Sheen's Giant Bomb of Suck

Gorgeous early spring day here, topping out around 60 degrees, though quite windy at the park. We went there this morning (getting out of the house by 11:15 AM on a weekend counts as a victory of warlockian proportions for us). After about 15 minutes at Wilson Park--one of Kate's happy places, and Eva is quickly taking after her--my hands were cold, and I was quietly looking for excuses to leave. It didn't help that I was looking wistfully around at the play area itself--a small section of the park as a whole--and the people in it.

Wilson Park is the center of children's, and even adults', outdoor sports in North Kingstown. There are four tennis courts, three or four baseball/softball diamonds, and room for up to five soccer/lacrosse fields. (It was a tykes' lacrosse game there last spring which gave Kate and me the lacrosse bug...yeah, we've really followed up on that.) In addition to the athletic playing fields is a giant sandlot with several climbing jungle-gyms and a few swingsets. It's becoming Eva's little empire, since she's not used to sand.

The ground around our home is pretty hard-packed, with well-established grass, and a few thickets of trees or else hedges, and of course the paved driveways and road. There's no sand, and very little diggable dirt to speak of. So sand is still a new thing to the little girl, and she hugely enjoys just picking it up in her hands and throwing it into the air. She was doing that today, and tackling a few of the jungle gyms, as I surveyed the park and the many families, not unlike the three of us, taking the sunny spring morning outdoors as well, and wondering how long any of this will exist.

Of course we all have fits of thought driven by surges of emotion, which come and go like waves up and down a seashore. Still, I consider how the ultra-rich are doing their very best, out of sight, to terminate democracy and gather all available wealth to themselves, and I wonder for how much longer towns like North Kingstown will be able to provide even simple things like parks for the general public. An irrational thought, you might say, a weak theory of conspiracy baked too long until it's hardened into a cinder. But I read about the state-by-state lobbying groups funded by the likes of Charles and David Koch, at the state level pushing savage policies attacking the working class, such as the abolition of collective bargaining rights for public employees, and in Maine, even the abolition of child labor laws. It's hard not to read this news and feel the kind of foreboding which makes it difficult to keep food down.

And there's the case of Fox News, run by another billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, and wholly dominated by his persona and outlook (as well as that of his hand-picked deputy Roger Ailes). Fox News, including every one of its news and opinion hosts, has a slender allegiance--at best--to the facts, and often an outright antipathy, as the network as a whole acts to forward a libertarian viewpoint often blurring with anarchy. (Bill O'Reilly proudly touts his belief that the moon has nothing to do with tides. It's worth wondering, if you watch O'Reilly or any other Fox host, how rudeness, insult and the display of willful ignorance have come to be so prominent in major American media.) In short, Fox News is not legitimate news. But in the words of the immortal Sheen, at the moment they seem to be on the side that's winning.

That is as far as I'll go into social and political issues now, as this is a family blog. But a deep and growing fear for the future of my country is very much a part of my thinking these days, and it's not something I can altogether avoid when I write. I believe in some collective sacrifice on the part of every individual for the sake of a community, whether on the local level, or for states, or for our country, or above all the whole planet. Paying a fair amount of taxes and doing perhaps some physical service for the community are certainly part. The further we turn to an attitude of securing only our own benefit, the more we destroy this nation we grew up in and are protected by.

So these thoughts, and fingers turning white in the chilly breeze, had me wanting to leave the park well before Eva did. Sometimes I'm the crump in the family, the one who backs out of a thing because I'm not feeling up to it. I don't even have the perfectly good reason, like Kate, of being pregnant to just check out of commission for a day. With me, the trouble is usually in my head. My body just follows along.

Except for yesterday, when I did a bit of work for Kate's boss Cheryl, spring cleanup of their yard. Cheryl and her husband have a very nice log cabin--a genuine log structure, not a frame house with log-looking siding--on a small pond. (The small pond has the look to me of a kettle hole, a big hole in the land left by a melting chunk of ice as the glaciers melted back. If the glacier had been floating on the ocean, like Arctic ice, such melting chunks would have become icebergs. Over land, they fall onto the ground, rivers of meltwater pile sand and gravel all around them, and they gradually melt to leave huge holes where the ice had been--kettle holes.)

So Cheryl and her husband live on the shore of a kettle hole, surrounded by oak trees. And with all the terraces and retaining walls around their place, there are plenty of spots where the wind eddies around and drops oak leaves. It seems the oak leaves from half the pond's shoreline end up in Cheryl's yard. Eight inches thick in places, wet and starting to mulch. I can tell you, raking, pitchforking and then hauling these things away in a tarp was a tougher full-body workout than anything I'd done at the Y in the last two years. I practically had to drag myself back to the car when I finished (for the day--I'm going back next Saturday), with sore quads and hamstrings, sore hips, extremely sore shoulders, and wanting to go to sleep. This was the kind of whole-body fatigue and soreness that makes it painful to roll over in bed.

So this morning, the blahs were probably 65% in my mind, but still a good 35% was post-strain soreness still, and wanting just to flop down in a comfortable chair, dig into a good book, and start thinking about something. Standing in a park with the wind whistling through my fingers just got me onto a mean path of thought that took me to the bleak place I described just above. This morning, I suppose my body led my mind.

As for the reading, I'm back into the history of the petroleum industry. I'm taking a break for a bit from philosophy and the whatever-it-is you'd call Finnegans Wake. If reading Kant is like using a pickaxe to get through a bed of coal, reading the Wake is like blasting through granite, and reading some history is like digging in sand. Compared to the first two, it's practically a vacation. Besides, it has me thinking about yet another writing project (beyond the Deepwater Horizon project) that I'd like to embark on.

Meanwhile, on the way to the park this morning, we listened to a bit of sports radio. Kate and I have the rough policy that the driver picks the radio station--common sense enough, though when the family travels together I usually drive, so that means I dominate the radio.

I adore sports talk. I fell in love with it in the fall of 2005, when I was living in North Kingstown and taking classes up at Harvard, and I would drive up and back once a week, and for the two-hour trip started listening to those guys yelling and screaming about local teams all day. Only, by and large, listening to the noonday and afternoon hosts, I found them to be pretty reasonable guys, by and large, though certainly pushing certain issues which would get a response out of listeners (such as critizing an underperforming player or team).

The real trick of a successful host is to successfully manage the callers, who range from very knowledgeable to idiots oblivious to the facts. Entertaining shows draw many callers, and of course a slew of regulars who don't mind spending an hour a day on hold just to talk on the radio for 30 to 120 seconds. (I confess to having called in five or six times, once to advocate that the Sox sign Barry Bonds to a one-year contract. If the Red Sox, after 2004, were viewed as the Evil Empire Lite, well, why not eliminate the "Lite" part? Anyway.)

So I like sports talk radio. We listened this morning for about half the trip out to the park, before I changed the station to one of the pop-dance stations that Katie likes and I despise so much (she says sports radio puts her to sleep, so I try to listen to it at the start of our trips to and from Maine). The weekend shows tend to be pretty dull, I admit, since the top-line hosts have the days off, and the majority of games are in progress. So this morning the guys were talking about Charlie Sheen.

I'm not exactly a pop culture maven. I grew up on pop and rock music, checked out of rap, and have been more or less unaware of new groups and performers since 1995. (I think U2 is a modern Rolling Stones--great lead singer, good lead guitarist, plus two guys--and I believe that Led Zeppelin might never be approached for musicality, once they narrowly edged the Beatles in that category.)

I resolutely ignore reality TV, since it's more contrived than anything, and I have a visceral dislike for people intentionally making fools of themselves for the sake of attention. (Physical comedy is something else--that requires talent. But people being petulant, violent jerks to one another is simply demeaning, to everyone who participates and watches. Kate watches BrideZillas, and it makes me wish I had an office in another room.)

My reality TV is live sports. Here you've got guys--or women, when I watch skiing or skating--who are among the very best on the planet at what they do, honestly competing. (Okay, some dog it from time to time, and sometimes the refs are questionable, but that still doesn't approach the all-around voyeuristic worthlessness of reality TV.)

I avoid sitcoms for much the same reason--dullwitted characters, with uninspired writing, foundering their way through contrived plots. Though I do watch cartoons, including (occasionally) Dragonball Z. Any watcher of reality TV or sitcoms might want to skewer me for that, but (a) the writing is often better, and (b) at least the ridiculous nature of the cartoons is obvious, not concealed.

I don't want to go into an even longer digression here, but there are two television shows (aside from live games) I do watch: House and Breaking Bad. All I'll say now is that, I'm proud to have introduced Kate to two of her favorite shows and characters: Metalocalypse (and Pickles), and Breaking Bad (and Walter White). She introduced me to House, and has compared me to him on numerous occasions. So every once in a while I play along and walk with a limp.

I've seen, total, maybe ten minutes of Two and a Half Men. It fits perfectly into the category of dullwitted sitcom I so despise. Charlie Sheen has been part of some pretty fun movies--Hot Shots! and Major League come to mind--but I had pretty much no reaction at all to his ongoing role on this show. Of course, it's impossible to navigate to a news website these days without idiotic Lilo-Britney-type gossip prominently getting in the way, so I've seen more than I ever cared to about Sheen's professional meltdown. (I suppose it's been accompanied by a personal meltdown of sorts, but who really knows?)

He got himself fired in spectacular fashion from a very successful TV show, while revealing a huge amount of disgust (concealing even more jealousy?) for the show's creator. During a round of interviews Charlie gave, he let loose with a series of almost inspired quotes, including drinking tiger blood (I hear he's trademarked it and has sold the name rights to a drink manufacturer--PETA will love that), and my favorite, riding the mercury surfboard. (Mercury is liquid at room temperature, though Bill O'Reilly might not be so sure--but in any case, who cares? The idea is too much fun.) Winning, the warlock thing and "defeat is not an option" are much less clever and much more mockable.

So Sheen torched his present job (though there's a small possibility he might have it back next fall), and then arranged a 20-city tour of his new one-man (and two-goddess) tour, the "Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" tour. He might have called it the "Huge Bomb of Suck/Defeat is Highly Likely" tour. The first show occurred last night (April 2), in Detroit, Michigan. Why not on April Fools Day?

Apparently Charlie rambled pointlessly, the audience booed frequently and Sheen at many points derisively mocked those who heckled him, including with the taunt that they'd already given their money to him. Too bad, because he could've really turned this tour into something. Apparently Sheen wrote the whole thing, if you can call it that. That was his first mistake. Furthermore, he goes over the events of his divorce from CBS and subsequent talk-show rampage. That was his second.

I say, Sheen should've hired five or ten good comedy writers to put together a series of vignettes, of comic one- or two-person scenes illustrating various ideas, or really not related to anything at all. The whole show could've had a general thrust in the direction of life as a star, or some of the reality of putting together a weekly show, or something actually new to the audience. You know, something vaguely educational, a comic show about a slice of experience unknown to the people attending.

Rule #1: don't even mention Two and a Half Men, or anyone associated, or CBS, by name. Let any reference be implicit. Rule #2: have a planned, rehearsed series of one-man character vignettes (Sheen could play two guys at once, like one-man-show actors frequently do) that he's rehearsed and knows cold. I think Sheen has the charisma and acting ability to hold a stage for 90 minutes by himself. If he'd followed those two rules, I think this tour might have turned into something pretty successful. As it is, it's likely to end before he wanted it to. I don't see the theaters in cities #10-20 hanging onto such a lame no-show. (Apparently those extremely quick sellouts weren't people going...they were scalpers and secondary ticket agencies, who are now losing lots of money because they can only sell the tickets at a loss.)

Tough luck, Chuck. At least Sarah Palin--another charismatic dope--has a few handlers who know what they're doing.