We happened to be reading a biography of Led Zeppelin just before seeing the footage of Shia LeBeouf's recent appearance on the David Letterman show, where he talked about his getting arrested on his twenty-first birthday for making serial nocturnal appearances at a Walgreens while "pretty wasted." And that may have had something to do with our first reaction, which was sort of along the lines of, they sure don't make bad boys the way they used to. We like LaBeouf, we wish him well, and we wouldn't want him doing anything that might force Harrison Ford to put the lad over his knee. But still, you only turn twenty-one once, and a lot of people turn twenty-one before they have access to fame, riches, and admiring young women whose appreciation for your natural delighfulness is thrown into even greater relief by all those riches and fame you're storing in the glove compartment. We're not saying that you ought to get arrested to commemorate the event. But if you do get arrested, the circumstances should in no way involve a late-night shopping trip in quest of Clearasil.
In what looked like a carefully-set-up and well-rehearsed explanation, almost as if he were performing under orders by someone who had the potential to do a lot of good or a lot of not-so-good for his career and who doesn't want parents keeping their kids away from the new Indiana Jones movie because they don't want them idolizing winos, LaBeouf explained that he had been enjoying a pleasant evening enjoying the intoxicants that he is legally entitled to as an adult and was just getting ready to bed down when he noticed that he had a pimplie on his noodle. So, as he related the events on the show, "I go to Walgreens and I go to the cosmetic aisle. And I see the security guard and he's looking at me, four in the morning, pretty disheveled, pretty messed up on the special magic sauce. And I get the pimple cream, and he's looking at me, he's kinda giggling to himself, and now I'm starting to feel like, `What? It's really not that funny, guy, you know?'" (LaBeouf starred in the Project Greenlight movie The Battle of Shaker Heights, in the process earning himself a Ph.D in "not funny.") LaBeouf made it back to his hotel room and dabbed the miracle ointment onto his forehead, then realized that he needed some cigarettes to enjoy in bed. So he returned to Walgreens, but the security guard gave him some shit again, and it got him so flustered that he bought gummy bears instead. LaBeouf returned to his hotel room and realized his mistake after failing, on his third try, to light a gummy bear. "I go back down, I got the hoodie on, [the security guard] goes, `Really? Really? Really?' And I'm like, `Yeah, really!' He goes, `Well, what are you doing here?' And I'm like, `Well buddy, it's your worst nightmare.'"
It was at that point that the security guard, recognizing a desperate cry for help when he saw one, slipped the cuffs on LaBouef and called the cops, who charged him with criminal trespassing. The charges were subsequently dropped, probably after the Walgreens CEO's teenage daughter threatened to hold her breath until she turned blue. The whole traumatic experience will no doubt be instructive for all involved; presumably LaBeouf has learned a hard lesson about the dangers of smoking, though if he quite cigarettes cold turkey, we worry that he might lose whatever control he still has over his gummy bears jones. We've also learned that there's still at least one Walgreens out there; we thought they'd all been turned into Duane Reades. That may have something to do with why the security guards there are so touchy.