A lone man shares the front page with the disaster in Japan and the civil unrest in Libya. He’s a rambunctious teenager in an adult body, and, despite his age, the deluge of testosterone has yet to ebb. With booze, drugs, rehab, lawsuits and two flanking “goddesses,” the paparazzi have a field day, the entertainment writers have a field day, the readers have a field day and everyone, including Charlie Sheen, goes home happy.
Yes. Including Charlie Sheen. So where does someone who is Wisconsin bred, and has yet to travel past the surrounding states, fit into the picture? Karl Foster, a student who currently runs the social media of Madison Area Technical College, has a good shot at becoming Charlie Sheen – online. A rumored 82,000 hopefuls typed out a 75 character cover letter on Internships.com at the behest of @CharlieSheen and his Tweet that read, “I’m looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood.”
There have been three rounds thus far. The first required a pithy cover letter. The second, a resume. The third, a YouTube video. The fourth, no one but Team Sheen knows. From Karl’s account, you realize that the interview process has been peculiarly corporate. Without prior notice, any day could be the day that make or breaks your chances of joining Team Sheen via email.
The YouTube interview required the remaining several hundred candidates to answer one of three questions in business formal attire. You’d expect to answer a ridiculous question like, “How are you going to slay my trolls,” with booze in hand, but none of that sort was among the mix of three questions: “In your opinion, what is the best company using social media today and why?,” “If you were the social media director for a major humanitarian aid organization, how would you create awareness and raise money via social media in the aftermath of a global disaster”? and “How would you advise a candidate running for public office to leverage social media in his or her campaign for election”?
Karl elected to answer the latter. You have to wonder just what exactly is going on behind the scenes. Team Sheen is an undeniably organized order. Could it be an LLC by now? Most likely.
Add to that, as the internship opening was announced, Sheen was preparing to tour the country for his show, “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is not an Option.” We can only guess there will be profanity-laden tirades directed at CBS and beer.
Forget the show. Charlie Sheen is a method actor who lives the show. And America, including myself, has fallen for his sitcom outside of “Two and a Half Men” with the actor’s bizarre interviews, frequent rehab stints, girls, parties and lawsuits.
“When he started doing all those interviews on the network stations after he got fired from “Two and a Half Men,” I started following him,” Karl said. “I saw him on U-Stream. I was so captivated by how crazy he seemed. He said that he had Tigerblood and Adonis DNA on network television, and he said he was an F-18 and was going to drop his payload on all the trolls.”
A candidate like Karl should be torn between his low key Wisconsin roots that normally only get as crazy as a keg stand. Hollywood is a whole new jungle that attracts the virgins like a mosquito to a light trap. But he’s anxious, eager and hopeful to experiment in the West Coast.
“If I could land a permanent position somewhere out in Hollywood, I would go for it. I’ve got a little education left to go, but I could do it out there,” Karl said.
On the other hand, his parents aren’t sharing his vigor. “My parents, when they started to take it seriously, they said, ‘Do not get caught up in this. If you do get it, you are there to do a job – not to adopt a lifestyle,'” Karl said.
Hypothetically, even if Karl won this coveted position, a position contended by the likes of students and even a vice president of marketing who is willing to drop out of her career to join Team Sheen, many will share the sentiment that he could be immersed into a world of Sheen, a world of hurt. To tweet as Charlie Sheen, of which Sheen (or a ghost tweeter) has set a particular standard – a Guinness World Record for a million Twitter followers in the shortest time – requires a method actor. Living Charlie Sheen’s life is a must.
The winner must think like the man who has created a louder uproar for his non-professional antics than the cheers for his on screen acting. At the other end of the spectrum and on a more positive light, Sheen’s social media person to-be will be acting as Sheen’s crisis management chief. To douse the flames and save Sheen’s face would be a prodigious accomplishment that would go down as a social media marketing case study of this century (next to BP) but only if Sheen does in fact give the winner the password to @CharlieSheen.
