Celebrity? Poker
This fascination with watching celebrities playing poker is beyond absurd. Recognizing the absurdity is our cue to make fun of it, so let’s all go together, shall we?
My main goal in watching celeb poker is, naturally, to witness a mistake, a horrible gaffe, a social or numerical screw-up that brings these important people right down to earth. As fans we enjoy lifting the stars up…and then dragging them right back down again. As much as we enjoy seeing our favorite Hollywood denizens outside their normal realm, we enjoy it even more when we witness firsthand their mortality. And with luck, their stupidity.
The first thing you notice about celeb poker is the misuse of that word celebrity. Just because you’ve starred or guest-starred or even cameo-ed on 5 or more episodes of ‘The West Wing’ or ‘Law and Order: K-9 Unit’ doesn’t make you a celebrity. If I don’t know who you are by name, face or clothing, you shouldn’t be on the program. I don’t care if you’re one of the leads of ‘That 70’s Show’. I call your program ‘That 70s Show I Don’t Watch’ and so I, by proxy, don’t care much for you either. I care for you even less in your ‘My agent bought it at the thrift store so I’d blend with the commoners’ T-shirt, the brown and yellow faded-and-crooked San Diego Padres cap you insist upon wearing during the entire program and the clever way you oscillate that toothpick in your mouth, side-to-side, like the bastard child of a beaver and a Cylon.
The second thing you notice, of course, for men, is the women. I like women, lots of men do, and with that emerges the problem. I don’t necessarily care to see beautiful women playing poker. Truth told I’d watch an hour of Lauren Graham folding her laundry so really the cards and the card table are just getting in the way. Kinda like the plot in a porn flick – it’s just filler in between the really good parts and you can’t fast forward through them fast enough. However, I accept that if its watch Lauren fold her hand or watch nothing at all, I’ll take the motion of her manicured digits deftly dismissing an off-suit 4-3 pocket any ol’ day.
Seeing actors out of their element humanizes them. We seem them laugh and pose and tease and kid around, maybe even sweat a little as they ponder the play, but humanizing someone usually entails exposing their frailties. Seeing the look of shock and dismay when the bit-part cop from ‘NYPD Blue’ thinks he’s got a flush only to discover at the last moment that he’s holding two spades instead of two clubs isn’t that funny – it’s sad. I for one don’t (usually) bask in the glow of someone’s embarrassment, even if it’s an overpaid total stranger on the small screen. I enjoy the game but witnessing misery isn’t my idea of light television. Trust me on this – Celebrity Poker couldn’t be any more light television if it was filmed mid-air.
I’m not sure why poker has this fascination, either. It used to be that chess was considered difficult, or bridge. These were complicated games. Now we’re suddenly faced with the notion that poker is such child’s play that even actors can do it. That’s stupefying.
If we’re going to see actors involved in sports, why not just bring back ‘Battle of the Network Stars’? I recall Richard Hatch (not the annoying naked one) playing flag football. I fondly remember Mr. T playing ‘Simon Says’. The swimming relays, the running, the dunk tank and all of it hosted by Howard Cosell, serving penance or community service.
I just saw Celebrity Blackjack. What could be more numbing than that? You aren’t even competing against the other celebrities. Are you serious? It’s just you against the dealer! They should just separate the guests and give them each their own episode. Just spend a half hour with one of the now-grown-up kids from ‘Home Improvement’. Two fifteen minute shows with Edie McClurg and Robert Clary might be nice. How about ten minutes with the guy who played the phone repairman on ‘Alice’? Heck, get Alice herself.
If Celeb Poker gets the best ‘stars’ and then Celeb Blackjack gets a slightly lesser breed, who will be playing the worst card games? Pauly Shore and Tori Spelling meet off in ‘Celebrity Go Fish’? Kathy Griffin stars in ‘All-Star Celebrity Solitaire’?
I simply cannot wait to rent ‘John Tesh in Celebrity 52-Card Pickup’. On Beta.
If a star is interesting, let’s talk to the star. I’d rather hear ten minutes of Tina Fey talking to an interviewer about being the lead writer on SNL then watch her mingle for ninety minutes with four no-names, never-weres and someday-hope-to-bes.
Is that such an odd request?
