Charlie Sheen did a live webcast. And reports and Twitters suggest that many concluded the “winner” is a “loser” — no matter how much money he has, how many porn stars are living with him or whether CBS ultimately kowtows to big bucks temptation and invites him back to resume filming on the mega hit show “Two and a Half Men” or not.
Sheen has become a major cultural commodity these days: with a hit show (due to his impressive talent, sharp writing and supporting cast) now in limbo, a Twitter account that got more in 24 hours than my Twitter account will in 100,000 Joe Gandelman lifetimes, and he has been on so many talk shows that the networks may as well just carve out 15 minutes a day for him on all networks in a simulcast. (I mean, “DUH! Ratings winning!”).
But if this is a winner then they need to redefine it in the dictionary:
Charlie Sheen lost Saturday night, blabbering endlessly on a live webcast that quickly lost viewers and drew heaps of online scorn.
Sheen’s show started with fart noises and endless references to “winning” – and ended with the troubled actor drinking from a sippy cup and repeating the word “duh.”
“This was just sad, and boring, and pointless,” a viewer with the Twitter handle Sasu_Uzumaki posted online.
The forgettable 50-minute webcast, dubbed “Sheen’s Korner,” featured Sheen and a group of his misfit pals, including “goddess” girlfriend Natalie Kenly.
With more than 100,000 viewers tuning in, the former “Two and a Half Men” star opened the show with a “big shout-out” to his children. “Daddy loves you, and if you’re watching, tell mom to leave the room,” said Sheen, wearing a black hat and black T-shirt with a neon dollar sign. “It’s on.”
Much of what he said afterward was unintelligible. In one of his few moments of clarity, Sheen revealed that he got the word “Winning” tattooed on his left wrist.
“Guess what we were doing all day, every second of the day? Winning,” Sheen jabbered.
I guess.
And by that standard, if I eat four pizzas, I’m dieting.
Here are some Tweets on his webcast.
Under Charlie Sheen webcast we find this:
EricStangel Eric Stangel
Watched Charlie Sheen webcast. Ladies & Gentlemen, we now have a cultural moment lower than LeBron James Decision special
10 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply
Top Tweet
And under Charlie Sheen, here are a few relevant Tweets:
SarahKSilverman Sarah Silverman
My thoughts and prayers are with Charlie Sheen tonight, as he’s been diagnosed with Full Blown Busey
2 Mar
Top TweetCharIieeSheen Charlie Sheen
When cocaine wants to party, it does Charlie Sheen.
4 Mar
Top TweetCharIieeSheen Charlie Sheen
by sarahhogeboom
I wake up and I’m like, wow, I’m Charlie Sheen and you’re not. #winning
23 hours agoboyfulani Felix Mind
by donhangani
How much coke did Charlie Sheen take? Enough to kill Two and a Half Men. #MkZ
1 hour agodenn62 dennis
Charlie Sheen rambles in Internet broadcast: Charlie Sheen, in a nearly hourlong Internet broadcast from his She… http://bit.ly/gldlU4
1 minute agopNibbler phantom duck Nibbler
by savagecabage
Charlie Sheen for Irish President #vinb
2 minutes agoArtemusDark M Cid D’Angelo
Charlie Sheen: This sudden limelight is not good for you and your career. Take a sabbatical; the distracted public will forgive and forget.
1 minute agokinnghusso Hussain Ahmad
@
@StephanieDion charlie sheen lost his mind..
1 minute agoJamesPeart James Peart
…..I think my subconcious is either telling me to never be a stockbroker or to stop reading Charlie Sheen tweets.
1 minute agonprscottsimon Scott Simon
by mdomb
Modern perplexity: same technology that helped world hear Egyptian protesters enables Charlie Sheen to have on-line show.
49 minutes agocapricecrane caprice crane
by twilite547
Paris Hilton tweeted at Charlie Sheen: “I think I might have Tiger Blood.” No, cutie. That’s just your garden-variety herpes.
12 hours agoweinmanj Jaime Weinman
by hamster_lips
Charlie Sheen has gone from making millions on a show with 15 million viewers a week, to 100,000 viewers for free. He’s outsmarted us all.
10 hours agoMsPurrty_Ire Ms Purrty
Since when is Charlie Sheen the new thing? And men love him! #SickAsses if he didn’t have that money he’d be a f—– p druggie to people
2 minutes agoShenique_E Shenique Edwards
Charlie Sheen even has merchandise with #winning on it. 2011 catchphrase of the year
2 minutes ago
Under Charlie Sheen Internet we find this.
indyjohn John Strauss
Charlie Sheen live on the Internet: “sloppy, self-indulgent bit of cringe theater”: bit.ly/hNQCPb via @EW
39 minutes agoDiogoAkira Akira
Carnaval is fun….on the street and on tv but on the Internet…noooooo! Please gimme a break!!! The same works for Charlie sheen
1 hour agozack263 zack263
Charlie Sheen: The Debut Episode of “Sheen’s Korner” http://bit.ly/eDyoHL
1 hour agobleebasket Bernie Lee
I feel asleep early last night did Charlie Sheen kill a panda on the internet last night for an encore?
1 hour agoBoydiiMo Damon Boyd
100 Thousand People Wanted To Watch Charlie Sheen On The Internet: Charlie Sheen is wasting our attention. http://bit.ly/hSPRYi
1 hour ago
Variety uses the phrase “Big B.O.” to refer to big box office.
Sheen’s webcast has been deemed by many to be Big B.O., too, but the kind of B.O. that stinks up the joint.
For instance, the Daily Telegraph:
CHARLIE Sheen has gone from online sensation to online denigration after his bizarre new internet TV show got a touch of the Ben Eltons yesterday.
It’s not often that 60,000 people are prepared to watch a nondescript set of beige cupboards but that was the situation yesterday as viewers piled on to Sheen’s Ustream site in anticipation of the show Sheen’s Korner at 2pm AEDT – 10pm Saturday night in California.
Ten minutes before the broadcast and the numbers watching grew by something like 100 every second, all glued to a camera pointing at nothing and punctuated by the occasional bump or moving shadow in the increasingly familiar Sheen household.
By the time the 45-year-old actor took to the screen there were more than 100,000 people to witness his big opening act, tearing off a bandage on his wrist revealing a tattoo of the word “WINNING”- his new world famous mantra – in large black letters.
But despite such promising beginnings it appears Charlie peaked too early.
After a meandering and largely nonsensical chatter between himself and what appeared to be a random selection of his entourage – including one of his so-called Angels – the group on camera ended up being reduced to chanting “Winning! Winning! Winning!” over and over.
It was not long before the peak of 115,000 viewers early on started to taper off as bored viewers abandoned the show. At the same time the Twitter feed to the side of it, which was so bombarded it was almost impossible to read each tweet, started to get a little negative. Sheen had committed the unforgivable showbiz sin of going from crazy and entertaining to crazy and boring.
Afterwards film director Judd Apatow – the man behind hits such as Knocked Up – was lethal in his assessment: “@charliesheen going from a hugely successful show which pays you millions to a free podcast might not be ‘winning’. Depends on definition.”
Indeed, if you haven’t already, be sure to read my Cagle.column on Sheen earlier this week HERE.
In financial terms, Charlie Sheen may be a winner with a big, fat bank account, access to network talk shows whenever he wants, millions of followers — and poised to make a fortune if he sells merchandise with his name, face and verbal tics plastered all over them.
But in many other respects, he is in last place.
Sheen’s long range problem: it will be difficult now for him to get anyone to insure him for future projects. And he has just wiped out venues for his talent since (you heard this here first) many directors will llikely not want to cast him in major drama or comedy projects in the future unless it’s just for reasons of notoriety since he has destroyed his usefulness as an actor who can get audiences to put aside the realization they are watching an actor and focus on the script and film or TV show. To really work most movies and films must get audiences to suspend disbelief and believe what they are seeing is for that moment a reality. That media overdose narrative on Sheen and Sheen’s own insistence on keeping it alive, could get in the way of that.
A little nuttiness can go a long career destruction way.
Just ask Tom Cruise if he’d jump on a couch again on national TV.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.