Of all the good things that Twitter has brought to the world, like the increased awareness of cultures outside of your own and the freedom to complain about what your friends are posting on Facebook, surely the most important thing is the ability to see celebrities get mad about stuff just like normal people do. It’s even better when the stuff that a celebrity is mad about involves another celebrity, because that means there’s a chance they could bump into each other in real life and start throwing punches. We all win in a situation like that.
Sadly, the recent Twitter feud between Patton Oswalt and Albert Brooks didn’t end in a fistfight, but that’s probably because they were really fighting with Esquire magazine, not each other. As told in this Daily Dot post, Oswalt was recently featured in an Esquire article that presented him as “the dean of the Famous School For Comedians,” an homage to a comedy bit that Albert Brooks came up with for the magazine back in 1971. Being a fan of Brooks (and who isn’t?), Oswalt thought the piece was all in good fun and he even tweeted it at Brooks, who—as it turns out—had no idea that Esquire was ripping off his idea. Apparently Esquire didn’t see Drive, because Albert Brooks can be pretty scary when he gets mad.
And mad he was:
Eventually, Esquire tweeted something that could be taken as an apology, but is clearly not an apology:
As for Oswalt, after briefly assuming that Brooks was joking, he later tweeted his own, actual apologies in what Daily Dot describes as “a series of tweets”—because everything has to be “a series of tweets” with Patton Oswalt:
Brooks accepted Oswalt’s apology, because he’s a cool dude, and then they both agreed that Esquire is stupid.
Something tells us the magazine is going to have a hard time filling that Famous School For Comedians position next semester.