We hardly consider it overstatement to declare this The Golden Age of What's Going On in Alec Baldwin's Noggin, for never before have we—the more-than-casual Baldwin obsessionists that we are—had access to literally reams and reams of the ursine 30 Rock star's internal musings. There was, of course, the recent 8,000+ word profile in the New Yorker, in which we learned that something about the Hamptons air turns Baldwin into a deerstalking homosexual nudist. Yes, that was good—but it wasn't enough! So we dive now—like a hairy, naked gay man into a platter of freshly broiled venison—into leaked excerpts from Baldwin's upcoming memoir, "A Promise to Ourselves." In it, he reveals how villainous, sippy-straw-twirling TMZ suzerain Harvey Levin very nearly drove him to suicide with the release of his infamous Thoughtless Little Pig voicemail:

Baldwin had been trying to reach his daughter, then 11, but "she was off for spring break with her mother and her phone was turned off for 10 consecutive days ... This had gone on for years now and ... when the beep came, I snapped. [Levin] seemed to be that breed of tabloid creature that realized an almost sexual level of pleasure from ruining other people's lives."

"He has created TMZ as the updated receptacle of ... trash," Baldwin writes. "He leads a cadre of self-satisfied twentysomethings who jump like rats from public relations sinking ship to sinking ship." The release of the tape caused Baldwin to become suicidal, as he and the agoraphobic actress had been fighting in court over their daughter for six years. "Driving up the Taconic Parkway, heading to an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, I began to think about what little town I would repair to in order to commit suicide. What semi-remote Massachusetts state park could I hike deep into and overdose there? When I returned to New York, the thought of jumping out the window of my apartment was with me every night for weeks."

Needless to say, thank God Baldwin resisted that destructive impulse, and in doing so saved the life of not just one of America's most gifted actors, but also that of the hapless doorman he'd have all-but-certainly crushed beneath his fleshy, plunging frame.