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With awards season looming, Hollywood, it seems, is teetering on the brink of an unfathomable parking tragedy. The Los Angeles valet population's inability to keep pace with a booming VIP overclass unable to open or close car doors without professional assistance threatens to grind entertainment industry celebrations to a chilling halt, where frustrated guests languish in their vehicular purgatories while event starting times are senselessly delayed and food service schedules are plunged into chaos. Today's Variety hopes to bring awareness to the seemingly insoluble traffic problem before it worsens by looking at What Went Wrong at Friday night's American Cinematheque tribute to George Clooney, taking care to note the psychological toll such snafus take on their emotionally fragile victims:

But the issue found a perfect storm at the BevHilton's Friday event honoring George Clooney. With parking spots filling early, arriving guests after 7 p.m. were stuck in their cars in the driveway. "At one point we wanted to turn around and just leave," said one studio exec about his 40-minute wait, "and then we realized we couldn't."

There also was a long lineup at the valet for cars after the event (one studio topper fumed for an hour and 45 minutes waiting for her car).

The backup with parking naturally caused problems with the dinner service, since many guests weren't in their seats on time.

As for Monday's Fulfillment Fund event, one Fox exec said he spent 40 minutes "breathing fumes" in the driveway before being told there was no more valet parking.

Hopefully, this heart-wrenching evocation of the indignities suffered by the awards show POWs trapped in their German-engineered tiger cages will move awards organizers to finally solve the parking dilemma before the Golden Globes. Nobody wants their Globes hangover exacerbated by a trade paper report of how dozens of guests, falling into a Sartrean despair induced by a soul-crippling belief that they'd never reach the front of the valet line, took their own lives by breathing deeply of the exhaust fumes that promised sweet release from their imprisonment.