High and Low: Charlie Sheen, Original Gangster

“Whenever we needed money, we would rob the airport,” so says Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic “Goodfellas,” and apparently Charlie Sheen was paying attention. With the economy still not exactly recovered, Sheen waltzed into Detroit, Michigan on April 2^nd and packed the 5,100-seat Fox Theatre for a 70-minute kick-off of his “Torpedo of Truth” tour. Keep in mind that many people in the U.S. think that Detroit is on the precipice of being a third world country, and many others think it already is. Though many people are also idiots, Detroit didn’t get that reputation for entering a golden age of standard of living, national relevance and paradise-seeking bikini models. Being from Buffalo, I’m allowed a cheap shot. Armed with a porn star and several other busty knock outs at his side, Sheen was cheered loudly, then soundly booed once the crowd started to finally realize that he doesn’t actually write the lines that he says on TV. My personal favorite part was Sheen telling the crowd that Snoop Dogg would be performing, only to play a short clip of a Snoop song at the very end of the show. What’s clear is that nothing short of a heart attack is going to slow him down from taking gobs of money from an American public obsessed with seeing former stars in full plight. If he got arrested tomorrow with ten kilos of snow, he’d do a short video with David Fincher from prison that would be seen by every single person in the world with an internet connection or TV.

A couple reports have come out saying that many media outlets were even readying Charlie Sheen’s obituary early. Just waiting to fill in the date, really, the file already open. It’s hard to blame them, though, considering they aren’t the only ones anticipating his early demise. “Charlie Sheen dead” is already one of the top Charlie Sheen-related searches on Google. And dancing to the tune of the trigger-happy entertainment media is a bunch of people who paid $75 (or more) to see a loosely thrown together Charlie Sheen comedy special. The funniest part is that once they got there, many seemed to suddenly realize that a 70-minute Charlie Sheen comedy special is a 70-minute Charlie Sheen comedy special. There’s a funny Seth Rogen line in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin" that comes to mind about what it would be like to actually attend a donkey show. Where I have to start liking Sheen is that he plays the part of the clown and simply robs a bunch of people who showed up to see a train wreck develop. In a way, the entire public has provided him a limitless ATM, and he may just be a genius for letting them give him their money while he wears the clown outfit and drives that stupid tiny bicycle. At one point, according to grown adults who get paid to write down what Charlie Sheen says, Sheen turned and calmly addressed a disgruntled member of the crowd: “I’ve already got your money, dude.” Henry Hill would have been proud.