On a recent episode of the cable TV show "The List," a studio audience assisted a panel of semi-celebrity judges in selecting "The Best Artist of the '80s." One of the judges on the panel was Rick James, who showed up all puffy and had laryngitis to boot. Croaking like Linda Hunt after a KISS concert, Rick James nominated HIMSELF as the best rocker of the '80s. Out of fear that they'd be abducted and forced into sex-slavery, the audience and fellow judges shakily cast their ballots, and, Madonna be damned, voted for Rick James as the biggest musical act of 1980-1989.

And really, if you were in the same room with this man, wouldn't you?

If your answer was NO, you obviously don't know about the terror that is called Rick James.

His biggest hit, of course, is the trashy song "Superfreak," which was accompanied by a lurid video shot on grainy film, depicting the cornrowed James lapping his tongue at a bunch of lip-glossed and leather-teddied skankarellas in the back of a limo. Awwwwww, yeah.

At the most successful point of his career, James became famous for lighting up giant joints onstage and singing love songs to marijuana plants. After a while, though, he discovered (fellow TRAINWRECK) Prince, and became paranoid that the little funkateer would steal his spotlight. And, of course, he was right. After a paranoid attempt to trash the sexdwarf to anyone who'd listen (too much skunkweed, perhaps?), Rick James took a tumble over the stoney cliff. Emphasis on STONEY.

He and his woman got all wacky on whatever drugs they could get their mitts on, and did their best to have sex with anything that had holes or protrusions. Meanwhile, James peroxided his locks, started wearing frilly shirts, and declared he had given his life to Christianity. Christian values notwithstanding, James and his lady eventually got so out of it that they kidnapped a woman, tied her up, forced her to smoke crack, and made her their sex slave.

Superfreaks indeed.

Eventually, the woman got away and James and his partner got caught and thrown in the slammer. After a lengthy jail term (and, seemingly, more than a few helpings of pie), a worn and pudgy Rick James returned to society, making the "Where Are They Now?" retro-kitsch circuit. Could an appearance in an Old Navy commercial be far away?

Rick James - a very WRECKY boy. The kind you DON'T take home to mama.

29. SALVADOR DALI, Persistence of WRECKINESS

Some consider him to be the Elvis Presley of Surrealism, but let's face facts: Dali was the godfather of all things TRAINWRECKY. Here are some fun facts to consider:

* Salvador Dali often tied a loaf of bread to his head, often doing so when he took his pet ocelot on walks.

* When he was in his 50s, he was obsessed with a pre-teen girl named MIA FARROW.

* Dali and his wife Gala used to brag about how they would take temporary custody of orphaned children, so they could lock the children in a room and beat them mercilessly.

* Dali made a piano-like instrument that was made out of cats. If you pushed one of the piano "keys," a heavy weight would drop on the corresponding cat's tail, forcing it to scream.

* Salvador Dali produced his own counterfeit art prints, and they sold for ridiculously high prices. The question, of course, is: if you counterfeit your own art, isn't it still real?

After his wife died and he was injured in a fire, Salvador Dali lived in seclusion in the top of a tower in Spain until he died in 1989. More Manson than Marilyn, more Alice than Cooper, this man was the mother of all WRECKs.

Ah yes, Joan Crawford. Also known as the face that launched a million drag queens. I guess La Crawford would qualify as yet another "Blah Blah Blah" WRECK, since we've all had "Mommie Dearest" pounded into our collective psyche like so many thwaks with a wire hangar.

The Joan that we didn't really get to see through that infamous book/movie was Joan Crawford: Career TRAINWRECK.

I'd like to think that it all started with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" in which she and bitter enemy Bette Davis entered the world of schlock suspense and struck gold. Bette Davis managed to ride her ups and downs for a few more decades, writing acidic memoirs and blowing up inflatable pool ducks in the Karen Black film "Burnt Offerings" (and she blew the duck with a cigarette in her hand, natch!).

It wasn't so pretty for poor Joan. After she married a bigwig at PepsiCo, Joan became obsessed with soda. When she wasn't tearing down bitches of bearing walls and putting windows where they ought to go (don't be confused - it's a semi-obscure "Mommie Dearest" quote), Joan INSISTED on Pepsi product placements in ALL of her movies. Indeed, if you watch the films produced in Joan's autumnal years, you'll see someone sucking on a Pepsi bottle, or you'll see a Pepsi billboard, or you'll see a Pepsi truck careening down an alley(John Waters did a subtle homage to Joan's Pepsi fixation in the movie "Pecker").

Maybe it was Joan's Pepsi fetish that landed her the chinsy roles that brought up the rear of her ouevre. I don't know, but I have to admit that Joan's worst films are my favorites. Who can resist "I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are," where Joan plays a middle-aged co-dependant skeeze? And how about "Berzerk," where Joan's the ringmaster of a homocidal circus? (Sample quote: "This is a circus, not a charm school!") And we can't forget my absolute favorite - "Straitjacket" - in which Joan plays an insane ax murderer who has just been released from the sanitarium, only to find herself twitching whenever she sees an ax. This movie has deluxe WRECK value, if only for the scene where Joan gets drunk, makes a pass at her daughter's fiancee, and then, all sexy-like, lights a match on a spinning LP record.

But of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "TROG," the mid '60s atrocity in which Joan is a distinguished scientist (hell, she's DRUNK through the whole movie) who not only discovers the missing link, but gives the little bugger CHARM LESSONS. "Good...GOOD Trog!" Joan slurrily chirps as her caveman Pygmalion fetches a ball. My favorite fact about "Trog" is that the budget for this film was so low, Joan had to change her costumes in the back of a stationwagon!

It was around this time that Joan wrote an Emily Post-type book, all about how to live a proper lifestyle and how to be socially upstanding and acceptable. The cover shows Joan in a huge, elaborate bee-hive, clutching her poodle. I checked this book out from my local library years ago, and it was SCARY. I wish I remembered specifics from it, and hopefully some TRAINWRECK fan out there can help me out on some of the details of this tome. I DO remember she had a lengthy section on child-rearing and discipline. No, really.

After all of the above, poor Miss Crawford sunk into television appearances - "Night Gallery" and other horror schlock television appearances. Then she died, soon to be dubiously immortalized by Faye Dunaway, who is a TRAINWRECK of an entirely different track...

"I don't think I should be held responsible for anything I don't know about."

- Kathie Lee, referring to the news that there have been underage and underpaid workers in "sweat shops" working on her clothing line. 5/31/96

We all know what a mega-bitch Kathie Lee is supposed to be. We all remember the scandal about the Kathie Lee collection being made in sweatshops full of starving children. We've all seen - or heard about - one of her many extended raving sessions on "Regis and Kathie Lee," where she bleats damnations at the media. We all feel sorry for her children (see previous trainwreck entry).

But really - what is this woman's deal? Is she really a foul, demon shrew, or is she demonized because she speaks her mind?

Ok, enough of this "being objective" crap. She's a foul, demon shrew.

She's like the nasty aunt who shows up at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, whom nobody likes, yet everyone pays attention to so they'll have wild stories about the skank relative to tell at work the next week. I mean, COME ON - in her autobiography (or one of them, anyway), Kathie Lee outed her sister as someone who uses a colostomy bag. HER SISTER! She defended high-profile rape suspect Michael Kennedy - "not that what he did was right," she reminded America. And she's television's queen of the unintentional sour expression. It seems as if whenever a camera catches her in a moment of repose, she's silently seething about something.

And ugh, the worst transgression of all - watching a Kathie Lee Christmas special is LITERALLY like watching a TRAINWRECK. It's tragic and horrible, but you can't take your eyes off of it. I obsess over these specials, if only because I'm amazed to watch this woman clutching little children and singing about sugar plum fairies, all the while her eyes are burning with a hatred only rivaled by the Prince of Darkness himself. It's really creepy. Check it out some year.

Kathie Lee - a WRECK WE LOVE...to hate!

"If it weren't for those two little whores, Jon Benet might still be with us today." - Gore Vidal

I know, I know - they're only little girls. Whatever. They're more like when Sigourney Weaver accidentally gives birth to half-Alien offspring - horrible, tragic, hateful little monsters that are all fang and hiss. Only thing is, at least Sigourney always had the decency to kill her evil, acid-blooded brood. We, on the other hand, are stuck with Ashley and Mary-Kate.

At least "Full House" got the axe. The little sucklings were at their most potent back when they were still in Huggies, and bleating off their one or two precious, precocious little one-liners. Oh GOD, every time I happened upon a scene where two-year-old Mary-Kate would dispense relationship advice to John Stamos, I'd fly into such a rage that I would actually pick up the phone and call my local congressperson to complain.

"How the West Was Fun"?! Christ.

Fortunately, all of us Olsen-haters are getting our day in the sun. Slowly. Deliciously. The girls are starting to grow out of their "cute" phase, and they stopped being popular a couple of years ago. I saw a copy of their 2000 calendar recently, and in every month's photos, the duo are posed listlessly against assortments of balloons and teddy bears. The looks on their faces are all like, "yeah, okay. This is what we do for money. This friggin' girlie cutie crap. I think I'm getting my first period. Shit. I need some more coke."

The Olsen Twins are going DOWN, and it's not gonna be pretty. I predict one of them will wind up in Playboy magazine, and the other one - after a long bout with Scientology, drugs and embarrassing Howard Stern interviews - will come out as a lesbian and date drag kings. I'm usually right about these things, you know.

Without David Crosby, there would be no VH1: Behind the Music. Without him, who would show everyone how to be a drug casualty? During his ten year drug addiction, Crosby showed us how to look like absolute crap, babble incoherantly, get really fat, and land ourselves in prison repeatedly - but with a certain savoir fare.

There's not much more to say, except that David Crosby is truly a TRAINWRECK PIONEER.

Many of you may not know who Jonah Falcon is. To be quite honest, without him there would be no list of the 100 Top Trainwrecks of the 20th Century.

Let's start at the base of this story and measure our way up, shall we? For starters, let's get the obligatory factoid out of the way. Jonah Falcon's claim to fame is that he has an unusually, grotesquely, amazingly huge wang. I just don't know how else to put it.

In Lower Manhattan, Jonah's whale is a bit of a legend. He's a hit at the clubs, and wherever he goes, dirty old men stumble over each other to have a tug at Mr. Falcon's Steamboat Willie. He's even been written about in magazines like OUT and THE VILLAGE VOICE. We're talking major articles - profiles! Just because he has a huge, huge, huge weiner!

And in my opinion, it's kinda sad. Okay, here's the truth of the matter, and it's a hard thing to write, because, well, it's delicate. As much as I enjoy being a bitter bitch, and as much as I enjoy shredding the likes of Julia Roberts and Scott Weiland, it's different when I'm writing about a trainwreck whom I actually know, and it's also different when I'm able to observe the, uh, ANATOMY of a trainwreck. And I mean that figuratively, not literally. Believe me.

The first time I encountered Jonah was at a job of mine, where he was hanging out with a group of old guys who seemed to really be getting a kick out of him. After a while, he approached me, we talked about Mystery Science Theatre 2000 for a while, and then he left. Nice guy, I thought. Geeky as hell, and with greasy hair and a face that reminded me of a newborn puppy - all smooshed. My co-worker, meanwhile, was horrified. "DID YOU SEE HIS CROTCH?!" she screamed upon his exit. Uh, well, no I hadn't. Whatever.

Jonah visited once again, not too long after the first encounter. This time, he was wearing bright silver, super-tight bike shorts. I realized that the idea here was to draw attention to whatever was going on down in the ol' groinage, but I was intent on my decision not to peep down there. I guess I thought I was doing something positive for the guy's dignity or something, I don't know.

My good intentions were foiled by the man himself when, after approaching me and engaging me in some cursory conversation, he asked me, point blank, "so what do you think of my bicycle shorts?" I remember glancing down real quick, thinking GOOD CHRIST ALMIGHTY, and then looking back up real quick. I said "nice shorts. Lycra?"

And that's the extent of my interactions with Jonah Falcon, for the most part. A year or so ago, a friend of mine came to New York to visit me, and we all went out to the club Squeezebox. My friend wandered off for a while, and returned, awe-struck and raving about some guy with a huge wang who was taking it out to show people. Of course, it was Jonah.

And not too long after the Squeezebox incident, I noticed Michael Musto compiled a list for the VILLAGE VOICE of the TOP TEN NIGHTMARES OF LOWER MANHATTAN. Guess who was Numero Uno? Yup - Jonah Falcon. And it was at this exact time...or wait, maybe it was after VH1's TOP 100 WOMEN IN ROCK...that I decided I needed to compile the hundred most ill-mannered, dubiously tragic public personas of the last hundred years.

But back to Jonah - you're probably asking yourself by now, "well, does he do porno?" He says he doesn't, and he says he wants to be known as a "serious" actor/writer/director. He even has a website where he deconstructs the DILBERT TV SHOW. Oh, and he even walks the line of knowing/unintentional irony by way of writing a critique of the movie "Boogie Nights" on his site.

Interestingly, he doesn't use his site to blatantly advertise his deformed crotch-hose. Oh, sure, he refers to it a lot, but if you didn't know about him, it wouldn't be obvious that you're reading a webpage by a guy who runs around New York showing off his breadbox-sized pecker. What this tells me about him is that he wants to be more than the guy with the freak-dick, but it's the freak-dick that gets him noticed. It's the freak-dick that gets him into VIP rooms at clubs, and it's the freak-dick that inspires people to write long-ass profiles of his otherwise unspectacular self.

It really is kind of a tough call - would YOU put a lot of effort into coming off as an intelligent, cultured, talented person when all you have to do to get peoples' attention is show off some uniquely exaggerated erogenous zone on your body? The first choice might be more rewarding and it might prove a lot of integrity on your part, but let's face it, dazzling the masses with a big schlong is a hell of a lot easier. But, ya know, on the other hand, nobody's putting a gun to his head and forcing him to run around the city in skin-tight silver shorts. And even if someone were, look at Dolly Parton - she's been capitalizing off her giant bazooms for decades now, but meanwhile she's proven herself as a valid artistic performer about, oh, a kajillion times.

As long as folks continue objectifying the guy, he's gonna continue being nothing more than a walking, talking elephant prick. When people start to see over and around that gigantic loaf, maybe he'll be afforded a normal life and actually try to develop the talent he wants to have. I can say that I was motivated, sheerly by the guy's trainwreckiness (which is every bit as positive as it is negative, or else I wouldn't have put MYSELF on the list...), to create this list. Thanks for the inspiration there, buddy. Now aim that thing the other way.

I'm really surprised poor little Chelsea Clinton hasn't offed someone yet. Would you blame her for going off the deep end?

I mean, really. First off, there's her sexual compulsive father. And let's face it, folks, he's a SEXUAL COMPULSIVE. After looking at the little intern troll he repeatedly basted in his love goo, it clearly wasn't about her unusually strong allure or charm. But then, after reading the list of tacky CRAP gifts that Bill and Monica bought each other, it's hard to address the issue of good taste in the whole mess. But anyway, whatever, that's her dad.

And then there's MOM, and all of that freaky Whitewater scandal stuff, and her parade of schlumpy hairstyles (she shoulda never lost the Meridith Baxter-Birney "Family Ties" look, with the headband), and - oh, the inhumanity - the rumor that Hilary's assistants made fun of her behind her back for using the phrase "OKEE DOKEE ARTICHOKEE" about a thousand times a day.

And then there's poor Chelsea herself. When Clinton was first elected, the poor kid was so ugly that she could scare the stink off a skunk. And really, no ugly kid deserves to be made fun of by the entire country (perhaps the entire world). Well, I can think of a few kids I went to school with who should have endured that fate, but you get my point.

And I'm not even going to get into talking about Bill Clinton's fatso loser brother Roger, except to say that it's nice to know that America was able to enjoy a sequel to Billy Carter.