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Celebrity Temper Tantrums

Date: Jul 25 2006

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Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

poking fun

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

We all have moments of emotional craziness. Sometimes we feel so upset that we want to scream. Some of us are able to control ourselves, some of us are not. Elton John admits that he is very emotional and has a hard time controlling himself. Alicia Silverstone has thrown her share of tempermental fits. Mike Tyson can’t control his rage.

Do you think celebrities have more emotional fits than the rest of us? Listen to John and I talk about it.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Dave

John

Dave: Did you hear about Russell Crowe throwing his cell phone at some, some journalist a couple weeks ago?

John: Yeah, I did. What caused that?

Dave: Yeah, I’m not sure. I don’t know. Who knows with Russell Crowe? He’s such a spoiled brat.

John: Yeah, he’s always doing stuff like that, right?

Dave: Yeah, just having temper tantrums in public. When the movie Gladiator came out a few years ago, Chris Rock was poking fun at him. They’d cut to a shot of him in the audience and you could see him just getting really frustrated.

John: Yeah, it’s kind of like Mike Tyson in a way, where he gets a little frustrated and takes it out with some violence or something.

Dave: Yeah.

John: Didn’t he take a baseball bat to someone’s windshield?

Dave: Yeah, a couple years ago some guy rear-ended him in traffic. And he got out of his car, took a baseball bat from the trunk and started pounding the guy’s windshield.

John: Yeah, I wonder what caused that. It’s just being used to getting everything that you want.

Dave: Yeah. Being a celebrity, you’re a real ego maniac.

John: And you’re catered to all the time.

Dave: Always, always.

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Discussion

Russell Crowe is famous for his bad attitude. He has yelled at and threatened reporters, gotten himself into fights and even hit a hotel employee with a telephone. He admits that he has a hard time controlling his anger.

But the king of public temper tantrums has to be tennis great John McEnroe. He has yelled at referees, thrown his tennis racket, stomped around the tennis court and even hit a tennis ball at a lineswoman.

(Russell Crowe threw the phone at a hotel employee, not at a journalist, as Dave says in the conversation.)