We quickly became bored by the plot of last night's episode of Entourage, an endlessly recycled sitcom standard in which "the crew gets a surprise visit from Dom, a recently paroled childhood friend from Queens," and soon found ourself curious about the careers of the show's day players. And so with the help of IMDb, we decided to learn a little more about the people we'd just seen utter a line or two and disappear, ride naked atop an uninteresting guest star, or meaningfully brush up against Jeremy Piven in a crowd scene. The results of our little journey to the bottom of the call sheet follow after the jump:

Those who've been watching Entourage because they enjoy the girl-crazy, high-fiving sitcom adventures of the pretty guy, the tall dumb guy, the shorter dumb guy, the somewhat street-smart guy, and the hyperactive, foul-mouthed guy in the suit are apparently missing out on the multilayered charms of the "cult" HBO series. Fortunately, the LAT has charged a UCLA professor with revealing the Hollywood-decoding subtext behind the moments when Ari Gold drops the name of a real-life movie executive while an indifferent Vince floats in the pool at the Standard:

Perhaps the only thrill bigger than that of finishing a hard-won second place at the box office is the fanciful capture of the all-time opening weekend record. Today's Variety features this huge parody ad touting the performance of Entourage's Spider-Man-squashing pseudoblockbuster, Aquaman, proving that even fictional talent must be sucked up to in the trades, lest they feel unappreciated and make their next fake movie with a competitor.

Last night, hundreds of thousands of local Entourage fans gathered at viewing parties all over L.A. celebrating the show's third season premiere (what, you didn't go to one?), where they patiently waited for Johnny Drama and Turtle's pussy-chasing misadventures to carry them offscreen long enough for Jeremy Piven to engage in the hugging-out-of-bitches and deliver a tongue-twisting monologue sending up the industry's self-interested heartlessness. In yesterday's piece about Hollywood's continuing delight at seeing itself teased on premium cable, the LAT managed to find an agent willing to pretend to be appalled by Entourage's depiction of the baby-eating caste:

OK. So it's time we admit it. We're totally confused by the ad campaign for the new season of Entourage, which starts this Sunday night. (Opposite the Tonys. Dilemmas!) Yes yes, we know that Ari Gold is — or at least was — a major Hollywood power broker. But as we left last season, wasn't he unemployed, friendless except for gaysian Lloyd, and desperately trying to hang on to clients while working from a coffee shop? Now, it's a given that he'll soon be back to his old self — Ari's personality wouldn't allow it any other way, and, more important, the popularity of the character wouldn't allow it any other way — but, still, despite the ads' claims, we're going to have to say that for the moment Ari Gold can neither make nor break you.

Page Six has exclusively obtained script pages from the upcoming Entourage premiere, and today has published an outline of a pivotal scene from the episode. In this hilarious, slice-of-Hollywood-life outtake, Jeremy Piven's beloved, fast-talking agent character Ari angrily confronts onetime working actor Stephen Dorff for committing the unpardonable sin of cutting the bathroom line in a club without first offering to share his eight ball with everyone patiently waiting their turn for a stall trip. Cut to: INT. NIGHTCLUB HALLWAY—NIGHT

At last night's after-party at Social Hollywood celebrating the the third-season premiere of Entourage, actresses Constance Zimmer, Perrey Reeves, and Emmanuelle Chriqui share a laugh as they try to sort out who played E's girlfriend, Ari's wife, and the studio executive who blew Ari in Cancun.

Driving down Santa Monica Blvd. last night, we noticed an ad campaign for Entourage had popped up on bus shelters and benches. (Which, when you think about it, provides more than a dollop of irony considering the show's characters would sooner throw themselves under the tires of a repossessed Hummer before riding LA's public transportation.) The tagline itself, however, left us so completely confused, we snapped a picture of it: Block, white letters on a black background, stating "It begins and ends with E." Would E! network run syndicated repeats? Was this just some lame reference to Vince's manager/best friend Eric, whose nickname is E? Or would the third season be book-ended with love-drug-fueled Hollywood Hills parties and Vegas Strip adventures, during which Turtle and Drama finally physicalize their deep, mutual admiration? We're rooting for door #3.

The US Weekly blog has the exclusive on the weekend marriage of Entourage's Kevin Dillon to his pregnant fiance Jane Stuart at a Vegas wedding chapel. Dillon sprang for the Elvis Hound Dog Special, a $349 package that included the musical stylings of his very own Elvis impersonator:

Page Six understandably may not be quite on their game lately, but something in today's item about another one of those Entourage episodes shot at a real! live! Lakers game has made us wonder if their editors' sanity has begun to crack under the payola-spotlight pressure:

Still smelling of rose water and cardamom from his Journey of a Lifetime, Jeremy Piven has perhaps gotten a little spoiled by India's "all the girls you can bag in an hour for 5000 Rupees" policy. A quick meeting with the Entourage producers and one Craigslist posting later, and suddenly a "female models"-only mass casting opportunity is born:

Could that be the crown prince of Hollywood's swingin' singles scene, Entourage's Jeremy Piven, styled to within an inch of his existence (blazer collar flipped up, if you please) on the cover of Los Angeles magazine's nightlife issue? Why, yes, it is! The interview isn't on their website yet, but should you get your hands on a copy, on page 123 you'll find a treasure of personal philosophies on one of Piven's favorite subjects nightprowling in LA. A sampling:

Today's Page Six offers up a party report from Sundance, where disaster may have been averted by the concerned, if ineffectual, presence of an HBO star:

· Heads at the New New Paramount continue to roll! Veteran Paramount distribution president Wayne Lewellen, described as "part of the studio's old guard," (italics ours) is sensitively drop kicked in time for the new fiscal quarter and replaced with DreamWorks' Jim Tharp. [Variety]
· A noted lead actor on a TV comedy is making his feature film directing debut in a movie about "alienated youths in suburban New Jersey." No, this isn't a two-year-old story about Zach Braff and Garden State. It's Entourage's Kevin Connolly directing The Gardener of Eden, produced by his buddy Leonardo DiCaprio. [Variety]
· Oxygen network orders 10 episodes of The Janice Dickinson Project, a reality show about the self-anointed "first supermodel," in the hopes of netting the women's network the highly coveted 50-79 "nightmare bitch" demographic that is so attractive to advertisers. [Variety]
· VH1 will launch a new show called Web Junk 20 in January, a weekly top 20 featuring the hottest viral internet videos. So basically, by the time the Chronic(What)cles of Narnia goes from SNL, to the internet, then back to TV, it will surely be as hysterical as the first time you saw it. [THR]
· A conservative media watchdog group called The American Family Association is stepping up its campaign against NBC's upcoming series, Daniel, which their website claims is about a "drug-addicted Episcopal priest whose wife depends heavily on her midday martinis," or, as it was pitched in the room, "Thornbirds meets Will & Grace." [THR]

Sadly, the real-life inspiration for Entourage's beloved bong-enthusiast and hanger-on Turtle has died from an asthma attack over the weekend:

The incredible flood of "No roaming charges, bitch!" and "Unlimited in-network calling, bitch!" jokes made us black out for a few minutes, but after we came to (the interns are pretty quick with the smelling salts), we realized that doing regional endorsements is perhaps not as distressingly small-time as we first believed. After all, Jeremy Piven's on board with the best network in Cincinnati, and when he, Vince, and the Entourage boys are cruising the Midwest for tail, he needs a service provider that isn't gonna drop his calls right as he's about to close a deal with an Explorer full of starstruck honies.

Further blurring Entourage's hazy fiction/reality lines (Ari Gold-the-character sitting in Ari Emanuel-the-inspiration's Lakers' seats; Bono giving Johnny Drama a shout-out, in the middle of an actual U2 concert), the NY Post reports today that Aquaman, the fictional project that drove most of Entourage's second season plot, is now Aquaman, the very real Smallville spinoff, coming soon to a WB affiliate and Whopper wrapper near you:

· 'I DON'T think anybody has ever seen my body!" Jeremy Piven complains to Liz Smith about how he yearns to doff Ari Gold's Armani straightjacket and unleash the pecs n' pythons on the public. Next season on Entourage: Lloyd slathers Ari in sunblock at the Standard's pool as the agent once again tries to talk Vince out of quitting Aquaman. [via Jossip]
· The Prettiest Pony blog recorded the minutes from last night's The OC premiere. And while we're on the subject, did anyone else notice that sometime during the time it took for Coop to shoot Trey and for the gang to bring him to the hospital, everyone had a chance to get new haircuts?
· Sometimes we think that Britney Spears got knocked up just so she could get fat without the stigma.
· Reality TV's infamous Fat Naked Gay Guy in a Tree, Richard Hatch of Survivor, has been hit with ten counts of tax evasion and other wonderful tax-related no-nos.
· Come to think of it, yeah, that Nic Cage really is kind of a Mopey Marvin!

· The NY Times provides as good an illustration as you'll see of why agents are the ones wearing the nice suits and shouting into phones all day, not the ones writing the words: "'Did you hear what Ari said?" is now a regular feature of our Monday staff meetings,' said Jeremy Zimmer, a founding partner at United Talent Agency. He was referring to Ari Gold, the show's insufferable talent agent, played by Jeremy Piven in an expensive Caesar haircut. Meanwhile, at International Creative Management, the agent Brian Sher said he got huge laughs by announcing at a staff meeting that the priority project at Warner Brothers this fall would be 'Aquaman.'"
· Talent agent, defined. Is this a themed round-up?
· Now that Paris Hilton has traded in aging Chihuahua Tinkerbell for a younger, bitsy-er (bitsier?) version, Zulkey looks to Hilton's future of continuing pet-miniaturization.
· You couldn't pay us to watch Big Brother Whatever Number They're Up To Now (well, maybe we'd let Les Moonves pay us to watch it), but this clip of one of the contestants calling another contestant a "cokehead" who "fucks old men" is pretty amusing.
· P. Diddy abstains from sex before the VMAs, we abstain from giving a shit. (Yet we link to the story! Funny how that works!)

We have no idea if this is actually Adrian Grenier's Friendster, as we're told it is. We're sort of willing to believe it, for several reasons including that it dates back to well before the debut of Entourage. Real or not, though, we very much enjoy the "favorite books" section: