The doorman thrust his hand out against a FUBU-clad chest and stared deep into the sunglassed eyes of a man with tightly shaped facial hair. “Do I know you?” the doorman asked in an unfriendly growl. The man’s seeming ease with which he had approached the club challenged the doorman’s authority, and if there was one thing he didn’t like, it was his authority being challenged (if there was a second thing he didn’t like, it was women, but no one at work knew about that yet.)

As he had suspected, the man, so brazen in his approach, so arrogant in his posture, didn’t say anything. The doorman lowered his hand. “You should wait in line like everybody else,” he said, “but I can tell you right now that you ain’t getting in. Not with those sneakers.” The man didn’t move. “You got shit in your ears?” the doorman asked. There was a commotion in the entourage of people waiting behind the man. Someone was jostling to the front.

“What’s the problem?” the newcomer asked. “I want to get my drink on.” The man in FUBU stepped aside. Clearly, this new figure was the leader of this crew. The doorman had every intention of dressing down this Silver Lake creep in front of his whole entourage. A gray shadow crossed his face. Oh shit. He had no idea. One wrong word from this guy, and the bouncer could be out of work across the city. With his hand shaking, he opened the door and ushered the entire crew in, even the few people his expert eye told him had just melted into the crowd and probably didn’t even come with Horton. The elephant slapped the doorman gently in the face twice with one of his ears, tucked a dollar bill into the breast pocket of the doorman’s coat, and stepped into the club. “NUMBER ONE MOVIE IN THE COUNTRY, SON, WHO WANTS TO GET FUCKED” he bellowed.

Horton slid into his VIP booth and wrapped his giant legs around a couple of scantily clad women, the type who think erotic films are a perfectly legitimate way to get into real acting. The man in the FUBU shirt and horrible sunglasses, who Horton just called Bucket after a hilarious incident that involved Kiera Knightly and an Emergency Room stomach pumping, signaled the waitress over and whispered something in her ear. She looked outraged as she walked away, but a few minutes later a silver bucket of ice and flavored vodkas was delivered to the table. Horton nosed one of the women’s outsized breasts with his trunk, and she rolled her head back in simulated pleasure. Horton knew the game, and he didn’t mind playing. “WHO-DY WHO” he shouted at the table. It was a catchphrase he’d been trying out with his crew, something VH1 had given him to prep for a new celebreality show they were planning for the fall lineup, Horton Hears a Ho, in which Horton would give advice to hos in a mansion.

“WHO-DY WHO” the table shouted back.

“HAKUNA MATATA, MOTHERFUCKERS! LET’S DO THIS!”