Celebs Who Completely Failed At Their Second Career

No one is immune from the cult of celebrity—including celebrities themselves. The rich, bored, and famous often find themselves convinced that they can do absolutely anything, believing that their superpowers will propel them to greatness. Many venture out into secondary careers, and more often than not, they fall flat on their handsome faces. Don't worry, though: the rich can afford a few bad investments. Here are few celebrities whose egos are still bruised from failed business ventures.

Once, Hulk Hogan tried to suplex pasta down America's collective throats. In 1995, Hulk opened his own restaurant called Pastamania in the Mall of America in Minnesota. Despite featuring flavorful delights like Hulkios, Hulk-Us, and Hulk-shaped Hulkaronis, America just wasn't ready to taste the Hulk, and the restaurant closed within a year of opening its doors. We'd rather eat at Jerry Lawler Presents Slamburgers anyhow. If someone has to be the King of Hamburgers, might as well be someone who looks like one.

One might not be inclined to trust a self-proclaimed Nature Boy with finances, but Ric Flair presumed that thirty years in the ring gave him enough relevant experience to open his own loan company, just like how years of working at Joann Fabrics prepares you for neuroscience. Flair's loan company launched in 2007, but Flair was already embroiled in multiple lawsuits regarding his failure to repay his own debts. By 2008, the business was deemed illegal under United States law, as it was operating without a license. Never get a loan from a guy who's proud of how much he can bleed.

Aiken's unexpected attempt at climbing the ranks of North Carolina politics was carefully documented in the TV miniseries The Runner-Up, but many felt that his run for a congressional seat was just an extremely expensive and humiliating publicity stunt. Unfortunately, Aiken was unable to win over the voting public as easily as he did American Idol, and once defeated in 2014, retreated completely from politics and opted for more less visible activism.

When you want to look rich, but don't want to seem like you actually earned any of your money, pay with the Kardashian Kard! Announced in 2010, the Kardashian Kard was going to be a pre-paid debit card which preyed on teenage girls with no knowledge of how money actually works. Because of the public outcry surrounding the card's insanely high fees for everything from having the card to making balance inquiries, the Kard was cancelled before it even came out. Because, you know, you can just get a free card from a real bank that does the same stuff.

In 2008, Johansson released an album of Tom Waits covers, because nothing in this world is sacred. Johansson's weird, clogged-up-bassoon voice can kind of hold a tune, but lends absolutely nothing interesting to her covers. As a result, the painfully forced album and her 2009 follow-up, Break Up, were unable to score more than a C+ average among reviewers. Her ambitiousness is respectable, but any creature with a sense of their own mortality knows that you can't touch Waits and come away clean. Don't even try it.

If you add together the review ratings for Kazaam and Steel, you get a combined score of 5.5 out of 10, which is still a pretty miserable movie. This is the summation of Shaq's "acting" career, which is ten feet of horrible smashed into a 7-foot tall, emotionless monster. In between ruining movies, Shaq recorded five albums' worth of questionable rap music. While the first, Shaq Diesel, went platinum because of morbid curiosity during pre-download days, his follow-ups tanked and were only met with critical indifference.

Feeling that there just weren't enough $250 vegan shoe options, Natalie Portman partnered with Té Casan to create a line of overpriced shoes that harmed no animals, injuring only the souls and wallets of wealthy PETA members. In only a few months, financial mismanagement crashed the line, its website disappeared, and the entire stock was clearanced off at discount outlets. At least Portman failed in the name of making the world a better place for animals, which is a fair trade for helping to ruin Star Wars.

The African lungfish can secrete a thick layer of protective mucus around its body as protection from both dehydration and dangerous predators, which have little interest in eating a giant sea booger. Much like the lungfish, living booger James Franco surrounds himself in an impenetrable shell of narcissism, through which no shame can pass. The movie star has dabbled in both mediocre paintings and aimless fiction, neither of which would be worthy of attention were it not for him playing Green Goblin Jr. in Spider-Man a couple times. Critics have mostly reacted to his non-acting pursuits with indifference, and the rest are sycophants.

It seems to be a rite of passage for a celebrity to either create a fragrance or a hot sauce. Don't mix the two up or you'll lose an eye and ruin your eggs. Aerosmith's Joe Perry chose the world of hot sauces, which pretty much all taste the same anyway. After releasing only two hot sauces and two barbecue sauces, Perry's business completely vanished, and his website was purged of any spicy evidence. At least he could get away from Steven Tyler for a few minutes. That's gotta be worth losing a few million dollars.

You know when you're in a restaurant and the kitchen door swings open, and you see a human that should absolutely not be around food manhandling your poultry? That man opened a restaurant called Flav's Fried Chicken, and it lasted for four months. Unlike most celebrity tie-ins, the restaurant used Flava Flav's personal recipe, but it wasn't enough to keep the food joint up and running. Taking a bite out of Flav's corn niblets couldn't have possibly been that appealing anyhow. We'll have to ask Tiffany Pollard.

The only cure for stupid is keeping quiet, but no one's ever accused a Real Housewife of being too smart. That which compels talentless housewife after housewife to release autotuned singles about their decadent lifestyle is the same thing that propels lemmings over cliffs, or ants to march into a death spiral. Housewives are genetically programmed to not learn from any Housewife who has gone before, and all are protected by expensive shame-blocking pills not available to the general public. From the puke-worthy "Money Can't Buy You Class" to the vomit-inducing "Google Me," not one Housewife anthem uses an actual drummer or vocalist. Apocalypse asteroid, you can't come soon enough.