I might get excited about chocolate if it and I were the last things on earth, but mostly I can look at it and move on to the cheese course. My consort, of course, would mainline the stuff if he could. So when I got an invitation to a preview of a seemingly swanky chocolate buffet way the hell downtown, I RSVP’d for two to split the ennui with the bliss. Big glasses of Champagne waiting at the door looked promising, but then we started sampling. I’m an old ho, so I know you take a bite and move on rather than expect the lame to soar on a second taste. But poor Bob was struggling to do justice to the pastry chef’s prolific handiwork. Finally, even he crapped out and said: “Why am I thinking of Pepperidge Farm?” Well, let’s count the ways, beginning with “chocolate peanut butter cup apricot sauce,” moving on through “chocolate apricot Jell-O” and continuing through “chocolate rice crispy treat.” “Fluff ball” is also a term you never expect to encounter on a menu outside of Applebee’s. What finished it for me was the “chocolate covered apricot pate de fruit.” French Chuckles should be so spectacular they need no Hershey’s. What was most mystifying was who the target audience might be at a time when chocolate connoisseurship is out of control. For this mediocrity they charge $75 (including the Champagne), but it is also packaged in weekend getaways that go up to $40,000 (for the Can’t But Me Love, the release said). The organizers describe the selection as sinful. It’s the right word, wrong meaning.