In case you're unfamiliar with the "upfronts," they're an annual television industry event held in New York where all of the bigshots and stars from all the networks present their show lineups for the upcoming season to advertisers in the hopes of removing them from their money. Usually, these events are one enormous act of autofellatio, an endless stream of workers sucking the cocks of the companies they work for in order to hold on to their jobs and continue to cash ridiculously large paychecks, and really, who can blame them? Apart from the time in 1991 when Johnny Carson announced out of the blue that he was retiring during an NBC upfront presentation, these things are usually painfully benign, and are rarely, if ever, truly newsworthy. Typically it's an endless parade of people like Charlie Sheen stepping up to a podium to tell the fine folks at Procter and Gamble and General Motors how if they thought last year's season of Two and Half Men was funny, well, they haven't seen anything yet, because this upcoming season is going to be a fucking riot, and then they politely ask them for $1.5 million for a thirty second spot and the advertisers usually pay it and everyone goes home fat and happy. The end.

Now, with all of that established, back to Kimmel, who completely shattered this usual sort of monotony with his performance yesterday. Here's a sampling of what he said as advertising executives just sat there squirming in their seats, laughing nervously, exchanging "WTF?!" glances, not quite sure of what to make of what what happening in front of them as he fired rhetorical scuds at ABC, its competitors, and the advertising industry in general.

"Let's get real here. Let's get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We're going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more."

"Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more. You don't need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies onto your clients."

"Next year on ‘Grey's Anatomy,' your product could kill Dr. Izzie. It just depends on how much you want to pay."

"I think all our shows are going to work this year. I really do. I don't, really."

"The important thing to remember is: who cares, it's not your money."

Kimmel also took a shot at NBC and Jay Leno, whom ABC once courted to possibly replace him when his contract with NBC expired, saying that they're "giving Jay's viewers exactly what they want. An early-bird special."

It's hard not to love and respect Jimmy Kimmel more than ever after all of this, but one can't help suspecting that ABC will soon be announcing his show's cancellation so that it can extend Nightline back to a full hour.

Jimmy Kimmel Demolishes ABC's Upfronts [New York Times]

1) Is assigning a piece on 'Pants-Off Dance-Off' to chronic masturbator Dave Itzkoff a subtle form of commentary in and of itself?

2) Which masthead type dropped the kids off at camp last week, noticed all the pills being dispensed, and had a lightbulb moment?

3) Was there supposed to be some kind of moral equivalence in the pieces on sad old men and sad old women? Also, for future reference, no one wants to read articles about old people and sex. Save that stuff for the large print edition, okay?

• Senior writer Marc Spitz
• Photo editor Kathleen Kemp
• Senior associate editor and erstwhile Lad Dave Itzkoff (who's also — have you heard? — the son of a cocaine addict)

We hope they're all busy getting delightfully trashed with former colleague Chuck Klosterman, who either was fired or quit a day earlier.

And we have no idea how they're actually going to put out a magazine.

UPDATE: A now-former Spinner tells us we're missing big chunks of the story: "You forgot to mention that they've also laid off our managing editor, Jeanann Pannasch, who just left for maternity leave (and may have had her pregnancy induced yesterday), and that the remaining staffers are collectively refusing to sign their rehiring agreements."

Earlier: Chuck Klosterman, Spun Out

Spin editor and New York Times Book Review columnist Dave Itzkoff's COCAINE'S KID, about growing up the son of an addicted father, based on his recent New York magazine article, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, for publication in spring 2008, by Nina Collins of Collins Literary Agency (world).

So, to recap: Itzkoff's first book, Lads, dealt prominently with his cokehead dad; his 5,700-word New York feature dealt entirely with his cokehead dad; and his second book will deal entirely with it, too.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: We're so glad we'll never have to go to Seder at the Itzkoff house.

Earlier: Dave Itzkoff Continues to Hate His Father

We can appreciate the concept of filial pride, on the one hand, but you'd think abject humiliation might factor in, too. (One wonders: Did Kathryn Harrison's dad go to the book party for The Kiss?) But we thought more about it, and figured dad probably felt humiliated but also guilty, and, in a very therapized way, it was probably decided to play up the pride and show family support.

Then we read the new New York magazine, where Itzkoff ads more to the my-dad-the-cokehead canon. A sample passage:

I had never actually seen my father getting high before, and on this day, I still wouldn't catch him in the act: His supply was exhausted, and all that remained in the room were a few rolled-up dollar bills on a nightstand, a glossy porno magazine on the floor, and a frightened old man shivering on the bed, his nostrils cemented shut with a mixture of blood and mucus, his eyelids sealed closed by some bodily fluid whose origins I couldn't even guess at. I had no idea how much coke he'd done or how long he'd been doing it, but now he was coming down, and he was coming down hard. "Come on, Dad," I said. "Let's get you out of here."

And we had several reactions — that we're glad our father's not an addict, that young Dave is a very angry boy — but mostly this: We're thrilled we'll never have to go to a Seder at the Itzkoff house.

Cocaine's Kid [NY Mag]