, “She would talk a lot about bus bunching on Fifth and the fact that the subways are so crowded during rush hour.”

Which isn’t to say she’s been a champion of commuters during her years on the board. “She plays for the company team,” said Gene Russianoff, longtime spokesperson for the Straphanger’s Campaign. “During her tenure as bus committee chairman, they eliminated 570 bus stops, which led to worse service. She didn’t publicly fight the budget cuts. She’s not a thorn in the side of the M.T.A.”

 The origin’s of the couple’s romance are murky, despite the efforts of some of Fleet Street’s finest news hounds. (Indeed, Sir Paul, dubbed Macca by the British papers, recently suggested he may have been voice-mail hacked.)

Reportedly, their acquaintance goes back some 20 years, due to the  proximity of their weekend homes in the Hamptons. (Ms. Shevell’s East Hampton residence, valued at $8 million, is said to be far nicer than Mr. McCartney’s Amagansett getaway.) 

Their romance first became public in 2007, when The Sun reported that they’d been spotted at a South Fork sushi spot. Afterward, the story noted, “Macca put his arm around Nancy after he drove her home—and they kissed tenderly.” Ms. Shevell was legally separated at the time, and Mr. McCartney was busy disentangling himself from his troubled romance with Ms. Mills.

The tabloids also breathlessly reported on a road trip they took in the summer of 2008 on Route 66 crossing seven states in an ’89 Ford Bronco, and another jaunt to Anguilla after the deaths of Nancy’s older brother, Jon, from a drug overdose, and Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ road manager.

The couple’s engagement was announced on May 6 of this year. The wedding will be in London—a low-key affair (as these things go) with just a few friends and family members present.

And after that? Ms. Shevell has been quoted by The New York Post as saying that she’d love to live here in New York but that they would most likely wind up in England. That’s where the story may diverge from the usual fairy tale. Despite Sir Paul’s fortune of well over a billion dollars, he is famously stingy. (A source close to the couple noted with an eye-roll that during the couple’s courtship, Nancy always bought her own plane tickets to the U.K.) His estate in Peasmarsh, Sussex, might be set on 1,500 acres for privacy reasons, but it’s no palace by any stretch. Moreover, it’s isolated. Ms. Shevell can anticipate a lot of nights watching the telly.

And when she does go out, sources say, she will have her work cut out for her. “Confident, independent women who come over here with money will not have many friends,” warned Helen Kirwan-Taylor, an American journalist whose husband runs a hedge fund in London. “The last thing you can be here is threatening to other women. The things that open doors in New York shut them in England.”

After the M.T.A. meeting, Ms. Shevell told The Observer that she didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “It’s just not that intriguing,” she said. “Not like his last marriage, which was really intriguing. I’m over 50. I work. That’s it. I haven’t been social and I have a small group of girlfriends. There really isn’t much to talk about.”

She smiled, pushing through the door out to Madison Avenue—presumably late for a bus.

dprince@observer.com

There is really only one industry in the Hamptons: the rich and famous. They propel the local economy whether you're talking about landscaping, real estate, hardwood flooring, waiting tables or taking unauthorized photos of celebrities for profit. Mr. Agudo spent years doing the first-driving a backhoe-before he decided to try the last, full time. In 2008, he started the Web site hamptonsgrind.com. Since then he has made his living running the site (he's looking for venture capital) and selling photos of celebrities to outlets like In Touch, Life & Style and sundry foreign publications.

The Hamptons have long been an upper-class refuge, a place where they could sun and swim among their own, unharassed by the rest of us. But in recent years, the culture of celebrity spectacle has firmly taken hold here, as much as it has in Manhattan, Los Angeles and London.

"I said, you know, let me make my hobby make me some money," he explained. "You can't grow up out here and watch your town be taken over by all the millionaires without, you know, wanting a piece of it."

Mr. Agudo, 39, is a big man who favors cargo shorts and short-sleeved button-up shirts. His close-shorn hair and sun-tanned complexion give him the air of an ex-military man, but he has lived in East Hampton all his life.

The Starbucks is where he begins each day's hunt and often where he gets his first photo.

As I was standing outside waiting for him to join me, George Stephanopoulos walked up-looking every bit 35 of his 49 years-wearing khaki shorts, a faded blue polo shirt and dingy white Jack Purcells. He had two dogs in tow, one a solicitous miniature dachshund, the other a barky beast of unapparent breed (possibly a Glen of Imaal terrier). After tying up the dogs, he headed into the Starbucks. I hung back and waited to see how Mr. Agudo would play the situation. Eventually, Mr. Stephanopoulos came back out, retrieved his dogs and went on his way.

Puzzled, I headed back inside to find Mr. Agudo talking to the comedian Michael Showalter in line.

Mr. Agudo came back to the table and excitedly asked, "Did you just see what happened?"

"Stephanopoulos or the guy you were just talking to?"

"Wait, is he somebody?" Mr. Agudo asked me.

"Yeah, he's a comedian. He's on TV. His name's Michael something."

"See, because I asked him if he was anybody, and he said no. I'm gonna go say, 'Hey Mike,' and see what he says."

After a moment Mr. Agudo returned to his seat, winked and made a chk-chk noise out of the side of his mouth.

"He totally did not like that," Mr. Agudo informed me, admitting that at first he thought Mr. Showalter might have been the musician Perry Farrell.

He was feeling the day's possibilities, the notion first thing in the morning that today might be the day when you catch someone really famous-Madonna, say-doing something really boring-grocery shopping, say-and sell the shot for a tidy sum. Rubbing his hands together, he said, "Here we go. Hopefully, get a good one today. A moneymaker." He darted outside to catch a snapshot of the newscaster before he disappeared. "We'll throw him on Hamptons Grind. Celebrity dogs," he added.

It was time to head out. Mr. Agudo made a preliminary round of nearby restaurants and shops. With his camera in his backpack and his hands in his pockets, he didn't walk as much as skulk. This lurking demeanor would seem even more suspect when we later dropped by a petting zoo in search of stars with their kids.

With no luck in town, it was time to hit the road. Mr. Agudo's white Ford Escort is conspicuous among the Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins and immaculate classic cars. The first stop was East Hampton Main Beach.

After a brief stroll around the concession stand there, we got into the car, made a U-turn and slid back toward town. A white convertible Beetle approached from the opposite direction.

"Look, is this Russell Simmons? Look, there's Russell. Where's he going?" Mr. Agudo said. "See, this is the shit. He'd drive right by you. But to me, I'm in the business. He's nothing, but if you get him in the shot, on the beach. I hope he's going in there with his shirt off, yeah, you never know."

We made a U-turn, and crept up on Mr. Simmons' car from behind. Then we made another U-turn, exiting the lot. "He's just at the beach. Leave him be," Mr. Agudo decided. "I made money on him a little while ago. I'm not even gonna bother the guy," he continued, easing the car to the side of the road and adjusting his side mirror to better surveil the rap mogul.

"Where's Rev. Run? That's who I want to see today," he continued, referring to Mr. Simmons brother, the Rev. Joseph Simmons, an ordained minister and member of the rap trio Run-DMC.

Little more than 100 yards down the road, I spotted a flashy convertible, a 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS ragtop, whose driver I recognized.

"There's Bon Jovi," I pointed out.

"Holy shit!" Mr. Agudo exclaimed as the rock star made a left in front of us. We made a hasty U-turn and passed Mr. Bon Jovi's gate just as he pulled into the driveway of his redoubtable house and under a well-concealed carport.

East Hampton in the summer is very much a walking and biking community (though the traffic is still a special kind of hell), and each cyclist or pedestrian we passed received a once-over from Mr. Agudo. We passed a woman jogging, and Mr. Agudo sang to himself, "Who could it be? Are you anybody famous?" We passed a couple in a pedal car. "I thought it was someone, but ..." It turned out it was no one, just a person. This is a chronic pastime out here, even for the nonprofessionals.

EVERYONE HERE IS looking to see who everyone is. More to the point, everyone is looking to see if anyone is someone. Eventually a series of questions emerges. First: Who is that person, and is he or she famous? If not, second: What is he or she doing here? Third: Am I famous? If not, fourth: What am I doing here? Fifth: Who am I? Of course, these questions are null and void if the subject is wealthy.

No doubt Mr. Agudo has felt these pangs of being a nobody in a town full, at least during the summer, of somebodies. As we drove by a particularly large oceanfront property, he pointed out, "This is some really rich guy. He tore up the dune and didn't even care. It must be nice, man. Just to move somewhere, total disregard for any laws ... Maybe I'll have that problem one day. But living out here, and seeing them, with all the cars, you want that problem. I don't want to be a snob or anything. I want to go to the next level. That's why we're doing this."

Like all paparazzi, or at least all those quoted in the press, Mr. Agudo makes a distinction between his modus operandi and those of competing photographers. He respects his subjects' privacy; they disregard it completely. This impulse toward decency-even if often not adhered to-could have its drawbacks. As Peter Howe, author of Paparazzi, once put it, "The real paparazzi are the ones who come up with these amazing creative ways of invading somebody else's privacy."

Felix Filho, a photographer with the infamous and wildly successful Los Angeles photo agency X-17, was even more forthright. "To be a pap," he told The Atlantic, "you
have to be ready to do anything, legal or illegal." At times, Mr. Agudo seems to lack such resolve.

Though he has paid hot-dog vendors and shopkeepers for tips and once rented a cherry picker to hoist him into the air for an over-the-fence shot, Mr. Agudo favors a noninvasive, cooperative approach. After all, these people are his neighbors. "I honestly think," he told me, "that if a lot of them knew that I was just a local boy trying to do right by 'em, you know, do right by myself, they might give me a little opportunity. ... You just gotta be forward and ask. If you don't, you never know.

"I'm just trying to get out of Three Mile, like Eminem," he continued, referencing both the name of the trailer park where he lived, Three Mile Harbor, and the movie 8 Mile, starring the popular white rapper. One paparazzo told me he wouldn't work a summer in the Hamptons for less than $100,000. Mr. Agudo has not yet moved into that income bracket. He told me that his best "get," a shot of Lindsay Lohan, netted him several thousand dollars. Some he sells for as little as $20. 

We headed to a local yacht club-the name of which Mr. Agudo requested go unmentioned-to "check out this guy, see if he's on tour or not."

"Who?" I inquired

"Paul McCartney."

Sir Paul, it turns out, is the ur-quarry, part of the hamptonsgrind.com origin myth. "I was doing photography like 10 years ago," he recalled. "Just landscape. From there, I bumped into a few people. Paul McCartney, when he was going out with Heather Mills. I had a landscape camera, and Heather Mills got out of the car and smacked me with her pocketbook." He had shown me the photo earlier, of the couple in a Rolls-Royce. "I'm sure ever since that day, he hasn't really been driving that around too much. He's probably got it in storage." He didn't use the photo because Ms. Mills had been so upset. "They were on their way to Splitsville, U.S.A., anyway."

We eased into the club parking lot, did the usual scan for recognizables, saw none and made a U-turn. Back on the Montauk Highway, Mr. Agudo reconsidered an earlier prohibition on stopping at a local church fair. (Earlier, he said, "I'm not gonna bother them with their families." Now, he said, "They all live here. Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts. For them, they could walk here.")

As we parked the car, a man in a large white Chevy work truck slowed, rolled down his window and yelled to Mr. Agudo, "I just saw Gwyneth."

"Oh, shit," he responded. Back in the car.

After some scouting of the roads near the house where Gwyneth Paltrow summers with husband Chris Martin, we came to a stop at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Bluff Road. Mr. Agudo looked thoughtfully left then right, then left again, muttering to himself, "If I were Gwyneth ..." Right again, then left, he then proceeded straight, through the intersection. Apparently, if he were Ms. Paltrow, Mr. Agudo would head for the beach. Easing down the sand-dusted road, we came up behind a caravan of cyclists, what looked to be a few teenagers and a grown woman. Mr. Agudo craned his neck around as we pass. The woman was blond, but, as it turned out, not a famous movie star. "There's too many bikers for me today," Mr. Agudo said.

We arrived once again at the small parking lot of the beach. Two flaxen-haired girls were sitting languidly by a fruit stand. Mr. Agudo, furrowed his brow and scanned the limited horizon for a glimpse of Ms. Paltrow. She was nowhere to be seen, the closest thing being the lanky, towheaded pair behind the crate of plums.

As we look out at the ocean, a tanned teenage boy walked down the steps from the concession shack, spinning a lanyard.

"Hey, is Seinfeld down there?" the boy barked to the girls.

"Oh, shit." Mr. Agudo's ears pricked up. "Did you hear that?" He could already envision the big Jerry shot.

The girls slowly turned their sunglasses in the boy's direction.

"What?" said one.

"What?" echoed the other.

He pointed to the front of their table. "Your sign fell down there," the boy repeated.

"Oh," they answered in unison, without moving to fix it.

U-turn. Back up the road. Away from the beach.

editorial@observer.com

A year later, they performed the very first concert ever held at Shea Stadium.

This week, Paul McCartney is back to christen that arena’s replacement, Citi Field. And while in town, he’ll be heading to the Ed Sullivan Theater July 14 to play for that theater’s new inhabitant, David Letterman.

The concerts and Late Show appearance kick off Mr. McCartney’s latest U.S. tour, which will take him across the country.

It’s somehow fitting that, both really and virtually, Mr. McCartney is returning to these epochal venues.

At times, Mr. McCartney’s most recent reinventions have, if anything, strained for the trappings of 21st-century relevance and ended up being pure nostalgia. At the end of the summer, both Citi Field and the Ed Sullivan will be featured in the Beatles version of the video game “Rock Band,” slated for a Sept. 9 release. The game comes packed with 45 Beatles songs to play (or to approximate playing) in your living room—like 21st-century sheet music!

But at Citi Field and the Ed Sullivan Theater this week, it’s the music that will be the center of attention. And that is good for Mr. McCartney, because nowadays, and for the first time in a long time, he is exhibiting some part of the ambition that made the Beatles, and an earlier Mr. McCartney, not just world-famous, rich, the center of the recording-industry universe, but actually great.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to speak of a man like Paul McCartney as having been unambitious. But given his early legendary status, it was easy to think that the fans’ connection to Mr. McCartney made success too easy for him.

How do you continue a career that seemingly can’t go wrong, and infuse it with the energy that accompanied that first American tour?

In many ways, this recent shift is the result of years spent in the dead center of the music industry, watching its decline. It’s also proof that Mr. McCartney the studio tinkerer, responsible for backward guitar lines and orchestral cacophonies in the Beatles days, hasn’t lost his curiosity.

It’s possible that no one was as entrenched or even as responsible for what happened to the music industry since 1970 as Paul McCartney (and by extension, the Beatles). He was signed to EMI for decades and made the label very rich (and he didn’t do so bad for himself). Yet by 2007, McCartney was convinced the industry had reached the end of its usefulness. He called EMI “boring.” He walked.

Mr. McCartney’s relationship to Big Music has often been contentious, but never has it propelled him so far outside its own conventional commercial wisdom as it has now.

Soon after the game’s release, downloadable versions of Beatles albums, starting with Abbey Road, will finally be made available. (The Beatles haven’t exactly been on the edge of new technologies; it took years before their catalog was first available on CD, too.) In a nice touch, a download of “All You Need Is Love” will be available exclusively to Xbox 360 users and proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders.

One return that isn’t in the cards for Sir Paul is those Beatles songs Michael Jackson owned before his death. In the past weeks, rumors swirled that he had willed the songs back to Mr. McCartney (and Ringo, one presumes), but this turned out to be untrue. On his Web site, Mr. McCartney explained that it was fine, because the alleged will was “something I didn’t believe for a second.” He also insisted that the famed rift between the two onetime collaborators (“The Girl Is Mine,” “Say Say Say”) was overplayed by the media: “In fact, though Michael and I drifted apart over the years, we never really fell out, and I have fond memories of our time together.” He did however call Michael a “boy man,” which may be accurate, as well as accurately creepy.

One former associate whose passing likely did not elicit fond memories for Mr. McCartney was Allen Klein, who died July 4. The noted cutthroat manager who once quipped “Don’t talk to me about ethics” tried to wrest the Beatles catalog just as the band was splitting up (he’d conned his way into many valuable Rolling Stones rights years before), but thanks in part to Mr. McCartney’s vocal dissent, he never got a chance.

Mr. McCartney learned from these un-square dealers. He’s been working to extricate himself from middlemen for the past two years. He’s in a video game. He’s circumventing the major-label system that once revolved around him. He was quoted in the press saying he’d like to work with MGMT (they’re opening a few dates on this tour). Who is this old hipster?

He became the first artist on the Starbucks–Concord Music Group’s Hear Music Record Co. Memory Almost Full was well received, among critics but especially by the public, and sold more than a million copies in the U.S.—his highest-selling stateside release in 25 years. The 2007 album was solid though comfortable, not much of a musical surprise. Mr. McCartney also made a deal to sell the album through iTunes, and even allowed a song to be used in a commercial for the online music giant.

Hear Music seemed like a sure thing. But by 2008, Starbucks’ model wasn’t looking so rosy anymore. Returns diminished through Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon and James Taylor and onto, uh, Cat Power (apparently just being in a Starbucks isn’t enough to make people buy music by someone other than someone who was in the Beatles). As Starbucks started slashing prices and closing hundreds of branches, Hear Music got shunted over entirely to Concord Music, and Starbucks focused on its partnership with iTunes rather than cultivating a label.

But set adrift, Mr. McCartney did not return to the majors. In fact the decline of Hear Music may have been even more liberating for him. His next album was self-released in late 2008 by MPL, an imprint of his own London-based publishing company, and distributed through indie labels (ATO, One Little Indian) as well as on his own Web site. It was also released under the name Fireman, not as Paul McCartney—the return to that moniker for the first time in a decade. (He’s used it twice before in non-vocal electronic collaborations with producer (and ex–Killing Joke bassist) Martin “Youth” Glover, in 1993 and 1998).

All the Fireman albums have been expressly about pushing Paul McCartney to places where he sounds very un-McCartney. In the past, that’s meant rather drippy electronica. This time it meant a rather joyous (and noisy!) psychedelic pop album titled Electric Arguments, in which there’s no piano balladeering and even less anthemized “Hey Jude”–like formula-ism. The album ranges from the heavy kerrang of the opener (“Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight”) to the plaintive and lo-fi follow-up (“Two Magpies”), reminiscent of the hushed urgency of his early solo albums, and on through string sections and rousing marching-band fervor and even a bit of hymn singing (“Is This Love?”).

The collaborative duo worked swiftly, crafting 13 tracks in as many days, yet the results feel vital rather than slapdash. There are thunderous, Zeppelin-like rockers and Paul duetting with his own falsetto and Paul’s voice at a shout, nearly subsumed in more than a few reverb storms of epic proportions. He’s done nothing like this in many years. It’s proof that McCartney’s legendary experimental streak is still around and can be folded into his more prosaic pop songwriting.

A statement released about the album bragged that it was “made with no record company restraints or a set release date to work to” and “with complete artistic and creative freedom.”

It shows, and it will be interesting to see how much Macca makes of his newfound freedom.

editorial@observer.com

“It is an ocean of infinite intelligence. Creativity. Happiness known as bliss. Infinite universal love. Energy. Dynamic peace,” mused the 63-year-old filmmaker, dressed in a black suit and a yellow tie that was brighter than his signature silver pompadour, at the beginning of a star-studded concert he had organized at the famed venue. “When a human being, any human being, dives within and experiences this ocean, swims in this ocean, life gets better and better and better.”

Ohmmm!

He was referring to Transcendental Meditation, also known as TM, the trademarked meditation technique developed in the 1960s by Indian spiritual guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and which Mr. Lynch, himself a meditator of 35 years, plans to teach to 1 million "at-risk youth" via his namesake foundation. The concert was a benefit for this initiative.

His co-host for the evening was Laura Dern, one of Mr. Lynch’s favorite actresses, whose head-to-toe black ensemble accentuated her shiny blonde locks and bright red lipstick.

“It’s pure bliss to be on a film with you because it’s boundary-less,” said Ms. Dern (we’re noticing a “bliss” theme here!), standing next to Mr. Lynch at stage right, “and I’m just curious if the boundary-less-ness that you bring to all of us comes from your connection to meditation.”

“You better believe it!” he replied.

If Tom Cruise is the celebrity face of Scientology, and Madonna is the celebrity face of Kabbalah, Mr. Lynch has become that for TM, which has a less cultish, although not entirely uncontroversial, reputation. And as was evidenced by Saturday’s concert--the highlight of which was a rare performance by surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr--he is but one on a long list of bold-faced names that use or endorse the practice. Jennifer Aniston, Yoko Ono, John McEnroe, Martin Scorsese, Kyle MacLachlin, Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick and Jason Bateman, though not necessarily all meditators themselves, were among the attendees.

“I’ve been meditating for 37 years,” said Jerry Seinfeld, who made a surprise appearance midway through the concert, before launching into a series of jokes about bathroom stalls and taxis.

Soon afterward, fellow comedian and 38-year TM practitioner Howard Stern took the stage.

“Mike Love of the legendary Beach Boys saw me backstage and he said to me, ‘Howard, you prove that you do not have to be a pussy to meditate!’” he said.

Other TM-ers to perform included Angelo Badalamente (to The Daily Transom’s utter excitement, he opened the concert with a flawless recital of the Twin Peaks theme song), Ben Harper (did you know he was married to Ms. Dern?), Donovan, Moby, Betty Lavette, Sheryl Crow and Eddie Vedder, who was looking very 1992 with his unbuttoned flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, wavy shoulder-length hair and scruffy goatee. Hip Hop mogul and philanthropist Russell Simmons addressed the audience via a taped video message, but he had appeared in person the previous afternoon at a pre-concert press conference in Radio City’s lobby.

“I operate most days from my meditation,” he said. “It gives me the ability to function in a world that is full of stress.”

The concept of TM as a celebrity cause isn’t entirely new. In fact, The Beatles were largely responsible for importing TM to the West after studying under the Maharishi in 1968 at his ashram in Rishikesh, India. The technique involves repeating a mantra with one’s eyes closed twice a day for 20 minutes.

“It was a great gift the Maharishi gave to us,” said Mr. McCartney, standing next to Mr. Starr at the press conference, and looking quite hip for his age. “It came at a time when we were looking for something to stabilize us toward the end of the crazy ‘60s. And it is a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time.”

Of course, to describe TM as a “gift” in 2009 is somewhat misleading; it costs $2,000 for an adult, or $1,000 for a full-time student, to learn the technique—not exactly the most recession-friendly investment—hence the need to raise so much money so the kids can learn it for free. (The pricey Radio City benefit generated an estimated $3 million, according to The David Lynch Foundation.)

Perhaps that's why critics have accused the TM crowd of being a bit cultish. Even Moby, a more recent TM convert, couldn’t resist making a wisecrack about it.

“Growing up, anything associated with TM and hippies scared the shit out of me,” he joked. “I thought it involved ritual animal sacrifice and moving to some country and renouncing wealth and materialism and eating bugs.”

But in the end, TM’s “simplicity” won him over.

“One of the things that makes TM so effective is that you don’t really have to do all that much,” he said,  “and as a profoundly lazy person, I appreciate that.”

Mr. McCartney, wearing a lightweight European aristo scarf indoors, was accompanied by his lady friend, M.T.A. board member Nancy Shevell, who has been publicly scolded lately for skipping budget meetings while cavorting across the pond in England with her new beau.

“Together now!” a scrum of photographers yelped at the pair. Ms. Shevell gave Mr. McCartney a pouty look, but then scurried up next to him anyway, posing for photos in her violet minidress and curious, sparkle-covered nude leggings, which seemed to recall the singer Britney Spears’ outfit at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.

“We recycle, I drive a hybrid, and we’re vegetarian, which the United Nations recently said is the single most effective thing an individual can do because of cattle-rearing and its effects on the environment,” opined Mr. McCartney. “I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years,” he added, “and I’m now only 37!” (He’s actually 66.)

Around the room, other guests were discussing their own minor contributions to the environmental movement, too. “Our daughter has us using recycled toilet paper!” the Daily Transom overheard one man exclaim to his dinner companion.

A number of powerful moguls attended, including financier Ron Perelman, former Viacom president Tom Freston, IAC chairman Barry Diller and IMG honcho Ted Forstmann—the latter two, accompanied by Diane von Furstenberg and Padma Lakshmi, respectively. Also present were several SNL cast members invited by their boss, Lorne Michaels, who bought a table that evening. (30 Rock star Alec Baldwin served as emcee for the event.)

“We fell asleep, rolled out of bed and rolled into here,” said comedian Fred Armisen, with Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss on his arm.

“We’re going to L.A. soon and we’re going to get our little hybrid cars—that’s our big move,” Ms. Moss told the Daily Transom. “But,” she added, turning to Mr. Armisen, “we’re pretty good, right?”

“Yeah,” he chimed in, “and we’re pretty recycle-y.”

Do they wish they were greener? “I always buy new clothes and then I throw them away, so I’d like to start reusing them,” joked Mr. Armisen. “I never do the laundry. Really expensive suits—right in the garbage!”

Nearby, fellow SNL standout Seth Meyers was making his way inside. “My boss invited me,” he told the Daily Transom. Invited or told? “No, he asks me. He’s powerful enough to know that asking will do the trick.”

Mr. Meyers said his carbon footprint has been relatively small. “I don’t have a driver’s license right now so I can’t burn any gas, and anytime I turn on my air conditioner, it blows the fuse,” he noted. “My prewar apartment building has very strong feelings about being green.”

What else can he do to help? “I am only going to have sex with the light off!” Mr. Meyers pledged.

Ms. McCartney, the evening’s honoree, teetered in right before the dinner began in a royal blue, sheer-topped dress. The Transom wondered what, if anything, is most frustrating for the eco-conscious designer.

“The meat industry!” she replied. “It’s responsible for all the carbon emissions during its worldwide transport.”

Ms. McCartney’s father suddenly dashed toward her holding up his cellular phone like a tape recorder to mock the reporters lining up to speak with her.

“But, what do you think about the environment?” demanded Mr. McCartney in a silly Irish accent.

“No more questions, no more questions!” she shrieked at him to play along. After which, father and daughter posed together for photos and retreated inside.

Yale announced that it has awarded Paul McCartney with an Honorary--we assume honorary means he didn't actually have to schlep out to New Haven to attend classes--Doctor of Music degree, an academic degree of the highest level also awarded to Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and John Mellencamp.