Celebrity Fit Club 3: A Pox on Pop Culture ... A Special Report by DB Bogangles

So I must admit I watched the season premiere of Celebrity Fit Club 3 online. I watched it online very late at night and was enthralled. I initially thought I was going to live-to-Microsoft Word blog it, but Emma and I decided to eat some bovine to ring in the New Year good and proper – missing the broadcast completely. I wonder if VH1 will ever show it again.

First off, let us examine who will be inducted into the CFC. I’d like to imagine it’s a club like Skull and Bones at Yale or something. There is an actual induction ceremony with sodomy, etc., Gary Busey is the grand master, and there are skulls and bones of former members littering the windowless room.

NB: I did a little sleuthing and found out that while the show is called “Celebrity Fit Club” the actual sessions that the show films and the ensuing weigh-ins are part of “Fit Camp.”

How exciting. I suppose anyone reading this is familiar with the thesis of the show at hand. Let us now try and explicate the title to see if we can gain some insight into what this majesty is truly about.

CELEBRITY = a person of some renown. This is too broad a definition. I mean this could be anyone from Charlie Manson to Chester Alan Arthur to Gary Burghoff.

Who am I kidding. Chester Alan Arthur isn’t of any renown. So for the purposes of this blog entry, let’s define “celebrity” as some human who is trapped in the pop culture broom closet.

Mind you, the closet has a time sensitive lock, so the people trapped inside won’t be freed for quite some time - which is why on the last edition of Celebrity Fit Club we were treated to both Willie “In the Flesh” Aames AND Wendy “Snapple Lady” Kaufman, both at about 14 minutes and 59 seconds of their 15 minutes of fame. So celebrity = a celebrated person.

FIT = physically and mentally sound.

CLUB = a group of persons associated with a common purpose

THREE = the number that comes before 4 and after 2, so there have been two editions of this program before this particular edition, which is now being aired on VH1.

HITHERTO and HENCEFORTH Celebrity Fit Club 3 is a television program in which a smattering of celebrated persons who are both physically and mentally unsound, ranging in celebrity from Charlie Manson to Gary Burghoff, but excluding those such as Chester Alan Arthur.

Sorry buddy. It's rough being you.

This link explains whatever the hell this show is about according to Viacom:
http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/celebrity_fit_club_3/series_about.jhtml

Anyway I am new to this whole blog entry thing, so bear with me.

The episode starts out with a creepy dinner at some random LA house. Jeff Conaway sticks his hand in the parfait and then licks it. This marks the first Jeff Conaway Moment of What the Fuck. Tragically, the 11 year old in me had no idea what was coming in the next hour and was slightly turned on. The celebrity fatties are shown actually making their last supper. HA. Get it? Like Jesus before he was crucified. I wonder who Judas is. More importantly I wonder who the Jesus of Celebrity Fit Club is …

Oh, I am supposed to explain or identify the celebrities on this apocalypse of a television show.

1. Vanessa from The Cosby Show. Looks exactly like she did on the show. She doesn’t really look fat. Whatever.

2. Outlandish or Ridiculous or what the hell is his name? Oh yeah, it’s Bizarre. Apparently Bizarre hangs with Eminem.. He is the REALLY fat dude with a SHOWER CAP on. Let it be known the man has no hair. When asked how he let himself crack the 300 lbs barrier, Bizarre said something like it just got away from me, I lost track … that happens to my cell phone, NOT my body. You got fat. It happens, you ate, didn’t exercise AND have bad genetics.

He looks like one of those ducks in the window of a Chinese restaurant.

3. Kelly LeBrock is the one who looks like she is a pretty girl wearing a fat suit to make a statement about what it is like to be fat, except she actually is. Bummer. Her accent is great too. I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually does have a fat suit on and she is doing this just for exposure or something. Gunnar Nelson comes in as a replacement for someone on this Hindenburg voyage and apparently he manipulated his submission photo to get on the show – so it isn’t out of the realm of celebreality possibility. Oh good heavens. Did I just quote the VH1 promo? I think I did. Anyway, if you were wondering who is ejected from CFC3, he is number 8 on this list and a hickie from him sends the very best.

4. Countess Vaughn – the really short black chick. She seems pretty, and she isn’t that fat, but apparently has a bad thyroid. Sucks for her. Her goal is to be in a men’s magazine, but a classy one. I think she said that. I wonder what she is a countess of? Did she marry into that title? Did she get it for her work on UPN?

5. Chastity Bono – She is the only one on the cast who looks like Sonny Bono, but with the addition of Gunnar, she will no longer have to bear the weight, pun sort of intended, of being the only celeb offspring with a famous father who died in a tragic accident. Probability wise, how did that happen?

6. Young MC – I don’t know who this is at all, but he is the other black dude who isn’t as fat, but still fat. Basically, he is the black dude WITHOUT the shower cap on his head.

7. Bruce Villanch – The insanely fat man. I can’t put my finger on what muppet he looks like though. If you don’t pass out from boredom beyond the first commercial break you will see Bruce sans shirt. I wish I had magnificent breasts like him. What is that, like a d-cup? Wow. Anyway, you can ID Bruce by his magnificent rack and crazy Janice of The Muppet Show fame hair.

8. Finally we come to Jeff Conaway.

He's the one who's NOT John Travolta. So much hotter than John Travolta. Maybe he should have taken him up on those offers to go to the Scientology classes. Oops. Like did the man trip and fall down a elevator shaft? Where did he go? Oh he went and did erotic thrillers, an episode of Murder, She Wrote and maybe some cocaine. That's where!

Let it be known that I had a MASSIVE (Jonathan Taylor Thomas did nothing for me) crush on him since forever ago - I must have been 10 or 11 when I first saw Grease or Taxi – so my love for him knows … well actually it knows many bounds as he too takes off his shirt during the show … and those are the bounds of my love. He is apparently a drug addict in some state of recovery or something, who knows. He is also really tall. I think his BMI (body mass index) is the smallest, so he has the least amount of weight to lose. Now while you are at the VH1 website for CFC3 I suggest checking out the message board, because apparently everyone hates Jeff.

Link to message board:
http://www.vh1.com/interact/boards/main.jhtml/celebrity_fit_club_3/ThreadList?offset=0&_requestid=388813

I love how people selectively love their crazy. Gary Busey destroys his genius talent and promising career – after being nominated for a freaking Oscar – he is totally batshit using all those pneumonic devises that make no sense, and the fact that he even had to make them in the first place is baffling. Daniel Baldwin is famous for having a famous talented brother, has a severe addiction to god knows what, and anger issues, but that’s fine with everyone. Willie “In the Flesh” Aames was on two crappy television shows, one was even with Dick Van Patten and he also had a massive drug addiction – with an obvious personality disorder, amongst other things, but that is totally cool. But Jeff freaking Conaway in one show moons everyone, pops some “benadryl” from his pill collection and then tells the drill instructor “Harvey” to fuck off or something after Harvey refuses him the right to pee and all hell breaks loose on these boards. These people are nuts. I will address this issue in another blog entry should Emma permit me the privilege.

To say nothing of the fact that the producers are clearly praying on a serious medical problem that he has. Like they didn’t see this train wreck coming? Out of the cast of Taxi – can I ask you how in the hell is Tony Danza the most successful? Why is he still on television? One cancelled show after the next. Those freaks on the message board should go after him, but if a fatty with a drug problem tells an ex-marine to fuck off – the man had it coming. At least he still has great hair.

Well, this isn’t the last of my treatises on Jeff Conaway, as next week proves to be insanity when Jeff takes a little too much benadryl and removes another article of clothing. This time I believe he takes his shoes off and then flips Harv the bird.

Okay now on with the rest of the show. ‘Chas’ as she likes to be called is one team captain and our pal Jeff is the other team captain. Oh did I mention that when I did some research for this entry and typed in “Jeff Conaway” into Yahoo, it suggested “Jeff Conaway meltdown” as a possible other search topic. Unfortunately not everyone wears their drug addiction as well as Dr. House.

So Chas seems normal enough, as does most of the cast, making for a nauseatingly boring episode. Jeff seems like the entertaining freak of the show, but when you take away the humor of it all – it is devastatingly sad. Like, I just wanna watch my has-been fatties on the teevee and have a good time doing it. I don’t want to have to deal with this downer, but we’ll deal. Bruce Villanch is a bizarre kind of oracle. I didn’t know one man could make me lose my sex drive that quickly. He must have eaten it. His long jump was something. Like should an obese man pushing 60 with a whole cavalcade of health problems really be running and then jumping at all?

Who gives a shit who won the episode, we’re all fucked.