Leave Charlie Sheen Alone

There's an awful lot of scary stuff going on in the world right now and I need a break. Thank God for Charlie Sheen. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type.)

As you may or may not be aware, Charlie Sheen is in rehab. And from what I can tell, he is none too happy about it. I base that solely on a text message that Charlie apparently sent to a one Dylan Howard, the senior editor at RadarOnline which read: "People don't seem to get it.... Guy can't have a great time and do his job also? Bunch of turds." Is it sad that it doesn't surprise me at all that Charlie Sheen has the number of the senior editor at RadarOnline? It's certainly not shocking, that's for sure.

Charlie Sheen is a party animal. He seems to like to work during the week and then turn his weekends into one long, drug fueled, stripper fest with a bunch of mattress actresses. But then on Monday or whenever it is that he is supposed to be back on the set of "Two and a Half Men", he's there! He puts in his time, he does his job and everything is fine. Yeah, not so fast.

"Two and a Half Men" is gold to CBS. That show nets them millions and millions. And they don't want anything to happen to their cash cow. Unfortunately, the cow likes to really party it up in the barn with all of his hooker heifers. This apparently has people worried for his "well-being". And really, in this situation, I don't know if they should get all up in arms about it.

See, some people can really party and still manage to live. Have you seen Keith Richards lately? He looks awful, but you can't tell me that thirty years ago, folks would have bet money that he'd be alive and kickin' it today. No way. But some folks are just like that. The human body is amazing. So many people think that the body is some precious little snowflake, but in reality, the human body kicks ass. It can take an awful lot of abuse. And Charlie Sheen seems pretty bent on seeing what his limits actually are.

On the one hand, I understand why people are concerned about Charlie Sheen. It would appear that he is on the path of self-destruction. On the other hand, as long as he can do his job and function, does it matter? I mean, no one wants to see anyone self destruct. I get that. But is he hurting anyone besides himself? Does he have children? Yes? OK, then. That's not good. If he was child free, I'd be free of criticism (other than the fact that someone with that much money should really find a better use for it other than hookers and blow). But he's not, so let's not overlook that.

Considering that the show is about a drunken womanizer (which is basically what Charlie Sheen is in real life), I don't know that CBS should really be messing with a good thing. After all, the show does seem funnier when you're aware of the back story that goes on in real life. Let him do what he does and leave him alone.

You Can Eat That? Part Deux

It's really hard to know where to start with this one. I guess I'll start with the obvious and say that I wouldn't have expected this to be anywhere but in the south. Personally, I would have guessed Flori-duh. You can imagine my surprise (but not complete disbelief) when I learned that it actually took place in Kentucky. Apparently, Kentucky has its own special way of working out differences between folks that involve a lot of alcohol and a twenty dollar lawnmower.

Meet Clem. (His real name is Harvey Westmoreland, but I have a hard time calling him anything but Clem when I read this story. It was between Clem and Cleetus, but I think I'll make Cleetus his brother.)

Apparently, Clem's brother, Cleetus, had been doing some work for a one Troy Holt. Now, it would seem that before this incident these guys were friends. I use the term friends loosely, as I don't have any friends that get involved in these sorts of hijinks. Troy and his friend, a one James Hill, called up Clem and asked him to come over to where Cleetus was working for Troy. (He was cleaning out stalls of some sort. I'm guessing that there are horses involved. Fortunately, that's as far as their involvement goes, however. Those horses should consider themselves lucky that they didn't get dragged into this.) And according to Clem, "They called and wanted me to come around there and when I got there, I realized they were already drunk." Of course they were already drunk. You don't get a story like this without copious amounts of alcohol.

For some reason, after Clem gets there, Troy offers to buy his lawnmower from him for $250. I don't know if the lawnmower was already there or if Clem regularly travels on his lawnmower, but drunken Troy wanted to buy his mower. Well, Clem had only paid $20 for the mower, so he thought that he was getting quite the deal and agreed to it. The way things develop after this are a little cloudy, but apparently, drunken Troy felt like he was getting ripped off. Little did he realize that he was the one who was ripping himself off, as he is the one who offered up the $250 for the mower in the first place (which I was imagining to be a push mower, but was apparently was the mower pictured here). That's when, according to Clem, "He thought I was trying to cheat him. One thing led to another, and before I knowed it, there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire." I think that things were a little haywire before the guns and knives came out, but I see his point.

Side note: I'm going to start throwing that phrase into conversation and see if anyone notices. Before I knowed it. I think it'll catch on. What? You don't? People everywhere are saying "Run and tell that, homeboy!" I think "before I knowed it" has a shot.

So, where was I? Oh, right. The haywire. It's at this point that Mr. Holt and Mr. Hill allegedly cut off Clem's beard and (wait for it) forced him to eat it. Now, I'm not exactly sure how that would happen. First of all, what are they cutting it off with? The knives that they pulled? OK, I guess I get that. But like, did they make him eat all of it? From the pictures, Clem has a pretty good sized beard. Had he been forced to eat all of it, it would have definitely constituted a meal. I don't know how much beard I could possibly eat, though I'd imagine that it would be a pretty sizable amount if I had a gun pointed at me.

This is probably the sort of caper that could only occur when alcohol is involved. Who in their sober mind would force someone to eat their own beard? How do you force someone to eat their own beard? It's as bizarre as it is disgusting. And something tells me that there is a little more to this story that ol' Clem there isn't saying. I don't know what it is, but there has to be something else involved here. Mr. Hill and Mr. Holt are to be sentenced on Tuesday. Perhaps after that, they might be able to speak up a little bit about what happened and fill in some of the blanks here.