You may have thought that troubled former "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen doesn't listen to any voices except the warrior shouts in his own head. But the actor appeared to have listened to his audience when he took the stage Sunday night for the second stop on his My Violent Torpedo of Truth/ Defeat Is Not an Option Tour.
After bombing hard during his opening show in Detroit the night before and getting booed off the stage when his wandering production went off the rails, Sheen changed up the format Sunday in Chicago and gave the audience more of what they were looking for: dish on his chaotic personal life. According to ABC News, Sheen ditched his comedic opening act and the rambling multimedia presentation and switched to an interview-style format, with an MC asking him questions about his life and career for 90 minutes.
He talked about the pleasure he gets from his "goddesses" and called former "Two and a Half" co-star Jon Cryer a "rock star." He tried to calm down the crowd when they heckled the less appreciative audience in Detroit and shouted "Detroit sucks!" while waiting for Sheen to take the stage. He regaled the crowd of 3,600 at the Chicago Theatre with the tale of the first time he tried drugs; he talked about his marriages and his legal problems and explained why he prefers to pay for sex. "I have millions to blow, and I ran out of stuff to buy," he said. Smoking throughout the show, Charlie lamented his dad Martin Sheen's advice to pass up "The Karate Kid" in favor of the chance to appear in "Predator 2," never mind, as CNN pointed out, that "Predator 2" came out six years after "Kid" and Charlie did not appear in it.
Sheen reportedly stayed up all night on the bus ride from Detroit to Chicago retooling the show.
He ended the night with a poem, which read, "I stand before you oh captain oh captain to most humbly praise you for this radical ripple this single cast stone in the stagnant puddle that is the known universe. Your weapon of choice is wordplay via Dr. Seuss play."
It remains to be seen how the rest of the 20-city tour will do, with reports that a number of shows are suffering from poor ticket sales in light of the bad reviews of the Detroit appearance.