The first glimmer of its approach came in October, slamming into my awareness like a tractor driven by Satan hitting a chicken at warp speed. It nibbled at my consciousness through November. It sat ponderously on my brain as I frolicked blissfully through December, biding its time.

I tried to stop it. But still it came.

The ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, and a second darkness spread o’er the Earth.

Its name was Adam Sandler.

As a movie critic, I waste my precious minutes on terrible films while my peers discover the joys of a social life and natural light. I consider my job on par with, say, the measly efforts of our local fire department. Let’s compare: They bravely douse smoldering infernos in bathroom trashcans, but without me, naïve teens would risk brain damage and heart failure by walking into the latest Sandler flick to sport a catchy slogan and half-naked Drew Barrymore. I think we all know who should survive the latest budget cuts, and it’s not the people in the chunky suits with the silly hats.

Though my position ranks slightly above Colin Powell’s in terms of societal importance, Hollywood execs, aware that I do not (yet) have the power to press a button and blow them into deep orbit, still find it necessary to annually send me four months of mental anguish. Every January through April, I watch with increasingly fewer brain cells as the Big Bounces and Agent Cody Banks 2s of the world Eurotrip past my burning eyes. Movies unworthy of late-night slots on the Lifetime channel pop up in the winter/spring season with the frequency of caffeine-crazed prairie dogs, and we sit transfixed like woodland mammals in headlights as our collective IQ is zapped down to the level of mystery meat. This happens for one reason only:

You pay to see the *&@% films.

Why, God, why?

Why spend eight bucks to watch Harriet the Spy make out with her brother in Eurotrip when you could repeatedly bang your head against the wall for the same thrill? Why subject yourself to Along Came Polly when far more pleasurable activities await your attention, like kicking puppy dogs or lighting yourself on fire? And why prostrate yourselves again and again before Sandler, a long-time staple of the spring cine-matic slump, in spirit if not fact?

Hoping that life was not so meaningless as the success of 50 First Dates seems to suggest, I wandered the halls of Blair to find a Sandler fan to explain to me exactly why a balding man with an egg-shaped head and an unhealthy obsession with bodily noises is worth $72 million. Sadly, it was all too easy.

I came upon a bright sophomore named Sarah. Sarah claims to be a person of average intelligence who has never sold her soul to Satan, so I expected a detailed answer when I asked why she liked Adam Sandler.

“He’s funny."

Well, strike me with a frying pan and label me enlightened. I asked her to elaborate.

“He does stupid stuff that’s funny."

Ah, stupid and funny. The unstoppable force. Surely it can’t be this easy to get mega-rich.

Ten thousand light bulbs went off over my head.

This school thing—what has it ever done for me? Seeing as, at last count, I’d made a paltry $2.47 reciting the periodic table on street corners for spare change, I decided to strike out and submit my own spring-worthy movie to Hollywood:

We open on Chiquita Banana, a blonde 16-year-old born in Korea but raised in the Rockies by ninja mountain goats. She sets off to find fellow humans but gets kidnapped by a clan of marauding wildebeests. The film culminates with a jet ski chase with the Dalai Llama through the streets of suburban Utah.

It’s Coming to America meets Julie of the Wolves! Now all I need are actors bad enough to grace my masterpiece. I see a gaping void of talent. I see vacant eyes and surgically-enhanced smiles. I see the WB.

Nowhere else is such a high concentration of lipstick paired with such a low level of skill. Just remember, when it comes to the spring movie season, all you need to be a hit is vast quantities of nothing. Well, that and an egg-shaped head.