If I never hear the words “warlock,” “winnnnnning!” or “Adonis DNA” again, I’ll be perfectly fine. Charlie Sheen drove this notion home Sunday night at his “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option” show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
For approximately 70 minutes, Sheen rambled on about the etymology of his now-cliché catchphrases. When even he seemed tired of that, he took hard-hitting questions from the audience such as, “Do you like Canada?” and, “Can I have some of whatever money you have left over?” (for more details, you can read my then-live tweets from the show here). There were pre-taped bits that aspired to be of Funny-or-Die caliber (they so were not) and of course, the goddesses were marched onstage to toss a few T-shirts into the crowd of people sitting closest to the stage, who paid about $200 to be there.
There was a time in this long, drawn-out downward spiral where it felt like the joke was on us. Sheen just doesn’t care anymore, and he’s figured out how to make money from that! Who wouldn’t like to pull that off?
Spending a Sunday evening in a two-thirds-full Radio City Music Hall, I realized Sheen doesn’t seem to be in on the joke anymore, and watching him marinate in his own narcissism is getting really old. He said during the show that he wants to apologize to Chuck Lorre for all that he’s said about him, that he’ll apologize to Warner Bros., too, if it means he’ll get his job back on “Two and a Half Men.” A couple weeks ago, that might have worked. After torpedoing his violence all over the country (and Canada, whether he likes them or not), I don’t see him ever setting foot on the “Men” set again.
There’s this weird paradox about the notion of celebrity: the public wants to know more about these famous humans, but the more the public knows about their real lives, the harder it is to buy what they’re selling as actors.
Sheen, take a listen. We know too much already. Go back to your mansion; bring the goddesses with you if you want. If you’re serious about working, then do what you can to go back to work. It’s not “defeat,” it’s actually not embarrassing yourself.
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