Charlie Sheen in Detroit: Did He Bomb, or Did We?

Charlie Sheen's opening stop for his "Torpedo of Truth" tour in Detroit on Saturday has been almost universally declared a disaster. Late start time, terrible opening act. Incoherent meanderings, pointless video clips. Booing, walk-outs, demands for refunds.

He even reminded the increasingly hostile audience at one point that they had agreed to pay money for tickets to a show before they knew anything about it. Indeed they had. I'll get into that point in a moment.

In response, during the the second stop on the tour in Chicago the following night, the "show" was revamped completely. The entire show was now Sheen being interviewed by a DJ. And so, it would seem, the audience, (some of whom showed up with the hopes of seeing a Detroit style train wreck) was far more accepting. Though it seems Sheen himself was a bit unhappy with the change of format at times.

I don't know what Sheen's deal is. Drugs. Mental illness. Or a genius for marketing by use of a grand hoax ala Joaquin Phoenix. I think there is ample evidence for any of the above options, frankly. But based on the nature of the Detroit show at least, I don't consider the evidence for lunacy to be overwhelming yet. Frankly, I don't even think, as many seem to, that Detroit proves he has no idea how to put on a show. We can easily read about what happened and throw what we consider some truth right back at the "Torpedo of Truth", assured in our knowledge that what he did was bound to fail. But was it?

I think the whole thing really is an excellent field study on the entertainment consumption habits of our society.

To begin with, I think Sheen, in whatever state of mental health he is in, honestly had every right to assume that people who paid all that money to see "Torpedo" would love what he was doing. Even if it was half-assed and thrown together at last minute. It was after all basically the same sort of thing he has been doing since this alleged meltdown began. Weird rambling monologues. Women making out. YouTube videos. It seems that the stage show was in fact a visual, live reproduction of the frantic stream of consciousness of Sheen's mind that caused so many people to watch his internet streams, and follow him on Twitter. The very same sort of thing that led people to buy a ticket to "Torpedo" in the first place. Why shouldn't people have loved it? If Sheen is asking this question now, I can't say as I blame him much.

Let's face it; people enjoy paying money for some weird and lame, and even hostile garbage. Andy Kaufman made a career of pulling antagonistic, at times rambling and certainly nonsensical stunts on stage and people booed and yet loved him for it. Snooki's book is a best seller. There are the inexplicable cult followings of trash like The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, a movie so obviously inept, unprofessional and void of story, purpose, theme, structure, coherence, and at times even proper lighting, that it does not in the strictest definition even qualify as a movie.

So I think the line between Charlie Sheen's opening of "Torpedo" in Detroit, which was vilified, and the examples I give above which are lauded by considerable numbers of people, is a very thin one. Obviously "Torpedo" was torpedoed. Yet I have to think that in an alternate universe not too far from our own, (as in perhaps just one universe over) Sheen's opening in Detroit would have been a smash hit. If he hadn't been late, they might have loved it. If he had opened in say, Austin instead of Detroit, they may have loved it. If any one single random thing had been different, the entire affair may have caught the very same invisible wave of mass audience adoration that carries people like Dane Cook into inexplicable stardom.

In other words, it is easy to say the show was absurd, now that it has failed. But we, the American public have foisted similar or even worse fare into our collective greatest hits album. And just when we think we can define what is and is not likely to be a blockbuster, something comes along and changes the game again. Either because it failed, or because it succeeded.

The truth is, we really have no idea why the media/arts/entertainment consuming masses propel one book, act, scandal, celebrity or stage show into oblivion, and another into immortality. We haven't the slightest clue what we want. At times I think the best anyone can do is watch what people follow, and then either follow the pack, or run fast enough to get to the head of same. And even once there, you may get trampled.

I am no fan of the crap Charlie Sheen has been doing the last few months, whatever its cause. I wouldn't have paid money for his live show. I wouldn't have enjoyed it. However I am withholding the tiniest amount of judgment about the show's flopping, because society has proven over and over again that there was every reason to believe the show could have worked without the slightest alteration.

Sheen is reported to have yelled back at a heckler in Detroit,

"I've already got your money, dude!"

That may be the most significant and telling observation of the entire thing.

The Greatest Hits? Or Misses? Or Both? Neither??

If you look through my music collection, you will find that a majority of my albums are "Greatest Hits" albums. Depending on who you ask, this can be either a "good" or "bad" thing.

On the one hand, I could be accused of not enjoying "challenging" music. That Greatest Hits albums are merely a collection of a band's most commercial (and hence, least original) work. The songs that catered to some corporate idea of what was selling at any given point. By definition, "hits" cannot be good music. The audio version of shiny objects to keep the masses entertained.

Others would say, however, that there is a reason that such songs are hits. That they tap into something universal. Something with which we all, (or at least many of us) can identify. Lyrics and sounds that move many individuals, as opposed to moving a nameless mob. Therefore, Justin Beiber by definition produces great music, because he sells millions of records to millions of fans.

Me? I don't take either view 100%. The fact is, I don't know what to make of either hits, or my personal tastes. There are about a million different ways of looking at both what makes something popular, and what it means to be popular. And that goes for songs, books, movies, television shows. You name it.

I consider myself a discriminating, high cultured, well read person. And to that end, I do enjoy Shakespeare. Movies like "The Lion in Winter" and "Beckett". TV shows like "The West Wing". Music by Ralph McTell. Yet on the other hand, I consider a Steve Berry thriller to be among my favorite novels. I listen to REO Speedwagon.  I've been a fan of "Strange Brew" since I was a child, and I will still watch Three's Company if it's on.

And you know what? All of those things are/were hits in their respective genres. So which score do I get? The high or the low? Kudos to my intellect for roaring at the antics of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, or reprimands to my platonic appetites for laughing at Jack Tripper?

Turns out, I have no clue as to which score I get. If I have to get one at all. Because I have determined that things that are brilliant can end up being either obscure, or popular. The same goes for some real trash. I know there has to be some sort of metric by which we can distinguish a quality product from junk. I just don't think its status as a hit is that metric.

Certainly there must be something that The Kite Runner and The Di-Vinci Code have in common, as much as literature professors would loath to admit it. Something that makes me stop switching stations when I hear Hey Jude as much as when I hear Fat Bottomed Girls. But what? What?? Certainly nothing that makes me look like a rube. Nor a genius. Because I doubt I am either.

I have struggled with this question for a long time. In the final analysis, the best I can come up with is that the "hits" appeal to a large collection of individuals with their own tastes. At least at first. But then follow the leader sets in, and suddenly everybody has to have it, whether they truly enjoy it or not. This, half of all hits are just people copy catting. Something strikes a chord at first with people, but then becomes mass consumed by the mob after a certain threshold. The same thing with work that gets ignored.

There is, I have concluded, no way of knowing why this happens with some products and not others. So all I can do is continue to read many books. Listen to a lot of music, and keep my Netflix cue updated. And when something speaks to me, I declare it a keeper. No matter how elitist or common, difficult or easy, well known or forgotten it is. If it hits me, then it's a hit. And if that means a greatest hits compilation is in my future, so be it.

Whats does make a hit? Can we know? Is there a science to it on any level, or do people just love what they love; no code involved?

When Should Rules Rule?

The temptation among many creative types is to say, "Ignore the rules. Make your own rules. DOWN WITH ALL RULES! We are Too XYZ for stinking rules!"


Indeed if you are caught following a rule or a convention, you are not an artist, writer, filmmaker. You become a sell out.


Take it easy. Let's back up a bit.


I tend to think that breaking a rule simply for the sake of breaking it is not only foolish, but a tad boring. Refusing to conform to the rules 100% of the time in every circumstance is just being obnoxious, and to an ironic extent, conformist. Rules should never be broken for their own sake. Not because they are sacrosanct, (though there will be consequences for breaking them, like it or not.) But because to break rules indiscriminately doesn't challenge you. Your decision at every step is easy; "Break the rule!"


But truly knowing yourself and understanding where you want to go and who you want to be requires better discernment than that. It requires effort. It requires a true understanding of what rules are, and why a specific rule is threatening who you want to be, and how you want to proceed in life.


The great visionaries of the world were almost exclusively rule breakers. But they didn't sit in a room one day before they were renowned and say, "whatever is expected of me, I am going to do the opposite of it. Just so I can be hip." No. Rule breakers that we admire became so because they let were aware of what their hearts told them. They lived by Ralph Waldo Emerson's edict, "Don't die with your music still in you." And if following their music meant that boundaries were crossed or rules were broken, then so be it.


But the key is that they knew themselves well enough to understand the reasons for their rejection of the rules. Some visionaries did end up breaking almost all of the rules within their sphere. Some broke a few. Some actually only broke one single rule, but did so at a crucial time in history. When a confluence of personal passion, cultural readiness, and contemporary like minded people brought about a paradigm shift.


None of which would have happened if their actual goal had merely been to "break all the rules, all the time."


Learn from the entirety of their example. Make sure you observe when they followed the rules, and what rules they followed, and why, in addition to when and how they broke the rules. Find out which rules help you be true to yourself, and which ones hinder it. And if doing something in the conventional way speaks to you the most, by all means follow convention! It will not be the end of your creativity and your power. Indeed, it will be the beginning of your honesty with yourself about how you work. And that will be the very first step toward your greatest potential.


When you reach that point, no rule can stop you.