It's like "Glengarry Glen Ross" for 11-year-olds
By Erin Steele
April 20, 2007
Alec Baldwin really hates it when people don't answer their phones, and not in the way most of us do, where we're too irritated to leave a message and just hang up halfway through whatever lame voicemail greeting we're forced to endure. Then later, when said non-answerer calls us back and gives us a half-hearted "Sorry I missed your call," we say, "It's cool," not even chiding them for earlier failing to drop everything and answer the phone.
Not so for Baldwin. He endures the voicemail greetings, if only because it buys him time to think of colorful terms of endearment to deliver such as "rude thoughtless little pig" and "pain in the a**." And hey, I'm not going to act like I'm above this kind of thing -- I plead guilty to many a late-night drunk dial that resulted in certain ex-boyfriends being referred to as farm animals or various body parts (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)
The good news for me, however, is that the recipients of my tirades were grown men who just acted like they were 11 years old. Baldwin's case is far more grim: His expletive-laced meltdown was directed at his daughter, who is, in fact, 11.
TMZ.com "obtained" a tape of Baldwin's message, and by "obtained," I mean "sat back and had it dumped into their laps, most likely by Kim Basinger and her lawyer." The tape was played in family court earlier this week, where a judge found Baldwin's enraged, emotionally abusive father performance so convincing, she temporarily revoked his visitation rights (such is the curse of being the only decent actor in your family.)
Of course, telling your pre-teen daughter that she doesn't "have the brains or the decency as a human being," is pretty harsh and is also a pretty appalling sentence fragment. The decency as a human being to answer the phone? To watch "30 Rock"? To honestly tell your father that he needs to go on a diet, because the John Travolta bloat-ation plan he's currently on is working a little too well?
I don't know. What I do know is that Baldwin's oft-voiced plans to run for office are probably best shelved at this point. You know, since politicians are often forced to talk about "family values" and such.
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