Do the Hollywood shuffle with celebrity mugs

Some Las Vegas entrepreneurs -- who know a good deal when they see it -- are giving new meaning to the Hollywood shuffle. Thanks to the popularity of Iraq’s 52 most wanted playing cards, Starz Behind Barz has followed suit and is selling a deck with police mug shots of 52 celebrities who were arrested but not necessarily convicted. “We’ve sold several thousand decks in the first two weeks,” says Smokey Burns, a managing partner for the website www.inusd.com/starz.

Burns and his colleagues concocted the idea after watching the arrest of Martha Stewart on TV. “We were going to have Martha Stewart’s mugshot on coffee mugs with the slogan ‘Don’t get caught trading insider recipes,’ but the more we thought about it, and there’s so many celebrities getting arrested, one thing led to another.”

Stewart is not included in the deck, but mug shots of Jesse Jackson, Larry King and Bill Gates are featured. The hardest part, Burns says, was cutting the deck to 52 cards (actually 53: Michael Jackson is the joker). Aces in the deck include Matthew McConaughey and Eminem .

“Most of the arrests were well known, but the one that caught me off guard was Al Pacino,” Burns says. “He was pretty young. You look at his picture and it’s probably the best-looking mug shot in the deck.” Unlike with poker, Burns says, there is no limit to the novelty cards. “We’re trying to get one of the celebrity poker shows to use the cards or mention them.” And if the cards sell well, Burns plans a sequel.

“We’d rather wait until we have enough household names for a second edition. But at the rate these celebrities are getting arrested, we could probably fill out the deck in a few months.”

-- Michael T. Jarvis