Plight of the Phoenix

Have you been keeping up with the "Joaquin Phoenix Goes Bonkers, Grows Beard" story? It goes something like this. Some months ago Phoenix, the Oscar-nominated star of Walk the Line, announced that he was giving up acting to further a career as a rapper. He was later spotted wearing a huge beard while spouting rhymes weedy enough to shame Vanilla Ice.

Woops! It now emerges that Phoenix was engaging in a sort of high-concept, Dadaist art happening. While Joaquin pretended to self-destruct, his mate Casey Affleck was filming the star’s antics for an upcoming avant garde video installation.

Well, that’s all right then. None of this sounds in any way crazy.