"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Monday, March 12, 2012
Say, where's Charlie? (And other illustrated meditations on celebrity)
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WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
First off, you can click on it to enlarge it. And then if you're just crazy wild to hobnob -- excuse me, make that to exchange ideas -- with prominent thinkers like Emilio E, here's the link. (But admit it, the thinker you really want to, er, exchange ideas with is his brother, Marty S's idiot son Charlie. Am I right?) -- Ken
CHARLIE'S PROBABLY GOT IT ALL WORKED OUT
CELEBRITY APPLIED TO OTHER WALKS OF LIFE
ROZ CHAST ISN'T TARGETING CELEBS, BUT HER VISION OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT CAN BE ADAPTED
Seven questions about the Charlie Sheen "show." PLUS, going from the ridiculous to the sublime: a special Brahms chamber bonus
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KERPLUNK! GOES THE MARKET FOR CHARLIE SHEEN TIX
source: WNYC News Blog
"Day-to-day average prices paid for shows in New York on StubHub (from March 16 to April 4)":Is this a new leading economic indicator, the price of Charlie Sheen tickets? It sure seems like an indicator of something.
"On Saturday, the audience in Detroit booed Sheen and many walked out of the Fox Theater. Media coverage of the disastrous performance and the poor reviews that followed led to a significant price decrease for the New York shows, said [StubHub spokesperson Joellen] Ferrer."
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "People bought tickets to see a train wreck, and now they're off-loading them because they heard that it's a train wreck?"
-- commenter John from Brooklyn, on the above blog
by Ken
This morning I logged onto the WNYC website to check the details of a free lunchtime performance by members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of Brahms's wonderful G minor Piano Quartet. Before I could get to that, I was waylaid by the, er, unexpected news of a crash in the price of tickets for Charlie Sheen's upcoming "shows" here in New York at Radio City Music Hall. This was all the more unexpected in that I was blissfully aware such a thing was happening, let alone that it's been rolling in from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Columbus like some sort of slow-moving landlocked tsunami.
I have some questions about the Charlie Sheen "show," but first perhaps we should all get up to speed on this breaking -- if not actually broken -- news, as reported by Mirela Iverac on WNYC News Blog.
Monday, April 04, 2011 - 03:21 PM By Mirela Iverac
Tiger blood might be running through Charlie Sheen’s veins, but it is not helping him win over New Yorkers.
Many of those who bought tickets for his live show "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option" at the Radio City Music Hall -- scheduled for coming Friday and Sunday -- are trying to get rid of them after the production got panned following its opening over the weekend.
On Monday, there nearly 2,800 tickets available on StubHub for the two shows, with the cheapest priced at $24.
"Much of this has to do with supply pacing out demand," said Joellen Ferrer, spokeswoman for StubHub. "Because of bad reviews in Detroit, the demand dipped to this low level."
A rep for Sheen said he "wouldn't know" why there are nearly that many tickets available on StubHub -- some significantly under face value.
On Saturday, the audience in Detroit booed Sheen and many walked out of the Fox Theater. Media coverage of the disastrous performance and the poor reviews that followed led to a significant price decrease for the New York shows, said Ferrer. Overall average price for the shows last week was $130, said Ferrer, but it dropped to $50 on Sunday.
Nano Tissera, 22, a college student in New York, said he bought two tickets for the Sunday show about two weeks ago, but decided to sell them on Craigslist after reading reviews of the show in Detroit.
"I just got a really bad feeling from what I was reading," said Tissera. "It seemed like people were being ripped off, like they were not getting what they paid for. I thought, 'I should probably get rid of these.'"
He paid $150 for two tickets and posted an ad on Sunday asking the same amount of money. Tissera said he only received two inquiries and doesn't believe he will manage to sell them. He is less worried, though, about keeping the tickets after reading about Sheen’s Sunday performance in Chicago, which received better reviews.
Ferrer thinks that many fans will act similarly and whatever happens with ticket prices for New York's shows will depend on how Sheen performs this week in Cleveland and Columbus.
"It has potential to go either way," she said. "Maybe the prices will drop further. Or maybe he will get raving reviews, and people will want to pay more."
Yes, I suppose it's always possible that our Charlie could get "raving reviews." And apparently this will make people want to pay more? Add this to the list of things I don't understand, which leads us right smack into --
MY SEVEN QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHARLIE SHEEN "SHOW"
(1) Charlie Sheen is doing a "show"?
(2) Who would buy tickets to a Charlie Sheen "show"?
(3) Um, just what do you suppose a Charlie Sheen "show" would consist of? (Please God, no nudity. No one wants to see that.)
(4) Why would anyone buy tickets to a Charlie Sheen "show"?
(5) "Overall average price for the shows last week was $130." Huh???
(6) What would the expectations be for a Charlie Sheen "show"?
(7) How would you tell the difference between a "good" Charlie Sheen "show" and a "bad" Charlie Sheen "show"?
FREE-BRAHMS POSTSCRIPT
Greene Space was packed to the rafters for the free performance of the Brahms quartet, and the performance -- by the Chamber Music Society's co-director, pianist Wu Han (who offered some sensibly targeted introductory remarks), and three suave young string players -- violinist Arnaud Sussmann, violist Lily Francis, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis -- was fine. It's such a treasurable piece that I can't resist sharing it:
BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25
i. Allegro ii. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo iii. Andante con moto; Animato iv. Rondo alla zingarese: Presto; meno presto; Molto presto
Tamás Vásáry, piano; Thomas Brandis, violin; Wolfgang Christ, viola; Ottomar Borwitzky, cello. DG, recorded January 1982
There are more free performances this week in the Greene Space (44 Charlton Street, in SoHo): Thursday, the trio Janus (flutist Amanda Baker, violist Beth Meyers, and harpist Nuiko Wadden) playing works by Debussy, Treuting, and Negron; and Friday, the Escher String Quartet playing Zemlinsky's Fourth Quartet and Brahms's Second.
Sure, Charlie Sheen is an easy target, but consider how well he's been rewarded for flaunting his lack of talent
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The first of four of his own cartoons that The New Yorker's Bob Mankoff has personally charliesheenified
by Ken
Okay, it may be going too far to declare Charlie Sheen talentless.* Perhaps it would be more judicious to refer to the absence, in any of his work I've seen, of any talent beyond total lack of inhibition about self-exhibition. (If you're inclined to minimize this, think what it must be to be so shameless about exhibiting that particular self.) I confess that I've actually attended to some of his more astonishing remarks in this latest self-induced orgy of public scrutiny, possibly because -- another confession -- I actually watch Two and a Half Men (I sort of developed the habit a few seasons into the run).
FOOTNOTE: *I'm unequipped to account for Charlie's talent, or whatever it is, that seems to make him irresistible to large numbers of women. There may, of course, be talents known only to the parties of the first and second part, or possibly this can be accounted for by a surprisingly large number of women who do it, directly or indirectly, for pay (remember that his TV alter-ego, Charlie Harper, not only is unapologetic about his regular employment of hookers but seems to consider them one of life's most basic necessities), or appreciate Charlie's apparent willingness to spare no expense "to show a girl (and himself, of course) a good time."
Let's come back to that, though. Despite my own morbid curiosity, I doubt that I would have troubled to blog about Charlie except for this batch of self-mashed-up cartoons The New Yorker's Bob Mankoff has just unleashed on us. I've had previous occasion to peek at the blog of the magazine's cartoon editor (who of course is himself a longtime New Yorker cartoonist), but I have to say, I love what he's done this week.
There’s a lot to be said for Charlie Sheen. Really. And by God, he’s saying it. But it got my own “tiger blood” up when I found out that the “pure gold” of his quotes were being mashed up with New Yorker cartoons in a way that was too random for my effete sensibility.
So I decided to put my tiger blood to good use. I figured, as Charlie is presently not working anywhere, he might as well appear in a few of my cartoons. And since, given his present state, he might have trouble learning my captions, I thought I’d let him speak in his own voice.
In fact, checking out that first link, I think what Matt Stopera has done at BuzzFeed, tacking Charlie Sheen quotes onto old New Yorker cartoons, is quite wonderful. But there's something special about having the actual cartoon auteur charliesheenify some of his own work, with the following results:
TO FINISH UP ON CHARLIE
In Charlie's story, every time you think, "There must be a limit," you're proved wrong. This week on network TV -- a network other than CBS, notably -- he introduced a stunned world to his "Angels," who are apparently all that remains of the "family" he's been claiming so vehemently to be protecting, now that his twin sons, not yet two years old, have been safely removed from his custody.
There's some sort of grim fascination, a fascination I can't begin to explain, in the worthlessness of Charlie Sheen's Two and a Half Men character Charlie Harper, who manages at the same time to be no more awful than his mooching brother Alan (Jon Cryer). I could fall back on the invariable delight of watching the amazing Holland Taylor (I don't know whether it's her skill as an actress or her ability to home in on scripts that she can dazzle in, but at this point in her career I would watch her do just about anything) as the mother whom both brothers tend to blame for everything, but she doesn't appear in anywhere near enough episodes to furnish much of an alibi. And while Conchata Ferrell is similarly wonderful as Charlie's housekeeper Berta, and is in most every episode, I can't imagine watching the show just for her.
Even as CBS and producer Chuck Lorre appear close to have reached the end of their rope with Charlie -- perhaps even have taken to fantasizing about seeing Charlie at the end of a rope -- it's also true that in his monomaniacal blitherings he's entirely correct when he claims to have made vast quantities of money for other people, including his network and his producer. Of course he's nuts if he thinks he has done or does that causes people to watch him, beyond just "putting it out there"; if it weren't for the people who created and continue to produce and write the show, nobody would watch Charlie. At the same time, without Charlie nobody would watch the show either.
