Under 30

I can't complain but sometimes I still do

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Suck/lame? Nick Lachey

We continue our mission of clearly defining those people, things, ideas, thoughts, actions and other nouns and verbs of questionable suckitude with one of the world’s most famous husbands, Nick Lachey.

At first blush, Lachey seems like a suck slam dunk. He was a member of C-list boy band 98 Degrees. He continues to pursue a music career that has less buzz than a Wilson Phillips reunion tour. And his claim to fame -- wife Jessica Simpson -- now spends more time with Miss Piggy. Lachey is the epitome of being famous for being famous, and even that will probably be gone by the end of 2006.

But before you vote, consider this: Lachey seemed like an awfully nice guy on "Newlyweds," putting up with Jessica's airhead diva shtick long after it became intolerable for the audience. He's far from being a great artist, but he's a likeable enough performer who is custom-made for one of those boring daytime talk shows. If he sucks, he sucks so much that he actually doesn't suck.

So, is Lachey a has-been pop star whose days in the spotlight are numbered? Or a nice guy who will hopefully weather the post-Jessica years successfully? In other words, does he suck? THE POLLS ARE OPEN UNTIL NOON FRIDAY.

27 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who cares about any future success?

This man has reached the pinnacle. He had his taste of fame, he had a hot wife and now he can rest in anonymity and enjoy half of her stuff.

On the surface, he sucks royally. But part of me believes this was his plan all along.

On just the slightest possibility that he pulled off a diabolical masterpiece, he gets a not suck.

1:11 PM  
Blogger klhp said...

I always admired Nick's reslience of Jessica's antics. I loved that he did his own yard work and home improvements. He's a regular guy that got sucked into the Hollywood life.

Yes, his music sucks. But if you put him in a cubicle, away from the tabloids, he'd be your friend.

Though I'm torn, I have to go with...

...Not Suck.

1:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree the music sucks...but for putting up with Jessica as long as he did and for seeming like a normal guy otherwise. My vote is Not Suck! -r

1:33 PM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

The anonymous dude that used the term "bigger ceps" should ID himself. He rules.

1:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm torn. If there was a "pitiful" option, I'd go with that.

Was his music crappy? Sure, but nmot crappy enough that that alone earns him Suck status. And he may be a decent enough guy, but he's not so great that that automatically qualifies him for Not Suck.

I think, ultimately, I'm going to go with Not Suck for one reason (and it may say more about me and my values than him): immediately after the split, he was seen about town canoodling with Jessica's best friend/personal assistant. His wife dumped him, so he nailed her homegirl.

That's big pimpin'.

2:56 PM  
Blogger Krista said...

And seriously, Steve, post a better/recent/human picture of him. That's so 1997. It doesn't do anyone any justice.

3:05 PM  
Blogger klhp said...

I kind of like the new word 'nirmal.'
"I don't want to go out tonight; I'm feeling a little nirmal."
"I'd date him again if he weren't so, you know, nirmal."



(Remember the little kitten Nermal in the Garfield strips? I was obsessed with Garfield in third grade.)

3:48 PM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

I post only the most homoerotic pics of Nick Lachey. That's the Under 30 blog guarantee!

3:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i thought this was going to be a suck landslide.

he is a nice normal guy from the midwest. he goes to vegas, he wears baseball hats... 98 degrees... they sucked/suck... all these reasons put me on the cusp of my suck vote.

yet again though, i don't have much info on the guy. i saw newlyweds about 3 times. he was really boring.

i hear he's doing ab ball commercials now, and got paid $500,000 for doing it. that's so neat, obviously someone who cares about physical fitness doesn't suck right? but robin williams does do bike rides to raise money for aids, and he probably made no money at all those USO tours... and he almost sucked...

i'll have to research nicky and his charitable donations and get back to you. maybe wikipedia will have something good about him.

he's definitely lame, his music is lame, and music is self expression and therefore i make that connection... but i'm not sure about suck yet... t b c.

4:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so robin sucked cause of some movies he was in.. but when nick's music sucks, all of it.. he gets the not suck nod for seeming nice? ... i don't get it.

4:58 PM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

Sigh!

Robin Williams sucks because ALMOST ALL the movies he's in suck, and the fact that people think he's funny when he's obviously not!

Argh!

(expletive) (expletive) expletive)

Please don't bring this up again. Bad memories.

5:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i read his wikipedia and there is nothing in there that wasn't lame.

nothing.

oh he allegedly made out with some girl from Ohio State.

i don't think suck, but since lame is a valid option, i'm going with it.

My vote. Lame

5:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"He's a regular guy that got sucked into the Hollywood life."

wikipedia - "...it wasn't until while studying at Miami University in Ohio (majoring in Sports Medicine) that he realized his dream and followed his SCPA pals to Los Angeles. ... all auditioned in Hollywood and formed the nineties boy band 98 Degrees."

5:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sucks,
I don't think it even requires an explanation

6:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anyone who could spend more than a minute with that brain-dead, pizza hawking harlot gets a suck vote from me.

Let's look at it this way.

As an entertainer -- an artist -- Jessica contributed so much to our culture and our society. For instance, such brilliant parody:

"One of these days these bites are going to pop all over you..."

That sounds yucky. And this man had the gall to support that crap by being her emotional foundation. The fact that he had the sense to ride off into Splitsville doesn't change the vote. Too little, too late.

7:03 PM  
Blogger klhp said...

m, let me rephrase. Jessica sucked him into the Hollywood life. He went there willingly, but he was in a band with his brother when the boy band was huge. They didn't really make it... but then he married Pizza-Harlot-Who-Saved-Herself-For-Marriage. And that's when it all went south.

He should have stuck with Sports Medicine.

7:54 PM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

Your post made me laugh out loud, John Merrick. You may be the Elephant Man, but you have a great sense of humor.

8:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh helllllll no.

you guys can't really be giving nick lachey the ticket to non-suckdom because he's a midwesterner who never scored it big enough in hollywood to lose his insecurities and become as big a prick as, say, colin farrell or russell crowe -- can you? can you?

people, this guy is a chode. a CHODE! now, i'll admit that part of why i hate him is because my newspaper gives hometownboy waaaaaay too much ink, but here is my evidence:

"If someone wants an exclusive social experience here in town, this is the place." Says Lachey about joining a ridiculously exclusive private club in frickin' Cincinnati, membership to which runs $1,500 plus per-monthly required spending.

"American sports information is hard to come by in Stockholm, Sweden, where I'm recording my new album." Lachey, beginning his column about the University of Cincinnati's decision to let its basketball coach go.

"As I stand in the recording studio in Los Angeles trying to finish my next album, I find myself distracted lately; not by bad notes, inadequate lyrics or even the excessive spending of my wife, Jessica ..." The start of another Lachey sports column.

ugh. i can't do anymore. you know my vote. but just in case you can't tell...

SUCKS!

11:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

choad: /chohd/, n.
Synonym for ‘penis’ used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the denizens thereof. They say: “We think maybe it's from Middle English but we're all too damned lazy to check the OED.” [I'm not. It isn't. —ESR] This term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s underground comics, and to have been recently sighted in the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. Speakers of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati languages have confirmed that ‘choad’ is in fact an Indian vernacular word equivalent to ‘fuck’; it is therefore likely to have entered English slang via the British Raj.

1:31 AM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

Again, the "suck" debate hinges on whether the person in question is nice or not. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just interesting.

If Nick Lachey doesn't suck, it's because he sucks so much that he goes back to not suck.

11:12 AM  
Blogger Steve Hyden said...

Another observation: Under 30 voters put a lot of stock in precedent. For instance, if Kanye sucks, how can Nick Lachey be good? This is interesting. We seem to following the Supreme Court model. I don't agree with this. That's like saying you can't vote for John Kerry because he's not as Al Gore, and Al Gore lost to George W. Bush. A person's suckiness is isolated.

I type this while listening to Kanye West on the iPod.

11:24 AM  
Blogger Thomas Rozwadowski said...

Initially, I thought I'd loathe both "Newlyweds" equally, but there was a moment on the show when Nick made a sandwich with moldy bread, except he didn't know it was moldy, and he took two bites from the damn thing. And I thought, "Hmmm, I could see myself doing something like that." Not inside a mansion, but you know ...

Anyway, I definitely agree with the previous comment about Nick's contributions to popular culture being "suckworthy." Still, I also agree with the fact that he seems like a decent enough celebrity to hang out with. Or maybe that's just because I can relate to his obsession with sports. And really, it's a stupid basis by which to judge someone anyway -- the whole, "I'd have a beer with George Bush but not John Kerry" argument. It's irrelvant. I regret bringing it up.

In the end, I think it was having Joe "Satan" Simpson as a father-in-law that broke up the dream marriage. Nick gets bonus points for not putting up with the old man's garbage. Plus, there's the ego thing. Jessica probably makes ten times what Nick does now. You just know he got shooed to the side by photographers at the "Dukes of Hazzard" premiere, and it totally made him flip out.

Even though he isn't annoying to me, I have to vote suck. He has an album called "SoulO." That's just wrong. And if Stylus Magazine ever refers to you as "Jessica's hunky handbag," I don't think you're going to start printing out business cards.

12:16 PM  
Blogger Thomas Rozwadowski said...

And just to ruin Steve's day completely, I watched Dave Chappelle's "For What It's Worth" for like, the 800th time on TiVo the other night. Shot live at the Fillmore in San Fran, Dave explains in the opening montage that he picked the venue because it has hosted comedy legends Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Robin Williams.

Bruce. Pryor. Williams.

Choke on it, Hyden!

12:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i think he seems nice and he sucks. i think tom has some great points. i think gore was shafted. putting stock in precedent isn't what matters, it's pointing out the double standard.

1:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh, the mouth on that kid!

10:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So yeah, I have to say I am a little surprised by the results so far. Although it does seem that Suck is making some sort of a comeback, as of late.

I also have to say that I agree with those who have brought up the dispairity between the R-dub voting and the Lachey voting. How can you use one guys bad movies against him and not the other's bad music.

That said here is my scorecard:

- Nick Lachey is from Cincinnati, as am I: +5 points
- Nick Lachey went to the same high school as my dad, although at different times: +1 point
- Nick Lachey can sing, I cannot: -2 points
- Nick Lachey is physically fit, I am not-so-fit: -2 points
- Nick Lachey was in the boy band 98 degrees, I have never done anything so sucky: -20 points
- Nick Lachey looks like a good guy to hang out with, I am a good guy to hang out with: +3 points
- Nick Lachey tried unsuccessfully to get one of his boy band brethren elected Cincinnati's mayor: -5 points
- I happened to be at the same bar as Nick Lachey one night in downtown Cincy a few years back: +2 points
- Nick Lachey is becoming a media whore: -10 points
- Nick Lachey's music is not good (or tolerable): - infinity points

So there you have it, Nick Lachey SUCKS!

11:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm going with SUCKS, for I fear that a not suck vote would do serious damage to my metal cred.

10:35 AM  

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