Grapevine: Charlie Sheen: ‘I owe (Detroit) an apology’

Sheen to Detroit: ‘I owe the entire city an apology’

It’s never too late to say sorry. On The Drew and Mike Podcast with Detroit radio personalities Drew Lane and Marc Fellhauer on Tuesday, Charlie Sheen apologized to Detroit for his awful performance at a 2011 Fox Theatre show. The failed attempt to entertain the audience with profanity-filled monologues and jokes that sounded more like insults led to Detroiters boo him off the stage. “I owe the entire city an apology. Seriously, man. It was a mess,” Sheen said on the podcast, repeating, “It was a mess. Hemingway once wrote that, ‘To be a man you have to have a son, plant a tree and fight a bull.’ He left off, ‘getting booed off the stage in Detroit.’ I don’t want to say it was a witch hunt, but if it was, that’s not on the fan.” Sheen added that the show “started way too late,” and he regrets not doing what he did in Chicago — “just me sitting down with a moderator and just answering questions and having a fun interview and just telling the stories instead of all this smoke and mirrors.”

The hosts asked what Sheen was going through at the time, to which the actor admitted he “felt suffocated for a long time” and didn’t have “any real creative freedom” on the sitcom he starred in, “Two And A Half Men.” “You’re kind of working for ‘the man’ in a network scenario, and I don’t jive well working for ‘the man,’ ” he said. When Lane interjected that he seemed angry with everyone on the TV show, Sheen owned up to the accusation: “I was, and it was displaced. But I wasn’t on dope. I wasn’t on booze. I was doing a lot of testosterone, you know, which if you do too much, I think metabolizes as some type of a steroid, so essentially you can look at the whole thing as just a roid rage meltdown.”

Graffiti artist Shepard Fairey encourages voter action in Detroit

World-renowned graffiti artist Shepard Fairey is in Detroit this week promoting his #MakeAmericaSmartAgain nonpartisan movement to encourage voter education and registration. Fairey — known for creating the Obama “Hope” poster and several murals in downtown Detroit — will host an outdoor screening of the science-fiction film “Idiocracy” at The Skip in Detroit at 7 p.m. Saturday. According to the event page, “the film was selected as a tool to remind and inspire audiences to use their brain and participate in our democracy.” There will be a community discussion before the screening and after-party featuring DJ Amy Dreamcatcher, aka Amy Kaherl of Detroit Soup. The event is free, but donations to the nonpartisan grass-roots initiative Vote Detroit are encouraged.

Meet Olympic swimmer Anthony Ervin

At age 35, Anthony Ervin became the oldest individual swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal. (In Rio, he clocked 21.40 in the men’s 50-meter freestyle and won another gold medal in the men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay.) Ervin, of Los Angeles, will be joined by co-author Constantine Markides to give a book talk Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor. The two will discuss the memoir “Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian,” which delves into Ervin’s experience as a competitive swimmer — he won his first gold medal in Sydney at age 19 and later auctioned it off to donate the funds to tsunami relief — as well as more unstable moments, such as his experimentation with drugs and alcohol and suicide attempt. The book talk and signing, at 124 E. Washington St., is free.

CMA Awards nominees announced

Nominations for the 50th annual Country Music Association Awards were announced Wednesday from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Country singers leading the nominations include Chris Stapleton, Eric Church and Maren Morris, each receiving five nominations. Dierks Bentley, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban followed close behind, with four nominations each. Those up pit against each other for the prestigious Entertainer of the Year Award include Garth Brooks, Luke Bryan, Stapleton, Underwood and Urban. Underwood and Brad Paisley will host the show airing from Nashville at 7 p.m. Nov. 2 on ABC.

Knight files suit to remove her name from restaurant

Motown star Gladys Knight has asked a judge to remove her name from her son’s Southern restaurant, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As reported in June, Knight’s son, Shanga Hankerson, was arrested for stealing over $650,000 in sales and taxes collected from restaurant customers. Since then, one of the three restaurants in the Atlanta area closed and the others are operating under receivership. “The restaurants are in free fall, and their decline necessarily has the collateral effect of damaging Knight’s intellectual property and Knight’s reputation,” the lawsuit states.

Compiled by Stephanie Steinberg

ssteinberg@detroitnews.com

Thursday’s birthdays

Dr. Phil McGraw, 66

Gloria Estefan, 59

Padma Lakshmi, 46

Joe Trohman, 32