After Bombing Big-Time, Sheen 'Wins' in Chicago

Charlie Sheen may have totally bombed in Detroit, but with a few changes, he managed to score a standing ovation last night in Chicago. Gone was the "disjointed exercise in hero worship" from the first night of his Violent Torpedo of Truth tour, writes Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune. In its place was Sheen, fielding questions from an interviewer, "chain-smoking, wearing a shirt borrowed from a guy in the front rows" ... "bantering with the crowd, dropping the F-word, and actually seeming to satisfy, if not amaze, concertgoers."

The result? The boos were nearly entirely gone. The Chicago show shifted the tone "from epic self-aggrandizement to a more casual, at times even likable, persona." Did it justify the $80 ticket price? Not exactly, but "it got the job done. And it gave the tour—which looked doomed after Saturday—a format it can work with going forward." (Even so, the New York Daily News reports that at least one audience member called out "train wreck"; noted Chicago film critic Richard Roeper was not impressed.) Click to read more about Sheen's show, which included some nasty comments about one of his babymommas. (More Charlie Sheen stories.)