The View

Alec Baldwin was welcomed with applause to a sitdown in a taped segment that aired on "The View" today, with Baldwin giving a heartfelt and somber tale of parental alienation that drove him to the boiling point.

Baldwin said that his "deep and endless frustration" in being unable to communicate with his daughter, Ireland, led him to misdirect his anger to the child, because he "can't address the other person in this dynamic," but stopped short of mentioning Kim Basinger.

Tyra Banks got a feel for what it's like to be on "The View' -- and what it's like to feel a "View" hostess.

Banks got couple handfuls of the soon-to-be-former "View" ringmistress during her visit with the "View"-isatas, copping a feel -- a rather long and grope-a-licious feel, we might add. This is one clip that Donald Trump will no doubt be keeping in his personal stash.

Of course, Ro isn't Banks' first bosom buddy: When the amply-breasted Katharine McPhee appeared on "The Tyra Banks Show," Tyra got a pretty good handle on the McJuggs to prove their naturalness.

TMZ has confirmed Alec Baldwin pre-taped "The View" today for a Friday airing, and it was an emotional scene.

Someone present recounts that Baldwin "was very heartfelt, apologetic and emotional." We're told the audience applauded multiple times as Baldwin discussed the events surrounding the voice mail.

On the show, Baldwin indicated he is interested in being released from his "30 Rock" contract. Sources tell TMZ, however, that if NBC does not release him he will fulfill his contractual obligations. We don't know how long those obligations run.

How's this for a shocker?! -- Alec Baldwin will appear on "The View" this Friday!

Earlier in the week, Rosie said she was sympathetic to Baldwin in the wake of the incendiary voice mail he left for daughter Ireland.

Rosie announced on today's show that Alec called her and expressed interest in doing a phone-in segment on the topic of parental alienation. Somehow, the ladies convinced Baldwin to come into the studio. That'll be interesting.

TMZ has now confirmed the buzz that we exclusively reported last night: Rosie O'Donnell will announce on today's show that she is leaving "The View." And TMZ has confirmed that "View" honchos are already searching for her replacement.

Stay tuned!

UPDATE: LOG ON TO TMZ AT 11:15 AM EASTERN TIME AND WE'LL HAVE A CLIP OF ROSIE'S ANNOUNCEMENT.

Crow made her comments on her blog last week, and Rosie took a moment on this morning's "The View" to express her incredulity at the supposedly enviro-friendly suggestion. "Have you seen my ass?!" bellowed Rosie, and Barbara Walters was good enough to warn viewers not to use their sleeves, another of Crow's helpful suggestions.

Pretty-headed HOmemaker Deirdre had been scheduled for "The View" this past Monday, but in the wake of her husband's I-mess, as TMZ reported last week, she canceled all appearances related to her book, "Greening Your Cleaning." But there she was on today's show hawking the tidy tome.

In a post on his blog, TomDeLay.com, titled "If the Left takes Imus, We'll take Rosie," the controversial DeLay calls on conservatives to "protest and demand" that Rosie get the boot from "The View." DeLay uses Imus-gate to demonstrate the "concerted strategy" of the left to, in his words, "unite to destroy."

Going further, DeLay issues a challenge to fellow right-wingers: "If Don Imus falls to the pleas of political correctness, we're taking Rosie O'Donnell down with him." Rosie shot back on her blog late last night, calling DeLay a "criminal" and telling him to "go away."

After "Kill Bill" and "Sin City" re-injected high kitsch into the American cinema, we here at City of Industry were particularly interested in what the critics would say about Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodgriguez's newest, critic-proof films: Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Tarantino's "Death Proof," which are being released as a double feature entitled "Grindhouse" -- this weekend on 2,624 screens.

By far, my favorite review of the directors' combined 3-hour slasher & zombie hodgepodge comes from the Christian Science Monitor's Peter Rainer, who writes of Tarantino's newest:

"Tarantino devotes a great deal of time to scenes of the women just sassing each other – at times it's like a grindhouse version of 'The View.' [but]...Tarantino may have moved beyond the grindhouse conventions he has routinely championed. The extended sequences with the women in 'Death Proof,' before the blood and the vroom-vroom set in, could be his newfound attempt to humanize his people instead of treating them as car-crash mannequins. He has such a good, loosey-goosey feeling for the back-and-forth jabber of girlfriends that you almost wish he had jettisoned the skidding U-Turns and just made a film about women hanging out."

That's an intriguing idea, and one that's especially timely given the untimely death of Bob Clark. Tthe director got his start with horror schlock like "Black Christmas" and raunchy comedies like "Porky's," but the media -- and the world -- remembers him far more fondly for directing that near-perfect holiday film, "A Christmas Story."

Rosie O'Donnell isn't as paranoid or as radical-minded as her recent rants might suggest -- she's just trying to get herself fired from "The View," according to Dennis Miller.

Miller provided his analysis of the Rosie situation on last night's "The O'Reilly Factor," branding O'Donnell and "The View" co-host Joy Behar a "Thelma and Louise" tag team of liberal orthodoxy which is threatening to scare Elisabeth Hasselbeck into oblivion. Miller suggested that Rosie wants an ownership stake in her own morning show -- which she currently does not have at "The View" -- and is trying as hard as she can to get her bosses to show her the door.

Helpfully, Miller suggested one way to really piss off her bosses at ABC and Disney: "Announce that one of her former lovers was Tinkerbell."

Rosie O'Donnell felt Bill O'Reilly's wrath again last night on "The O'Reilly Factor," with Bill calling her "radical" and "dangerous," and suggesting, as a financial newspaper did, that she's spewing anti-American propaganda.

In his "Talking Points" segment last night, O'Reilly picked up the Investor's Business Daily's editorial calling O'Donnell "Tokyo Rosie," a reference to "Tokyo Rose," the nickname American GIs gave to Japanese women who broadcast anti-American messages over the airwaves during World War II.

As of this morning, Rosie had posted no response on her usual soapbox at rosie.com.

Thanks to Joy Behar, her "View" cohort, who gave Rosie a vehicular manifestation of Rosie's favorite combatant, Donald "Dump Truck" Trump as a gift for O'Donnell's 45th birthday on today's show. Touching, really.

The 77-year-old "View" host is fast becoming the go-to-ma'am for the latest in blown-out, wispy, ash blonde shag trends for the post-post-post-MTV crowd. When you're a graying Grammy winner, the Rosie man-bob just won't do! He bangs!

And for you men who find yourselves pushing 50 and beyond, but don't feel like going blonde, fear not -- the starched Walters Wave also comes in a lush Richie Sambora Chestnut Brown!

It's the latest cranial-dance craze sweeping the nation -- The Trump-Over!

First, you tilt your head to one side and flop your hair thataway. Then, grab your locks and toss them, imperiously, the other way across your scalp. The whole time, purse your lips and lightly squint your eyes in an I'm-a-balding-blowhard-billionaire scowl. Bingo! You're doing the Trump-Over!

Conan O'Brien's been doing it for years, but today, on the Daytime Emmy-nominated "The View," Rosie O'Donnell was joined by Joy, Elisabeth and guest host Susie Essman in a new, feminized version -- prompted by Trump's latest attack on Rosie's inversion therapy for chronic depression.

We kid, we kid! Rosie's OK -- she's doing herself some good, in fact.

In a special broadcast about depression and women, Rosie demonstrated "inversion therapy" -- wherein the patient suspends herself from a yoga swing. Rosie says that it releases the serotonin in her brain and that she indulges in the verticality for 15 to 30 minutes every day. Yo ga, girl!

No word on whether Babwa would be doing her own show about the experiences with depression -- The Great Depression, that is.