"Hello, my name is Alec and I'm a retirement-holic. ...I don't know why, but I have this insatiable need to announce to the world again and again that I'm quitting the acting business. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Okay, that's not a real scene from the life of Alec Baldwin, but it might as well be. About a year and a half ago, Alec was kvetching about turning 50 years old and how he only cared about the Emmys honoring 30 Rock, and his plans to quit the business.

And now he's done it again. In an interview with Men's Journal, promoting his new movie with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin called It's Complicated, Alec Baldwin says he will quit acting in 2012 when his 30 Rock contract comes to an end.

There's another Bravo to NBC crossover afoot. First, The Real Housewives of New Jersey popped over to play themselves on Mercy. Now it turns out that Kathy Griffin is on her way to Law and Order: SVU. And, get this, she's not playing herself. The queen of the D-list will be acting.

Kathy has been tapped to play a lesbian activist in the February 10 episode. As anyone who's watched Kathy on her Emmy-award winning reality show, My Life on the D-List, Kathy is a shameless over-achiever and loves to work. She's ambitious and determined to get off the D-list. As she might say, she would go to the opening of a refrigerator if it would help her career.

American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee is giving acting a shot. She has been cast as a sorority girl in an upcoming Adam Sandler-produced movie that does not yet have a title.

According to Entertainment Weekly, McPhee will "co-star" alongside funny girl Anna Faris, who plays a Playboy bunny who has been evicted from the mansion. Faris becomes a den mother to a super lame sorority, of which McPhee is a member. Rumer Willis also has a role. It will reportedly begin shooting late this summer.

Katharine has a background in acting-- according to her official bio, she studied at the Boston Conservatory and the California State Summer School for the Arts. She even had a role in an MTV pilot that never made air. What I'm trying to say is... the girl has been groomed for this kind of thing.

The title of this post is also a pithy description of my upcoming autobiography -- thank you, you've been a lovely audience!

House band: Ba da bop ba dop bop!

Anyway, the clip after the jump is a scene from My Bare Lady, Fox Reality Channel's series about a bunch of female porn stars trying out for a role in Romeo and Juliet on the London stage. The clip features the women faking orgasms as part of their audition, I assume for the famous "fake orgasm" scene in Romeo and Juliet: "Thou art causing me to climax!"

As I said before, I find it a little condescending that this series implies porn actors aren't real actors. I say they are real actors, just different kinds of actors. It's not so easy to be in the moment and maintain that element of fantasy when a roomful of people are watching you do it. I should know, it's why I'm no longer allowed in the library.

The video is probably NSFW, so click ahead with caution.

[via Digg]

This fall, the Fox Reality Channel will be airing a three-episode series titled My Bare Lady, which will take four female porn stars out of their usual element and place them on the London theater stage, where they will perform "legitimate" theater. The ladies will have only a short time to get their acting chops together for the performance in London's West End, where an audience will decide if they have what it takes.

Now, this seems interesting and all, but also just a tad condescending. The implication seems to be that porn is easy and real acting is difficult. In the interest of fairness, I think the "real" actors who train these women should themselves have to act in a porn movie. Memorizing your lines is one thing, maintaining an expression of eternal ecstasy while coated in honey and hanging upside down from a set of indoor monkey bars is something else entirely. And I speak from experience.

[via Chroma]

NBC has created a game on its website to go along with the live telecast of the Golden Globes, which air on Monday night (8-11 pm EST). It will feature a film and television trivia game that parallels whatever is happening on the Globes. It looks like the website is also going to have polls up as each category is announced so the internet can vote for who it wants to be Best Actress or whatever, and the results will appear in real-time up until the winner is announced. I think it would be interesting to see who people are hoping will win each category, compared to who actually wins.

You know what the website needs, that it doesn't have? A Golden Globes drinking game. Somebody kisses Jack Nicholson's ass? Take a drink! Someone does an impression of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch? Drink! Scripted, playful banter between presenters falls flat? Drink up!