Charlie Sheen's Heart of Darkness

There are a few things I’d like to get straight about the whole Charlie “Deepwater Horizon” Sheen environmental disaster.

1. This is not the tragic loss of a great screen actor. He’s always been fair to middling. He topped out working with Oliver Stone, and has been skating by on personality ever since. He’s lazy. He might have been a good actor, but he doesn’t put in the effort. His most indelible character has been a womanizing, semi-drunk actor – named Charlie! It’s not a stretch.
2. The character Charlie is a fun uncle who has paraded a string of bimbos through his nephew’s life, and eventually started dating a smart, competent woman. The real Charlie is a father who has paraded a string of bimbos through his children's lives, and the smartest woman he’s dated in that span has been Denise Richards, and he now lives with a porn actresses and a fetish model.
   
3. The Middle East. It’s still happening.
4. Rehab only works if you’re willing to admit your brain is fucked up, and are willing to surrender to the process and let someone else advise you (either 12 stepping it, or a sober living coach, or a trained medical professional) until such time as your brain is healed enough that you are capable of making decisions on your own. Being an arrogant ass is an impediment to the process.
5. Of course you don’t think you’re manic depressive. You take coke when you’re down and booze when you’re up. It’s called self medicating. Now that you’re clean, you’re brain isn’t able to cope and you are spinning like pinwheel in a hurricane.
6. I didn’t miss the Chaim Levine thing. On the naughty chair with Galliano!

Inside the bubble, no on can hear you rave

You know, the run of celebrities saying junk in public (Galliano, who loves Hitler; Sheen who is a high priest, Vatican assassin warlock; and Everybody Loves Muammar Gadafi), you just start to wonder how really, really, seriously thick the celebrity bubble is.

Cause, you and me, even if we did love Hitler, and we don’t, we’d have enough common sense to know that there aren’t too many rooms in the Western world where that particular statement plays. You should pick your crowd if you’re gonna blow anti-Semitic (and you shouldn't). Not while pawing a female cop in Malibu, and not while in a restaurant in Paris. It will get out.

Not that I’ve never been drunk and heard my mouth saying things that my brain did not authorize. But that’s more like telling somebody I work with that they have really pretty eyes (or something, you know, not that I would have said anything embarrassing like that, or started crying immediately after). And even if I loved Hitler (which I DON’T), I could down a bottle of Jack and still keep a lid on that bad boy in front of strangers. It’s a conditioned response. You keep the crazy on the inside unless you’re around people who love you and would go to their grave with their mouths zipped about your crazy.

But, if you’re lucky, you have 2 or maybe 3 of those people who guard your crazy secrets. Evidently, there were enough people keeping Galliano’s psychobabble on the down low inside his celebribubble that he thought everybody would just not mention the Hitler thing if he got soused and blurted it out. Same with Sheen. How many people have been standing between him and TMZ for so long that he no longer can tell which things should not be said in the outside voice?

I guess the lesson is not to get so hammered, or smoke so much Charlie Sheen, or well, I don’t know what Gadafi’s excuse is that you don’t know when you are inside your bubble or not. Especially when you’re at an office Christmas party, drinking tequila sunrises and talking to a co-worker with really pretty eyes. Seriously. Cause once the tequila starts talking, you can’t whistle that stuff back. Even if it doesn’t end up on TMZ.

That's my girl!

Wooooo! That's the stuff!

Wo-oh, Domino

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110223/us_yblog_thelookout/dominos-delivery-driver-comes-to-the-rescue-of-elderly-daily-customer

Okay, what really bothers me about this story is the comment section. Okay, I’m partially bothered that this poor lady only had the pizza delivery gal to look out for her (scary thought to add to my single woman’s closet of fears, along with slipping in the shower and nobody noticing until the $3,000 water bill comes due). But the part that honks me off is the really judgmental crap that gets thrown around down in the comments about this lady’s diet.

Number One: She’s 82. Leave her the eff alone.

Number Two: If I could eat pizza every day, I would. She’s hit octogenarian status and whatever deals she’s made with the nutrition gods have obviously worked for her. Frankly, she's my hero. Maybe at 82, she might be running marathons if she was eating sprouted wheat and beet juice. Or maybe she might have dropped dead at 62. Every body is different. And unless you’ve walked a mile in nana’s housecoat, you have no basis for judgment. Personally, I hope she’s spiking those Cokes with a bottle of Jack and having a Marlboro for dessert. And giving those nay saying buzzards the finger.

Number Three: She’s 82. Leave her the eff alone.

Wedding Bell Blues

I was watching Cedar Rapids yesterday, and I kind of realized that this may be the kind of movie that saves the romantic comedy. Okay, before I lose you on this, let me say that even though it’s got a male lead character and is essentially a gross-out comedy, this movie is about a guy looking for love. That’s pretty much the basic formula. And rom-coms, in my opinion, have gotten too concerned with a generic pretty girl scrambling for the happily-ever-after wedding bells ending. Romance is matters of the heart. And sometimes in romance, your heart gets broken and you don’t end up with the ring and a church booked for June. And that’s not necessarily a tragedy. My life goes to show, it can sometimes be pretty damn funny.

In Cedar Rapids, the main character (**Spoiler Alert**), Tim Lippe does not actually end up with a ring on the all important finger, which he very much wanted, or even the love of his life, unless you count his bromance with the John C. Reilly character. And I guess you could. So if he doesn’t end up with that happily-every-after wedding, what does he get that you’d want out of a new kind of rom-com? He’s happier, stronger, wiser and there’s more love in his life, even if it comes from friends. I think that’s a great ending for any main character in a romantic comedy. Remember, Holly Hunter doesn’t end up with James Brooks or William Hurt in Broadcast News, and that was a high-water mark in the romantic-comedy genre.

So what do we get if writers give up the idea that it doesn’t necessarily have to end up in the Vera Want and the Chapel of Love? And we give up the old “comedies end in marriage, tragedies end in death” trope. Certainly more skin in the game. You won’t necessarily know that it’s going to end the same way every time. How’s that for a concept? Sure, we want our hero/ine to end up happier that before. But if there are many definitions about what could make a man or woman happy, there’s a world of possibilities of where a romantic comedy could go. And in a genre that has become all too stale, that would be a breath of fresh air.