Charlie Sheen: Tiger Bomb

I guess paying good money to see Charlie Sheen's mid-life crisis...er...psychological breakdown...er...bad Hunter S. Thompson impression live-and-in person didn't turn out to be too funny after all.

Sheen thrives on opposition, but how do you maintain your aggressive, pseudo-populist stance when the antagonist isn’t a studio chieftain or a holier-than-thou TV reporter but an army of working stiffs? The rebel yell inevitably became a schoolmarmish rebuke. Yes, my friends, the man who bragged about “banging seven-gram rock” chided the audience for being disruptive. Nothing apparently gets this wild child more steamed than a roomful of people all talking at the same time.

The funniest line all night came from someone seated behind me who hollered at the top of his lungs that the show had scared him straight. From now on, he promised, he would just say “no!” Clearly, for him, Sheen’s act was a “this is your brain on drugs” object lesson.

As Johnny Rotten once sneered at the audience during the final moments of the last Sex Pistols concert: "Ah-ha-ha...Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night."