Queens of the Stone Age – "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" (2000)

We've got something to reveal

No one can know how we feel 

I have no problem letting everyone know exactly how I feel about Entourage, the brilliant comedy series that ran on HBO from 2004 to 2011.

Entourage is a man's show (like Sex in the City was a woman's show).  Some of you women will disagree and take the position that Entourage isn't a man's show – it's a boy's show.  

Exactly!  That's why it's so great!

I love everything about Entourage!  I love it so much I want to marry it and have all its babies!

The thing I love the very most about Entourage is Jeremy Piven's character, a fictional Hollywood talent agent named Ari Gold.

Ari Gold: Veni, Vidi, Vici!

Ari Gold is greedy, profane, narcissistic, sexist and homophobic, and a compulsive liar.  (Surprisingly, he is faithful to his wife – but probably only because his wife inherited a lot of money from her father.)

Ari has a way with words.  Here's a conversation between Ari and a movie producer who is driving a hard bargain in negotiations involving one of Ari's clients:

Ari: Joe, what are you doing to me?

Joe: I'm not doing anything, Ari, I'm just doing good business.

Ari: That's weird because it feels like you are taking a steel catheter and shoving it right up my c*ck.

Ari spends a lot of time on the phone

You can count on Ari to drop the f-bomb in just about every scene he appears in.  Here's Ari during a negotiation session with his former boss:

Former boss: I'm prepared to offer you four million dollars.

Ari: OK . . . well, let me counter with F*CK YOU!

Here's a phone conversation between Ari and a client he's been calling repeatedly:

Client: Can't you wait for me to call you back?

Ari: As the French might say, NO I F*CKING CAN NOT!

Ari applies his own brand of logic to the problems that pop up in his life.  For example, here's what Ari says when he's trying to get an old college girlfriend who is now an assistant to the head of a big movie studio to get him a meeting with her boss:

Ari: I used to f*ck you.  You owe me!

The boys of Entourage

Ari regularly abuses his gay assistant, Lloyd.  Here's what he says to Lloyd one morning when Lloyd's posture strikes Ari as a little off:

Ari: Why are you sitting like that?  Are you wearing a butt plug?

And here's what Ari says after telling Lloyd to ignore the phones for a moment and just listen to what Ari is saying:

Ari: F*ck the phones, Lloyd.  Unless Carmen Electra calls for an emergency t*ttie f*ck, don't answer!

Jeremy Piven contemplates
one of his Emmys

Here's Ari's reaction when he learns that one of his clients was dating his assistant, but now has broken up with her:

Ari: From now on, ask my permission before you bang my assistant. . . . I could have told you it would end badly.  Now I've gotta fire her so you don't feel weird when you come to my office.

Client: No! Don't fire her!

Ari: All right.  I'll just sexually harass her until she quits.

Is this last exchange a case of art imitating life?

The fictional Ari Gold was inspired by the very real Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel, who left a large Hollywood agency in 1995 to open up his own shop, which he named Endeavor.

Several years later, a former Endeavor agent named Sandra Epstein sued the agency, alleging (among other things) sexual harassment.

We'll learn more about Ari Emanuel and his famous brother, Rahm – the mayor of Chicago – in the next 2 or 3 lines.

Queens of the Stone Age

The Queens of the Stone Age formed in Palm Desert, California in 1996.  "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" is the first single from their second studio album, Rated R, which was released in 2000.

The "Rated R" album cover

"The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" is featured in "I Love You Too," the ninth episode of the second season of Entourage.  The song plays as porn stars Jesse Jane, Devon, and Teagen Presley walk through a hotel corridor on their way to visit a bitter movie reviewer played by Rainn Wilson (who is best known for his role of Dwight Schrute on the NBC series, The Office).

Here's "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret."  (Warning: the music video for the song is repulsive – you might want to avert your gaze and simply listen to the song, which is fabulous.)

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: