TVSquad

I was always a bit uncertain as to just how it was World Poker Tour fit in with the Travel Channel. I understand that the games took place in different places across the globe, but that always seemed like the equivalent of making a show about janitors who work in a hospital and calling it a medical drama.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the best analogy, but the point is that World Poker Tour, after almost five years on the Travel Channel, is heading over to GSN, which seems like a much better fit. World Poker Tour, one of the first popular "poker" shows and the one that made people like me who said "who the hell wants to watch people play poker?" choke on our words, will become part of the network's Friday night "Casino Night" lineup.

The fifth season of World Poker Tour is currently airing on the Travel Channel. It will hit GSN early next year.

American Greetings has announced a licensing deal with daytime talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres. Called "the ellen collection," the 32 cards will feature illustrations of the benevolent, pant-suited wonder along with one of her trademark witticisms. Ellen had this to say about the venture, "I look at having a line of cards as another extension of being a host; helping you wish your loved ones well, piggy-backing on your birthday greetings. I like to be up in the middle of everything and doing it this way is much easier than crashing parties."

Cards will start turning up in grocery stores and drug stores as early as this summer. So, watch your back crotchety old Shoebox Greetings lady, Ellen's coming. And, if we're lucky, other television personalities will follow suit. "Get well soon so I don't have to look at your whiny face" cards from Dr. House. "I'd wish you a Happy Birthday if I didn't think I was stuck in Purgatory" cards from the cast of Lost. The possibilities are limitless.

This year, Target is selling these boxes of Valentine's Day cards from Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. The Desperate Housewives ones, in particular, are really bad. The jokes just aren't clever. For example, one card has a picture of all the characters in a laundromat and says, "It's Valentine's Day and you're HOT!" ... "Enough laundry already! Go have some fun!" The Grey's Anatomy ones are slightly better. The most depressing/funny one has a picture of Meredith and Cristina on the front with a message that says: "Not my idea of a perfect Valentine's Day"... "But at least we have each other." How sad! The writers avoided any references to surgery and hearts. Opportunity missed, I say!

There is supposedly a box of valentines based on The Office, too. This website has a photo and description, but the link to Target is broken and I can't find it on the site. If they do exist, they sound pretty awesome. One directly quotes Dwight about love. It says, "Women are like wolves. If you want a wolf, you have to trap it. You have to snare it. And then you have to tame it. Keep it happy. Care for it. Feed it. Lovingly, the way an animal deserves to be loved. And my animal deserves a lot of loving." (Update: It doesn't actually have that quote. But it's still funny.) Now that's my kind of Valentine's Day!

Despite the fact it went off the air a full eight years before I was born, I count the original Batman series starring Adam West and Burt Ward as one of my favorites. When I was in junior high there was a cable channel called The Family Channel which would air back-to-back episodes of Batman late at night. My dad would let me stay up on school nights and watch them, and since the episodes were shown together there was no waiting till next week to see how the cliffhanger played out. The show is fun to watch as a kid, but as an adult it's easier to catch all the subtle jokes and innuendo. Those who have watched the series after reaching adulthood realize it was actually much smarter and funnier than it seemed on the surface.

That becomes more evident when you check out this awesome collection of sound effects from the series. Well, not sound effects exactly, but the cards that would flash on the screen during fights with words like "POW!," "KER-PLOP!" and one of my favorites, "FLRBBBBB!" Not only is every effect listed, but they're also indexed according to which episode they appeared in. More people with a lot of time on their hands need to do things like this in order to provide me with weekend Web entertainment.

 [via Cartoon Brew]

For its next season, Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown gets a new co-host and a new location. In support of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina, the poker contest will film at Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. The building was damaged in the hurricane and just reopened in February. All the celebrities involved with be playing for Hurricane Katrina-related charities. Also, Phil Gordon is out. His replacement is poker champ Phil Hellmuth. Don't worry, Dave Foley is still the other co-host. No word yet on which celebs will participate, but I'd love it if they invite Bonnie Hunt back. She was hilarious.

Pro poker player Annie Duke is taking a gamble on primetime television. Or, she'll be trying her hand at acting. Yeah, you get the idea: the sassy princess of poker gets a cameo on Numb3rs next month. She and Ben Mezrich, poker expert and author of Bringing Down the House, will be part of an episode on Friday, January 13. The episode starts with a murder at an LA card club where a card counting scheme is unveiled and several college students' lives are in danger. Duke plays a card dealer and Mezrich plays a player. The episode is based, loosely, on Mezrich's book, which is about a bunch of MIT students who figured out how to win millions of dollars at card games in Las Vegas casinos in the 1990s. In fact, two of the scheming true-life MIT students, Jeff Ma and Matt Lau, even have small roles in the episode as blackjack players.

And, no. Nobody "drowns in the river".

[Via The Futon Critic]