The show was really a classic version of the comedian who fails to catch fire and bombs out. But in Charlie’s case, there’s a second dynamic at work. His show is supposed to be about zinging, winning, laying out the lethal truth, and as soon as he started to betray that promise, people in the audience didn’t just turn against him. In a funny way, they “became” Charlie Sheen, turning the same venom on him that he once turned on the lamestream media. It’s as if, in putting on such a feeble show, he’d become part of what we were supposed to be in solidarity with him for attacking. By the end, the crowd was like the Hollywood horde in Day of the Locust, rising up to destroy the cult of celebrity it worships…

You know a performer is in trouble when his hecklers are funnier than he is. I went to see Charlie Sheen at Radio City because I’ve been fascinated by his ranting-outside-the-box media blitz, and because I do think, given the right setting, that he can be a witty and truthful bomb-thrower. But I didn’t get one honest laugh out of his hour of lamely convoluted self-love — that is, until near the end, when the jeers were mounting, the people were already streaming up the aisles in bored contempt, and a guy a few rows in back of me yelled, with one of those full-throttle arena-rattling shouts, “This is the worst thing I’ve seen, ever!” A statement of pure opinionated passion, and not necessarily all that funny, until, a moment later, with the kind of timing that only a born heckler can muster, he added, and at top volume: “This is worse than Chernobyl!” No one there, including Charlie, could have said it better.