Monday 28 February 2011

Charlie Sheen: me 23 years ago

Star of the hit television series Two and a Half Men. Played opposite Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street. Currently the highest paid actor on television at $1.8 million per episode. That's me 23 years ago?

[chuckles] Well, not quite. Ha! Not even close. However, all of the papers have been full of stories about Sheen, interviews given by Sheen and tabloid pictures of Sheen which have painted an unflattering portrait of a man possessed by a runaway addictive personality. Alcohol, drugs and sex, not necessarily in that order, have taken a hold of dear old Chuck and he has no idea of which way is up whether he realises it or not. I'm seen the interviews. Believe me, he's hasn't got a clue.

Just this past February 8th, I celebrated 23 years of sobriety, Now I'm sure any of you who continue to trip the light fantastic may be thinking this could be the start of a holier than thou diatribe against the evil of spirits and a rant about the merits of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the reinstatement of prohibition. Nothing could be further from the truth. I buy alcohol; I serve it; I do my part to let wine breath properly by decanting it and try in assist in the creation of a good pairing of grape and entrée. My expertise in this area is admittedly limited but my point is that what I choose to do is in no way a factor in determining how others choose to imbibe. My choice is a personal one.

However, a person who suffers from an addiction can be just as loony when they're sober as when they're high. Yep, you heard me. Being addicted to alcohol and/or drugs can change your thinking; some call it the alcoholic thinking. Charlie Sheen has all the classic symptoms. He's got it good, but he's ungrateful. He wants more; he's never satisfied or satiated for that matter. He's not at fault; any problem has been caused by somebody else.

As I read the columns in various publications, I know that Charlie's days are numbered. If Time Magazine is going to refer to him as a "class-A tool", I am certain that his employers are going to begin question the profit margin on a commodity which is looking more like a liability. And this is a burdensome liability which is not getting any cheaper. Sheen is getting $1.8 million per episode right now and is shooting his mouth off about demanding $3 million for the next season. Guess what? No one is irreplaceable and all good things must come to an end.

Robert Downey Jr., right in the middle of starring in the television series Ally McBeal for which he was nominated for an Emmy in 2001, gets fired and is written out of the show because he is arrested for drugs not once but twice!


Dear Mr. Sheen,

Please read the following. It is personal and it is my story. But it is your story as well. You have more to do in this world; do not waste one more minute of it in an altered state of consciousness.


You can turn this one around. And I don't mean through your deluded ramblings about curing yourself with your mind. I mean actually turning your entire life around.

23 years. I can do it. You can do it too.

Yours sincerely,

wb :-)

P.S.

Conan O'Brian had the Tonight Show taken away from him. Has anybody been more shafted by circumstances and by decisions made by other people? However in leaving, he was gracious, appreciative and took the high road towards his employers. He was a gentleman. We would all love to see that Charlie Sheen. Conan is anything but a class-A tool.

Conan O'Brien Goodbye Speech - May 11, 2010



References

Wikipedia: Charlie Sheen

The New York Times: Famous, With Foot in Mouth
By Alessandra Stanley - Feb 28/2011
Troubled politicians and celebrities often turn to television and radio to retune their images radically — it’s a One Step program to persuade themselves of their own powers of persuasion. And self-delusion has no borders.
...
Mr. Sheen’s grandiose rants on the nation’s two leading morning talk shows — and via live stream on the gossip Web site TMZ — were more unmoored than most, but he showed all the usual symptoms of an insulated star with an unreasoned belief in his own invulnerability.

Asked if he was bipolar, Mr. Sheen said he was “bi-winning.”

That he only made himself look worse isn’t exactly new. Mr. Sheen, who spoke out after CBS suspended production of his hit television sitcom, “Two and a Half Men,” follows in the unsteady footsteps of Tom Cruise and his 2005 diatribe against psychiatry, Ritalin and Brooke Shields. There were echoes of Michael Jackson’s infamous 2003 interview with Martin Bashir in which he described sharing a bed with children at the Neverland ranch, and also of Whitney Houston, who in 2002 denied to Diane Sawyer that she used crack. (“Crack is whack,” she said.)

2011-02-28

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