Sorry, Charlie

The completely bat-shit crazy, late-night TV comedy gold mine that is Charlie Sheen doesn't seem to be fading away as quickly as anyone was expecting it to.  In fact, I noticed it being pushed into another week of buzz from a piece by Rob Sheffield in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, "Charlie Sheen: As American as Apple Pie."  Seriously, he's running the clock into overtime on his 15 minutes and it's way past time for me to step forward to take some overdue responsibility for my part in all of this.

A couple of months ago, my lovely wife Shelly and I were having a slightly (barely) heated discussion wherein I expressed some dissatisfaction with the way some things were being handled (or not) in our household.  "Sometimes I feel like I just can't win around here, " I said.  "I'm getting pretty tired of it and dammit, I'm going to start winning."  It wasn't really an argument so Shelly smiled and accepted my declaration and we proceeded to start doing things my way much more often.  Unfortunately doing things my way wasn't always necessarily the way that got desired results and when things would go off the rails for whatever reason one of us would wryly observe that at least now I was "winning."

By now I'm sure you see where this is going.  Through whatever "butterfly in China causing a tornado in Kansas" interlocking machinery we're all part of, somehow Charlie Sheen got wind of my "winning" and decided to try it for himself.  The problem is that when it all goes to hell in a hand-basket for him the irony of his so-called "winning" is completely lost on him and he gets even more arrogant and vocal about it.  There's no recognition of the failure, only the utter conviction of the absolute rightness of his completely wrong bullheadedness.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to America, the world and most especially to Mr. Martin Sheen (a very talented actor who I'm sure no one thinks this is any reflection on) for having been such a bad influence on poor, easily-led Charlie.  If I had known that my humorous observations of my own misfortune would be so completely lost on such a weak-minded fellow as Charlie I'd have just kept my mouth shut in the first place, hoping Charlie would follow that example instead.  From now on I'll try to be more aware of my impact on the behavior of Hollywood's useless celebrities.