Is Living Nude the Best Revenge?

Well, I thought so, but no one else agreed.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/12/seymour-200912

Don't Call It a...

So...Nightly Viewings Now? Wonders Emerz...

My father has a rule that he lives by: The radiator stays off until Thanksgiving. Emerz and I have one rule that we live by: No Love, Actually until November 1st (unless there’s, you know, company over). This year, I almost didn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for Daylight Savings, that wrinkle in time, and Halloween, that wrinkle in reality, that exercise in banality, that combination of New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day, I would have had to find a new rule. I don’t even know where I would begin to look for one of those these days.

What a film: A post-9/11 elegy that begins and ends in an airport (did you know that that is real footage of people hugging and kissing and crying recorded by a hidden camera at Heathrow airport over the course of one week?). An orgy of twisting love stories that never compete (competition, in my experience, is a mood killer at orgies). A Hugh Grant romantic comedy that is not a Hugh Gant romantic comedy. A modern day examination of everyday emotions and relationships and human interactions that manages to present a conflict without resorting to the classic, chronically-dissatisfied bourgeois ladies (chefs, florists, magazine editors, cookbook writers, all) faking a meek smile while their bumbling male counterparts grin on, sweetly stupid and headed for disaster. A tearjerker that never feels exploitative. A rejection of cynicism that never feels forced or ignorant. Claudia Schiffer. Mr. Bean. Music, music, music. Christmas. This thing fires with both barrels. This thing eats Sandra Bullock for breakfast. This is the Dream Team.

This film defines love for me and Emerz in a way that very few other pieces of art manage to do (Umbrella, Travis Barker remix being another lofty example). What I realized this 11/1, and what astounds and frightens me, is that I do not know what I base these feelings on. I literally have no emotional grounds on which to judge the film’s accuracy. My analysis of the human beings and their actions, reactions, decisions, etc., in Love, Actually is based on my previous viewings of Love, Actually, not any sort of past personal experience. Things could be worse. Eight is a lot of legs, David.

Lunch w/ Emerz

Cavallari's Weekend: Better Than Yours?

Kristin Cavallari Ended up seeing The Proposal, then came over and rented The Haunting in Connecticut and the movie about the homeless guy that plays the violin and cello. yeahhhh;; all we're good.

-via Facebook update

(grammatical errors Cavallari's)

The Love Continues to Grow

Booty Call for Emerz

Emerz' eyes are bleary and his phone is running on empty. We're squeezing grapefruits and the shrill tones of his ring call out and he trudges to the charger, asks to call her back on the land line. Land lines are appropriate: homey and wintry, a solid footing for a time of transitions. Kim needs Emerz now more than ever. She didn't like New Orleans. She couldn't stand the smell of the astroturf, the winking cheerleaders with pneumatic everythings, the low-lying skyline, the above-ground tombs, the carnies, the trannies, the Sandusky gentlemen. The mini-lobsters ("crawfish," mouths Emerz), the costume jewelery, the Sarajevo hangovers, inevitably waking to see the city bombed-out and splattered, neon lights cackling in the wet heat of midday. There was no ocean, only an earth-toned gurgling brook that hummed like radio static.

And Reggie would always leave the TV on in his cream-colored condo so she would wake at 5 am to a blaring repetition, the DVD Menu of Blue Streak or The Players Club or Booty Call and once, bizarrely, she thought, The Woodsman. She watched part of that, she loved Footloose growing up, but all she got were jittery nightmares, strangers lurking in shadows in seasonally inappropriate overcoats whispering things through tall chainlink fences.

And she missed home, that set where they all live, where Brody has a key, he's probably making a sandwich right now, his head deep in the fridge, a towel wrapped like a snake around his neck, water dripping from the hems of his trunks.

It wasn't all bad, says Emerz. Reggie had the hands of a baker, kneading and kneading until the ripples ran smooth. But New Orleans was too pleased with its imperfections, Kim told him. Where are their values? Where are their eyebrow threaders? And they can't throw a funeral worth a goddamn. What can she say? There was a carousel, but all the horses ran away.

Toni's Blog: FOUND!

It's like Al Capone's vault: Just because it's empty doesn't mean it's not important.

http://idontreadyourbloganymore.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-dont-read-your-blog-anymore.html

The rest of the posts are less literate, but no less Toni. And Emerz will thank you not to refer to Vanderbilt as "clown college."

Game, Set, Match to Stifler

So, all that's left to decide is who gets LeeLee and who gets Helen Hunt? I'm going to say...Stifler goes with LeeLee, because he's always throwing stones at Glass Houses, and Roddick plunks down with Helen, because, for an American tennis player, that might be as good as it gets. Or maybe he's mad about her. Or...maybe he's simply playing it forward, hoping a good deed will net him (intended), I don't know, Khloe Kardashian, or Jessica Simpson's old assistant, good ole what's-her-name (he does resemble a badly burned Kevin Spacey).

Emerz Returns

Arbitration is on the way. A furious flutter of text messages and closed-door board meetings and salsa-stained inter-offfice memos have decided the fate of Emerz, the erstwhile summer intern at Fleck, Kuehnle, Potter and Potter. The final straw may have come when Emerz handed in his first report to the partners dressed as Tilda Swinton. Or it may have come earlier, when Toni's father (once an erstwhile summer intern himself, now fully grown into a Westhampton slum lord and one-time co-owner of a short-lived gourmet sandwich truck with Nora Ephron) caught wind of Emerz' black mail scheme (involving shenanigans reported to have taken place on a Milbrook squash team's bus restroom) and called a higher power, most likely, his father-in-law. He sails boats, Toni sinks them. He opens doors, Emerz closes them. So...now what?

Good thing it's summer in Connecticut, home of SlugFest, or what's left of it these days. Emerz playing "Around the World" with July renters is something most of us thought we'd never see again, but there's Emerz in the Ad court, Mrs. Price up at the net, her skin tanned nearly dark enough to disguise the vericose veins running up and up and up. And there's Mrs. Ford watching from the bench off of Court One, sipping water from a thin paper cup. She has those little balls on the back of her socks. Well now,what do you know, if it isn't Emerz' Achilles' Heel.

Emerz Quotes Music and Lyrics, The Wasteland All In One Day

And then there is Cora Corman (Haley Bennett): mystic, siren, faith healer. She no longer thinks, she just exists. Same goes for Emerz. He, like, started that. Bennett's turn in Music and Lyrics and the resulting sexual chemistry between her and, uh, the audience, makes Emerz wonder how much longer Drew Barrymore can coast off her Playboy spread circa '98, or her topless Goldilocks meltdown in Boys on the Road. As we speed up towards whatever comes next all children will start partying at 7, hit rehab by 10, marry a Canadian by 13. What will we talk about when the girls of summer are gone? Oh, shanti shanti.

Ex Machina, Says Emerz

Emerz' dorm room looks a lot like Shia LaBeouf's dorm room in Transformers II: the Bad Boys posters, the Mountain Dew vending machines, the blinking towers of hacker gear. There was even the time that Isabel Lucas came over to hang. She was forceful, vibrant, filled with a steely resolve. Of course, in the end it turned out she was a Decepticon. "Aren't they all," says Emerz.

Emerz' Double Vision

Sex, Lies and Emerz

The Leighton Meester sex-tape viewing will inevitably go down as the central entertainment of what will soon be known as the Best Day of My Life So Far, tentatively scheduled to occur the minute San Fernando Valley bigwigs agree to terms and Comcast repairmen finally arrive and hook me back up to the real world. Until then, dreams will remain dark and spotty, featuring lots of spiders and rats and scuttling sounds.

I walked past a man speaking sternly to his ten-year-old son on a campus bench. The boy was red-faced, hoping he wouldn't cry. I thought, My God, did I just fall through a time warp? Is that me? That was how I felt for about fourteen years of my life. Then a guy jogged by who looked exactly like a Filipino Chuck Bass, and there I was again, suddenly, "safe" in 2009.

Emerz says he doesn't know if he can watch the tape. Remember, he didn't watch Kim Kardashian's, either. "Well, I'm a sensitive guy," says Emerz. This from a man who refers to women's primary(?) erogenous zones as "bangers and mash."

Sex, Fame and What's the other one?

Someone call Liam Neeson's agent.

A Gleeful Emerz Revisits A Mystery

Memo to David Chase, says Emerz. This is how you end an episode with Journey.

Emerz, She's Too Young!

Normally, I wouldn't agree, says Emerz. I've read the Marquis de Sade, remember, says Emerz. He is speaking about a film he has just seen. There's blood on the couch now, says Emerz. It came from my arms. Suddenly everything itched. Well, cheese and crackers, I say. That smarts. And hasn't everyone been there, tormented by that deep, inner static? Lifetime's She's Too Young takes place in a comfortable suburb. Therefore, the high school social caste is determined by promiscuity. It really is a parent's worse nightmare. Funny how those always turn out to be the basketball star's fantasies. Boys will be boys, says Emerz. Except, not this time. This time, a girl named Dawn reports to the school nurse and says that she has a painful sore in her mouth. She is diagnosed with syphilis. Her parents have recently gone through a divorce. She admits to having multiple, multiple partners. She is in ninth grade. Emerz' skin tightens.

Cue the crying parents (including a slumming Marcia Gay Harden), the public health officials, the vacant stares of the actresses as they give dry accounts of sexual acts under the blue lights of the examination room. Cue the moral outcry, the unwavering sensation of immortality that pumps through the hearts of teens everywhere, the overturned bottle after the liquor cabinet gets busted open.

You see, I tell Emerz. They do feel shame. If anyone can recognize it, it's me or Emerz. Mostly Emerz. But by now Emerz is huddled in the corner, shaking and bleeding. And here he was, thinking he was almost ready for children of his own. Everyone's having babies. Just watch MTV. I mean, Emerz, how soon we forget. He's Too Young.

I tell Emerz that it is good to be occasionally reminded of possible consequences. Sometimes that reminder comes from Lifetime television movies. Sometimes a Lifetime television movie is the consequence.

From Emerz, For My Consideration

Emerz always called Serena sloppy, hastily thrown together. He prefers the cold calculation of Blair, and after all, he reminds me, she was the one masturbating all season (busted by the housekeeper. High school!). How Serena (Jenny?) of her. How like Blair to appropriate their best qualities and make them her own. And now this (I mean, she is kind of a spy): And then this: That's so Emerz, except he makes the Bad Girls Go Worse.

Emerz Resists The Recession

Emerz and I are walking through a nearly empty mall, silent but for the sound of his flip-flops thwacking the once-polished floor. We consider empty storefronts, blooming garbage cans, the roving packs of dogs, like a less-crowded Pompeii. We recall the vacant parking lot we trudged through, the shuttered Applebees. Suddenly there is an oasis, a girl walks out of Lady Footlocker. She considers us, her fellow shoppers, travellers, for a moment, before turning away and heading for the (she'll soon realize) stagnant escalator. "Well, she looks like about a million bucks," I say to Emerz. "Yeah," he says, "as in, she could be lost in a night."

Emerz On The Way Home From Fleck, Kuehnle, Potter and Potter

True Life: Memorial Day With Emerz

It's the start of the summer, Memorial Day weekend, although the DJ on 105.5, the Sound of the Long Island Sound, reminds us all that summer doesn't officially begin until the "equinox."

The weather is here, we wish we were beautiful. We play a quick round of croquet and then make a break for the den and the True Life marathon playing all weekend. We watch the sad plight of Frankie, who suffers from a panic disorder and therefore cannot cross the bridge from Staten Island to the freedom and beauty of New Jersey. We watch Jayden James cry after losing the AVN Best New Starlet award. We watch lives unfold: dreams dissipate, diseases are discovered, addictions are acknowledged. It's like beginners Intervention. We're waiting for True Life: I'm Pregnant. Actually, we're waiting for True Life: Losing The Baby Weight. After all, having the baby is easy, you just give it to your Mom. But who do you give the baby weight to?

From The Try Harder, BET! Department

From the Try Harder, BET! Department:

College Hill: South Beach, Episode "Ribgate.": The divided house gets worse when Kay eats Kyle's ribs.

Emerz and I Discuss Recovery, Things In The Way Of

Emerz and I are on the phone, talking ups and downs, ins and outs, the revolving door policy at Silver Hill and Hollywood Video. I say that Owen Wilson hasn't done shit in a while now, not counting the movie starring that dog and Marley or any late-night romps at some museum.

"He's in recovery, getting off that H," says Emerz.

"Hudson?" I say. "And here I was thinking I was the only one who watched Bride Wars with a belt around my neck."

Emerz Is So Vain, He Probably Thinks This Blog Is About Him

Personal History

I might as well tell Emerz that I basically know Kate Bosworth. I know two people in her entourage. I've seen Superman Returns. And as long as we're in the dick measuring business and pulling out the big guns (Liam Neeson-style) I should mention that I was in an 8th grade production of West Side Story with John Tucker from John Tucker Must Die. Naturally he was a Shark and I was a Jet.

Emerz Wears Sandals to the Shower

"Have you seen Dorm Life?" I ask Emerz. It's a web series, so I don't judge.

"How would I even know if it was any good?" asked Emerz. "Unless it's about a one-bedroom apartment five miles from campus."

"You should pitch that show," I tell him. I've seen the treatment and it is pretty good, but there's already been a show about nothing. Nothing has been done.

Emerz on Helicopter Parenting

Emerz wants to know what's the deal with kids in bike helmets, girls demanding condoms, fathers dropping out of the market and plopping 80 G's in checking. Risk-aversion is death to Emerz. I tell him it's something called helicopter parenting. I tell him he wouldn't understand, mostly because his dad owns a helicopter.

Forty Love

Emerz and I watched Wimbledon, marveling at the lack of chemistry between a slumming Paul Bettany and a striving Dunst. We decided that finding sexual compatibility is a lot like finding a tennis partner. Either they don't have the right shoes or they were ranked juniors. Some have weak serves, or too much spin, or embarrassing mannerisms, and some have laser-like finishes and leave you panting in the pro shop. Either way, there's nothing like peeling back the tin and smelling a new set of balls.

Grosse Pointe Blank Check

From the Tough To Gather Sympathy Department (see also, Schadenfreude):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/fashion/10michigan.html?ref=fashion

"Where the e’s are silent but still do all the work..." Gross.

And, to pass the long hours of unemployment and social freefall:

http://www.lazydork.com/movies/grosse.htm

Walking Home With Emerz

I love the strange, introspective voicemails I get from Emerz on his walk home from the office. "It's raining in Manhattan," he says, and what does that even mean, besides everything?

A Long Lunch For Emerz

Emerz is taking an early, long lunch, perfecting the windsor knot Downey Jr. wore in Ally McBeal. I mean, there are some parallels when you think about it, and Mr. Fleck insisted. He didn't insist on getting soy sauce all over that batch of memos, but everyone is allowed one mistake. Emerz is allowed seven.

School's Out For...Ever?

Emerz always thought his plans for the future were too big to fail, like, say, AIG (in which he has, had, a vested interest) or Liam Neeson's penis. Turns out he was right. He starts tomorrow at Fleck, Kuehnle, Potter and Potter.

Chapter Eleven For Emerz; Reunions

We have a friend, could be the love child of Jennie Garth and Peter Fancinelli, raised at the bottom of a well and fed only cottage cheese. A fleshy vampire, a fiend, an avid Agnes B supporter. It's been too long. Starting in three weeks Emerz will be getting tons of face time, as their summer associate positions begin at Fleck, Kuehnle, Potter and Potter. They'll be working in the bankruptcy division, "moral, I hope," says Emerz, who has cold feet due to not wearing socks.

I ran into Toni recently at a memorial service for a bouncer we both knew. She was wearing a black veil, her dress nearly as see-through. We spoke for a moment or two about the usual: ironic bling, the ab definition of certain lifeguards in Montauk, botched breast enhancements, successful penis enlargements, famous four-year-olds, Trinity politics, Guardasil, the effect of Guardasil on Trinity politics, blog hits, Dianetics, sleep disorders, etc., until I realized we barely have anything in common anymore.

No Matter Who Wins, We All Win

(Images courtesy of Emerz)

Channing Tatum lost the role of Gambit in the upcoming and badass-looking Wolverine biopic to Tim Riggins. If only every tragedy resolved itself so beautifully. Tatum O'Neal, on the other hand...

In Which We Wish Nothing Ever Happened. Also, Emerz' Idea of Heaven. Also, Sasha Grey

Everyone's hawking the fish sandwich now. "Must be the recession," says Emerz. We're Googling Sasha Grey, wiping tartar sauce from our lips. She's legitimate now, available for daytime viewing (Safesearch set on Moderate (Lust, Caution)), the star of Steven Soderberg's new film, The Girlfriend Experience, something some of us know something about already. Even if people (like Emerz, for one) cry gimmicky cross-over casting, I tell Emerz it has to be better than Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts in the lamentable, touristy Ocean's Twelve.

"I prefer Grey's earlier work," says Emerz, and there is something to her; an honesty, a dignity kept intact despite the running mascara and gritty digital video.

One clip we find has Emerz mesmerized. "I don't believe in heaven," he says, "but if I did I believe it would be this, played on an infinite loop, for all eternity."

"You mean you would be the lucky guy?" I ask.

"Oh," says Emerz. "Right, yes." Sex, lies and videotape.

"Because you don't have to be dead to watch pornography all day," I say. I mean, video is a passive medium, but you don't want her doing all the work.

The TV in heaven plays my favorite scene. Play it one more time. Play it all night long.

(See Talking Heads, Lust, Caution, Sasha Grey youtube testimonials. Emerz says to link it, but that's a slippery slope.)

Falling Asleep With Emerz

We're talking about someone new. Someone borrowed. Someone blue. "She was all like, 'I love you Emerz, but I just can't spend another night falling asleep to 9/11 conspiracy documentaries on Google Video,'" says Emerz.

"I know, I know," I say. "Was it Spare Change I or II?"

Lunch With Emerz

On the way to Subway I call Emerz. "30 Rock stole your Pelican Brief joke," he says. "Of course, theirs was better." Yeah yeah. "It doesn't matter either way," says Emerz. "I'm onto The Rainmaker."

"Where are you now?" I ask.

"On the way home from Subway," says Emerz.

We have a friend, an econ major. Well, we know lots of people with lots of interests, but he does something with it. Well, still does something with it. He says Subway has changed the lunch game forever, changed the way America eats lunch. I asked Roy (short for something long) the same question I ask everybody: How much longer? But unlike everybody else, he has an answer. A week and a half.

"No such thing as a free lunch," says Emerz.

Toni and I Meet Sans Emerz

I text Toni, my grammar perfect. In this way, I date myself. She responded with a slew of new acronyms. Acronyms, they cover all manner of sins. After hours of deciphering I realized it included her address. In this way, I date Toni.

The Metro North out of New Haven smells like urine. To pass the time I try to recall sexual partners. That gets me as far as West New Haven.

"So how far is Emerz into The Pelican Brief?" she asks, as we stroll towards a frozen hot chocolate.

"Not as far as he might like," I say. "He's always distracted by interracial couples. Sad, in this day and age."

"That movie came out 16 years ago," says Toni. "It has nothing to do with our day and age."

Toni's roommate is the zeitgeist. I decide not to press it.

"So how did he get the job anyways?" I ask.

"Ugh," she says. "At Fleck, Kuehnle, Potter and Potter? Trust me, it's not that hard. I'm guessing the associate went to Buckley, maybe a wristwatch changed wrists, there may have been some inference of black mail on Emerz' part concerning a semester of mine at Millbrook that got cut short. But congratulate him for me, if you feel up to it."

"Do you love Emerz?" I ask.

"Do you?" she says, and she won't take yes for an answer.

Summer Job For Emerz

"Well, let's see," says Emerz, after I ask him for an update. "I just watched The Duchess."

"Not overly interested," I say. Emerz and I know people who won't even watch movies with costumes. But because we wear costumes everyday, we sometimes let it slide.

"I'm waiting for the day when Knightley will just become Helen Bonham Carter."

"Is that what you're waiting for?"I say. Everyone is wondering.

"Like Cruella DeVille," says Emerz, sighing.

"Oh, I see," I say. "You're watching Damages again." We had a talk about this once, post-Toni. Short version: Slight restraining order, Emerz charmed her lawyer, snagged the summer internship at his firm. He's been doing research ever since.

"I can assure you, they'll all be billable hours," says Emerz. "Trust me."

If this sounds too Gossip Girl-y, remember that Emerz read the books.

"Ahem," says Emerz.

More than once.

Friday Night Lights: This Time Around, No More Tears

That's always been the challenge, ever since Michael Fredo first announced it just a few years back (Tommy Jeans version). But Emerz complains that his tear ducts sting now after repeated viewings of last Friday's throwdown. I said it's not the first time it has burned when he secreted fluids. Just the first time for his face. No, says Emerz, my deviated septum got pretty irritated whenever my nose ran.

And scene.

Maybe if this was a show about croquet, Emerz could get somewhere. Thursday Afternoon Daiquiris. Coming this summer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4pA_GJDSuk

Stringing Them Along

All the ladies of The Office are after Stringer Bell. "Well, of course," says Emerz. "Angela wants to go black, and thanks to Darryl, Kelly can never go back."

The End of an Era

We're in the den, listening to Emerz' "Pokerface" remix, "Butterface." Emerz loves Lady Gaga, loves all things Sacred Heart. He's over Dwight babes, for the record. Toni's last text message said he would "never eat lunch in this town again." I thought that was pretty good. Maybe he should reconsider?

"I'm over it," he says. "She got a UTI, like, every week."

One can never tell with Emerz. The truth is embedded deep within him, and good luck trying to read his butterface.

I dig a little deeper. I don't trust people who move on so quickly. Emerz is like Beyonce: To the left, to the left. Except who knows when there will be someone new? Moveon.org was like founded by Emerz.

"I mean, I have a Brazzers account," he says.

I always thought Emerz and Toni were like Garrity and Riggins. Turned out they were more like Tyra and Cash. I guess what you need to look for, hope for, pray for, is something more like the Taylors. Just something that makes you cry for all its beautiful simplicity.

It's supposedly easy, if you ever find it.

Stringer Bell, Silver Bells

Stringer Bell will begin a six-episode story arc on The Office next week as a new no-nonsense corporate Dunder-Minflinite who clashes with Michael Gary Scott. Where's Emerz, you ask? Sniffin' some dude's thong? Probably.

The Bells are really killing it: Kristen Bell, Stringer Bell, Byrdie Bell, Catherine Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Silver Bells, Silver Bells...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101780271

Emerz' Dangerous Thoughts

"What's that movie with Michelle Pheiffer and all the black kids?" It's on the tip of my tongue. "Necessary Roughness," says Emerz. "But what's that movie with Mekhi Phifer and all the white kids?"

Baby It's Cold Outside

Waking up to room service trays banging against the door frame. Toni likes to order food over the phone and watch it shrink in the air-conditioning. There's a tropical storm warning screaming and streaming at the bottom of the screen. Me and Emerz are like, no kidding. We've taken to betting on Toni's next mood swing. I got five on manic, Emerz is going with his gut and saying depressive. No matter who wins, we all lose. Laying on the bed with her robe split open, I take a look at what I used to be so jealous of, and feel nothing but a pang of pity, drowning in irritation. "There's something to be said for a little mystery, babe," says Emerz, who has already solved the riddle.

Meanwhile at Club Med...

The baby's hungry and the money's all gone. The folks at home don't want to talk on the phone. We sent a long letter, get back a postcard. Times are hard. (Image courtesy of Dolph.)

Love In The Lost City of Atlantis

We're in the elevator on the way down to the pool. Emerz is readjusting the drawstring of his Vilebrequin Salamander trunks. Toni is upset that we are all sharing a room. Trouble in paradise. Literally. "What's he even doing here?" she asks in a stage whisper.

"Blog fodder," says Emerz.

"Bog flodder," says Toni.

The weather is here, I wish we were beautiful.

You know me and Emerz, always finding cities and parties we were told never existed. This pool is no exception. Toni finds a frenemy from Dwight. I'm suddenly hungry for Jell-o. "Virgin pina colada," says Emerz to a cabana boy. "I really can't stress virgin enough."

If you like pina coladas... Well, let's see. Forecast calls for oppressively sunny skies, no one's making love at midnight unless one of us orders a cot, Toni's heavy into yoga and the last half of her brain seems to have crawled inside a bottle of Xanax. For the flight, she says, clearing a nostril.

I get nice and lobstery and head back upstairs, buy the full porn-pass (can't afford not to), but soon I'm roaming the channels. There's the old, familiar back-and-forth: porn, Love Actually, porn. Lather, rinse, repeat. Cable's been taken over by romantic comedies, supposedly as fluffy as the pillows on our bed. But they still pose a threat. That hidden stinger of romcoms--copious and lengthy bouts of infidelity on behalf of the woman who is not sure that what she thought she wanted all along is really what she actually wants. It just sort of happened, she says. I tried to tell you, she says. Didn't you notice my declining interest in the flower arrangements for the wedding we've been planning? My growing ambivalence over the decorating scheme for the house you bought me?

Well, you know me and Emerz. The completely acceptable, hoodwinked alternative.

Emerz Biopic

"Man on Wire" says Emerz, drawing question marks on his chin. "Unauthorized biopic?"

"Why not?" I say. Like, who hasn't wished that they could still feel that monstrous breeze?

Mayer Seating Tests Emerz' Team Aniston Status

"This is important," says Emerz. "I mean, the second row? In front of God and everybody?" He has Toni dialing her godfather's contacts. Full-steam ahead on this one.

"Since when does John Mayer get Jack Nicholson's Oscar seats?"

Spectator Sports, Spring Break '09

Emerz followed my advice and now he's hooked. Sometimes I forget about his addictive personality and introduce him to what would be a benign or even positive influence for anyone else and he turns it into an excuse to trip the blinds and hit the message boards and splash photos of Aimee Teegarden all over his desktop screen saver. I mean, remember when we had a Bangbros password?

But this is a good time to get into Friday Night Lights. Smash is gone, safe at school, Saracen is demoted to part-time QB and full-time BF, Riggins is experimenting with the power of his position and home-ownership. The economic climate of Dillon, Texas allows the show to delve into and comment on things as they are right now. Emerz prefers The Real Housewives of NYC. After all, he expects to be one someday. But for now he's slumming it and enjoying it, the pick-up trucks and Applebees and soft-serve smiles.

Emerz has time for this because Toni is busy planning our Spring Break. Spring Break '09, baby. Last year I spent Spring Break speed-dialing drug dealers and slipping in and out of cabs, looking for the last laugh of the night. This year we are going to Atlantis. I tried to invite Kenzi, but she's going to a Club Med somewhere with her grandmother. We'll be swimming with dolphins, she'll be swimming with some guy named Dolph.

After Saracen and Julie roll to the ground by the lake and make things official, the whole show took on a glow, that secret glow that follows any non-regrettable devirginizing. The whole world has opened up to the two of them, and no one's the wiser. Making furtive eye contact in the dusty church, that glow seemed to spread to Emerz' den as well. After all the windows are nothing now but thin cracks of afternoon light. We've got tears in our eyes. My Summer Glow moisturizer got in mine; I don't know what Emerz' excuse is.

Driving Mrs. Emerz

Toni gave Emerz a split-heart pendant for Valentine's Day, 14 karats. Awkward, I gave him nearly the same thing. A chain of broken-heart-shaped charms around Emerz' neck, one soon to green after a shower or two. "Semi-charmed kind of life," says Emerz.

Emerz wants me to teach him to drive. He's got a new S4; a triumphant, sneaky purple, with a tight gearbox that Emerz can't make heads or tails of without wince-inducing grinding noises and knee-bruising stop shorts after stalling out. We take to the streets. I'm driving, he's riding shotgun, fiddling with the balance and fade. I take the corners hard, squealing, fishtails and exhaust and skid marks marring the quiet of the vacant summer neighborhoods dotting the Connecticut coast. "You see that?" I say, pushing and pushing, feeling the G-force settle in my stomach. Shuttered clapboard houses blur out the tinted windows. "You see that? That's how you do it." Emerz grips his seatbelt, rethinking the purchase. Maybe next he'll get the Mini-Cooper. He hears they are surprisingly roomy and spry.

Later, we watch Days of Thunder in the den, dazzled by the careening curls of Kidman, tight and sprawling and golden in the dusty light of the hospital, in the clinical light of the racetrack.

"That's a woman in love," says Emerz, after she issues another ultimatum to Cruise; young, dumb and full of...himself.

"You're the expert," I say.

Toni's in Southampton with her godfather, admiring the cold winter surf, discussing a possible summer position at Christie's, overhearing two twenty-something male assistants canoodling on a back porch. Emerz and I prefer the shapely and shiftless Long Island Sound to the endless expanse of the Atlantic. Call us pragmatists--we like to see what comes next, what's speeding around the corner. We like to know we're not alone. We like to be able to water-ski most anywhere, shredding over ferry wakes, twisting between lobster buoys, skipping over schools of blue fish. We forgive the oily sand, the murky beaches, the possible Plum Island fall-out, the yahoos on jet skis, the occasional power plant. The preemptive penicillin makes my skin sensitive to sunlight. Good thing the sky is dust gray, empty and dull through the moon roof.

Emerz climbs into the driver's seat, pops the clutch and we stutter back towards home. We watch The Door in the Floor, Something's Gotta Give and Cruel Intentions, admiring the colors; the green of the high hedges and rolling lawns, the blue of the ocean and sky, the crisp white of Bridges' and Keaton's and Philippe's untucked Oxfords, but telling ourselves we've made the right decision. To celebrate I drive us to Dairy Queen. It's closed, which we suddenly realize we knew it would be.

A Late Lunch at Emerz'

We make Lean Cuisine Spa Classics. Kenzi eats Toni's after Toni complains about the texture of the pumpkin ravioli. We've been watching a gay man's Youtube channel of cats sneezing for most of the afternoon. Kenzi's car won't start. This is after the GFE, upstairs. Thank God Emerz' parents are in China; Kenzi was loud, an over-the-top attempt to mask her contempt. I've never liked that. Emerz and Toni seemed annoyed when we came down the stairs, but Kenzi and Toni have been at it all day, like a rabbit and a snapping turtle caged up together, sharing the same water bottle and pellet tray; Toni's red-eyed stares and Kenzi's rough neck and darting tongue.

The GFE, well, short on the cuddling, if I was to write a review. You pay for the cuddling more than anything else. One hundred dollars worth of cuddling, with an amateur, I would say buys you four to six minutes. Kenzi shrugged out from under my arm after maybe two-and-a-half, and then its off to the bathroom: Scalding hot shower, knees to the chest, rocking back and forth. What else is new. I'm doing the same thing, only in the master bath, with the Jacuzzi jets and Epsom salts. Kenzi doesn't know what she's missing, for once.

It's only after the tow truck arrives and we wave good-bye from Emerz' drive-way that my blood pricks a bit. Like, what did I expect? It happens all of a sudden even though Toni says finally. She's exhausted, brushing the buttery pages of my Men's Vogue with a credit card, looking to salvage the rest of the night. Emerz locks the door.

"Leave it open," I say. "Just in case she needs to come back." Emerz tosses me a bottle of preemptive penicillin and double-bolts it.