Gawker
Alec Baldwin doesn't spend all his time on the phone in New York City, it turns out. Last week, he visited Yale to give a "master's tea" but also took some time to get acquainted with his surroundings. Fortunately, two of the university's creative writing students encountered Mr. Baldwin while he was there—and they recorded their impressions.
From the first student:
As everyone knows, you never forget meeting celebrities. Encounters with the famous leave glowing fingerprints on our lives, as if we have been touched by something fiery and celestial. That's why I'll always cherish my encounter with Alec Baldwin:Or dressing up like Kim Basinger in Boxing Helena! He probably would have enjoyed that. Anyway, here is the second student's piece:
Alec: Pardon me, I need to make a phone call.
Me: [Stepping out of his way] Sorry, sorry.That day, Alec gave a talk at Yale in a lecture hall which seated 175. A hundred more people were turned away when a wrathful fire marshal arrived to crack down on those hoping to loiter in the aisles or stand in the back. One woman, claiming to be "a grad student at the med school here" and to have "a reserved seat," punched the student guarding the door, bolted past him to the lecture hall, and then, when the police came to detain her, escaped down the street. Understandable: physical assault and possible arrest are token prices to pay for a glimpse of Alec Baldwin.
The post-talk dinner with Alec was an even hotter ticket: students lobbied for days in advance to earn a seat at the table. One girl, having won her place, arrived for dinner wearing a curvy summer dress and a full complement of makeup. She immediately set her purse down in a chair at the center of the long table, across from where she anticipated Alec would be, to mark the territory. (I would be hanging in the corner, balancing my plate on my lap.) Ten minutes before eight, Alec rose from dinner with an extravagant thank-you and left to see a play, accompanied by his friend David Blank and by the girl in the summer dress. The rest of us kicked ourselves for not having thought to wear makeup.
It's a birthday party at Caf Bottega and everyone is excused in advance. The girls' tops are starting to slip as they dance in private circles, the boys in a parody of stealth sidling up behind them and arhythmically grazing against their hips and asses. Everyone's singing or screaming—it's hard to tell who's doing what.Audrey, honey, darling. Seriously, call us. We'd like you to begin saving your voicemails.
The more forward ones are already pairing off: they're trading phone numbers and tequila shots, or they have their arms draped around each other's necks and waists, and their heads are bowed, and they dance slow.
Audrey's sitting at the bar. There's a group loosely affiliated with her standing and ordering drinks. "I just don't know how not to be single," one girl's noisily telling a boy. He seems understanding. "Now that I'm in a relationship," she says, "I just keep seeing all these people I should have fucked when I had the chance."
"I wanted him so much," Audrey says.
"Who?" I ask as I sit down.
"I'm at the dinner for Alec Baldwin. I'm wearing this low-cut dress and I'm like he's not going to talk to me but I want to look nice. And Sam, he's locked into me the entire time." She grabs my neck and pulls me towards her. "He's looking at me like this and them he says, what are you doing after this? And I say I'm going to see Lulu at the Rep—I have a friend in it—so he comes with me and he sits through this shit play for two hours and, Sam, he's got his arm around me the whole time."
"Was he sleazy?"
"No, he was charming. I've never met anyone that charming. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and I told him all about Psycho Jeff and what he did when we broke up, and he started telling me all about Kim Basinger and how she was bipolar and we connected. But he's old. He kept asking me how old I was, if I was sure I was 20."
"That's charming."
"And then he walks me back to my dorm"
"Did you sleep with him."
"No, he gave me his number. I should have. He asked me if I wanted to come to New York with him for the weekend. I said I was busy and he gavbe me his number. He told me to call him whenever I'm in New York."
"That's awesome," I say and we hug each other. "Careful Aud," I say, laughing. "I've seen how full of yourself you get when something like this happens. I won't be able to talk to you for weeks."
"I know," she says. She's smiling broadly. "All I want is to go to New York. I don't care about anybody else. Fuck you all," she shouts at the dance floor, although the music's so loud that nobody turns. "Fuck you all," she tries again, "Alec Baldwin wants me."
UPDATE: It wasn't Audrey.
Comments
I can't for the life of me remember where it's from, but Leonard Cohen once said something to the effect of: "Now that I'm famous at 60, I can sleep with all the girls I wanted at 19". Which is both hilariously ironic, and a pretty brutal condemnation of girls. Where was I? Oh right... SLUUUUUUTTTTT!!!
So even if you're the king of all jackasses, you still get to be king. That's good to know.
I was referring to Alec Baldwin, by the way, not Leonard Cohen.
I call bullshit on this story, sadly, as it assumes there are actually girls at Yale cute enough for Baldwin to chase after.
Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age
by Cindy Walker
Don't be ashamed of your age
Don't let the years get you down
That old crowd you knew
They still think of you
As a rounder in your hometown
Don't mind all the gray in your hair
Just think of all the fun you've had putting it there
And as for that old book of life, you never missed a page
Don't be ashamed of your age, brother
Don't be ashamed of your age
Listen, Mr. Smith, Mr. Brown
Don't let the years get you down
Life ain't begun
Until you're forty, son
That's when you finally start to go to town
And don't wish that you were a lad
Why boy, you've lost more gals than they've even had
And mister, you've graduated from that whole sucker stage
Don't be ashamed of your age, brother
Don't be ashamed of your age
Words to live by.
@GorgeousGeorge: This is what gay men call CFY: the Cosmetic Factor of Youth.
"Aud" is exactly how I'd describe Alec Baldwin going to a play with a 20 year old and having his arm around her the whole time.
Now, if it was the former (ie, not obese) Alec, the stories would have read thusly:
1) The lecture hall capacity would have been at least 180
and
2) She would have slept with him
@Pope John Peeps II: I'd sleep with Leonard Cohen and there would be nothing ironic about it. Brutal? If he likes.
@GorgeousGeorge: There's no accounting for taste. Maybe Baldwin had a yen for horse-faced over-achievers that night.
If Alec pretended to be Jack Donaghy, I'd fuck him.
This is EXACTLY Alec Baldwin -- down to the phrasing. Though I hate to admit it, Audrey can't be making this up. I went on a date, or two, with this assnine Baldwin. He is charming. And Fat. And Old. And Manipulative. And Deceitful. And a Liar. And a Two-Timer. I capitalize all those adjectives to add emphasis. This man is a pig and misleads young women left and right. Thank God it ended when it did and I was saved from myself. PIG. Wake up, Audrey. Please don't think you're the only one. And be careful - he doesn't wear condomns. And he's not even well-endowed. Trust me - not at all. Three minutes of a sack of flour sweating all over you. Save yourself. Wish I had.
I abhor what he said to his kid, in the vacuum of lack of knowing the whole story.
That being said, I think Alec Baldwin is one the hottest men on Earth. He and Babydaddy, from the Scissor Sisters.
The production of 'Lulu' that Aud and Alec canoodled through ends with Lulu getting knifed in the vagina. Oh, sorry, spoiler.
since Aud goes to Yale, she's probably too sex positive to sleep with a guy who can only cum after calling her an ungrateful little pig.
You mean State and Main was a documentary?
@backslider: Was your fallback-school experience that embittering?
Jesus christ, creative writing majors should not be allowed to subject others to their self-indulgent crap. "Encounters with the famous leave glowing fingerprints on our lives"? -- what is that, the first line of some mass market paperback biography of Farrah Fawcett? I also woe the inevitable day that the second writer shows up in LA with their pile of screenplays and pocket full of big dreams. Barf.
Where'd this arrive from?
I don't buy it. Do I have to buy it? Maybe I buy it.
@coreyander: And goodness, is this supposed to be poignant:
"The girls' tops are starting to slip as they dance in private circles, the boys in a parody of stealth sidling up behind them and arhythmically grazing against their hips and asses. Everyone's singing or screaming--it's hard to tell who's doing what."
I love that sort of clumsy attempt at establishing an atmosphere of, what exactly? It reads more trashy than sexy, but I don't think that was the intent.
@sheistolerable: I could not agree more.
@VanTwee: Yeah it does.
The bar that is referred to in this scintillating account is not nearly as "fabulous" as the writer wishes it was--anyplace that boasts smooth jazz as live entertainment doesn't strike me as a place where girls in slippery tops would be singing/screaming. That, I believe, occurs down the street at the bar with the giant swing.
Alec Baldwin hitting the college girls is just as sleezy as college boys picking up high school kids. Poor cow. Aud's probably dreaming about her Disney princess wedding dress right now.
Hey, she's an adult. Legal is legal and Baldwin is official. We're all trying to get off with those we can tolerate. Why not Baldwin?
The first story is all ironical and mediocre and the second is just horrid; Is that asposed to be Fitzgerald or Bradshaw? Either way it's successful and it's rank.
Also, it's entirely fiction. How has Dave, a friend of Alec's, from story A become Sam, a friend of 'Aud' (rule: make your writing sound sophisticated by giving characters unusual nicknames of unusual names), of story B? I trust the bitter total outsider tone of A more than the vipery almost-on-the-inside tone of B.
Several of you need to learn how to read.
"Glowing fingerprints" is sarcastic - the whole first piece is about how silly celebrity obsession is. The atmosphere at the party is supposed to be trashy and oversexed. And coreyander, the verb is "rue," not "woe."
I'm still reeling from the "sack of flour sweating all over you" from Island Girl.
"You're with me, tanktop."
@coreyander: thank you. this is typical self-aggrandizing yale crap. ugh. they are so insufferable.
@another: smells like someone went to yale!
@Island-Girl: so you banged him?
I am "Audrey", and just would like to say that the girl this happened to was not even named Audrey, Audrey was used as an alias.
Also, to the posters above, although I did not write these pieces, I am in that writing class and know that they are meant to be sarcastic...and to emphasize the ridiculousness of celebrity obsession and lionization.
@another: I think you are being far too generous here. Being facetious does not excuse terrible narrative writing.
Also, while it is true that "rue" is also a verb, there is nothing grammatically inappropriate about "woe the day". I am embarrassed to admit that I borrowed it from a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto, but at least I'm honest.
I don't know what's hotter: getting suffocated by Baldwin's doughy, yet delightfully hairy, torso or his ego. The magical "three minutes" of either would cause neurological damage--but preferably death.
the "creative writing" in those essays offended me more than his message to his daughter -- She's the daughter of 2 parents that hate eachother and are both fucking nuts -- she probably IS a little pig.
And although I can imagine that fucking Alec Baldwin is much like fucking a sweaty sack of flower... I still love me some Jack Donnegy.
Kim Basinger wasn't in Boxing Helena.
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