Wolf Gnards

These next Uggie winners represent a very special sort of ugly. What do James Taylor and Brian Posehn have in common? Dulcet tones? Nope. Nerd rage? Not that I know of. Posehn and Taylor happen to suffer the same fate as most jocks in high school, that being they were formerly handsome. More than that though, not only are they not handsome, but they have strayed into the stratosphere of ugly. The only thing worse than being pug fugly is knowing the sweet taste of beauty.

If you follow 30 Rock then you’re probably familiar with the “handsome bubble.” The idea is that the extremely handsome have no concept of rules or regulations, everything is always done for them, and they pretty much live a different reality than our own. This explains why so many beautiful people are dumb as rocks, does beauty and stupidity simply go hand in hand or does the brain go into atrophy from years of disuse? However, not only can this handsome bubble burst, but it can implode. Turning beauty into beast, and can this beast possibly be ready to deal with the real world, a real world of getting parking tickets and paying bills on time?

James Taylor

James Taylor is classic singer song writer, who surprisingly enough is known more for his musical ability than his good looks. However, your mother or grandmother would probably argue that point. If you were alive in 60’s and 70’s the biggest reason to buy James Taylor records were for his album covers. He had thick shampoo commercial hair and the face of an angel, the face of a goddamn angel, I tell you. By the 80’s his once long hair was rapidly receding. But it’s more than hair loss because bald men can be attractive (Dee Dee says Ben Kingsley is a Sexy Beast). His face started going sour around the same time… just small changes, slightly harsher feature. His skin now looks like it was burned by boiler room furnace after the neighborhood parents caught him molesting their children. OK, so he’s not the Freddy Krueger or the Elephant Man, but it’s really the fall that I find fascinating from beautiful to handsome to average to slightly below average. Maybe, not trollish, but the bubble has certainly burst. One funny note, the majority of pictures of old James Taylor have the very top of his head cropped out as if no one will notice he’s bald.

Brian Posehn

Brian Posehn: now we’re talking ugly. This is the dictionary definition of ugly. If Taylor was boderlined, Posehn has hit critical mass. If you’re familiar with Brian Posehn’s early work like on Just Shoot Me, you’d probably say, “He was always weird looking.” Or if you’re more familiar with The Sarah Silverman Program that he was always “gigantic, orange, and gay.” And while in real life he is not gay, he really is that gigantic and orange. However, what you may not know about Brian Posehn is that he used to be handsome. Not gorgeous like Taylor, but certainly not circus ugly. Brian Posehn was the All-American boy. Posehn used to have long flowing blond hair and a trim build, just a typical California surfer dude. Early on he was known as the Keanu Reeves of comedy. And somewhere along the line he went from Surfer von Dudenstein to the heavy metal nerd we all know and love. I don’t know if it was gradual or over night ugly, but it him and it hit Brian Posehn hard. Perhaps it was something like this: Brian wakes up and finds the spot next to him in bed empty. This spot has never been empty! So, he had to find a way to fill it again. If he had any musical ability he would have become a heavy metal guitar god… next best thing: a nerd comedian.

Honorable mention: Jan-Michael Vincent (However, he had his face ground by car accidents, so I don’t think he counts)

Your reporter in ugly,
J. Douglas Musashi