Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs for Emerz

"Well, Emerz, " I said, "it looks like your new building isn't quite as exclusive as you thought. The doorman just waved me right in." "That's because he knows you," said Emerz. "Oh, really" I said. "A fan of myfriendsgotcable?" "No," said Emerz. "He lives in your building."

Double Vision

"Have you seen Eight Christmases?" asked Emerz. "You mean Four Christmases," I said. "I'll call you back in two hours," he said.

A Busy Holiday Season for Emerz

"Have you seen Doubt?" I asked Emerz. I'd been hearing a lot of buzz. "What's the deal with all these Holocaust movies coming out right now," he said.

Emerz' Test of Faith

"You've got a better chance of getting into heaven than getting into Devyn," said Devyn, of the brave, new, Real World.

"I'm an atheist, bitch!" said Emerz, with impressive vitrol.

Emerz as Cerberus, Lording Over the Triborough Bridge

"First they come for your friends, and you say nothing," says Emerz, "and then they come for your city..." He is blasting the squirrels that sixty-nine the bird-feeder with a pellet gun, eating glovefuls of snow. "What?" he asks, "You got a problem with this?"

"Not at all," I say, "as long as you don't start wetting the bed or starting fires." Emerz is, for better or worse, a born and bred New Yorker, who is currently posted up in a tri-state resort community in search of a little breathing room. Whitney Port is doing the opposite, keeping her head amid the skyline, and doing it suspiciously close to how Emerz remembers doing it, one hand busy held aloft, sunglasses the size of apartments, Dinner parties! Eating outside! Coffee! and chanting that untrue refrain, "What a small world, what a small world, what a small world..."

I say the problem with the show is that it takes the vibrancy of NYC and condenses it into banal conversations about manufactured juvenile drama. Instead of talking about art, they talk about art dealers. "Fuck art dealers," says Emerz. "And their kids."

What's cooler, I ask Emerz, the uptown crowd or the downtown crowd?

"How the fuck am I supposed to know," he says. "Downtown like what, 61st St.?"

Whitney seems similarly confused, attending an "uptown" party in Tribeca. "Well, it's a state of mind," says Emerz. "Everyone knows that."

Finally, says Emerz. A show about dating in the big city.

"Does that work?" I wonder aloud after Alex asks Whitney to meet him to discuss her boyfriend. Do girls do that? Listen as other men just blast out a rumour like a cannon ball warning shot? Do men do that? Just assume that eventually a guy with an accent is going to slip up and fall into his place in your elaborately constructed reality? I guess they do, I finally realize, while watching it all unfold across an elaborately constructed reality, taxis swimming uptown like salmon, full disclosure kept in safety deposit boxes. The City within the city, vaguely familiar people and places. It can all be a little much. "I don't want to think about anything," says Whitney. I tell Emerz I would think she'd be tired of that, but who can blame her? After all, who would want this, this exploded life?

"The unexploded life..." says Emerz, stroking the pellet gun across his lap.

So where does this leave us, I ask Emerz. "Eyeing the metropolis from afar? Thinking about people who are not thinking about us?"

"I'm redoubling my efforts to become a doorman," he says.

"A doorman to what?" I ask, "A building? A club? Uptown? Downtown?"

"The city," he says. "I'll be the doorman to the city."

Rooting For The Villain

"This cast is so L.A." says Emerz. We're watching S.W.A.T., just barely too young to remember the show. I ask for clarification. "Oh, come on," he says. "Rosario Dawson? LL Cool J? That guy, that guy, Mr. International, who dates Kylie Minogue? Who directed this? The maitre d at Koi?" "Michelle Rodriguez," I say. "What?" "It's Michelle Rodriguez, not Rosario Dawson." "Oh, that's right," says Emerz. "I wonder if she's out of Hawaiian prison yet." Emerz hates police. He hates the lights, the radio static, the mustaches, the flattened foreheads. He roots for the villain. Always. When we watched Rent he rooted for gentrification. When we watched An Inconvenient Truth he rooted for the truth. When we watched Hook he rooted for Robin Williams' continuing dedication to his work. "Oh, grow up," he said to Peter Panning. "It's a once in a lifetime deal!" The S.W.A.T. villain, Mr. International himself, Mr. One-hundred-million-dollars!, Mr. Kylie Minogue, is as good as anybody to root for. "But he's a wanted terrorist," I tell Emerz. "And he cockholded Richard Gere in Unfaithful," says Emerz. "But...but," Emerz takes a deep breath, massages the bridge of his nose, "I find him irresistible." Emerz is against regulation of any kind. Don't tell him who to root for. And don't regulate his heart. "Do you remember that?" he asks. "That scene on the staircase?" His nose is pinched white under the pressure of his remembrances. "Do you remember that scene on the staircase?" What goes around comes around, I tell Emerz. And, in the end, Hollywood always leaves the villains holding the bag, dead or in jail. Just look at Michelle Rodriguez, I say. Proof positive that life catches up to you. But Emerz isn't hearing it. He's flipping through the movie channels, looking for a team to cheer for. I check the TV Guide. United 93 comes on at 8.

FRIENDSHIP IS RARE, or INNUENDO OVERLOAD

(Image courtesy of Emerz) What should young people do with their lives today?Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.-Kurt Vonnegut Emerz is familiar with loneliness. He knows the cold feeling of a television remote on a Friday night. He knows the clammy spiral of porn sites and the false hope of adultfriendfinder. Emerz knows the thunderous silence of a quiet phone, lying across his bed under the heavy drapes of the canopy, legs crossed behind him, face first into a suffocating pillow. Oh wait, he has it on silent. There. That's better. Brody Jenner should be immune to this affliction, Emerz thinks. The fact that he clearly is not does not have the reassuring effect Emerz was hoping for. It's more like a guffaw, like, Brody's got problems? Like, is there hope for anybody? Here's the thing about Emerz and Brody Jenner. Emerz would consider himself to be friends with Brody. Bromance is something of an insult to Emerz. He wasn't aware Brody felt so alone. A Brody Jenner dating show, Emerz could get behind that. Brody's got needs, Emerz understands this. And any woman would be lucky to land him. It speaks to Jenner's skills that he doesn't need MTV for women. So then, what does Bromance say about him? There was a bad split with Spencer, former BFF. "You're dead to me," Spencer said to Brody, "I'm talking to a dead man right now." How many times have I heard that, thinks Emerz. Variations on a long-running theme, thinks Emerz. Breaking up is hard to do. I don't believe that Spencer and Brody are actually enemies, but Emerz gets fussy if you challenge the reality established by The Hills. So Brody is floating listlessly through Los Angeles without anyone to tell him how good he looks, without anyone to laugh at his jokes or admire the shiny leather of his SUV's interior or stand next to and feel taller, faster, sharper. He has Frankie, but he is more of a succubus than a wingman. More of a hanger-on or package carrier than friend. Emerz is adamant on this point. Of all the teams Emerz is on (Team L.C., Team Aniston, Team Ronson, Team Fez (vs Moore), Team Moore (vs Roddick)) team Not Frankie is Emerz' banner headline, his number one cause, his Rushmore. Emerz doesn't feel too threatened by the competition, as he calls them. He was puzzled by the arrival of an openly gay contestant, until I explained to him that the gay man's purpose was to assure us that all the rest of the bros were not gay. No matter how much time they all spend in the hot tub together ("That's just how Brody rolls," Emerz tells me after I wonder aloud about the hot tub thing). The gay man may have spoken for all of us when he said, "I thought this would be more like an episode of the Hills." It is not, despite Lauren's cameo in later episodes. Say what you want about the denizens of The Hills, but they don't go to Fredrick's of Hollywood parties at Hush. They don't have Boston accents. They don't worship television personalities. They don't drink out of red solo cups. They don't help people, or reconsider, or apologize well. "What are friends for?" I once asked Emerz, rhetorically, while giving him an affectionate slap on the back. "I've got no idea," replied Emerz. With Brody, he thinks he is beginning to understand. Emerz owns the Princes of Malibu Collector's Edition DVD Box Set. He celebrates the entire Jenner catalogue. He bought birthday presents for Brody's half-sisters, the Kardashians. He refused to watch Kim's sex tape ("my most trying hour," says Emerz) out of familial love. Emerz doesn't like to share (see the great six-foot party-sub debacle of '06), but even he has to admit that there is more than enough Brody to go around. He's going to keep his eye on the black guy though. "I don't trust him," he says. "I don't want Brody to get hurt."