"Take Me To The Hookers", This was the command Charlie Sheen allegedly issued to a Glasgow taxi driver way back in August 1997, as he began another night of legendary drug-fuelled mayhem, destined for the frnt pages; nothing out of the ordinary there, only this time it was in my back yard, the city I grew up in and which seemed as likely to be the setting of a real life adventure starring Charlie Sheen as I had of being in one of his movies. His subsequent mystery tour through the night of this town became legend in the murky worlds of this city's newspaper reporters, drug users, film crews and taxi drivers .
The version I came to accept is as follows:- having made his way to the hookers, he convinced an astonished streetwalker to take him to Easterhouse to seek out an "eight-ball" of cocaine. At the apparent achieving of this end, he next had the driver take him to Mo's 24 hr Store in a bid to procure a roll of tinfoil and some Bicarbonate of Soda (to make crack), although the "coke" ultimately turned out to be mere amphetamine(looking back, I wonder if his hotel room bore the brunt of his frustration there, and its perhaps just as well for the hooker she had melted back into the night). The taxi driver, prostitute and even Mo's staff all weighed in with statements for the press over the following week or so and everyone had a good laugh, especially me as the absurdity of the tale really struck a chord with my sense of humour and understanding of the city I love and hate in sometimes equal parts. Actually, the day before this episode, a friend of mine on the crew of Sheen's film, "Obit", had told me of a funny moment during a beak from filming. At one point someone had come up to Sheen to congratulate him on his recent rehabilitation, apparently he merely looked at the guy over his ever-present Ray Bans, and drawled "Sure". These days, he doesn't seem half as funny as his talk of "Tiger Blood", "Princesses", "Warlocks", "Trolls", "Rock Star Life", "Chuck-E-Cheese"(a reference to the creator and Exec-producer of his hit TV show, along with some other bizarre and possibly anti-semitic nicknames) have entered the lexicon of today's media, while the internet is literally buzzing his utterly deranged and difficult to watch, much less understand, behaviour.
Heavily publicised incidents such as the announcement of his three way living arrangement with his nanny and a porn star, a rant from rooftops while brandishing a machete, and his reveal of a tattoo stating 'Death From Above' etched onto his solar plexus has compelled him to attempt to explain it all away internet rants on Twitter, where he has become the fastest ever Twitterer(or is that just 'Twit'?) to reach one million followers, and Ustream, where he addresses his webcam on all manner of subjects, none of which I understood and most of which I ignored, except for a mind-bendingly awful 'skit' where he played both himself in the style Apocalypse Now's Colonel Kurtz, and Chuck Lorre, in the style of a simpering version of Captain Willard, who was, of course, played by Sheen's father, Martin(One hell of a Freudian slip).
Charlie's internet activity seems to be an attempt to 'set the record straight' after a round of increasingly paranoid and frantic media 'exclusive' interviews failed to do so. His highest profile appearances have been on Piers Morgan Tonight and Good Morning America, but has he has played host to, or simply solicited the attention of scores of reporters, more often than not simply descending into an embarrassing diatribe about how silly he looked in some stupid shirts while being paid more than any other American TV star. On the Ustream 'shows', he more or less simply lets his disordered thoughts flow through his mouth in a style that has the unmistakable air of a manic depressive, using a sort of stream of consciousness that would put James Joyce to shame(and not in a good way). Looking like Jon Snow would if had spent the last ten days tripping on acid while attached to an IV morphine drip, Sheen is lost and somewhere in his heart he has to know it. Unfortunately he is surrounded by Bizarro people, and so his rare moments of coherence (which seem to revolve around deeply insulting comments about his former employers and co-workers) are lost in the rush to stroke his battered ego.
Amazingly, he does offer those from his former network that he doesn't actually despise the chance to come join him, and 'be on the winning side' which is nice, if a tad unlikely. Despite the clarity of his speech and cadence at times, his claim that he is happy to have been been fired, as he can now sue, speaks volumes. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm fucking positive these statements will hurt his chance to sue the network for their "Gazillions", as he puts it. The addresses to his webcam touch on on all manner of subjects, none of which I understood and almost all of which I ignored(ironically while surfing the internet for something more interesting and less awful, which I'm sorry to say never found.). The point of these pitiful broadcasts which seemed to be to portray himself as a mysterious and hardcore Warlock, and Lorre as a brainless, bean counting keyboard basher. Sheen is so sure of his power that he is to embark on a tour of America, bringing his wisdom to conference centres and mid-size arenas all over the US, where will this end?
*UPDATE* On April 2nd, it has been reported Sheen was booed off the stage at his first appearance, which is simultaneously surprising and somehow not. I'm fairly sure at least some of those booing must have turned up expecting him to be that guy from 'Two and a Half Men' Fucking humans, we're all a disgrace.
The bad juju generating around Charlie Sheen at the moment is beyond my ability to perceive and process, including the truly sad separation from four of his children for their safety, by his two ex-wives. Perhaps elevating a man with a proven history of violence towards women and paranoiac tendencies to the status of Televisual Deity was a bad idea from the start. I don't particularly want to go on making a rubbernecking list of his seemingly endless low points, in fact my main point here is simply to ask why the man isn't being sectioned, or at least being helped to see how badly he has slid off the rails? Surely he has reached a point where his paranoia, actions, reactions and expectations have merged to form a perfect storm of impending doom, so why not an enforced period of rehabilitation and reflection? Is he too rich? Are too many people getting off on his one-man, two woman three ring circus? Its a pretty poor reflection on humanity that when talented people like Amy Winehouse, Nick Nolte, Robert Downey, Jr, Pete Doherty, and Britney Spears, and dozens more earn more money and column inches when their lives descend into chaos than when they are doing the thing that brought them to the world's attention in the first place.
As Sheen's latest drama unfolds, Mike Starr, former bass player with Alice in Chains has died of a prescription drug overdose, not long after his addictions had been broadcast as info-tainment on VH-1's Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, no doubt pushing up sales of his old band's first two albums. This makes me wonder if Charlie Sheen will end up making even more money dead than alive, like Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley? I believe that if something happens to Sheen now, there will even be some dumb fucksticks who believe that his destruction was caused by the powers that be "taking action" over his bizarre(and ironicallly internet fuelled) 9/11 theories(yep, he's been on that wacky band wagon, although that was a while ago now!!), rather than the drug addiction and destructive personality traits that were in place long before Al-Qedea ever thought of sending a different breed of delusional twat to flight school. I'm not saying here there aren't questions I wouldn't like answered about Building 7, the Pentagon plane, Gulf War II, etc. I'm just speculating that some folk will be more prepared to believe the wild conspiracies than the simple truth that there is a fine line between 21st century fame and the impulse which gave birth to Victorian freak shows.
The nature of this peculiar style of 21st Century celebrity meltdown, where people watch a well known person descend into well of madness and personal hell, and have the cheek to ask "How'd this happen?" when the path to each incident has been delineated very clearly on TV, the press and to an unprecedented degree, the internet. In fact, the only reason I'm OK with writing about something so "Big in The News" in a blog I'm keeping pretty much private for now is the fact that in a Google search of "Charlie Sheen", this will come in at entry number 5,666,666,666.
On Ustream, the Twitters about him are coming in so fast that you can't even read them unless you let your finger hover over your mouse/pad/i-gadget to select them, the pico-second they appear. They say that in an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of keyboards, one would eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but I bet they couldn't come up with the tale of Charlie Sheen; that one could only happen in this reality.
Back in 1997, I felt my own interest in the bizarre story of Charlie Sheen's night flight to a coke sting in Easterhouse was immature, and that the Glasgow press had went slightly over the top. Now I really know what immature interest and overexposure to celebrity culture really is. For the record, I always thought Cusack was way cooler.
links to the 1997 episode:-
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