Dipshit or douche?

Every week we scan the news and gossip blogs for a celebrity or entertainment icon to smackdown. Usually, by Sunday, we know who we are going after. They tend to be obvious choices. This week, we actually had to think about it. It was only when we reviewed our Oscar Live Commentary that we did on Sunday that someone popped out: no, not Mickey Rourke. For the sake of our sanity, we can’t look at that guy anymore and we need to move on.  

          Ben Stiller walked out on stage with Natalie Portman wearing a beard and acted disoriented, inappropriate and generally bombed out of his mind. Of course, he was parodying Joaquin Phoenix who in October of 2008, retired from acting to pursue his career in music. We’re sorry, not just a music career.  He is actively working on becoming a rapper. He performed ‘his music’ in Las Vegas recently to boos and ended his set by falling of the stage. Of course this whole fiasco, including the ‘wave your hand in the air’ part, was caught on film by his best friend Casey Affleck who is making a documentary of the transition from actor to drugged out fool. His appearances on Letterman and anywhere else that will take him have been marked by opiate laced behavior sans the nodding out.

          Many people believe that this is an elaborate, albeit juvenile, punking of the entertainment industry. Our question is this: Who really gives a shit?

          Joaquin you have been chosen for smackdown because you are behaving like a douche bag. You are comporting yourself as someone who has given in to the poppy and needs some detox and methadone to maintain. No, you have never starred on a Nickelodeon show or voiced an animated character but regardless, you are a role model. A few years ago you entered rehab for alcohol and now you have graduated to either shooting up or smoking your own arrogance. Either way, whether you are acting or not, you are forever more a dipshit.

          If he is pretending, which we think he is, what would be the purpose? To expose the industry as shallow or prove that an actor can get away with murder (or a retired football star)? Or is it an exercise to show that actors have too much free time and their sense of self importance gives them the right to dupe their audience of lemmings? We can see how Casey as an intelligent, educated man can be drawn in by his brother in law who is an artist. Joaquin, who was once Leaf, has lived abroad, chosen to drop out of acting before, is tortured and generally a brooding ass. To an educated guy, Joaquin must be friggen fascinating. So these two assholes are sitting around a table and decide, ‘I have nothing to do, let’s mess with people’.

          Whatever the reason behind this hoax, there is one glaring thing that people seem to forget. Joaquin was the person who called 911 when his brother River died of a drug overdose on the sidewalk in front of the Viper room. He watched his brother perform his music, go to the bathroom to do a speedball and then convulse on the sidewalk. The call was played on the news for weeks.  You could hear his heart breaking as they asked him if he could see if his brother was breathing and he had no idea. So after all these years post trauma, have you forgotten the pain Joaquin? Was it hysterical to watch your brother, like yourself a brilliant actor, musician and activist, die because of his drug abuse? Is your little film a comedy or just another actor’s failed attempt at creating performance art? We think River deserved better. I guess we see this as the same as if Bindi Irwin trick or treated with a stinger sticking out of her chest.  Just, bad form.