TV: Too much of a good thing

I love TV Poker. I love that it's everywhere right now, so much so that it's pissing off non-Poker fans. I love that at almost any given time of day, I can find Poker on the dial, whether it be the World Series of Poker on ESPN or ESPN2, the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel, Late Night Poker on Fox Sports Net, Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo, Dogs Playing Poker on the Animal Channel, Liquor in the Front, Poker in the Rear on the Food Network, Hitler's Deadliest Poker Games on the History Channel, For the Last Goddam Time, Anna Nicole, a Flush Beats a Pair of Fives on E!...

Okay, I'm making up some of those. But Poker is everywhere. And now, as if there weren't enough televised card games already, GSN (formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken) recently added the World Series of Blackjack. Hell, Blackjack is barely interesting when I'm playing it, and the way the tournament is set up, whatever fun might've been had is forcibly removed. There's a set number of hands played (30, I believe), and limits are set on the maximum bets allowed, so everyone plays this incredibly dull, conservative, chip-conscious game, where, unless you bet really foolishly and actually lose all your chips early on, nothing matters until about the last three hands. And yet, I still enjoy watching it.

I didn't think there was a card game you could put on TV that I wouldn't watch.

Until GSN came up with Celebrity Blackjack.

Sweet, merciful Zeus, is this a train wreck! And not the exciting, exploding, twisted steel, bodies flung from windows into orphanages kind of can't-look-away train wreck. This is a train wreck with Jamie Kennedy and Eddie Griffin trading alleged "wisecracks", Hal Sparks thinking of his hilarious appearance in Spider-Man 2 and pretending not to be humiliated, Dean Cain gamely tolerating MAD TV's Alex Borstein cracking Lois & Clark jokes old enough to join the AARP, Melissa Joan Hart appearing to be in actual physical pain from adding up her cards kind of train wreck, which means this is the kind of train wreck where you have to shield your eyes, plug your ears, stick your head in the sand, and pray the world is enveloped in nuclear fire before you have to watch one more second.

If that sounds bad, consider that "Hollywood" Dave Stann, the single most obnoxious card player in the world, and the reason why watching the regular World Series of Blackjack was often a chore, serves as the dealer in Celebrity Blackjack. Which means his inflated ego is in direct competition for screentime and quip quotient with celebrities who didn't make the cut for Celebrity Mole, and are therefore fighting for attention as though their very celebrity lives depended on it (which they do). It's a pissing match in which you are the receptacle. And if that sounds unpleasant, trust me: the reality is much, much worse.

People: "Stuttering John" is one of the "celebrities" on this series. Fortunately, I didn't have the displeasure of witnessing that episode -- I could barely watch the one episode I ran across, let alone the entire six (I think) episode tournament. But when "Stuttering John" is elevated to "celebrity" status, it's time to turn off the lights and lock the door behind you. This show is a travesty on the level of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, only, if we're all very, very lucky, no one will remember Celebrity Blackjack five years from now, not even the participants.

I didn't care for it, is what I'm saying.