Hey, it's that guy

It’s been a long time coming, but today the NYT does a profile of Jeremy Piven and gives the man his due.

Let me just say that while Mr. Piven deserves every ounce of praise for his brilliant—and dead-on--performance as bootlicking agent Ari Gold on Entourage, I have been a fan of his since One Crazy Summer, back in the day. He is the ultimate supporting best male buddy, the guy who plays crazy fun frat boy like no one else. Who else can utter biting witticisms under his breath with perfect comic timing like he does? When Mr. Piven’s face pops up on a show or in a movie, you know he’s going to make the project better. He and John Cusack are the ultimate comic foils for each other, as demonstrated in One Crazy Summer, Grosse Point Blank, Serendipity, Say Anything and The Grifters (ok that's not comedy). He's also the voice of Elongated Man on Justice League.

Am I slightly obsessed? Yes, and here’s why. Not only is Mr. Piven cute and ubiquitous, he’s actually talented. I tried to recognize this fact 6 or 7 years ago by submitting a “Hey! It’s that guy!” piece on him to what was then Hissyfit but is now Fametracker. Wing Chun turned it down in favor of a piece on fucking Christine Baranski, and then she ran something on Jeremy Piven a few months later that was written by someone else. TWOP and Fametracker might be endless goldmines of cultural snark, but I am forever bitter toward Wing Chun because of her oversight.

BTW--the NYT article says that "some viewers complained that "Entourage," which focuses on a movie star and the hometown friends who mooch off him, was fake-insidery, inaccurate about Hollywood or so full of private jokes that only its producers (including the creator Doug Ellin and the actor Mark Wahlberg) could think it was funny. "

Anyone who's ever lived in LA (or lived in California and had friends in LA) can tell you that the reason Entourage is so good is because it SKEWERS the entertainment scene in the most stingingly accurate way possible.

UPDATE: Apparently Defamer thinks that Virginia Heffernan went a little overboard with her Piven worship. I say suck it up, bitches.