Dear Matt from HGTV’s Design Star,

Please, for both our sakes, stop calling me.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times — these things never work out. You’re a star of the modest HGTV reality show Design Star; I’m the scribe of a moderately-known, occasionally-read blog about television. We’re just from different worlds. Bloggers and reality folk are natural enemies — like cats and dogs, cops and robbers, fire and water, ninjas and robots.

Listen, I know all about you. How you’re a Colorado-born artist-cum-designer with a smile as broad as your dome is bald. How you’re the nice guy amongst a throng of interior designers who can be both catty and vicious. But our innate animal attraction doesn’t mean we can disrupt the natural order — bloggers and reality folks are the Capulets and Montagues of the twenty-first century. Believe me, if we keep heading down this road you’re going to be poisoned, I’m going to have a dagger in my chest and Vondie Curtis-Hall is going to eulogize us.

No one needs that, Matt. No amount of adorable eye-twinkles will change the facts.

Furthermore, it doesn’t help matters when you call me, three sheets to the wind on whiskey sours, talking about the house you can design for us in the Rockies. About how we can decorate the home ourselves and then raise alpacas on our expanse of land. Or maybe make and bottle our own line of jams and jellies.

And, yes, I’m sure that after you win the current season of Design Star you’ll be able to have enough basic cable clout to get us guest spots on Barefoot Contessa. You keep saying how you can build good old Ina a new kitchen table while I keep her company as she methodically purees vegetables for our gazpacho.

By the way, I hope I didn’t lead you on that time you caught a look at my laptop and the desktop was tiled with your headshot. I mean, I knew you were going to look at it. I was just playing a joke.

I just hope we’re on the same page because I don’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt. Okay?

Sincerely,

DAN

PS - I love you.

From a cursory look at this morning’s Emmy nominations, I can reveal thus:

• Creature Comforts America got nominated. Hooray!
• 30 Rock dominated the comedy guest star categories, with nominations for Rip Torn, Will Arnett,Steve Buscemi, Tim Conway, Carrie Fisher, Edie Falco and Elaine Stritch.
• I will murder everyone if anything but 30 Rock or The Office wins Best Comedy. The other nominees are Curb Your Enthusiasm (meh — even though I know lots of people love this show), Entourage (ugh) and Two and a Half Men (gross).
• Drama series nominees are Boston Legal, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost and Mad Men.
• Despite herself, Kathy Griffin got nominated again.
• Rainn Wilson and Neil Patrick Harris are nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy. Again, I will murder everyone if Jeremy Piven wins again.
• Amy Poehler got nominated for best supporting actress in a comedy for SNL (has this ever happened before?). Jenna Fisher was denied.

• Wha?: Office spinoff won’t be an Office spinoff
• An interview with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs
• Even more Eliza Dushku/Dollhouse info
• Washington Post pays tribute to Project Runway’s final Bravo season
• Simpsons Ride gets 1 million riders in quickest time ever
• Katherine Heigl might get a brain tumor in Grey’s
• Olympics won’t be shared over Hulu
• Photos: Did any of the kids from Home Improvement become crackheads? Find out here
• Watch old school Nickelodeon right here
• This day in lists: 13 things you didn’t know about The Offfice