GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #228: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD AND SOCIAL MEDIA

I forgot who said it, but I remember hearing someone talking about the difference between contacting celebrities now and contacting them back in the classic Hollywood days. Way back when, you had to physically write a letter, be it by hand or typewriter, and you had to snail mail it to the studio. There a representative of the celebrity in question would type a phony letter, sign a picture for the celebrity and send the lot back to the fan. Now all you have to do is send them a tweet on Twitter. Sometimes you get ignored, but sometimes you get lucky and they respond.


Whoever mentioned this didn't take it to the next logical step: what if classic Hollywood had social media?


You fuckin' KNOW that Valentino would be sending out dick pics via DM. I would love to see Errol Flynn's drunken midnight tweets. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Duke would outrage millions by the far right things he'd post. Everyone else would probably be equally outraged by Bogie's views. I like to think that Rock Hudson would have been a gay rights activist. Perhaps someone would have been able to see Marilyn Monroe's problems and would have saved her life. Chaplin wouldn't be considered a genius today; he'd have been busted for his very active interest in underage girls instead.


Holy shit, could you imagine if Sinatra Periscoped his legendary parties? Jane Russell's Instagram would be on fucking fire. What if the Hollywood 10 protested on their Facebook pages? A lot of those guys were talented, and I'm pretty sure they could come up with just the perfect barb to hurl in McCarthy's direction.


Extend it to musicians. Images of John Bonham trashing hotel rooms would be all over the internet. Jimi's sex tape would be all over Pornhub (like it is today!). John Lennon and Paul McCartney sniping each other on Facebook. (And I'd bet even money that there would have been a Lennon/Ono sex tape. Maybe there is, but it hasn't surfaced yet.)


How about writers? Am I the only one who would have loved Jack Kerouac's blog? Or how about F. Scott Fitzgerald's? I can see Hunter S. Thompson posting videos of him shooting at high grade explosives on YouTube. Could you imagine the wonderfully depressing and soul-bearing posts Sylvia Plath would have sent out into the world? Shit, I know it's earlier than everyone else I've listed, but goddammit! I think Mark Twain would have been the Patton Oswalt of his time.


Presidents! Do you think JFK would be able to control himself with Snapchat nudes? Nixon wouldn't have needed Watergate to destroy him; he'd just need to do drunken live posts on Facebook. Everyone would have known about FDR's disability. Everyone would follow Teddy Roosevelt in much the same way everyone follows Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan when they're hanging out together, doing knight shit.


If you don't think all of this would be crazy, let me remind you that this happened recently. Yes, Charlie Sheen, star of MAJOR LEAGUE, is saying that he'd pitch for the Indians if they asked him to. Shit doesn't get more surreal than that.


Unless you give social media to classic Hollywood. Let's build a time machine, shall we?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #153: WILD THING!

A while back, when I was Future Booze Jesus, I was asked if Charlie Sheen really was "winning." Considering new information, we now know he was diagnosed HIV positive around the time of the whole meltdown. Would that change my opinion?


That presents an interesting question.


First of all, the fact that Charlie is HIV positive is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. He only went public because some scumbag was blackmailing him. Considering that, there is really only ONE question: how responsible was Charlie with this information? In other words, did he tell women he slept with that he had HIV? Did he wear a condom? Or were there other precautions taken?


He says he's a responsible sort when it comes to this. I read that as him having confessed to his condition to sexual partners and taking precautions to make sure that his partners don't get it. It sounds really good, and I hope it's true.


At the same time, and this is JUST MY OPINION AND NOT FACT, he strikes me as the kind of guy who would rawdog it no matter what. If this is true, then I really need to revise what I said before.


Yet he's been sober for a fairly long time. If he says he was responsible, I think I believe him. Matt Lauer tried to rat-fuck him on his alcohol intake, even though he said it was every once in a while, as compared to a drink every once in a while.


Again, it is ONLY MY OPINION AND NOT FACT, but I believe that Charlie drinks more than he says. But I don't think it's enough to get him fucked up so that he won't take his meds and so that he'll rawdog a girl without telling her about his diagnosis. That's some hefty shit, and speaking as someone who can routinely be drunk as fuck, I don't believe it. There was a time that I suspected that I might have Hep C, and I warned any potential sexual partner about it. And if they were OK with that, I would not have sex without a condom. Luckily, I didn't have it, but as drunk as I was, I never took chances with someone else's life.


Speaking as someone who is fucked up, I think I believe Charlie. So let's calm down the witch hunt. If it turns out that he knew about it and lied about it, that's a different story, but from my perspective right now: this is not our business. It sucks that he had to go live with this info because of his blackmailers (could YOU deal with $10M worth of blackmail?). As it stands, I don't think we have enough info, but what we have so far means it's his business and the rest of us can go fuck off.


So let's let Wild Thing go for now until we have something that really, truly condemns him. Because from what I can tell, he's an angry man who gets fucked up and likes to lay pipe. The dude has been very honest with us in the past. I have no reason to think he wouldn't be honest now. Until we have something else, that's the end of the discussion.