The Kanye Pyramid. (Wireimage c/o Adult Swim.)

“Tru$t U$,” read the sign behind the bar of the Roseland Ballroom last Thursday night, as a couple hundred reporters, ad sales reps, financial backers and celebrities crammed into the performance space to see the Adult Swim upfronts. Well, that wasn’t exactly true—most people weren’t there to see the new lineup of shows that will air on Cartoon Network, or to rub elbows with Lake Bell (Childrens Hospital), Paul Scheer (Filthy Sexy Teen$), Seth Green (Robot Chicken) or Aziz Ansari, who will be doing a voice cameo on Venture Bros. Instead, they were there to see the night’s entertainment: Kanye West.

Somehow, Adult Swim, owned by Turner Broadcasting, has always managed to book the most impossible talent for its upfront events. Two years ago, Jay-Z performed a 50-minute set; last year, T.I. was the main draw. But something about booking Mr. West—who had been the star guest and musical entertainment at the Met Gala the previous week, and would be closing out the season of Saturday Night Live two days later, and whose new album (the title leaked to the press: Yeezus) drops June 18—was an extra-special get.

Mr. West performed on an awkward triangular structure which made it impossible for anyone except those in the very front row to see Yeezy go through the motions of hits like “Clique,” “Jesus Walks,” “All of the Lights” and several new tunes, including “Awesome.” Whether the night’s circus tent/bouncy castle of a set was some sort of commentary about the amount of ironic cognitive dissonance Adult Swim fans actively engage in, or whether Mr. West just didn’t want anyone to see his listless performance (perspiring in front of a mic, mouthing lyrics), we may never know.

There was one portion of the evening when Mr. West decided to get real with the audience, indulging in one of his patented rants:

“So I don’t want no people runnin’ up on me with cameras, trying to, like, sell pictures and shit to magazines, asking me dumb-ass questions, throwin’ me off my focus and shit. Harrassin’ you all muthafuckin’ day. I ain’t no muthafuckin’ celebrity.

“It’s so funny. Somebody asked me, ‘When you do SNL, are you going to do a skit about the paparazzi and shit. And like humanize yourself?’ I ain’t here to apologize to no muthafuckas, man. It ain’t about me humanizing myself. At what point did I become un-human where I have to turn myself back? Or maybe I was demonized, or maybe I was treated inhumane and not human in that type of situation. I ain’t no muthafuckin’ celebrity. I ain’t runnin’ for office. I ain’t kissin’ nobody’s muthafuckin’ babies. I drop your baby and you muthafuckin’ sue me and shit. I’m trying to make some music that inspires people to be the best that they can be. And I don’t want nobody else to ask anything of me! Don’t ask nothing else of me ...
“Hell nah, I ain’t doin no muthafuckin’ SNL skits. This is my goddamn life. This ain’t no muthafuckin’ joke.”

Whether this message managed to reach fans through the lenses of the cell phones held in front of their faces, it was hard to say.

Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter what Kanye West says; it just mattered that he showed up. Over at the VIP bar, two older men from out of town were having a drink. After hearing that the Transom was in the writing business, one gave us a pitch for his own film.

“It’s going to be like The Hangover, except it’s about a finance guy from Kansas who goes to New York for the network upfronts, and like, meets all these celebrities and has all this random sex and gets caught up in the craziness of New York City,” said the man, who happened to be a finance guy from Kansas.

“Oh, and I have another idea,” he continued, “but it’s much darker. It’s about a group of guys on a bachelor party bus, which gets hijacked by a bunch of black thug terrorists.”

“Wait, are they black thugs or are they terrorists?” we asked. The man looked at us, confused.
“What’s the difference?”

We finished our drink and left, a little bit wiser as to what it was that made Mr. West so angry all the time.

The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 11:30pm): Daniel Radcliffe, Veronika Part/Levon Helm, Top Ten with Bruno.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:35pm): Ashton Kutcher, Charlyne Yi, musical guest Gomez.

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05am): Seth Green, Jillian Harris, Zac Sunderland.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35am): Edie Falco, Les Stroud, Lisa Landry.

Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, 1:35am): No New Episode.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11:00pm): Ronald Kessler.

The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 11:30pm): Tony Zinni.

Chelsea Lately (E!, 11:00pm): Graham Norton, comedians Josh Wolf, Randy and Jason Sklar.

Answer, if that depression was great like this one: Attend a screening of the latest teen sex comedy (or is that teen-sex comedy?) at the Tribeca Grand.

This past Sunday it was Sex Drive, an oddly restrained little composition in the American Pie school whose craftsman-like simulation of raunch almost made up for its workmanlike impression of heart. The thrill might be gone (surely as much the Daily Transom's problem as the film's), but the mileposts were reached with unimpeachable alacrity: virginity, semen-involving hijink, astonishingly attractive best-friend girl understood as edgy due to darkness of hair, improbable set-up of road trip leading to sex-opportunity (sexportunity?), execution of said road trip, sight gag involving an elder gentleman's scrotum, an imbecilic Seth Green as Amish mechanic, complications to said road-trip and said sex-opportunity, mutual realization of unspoken more-than-friend status with best-friend girl. And: non-virginity.

If the Apatow cabal has recently sold an iPod-like variety of generic sexual bildungsromane-Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin-Sex Drive seems to have emerged fully formed from some Fordist youth-experience factory, which will pump out adolescence (and adolescents) in any color you want as long as it's white. (Others are welcome as supporting characters.)  And, lo, modernity: with the merely unknown Josh Zuckerman as our nerd-hero in place of the profoundly unknowable Michael Cera, this assembly-line commodity is not really any more or less execrable than the fussily bespoke Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The name of the factory is Alloy Entertainment, the content arm of a tentacular advertising concern called Alloy Media + Marketing. You know their work because they're the masterminds behind Gossip Girl, whose nubile cast members-now, is this synergy or co-creation?-made up a good half of the notables at the screening last night.

After the show, Leighton Meester rubbed the stubble of a boyfriend named Sebastian Stan at the bar while Taylor Momsen, hair and skirt both deviously shorn, held court with a bunch of girls who courteously asked the Daily Transom if he was the last one out of the men's room. (Apparently there was a line over at Ladies.) Earlier, in the arrivals zone, Connor Paolo, a very fauny 18, explained why he liked spending time off the set with Ms. Momsen: "Well, she's tall and she's blonde, and I guess that's what American ideology tells us is right."

Mr. Paolo was an unusually able interlocutor for the gathered press.

Which is to say, yes, he has been over to that notorious den of iniquity in Chelsea shared by Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford, and how are their parties? "They roll. Let's just say they roll."

Subsequently tossed a curveball request to name his favorite drink, he missed no beat: "Milk." Celebrity crush? "Judy Dench.... She's a dame, so I'd be knighted."

If only the contemptible Mr. Green, similarly Lilliputian but now closer to 50 than 18, were as gracious. Joke-asked by a young reporter to talk about his own loss of virginity, Kenny Fisher from Can't Hardly Wait (he was 24 already then!) hubba-grunted grotesquely: "I'm hoping tonight, baby, you free?" Yuck.

With such characters in attendance, good thing Katrina Bowden brought her mom. Known as the leggy dumb blonde from 30 Rock, the younger Ms. Bowden, a very mature 20, plays the ostensible sex-destination in Sex Drive. She warned against going on crash diets-"you don't even lose any fat, just water weight"-and extolled the follicular virtues of shea butter.

An impolitic cry came forth, almost involuntarily, from the Daily Transom's companion's lips:  What's it like being so gorgeous?

"It's cool. I guess it's usual to be typecast for a little while."

In response to a follow-up: No, she has never played someone ugly, not even in school productions.

Later, the elder Ms. Bowden, a handsome career IBM employee whose taste runs to sensible sweaters and cabernet, explained that she was no stage mother and always had complete trust in her daughter, who from the age of 14 showed preternatural drive and self-discipline. "She was an honors student, because she knows if this doesn't work out she can always go to college...I'm so proud of her."

Which raised a gnawing thought: Could there be a worse audience for a sub-prime spectacle like Sex Drive? Like Barack Obama, these current and former child actors are the cream of American meritocracy, extracted from obscurity and youth through the sheer force of their talents and grit of their underage wills. (Or their parents'.) What could they possibly make of a movie proposing to show the mating rituals of human teenagers as bitter folks clinging to synthetic body fluids and Fall Out Boy cameos (inexplicable, in this case) in search of meaning?

Gossip Girl, the story as well as the cast, was obviously always meant as escapist fare, but perhaps even the minor aspirations of Sex Drive will soon seem tauntingly foreclosed to this country's young. The vehicle in the picture is a Nixon-era Pontiac GTO Judge. The Daily Transom cornered nominal writer-director Sean Anders, a somewhat disreputable-looking fellow slathered in leather, on this point.

"It was worrying," Mr. Anders admitted, "that you have this movie with a car that has terrible gas mileage when everybody has this on their mind-and the entire economy, really.

"If this movie tanks, I'm going to blame it on that."        

Asked about the potential impact of the credit crisis on his corner of the metaverse, Mr. Paolo was thankfully more sanguine. "We'll see. But I'm pretty sure the Gossip Girl kids are insulated from all that."

So whom did we nab? Screenwriter David Goyer! “This film is intense intense,” he said. “It’s about escalation, both good and bad.” What’s new about this Batman? “He’s the most realistic. In both films, we made sure that the technology he uses is based on technology that is being used or developed by the Department of Defense right now.” Now that’s truly scary. …

“More intelligent and more human,” said Michael Caine, who plays Bat-butler Alfred Pennyworth, wearing a black suit created for him by his recently deceased English tailor (“I can’t get any more alterations!”), when asked about the updated superhero.

Lauren Conrad of the splashy reality series The Hills was crowing about her maiden visit to the Hamptons. “It was great,” she said. “Beautiful.”

But overall, the mood was muted. A black carpet lined the entrance to the theater, and the absence of the late Heath Ledger (the Joker) was palpable. “I’m very thankful to have worked with him,” said the actor Chin Han. “He was so inventive—it was invigorating.”

cbankoff@observer.com

There’s hope! Striking writers and the networks that loathe them have agreed to resume contract talks after Thanksgiving. But then, it's kind of a TV weekend. How to avoid the many repeats this holiday week? For starters, Ellen Degeneres may have canceled her trip to New York City this week—being protested would be such a bummer!—but she (and her contract with Warner Bros.) promise all new shows this week (NBC, 4:00 PM). Today: her guests are the Backstreet Boys! Oh, joy. Who needs writers?

Seriously, though. Tonight, you can avoid the networks and the work of writers all together and just stick to that old-school reality programming: documentaries. The Sundance Channel will be showing the Maysle brothers’ masterpiece Grey Gardens (7:15 PM) for the millionth time, while I Am an Animal: the Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA (HBO, 8:00 PM) will debut. It appears Sheila Nevins is starting to blur the lines between the titles of her Real Sex documentaries and, y’know, the ones that nobody watches.

TUESDAY

ABC kicks off Tuesday with the repeat to end all repeats! It’s a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (8:00 PM), written in 1973. They follow that up with He’s a Bully, Charlie Brown (8:30 PM), based on the last original script penned by Charles Schulz. Of course, a dead writer can’t strike. He's hired!

Truth be told, most all network programming is brand new tonight, including House (Fox, 9:00 PM). But if you’re finding Tuesdays a bit tedious—I surely am—perhaps it’s time to invest some money in—gulp—Showtime, which is sporting the promising programming trio of Brotherhoood (8:00 PM), Dexter (9:00 PM), and Weeds (10:00 PM and 10:30 PM). Whatever happened to Shannon Tweed? Oh, right, that’s Cinemax. (Whatever happened to Cinemax?)

WEDNESDAY

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, 10:00 PM) was picked up for a full season. It was the last of its Wednesday compatriots to get the nod. But get this—funny story—there’s no one to write the darn things. So, if you’re Peter Krause, and you’re feeling sorry for yourself, watch Hotel Rwanda (8:00 PM, MyNetworkTV). You’ll feel better about your situation in no time.

If you’re not Mr. Krause, however, perhaps you should check out Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Fox, 9:00 PM). Each week, the show’s audience has increased 10 percent, while Private Practice’s (ABC, 9:00 PM) ratings have dropped since its boffo debut. What does it mean though if I still don’t want to eat the London?

THURSDAY

It may be Thanksgiving, but get nap time over before prime time. Seth Green will join Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 9:00 PM) as a patient for a two-episode arc. It’s sweeps and they’re obviously pulling out all the stops. Afterwards, ABC will premiere the second season of October Road (10:00 PM), otherwise known as that show with the girl from That ’70’s Show. Meanwhile, Tim Gunn will help the NYPD by prosecuting a policewoman for fashion felonies on Tim Gunn’s House of Style (Bravo, 10:00 PM).

FRIDAY

On 20/20 (ABC, 10:00 PM): “A man whose entire body is covered in tattoos. A woman who sailed around the world in 71 days. Twenty-two people who crammed themselves in a Mini Cooper. A dog who can balance a glass of water on her nose and climb a flight of stairs. What could they possibly have in common? They're all Guinness world-record holders.” Take that, 60 Minutes.