Why Charlie Sheen Isn’t Funny

A month or so ago, it was difficult to avoid a daily rant coming from Charlie Sheen. His antics were covered everywhere – television, the internet and print media. The rants, and that’s what they were, seemed bizarrely funny at first but as time as worn on, so did Charlie and now he’s virtually off the radar without a job, without too many fans and frankly, I don’t even know where he is nor do I particularly care. Time moved forward to Osama bin Laden’s death, the last space shuttle and politics as usual and Charlie was a victim to his Andy Warhol moment.

You see, Charlie over shared. What was amusing at first became a daily occurrence and it quickly got old. Even the people who ‘liked’ the various Facebook pages following his antics drifted off to topics they found more important like the Middle East, sports scores and their own economic well-being. The barrages from Charlie started falling on deaf ears except for the authorities and network executives who had to deal with him in some way or another. The rest of us now remember him as some nutty guy who did a lot of drugs, held a knife to someone’s throat and had a harem of women taking care of his children. He is now an out of work actor with a drug problem.

When the movie Network came out, the first time I heard Peter Finch scream ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore’, it struck a chord. It was 1976 and we were angry about Nixon, Cambodia, and Legionnaire’s Disease. We were tired of wars, Big Ben disintegrated and the world didn’t feel right anymore for many reasons. We were also producing a new generation of protestors beyond the hippies of the sixties. Our madness meant sucking it in a little and maybe joining a protest carrying a placard but mostly we seethed inside and voiced our opinions to friends or became very brave and wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. If it was printed, we were often mortified about who would read it and if we sounded like an idiot. We smoked our weed on the sly and watched television a lot because there was a lot of news.

This may be why so many of us Boomers don’t understand this over sharing that a couple of generations behind us so like to indulge in – the Charlie Sheen generation. Is it necessary to describe one’s morning bowel movement? Is it interesting to hear the drug induced diatribes on world peace which always end with threatening people who don’t agree with the theory? Theories, friendships, and even bodily functions suffer from too much over sharing. It is good to keep some things in life quieter or at least until the words can be well-formed and meaningful. Unless, of course, you are a Charlie Sheen. Then you fade away into obscurity and no one listens to you at all.

Sure, these things pass quickly and become yesterday’s news faster than logging off and on again, and they are replaced by the next nutty event. For people who worry so much about their carbon footprints, there is a generation who don’t seem to worry very much about the word toxins they put into the environment. For the rest of us, it’s like living in a world constantly waiting for some kind of smoke to clear the air. I do not miss the old days but I do miss that unsaid rule that you think before speaking.

Roger and Me

Can I call Roger Ebert a friend? Since we’ve known one another for over twenty years and continue to banter back and forth, I think I can.

The first time I met Roger, I was an assistant producer at BBDO, and he and Gene Siskel were hired to present a thumbs up presentation on a new Apple product at the old Plaza Hotel. It was a big event and John Scully was still President of Apple. Of course, I knew who Siskel and Ebert were, but didn’t know much more about them than what I saw on television. It was a few years later that I came to know Roger, and it was online.

For those of you who remember Compuserve, it was the intellectual’s antidote to AOL for chat rooms. The Showbiz Media forum was full of hard core film buffs and Roger had his own section, and he participated – a lot. There were great exchanges and arguments that could last for days, and everyone used their real names. None of those sexygirl28891 handles. We celebrated great films, bashed the bad ones, discussed silly nuances for days, saw people come and go and lives change. About the time Gene Siskel died, Roger pretty much stopped posting. We all understood, and even though the room carried on for a while, it turned out he had been the glue. Finally, it fell apart. The forum still exists, and on a recent fly by, I noticed one or two of the same folks are still there but it was never the same again.

I continued to read Roger’s reviews and would sometimes contribute to his Answer Man column, but it has been in recent years that we’ve been back in touch. Roger is a prolific writer, and his bout with illness seems to have manifested itself in writing even more online. He tweets, he blogs, he promotes, he tweets, he blogs, and then there’s The Ebert Club. That’s a site that’s a little like the old Showbiz Forum. For a mere $4.99, I joined up. I enrolled early because there was a discount of a penny before a certain date. We all got virtual decoder rings as a bonus as if the site itself wasn’t enough.

Roger has an insatiable curiosity about everything, and it’s contagious because he writes about whatever tweaked his interest of a given moment. I avoid most of his political stuff because we’re polar opposites and he can make my blood boil, but the rest is usually good thinking fodder. He wrote a piece today on brain frisson, and how we are all most likely suffering from an inability to concentrate for very long due to heavy internet use, and what it takes to mentally excite us anymore. He’s right, but I also have an argument with him about it but it was thought provoking and fun.

As I write this, the other monitor tells me that he just tweeted a poem called Death by Scrabble, and another about Pasternak, who died on this day. I haven’t thought about Pasternak in ages! So, I’ll go look up some Pasternak things now rather than get back to work, and that’s the frisson he’s talking about. I’m glad to know Roger. There are a few people that you meet in life that keep you thinking, and he sure is one of them.

Claudia’s Workout

Claudia DeMonte makes art.  Art about women.  She isn’t a hardcore feminist, but her work is about what women do, what women use to decorate themselves, what they feel and what they do with their lives.

I follow Claudia’s work mostly through invitations from galleries and museums all over the world, and get to the odd show in Manhattan or somewhere in Litchfield County whenever possible.  Between she and her husband, Ed McGowin, who is also an artist, their lives seem like one of those pieces of luggage with country stamps all over it.  They live in Manhattan, South Kent, and Florida, and seem to work and show in all places in between.  If you know them, you also know that an email is the fastest way to even begin to find them.

Claudia’s latest show is a series of small bronze pieces called ‘The Luxury of Exercise’.  They are wonderful small works that show yoga and stretching positions.  The title has as much to do with being able to afford exercise as it does with actually exercising.  It’s another Claudia-observation on the lives women lead.  Her earlier work with milagros-like charms attached to shaped wooden bases are some of my favorites.  The telephones, shoes, handbags and other female necessities hit a universal chord as have many of her other works.

Ed and Claudia often collaborate, and have done some successful commissions and shows as the McMontes, a name most of their friends use when referring to them as a couple.  They have a great relationship, and one that is testimony to the fact that a couple can live and work together, and I think they have a lot of fun doing it.

See more about Claudia on her site: http://claudiademonte.com