4 Celebrities Who Are Clearly Trolling the World

In Scandinavian folklore, a troll is a big, slow idiot beast that eats people and turns to stone in the sunlight. After some jiggering throughout history, a troll became an asshole who assholes his way through life in an asshole way, but does so knowingly. This is key. The difference between a troll and any asshole is that any asshole doesn't even get that they're an asshole. They live in asshole ignorance. Trolls do it on purpose, but they do it so well that it becomes an all-consuming brand of psychotic assholery that some people refuse to believe is real, because how could it be? How could this person be such an asshole all the time if it's not genuine, unintentional assholery? Well, there are some signs to look out for, and I will guide you through it using four of the world's most prolific trolls. Because I'm helpful like that.

#4. Nancy Grace

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Ugh. That's how every story on Nancy Grace should begin, owing to her detestable and repugnant nature. If goodness smelled like roses, Nancy Grace would smell like a Magnum condom dredged from the bottom of a cistern in a Mumbai sewage treatment plant.

Grace has made her entire career out of loud mouthing her way through tragedy at the expense of good sense and tact. She doesn't care if she's right, or if she has all the facts, as long as she can sensationalize something terrible and get people to listen to her shrill caterwauling long enough to justify the network cutting her a paycheck. In a more perfect world, they'd simply toss her a raw steak and lock her back in the enclosure with the other shaven apes, but life isn't fair, so here we are.

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"When we dated, Nancy had the worst ass beard."

In a stunning and gut-churning twist, there was a time when Nancy Grace was an actual legal professional. People's fates were partially in her hands for real, and not just as a result of her slinging blame like so much poop on her nauseating television shows. Fortunately for us, her shittier nature put a swift end to her legal career, as she had convictions overturned thanks to her withholding evidence and playing "fast and loose" with facts. So basically the shit she does on TV now is the shit she did in courtrooms when she was a lawyer -- she's a scumbag liar who prejudges people based on her ass-brained understanding of the situation.

I'll give Nancy the benefit of the doubt these days when it comes to trolling -- either what she's doing is willful trolling or she's electrodes-in-the-urethra-to-celebrate-Arbor-Day insane. But her mean-spiritedness makes me feel like this isn't mental illness, just twatishness. She's a twat.

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"I'll see you next Tuesday. Get it? Get it!?"

During the Elizabeth Smart case, Grace repeatedly called one suspect guilty on television when it turned out he wasn't. After the death of the Ultimate Warrior, Grace insinuated that his death was related to drugs, which it wasn't, along with the deaths of numerous other wrestlers who also hadn't been linked to drugs. This has been Grace's problem since she hatched from the pit -- she takes one potentially relevant assumption and rides it like a dying pony into the ground, regardless of whether there's any need for it. She's a reactionary, thoughtless slug of a human. If a bag of farts could wear blouses from Big Lots, it would be Nancy Grace.

Now, if we're being rational, we know that Grace actually graduated from law school, so technically she has to have at least some brains mixed in with the shit in her head, and that means she has at least a minimal understanding of the actual criminal justice system and the very basic, very easy to understand presumption of innocence. It's literally impossible for her to not be aware of it. And that means she's willingly and flagrantly ignoring it. And why? Because that gets her simian hide on the news and in social media. It's how she gets noticed. Otherwise she's just an irrelevant sack of poop with a terrible haircut. She's trolling for relevancy in a desperate attempt to maintain influence. She doesn't care about the people she pretends to be championing, and she couldn't give half a shit for justice. She wants to be seen, like the world's most foul stripper -- look at me and give me recognition and money. That's all. Fuck that filthy barnacle.

#3. Michael Bay

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Is Michael Bay a legit filmmaker or a glorified monkey with a film camera and a penchant for titties and splosions? Is there necessarily a difference? Any forum on the Internet (known in some circles as the Hallowed Halls of Intellectualism) that discusses movies will endlessly debate the merits of Michael Bay's film history, and more often than not the decision will fall on the side of "shitastic." People love to hate Michael Bay movies, even though every Michael Bay movie has made more money than every other Michael Bay movie and we've all seen them.

The question now, in 2014, after a solid 20 years of Michael Bay movies, is how can you still believe he doesn't know what he's doing? Ever since Bad Boys in 1995, Bay has been criticized for his heavy reliance on explosions over dialogue and body counts of innocent bystanders in the dozens (if not hundreds) over any kind of accountability or responsibility for his central characters. He makes action movies that are built on a solid foundation of images that would flash through the head of a 15-year-old while he masturbates on a roller coaster in a thunderstorm.

Purestock/Purestock/Getty Images

"There's something in my eye!"

Every new Bay movie is met with the same derision as his previous works. Just look at the animosity already directed toward his unreleased next feature, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Bay is only producing, not directing. Fans have reacted in a way that suggests that Bay's influence has ruined the legacy of cartoon turtles that eat pizza and fight a big alien brain while receiving spiritual guidance from an elderly rat. No one can ruin that. That's the dumbest fucking sentence I have ever typed. Michael Bay could literally film himself fucking a real turtle with a nunchuck and it would be no less artistic than the source material. But the general consensus already is that Megan Fox was a terrible casting choice and the turtle effects look shitty. Because we've all seen bipedal man-turtles, and these ones don't live up to our expectations.

I would argue, after Transformers 2, in which a robot literally had low-hanging testicles that were visible on screen and noticed by all, that there is no way that Michael Bay is accidentally making bad movies. The movies he has directed have made over $4.6 billion worldwide. No one is $4.6 billion stupid. That's in defiance of nature and goodness. Michael Bay does what he does on purpose for $4.6 billion reasons. Everyone talks about his movies. Everyone goes to see them, and everyone bitches enough to make everyone who hasn't seen them take a look to see what the big deal is, and that roller coaster keeps thundering through the wank storm.

#2. Nicolas Cage

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Nicolas Cage is hands down one of my favorite actors working today, and it's not for any respectable reason. It's chiefly due to his bear-who-drop-kicks-ladies opus, The Wicker Man, but also such feel-good hits as Season of the Witch, Ghost Rider, Bangkok Dangerous, and Face/Off. I feel like any acting accolades Cage has ever received were the result of his incessantly being on film to the point that one day they ran out of films to give awards to and all that was left on the table that year was Leaving Las Vegas so they had to give Cage some acting awards for it or just have surplus that they wouldn't get a refund on from the trophy shop.

Nicolas Cage approaches every role the same way -- how wouldn't a real person tackle this situation? This is often executed on camera by a series of facial spasms to shame even Jim Carrey or a Tex Avery cartoon, as Cage contorts and tics his way through a serious of either unrestrained emotion or unpleasant bowel turmoil. This is the Nic Cage school of acting. Plus yelling. Try to yell in situations when things are tense. Make sure your eyes are big at the same time. Good stuff.

For a time Cage was considered a good actor (this was during the age of the aforementionedLeaving Las Vegas), and movies like Adaptation and The Rock were taken at face value and not particularly derided at all. Then a funny thing happened, which probably was Face/Off, owing to its overall box office status at the time and visibility as a bit of a bigger hit that really showcased Cage's over-the-top lunacy. This would feature heavily again in The Wicker Man and Ghost Rider. Any time Cage was required to play a role with a range of emotion, rather than a total straight man, he was all bug fuck insane.

As the movies piled up, on top of stories about Cage's personal problems like losing a fortune due to buying castles and first issue comic books, the backlash against Cage hit full swing. He was a dingus, a loser, and a poor actor. His legacy would be Ghost Rider 2, a laughable shitfest of flaming turds on bikes. Nic Cage sucked.

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"I am the Spirit of Vengeance! Zoom!"

But can that be so? Cage has been acting for over 30 years now; that's a hell of a long time. You know what other maniac has been acting that long? Gary Busey. If you think Gary Busey is honestly insane, you haven't been watching Gary Busey. This is all an act, for both men. For Cage, he simply stopped caring a few years back. He made a few goofball movies and they didn't go over well, and it became clear that he doesn't have the range to be everyone and everything on screen. Imagine Schwarzenegger trying to do Hamlet (Last Action Hero notwithstanding). Cage knows that. So he just fucks with his roles.

Look at who Cage is in his personal life. He buys castles and comic books. He's a supernerd who had access to super funds. How would any supernerd approach Hollywood action movies? They'd do just as ridiculous a job as Cage is doing, because that's what supernerds do. He needs money, so he half-asses his way through a film, pays some bills, buys a cool sword, gets Stan Lee's autograph and the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, and calls it a day. That's Nic Cage's life. He knows Season of the Witch is stupid, but he made millions for it. I would have done full frontal inSeason of the Witch for half his salary and then told everyone about it afterward.

#1. Justin Bieber

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For a long time I was on the bandwagon of hating Justin Bieber because he comes across like a smug, reckless, thoughtless, selfish, dick-headed shit boy. And I'm sure that's true. But I have to wonder now if he just stumbled into that by accident or if it's a weirdly calculated adventure on his part.

Did you ever see the movie Surviving the Game with Ice-T? In the movie, Ice-T plays a homeless man who gets hunted for sport by a bunch of rich assholes who are apparently so jaded by life and how they're so rich and there's nothing new and exciting left for them that they hunt man for fun. I feel like this is Justin Bieber's world now, only instead of killing Ice-T, he just wants to kill tact and good taste. If he tried to kill Ice-T, I think Ice-T would literally rip him in half.

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"Do I look like the sort of man who wouldn't murder Justin Bieber?"

Pop stars in general are not living, breathing think tanks, and we're used to that. Everyone remembers how Jessica Simpson thought tuna was chicken because her brains get sleepy easily, and Britney Spears sharing her love of places overseas, like Canada, so it's not like Bieber is in a unique category when he talks about Anne Frank being a Belieber, or even when he opts to piss in a mop bucket when I guarantee there was a bathroom probably within 50 feet of where he was. But it's gotten beyond simply being a moron for Bieber and is fully in the realm of dickishness now. He speeds, he eggs people's houses, he gives the most arrogant and cocky deposition in the history of the legal profession, and apparently he recently got cussed out by someone's dad at Walmart for trashing the place. He trashed a Walmart and got told off by a middle-aged man. He's the villain from a 1980s teen dramedy.

I don't believe that Justin Bieber is secretly smart or Machiavellian or anything, but just look at this: In 2010, Bieber was accused of assaulting a 12-year-old at laser tag. The next year, he got pulled over after cutting off a highway patrol officer in traffic. That same year, he guest starred on CSI and apparently punched a craft services cake. He punched a fucking cake. The next year, he wore that hideous yellow hat in public and then tried to smuggle a monkey into Germany that he then abandoned in Europe. What kind of fucker abandons a monkey? The kind of fucker who never cared about that monkey to begin with. This is all for show.

Chad Baker/Jason Reed/Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty

"Ya used me, Bieber! YA USED ME!"

If I had a monkey, I would drop kick the entire country of Germany off the goddamn map if they tried to take it away from me. Why? Because I have a heart, man. Bieber's whole shtick is an act. He spent his first five years as an androgynous teeny bopper wet dream, and now he's trying to make himself a bad boy through calculated and completely B.S. shenanigans because he's sick of being known as the world's richest pussy man. I would be, too, but I never would have established myself as the world's richest pussy man in the first place. And I would have fought for that monkey.

5 Famous People Whose Best Work Was Motivated By Revenge

The question all artists seem to hate the most (after "Hey, can you whip out a logo for my band real quick?") is "Where do you get your ideas?" They'll tell you that inspiration is a hard thing to explain, like it's some strange magical dimension us talentless mortals could never grasp -- but the truth is, they just hate admitting that sometimes the greatest movies, songs, or books were made for the most hilariously shitty reasons. For instance, I'm pretty sure Michelangelo had a buddy named David who once ate the last slice of goat pie, so he made a sculpture for the specific purpose of linking that guy's name to tiny dicks for all eternity.

Don't believe me? Check out the petty-as-hell reasons for some great pop culture milestones you probably enjoy (or, like, are aware of large amounts of people enjoying. Don't be a dick, dude.)

#5. Judd Apatow's Entire Film Career Is Revenge Against NBC

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From the perspective of us living in this motherfucking Jetsons year of 2014, the career progression of comedy mogul Judd Apatow seems perfectly logical: First he and Paul Feig made the beloved cult show Freaks and Geeks on NBC, starring young unknowns with names like James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel, and then everyone immediately loved those guys and said, "Hey, let's put them in movies," so now Apatow and his kids rule Hollywood.

However, "beloved cult show" is almost always synonymous with "good shit no one watched," and that was exactly the case with Freaks and Geeks -- in great part because NBC aired it on Saturdays at 8 p.m., a time when us socially active people are usually out ... um, ahh ... something with parties? Parties-ing with other socially active people.

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Typical party, like the ones I've attended many times.

When Freaks and Geeks was canceled, Apatow did not take it well. His wife says he acted like he "just lost a family member." And what do you do when someone murders your family? You spend the next decade carefully executing your revenge, yes. As soon as Apatow hit it big with The 40-Year-Old Virgin, he started working on turning the talent of his old show into movie stars, just to spite NBC. Not only has every movie he's directed featured at least one Freaks and Geeks cast member, he also used his producing powers to help make films like Rogen's Superbad andPineapple Express (both starring Franco), Segel's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Feig'sBridesmaids. All of those movies made over $100 million, but more importantly they also made an NBC executive cry.

In Apatow's resentful mind, he pretended the show was still on and his movies were "the continuous adventures of those characters" -- for him, Knocked Up is "just an episode of Seth's character getting a girl pregnant." Which, since Freaks and Geeks was set in 1980, would make the guy Rogen played there a very youthful 45-year-old.

Via Rebloggy, Jamie McCarthy/NBC/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty

Then again, I'm pretty sure that if you cut off Seth Rogen's head, lightning bolts come out.

At the same time, you can definitely tell there was a change in the focus of Apatow's work: When he was doing Freaks and Geeks the executives accused him of making the show too depressing, but suddenly he started doing hilarious movies where the slob gets the girl in the end and there's a baffling musical sequence. And, apparently, he did them just to shove the resulting millions in NBC's face. Now that Segel, Rogen, Franco, and Feig have all gone on to make their own $200 million films, Apatow doesn't feel such a need to make money, and he's gone back to doing thedepressing, meandering comedies he probably wanted to do all along.

#4. David Bowie Becomes a Megastar to Piss Off His Old Manager

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Everyone who was cool in the '70s ended up selling out in the '80s, but no one did it better than David Bowie -- dude went all the way. Within a few years, Bowie went from an unsettling and mysterious figure making bizarre experimental music in Berlin, to a pop superstar filling stadiumsall over the world. It's like if one day Nine Inch Nails turned into Beyonce. Most people assume Bowie sold out because he wanted money, but there's another unconfirmed, yet irresistibly logical explanation: He wanted money, probably, but also to piss off the cigar-chomping bastard here:

Via Rareready.Tumblr.com
Also pictured: David Bowie and his wife, in some order.

That's Tony Defries, Bowie's old manager and by most accounts as big a sleazebag as he looks in that picture. In 1975 Bowie realized that perhaps using up all his own money on touring and promotion while only his manager made a profit wasn't the best arrangement, so he split with Defries ... only to find out that, because of his contract, he still had to give Defries' company 50 percent of the royalties for everything he made until September 1982. Bowie reportedly spent a week locked in his attic, screaming. And, perhaps, plotting.

You see, it just so happens that between 1976 and 1980 Bowie would make the most intentionally uncommercial records of his career: Low and "Heroes" were half instrumental tracks (and not the kind you can play in an elevator), while Lodger was just brain-meltingly weird. When Defries heardLow, presumably expecting the next Space Oddity or Ziggy Stardust-type hit, he angrily called it a "piece of crap" and voluntarily excluded it from the contract. Between 1981 and 1982 Bowie just sat quietly and released no songs, except "Under Pressure" with Queen, but he happily gave up the royalties to the band so that Defries didn't get squat.

And then, as soon as the contract with Defries was over and Bowie didn't have to give up half his money anymore, he went back to the studio and did the pop-est album imaginable, Let's Dance. Itsold 10 million copies and made him a multimillionaire. I like to imagine that as soon as the clock struck midnight on Sept. 30, 1982, Bowie washed the lipstick from his face, took off his dress to reveal a perfectly ironed suit and tie underneath, and said, "Gentlemen, let's business."

Via NRGM
He was alone.

To be clear, I'm not saying Bowie pulled his late '70s albums out of his ass: Critics agree that they are among his best (and I would drop the "among"). But, you know, this does explain all the instrumentals.

#3. Paul Reubens Creates The Pee-wee Herman Show BecauseSNL Turned Him Down

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Paul Reubens is the guy behind Pee-wee Herman, the man-child with severe modulation problems who starred in a number of things with the words "Pee-wee" on them in the '80s. Say what you will about Reubens, but his show Pee-wee's Playhouse is still great to watch, in large part because this children's program from 1986 has better jokes than many sitcoms today (and better special effects than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Also, Laurence Fishburne is fucking suave as Cowboy Curtis.

So, what inspired Reubens to create this thing that has brought so much joy to so many people? Anger, bitterness, and revenge. According to Pee-wee himself: "The Pee-wee Herman Show was 100 percent created out of spite for not getting Saturday Night Live."

Keep in mind that in the '70s Reubens hadn't yet fully descended into his Pee-wee persona -- that was just a character he did sometimes during his improv routines. After years of obscurity, in 1980 it seemed like Reubens was finally going to get his big break when he was selected as one of the finalists for the new season of Saturday Night Live ... but then they turned him down. The worst part wasn't that he got rejected -- it's that he got rejected in favor of Gilbert Gottfried.

Via Newcity Stage
"Sorry, if we have both of you on the same show our sound guy will kill himself."

What pissed off Reubens the most was that he felt Gottfried got selected only because he was friends with the producer. I have to question the veracity of any statement implying anyone could tolerate Gottfried enough to call him a friend, but in any case, Reubens was "so bitter and angry"that he spent the whole plane ride back from New York thinking about what he was going to do to make them sorry. Finally, he decided to borrow $5,000 from his parents to start his own damn show. It's pretty clear that the experience warped him -- presumably a red bow tie crashed through the plane window at that point, and Reubens said, "Yes, father. I shall become a Pee-wee." (And then everyone in the plane died.)

The same year, Reubens and some improv pals put together The Pee-wee Herman Show as a stage attraction, which led to an HBO special, which led to a movie, which led to a hit TV show.Pee-wee's Playhouse won 15 Emmys in its five seasons -- that's 12 more than SNL won in the same period. Oh, and to this day the seasons with Gottfried are considered the shittiest in the history of the show.

CBS
No, seriously.

Wait, I forgot to do some "Paul Reubens wanked in a porno theater" jokes. Have ... have you noticed how "Pee-wee" could refer to both his character and his penis? Yeah. (Aced it.)

#2. H. Rider Haggard Invents a Literary Genre on a Petty Bet

Library of Congress, via Wikimedia

I'm 100 percent sure that no one reading this has ever, ever heard of H. Rider Haggard (sure hope this sentence doesn't get me any angry comments!), but you've definitely heard of the stuff he's inspired. Haggard created a literary genre -- as in, he sat down to write one day and came up with something no one had ever thought of before, and then other people kept writing about that for hundreds of years. Those people include everyone from H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, to the dudes who make the Uncharted games.

Here's the best way I can communicate this guy's importance: If it wasn't for him, there wouldn't be a comic where Wolverine fights mutant dinosaurs.

Marvel Entertainment
And what would be the point of living?

Haggard created the "Lost World" genre, in which rich white people find some exotic new land and proceed to have sexy adventures in it. Apparently, no one in the history of literature had tried to combine this magical sequence of events before, and the thing that led humanity to finally make this breakthrough was a stupid, petty bet between brothers.

Have you ever declared that something you've just read/watched/heard/tried to masturbate to sucks, only for someone to say, "Oh yeah? Why don't you make something better?" That's exactly what happened in 1885 when Haggard, then a lawyer and amateur novelist (he'd written two books which netted him exactly 60 pounds), finished reading Treasure Island and said he wasn't that impressed to his brother, whose name I don't know, so let's call him Chet.

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Portrait of Chet Haggard, Esq.

Chet bet Haggard that he couldn't write a better book, and after what must have been a solid hour of "I can too" and "nuh-uh," Haggard agreed to the bet. According to a contemporary of Haggard, "The bet was made casually, to prove it possible for someone, not at all known in authorship, to do a 'thriller' as successful as Treasure Island." And so Haggard spent the next six weeks (the same time it takes you to finish a longish game) writing a book called King Solomon's Mines. Again, he wrote it just to prove any random jackass could crap out something better than the most popular book of the era, and he totally fucking did. The book "far eclipsed Treasure Island in popularity" and spawned 13 sequels and 14 movies (or 15, if you count Sean Connery's career-ending portrayal of the main character in LXG). The next year Haggard followed it up with another novel in the same genre called She, which made him popular and a critically acclaimed author.

Anyway, Chet had to tell people his name was "Farty McPoopbutt" for a month, probably.

#1. The Best Looney Tunes Cartoons Were Made to Disobey One Producer

Warner Bros.

We've all experienced that crucial moment when you're watching Looney Tunes cartoons late at night, perhaps with your mind in a slightly impaired state, and you go, "Man, this shit is great. This is high art. They should, like, give this stuff awards." Well, they did. As in, Academy Awards. In total, five Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons won Oscars in the "Best Short Subject (Cartoon)" category, otherwise known as "Most Hilarious Animal-Related Bullshit." And here's the thing: None of those cartoons would exist if it wasn't for a single producer everyone hated, and the animators' burning desire to do the exact opposite of everything he said.

Warner Club News
"Let's have Bugs dress more manly, and make out with lots of women."
"We'll get right on that."

Eddie Selzer was a Warner Bros. producer who reportedly liked barging into the animators' room, shouting random orders, and then apparently not checking to see if anyone followed them. Shortly after being assigned to oversee the Warner Bros. cartoons in 1947, Selzer decided that the animators couldn't pair Sylvester the cat with Tweety the bird in the same short -- they should use a woodpecker instead, because woodpeckers are a riot. When the short's director, Friz Freleng, threatened to quit over this important issue, Selzer relented and let him make the damn cartoon ... which gave Warner Bros. its first Academy Award for animation.

Later, Selzer announced that they absolutely couldn't do a short starring a skunk. According to animator Chuck Jones, "If Eddie said no, we knew we had to do it." Boom, Oscar No. 2. And the best part is that it was Selzer who had to go up and accept all the awards for the stuff he specifically said not to do.

Via Cartoon Research
"Did ... did you guys not see the latest Droopy?"

At different points, Selzer also came in and declared, for no discernible reason, that he didn't want any shorts with camels or bullfighting. The animators just shrugged and did exactly that, resulting in two Bugs Bunny classics. Friz Freleng then remade the camel short (without the camel), and what do you know? Another fucking Oscar. Two other Merrie Melodies shorts won Academy Awards, and both of them featured Freleng and Sylvester -- two names that probably wouldn't be at Warner Bros. at that point if anyone had followed one of the basic rules of filmmaking and obeyed the freaking producer.

And it's not like this was a guy who had absolutely no power: In 1954, he effectively banned the Tasmanian Devil from appearing on any cartoons for three years because he thought he was too obnoxious, until the president of Warner Bros. himself came down with the Taz-mania and the only cure was more Taz. Upon Selzer's death, his Oscars were distributed among the crews of the cartoons, so maybe there's justice in this world after all.

Eulogy for the Genius of Adam Sandler

Theaters are still recovering from the release of Blended, the latest comedic phlebotomy from the demon that has taken possession of Adam Sandler. I haven't seen Blended because I don't own a hazmat suit, so how do I know it isn't secretly hilarious beneath its dumb surface, like Billy Madisonwas? Because I get my news from 20 years in the future, obviously. And Sandler repudiated the film himself, as you can read in his obituary.

The New New York Times-Feed
Adam Sandler, 67, Changed the Face of Comedy
May 32, 2034

REQUIEM FOR A GENIUS

Adam Richard Sandler, who was once the most successful comedic star in the world, died of a heart attack yesterday while trying to make his poops.

Sandler's body was found on the toilet by a beautiful maid he could never be with. Although clearly distraught in a sexy way, she described his death as "His funniest work to date." It was a fitting end for the actor, who played scatologically doomed losers to the point that they overshadowed both his career and his life. Eventually his filmography collapsed into the schlockiest of remakes, crossovers, and sequels.

Universal Pictures/ Buena Vista Pictures
Probably the only monster they couldn't make funny.

Born September 9, 1966, to Stanley and Judy Sandler, the plucky lad showed comedic talent as a toddler when he would soil his diapers. Hilarity was his destiny, and as an actor he began crapping his pants on The Cosby Show, MTV's Remote Control, and Saturday Night Live. The poop was edited out of the shows' broadcasts, but Sandler still felt that there was a place for his unique brand of humor. Alas, like Icarus, he dared to fly too close to the sun, only for it to melt the taffy-like shit that stuck his wings together.

Goodshoot/Goodshoot/Getty Images/ Is your money worth it, Columbia Pictures?
You probably didn't know he was Ash from Pokemon in his youth.

No man was ever lonelier than this comedic genius, beloved by all and understood by none. It wasn't till late in life that critics began to perceive his subtle, scathing satire of America's sense of humor. Among the criticisms against him:

Listlessness

For much of the 21st century, critics felt Sandler had abandoned his drive to succeed. Indeed, after a strong start with well-crafted dumb comedies, he produced 95 percent of Hollywood's comedy shitpile.

Whereas Billy Madison was about a spoiled brat determined to grow up and Happy Gilmore was about a good guy trying to save his grandma's house while conquering his rage, Grown Ups was about a guy who must choose between a weekend with his buddies at a lake house and a trip to Milan to support his wife, Salma Hayek -- which, come on, isn't even a decision. Paid millions to film his vacations, Sandler had entered a new period in his career.

Digital Vision/Photodisc/Getty Images
When you factor in all the time saved by not writing scripts, it's really like two vacations.

In retrospect, the film's premise that women's professional lives aren't as important as men peeing on each other is brilliantly satiric. By even positing that there was a choice to be made, Sandler skewered sexist -- and indeed savage -- early 21st century attitudes. It's difficult for us to look back now and realize that people accepted such a ludicrous juxtaposition as serious, but remember that human brains back then lacked both a metacortex and a LogicPure Syntho-Afferent Cognitive System(TM).

At the time, audiences perceived the film as merely another directionless Sandler comedy, so idiotic that it could cause heart defects in unborn children. But with Grown Ups, Sandler had upended the "vomedy" genre (pioneered by Sex and the City and perfected by Entourage) of awful people making their outrageous adventures boring.

Worst Offender:

Nowhere was this better proven than in Grown Ups 4: Movin' 2 Da Streetz (tag line: It's ON now!), when the actor unzips his fly (exposing a comically misshapen penis), sneers into the camera, "This is what you want, America, you cheap slut?" and urinates on the lens for an impressive 110 seconds. If one didn't know how subversive this humor was, one could easily mistake it for a man too rich to make an effort.

Cronyism

Like all great creators, Sandler worked with his preferred stable of talent, but at times their light was diminished in the glare of his achievements. As such, colleagues like Rob Schneider came off as talentless hacks with an undeserved sense of their own ability.

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
That douche was an anti-vaxxer, so, historically speaking: Fuck him in the face with the smallpox-infected arm of a dead baby.

Perhaps the best example of this was director Dennis Dugan, whom Sandler once pledged never to quit on, "No matter how wretched and insensate our films become." Their partnership concluded in 2017 with a trilogy of feature films set in Bora Bora that featured Sandler rubbing Vaseline on a bound and gagged Alice Eve's ears.

Critics praised Eve's "startlingly realistic" terror, but theaters rejected the avant-garde comedy for a scene in which Sandler accidentally crucifies a gay couple. These days, of course, all citizens can use the Overmind to view the film through Sandler's eyes and see its nuanced genius. Eve's character is all of us, and the comedian is our species' history of genocide.

Dugan died of septic shock in 2019 after being bitten by a child with a potty mouth. Sandler was devastated by the loss, refusing to speak in a high-pitched voice or take a slapstick shot to the nuts for an entire year.

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A Confederacy of Dunces (2028)

Sandler's first book adaptation moved the picaresque novel from New Orleans to Aruba while merging most of the book's eclectic characters into a stoner played by Kevin Nealon. The bulk of the film is simply Sandler singing "The Hot Dog Song" through a perpetual belch. Keen-eyed viewers can spot the Waterboy in several scenes, urinating on important cultural artifacts.

Laziness

As proven in the comedy(?) Click, time is more valuable than money. After achieving financial success, the legendary comedian never wasted time devising a funny script or compelling characters. It was far cheaper to swallow the costs of filming a major motion picture without chewing, since they would recoup themselves regardless. Defenders argued that lots of people like lazy comedies, so what was the harm? Apart from all the children that money could have fed.

The nadir of his ambition was when he teamed up with Guy Fieri to create a Grown Ups-themed chili. If ever there was a dinner recipe lazy enough to be worthy of the Grown Ups theme, it is chili. Chili is what happens when a cow falls asleep in an onion patch on the hottest day of the year. Like the Grown Ups series itself, it is enjoyed best if one simply leaves the room and lets it stew in its own juices for four hours. Both will end in a massive pile of crap.

But Sandler was not a man to rest on his chili bowl. Recognizing the flaw, he poured himself into 2021's RoboChubby Turns a Lesbian. No film before or since had ever realized such a profound vision of a slob, his dumpy sidekick, and a legitimate actress slumming because Hollywood wouldn't give her a starring feature.

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For crying out loud, Warner Bros./ Michael Buckner/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
A turning point.

Blended 2: This Is the Remix was cobbled together from 80 percent deleted scenes from its predecessor. However, in fairness to Sandler, he was unable to film more, since, while vacationing/filming in Africa the second time, he was attacked by a cheetah who had seen That's My Boy. Frequent Sandler collaborator Rob Schneider was never seen again, possibly because no one ever looked for him. On a more positive note, two members of the Black Eyed Peas died in the attack.

Tastelessness

Satire seeks to illustrate the sacred by profaning it, and Sandler's craftsmanship in this frequently drew charges of obscenity. The turning point was in 2022, when his dominatrix died of exhaustion after 27 straight hours of intense flogging. Police found the actor bound and blindfolded in his basement with battery cables clamped to his nipples. Despite suffering four days of dehydration, he begged officers on the scene to "Slap me, spit on me, anything to just, please, God, feel some pathos, ANYTHING!"

Following that brush with death, the funnyman gave away his fortune and wandered the Earth. Eventually, frozen, lost, hungry, and bewildered, he found his way to a comedic monastery in the Himalayas. There, he was taken in by the Laughing Monks and taught the Iron Ha-Ho style that would define his renaissance.

Worst Offender:

Columbia Pictures, for some ungodly reason Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Pictured: rock bottom.

Upon his return, Sandler shocked audiences with Jack and Jill 5: Jack It Like It's Jilly, a dark comedy that opens with the revelation that Jill only exists in Jack's fractured psyche.

Complicating matters is her love triangle with shadowy figures that only Jack can see: a 6-foot rabbit and the ghost of Jimmy Stewart.

A furious Stewart insists that Jack is just a character, and if he wants to heal his psyche, he must admit he doesn't exist any more than they do. Next, he should acknowledge that he is an actor named Adam Sandler and apologize for the remake of Mr. Deeds.

Having realized that family is the most important thing, Jack becomes a little too close to Jill. Sandler, of course, was commenting on the relationship between a film's commercial and artistic interests, but the symbolism was lost on the average viewer, as in the scene below:

CLOSE ON
JILL, putting tuna fish and peanut butter on a sandwich.

JACK
You're actually going to eat that?

JILL
It's delicious! [farts] Oooh, I got a little gaaaaas!

ADORABLE CHILD
P.U.! [farts] Now I made a P.U.!

Jack lights a cigar with the Magna Carta and high-fives the CHILD, who will one day sink into a SPIRAL OF DRUGS AND DEPRESSION typical of child actors.

CUT TO
KATIE HOLMES, being A GOOD WIFE who is HOT and probably has a name.

HOLMES' CHARACTER
Jaaaaack!

She eyes something off screen with a glint of desperation.

CLOSE ON
A STRAIGHT RAZOR, unattended on the counter.

DEMONIC VOICE
(whispers almost inaudibly)
Do it.

CUT TO
Jack, shaking his head as Jill dances HILARIOUSLY to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back." She farts near the tea kettle, sending a jet of flame to the flammable CURTAINS.

JACK
That's ... [looks at camera] NO BUENO!

JILL
(embracing him)
We're twins. You already share half my DNA. Could anything we do truly be wrong?

They kiss, passionately. Katie Holmes protests, but is dragged out of the room by STRANGE MEN IN BLUE SHIRTS. In her place, JAR JAR BINKS enters the room and starts moonwalking. He high-fives Jill.

WIDE ON
AMERICA, seen from space, burning.

TRAILER GUY
(V.O.)
It's about family.

The film's many levels of metacriticism proved too obtuse for audiences, but critics lauded the courtroom scene where Judge Jill's face melts off to reveal the stony gaze of Happy Gilmore before Sandler is sentenced to death for crimes against nature, only to escape to freedom under a new identity.

The intensely personal work was his first commercial failure, but he iterated in interviews that "It was my poop-smeared salvation."

Notable Films

Grown Ups 3: Blood, Blood, Everywhere

The gang is up to their old tricks when they rent a villa in Madrid, only to discover a murderer is in their midst. The infamous three-minute "dog eyeball icepick scene" was famously pulled during the theatrical run, but restored for the director's cut. Sandler said on the disc commentary that he fell asleep every night watching the scene.

The writer-director-star met his second wife, actress Sandy Sanderson-Sandler, while filming this movie, when she was cast as "The Dog Owner With an Empty Jar of Peanut Butter but the Dog Has Rabies." Audiences adored the scene in which Sandler's Lenny Feder contracts rabies of the dick and Kevin James must inject his penis with 21 vaccination shots. David Spade pulls double duty roles as both Marcus Higgins and Maria Santacruz de la Ignacion y las Grandes Tetas, Hayek's half-sister, who awkwardly attempts to give Schneider a rim job in front of the children.

Shame on you, Columbia Pictures
On the plus side, Kate Hudson didn't make any movies this year.

Chuck and Larry Remarry

Chuck and Larry must reunite when Chuck wants a child but New York's restrictive laws say that only homosexuals are allowed to adopt. David Spade plays their Chinese baby, Long Hung Dong, who is only 4 months old but can speak pidgin English and loves to cook "flied lice." The racism implicit here was both subverted and upheld when Sandler happily crunched down on a bowl of flies and lice. An endearing entry, but a difficult one to watch, as its opening credits are a three-minute panoramic shot of Chinese foothills littered with discarded babies.

The Third Pole

Sandler's unemployed ice fisherman Karl Smiley must impress Amy Adams or something before the ice thaws by winning a fishing contest or else rich people will build underwater condos in the lake, I don't even fucking know. This was his last collaboration with David Spade, playing Rastus, the ghost of a slave who drowned while swimming to freedom. Kevin James also appears as a talking bear who kills five sexy hikers (all played by Sandler in drag doing the same voice for each).

PhotoObjects.net/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary/Getty Images/ Robin Marchant/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Original title: The Familymoonpole

Drunktarded

Shot in a single night on Super 8, a disguised Sandler wanders LA's Skid Row talking in his baby voice and provokes people into fights by shitting on their shoes. At the end of the film, the number of people who take a swing at him is tallied against the number who say "Aw, sorry, buddy, I didn't realize." Critics praised the actor's commitment to the experiment, including taking seven stab wounds to the belly.

Grown Ups 5: Face Fuck Mash

Written by Sandler and directed by Lars von Trier, this "Kafkaesque gasp for help from the maw of madness" reunites the gang when Sandler's Lenny Feder wakes to find himself part of the mysterious Experiment 12. After strangling a glassy-eyed child with her own intestines for a sip of water, Feder tears through the walls imprisoning him, only to find that it's all being conducted by the mysterious Dr. Reldnas, who is a splinter of Feder's personality. David Spade's corpse cameos as the body of Marcus Higgins and reappears later in heavy makeup playing "Kris Roq," a talented comedian trapped in the room with Feder. Critics still dispute exactly what happens during the film's finale, a 7.5-minute sequence in which the camera is knocked to the ground, and all we hear are muffled sounds of a struggle, followed by the sound of someone being devoured alive as a voice chants in Latin.

Chuck and Larry: The Omega Ultimatum

Now that robots and humans are legally allowed to marry, Chuck and Larry admit that they're just big, flaming gaybags for each other and shouldn't have to hide that to be happy.

Legacy

In an interview last year at the Omegacron Honors, Sandler reflected on a career spent enriching the lives of others with laughter:

"After my dominatrix died, I sat down to cheer myself up with some light fare, a family-friendly comedy. It turned out I was watching Blended, a film I was apparently in. Seeing an amazing actress like Drew Barrymore, who's been used by the system since day one, only to cobble herself back together ... seeing a talent like that sleepwalk through this job, the meaninglessness of it all really hits you like a faceful of French onion soup.

"That was when I realized that a man of my means -- a legitimately funny comedian who could realize any vision, no matter how far-fetched -- can you imagine if I had actually wasted my once-per-generation chance to pursue my talent and craft? What a stain that would be on my very existence?

"Look, crap has always existed. It's fine to not be good at something. It's even OK to be good at something and still be unentertaining. But what is this pervasive culture of being able to do something well and deliberately dialing it down to the blandest possible incarnation? The Ke$has and Guy Fieris of this world, the Adam Sandlers. We're all going to die. TRY TO DO SOMETHING BEFORE YOU DIE!

"I'm not talking about the people who try and suck -- your Pitbulls of the world, who were always going to be affably mediocre. I'm talking about people with real ability and awareness who instead elect to autotune their work, pour donkey sauce on it, and otherwise piss in the pool and call it a day. If you have legitimate ability, you don't get to carpet bomb your success with the easiest option to assail the senses. You owe it to everyone who took the time to help you learn your craft to stand the fuck up and MAKE SOMETHING.

"No. Goddamn. Shortcuts."

Sandler leaves the world a duller, drier place. The world shall not laugh through a mouthful of Doritos upon his like again.