April 9, 2011
The most common question I got asked from people after I told them that I was going to the Charlie Sheen show at Radio City Music Hall tonight was: “Why?”
And my stock answer was and is: “Why the fuck not?”
How many times will you be able to see Charlie Sheen at Radio City Music Hall? Probably never again and I’ve always lived for these one of a lifetime moments. Will the crowd be scary? Probably, but sometimes you must face your fear and see what’s happening outside of your circle of comfort. So, it’s off to the Charlie Sheen show we go.
Show business kids making movies of themselves you know they don't give a fuck about anybody else.
While the poor people sleepin' with the shade on the light...
While the poor people sleepin', all the stars come out at night.
After closing time, At the Guernsey Fair...
I detect the El Supremo, from the room at the top of the stairs.
Well I've been around the world, and I've been in the Washington Zoo...
And in all my travels as the facts unravel, I've found this to be true...
They got the house on the corner, with the rug inside.
They got the booze they need, all that money can buy.
They got the shapely bods, they got the Steely Dan T-shirt, And for the coup-de-gras, they're outrageous.
Show business kids making movies of themselves...
You know they don't give a fuck about anybody else.*
(*"Show Biz Kids" by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.)
Charlie Sheen’s Show
What’s the mood and vibration of being at a Charlie Sheen show at Radio City Music Hall? Imagine all your worst fears have come to life: Guys with bicycle grease in their curly-Q, everywhich-way but loose hair-do’s, outfitted in muscle shirts and K-Mart designer jeans coupled with the learning-impaired women who love them. Badly bleached bottle-blondes giggling loudly in t-shirts sized too small to cover their Kentucky Fried Chicken figures, wearing too-tight, golden-stitched acid-washed jeans over asses that are bigger than a fin on a ‘57 Chevy. Muscle-bound bros drunkenly high-slapping each other and an endless parade of people wearing $50 “Winning” t-shirts shuffling listlessly around like chimpanzees who are two seconds away from hurling their own feces at you. And to make things letter-perfect, everyone is staring zombie-like at their cell phones and Blackberry devices.
It all came in perspective to me about ten minutes after the “show” started. I took a photo or two, but wanted a close up shot. I walked up to the stage and tried to get a photo up close, so I walked up to the side of the stage. All of a sudden I heard someone yelling at me.
“Hey asshole, get away from the stage,” I heard. I turned around and faced a man who, for the life of me, looked like the human version of a chili bean. He was really short, heavily tanned and very round with slicked-back hair and he was screaming at me.
“My wife can’t see, get away from the stage, you fucking asshole!” He shouted while waving a fist at me.
I looked over at his wife and saw a woman in a wheelchair.
She looked fragile and thin with unwashed brunette hair cascading down to her shoulders. She just looked sad and brow-beaten, like someone who had been shoved into situations with no way out for her entire life. I sensed that she’d give anything to be anywhere but in Radio City Music Hall with her little bean of a husband screaming at some guy with a camera blocking their view of the horror of the Charlie Sheen show. Her mouth wasn’t smiling or frowning, it was just a dispassionate shade of hopelessness. It was as if the color grey had come to life. Her eyes looked blank and beyond tired, like she was incapable of crying and probably had to make an effort to blink. She made me feel ten degrees of sadness and I kind of wished I was dead. I really was sorry I had seen her. She was that kind of person. And I didn’t blame her, sometimes life is just so unfair and you have to catch an unfortunate glimpse of it to make you appreciate your own lot in life.
I wanted to scoop her up and take her back to my apartment and feed her mescaline and vodka until she had forgotten the hopeless life I imagined she had led and ended up with an angry chili bean for a caretaker and a rotten husband. But that wasn’t going to happen. I’ve long lost the number of mescaline dealers and didn’t feel like trouncing her cheap, little chili bean of a husband. I’m not a fighter, but that just would’ve been too easy. I’m also not a bully. Live and let live. I did what I had to do.
I apologized for being in the way and did what she probably would’ve given twelve of her ten of her fingertips away to do: I ran out of Radio City Music Hall and came home and drank a bazillion beers.
Further reading: NY Post, NY Daily News, Daily Mail and NJ.com.
You also might like: LSD, Buddy Sorrell and Sparklers.
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