I got invited to the MTV Style Lounge earlier this week. It's the first and last "gifting suite" I'll ever go to.

You know what a "gifting suite" is, right? Remember, on THE SOPRANOS earlier this season – when Chris-tu-pha went there with Ben Kingsley, and then later punched Lauren Bacall? Yeah, that one. It's a room or, in my case, an entire fucking house full of free shit they give away to celebrities.

I'd read about gifting suites before. US WEEKLY seems to have a permanent branch of their reporting staff covering them. Hey, celebrities worked hard to become insanely wealthy and famous, right? Don't they deserve some retroactive free shit, to make up for all the years they had to survive on a standard living wage?

Also, the term "gifting suite" has this sinister, Orwellian quality. Like something Warren Ellis would come up with as a creepy, throwaway bit of dialogue. Come to think of it, I'll probably co-opt the term for something else I write. Maybe a "gifting suite" is a torture room, or a lab where they infect subjects with biological agents, shit like that. Hands off, Warren.

It still wouldn't be half as horrifying as the real gifting suite I visited.

First off, there weren't a lot of actual "celebrities" there. The fact that I was invited should let you know the quality level of those attending. Well, maybe there were some big, actual, photo-worthy celebrities attending later, but not when I got there. I got there at noon on a Friday.

That's when the "celebrities" consisted of asterisks like me, and people who "dress for the shoot".

"Dressing for the shoot" is something I heard Greg Behrendt say once, and good Christ, if it doesn't apply to an entire substrata of the Los Angeles population. These are people who, even though they don't have a shred of talent or even a joyful curiosity about film, music or theater, have a RAVENOUS appetite for the rewards those three pursuits bring. So they've decided -- fuck it, I'm going to fast-forward to the rewards stage. Part of the "rewards", in their estimation -- and this is beyond the goodie bags, chef's tables in restaurants, and access to exclusive nightspots -- is getting to treat everyone like shit.

Assholes. Assholes in bespoke clothing, distressed jeans and artfully faded concert T-shirts barking and sighing at everyone and everything around them. You pulled up to a valet station on Benedict Canyon, where a driver took your car away, and you boarded a huge SUV, which then took you a little further up a hill to where the "gifting suite residence" was. Well, this was paradise for the Shot-Dressed Assholes. They got to complain about having to leave their expensive cars, they got to bitch to the reception girls about having to stand in the sun, they got to roll their eyes at the SUV which, apparently, was "ghetto" and "last year". Wow.

Maybe these men and women realize how short a window they have where, coiffed and dressed, they've still got tight, young enough faces to fool people for the three seconds it takes for them to squeeze beyond the velvet rope. Hot, tan, blonde girls who are so fucking ugly. Buff, gelled, open-collared boys who can't read, and flash the SuFi.

This is not a screed against Los Angeles. Los Angeles is five of the best cities in the country, and three or four of the worst.

Blaine Capatch said that Los Angeles is eight or nine different cities, and you have to pick the right ones to live in. I was spending the afternoon in the part of Los Angeles which is Sunset Boulevard, west of Crescent Heights. It's Robertson Boulevard between Beverly and Olympic. Both of these areas could be napalmed, and the IQ and talent level of the city would double.

I hadn't even reached the house yet, and my self-loathing was bubbling and curdling my stomach as I hopped onto the SUV. "You wanna go to the gifting suite? MTV invited you." Well, I responded with my lizard brain. Free stuff! Blaaaaaaarghhhh! Give me free stuff! And I went without thinking.

Now I felt like shit. But it was too late. The SUV pulled up to the gifting suite residence, and three or four Shot-Dressed Assholes pushed their way past me from the back seat, scanning the landscape like velociraptors for someone who wasn't moving fast enough for their taste.

I got my ID from the receptionist, and found out that the gifting suite was put on by some organization trying to raise awareness for AIDS. I clung to this fact like a piece of goodness in a sea of shallowness and evil.

I was immediately led into a high-ceilinged chamber where an Adidas rep was giving away custom shoes. A flat screen TV was set up, connected to the webpage where you can design your own shoes. He shoved a pair of size 11 basketball shoes into a canvas bag and told me to, "Check out the website when you get a chance. It rocks."

The second those shoes went into the bag my brain started screaming, "OUT! I want OUT!". It comes down to this: I love money. I love success even more. But I worked very hard to get money so I can pay for things myself. That's what turns me on and makes me happy. Having shit handed to me by surly hipsters, or people whose mouths smile but eyes don't, is bad for the soul.

But no, I still had to do penance for my greed. Led around by a tightly-smiling escort, I had to visit ghastly jewelry dealers, shitty tequila salesmen, loads and loads of iPod accessories, stationary and facial cream concerns, and two sad-looking hotties from a restaurant called Pink Taco. "Pink Taco" -- get it? It's a rude slang term for "pussy"! But it's Mexican food!

"We're opening a new place in Century City. It's going to be off the hook. It'll be super-crowded and, like, the place to be," intoned one of the girls, adjusting her baby-doll halter.

Super-crowded. That's the habitat. That's where these people thrive. I was surrounded by women waiting for someone to cut in front of them. Their upper lip is permanently curled, and their jaw is always half-relaxed, ready to fully snap open and let fly with a string of righteous bitching at some perceived slight. Their lives are spent crowded in front of The Griddle on Sunset for breakfast, fighting for a treadmill at Crunch, jostling for lunch at Chin Chin, and long, pointless nights outside of Hyde or The Spider Club. I'd just discovered a Burbank bar called Bar 21. Cool, dark interior, plush booths, and never crowded. One of my favorite places to eat is BLD, which can get crowded, but there's plenty of windows of opportunity to eat and read and not be slapped against the rest of humanity like pigs.

Hell on Earth for the Shot-Dressed Assholes. If there isn't the potential for a screaming match over a shoulder-nudge, it wasn't worth it.

While I was waiting for the SUV to take me back to my car, I got waylaid by one of the producers of MTV's PIMP MY RIDE. You know what a pimp is, right? He's a dude who tricks, frightens, or flat-out bullies a woman to fuck other men for money, which she then gives to him. Just wanted to clear that up. 'Cuz there's a show called PIMP MY RIDE. Maybe they can do another show called RAPE MY CRIB.

Anyway, the producer was showing me some of the cool cars from the show, which they had in the house's massive garage. And by the way, this was not a house that people lived in, raised families, hosted friends, built memories. This was a sprawling, unwelcoming residence that was rented out for brainless rap videos, or shitty TV shows where they needed a remorseful but sexy drug dealer's pad, or equally worthless stuff. You get to see a lot of Shot-Dressed Assholes as background extras in these.

So he was showing me a "party van" they'd outfitted, with an extendable "Wheels of Steel" and mini-bar. It was kind of nice. Wow, someone had actually, you know, CREATED something. Had used skill and talent to craft something kind of new. My heart warmed for a moment.

"Yeah, we had this thing at a Ja Rule record release party, and we hired a fuckin' midget to serve drinks out of the side. And this one bitch..."

But I couldn't hear him anymore. My heart had snapped shut. Even the few good things in this world were always turned towards ugliness.

I rode the SUV back down and waited for my car. At one point, a blonde-haired nobody with perky tits and bad skin got in my face and said, "Is there a long fucking wait at the house? Or do I get to go right in?"

"You're not missing anything," I said, and she managed to sigh and sneer at the same time. The sneer made her zits flare under her spray-on tan.

I drove to the House of Secrets, got comics, and then ate a quiet, yummy turkey sandwich at the half-empty Tallyrand.

Anybody want a pair of size 11 Adidas?