The Thirteen Worst Instances of Celebrity Excess

The ridiculously wealthy generally fall into one of two categories; spendthrift celebrities obsessed with showy wealth and overpaid corporate types obsessed with the act of acquiring more wealth. There are plenty of exceptions to these two categories - anomalies or category-jumpers - but these rare exceptions only further prove the rules. I should know, I have spent more time than is humanly possible watching every episode of "MTV's Cribs" and 80% of the programming on the utterly worthless Style channel. Through rigorous note-taking and the helpful assistance of my poor man's TiVo (aka "the VCR") I have compiled an immense library on the excess of the rich. After combing through this raw data I have carefully selected the thirteen worst cases of celebrities wasting their money.

13. Scotty Pippen's SwansBasketball player Scotty Pippen owns a sprawling 19 million dollar mansion in Los Angeles that includes an Olympic plus sized swimming pool, three hot tubs, and a special wooden hut. Carefully landscaped and unobtrusive, the hut contains more than a dozen well cared for swans that are released onto the pool during parties. During the course of the Cribs episode where the swans were revealed Pippen admits that "sometimes they fly off" and he has to purchase new ones. It's like a retard's version of an ice sculpture only it enrages PETA.

12. The Ruby Collar on Jay-Z's Doberman Pincer

A dog will chase a rabbit into a septic tank. Reason number 97 not to put 75,000 dollars worth of platinum and rubies around your dog's neck.

11. Tommy Lee's Rotating Bed

In addition to multiple sex swings and dancing cages, the ever-tasteful Tommy Lee has his bigger-than-king-size bed mounted on a rotating dias controlled by a panel in the headboard. That's pretty ridiculous in and of itself, but the fact that the bed basically rotates from one view of his bedroom's interior to another view of his bedroom's interior makes it outrageous. I would love to see a list of the injuries that have been caused by this bed and Tommy Lee's drunken sexual antics. Hey, maybe this bed is how Pamela caught Hepatitis!

10. Ben Affleck's Engagement to Jennifer Lopez

God and Affleck's accountants only know what kind of money was dumped into this long-running media extravaganza of a relationship. He gave her lavish gifts out of his Armageddon fund and offered up a pricey engagement ring that has probably had more written about it than the Chernobyl disaster. Now that their relationship has reached its inevitable conclusion Lopez is free to shake her ass for someone else and Affleck is forever tainted. Hopefully he'll go back to the one thing he's actually good at: doing commentary tracks for Kevin Smith movies. Which, incidentally, is the only thing Kevin Smith is actually good at.

9. Nelly's Pool-Bottom Speakers

Lame sex-symbol rapper Nelly installed 22 inch subwoofers inside of glass boxes in the bottom of his swimming pool. He claims "the ladies love the bass" with a coy wink. Hey, Nelly, the ladies also love vagisil so why don't you fucking fill your pool up with that, jackass? Oh, hey, what's playing?! It's my favorite song "gllrrbbll rrgggbbb llrrbbgblrlrl."

8. Lil' John's Pimp Cup

Rapper Lil' John's pimp cup is one of the best known affectations in entertainment today, rivaling Fifty Cent's Band-Aid and zombie Tupac's bandana. The cup no doubt began modestly enough, as perhaps a tin or even plastic cup with a bunch of fake jewels glued to it. After making it big Lil' John went on to upgrade his comical cup with real bling, robbing it of much of its hilarious irony and further raising the bar for imitators at every college party in the United States. My sources tell me that Lil' John's latest and greatest incarnation of his prized cup weighs in at over nine pounds and is valued at 1.1 million dollars. I think he needs to chain that shit to his wrist and stay well away from any rap awards shows.

7. Bruce Willis' Helicopter Ski-Lift

Bruce Willis owns a ski lodge in the Colorado Rockies. Rather than installing something as dreary and mundane as a ski-lift, Willis keeps a helicopter at the sky lodge so that when he vacations there a pilot can airlift him and his guests to the top of a nearby mountain. Helicopters are pretty fucking expensive, but at least this isn't as bad as…

6. Dennis Rodman's Mail Helicopter

On an episode of Cribs Rodman claimed that he uses the helicopter he owns "mostly for getting the mail" on his enormous 900 acre estate in North Dakota of all places. I think - I hope - that Rodman was joking, but holy shit you just can't be sure anymore.

5. The Entire Band Motley Crue

Tommy Lee's bed nabbed a number 11 spot, but taken as a whole the band Motley Crue weighs in at number 5. When not hammering out a shitty 1-2 combo of glam and butt rock, the band's members have always been busy exemplifying the ideals of celebrity excess. One band member killed someone in a drunk driving accident, another overdosed and nearly died, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. During the early 80s Crue was responsible for nearly 30% of the GDP of Columbia. Nikki Sixx once ate a cheesesteak with half an ounce of cocaine on it and washed it down by injecting Jack Daniels into his carotid. When they weren't snorting, smoking, huffing, or injecting anything they could get their hands on the Crue crew were either banging the worst dumpster slime groupies or tearing up the guts of various models and actresses. Before Tommy Lee bestowed Hepatitis on Pamela Anderson he was somehow transferring a chigger infestation to Heather Locklear's anus.

4. Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski's Wife

Dennis Kozlowski made hundreds of millions of dollars as the CEO of Tyco, but he wasn't satisfied, and evaded millions in taxes while mixing his finances illegally with Tyco's liquid assets. Illegal corporate greed is nothing new, but Kozlowski stands out as a greedy CEO who loved to spend money as quickly as possible. One of the things he loved to spend money on was his hot trophy wife, who is in her forties now but looks like she's in her twenties. Yes, she's had more reconstruction work done than the USS Cole, but the real excess came from an infamous 40th birthday celebration Kozlowski held for her. He rented out a villa in Sardinia, flew hundreds of guests there, and spent millions on catering and entertainment. I would be willing to tolerate that sort of excess coming from a party if it were a classy fall-of-Rome/Caligula type of excess. You know, a big writhing orgy, hundreds of oiled model-caliber men and women ready to serve, being hand fed until you vomit into the channel of your triclineum and then the process begins anew. Instead, leaked video of the party looked like a lame poolside barbecue with entertainment provided by the Icecapades. There were togas, but most frat parties can manage that. Rappers know how to throw parties. CEOs do not.

3. Tim McGraw's Marble Statue of Hank Williams Senior

Tim McGraw has gone to greater lengths than anyone else to keep Hank Williams Junior off of his property by commissioning a marble statue of the country legend's country legend father. What's creepier than that? The statue isn't wearing a shirt. Try to find a picture of Hank Williams Senior without a shirt on.

2. Lil' Bow Wow's Hummer 2

Lil' Bow Wow is like eight…and he owns one of the most expensive domestic automobiles on the market. On top of that, Senor Wow also had state of the art speaker systems, custom leather interior, and custom wheels installed on his "bumpin' H2". He could go inside and listen to the giant speakers in his mansion, but no, the big boys listen to music in their cars and why should ageism stand between Monsieur Wow and his relaxing music? I just thank God and the State of California that he can't use his money to get a driver's license.

1. John Travolta's Private Jet

Somewhere in the mountainside headquarters of Scientology an alarm sounds and a big plasma TV displaying a map of the United States shows that someone in New Jersey has just rated on an E-Meter with life-threatening levels of Thetan. John Travolta puts down the cupcake he is eating and turns to look at Boy Wonder Tom Cruise. The dynamic duo slide down their poles with glee and emerge ready to leap into John Travolta's private jet plane. Seriously, John, no one needs you that badly. Get some first class plane tickets or a Cessna or something. You don't have any use for a 36 passenger jet.

Lifetime of Excess Achievement Award

You're probably wondering why Michael Jackson did not appear on this list. Well, he did now, bitch! I deem Jackson to be an unfair inclusion on the "Worst Thirteen" list because he would dominate all thirteen levels. Instead I offer Michael the deliciously coveted Lifetime of Excess Achievement Award. His achievements in celebrity excess leave every other celebrity - even the creepy Middle Eastern oil barons - eating his dust. To name a few of his accomplishments:

Has repeatedly gotten away with molesting children
Has also gotten away with defending his child molestation with some sort of crazy bullshit philosophy
People used to joke that he was a black man who turned himself into a white woman. Nowadays people don't even know where the punch line to that joke went. Probably down the blood channel of a plastic surgeon's operating table. Jackson now looks more like a cross between Golem and the Crypt Keeper rubbed down with white grease paint.
He bought the Elephant Man's skeleton. It takes a special kind of celebrity to do that and not seem out of character.
He built an amusement park on his private property. And not a cool one like Cedar Point, we're talking a late 19th century creepy Euro carnival where all of the rides end up with a pop star lich performing oral sex.
Buys random zoo animals that probably die of starvation when he tries to feed them million dollar abstract paintings of naked children.
He made "Thriller". A positive, right? Think about this: when combined with everything else Jackson has done the proud legacy of Vincent Price is now forever tainted.

With the help of a little voodoo magic maybe I'll be giving this award to Bob Crane next year. For now Jackson has a lock on it.

I can forgive celebrities going a little over the top once in a while with their money. After all, most of them get huge sums of money for doing very little work and very few of them are more intelligent than an ocean-going invertebrate. Until such a time as whales can filter them with their baleen I will be happy to point out some of the exceptional cases who take things just a little bit too far.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)