Some of my friends out outright offended that my wife and I went to see the "Torpedo of Truth" tour staring the infamous Charlie Sheen. Though I feel I owe them no apology, their snarkly self-superiority based comments have triggered a response from me. Here are the six reasons I went.
1) My wife and I don't really participate in the popular culture. People talk about shows like American idol, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, etc..., other than the names and roughly what takes place on these shows, we don't really know nor care what they are about. Sometimes that is a bit isolating, so occasionally we will dive into the popular culture to see what is going on. I figured there was no better opportunity than the Torpedo of Truth. From that vantage point I could see and gauge exactly how low our society is going. And to be honest, I was disappointed. I thought it would be much lower. Don't get me wrong, there were many immature folks who came to the show to see a train wreck, but over all, including the Irish mafia gentlemen that sat in front of us, all were well behaved. They did not riot. They did not throw food. No cars were torched outside of the Fox theater. They just booed and then got back into their yuppie cars and went back to their suburb. Rude and obnoxious yes, the roman rabble that all the gloom and doom sayers say lurk just a few crisis's away awaiting to plunge the country into a Mad Max wasteland when their welfare checks bounce, no. Not saying that one day isn't in the future, but if this show was a metric of the time table, it is further out than the Sh%t Hits The Fan blog site indicates.
2) What does it mean when someone is incensed that my wife and I went to the Torpedo of Truth Charlie Sheen show? It means that they identify strongly, and correctly, that Charlie Sheen's self destruction tour represents a vile turn for our culture. Step back a moment. Why would they think that? Because they know it is. How do they know? Because they participate in this culture. They know about 2.5 men. They know about Charlie Sheen. They know or speculate about the coke whores and the icons of self degradation that are elevated continuously in our society. The good part is they are repulsed by these things and take a stand by reviling those like us who appear to be some how granting legitimacy to this horrid under belly of our culture by going to an event like the Torpedo of Truth. Maybe they are correct, but there is a bad that goes along with this. What bad? The bad of knowing. Yep. They are enraged because they have paid attention to Charlie Sheen's antics. The know which slut of the week TMZ is stalking. They might let the channel changer rest and pause their channel surfing for a few minutes, shaking their head all the while of course, as they watch as the latest Hollywood slut gets in trouble again. Me...I don't. It is impossible to escape it utterly, but I really, really don't pay attention to this, well, daily crap our society produces. I'm less offended because I don't waste time pondering it, tracking it, getting bent out of shape over it. I simply don't participate in it (as much as possible, no one is completely free of its taint). So to all you who are enraged and stunned that I would go to something like this, please understand: look in the mirror first before flipping my wife and I the metaphorical bird, because I bet on a daily basis you come in contact with the filth of our culture and on some level participate in it daily more than my wife and I do. You can rail and be angry about our cultural filth, but you know about it, which means it is on your radar. It really, really not on mine. At least not on a detail level. Why is it on yours? So you can combat it? Or do you get a perverse entertainment from it's stain? Not for me to answer, but I will call out your sh*t on it if you keep poking at mine.
3) People are really appalled that my wife and I would spend money on something like this for the above reason. True, my wife and I should absolutely be in total austerity mode right now. No excuses. Except perhaps this one. We are so f**ked at this point a few bucks here or there won't matter much. Will it matter some? Yes. Will it matter a lot? No. We tried squeezing diamonds out of our @ss, but every once in a while you have to say, "what the f*ck." AQ could pop one of their 7 nukes in the US at any time, the euro soon to be followed by the dollar will likely crash in the next 18 months, yellow stone could blow (yeah this is the type of stuff that is on my radar). A tornado could hit and drive a piece of straw through my brain. I don't know what is going to happen. I do know that when the sh*t hits the fan, either for my wife and I as a couple, or for the country/world/state as a whole, we won't be spending time with most people we know and love now. I'm constantly biting my tongue to keep from over emphasizing to my wife that she needs to see her family and for both of us to get out of our shell more and spend time with friends as opportunities to do so are finite. We took my wife's brothers to the the show with us. We had a good time. That was worth the little bit of cash we through down. Someone joked (perhaps seriously though I don't think so) that we should have bought some silver instead. Good advice, perhaps really good advice, but the money saved by bypassing the Torpedo of Truth would have gone to some other of the hundreds of expenses we face, not to anything that will keep it's earthy value right now. Sometimes you have to invest in relationships and intangibles as well as material things that will eventually fade.
4) This was a cultural event, and for better or for worse, I figured it might be nice to see what was up and to say we were there. Like it or not, it is a conversation piece. :) You wouldn't be reading this right now if you didn't agree overtly or by action.
5) What pushed me over the edge to see the Torpedo of Truth was a social phenomenon that I will call the awareness movement. I was dragged to a Walmart by some friends of ours who wanted to buy something cheap. I'd personally rather just cut a check to the Army of the People's Republic of China rather than shop at Walmart, but while there as an observer I heard something that is anecdotal to this awareness movement. Some kid, probably about 20, was having a political conversation with some friends about world events that went like this. "They used to call it a conspiracy theory, sure doesn't look to much like a conspiracy theory now." All over alternative paradims of reference, what the mainstream calls "conspiracy theories" are gaining credence. This is fascinating to me. Why? Because it is indicative of how the main stream institutions who support the social religion of the good old U.S.A. have burned up so much street credit that they are becoming irrelevant. Non mainstream points of view that the elites previously were able to relegate to and tar as conspiracy theories are gaining acceptance. Know when else in history this has happened? During the Wiemar Republic right before the Nazi's took over. While as someone who thinks the mainstream press is controlled and generally full of cr*p, I fear greatly it's breaking down. Why? For the same reason that Obama voters found out the hard way that "change" in and of itself is not always a positive good. Numerous new meme's and ways of thinking are coalescing around us, and the end synthesis is not guaranteed to be better then our current cultural religion. I track this. And guess what? Charlie Sheen is part of this. He is part of this because of his association with a conspiracy theorist named Alex Jones. Charlie Sheen, after getting fired(?) from 2.5 men went on Alex Jones show and ranted for about 45 minutes mostly uncharacteristically uninterrupted. During Sheen's rant he dropped all sorts of choice sound bites that were eagerly gobbled up by the "mainstream" media. Alex Jones even showed up on the view to defend Charlie, but took just as much time pimping his site infowars.com as he did defending Charlie. Then O'Reily ripped on Alex, though not naming him by name, for defending Sheen. During the ripping process infowars.com was thrown out by name by O'Reily himself. Why is this relevant? Because all sorts of people have theorized for years that Alex Jones is the controlled opposition. As awareness grows that our current mainstream worldview is severely lacking as we compare what is really happening in the world to the story we are told is happening, could it be that the puppet masters behind the scenes are pigging backing or may fave even manufactured Charlie Sheen's psychotic escapades to tether Alex Jones on to his PR and help the masses be exposed to an info source that they control? I doubt it. But as a follow of both Alex Jones and the growing awareness as social phenomenons worth tracking, I was innately curious to see if Alex Jones would be linked somehow or if Charlie Sheen would espouse more conspiracy theories on his tour. If either happened it would be significant, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but significant none the less. I wanted to be there first hand to see for myself what would happen, so I was. Doesn't this fascinate you? Are you aware of it? This growing awareness that the world is different then what is being sold by our cultural institutions? I am, and for me going to this Torpedo of Truth gig was part of my exploration.
6) I'd never been to the Fox Theater, and every time I've been to down town Detroit I've had a good time. It is like hanging out in some awesome places amid the burnt out ruins of a post apocalyptic city. I was itching for another trip down there, the Torpedo of Truth provided a nice opportunity. Again, don't know how many of those opportunities are left. The Fox theater was awesome. If for nothing else I enjoyed seeing it. Overall my wife, her bothers, and myself had a good time even if the Torpedo turned out to be a dud. With the problems we face we don't get to say that every day. We don't ask for pity as an excuse for what we did, but I will use it as a shield. Don't like it, F*ck off.
Thus, no apologies. Thanks for the financial advice. Thanks for letting us know in your opinion it was dumb because it gave credence to cultural rot that is in your face every day that my wife an I by choice most likely are far more inoculated from than most as we most often coast by without being aware of. Turn off your idiot box, quit listening to the crap you call news, do battle daily in the infosphere promoting the ideas that you likely only vaguely espouse to the like minded, and then throw your grenades at me.
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