Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Russell Crowe, Phone Home

Rich Galen

Wednesday June 08, 2005

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Russell Crowe attempted to kill a telephone the other night.

According to some reports Crowe, who is known to be a bit volatile, was trying to make a call to his wife in Australia from his hotel room in New York.

The hotel, the Mercer, is what's known among the cognoscenti as "a boutique hotel" which, in New York, means two things: (1) The regular rooms will be the size of the closet in your college dorm room and (2) it will cost a very, very lot.

A glance at the Mercer's web page puts the room rates from $410 (for the 250 square foot closet) up to $2,300 for a suite. Phones included.

In any event, Crowe could not get the call to go through so he pulled the phone out of the wall, carried it, wriggling and struggling, all the way down to the lobby, and attempted to put it out of its misery by throwing it against the wall behind the front desk.

Rather than resigning itself to such a grisly fate, the phone did a half-gainer off the wall and shot towards the concierge, striking him on the cheek upon which the concierge raced into an office and locked himself in calling New York's finest to come and get control of this phone-icidal maniac.

According to the Australian Daily Telegraph Crowe "spent several hours sleeping on the floor of a police jail cell in Manhattan" before he was bailed out by his lawyer who "arrived with an egg bagel and a bottle of Pepsi."

A minor cultural point: In New York one simply does not have an egg bagel and a bottle of Pepsi for breakfast. If one feels the absolute need to have an egg bagel (as opposed to a plain, poppy seed, or onion bagel with a schmear) then one has it with a "coffee regular." Or a Dr. Brown's.

Egg bagel and a Pepsi. I mean, really.

Let's go to our Court TV analysis:

First of all, Russell Crowe is an actor. He is a talented and successful actor which means he has as much idea of how regular people behave as Michael Jackson.

Second, this is the actual copy from the hotel's webpage:

"At the Mercer we regard every staff member as our guests' personal concierge and the front desk as their private secretary."

Russell was obviously misled into believing, by the hotel itself, that he was supposed to throw the phone at his "private secretary" if only to gain his undivided attention. We suspect this may be the way Russell treats his regular private secretary in real life and so saw nothing unusual about this requirement.

Third, he had just returned from the UK where he had watched a champeeenchip boxing match between two guys I've never heard of. This, immediately following the release of Crowe's latest movie, which is about a boxer I have heard of.

Hmmm. Makes a movie about a guy in a violent sport. Goes to watch two real guys engaged in the same violent sport. Loses his temper and becomes � violent.

Are you kidding me? Cosmo Kramer could win this case.

All this is important because United States Senators, exhausted from all their Sunday show appearances, have returned from a week-long Memorial Day recess and will have to take up the nomination of John Bolton to be the US Representative to the United Nations.

A concern of some Senators is that Mr. Bolton is also known to be a bit volatile, having once thrown a tape dispenser at a contractor who had, apparently, dismayed him in some way.

The government of Australia should immediately appoint Russell Crowe to be its representative to the United Nations.

Kofi Annan should move accommodations around such that Mr. Bolton and Mr. Crowe have adjoining offices - or at least offices on the same hallway.

We'll sell tickets. I'll bring the bagels.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the Aussie newspaper account of the Great Phone Massacre, a link to the Mercer Hotel website, a Mullfoto and a separated at birth Catchy Caption of the Day.

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