J. Keith van Straaten (born June 16, 1971) is an American actor, host, and writer. He was born in Chicago, Illinois.
On TV, he hosted the first season of the game show Beat the Geeks in 2001. In 2006, he began appearing as a panelist on VH1's Best Week Ever. He frequently appears as a commentator on E! Entertainment Television on shows such as 25 Most Memorable Swimsuit Moments and Wildest Spring Break Moments.
Van Straaten has worked with Yahoo! on a number of projects. During the 2007 and 2008 Academy Award season, he authored a blog on Yahoo! Movies covering events and information up to and including the awards show. He also wrote their 2007 Summer and Holiday Movie Guides. The 28 short Yahoo! Answers On The Street segments were also hosted by van Straaten.
He briefly hosted a weekend internet radio show in 2007, the Game Show Radio Game Show.
Van Straaten has appeared in several television commercials, including those for McDonald's, Nike, and Cheez-It. He hosted the pilot for the US edition of Balls of Steel.
He produced and hosted a live-on-stage revival of What's My Line? at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City, following its run at ACME Comedy Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
Currently he produces and hosts "The Fix-Up Show," a live-on-stage matchmaking show at the Triad Theater in New York City.
Famous quotes containing the words keith and/or van:
“Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)