Saturday, July 31, 2010

Define "celebrity"

There's a full-page ad in the current issue of Card Player magazine for a "Celebrity Poker Tournament" to be held at the Firelake Grand Casino in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Here's who they boast will be attending:

  • "General Larry Platt, Americal Idol, Pants On The Ground"
  • "Norm Macdonald, Comedian" (should be "MacDonald," not "Macdonald")
  • "Jaime Edmondson, Playboy Playmate" (January, 2010; she was also half of the runner-up team on The Amazing Race last year)
  • "Chicken George, Big Brother" (contestant on the first season, 2000)
  • "Theo Vonn" (I'm guessing they mean Theo Von, who was on MTV's Road Rules in 2000, plus a couple of other reality shows since then)
  • "Kevin O'Conner" (probably means Kevin O'Connor, but even so I can't tell which of several people by that name it might be; Wikipedia lists two Irish footballers, an American actor, the co-founder of DoubleClick, an Amazing Race contestant, the general manager of the Utah Jazz, and the host of This Old House)
  • "Mark 'The Chinaman' Britten" (stand-up comic)
Wow. Hoo boy, that is one impressive line-up.

Look, I'm an old fuddy-duddy, hardly the most up-to-date on who's who. I saw Twitter messages yesterday pleading to "free Snooki," and had no idea who that was until I Googled the name. So maybe I'm a bad standard by which to judge relative degrees of fame.

But even if we give them a pass on misspelling three--THREE--out of the seven names (budget wouldn't allow for a proofreader, apparently), what kind of "celebrity" list is this? Norm MacDonald? OK, I'll give you that one, as kind of a B-list or C-list guy. I saw Platt on Idol. I saw Edmondson on Amazing Race, though I didn't know she had subsequently done Playboy, and wouldn't have remembered her from the show. I saw Chicken George on Big Brother way back when, but had no idea he was still stretching out his 15 minutes of fame from that. The other three are completely unknown to me, and, as indicated above, I can't even tell which O'Connor they have in mind.

At the very bottom of the ad, it says that there will be "over 20 celebrities playing in the tournament." One has to assume that for purposes of the ad they picked the biggest names that they had from their list, which means that you can expect to see some 13 "celebrities" even less famous than these.

I sure hope they have a crack team of security experts to keep the multitudes of overexcited fans at bay.

6 comments:

Snuffy said...

Free Snooki!!!!!!!!

Norm MacDonald and Jamie Edmonson are for sure worth the price of admission.

sblacke said...

Given the location of Shawnee, OK., I'm surprised they were able to get anyone outside of the local meteorologist and a HS football coach to attend as celebrities.

JT88Keys said...

This sort of thing always makes me laugh too. The company I work for is the title sponsor of a Champions Tour (fka Senior Tour) golf tournament. During the week they have a celebrity pro-am.

Every year they get one sort oa a-list celebrity. This year it was Teri Hatcher. In the past it was Rob Lowe. The rest of the celebrities are usually local ones like news anchors, athletic directors and coaches from the state universities, and a couple of lesser known hollywood types like Steven Weber (remember him from Wings?).

Julius_Goat said...

How long is this offer for "free" Snooki, anyway?

This always reminds me of the Season 1 South Park where the announcer breathlessly introduced "JOHN STAMOS!!!'s brother."

Memphis MOJO said...

"over 20 celebrities playing in the tournament."

Also, it's better English to say:
more than 20 ...
than saying over 20.

CraigAmick said...

I played in this last year. The celebrity bit is overplayed for sure, but it's for charity and it's a very well run tournament.