First, Arthur Kade's harrowing experience.

today while in the gym for the second time with one of my good friends (I had just taken his NO2 supplement at his house), I started feeling lightheaded and my heart was racing, and I actually pulled him into the locker room because I thought I was having a heart attack. It's amazing what you think about when you may be dying, and what went through my mind was in this order: 1) I can't let millions around the world down, 2) I wonder what the media will say about this if I land in the hospital in front of the Gen Pop, so I need to do this in private, and 3) I can't let this happen when I am about to make millions, I can have any girl I want being Arthur Kade, and I am clearly on my way to Little Oscar.

I think we echo all of humanity's sentiments when we say: Don't go with the cheap stuff, dude—make sure you take genuine NO-Xplode. Hardcore pumps and smooth, even energy that still gets you crucially ripped.

The other exciting news: Emily Brill, the Ultimate Narrator of the internet's pre-Kade era, may be making a comeback. She tells us via email (in response to our question): "I've gone back to writing. I'm working on a book, but there's nothing official to report. It's a recent decision."

Fameballs: Don't act like you do not care for them.

Brill's latest company, "Clear," which was supposed to save rich people a half hour standing in security lines at airports in exchange for $128 a year, is shutting down. Let's do a quick and dirty balance sheet of Brill's successes and failures—keeping in mind that to do your best is all your mom really asks.

Successes

The American Lawyer: Brill launched what would become the nation's leading legal magazine in 1979. This is not an unqualified success, though, since American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media) is having problems right now.

Court TV: Brill created the network (now truTV) in 1991. After receiving a huge popularity boost from the OJ Simpson trial, it was sold it to Time Warner in 1997. For which Brill got a tidy sum.

Emily Brill: Steven's daughter, the ultimate narrator.

Failures

Brill's Content: Launched in 1998, this mediacentric mag was supposed to capitalize on America's insatiable thirst for news about the news! Turned out not that many people really care about the news about the news. Not enough to pay money, at least. Stopped publishing in 2001.

Contentville.com: A website selling "a variety of content ranging from thesis papers to ebooks." Closed in 2001.

Inside.com: The legendary media site that launched the careers of many top media reporters and also failed to make any money. The magazine version of Inside was merged with Brill's Content, and the website was part of a convoluted plan with Primedia to corner the market on media trade publications, but the whole thing was shuttered in 2001.

Clear: In the post-9/11 world, Brill noticed, airport security sure was a hassle. People would pay to be "verified" beforehand so they could breeze right through! Right? 165,000 people did, reportedly, and Clear raised more than $100 million from investors, but now it's dead, unable to afford to keep going.

Brill also wrote a couple books which didn't sell all that well and a column for Newsweek, but you can judge those on their own merits. He's not out of the game, though—his other ongoing venture is Journalism Online, a company that plans to help various magazines and newspapers charge readers for online access. Bet on it!
[Pic via]

Here's what you DO need:

• An unquenchable desire for fame: Obviously. It is what drives all fameballs.
• Shamelessness: Your desire for fame must be greater than that voice in your head screaming, "Stop; you look like an idiot."
• A lack of redeeming talents: This isn't the Nobel Prize, okay? If you're a shameless fame whore but you also, say, cured cancer, one could argue that your talent is being properly appreciated. This will not do.
• An abundance of non-redeeming talents: These may include, but are not limited to: oversharing, self-regard, delusions of grandeur, superficial physical attractiveness, a ridiculous distinctive personal fashion trademark, the ability to talk about oneself without end, conspicuously false modesty, and sluttiness and/or man-whorishness.

• Growing a conscience: It can happen to the worst of them. Instant death.
• A desire for meta-fameballdom rather than actual fameballdom: This is the key mistake that people make when they come directly to us, begging for coverage. We're talking to you, lady who keeps sending us emails billing herself as "The next Julia Allison." You see, while we do grow and cultivate fameballs, it's absolutely essential that those fameballs are not seeking our approval; they must dream of stardom (even micro-stardom) in the outside world, not simply with a knowing wink on Gawker. A fameball's famelust must be their undoing, not their doing. If you're deserving, we'll find you.
• Being a one-trick pony: Lots of people do embarrassing fameball-like things from time to time. But do they have the staying power to keep plumbing ever-greater depths of self-abasement? Only the greatest do.

Ridiculous. What are these "paying projects?" There are no paying projects in the media now! Emily we demand you return at once, with your handwritten take on the Super Bowl and predictions for Sarah Palin's future and the spring shopping season and some good tamale recipes you picked up on a venture down to one of these "Mexican" restaurants. Don't mess around.

Emily live-blogged the show to herself, on paper, then transcribed those thoughts on her blog. We've condensed it down to the two most insightful parts. #2:

Whit, Olivia is not ‘uptown crowd’. That’s not a crime, but ‘uptown’ crowd throws on Jcrew, does Melons, went to Park Ave Christian maybe Brick (or somewhere funky uws or downtown if the parents are ultra lib/media). or maybe moved here from CT, NJ–sometimes MA. They do Nettis and sometimes Bea, but they don’t look like runway models bc they’re usually busy by day. They’re lawyers, teachers, bankers, volunteers, parents, consultants. Seldom PR. although exceptions obviously

And #1:

My handwriting is cryptic and so am I.

2009 belongs to you, Emily. [Essentially Emily]

You see, unlike us, she's from the world of dough-headed Upper East Side kids, so she can totes relate (or not) to all the interesting characters. She took notes, with her hands!, last night, weighing in on important matters like "is Blair wearing Juicy?" and "did you know that most girls I know... do not like 1Oak??" I did not know! She's posted the chicken scratch on her little website and we've put the pages down below for you too, in case you're lazy (you are). David Mamet scribbles on napkins too, Emily! See what you can parse. It's kinda hard. I think she insults the Bronx in some capacity.

Hey New Yorkers, Confession: I took things down for a bit of a timeout but Happy Election Eve and let’s rock. It’s been about a year since I lost all that weight that made me feel like an outsider –and gone from outsider to insider. But make no mistake: I always want to bring an outsider (or at least an original and unconventional) perspective with me wherever I go. And it is, and always will be, a presence in my ‘narratives.’

... I will not post for the sake of posting anymore. I’ve peeled back the curtain as I’ve now for the first time actually gone behind the curtain. But I don’t want this blog to become simply a travelogue or series of random thoughts - sharing for the sake of sharing.

Well, blogging is all about sharing for the sake of sharing—or sharing for the sake of generating revenue and charging higher ad prices! But whatever. Just keep bringing us content—goofy pics of society plagues like Liam McMullan and Kristian Laliberte—and we'll be happy. (We hope Brill doesn't discover the real cure for blogger burnout—benzos and alcohol.)

[Essentially Emily]

As Stevie Nicks so meaningfully informed us in "Landslide", "time gets bolder/people get older/I'm getting older too." We just assumed that didn't apply to people with giant trust funds. If this really is the end of Essentially Emily, bring on Daniel Stern for some Wonder Years-style narration, and enjoy the greatest hits of the poor man's Mary Rambin:

• Emily rocks out on her way to the Hamptons.
• We can't forget her brazen refutation of the Page Six article about her. How dare they investigate her with her permission!
• Emily charges Nick Denton is obssessed with getting to her dad. (No, he wasn't.)
• Everyone wants to grope her: didn't you know?
• Oh, wow, she really did give people tips on how to lose weight. I thought that was just a dream I had.
• Then there was when she compared her dietary struggle to having cancer. I think we all remember where we were when she dropped that bon mot.
• She wanted a pearl necklace, and the joke was lost on her. Emily! Why didn't we treasure every minute we had with your blog! Why must our tears flow into the unending pit of the Wayback Machine? Oh, God.

As Nick Denton once put it in a particularly reflective moment:

Finally, an individual's privacy or inherent celebrity can, in this highly mediated world, only be determined by something like Schroedinger's thought experiment in quantum mechanics. Schroedinger's cat is neither alive nor dead until observed—until that time, the cat is both alive and dead. Similarly, an Emily Brill may be a shy once-fat girl, or a shallow attention-seeking mogulette: only observation by blog can determine the truth.

Sniffle. Emily, what can we do to convince you to come back into our lives and do it all over again...just one more time? Let's beg her sometimes mean commenters to flatter her for awhile. Suggested compliment: "Your blog wasn't THAT embarrassing."

Confession: I was out for some quiet and casual on the Upper West Side with a friend when an old man (must’ve been in his 80s, no joke, and mildly inebriated) innocently insisted on buying us drinks–I opted for cofffee–and ultimately wound up with this crowd pleaser of a line upon observation: “You’re TOO YOUNG for pearls…”

NEVER.

Oh, we agree. Lots of kids get em in their teens these days.

I feel like everyone expects me to dress a certain way now that I’ve transformed, but why? I lose 100 lbs and suddenly, I should dress like, say, a cougar? Or something in between ‘pearls’ and ‘cougar’? I’m not changing the fundamentals of myself just because I slimmed down. Why is that so hard for people to understand?

Preach, O ultimate narrator.

Oh, and any guy who has a problem with a girl who wears pearls at any age isn’t a guy I’d ever date.

I have friends who concur.

HEH. [Essentially Emily]

Interview With Emily Brill from Stanley Stuyvesant on Vimeo.

Oh, and Update: In a brand new post! Ms. Brill discusses her invite-only soiree with her aspirating "readership" and asks the very, very important question: "ESSENTIALLY ASKING: what do you want to know about my friends’ political views?" To which the only response is: "Abso-fucking-lutely nothing."

No, but seriously: "go ahead, ask away! they might just answer for themselves tonight. holla!"

You should try to get in if only for the salient political commentary that Ms. Brill is apt to spout while she chuckles to herself, feeling that she's already won the only thing worth winning.

HOLLA!

I take issue with a piece like this because I think it plays with fire. “She has started cooking with olive oil and occasionally butter, and has increased her consumption of nuts and peanut butter,” Pope writes.

Well I’m glad she brings up peanut butter. I ate peanut butter almost every day when I was losing weight, but careful Tara: I was also burning about 8 trillion calories a day up in Bedford with my trainer and on long hikes with my Labrador (whom I jokingly referred to as my ‘outdoor/backup trainer).

Also:

Nuts are a big deal: they pack huge fat content and they’ll keep you CHUNKAAAAY if you’re not workin’ it.

Oh baby. Well Emily, if you really want to be able to down all the peanut butter you want, I suggest you give this a shot:

The post-profile response in the 2.0 world is to huff and sigh—on your blog—about how you were misquoted, taken out of context, or maybe get all upset about your photoshoot.

Exhibit 1:

NY Post: Anonymous says, “She’s always on her BlackBerry blogging, even at a sit-down dinner.”

Fact: At 25 I don’t go to too many sit-down dinners. And even a cursory look through my blog (with the exception of fashion week) would show I don’t blog too much at night. If you see me on my blackberry after dark, I’m probably doing what any other flesh and blood twenty-something does with her blackberry: texting or bbming. Jeez.

There is more of this! And it is fascinating.

There is one factual error in the article that Brill does not dispute, so we'll do it for her: Emily, your blog so does not get 72,000 hits a day! (Unless you're counting them the old-fashioned way, and who does that?)

She also has a problem with anonymous quotes attacking her: "I will never use an anonymous quote that’s critical of someone without first calling for a response." (Looks like I'm in the clear—I went on the record with my bitchy quote!)

[Essentially Emily]
The Modern-Day Tale of a Society Outcast [Page Six Magazine]

Emily's literary style is informed by a lifetime of urban experience:

The Clinton Years were glory days and we loved Rudy. Booming economy (or starting to), and it was Court TV…I think we also had a million snow days that year. Oklahoma City scared the hell out of us and the WTC was attacked that year too i think (or maybe it was in 5th grade–regardless, that was really really creepy), but things were still good. Hey, even my grades at Dalton were finally getting good!

Her ability to transcend hardship resonates with her fellow strivers in the Rotten Apple:

I guess a girl in New York can’t win. One minute I’m getting accused of having an eating disorder for being honest about my reluctance to eat a burger in the Hamptons and the next thing I know, I find out that guys see me as pigging out because I go nuts on foods like lobster salad.

Can you relate? It’s the reality of New York life.

Still, she's unafraid to give the unvarnished truth about her impressions of a new bar, damn the consequences:

I sat with a girl I hadn’t seen since 9th grade–now a lawyer–and we compared Park Avenue colorists, and she was with my other lawyer friends.

It’s a carefully crafted, intimate mix of people and if you get New York, you understand that this is a really good place to hang out and it’s only going to get better. But it would be ridiculous for me to sit here and write fluff. You’re not going to get that on this blog.

Who among us can say that?

[Pic via NYM]

In Which Blood Bubbles Up Through The Cracks Of New York City Streets
Real Housewives of New York City is not new. It premiered to horrified lookers on last year, its particular brand of gonzo nouveau riche tackiness eventually wooing viewers close to its leathery bosom. Now it's filming again, with a new "housewife" called Kelly Killoren Bensimon who films little internet movies with famous people in the Hamptons. No word yet on when the new season will begin but, again, they are filming. A tipster tells us: "I live VERY close to Alex and Simon of Real Housewives (I see them daily) and they were filming ALL weekend. I was most excited to see Jill Zarin there, happily chatting with Alex. I noted that Alex changed her outfit multiple times over the course of a day. Simon enjoys smoking outside with the crew."

In Which The Blood Seeps Under Doors, Into Homes and Shops, Threatening to Drown Small Dogs and Children
We warned you about this long ago, and now it seems to have become a reality (hardee harrr). Whitney Port, the dove-eyed and ghostlike silent observer from MTV's Los Angeles dream ballet The Hills, is currently working for the tremendously scary fashion PR guru Kelly Cutrone, which brings her and her cameras! to New York City. Yes, she's filming a show, rumored to be called The City, about her trials and travails in this biggest of rotten crab apples. Joining her on the carefully moderated ride will be Olivia Palermo, the confusing socialite who does something having to do with fashion sometimes. Fellow socialite Inevitably Emily Brill does not approve. Palermo's people have denied her involvement, but The Brills seems fairly convinced that she is. Sigh.

In Which The Blood Gets In the Elevator Of the Empire State Building and Lurches, Ominously, To the Top
As reported earlier by the Guest of a Guest, a new show called Social Heights will soon be leaving us bleary eyed and irrationally afraid of door knobs and streetlamps. It's to star various society types like socialgay and PR ninny Kristian Laliberte and friend of reality-TV hating Emily Brill Devorah Rose. Ms. Brill was approached at one point to be on this show, formerly titled 10021, but she eventually turned it down. The ins and outs of getting this stupid thing off the ground are probably more "interesting" than any of the tiresome plotlines the producers could ever hope to come up with. Either way, fellow socialgay Micah Jesse sits in a corner and sulks.

In Which the Blood Oozes Out of the Elevator and Precariously Close to the Edge...
We just don't really know what's going on with Julia Allison's reality show. The former Star editor-at-large and current fancy apartment-haver and her two Weird Sister buddies, "tech geek" Megan Asha and Fulbright scholar Mary Rambin, recently started NonSociety, an internet amalgamation of their Tumblr musings and various photo and video diary entries. Supposedly this is all being turned into a reality show for Bravo, which may or may not be subsidizing Ms. Allison's apartment. It's all terribly confusing and I'm not really sure these girls are actually considered "socialites," but whatever; they're pretty and have money and people seem to sorta pay attention when they do things. Again, sigh.

In Which the Blood Spills Over, Set to Rain Down and Destroy the City's Populace, Until a Bright Yellow Umbrella Catches It All and Protects Us Forever
Tinsley Mortimer and her indefatigable (if exasperated) housekeeper Guadalupe get a reality show in which they putter around the house and say funny things, Tinsley tells long rambling stories to the camera, and they go on various car trips. In one episode they go to Vermont to "see the exfoliage" as Tinz puts it, and she ends up getting stuck in an apple tree. The credits roll while Guadalupe pokes at the tree with a stick, trying to shake the socialite and handbag designer loose. (OK, so this one is made up. But it would be amazing, I think. You know, if Guadalupe existed. Get on it, Tinsley!)

everything in me says not to engage this question, but sheila [ed. note: not our Sheila] you should know that i haven’t slept more than 5 hours in recent memory. and please try to imagine how it would be if every aspect, every second, every thought, every moment of your life felt like it was conceivably part of your ‘work’. you speak of clubbing? dining? hamptons? my god the hamptons? the truth is that even my weekend in bedford wasn’t entirely restful because i still felt ‘on duty’ because i knew i’d be writing about it. and nothing i do when i’m off right now will be entirely ‘vacation’ either. my laptop is with me wherever i go, and i’m always in ‘blog’ mode. and that’s okay. i love this and i want to do it. this is what i’ve chosen to do with my life.

Fuckin A right. We can only imagine.

this misfit thing? my weight was a physical manifestation of being a misfit but i’ve been a misfit my entire life. the only thing i can do–the only thing i know how to do–is write about people, places, things, experiences. past, present, future. Be the ultimate narrator.

God forgive me for covering this.

[Emily Brill]