NEW YORK (AP) - With “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA” and his “fire-breathing fists,” Charlie Sheen has practically invented a new language with his rants and ramblings.
And while it may not rate an entry in Webster’s, the sitcom star’s batty, blustering poetry has resounded in social media. Sheen gained 1 million Twitter followers in just 25 hours and 17 minutes _ record time, according to Guinness World Records, which keeps track of such obscure achievements and had not previously crowned a champion in that particular category.
His unique lexicon grows daily, spreading rapidly over the Internet and onto T-shirts. On “The Alex Jones Show,” he said he has “poetry in my fingertips,” and added: “Most of the time _ and this includes naps _ I’m an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air.”
He has frequently repeated his most famous sayings _ “winning,” “tiger blood” _ like trademarked catch phrases. Early Thursday, he announced his latest slogan _ er, “fastball” _ with more hype than a CBS promotion for his show, “Two and a Half Men.”
“Ready for my next fastball, world?” he wrote on Twitter. “PLAN BETTER Applies to everything where an excuse now sits. Try it. U won’t be wrong. Ever.”
Sheenspeak could be considered a demented combination of William S. Burroughs’ beat musings and those Chuck Norris jokes in which the ’80s action star is inflated to mythic proportions.
“I am on a drug,” Sheen told ABC. “It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off, and your children will weep over your exploded body.”
Sheen has said his former party exploits made Frank Sinatra and Mick Jagger look like “droopy-eyed armless children.” He has called himself “battle-tested bayonets.” And he’s said he’s riding the “tsunami of media … on a mercury surfboard.”
Glossaries have sprung up to help keep track of Sheen’s vivid verbiage, which he has spewed consistently during his feud with the studio and producers who shut down “Two and a Half Men” because of his erratic behavior. CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves has said the series’ future is uncertain.
The question of whether Sheen’s bizarre bravado is a ploy, a sign of mental-health problems or a combination of both has grown more urgent as it has encompassed his private life. The actor’s estranged wife, Brooke Mueller Sheen, has claimed Sheen threatened to cut her head off, among other things. Their twin toddlers were removed from Sheen’s home Tuesday night.
Despite the accusations, Sheen’s ramblings have gone a long way toward endearing him to some of the public. The Twitter analysis firm Research.ly has found that positive sentiment for Sheen online far outweighs the negative.
Online, his best sayings have been compiled into lists, compared with the meandering speeches of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, substituted into New Yorker and Family Circus cartoons, added as subtitles to pictures of cute animals, put to song and remixed, and mashed-up with his scene from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Though the 45-year-old Sheen hasn’t previously been widely known to be lyrical, he has penned a book of poetry before: 1990’s “A Peace of My Mind,” with illustrations by director Adam Rifkin. It’s out-of-print, but GQ located a copy and has been publishing excerpts.
One verse: “A night of drink/ A night of hate/ A night as dark/ As last night’s date.”
For his tweets, Sheen built a following much faster than Ashton Kutcher, who had been on Twitter for months when the actor won his much-publicized race with CNN to 1 million followers in 2009. Kutcher now has about 6.4 million followers, while Sheen was approaching 1.4 million Thursday night.
Sheen, who has called social media a “cash cow,” seems likely to profit from his instant Web stardom, though he has not done so yet. He is being advised by the startup company Ad.ly, which helps celebrities earn money in endorsements on social media.
He already has at least one grateful business _ a dairy whose owner told TMZ he’s been flooded with calls since Sheen posted a photo of himself holding a bottle of the company’s chocolate milk. The American Red Cross tried some cross-marketing of its own with this tweet: “We may not collect (hashtag)tigerblood, but we know our donors & volunteers have fierce passion for doing good!”
Wherever his words take him, Sheen won’t fail for lack of positivity. As he’s said: “Can’t is the cancer of happen.”
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Online:
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-My-Mind-Charlie-Sheen/dp/9991300007
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