Morton Downey, Jr. is one of those people who if you knew everything about him, your hair would probably curl. He has regularly made jokes about near-miss mob hits on his life, he faked an assault by "nazi skinheads" where he was videotaped getting a swastika markered on his face by redneck youths, and he recently survived a respiratory illness that has prompted him to quit smoking and become a fundamentalist non-smoker. Okay, so now his halitosis only smells like coffee and trucker-speed now.

For those of you who forgot or are too young to remember, this is a guy who had a sensationalist talk show in the early eighties. His schtick was that he was ultra-conservative, and he would have liberals on his show and he would scream at them with his huge mouth and blow cigarette smoke on their fringed wool ponchos. After a fake-ass videotaped attack by nazi skinheads (which NOBODY talks about anymore - maybe one of the hired kids went on to become a famous actor, like Seth Green or something...oooh, INTERNET RUMOR in progress!), the show was cancelled, and Downey's Reagan-era career was through. This, DESPITE the fact that he had his trademark seven huge warts removed from his face at around the time of his career death.

Downey was always so full of crap anyway. Yeah, I used to watch his trashy show when I was a wee tad, back in the early eighties. I used to get all steamed when he'd go off on how cats need to be shot and served over a bed of rice while everyone smokes lots of cigarettes and votes for Reagan until the old fart serves up a death-rattle for a State of the Union address. This is before sensationalism got played out and, thus, easily identifiable. I'm sure if one was to go back and watch old episodes of Downey's trashfest, it would read like: "yeah, yeah, blah blah blah uber-conservative volatile buzzword, sure, whatever, watch my show, blah blah blah, got a light?" Basically, he blazed the way for Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer.

Here's a yummy tid-bit: Downey once offered to have his front two teeth removed and have his tongue "twisted," so he could look UGLIER for a role in a movie directed by Liam Neeson.

From the LINDA TRIPP IS A LIZARD webpage:

"Linda Carotenuto Tripp, a native of Morris County, New Jersey, graduated from high school in 1968 and went to Katherine Gibbs secretarial school. In her high school yearbook, she listed her "pet peeve" as "a certain fair-weather friend."

In THE NEW YORKER, Jane Mayer reports on "a memorable act of defiance" in Linda's youth. After she was "denied permission to attend a rock concert," Linda "took a sharp object to the paint on her father's beloved Mercedes."

In 1971, three years after high school, Linda married Bruce Tripp, a 25 year-old Army officer just returning from Vietnam. She then began her career as an Army administrative assistant at bases all around the world. She was attached to the secretive Delta Force at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She worked for the US Army Intelligence Command (INSCOM), the Army's intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Tripp went on to a "classified unit" at Ford Meade, Maryland, also home to the super-secret National Security Agency.

Tripp was employed at the White House during President Bush's term, and was kept on when the Clintonistas took over in January 1993. She hated the new regime. She was offended by male staffers who wore jeans and earrings. She worried about princes and prime ministers seeing the dirty carpets.

In 1994, things fell apart for Tripp. She divorced her husband of 20 years. After openly criticizing several White House staffers, she was exiled to the Pentagon. Her Pentagon supervisor wrote a memo detailing how she was the Employee From Hell (how she was nasty to co-workers, wouldn't work a minute past 5:00 pm, and complained about everything).

She was seething.

Then she met Monica."

I recently mentioned to someone that I intended to include Meg Ryan as a trainwreck. The friend was confused. "Sure, she sucks," my friend said, "but is she really a trainwreck?"

I thought about this for a while. Hmmmm. Has Meg done anything really horrendous - drunken brawls, murder charges, etc. - to merit inclusion as a trainwreck? Well, no she hasn't, but sometimes, just SUCKING is enough. And in my modest opinion, MEG RYAN IS THE QUEEN OF ALL THINGS THAT SUCK, so, like, bear with me as I try to justify my vitriolic rant as an official Trainwreck entry.

Okay, if I had to justify Meg Ryan's inclusion on this list, I would mention the ambiguous "estrangement" from her mother that she always mentions in interviews. I would mention a Diane Sawyer special I saw once that was being called "The OTHER Side of Meg Ryan". Perhaps the most notable indictment would be Meg Ryan's desire (remember, this is the star of "IQ" and "Joe Vs. the Volcano") to perform the life story of SYLVIA PLATH on the big screen.

The main issue I have with Meg Ryan is that she completely represents and exudes everything that I find repulsive about mainstream cinema. Floppy, cute, perky, precocious, but above all, so sudsy-clean inoffensive that she defeats her own purpose and insults the hell out of...well, ME. And even worse is when they pair her up with that droning hellbag TOM HANKS (oh CHRIST), like the movie studios are doing us some kind of FAVOR by putting these two snivelling kewpie trolls in the same movie. Oh, and gee thanks, I REALLY WANT TO SEE THEM GETTING IT ON BECAUSE O-BOY BUT DO I LIKE THE IDEA OF THEM REPRODUCING.

I once had the honor of heckling Meg Ryan, as she was in SoHo filming the film travesty "City of Angels," which was a remake of the beautiful Wim Wenders film "Wings of Desire." I was working in an office a few floors above where filming was supposed to occur, and a co-worker told me that she was on the street below, preparing to crucify what is one of my favorite movies. I wasn't having a good day to start off with, so I let off a little steam. I marched myself into an office directly above the film shoot, opened the window, and screamed out into the street, "I HOLD MEG RYAN PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH THE MOVIES!" I then slammed the window shut and felt really good about myself for the rest of the day.

These two men personify the meaning of the term TRAINWRECK, and they only miss the mark of being the top-rated trainwrecks of all time because they made the qualities of hatred, drunkenness, and general TRAINWRECKITUDE into an art form...and they didn't even know it!

I was first introduced to Pete and Ray about five years ago, when I found an interesting looking CD called "Shut Up Little Man" in a hole-in-the-wall Broadripple, IN record shop. The cover art suggested that it was a CD full of real-life bickering and drunken brawls - how could I resist?

When the laser hit my Pete and Ray CD, I was in for a treat. For over an hour, Pete and Ray, two drunk old men who lived together in a San Francisco rat-hole apartment, screeched and cursed and blamed each other for anything and everything imaginable, while Peter's ever-present friend(?) "Tony" looks on and sometimes mumbles his two-cents. At one point, Ray threatens to call the police on Pete, but can't remember the number. Pete drunkenly responds, "IT'S 911, YOU LITTLE FOOL!"

The CD was recorded by one EDDIE LEE SAUSAGE, an annoyed neighbor who ultimately realized he was powerless against the power of Pete and Ray, so he decided to do the next best thing to complaining: he taped their tirades and made money off them! Since the recordings, SHUT UP LITTLE MAN has been made into comic books, t-shirts, calendars, screen-savers, a stage play, and there's even a movie that's been in pre-production hell forever (Michael Stipe wants to produce it).

As for the Pete and Ray CD itself, it's a cult gem. Trainwreck rock star Kelley Deal (see Trainwrecks #91-#100) included them in her Top Ten favorite albums of the year in ROLLING STONE magazine, and techno-geek recording artist Moby cited it as "Record of the Year" in MELODY MAKER magazine.

So whatever happened to Pete and Ray? If they hated each other so much, why did they live together? Most importantly, WHAT THE HELL?! Well, first off, Pete and Ray have both gone to that great stoney lonesome in the sky. Ray keeled over first, and then Peter died a few years later, in 1998. As for Peter's friend Tony, according to Eddie Lee Sausage's SHUT UP LITTLE MAN website, the last time Pete saw him was when Tony woke up next to Peter in his bed, and Peter was naked, and Tony beat the crap out of him, and then threw Peter out of his own apartment and locked him out!

As for the question of why Pete and Ray lived together if they so despised each other, most SHUTUPLITTLEMANophiles claim that they were connected to each other forever in a marriage of hatred. Another theory is that there might have been some funny stuff going on. Ray was always accusing Pete of being a "fucking queer cocksucker," and Pete, well...in a 1994 interview with PAPER magazine, Peter Haskett DID make a come-on to the male interviewer, suggesting a threesome with Pete and Tony wasn't outside the realm of possibility. YUM.

Gotta hand it to the Phillips family - they are a TRAINWRECK DYNASTY. Papa John Phillips was such a drugged out alkie mess that he doesn't even CHART on this list, because who knows where even to begin with his skanky self? Meanwhile, sis Bijou Philips landed herself in the bottom ten percent of this tragic round-up, and now we have MacKenzie, in all of her skeevy Skeletor gory. I mean, GLORY.

I think Mac rocked on the '70s TV sitcom "One Day at a Time." I used to watch that show faithfully when I was a kid, mainly because it was set in Indianapolis, and I was a Hoosier kid myself, so, like, I could relate. Although they never really explained why the nosey but loveable superintendant Schneider was such a New Yawk stereotype...but oh well, we take what crumbs are given to us.

MacKenzie's character, little Julie Cooper, was great. She was one of the first sitcom offspring to have serious issues. She ran away from home, she called her mother names (poor Bonnie Franklin, resplendant in her terry cloth nightgowns), she drank, she dated bad boys. Mac had big lapses where she didn't appear on the show because she was in rehab, so the show's writers had to continuously come up with reasons she wasn't around...married....ran away from home...college...etc. The truth was, MacKenzie was too TRASHED to share a soundstage with the likes of pureheart Valerie Bertinelli, who would only wind up marrying trashbin rocker Eddie Van Halen anyway (though they make a cute couple, especially when they had matching feathered hair).

Says Snowglobe Groupie CUTIE O'GIGGLINS..."did you see her in half-sister bijou's video for "when i hated him (don't tell me)" ?? the one where lil' bij' is a stripper and lives in a camper trailer with her receding hairline boyfriend who cheats on her with her some other stripperesque slut and then, when bijou drives home (in her pick-up truck --- where do these people live anyway?), her bf stashes the other skag, who is in black lingerie, under the bed (!) and of course bijou sees her right away and she has a fit and well this all intercuts with footage at the go-go bar and you see mackenzie for all of three or four seconds grand total through the video and she just kinda looks...weird...like a little bedraggled and drunk, how else could you explain her presence in this video? sisterly bonding? "HEY MACKENZIE..i'm making my first video, you should be in it...we'd play STRIPPERS!" "Cool, bij'!""

BONUS SKANK POINTS for MacKenzie's tell-all account of how she met Mick Jagger at a party and had sex with him. Now THERE'S a mental image one can't soon forget. Can you imagine being at a party, opening the wrong door, and finding THAT little tableau? Yum.

Wow, Anna Nicole Smith, hey, you know...what the hell. She started out as a white trash hell-raiser, complete with feathered bangs, fringed-suede jackets and stone-washed boot-cut jeans with zippers up the ankles and drawstring waistbands. Then she watched one too many hair-metal videos and realized all she needed was tits and a dream and she could make the big-time.

And she was right. For a while.

Says Snowglobe Hag CUTIE O'GIGGLINS..."i used to think anna nicole was the next jayne mansfield, but since the advent of pamela anderson lee, anna nicole was a false alarm in that dept. anna nicole does rule, however, and deserves wreck we love status. we haven't heard the last from her yet, she is bound to become wreckier with age. have you seen her lately? she was just in us magazine holding two pies next to her boobs."

Rock and roll drummer.

British.

Alcoholic.

Drug-addled.

Probable behavior disorder.

Transvestite.

Dead.

Keith Moon.

Trainwreck.

Oh, SURE you remember Lauren Chapin. She was cute little KITTEN Anderson on the ancient TV show "Father Knows Best." Her poisonously cutesy, snot-nosed persona would become an inspiration for generations of obnoxious girl-actors to come: The Carries of "Little House on the Prairie"; Susan Olsen of "The Brady Bunch"; Little Rudie of "The Cosby Show"; The Olsen Twins of "The Seventh Level of Hell"; and perhaps most importantly, SMALL WONDER, the half robot/half little girl TV character whose show was cancelled after only one season, at the request of the Catholic Church.

After her fine work on "Best," little Lauren grew up and became a junkie, and from what she says on her very own E! True Hollywood Story documentary, she was quite the little self-mutilating prostitute as well! She even tells a story about how dirty old men would recognize her as KITTEN and make her pretend to BE that character as part of the sex act. ME-OW!

Today, Lauren has cleaned her stuff up. She's been BORN AGAIN and is now a fundamentalist Christian. "There's only ONE Father who Knows Best!" she quips, pointing upward with the same hand that once blew kisses to Robert Young and gave handjobs to grease-stained truckers in the back of diners all across the West coast.

OOOOH, yum yum I like Sean Young. She used to be one of those celebrities who you could count on to cuss and misbehave on talkshows, and who would always show up to stuff like The Oscars with a boob "accidentally" hanging out of her dress or something. I heard a rumor that Sean showed up at a tribute for Martha Graham at Lincoln Center, and her peek-a-boo gauzey dress revealed FULL BUSH.

My favorite story about Sean Young, however, is the urban legend that she Krazy Glued ex-bf James Wood in his most private area. Apparently, after discovering proof of his cheating, Sean glued James' (morning) wood to his thigh while the actor was sleeping! HOTT!!!!