Bearded Insanity: The Phoenix Chronicles

Howdy JP-heads! It's Sunday morning, and you know what that means: it's time for our weekly update on Joaquin Phoenix's quest to become the craziest celebrity of all time! Yes, it's issue XVIII of your favorite e-newsletter, Bearded Insanity: The Phoenix Chronicles! Please note: If you signed up for this newsletter hoping to receive information about the ongoing effort to ban disposable razors in Arizona mental hospitals, you’ve made a mistake. You’re looking for Fuzzy Logic: The Tuscon Tattler. I hope this answers some of the emails that have been flooding my inbox. The Latest and Craziest! JP has unveiled his official rapper name, and it’s a doozy! When you’re telling your grandkids about the actor turned hobo who eventually tried to charge the President and was gunned down by Secret Service agents, you can end with “and his name was Young Pheezy.” By our calculations, this rap name adds thirty points to JP’s overall crazy index. By scrupulously avoiding any use of the powerful imagery associated with the phoenix and relying instead on a garbled parody of every novelty rapper name from the late 80’s, he’s put himself firmly on the road to becoming an obscure

Jeopardy question. But Young Pheezy’s been doing more than flipping through his CDs and combining other rappers’ names. He’s also been out touring, taking his twin products of bored-sounding rap and bewilderment to his fans!

As I’m sure you’ll remember, I was excited to report that at a show in Vegas a while back, JP was both visibly drunk and fell of the stage after his set. It was all we could have asked from our favorite train wreck, but the generous benefactor has done us one better. Here he is leaping off stage to have a fistfight with a heckler! Although in fairness to the heckler, I think he was just shocked to see Matisyahu without his hat on.

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The audio is pretty garbled, but I think at 1:46 he says “I’m a fucking baby cop.” If that’s true, we might just have a new entry for our monthly “nuttiest thing JP said” column, not to mention a new idea for our "12 Shades of Crazy" JP fan art calendar! Film Role He Most Resembles! For the ninth week in a row, Commodus from Gladiator. For those of you who haven’t seen it, he was crazy. Celebrity Matchups! Let’s see how JP’s antics compare to other entrants in the celebrity hall of batshit lunacy! This week’s contender…Phil Spector! Appearance: Joaquin looks like a coroner who fell asleep in a pile of steel wool. Spector looks like a cartoon character who got electrocuted.

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Winner—Phil Spector As an Artist: Joaquin refers to himself as “a deep method” actor, meaning that for a period of his life, he actually thought he was an incestuous roman emperor who fought off invading spacemen in the 1300’s (but it was actually present day anyway). His Two Lovers co-star Isabella Rosselini calls him “tortured.” Phil Spector once pointed a gun at Leonard Cohen’s head and forced The Ramones to re-record the opening chord for “Rock and Roll High School” for eight hours. His son calls him “a monster.”