Entourage: Let's Blog It Out

By Mark La Monica

We here at Entourage, the blog, wish to extend our congratulations to Ari Gold and Turtle for winning the Big Knish Award, given at the end of each season to the character with the most memorable and printable quotes.

It was a heated contest each season and Turtle came on strong late to earn a share of the title.

Congratulations again to both Ari and Turtle for giving us so much good material to use in the office on Monday.

Final Season Three Standings
* Ari Gold 3.5
* Turtle 3.5
E 2
Drama 2
Turtle's mom 1

Big Knish History
Season 3 -- Ari Gold, Turtle
Season 2 -- Johnny Drama
Season 1 -- Blog didn't exist

Best Printable Line rules
Just to refresh your memory, the weekly honor of Best Printable Line comes with the caveat of the quote being able to be reprinted for people of all ages. If not for this rule, Ari Gold would win every week. If not for this rule, I'd have been fired for dropping too many curses and lewd material in this blog.

By Mark La Monica

Just my luck. Work kept me away from the original 10 p.m. airing of the season finale of "Entourage" and now I have to spend the first hours of Monday morning sifting through the best written episode of the season for "Best Printable Line."

Great lines were flying in all directions in the season finale. Turtle had a few. Ari had a few. Even Lloyd and E came through with quotable material.

But, after careful analysis, Week 12's BPL goes to Drama.

He locked it up early in the episode when he was trying to explain to Vince and the guys that they should meet with other agents before firing Ari.

"Nobody appreciates their girlfriend til they get herpes from the next broad, know what I'm saying?" Drama said.

Just a brilliant line and delivered in classic Drama fashion. I immediately lost it when I first heard that line. Of course, I also immediately knew we'd have a tie for Big Knish Award, given to the season-long winner of Best Printable Line.

I tried to find a Turtle or Ari that could top Drama's just to avoid that awkward "Bud Selig I guess we have a tie" shoulder shrug. Turtle came close with his printable "I'll give them 10 for amenities . . . " but that would have been forcing the issue only to avoid a tie.

That's just not ethical. That would be like an 3-12 NFL team intentionally tanking the last game of the season just to ensure the No. 1 pick in the draft.

So, we're left with a tie as Turtle and Ari split the Big Knish Award. We'll have a ceremonial blog posting on Tuesday celebrating their co-victory.

Best Printable Line Standings
* Ari Gold 3.5
* Turtle 3.5
E 2
Drama 2
Turtle's mom 1

* co-champions

By Mark La Monica

If "Entourage" were only five minutes long, Ari Gold would have locked up the Big Knish Award for winning the Season Three "Best Printable Line" title. The clincher would have been the Liberace mugging line about Martin Landau's car.

But alas, this show only seems like five minutes long. Turtle came in with a gem to steal this week's honor and force a first-place tie with Ari.

Vince guided Turtle down some sketchy looking back alley in Los Angeles and then handed him a thick envelope full of cash. Vince refused to explain why they were there, but just told Turtle to ask for "Jimmy."

Turtle responded, "Vince, what the hell's going on? I feel like Sonny Corleone at the toll booth."

Outstanding!

There's only one episode left for Ari and Turtle to battle it out for the Big Knish. Based on the coming attractions, which the BPL judges mistakenly watched for the first time all season, Turtle has been installed as the favorite heading into the week.

Best Printable Line Standings
Ari Gold 3.5
Turtle 3.5
E 2
Drama 1
Turtle's mom 1

By Mark La Monica

In the perfect world, Martin Landau would win the Big Knish outright for his work in this episode about Brando and the maid. Such precision, such deft. That's why he's a big dog in Hollywood.

But, the world is far from perfect, so we're going to have to stick to the rules of "Best Printable Line" and give it to Turtle again this week. He's making a strong run at Ari Gold for the title.

Drama is driving Turtle through Saigon's neighborhood en route to his house. Drama explains he's not happy about being in this town for the second time without his nunchucks (honorable mention for BPL, by the way).

Turtle retorts with a great line, both in the wording and the recipient of such wording.

"Oh, you're not happy. I've got 40 grand riding on finding Saigon in the next four hours. If I don't, I'm gonna kill myself by eating all your Propecia pills."

Boom!

Best Printable Line Standings*
Ari Gold 3.5
Turtle 2.5
E 2
Drama 1
Turtle's mom 1

* Ari Gold has a 1-game lead with two weeks left in the race for the second Big Knish Award.

By Mark La Monica

Back on the night of June 18, 2006, the judges came within a receding hairline of giving Drama the first-ever non-spoken Best Printable Line weekly honor for his dive into the pool.

Nearly two months later, we come close again. His right haymaker to one of Seth Green's boys was priceless, especially when watched in slow motion.

But since we didn't do it the first time, and that dive was better than the haymaker, we must look in another direction.

Seth Green came close right before the punch, and it would be printable. But I can't allow such disrespect of Emmanuelle Chriqui to be rewarded with anything but a vicious Drama haymaker.

So, this week, Best Printable Line goes to Turtle for his poolside chat with a bunch of strippers all trying to curry some favor in advance of the upcoming, um, "beauty contest."

"Fortunately for you ladies, I left my integrity in Los Angeles," Turtle says to the ladies by the pool at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. "My vote is 100 percent for sale."

Turtle solidified this week's top honor later in the show. Vince finds out about Turtle's maneuverings and suggests that his vote can't be bought just because a girl promised to sleep with Turtle. Turtle responds with, "I don't care who wins. I cut deals with all of them."

Outstanding. Vegas, baby.

Best Printable Line Standings*
Ari Gold 3.5
E 2
Turtle 1.5
Drama 1
Turtle's mom 1

* Ari Gold has a 1.5-game lead with three weeks left in the race for the second Big Knish Award.

By Mark La Monica

Some things in life just are not even close to staying inside the foul pole at the wall in left field. That list includes writing about a well-written show on cable television for a newspaper-based Web site. The show's writers are bound by nothing.

Oh what a world we'd live in if Best Printable Line was actually Best Line Regardless of Content. Of course, Ari Gold would win every week and he would have won about 11 times over during this past episode.

Alas, we are bound by honor and reprintability. So, after writing down every line from the show on a separate piece of paper and putting them in the cursing colander to filter out the unusable ones, we here at "Entourage, the blog" (OK, it's really "I" here at "Entourage, the blog" but I am both of and for the people) are still left with Ari Gold standing tall.

Barbara Miller (you may remember her from the Mandy Moore episodes last season), the sultry yet mighty super agent played by Beverly D'Angelo, cons Ari into a lunch meeting that includes his ex-boss Terrance. Ari is enraged by the Miller double-cross.

She then shows up at the Ari Gold emergency crisis summit lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet. Ari, in true Ari Gold fashion says, "Hey, Babs, the Traitorous Skanks Anonymous meeting is next door."

Wow. And printable!

Best Printable Line Standings*
Ari Gold 3.5
E 2
Drama 1
Turtle's mom 1
Turtle 0.5

* Ari Gold has a 1.5-game lead with four weeks left in the race for the second Big Knish Award.

By Mark La Monica

First off, apologies to my loyal Sunday night readers who are on this site at 11 p.m. seeking the Best Printable Line. (Don't laugh, you Monday and Tuesday readers, the Sunday readers are out there.)

But I'm on West Coast time this week and HBO East is not a privilege. But I'll trade that for my view of the pool and golf course. And I did have a keyboard sent to my room so I could provide the good people of some Entourageness and that kind of dedication should count for something somewhere sometime.

This week, E wins for Best Printable Line. He was sweating out the aftermath of his soiree with Sloan and her friend Tori. E woke up "snuggling" Tori instead of Sloan and was tweaking about it. The boys gave him some good-natured ribbing.

Drama explains to E that are no such things as accidents in threesomes. E responds with, "Yeah, you and Turtle crossed swords in your threesome. Accident?"

Bang. Drama got checked.

Best Printable Line standings
Ari 2.5
E 2
Drama 1
Turtle's mom 1
Turtle 0.5

By Mark La Monica

Episode 6 brought the pain like Method Man on his first solo album. Great lines flowed from beginning to end.

For the first time in the history of "Entourage, the blog" we have a split decision for Best Printable Line.

Maybe it's a cop out, or maybe it's just a nod to the brilliant writing of Lisa Alden from Episode 6 of Season Three. Either way, who really cares, because in the end, we all win for being able to watch this show.

The first co-winner, based on the episode's chronology, is Turtle.

Since Vince was ignoring his agent, Ari and Lloyd show up at Vince's house. The bell rings and the guys see Ari and Lloyd on the security monitor. Turtle turns to Vince and says, "This must be serious. He brought his muscle."

Ridiculous.

Shortly after that, Ari Gold claimed his share of this week's title. Ari is explaining, loudly, to Vince what will happen if he plays hardball with the studio and can't get around on the studio head's fastball. "He will sue you," Ari says. "He'll take everything you have. He'll take the house, the cars, maybe even Turtle."

Equally ridiculous.

We're six episodes in and the race for the Big Knish Award and Ari Gold is starting to pull away.

Best Printable Line Standings
Ari Gold 2.5
E 1
Drama 1
Turtle's Mom 1
Turtle 0.5

By Mark La Monica

Ari Gold had the top three quotes this week, but unfortunately, they don't qualify for Best Printable Line because of the discretionary language clause.

It's a clause we struggle with weekly. The reality of it is sort of upsetting, but such is life on a family Web site. And besides, at least they don't edit the actual show.

So, this week, we see Johnny Drama return to the leaderboard as he attempts to defend his Big Knish Award as winner of the Best Printable Line pennant race last season.

Vince just bought each of boys their own Aston Martin. Not a bad gift just for being friends with the biggest movie star in town.

As they're all about to get into their cars to drive to a meeting with Ari, Vince wonders if they'll look like a bunch of schmucks driving three cars.

Drama responds: "We'd look like schmucks in Jettas. In Aston Martins, we look good."

Best Printable Line Standings (through five weeks)
Ari Gold 2
E 1
Drama 1
Turtle's Mom 1

By Mark La Monica

Plenty to choose from this week as just about every cast member had a line worth remembering. But, seeing how we're based in New York and the show's characters (and the actors who play them) are from New York, we're going to claim geographic proximity with this week's quote.

This week's winner of Best Printable Line goes to Ari Gold for a second straight week.

Dom and the crew walk into Ari's office for a meeting to discuss the next project for Vince.

As they approach Ari's office, Dom is wearing a dark-colored tanktop, more commonly referred to by this generation as a wife-beater.

Ari blurts out, "Whoa, Vinny, you're rolling in bank now. You can't get this guy a whole shirt?"

Boom. Well done, Ari.

Best Printable Line Standings
Ari Gold 2
E 1
Turtle's Mom 1

By Mark La Monica

Three episodes into the season and we've got a three-way tie for first place and Drama is nowhere on the list yet. But he's got nine more episodes to make up a one-game deficit in the race for the Big Knish, given to the winner of Best Printable Line.

Episode 3 belonged to Ari Gold. He put the kabosh on his daughter seeing teen actor Max Ballard. His daughter didn't like that and gave him the "I hate you" speech.

Mrs. Ari had a snide remark for Ari about child therapy.

Ari responded, "In this town, as long as I keep her off an 'E! True Hollywood Story,' I've done my job."

Correct, dad.

Best Printable Line standings
Ari 1
E 1
Turtle's Mom 1

By Mark La Monica

At 9:54 p.m. Sunday night, I set the away message on my AIM to:

ok, seriously, it's sunday night and entourage is on. why are you bothering me when you should be watching it? in the meantime, go read my entourage blog at http://www.newsday.com/entourage.

Two pals, L-town friend Autonacci and Ex-student friend Big Al, ignored my away message and sent me IMs anyway. Both of the messages were direct quotes by Ari Gold from this week's episode. So, I can't really get mad at them for such technological indiscretions since they were already doing what I told them they should be doing.

Despite their Jack Abramoff attempts to influence the judges here at the "Best Printable Line" home office, we choose to award E with the line of the week. (Although, honorable mention goes to Johnny Drama, who nearly became the first person in the two-year history of Best Printable Line to win the weekly award without talking -- the dive into the pool was fantastic.)

As the gang drives into the valley to watch "Aquaman" on opening day, the temperature rises to 106 degrees. Johnny Drama feels every bit of the heat and is seen in the backseat with a towel over his head as he sweats through his sleeveless T-shirt.

Turtle takes a cheap shot at him.

But E wins when he fires off, "Yeah, seriously, Drama, 'cause I haven't seen someone sweat like that since Patrick Ewing retired."

Wow.

Season 3 Standings
E 1
Turtle's Mom 1

By Mark La Monica

Last year, Johnny Drama took home the Big Knish award as the Season 2 winner of Best Printable Line. Can he defend his title? Given the nature of the show and the writing, there's a solid chance. He's been installed as the 3/1 favorite in the Blog It Out sportsbook (aka, my workspace in the office).

The guidelines of Best Printable Line have been expanded to include usage of the em dash, better known as ----. This means we can include quotes involving not-so-nice language, provided we don't actually type the not-so-nice language.

So, here we go with the Best Printable Line (BPL) from Episode 1. The winner is Turtle's mom.

When the crew's moms got off the plane in Los Angeles, the crew was there on the tarmac to meet them. Turtle's mom was dressed in a black and red Adidas jumpsuit with a red visor, which is beyond hilariouson so many levels.

Turtle asked, "Did you bring a dress to wear?"

Turtle's mom replied, "No, I'm gonna wear this. ----ing idiot!"

Boom!