The Best Of The Worst: NCDSUV's Top 5 Celebrity "Sucks" Honorees So Far

Posted at 9:00 AM Oct 08, 2008

By Kenny Herzog and Andy Beckerman

If you're a regular visitor of this site, you likely have pretty refined taste in the high and medium brow. We don't really need to remind you why The Office is hilarious or Dexter makes murder more fun than an evening of naked cow-tipping. But chances are, you do need someone to finally take a stand and knock a few undeserving celebrities off their pedestals of reverence. Which is why we created out daily "Sucks" feature, which more or less distills a beloved famous folk's deplorableness into a tidy, generally merciless few paragraphs.

So in case you haven't been keeping up with the suckitude, here's the top five recipients of the prestigious appointment so far (and yes, we know the Michael Phelps post wasn't technically a Sucks entry, but it was more or less the muse for the idea, and he really, really sucks).

5. T.J. Lavin

Granted, this could apply to the entire cast of MTV's The Island, who may actually represent the first significant phase in human de-evolution.

But if that's the case, then host T.J. Lavin is nearly Cro-Magnon in his suckitude. Uncharismatic to the point of being unintelligible, emblematic of douchey skate-frat subculture and downright strange-looking, Lavin was always a distracting hurdle between viewers and the hypnotically deplorable cast.

But now (no doubt at the behest of producers, in fairness), he's taking on a more disciplinary role, sternly lecturing cast members like poor Ashley for trying to quit because of physical injury or lack of mental toughness.

He's like a maniacal confluence of your high school principal and the bully you'd tattle to the principal about. And has now gone from being a mumbling moderator to demonstratively inarticulate.

Oh, and if you don't think he sucks, then just listen to the clip above, in which Lavin (aka LAVS), raps to his peeps (i.e. himself) about what it's like to have "been around the world." I'd say Notorious B.I.G. is spinning in his grave, but I think we all know that would have to be one pretty damn big coffin.

4. Frank Caliendo

People often say that punning is the lowest form of humor (in which case I am the human embodiment of its nadir), but impersonations have to rank at least a hearty second. And somehow, we have cascaded down a slippery slope from Rich Little to Frank Caliendo, who's basically Kevin James if the King Of Queens monarch just put on a bunch of wigs and vaguely approximated the manneurisms of people more famous than himself.

It's been easy enough, however, to avoid Caliendo's paralyzingly surface anti-charm. It's a good deal easier to miss Mad TV and its fittingly lame-named spinoff, Frank TV, by accident than make a point of watching them on purpose.

But avoiding the onslaught of his new Dish Network spots, in which he generally lampoons the president (about as current a target for edgy comedy as Pee-Wee Herman jokes), has been a more complex task. And his latest ad (mercilessly embedded above) hits an almost sacrilegious low, as Caliendo articulates the illogic behind regular cable via the personas of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. As the latter, Caliendo more or less just gruffly blows steam and stomps around brattily, while his translation of Seinfeld amounts to high-pitched incredulity.

So, in essence, because Caliendo has reduced comedy to its basest capacity for titillation, he's decided to drag two of the most uniquely, subversively neurotic characters in TV history through the mud of non-hilarity with him.

Why? Because, like the other lucky entrants in NCDSUV's newest regular feature, he sucks.

3. David Blaine

David Blaine sucks. Observing his antics, on prime time no less, is akin to watching an asshole jock from high school beat you up and then rub it in by climbing a skyscraper like Spider-Man to avoid getting caught by the principal.

Even when the guy gets broadcast hanging upside down for 60 hours over Central Park, he flaunts his arrogance by lamenting some botched bravura ending featuring helium balloons.

Admit it: We're all secretly hoping on one of Blaine's tricks will go disastrously wrong eventually. Not because we're bad people, but because he's so unlikeable our consciences have reconciled the tradeoff of him sustaining serious injury to edify our morbid curiosity.

And because he seems like a prick who uses "magic" on national television to ensure a parade of poontang wherever he goes. God, he sucks.

2. Michael Phelps

We told you so. A good few weeks ago in fact. Unlike Michael Phelps' Olympic opponents, everyone's finally catching up to speed and realizing pop-culture Michael Phelps kind of sucks. And was inevitable. Because he's 23 and cut like a statue and just achieved our greatest modern academic feat in front of millions while wearing a Speedo.

So lo and behold, he's been spotted feeling up Playboy bunnies and is now hosting SNL, complemented by his apparent favorite rapper, Lil Wayne. And America is visibly getting annoyed.

I guess at least he's embracing his fleeting mega-celebrity for all its indulgent spoils, rather than playing the innocent card and ultimately lashing out with a series of PR disasters (ehem, Britney). Unfortunately, Michael, by the time LiLo and Sam (not to be confused with Lilo & Stitch of course) decide to get married and someone pulls off a miracle comeback in the World Series, no one's gonna give a shit what's inside your Speedos or between your giant ears until 2012.

1. Tim And Eric

"Oh, you write humor? Have you ever heard of Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!"

"So, you say you really love Wonder Showzen, eh? Well, then, I have a show that's even better than that: Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!"

"What's that? You say repeating information in the form of a question is a tired device for imparting exposition? Well then friend, you have to check out the hottest new show, Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. It'll rip your face off with laughter!"

Perhaps my Jewish heritage has constructed me to be a contrarian. Historically, we've always been on the outside looking in, scads of goyische children devouring Easter candy with abandon as we sit quietly in the dark, noshing half-heartedly on a piece of desert-dry matzoh. In kind, perhaps I think Tim and Eric as an adverse reaction to the thousands of times I've been told variations of the above.

You see gentile, er, gentle readers, Tim And Eric are charlatans, conning you out of your hard-earned laughs with the practiced swindle of a snake-oil salesman. Oh the awkwardness! How it sits pregnant in the air, only to land and give birth to an abortion. If Ricky Gervais was dead, he'd be spinning in an unmarked grave. And the non sequiturs! Their contrived nonsense transparent, revealing a conceptual desert as bone dry as, well, matzoh. It's like they took the worst parts of improv (the silences, the grasping and the banality) and fashioned some broke-ass Voltron out of the freakish assemblage.

But if these crimes are not enough to damn them to just outside of the first circle of hell (It's actually not so bad. There are snacks.) then focus your shitty eyes on the below clip. If there's anything that makes Tim and Eric potential Pol Pots of comedy, it's their purposely terrible aesthetic. They embrace the flailing failure of cable access and the amateurish facade of know-nothing goofballs, which are the worst aspects of our age: the well-meaning moron. The slow and sluggish should not be venerated! They should be mocked unmercifully until they die alone in their apartments, episodes of Tim And Eric looping sadly on their TVs.

Editor's Note: In the spirit of fairness, and in recognition that us cultural elitists often get a bit too geekily exclamatory about accepted holy grails of art, tomorrow's daily list will make a case for why your favorite films actually suck.