Two and a Half Brain Cells

I see that TV star/colossal prick Charlie Sheen is at it again, tearing up a New York hotel room in a drunken rage. His publicist, in a move that, even for a publicist, is comically inane, has stated that the alleged actor's behavior was due to "a reaction to medication." ("WARNING: Possible side effects include the urge to terrorize hookers, smash furniture, and wrestle the cops in your underpants. See your physician if these symptoms persist.")

Anyway, a line from a Life & Style press release on the incident reads:

Police were later called to Charlie's trashed suite at the Plaza Hotel around 2 a.m., where they found a passed out and half-naked Charlie and his escort screaming from inside the closet.

The problem here is that it is easy to read "a passed out and half-naked Charlie and his escort" as one phrase, making it sound like the two of them were in the closet screaming--he while unconscious. And somehow that manages to make the whole scenario sound even more absurdly sordid.

The solution, of course, is to insert a comma after "Charlie" to provide syntactical separation between him and his hapless escort. And as we all know, when it comes to hookers and Charlie Sheen (or anyone and Charlie Sheen, for that matter) you really can't have too many degrees of separation.