Here's how the first 20 minutes of the most intensely anticipated webcam show in human history:

Lots and lots of shots of the Tiger Blood bottle, interspersed with shots of book called "The Art of War." Not the actual book by Sun Tzu, the famous military theoretician, but a picture book about the war-themed painting. But it was about WAR, just in case you missed the point. Charlie is at WAR and we are his troops, unless we are trolls. We also saw an ashtray from the Queen Mary. Lots of focusing and refocusing. Then five minutes of talk with his writer . . .

Hold on, his writer? Yes. Someone was helping him craft his work. You could make out snippets of a chat about changing "Godspeed" to "Dogspeed," He sounded lucid. No speedy rants. No odd pronouncements. Did he know the mike was on? Did he know we could hear him be normal, and might suspect that Crazy Charlie was something of a persona adopted for the purposes of maintaining a tenuous hold on the spotlight?

Finally, at the top of the hour, the show began. It opened with clips from "Jaws" and "Apocalypse Now." Then a big long rant, read off a TelePrompTer, saying something about the people he doesn't like. It's the sort of thing you'd find impressive it your son wrote it for a high school play. There were attempts at coining new catch phrases: the Malibu Messiah, the Condor of Calabasas, the Duke of Dysentery - okay, maybe not that last one. He made fun of CBS prez & CEO Les Moonves, and that's always wise.

Then he talks about some sort of treason, and says "Sheen's Corner is available as a Sports Bar" and wished everyone dogspeed. In general, it was overwrittten, florid, dull, and it wasn't funny. On any level. Dear Charlie: if you put a clip from "Jaws" in your intro, it makes it all the easier to point out how you just jumped the shark.

He looked better, though. This time he had some professional lighting and some makeup. The whole thing's here, if you care, but you probably knew that.