Last night Shia LaBeouf went on David Letterman, and Dave, to his credit, wasn’t Shia (sorry) about asking The Beef about his public feud with Alec Baldwin. You know, the one where Shia passed off an Esquire article (and a pretty lame one at that) as his own public apology. Shia tried to explain, but he was so obtuse and full-of-sh*t actorsy about it that the audience was openly mocking him before he’d even finished talking. It’s actually remarkable how quickly they turn on him. Here’s a partial transcript (more after the jump, with video):

SHIA: I’m pretty passionate and impulsive. And he’s passionate and impulsive too, and I think that makes for some fireworks.

DAVE: So… why did you get fired?

SHIA: Because me and Alec had tension as men. Not as artists, but as men. In a room, I think that became a hard thing to deal with. When you got tension as men, that’s tough till July. You know, it’s cool for increments, but I think to do that for a long period of time… is pretty tough.

“When you got tension as men, that’s tough till July.” Deep, bro. Is that another truism gleaned from the perfumed pages of the Megan-Fox-as-Aztec-sacrifice issue? Got any juicy bon mots about matching ties to cuff links?

Now, it’d be good internet business to just say “HERE’S SHIA LABEOUF ACTING DOUCHEY, LET’S POKE HIM WITH STICKS!” because that’s the kind of simple morality tale that plays here in the cat-o-sphere. And you know, it wouldn’t be totally wrong. But in the interests of fairness, it should be pointed out that there are some contextual reasons why Shia Labeouf might be trying to communicate in metrosexual slam poem that go beyond his personal preference.

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TODAY IN EXISTENTIAL BUFFOONERY

Shia Labeouf recently left a Broadway production of Orphans over “creative differences” (the producers’ words), with co-star Alec Baldwin. Which wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy in itself, except that The Beef himself posted a bunch of inside-baseball emails between himself and the director, himself and Alec Baldwin, and himself and actor Tom Sturridge on his Twitter account, detailing just what went wrong.

Apparently, it was an “incompatibility” between LaBeouf and Baldwin that led to the departure. Now, I hesitate to paint Shia Labeouf with the “existential buffoon” label – a phenomenon we’re obviously quite fond of here – because having a personality that tends towards sensitive, overwrought, and dramatic is basically what makes actors good at their jobs. Still, I don’t what else to call it when a guy sends an apology email and prefaces it by quoting liberally from an Esquire essay called “How to Be a Man.”

Here’s Shia’s email to 72-year-old Orphans director Daniel Sullivan (which, again, was posted by Shia himself):

My dad was a drug dealer. He was a sh-t human. But he was a man. He taught me how to be a man. What I know of men, Alec is-

A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job.

A man can look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, he makes you. From your suitcase, from your watch, from your posture. A man infers.

A man owns up. That’s why Mark McGwire is not a man. A man grasps his mistakes. He lays claim to who he is, and what he was, whether he likes them or not.

Some mistakes, though, he lets pass if no one notices. Like dropping the steak in the dirt.

He does not rely on rationalizations or explanations. He doesn’t winnow, winnow, winnow until truths can be humbly categorized, or intellectualized, until behavior can be written off with an explanation.

A man knows his tools and how to use them – just the ones he needs. Knows which saw is for what, how to find the stud.

A man does not know everything. He doesn’t try. He likes what other men know.

A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to.

He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it’s just to put an end to the bickering.

Alec, I’m sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation. – Shia. [transcription via Jezebel]

“Look, my dad may have been a piece of shit drug dealer, but at least he taught me that real men eat dirt steaks, unlike that pussy Mark McGwire.”

I’m not sure if it speaks better or worse of Shia that he stole the dumbest parts of that email from a printed pep rally for dipshit finance guys published in 2009 in Esquire. At least he didn’t write them himself? But he still thought they were worth repeating? Here’s the original:

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Here’s the latest trailer for Rock of Ages, starring Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julianne Hough, and the invisible grinning face of Satan. This warmed-over pile of stupid clichés and pandering is impressive only the sense that I think I actually barted when I saw it. That’s when you barf and fart at the same time.

Not even a baboon in a leather jacket could get me to see this.

Boy, what would attractive white kids do without wise black folks to give them advice but not hog any of their spotlight? I hope this movie gets cancer.

From the director of Hairspray…

Aw, crap. I don’t know if I–

Based on the hit Broadway musical…

Um, yeeeah, you know, this doesn’t exactly sound like my cup of t–

Starring Tom Cruise…

Waiter! Check please!

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The news today for Tom Cruise’s latest project, Rock of Ages, is that Saturday Night Live’s Will Forte is joining the cast of this Broadway-to-big-screen musical adaptation. Forte joins Cruise, Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin, Bryan Cranston, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Malin Akerman’s super hot self, among others, for this star-studded celebration of the Tony-nominated musical.

Cruise is playing 80s rock superstar Stacee Jaxx and you can see from the image above that he’s hardly sacrificing his trademark manliness that he’s so well-known for these days. Don’t you worry about that, friends, because his woman, Katie Holmes, says that he’s still a boss.

“Two years ago he took me up on his P-51 Mustang, a fighter plane from World War II. He painted the words, ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ on the side,” Holmes says in the August issue of InStyle. “It feels like you’re on a bike in the sky. I thought, I’m either going to spend this whole flight totally freaked out or realize this is pretty thrilling.” (Via People)

When they landed, Katie wrapped her arms around Tom’s neck and moved in to kiss him, but he pulled back and said, “Stop it! You’re messing up my scarf!”

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