It’s fair to say that Rip Torn is the Tiger Woods of getting hammered on booze and breaking into banks with a gun.
And what did Tiger Woods do? That’s right, he tried to repair his image by going to rehab. So that’s what Rip Torn has done, too – after being released from jail following his alleged armed, drunken bank break-in on Friday, Rip Torn has apparently decided to check into rehab to mend his ways.
That means that before too long Rip Torn will stop being known as the 78-year-old man who gets drunk and stages late-night armed bank break-ins, and will start being known as the 78-year-old man who doesn’t get drunk and stage late night armed bank break-ins. We don’t know why he’s bothering. The first one’s obviously better.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that yesterday’s story about Rip Torn drunkenly breaking into a bank with a loaded revolver was the perfect story. After all, it had everything your heart could ever wish for – guns, booze, crime, an impractically old man primarily famous for attacking Norman Mailer’s head with a hammer doing something staggeringly odd, a chance to rock out the world’s greatest mugshot – but hold your horses. It gets better.
Yesterday Rip Torn was released from custody on a $100,000 bond, which gave his lawyer A Thomas Waterfall a chance to speak. That’s brilliant not only because Rip Torn has a lawyer called A Thomas Waterfall, but because Waterfall knows why Rip Torn shouldn’t be punished for his crime – because he thought he was actually in his house at the time. ABC News reports:
“He will enter rehab on Tuesday,” lawyer A. Thomas Waterfall said. The actor has previous arrests for drunken driving. Waterfall said he expected Torn to plead not guilty at his next court hearing on Feb 17. “Mr Torn believed he was at home,” Waterfall told Reuters. “Based upon that belief he would not have the necessary intent to commit a crime.”
You see? It’s perfectly fine. Rip Torn didn’t want to drunkenly grab a loaded gun and break into a bank through a back window – he wanted to drunkenly grab a loaded gun and break into his own house through a back window. And are you going to try and tell us that it’s against the law to get wankered and waggle a loaded gun around in your own home? Are you? You communist.
That said, Google Earth does show that the bank in question does bear? remarkable similarity to Rip Torn’s nearby clapboard home. And he reportedly took off his cowboy boots and cap and left them neatly by the door once he’d broken in. So maybe A Thomas Waterfall does have a point after all.
But still, rehab is rehab, and now that’s where Rip Torn is headed. It’s just a question of what sort of rehab he’ll go for – booze rehab, gun rehab, late-night bank break-in rehab or funny old man rehab. Surely there isn’t one single facility that’ll cater for all of those problems, is there?
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Young says
Stuart
Very clever!
Yet, I still do not see the correlation you reference to Tiger Woods. Rehab is one thing, but somehow our family can’t see how these 2 relate.
GA
Brothersun says
What a funny well written story, Thanks for my morning laugh.
Sunny says
I *love* him.
huh? says
Any other person would be sitting down at county jail awaiting a court apppearance…… Since when is it ok to use Alcohol as an excuse to do something stupid?