JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
©
2011
I
Was the First Pusher of the Drug Called Charlie Sheen
“I’m a flying penis!”
—Charlie Sheen
Ah, the macho-bizarro found poetry that tumbles from the crack-stained lips of Charlie Sheen, the gift for epi(seven)grams that has made his quotes the pop-culture phenom of 2011.
But, while Sheen may be an F/A-18, bro, that flying penis line is actually from 1994.
Yes, 17 years ago, I was already the archivist of what I called the Charlie Sheen Quote File.
I was the first pusher of the drug called Charlie Sheen.
Pro film critic was my calling at the time, and Charlie was among the bullets that I took to protect my audience. As my career rose, his declined, leaving us both stuck with such execrable fare as “The Chase.” Yet, even then, I realized that Sheen had a Shatner-like talent for over-emoted, unintentional comedy, an ability to pump laughing gas into a flat line of dialogue like, “What are you, mad?!”
I began including a Charlie Sheen Quote File in each review, applauding his delivery of such lousy lines as the aforementioned airborne genitalia quote from “Terminal Velocity.” At first, I thought that Sheen merely had a flair for heaping absurdity onto absurdity. But over the years, I gained the crucial insight that Sheen really is a hopped-up maniac who would spout weirdly asinine slogans without any camera or script in the room.
“Sheen, God bless him, actually is a swaggering moron,” I wrote in a 1996 epiphany, “and it’s therein that his greatness lies.”
Thus, I was as entertained as everybody else when Sheen recently declared himself a “Vatican assassin warlock,” but I may have been the only one not surprised.
Over time, I progressed from calling Sheen “the worst actor in America” to eagerly awaiting his next production. And I’m still in his corner.
If it wasn’t for his habit of threatening women with knives, I’d have to agree with everything Sheen’s had to say. Sure, he’s crazy and an addict, but who isn’t? Certainly not the anchorfolk and shrinks who are pretending to be so appalled by his behavior.
Every possible trigger of Sheen’s “meltdown” has been analyzed ad nauseum—except for the one very good reason he clearly stated: the soul-crushing, brain-numbing grind of being America’s monkey on a dirt-dumb sitcom. That is the truth that America dare not face. It’s so awful how people enable Charlie to be a rock-smoking, “porn family”-forming bad boy, cry America’s TV viewers—who themselves enabled Charlie to be a laugh-track-obeying, funny-fat-kid-pimping bad boy in their idiot box (as a character with his own name, no less).
Magically forgotten is that “Two and a Half Men” was a hall-of-mirrors show that deliberately played off of Sheen’s already solid rap sheet of bad behavior, that the entire joke was making his real-life drunken lechery cute and domesticated. Thus, Sheen is depicted as having a singular “meltdown,” rather than simply continuing a lifestyle of which “Two and a Half Men” was both commentary and cause. America’s TV viewers may now realize that Sheen is now funnier than an entire box set of his sitcom. Yet all the talk is still about who will replace Charlie so they can keep the I.V. sedative flowing.
America was already on a drug called Charlie Sheen. The outrage is that Charlie changed the prescription and is giving us an uncut dose.
As the first person on the streets slinging that shit (winner!), I say welcome back, Charlie. Good for you for getting clean on the really bad drugs: sitcoms and “Major League III.”
From
the Charlie Sheen Quote File
A brief history of my discovery of the magic and poetry of Charlie Sheen:
The Chase (1994)
I was “filling my notebook with scribbles like, ‘Charlie Sheen is the worst actor in America.’”
Quotes:
· “That is a lot of puke!”
· “Your voice is cutting through my brain like nails!”
Terminal Velocity (1994)
“But let’s talk about Sheen, who looks more like Morrissey with each passing film. First, I think he’s contractually obligated to frown constantly, because it makes him look less like his father Martin, a serious actor. In the one scene in which he raises his eyebrows, the resemblance is uncanny (and embarrassing).
“Second, it’s obvious that he’s the worst actor in America, but he has promise as a comic. He’s always funny, whether he’s playing his stilted machismo for laughs (‘Hot Shots!’) or not (‘Navy S.E.A.L.S.’). He does both in this [movie]…and the audience at my screening laughed either way.
“The man’s a bona fide joy, a worthy heir to William Shatner’s throne.”
Quotes:
· “I’m a flying penis!”
· “She did for bullshit what Stonehenge did for rocks!”
· “I’m puttin’ this mess in my rear-view mirror!”
· “Don’t wave that flag at me!”
· “Can I use the Q-Tip in my ear or just around the edge?”
The Arrival (1996)
“In fact, he may be the last great melodramatic actor, all blustery delivery and contorted expressions (here emphasized by a devil goatee). Others of his ilk, like William Shatner and Jack Palance, have succumbed to camp culture and descended into self-parody.
“Not Sheen. His bluster is genuine, his goofball earnestness the stuff that made the ’50s B-movies so wonderful.
“I saw him on the Conan O’Brien show recently. He stopped the show to hand out martinis and to show pictures of a 200-pound fish he caught. He announced he’d be selling his own brand of hot sauce.
“These weren’t stunts. He really thought he was being cool. Sheen, God bless him, actually is a swaggering moron, and it’s therein that his greatness lies.
“In more surreal moments, he almost breaks into metrical rhyming verse: ‘Out of my bed,/ still in my head,/ There’s still something to be said/ for abstinence.’”
Quotes:
· “What is this, ‘Tales from the Darkside’?!”
· “Jesus! I did the ‘Time Warp’ dance here!”
· “What I saw was no custom, no papier-mache skeleton!”
· “I look like a can of smashed assholes!”
The Shadow Conspiracy (1997)
“Sheen holds his own as the master of melodramatic delivery. You know how when that ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ creep tells a joke, you can tell that he doesn’t really think it’s funny at all? Sheen has that same quality of unconvincing earnestness, and it makes everything he says a delight.”
Quotes:
·
“Check this out—I call the White House, and
someone’s waitin’ there to put a bullet in my head!”
·
“Danke!”
·
“This rat swims!”
Posted March 8, 2011.