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The Donald was starting to lose me on The Apprentice. The incredible over-commercialization, Donald’s massive ego, and the complete ineptitude of the contestants was getting to be too much.
But The Donald won me back last night.
Following a reshuffling where each team was allowed to select three people to shuttle over to the other squad (and the men couldn’t dump off Markus quickly enough), the newly-intergendered (and now Markus-free) Excel team went on to suck down the biggest asskicking in the history of the show, actually causing the sporting goods store they were dispatched to create an “interactive sales event” for to LOSE sales.
So the contestants haven’t gotten any better. But the upside is that Trump apparently knows this too. Come Boardroom time, he stripped the Project Manager of his right to nominate people for firing, sent up the guy who was exempt (Brian, and, once again, the Vote For Exemption is more an issue of asskissing than any kind of assessment of the P.M.’s ability) and the two players who didn’t abjectly suck (Rebecca and Marshawn), and told the remaining four (Mark, Jennifer, the aforementioned P.M. Josh, and James) to go out into the hall.
Upon calling them back in, he let them try to shove each other in front of the bus for a while (hey, at least Trump knows what makes good TV), and then canned the lot of them. Wave of the hand. Yer all fired. Get the hell out of my office.
THAT was what brought me back. Making the four of them cram themselves in the Yahoo Cab Of Shame was just the icing on the cake. About the only way it could have been better would have been if the doorman went out of his way to hit them in the ass with the door.
Us game show geeks lost an icon today, when Nipsey Russell passed away yesterday afternoon. In that spirit:
Nipsey Russell has passed away His legacy plain to see. As a poet, he’ll be missed much more Than that pinhead O.D.B..
Anyone who was a guest on the various incarnations of Pyramid as frequently as he was is okay in my book. R.I.P., Nipsey.
So tonight I tuned in to my first episode of The Apprentice this season. I won’t spoil anything if you haven’t watched yet, but I have two observations to make:
First off, I’m in full agreement with my man Travis when he says that the Vote For Exemption is idiotic. There’s not a single reason TO do it, and yet the ladies handed one out tonight. Dumb.
Second, you would think that after three series of this, the contestants would learn one very important thing: If The Donald suggests or advises against bringing a specific person back into the Boardroom for potential firing, particularly if he does so after you’ve already announced your intentions, LISTEN TO HIM. The Donald does not bluff. If he’s telling you to do that, it means he either wants you to bring that person in so he can fire THEM, or that he’s NOT going to fire the person you DO want to bring in. Either way, NOT listening to him greatly increases the chances that he’s gonna fire YOU.
And, of course, the guy who did this tonight did not listen to The Donald, and therefore was sent packing.
So we have idiot women who don’t know how to play the game, and idiot men who try to throw someone under the bus at exactly the wrong time.
They should all lose. Where’s the Get The Hell Out Of My Office guy from My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss when you need him?
Yesterday was the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Detroit. Like most sports fans, I normally find most All-Star Games to be horrendously dull affairs, as they are exhibitions where the players spend three hours patting each other on the ass and playing at 50% so as not to get injured. However, baseball has impressed me just a little in the last couple years by making it worth something: the league that wins the All-Star Game is awarded home field advantage in the World Series. A small prize, sure, and a gimmick, but it at least makes me a little interested in the result.
I didn’t watch the broadcast on Fox. Why? Tim McCarver. I like Joe Buck fine…in fact I think he’s one of the brightest young broadcasters in the business. But Tim McCarver is a blithering idiot, and as a former sports broadcaster it hurts my head to watch him receive a paycheck for his moronic commentary.
So, it was the high esteem in which I hold Joe Buck that made me sad to see this. Apparently, during the game, some fan unfurled a mysterious banner over a Corvette ad in the outfield, designed to look like an ad for a website. The broadcast team covered it extensively, discussing among themselves what the banner might all be about, as if it were a large-scale version of the “John 3:16” stunt.
Except they KNEW what it was all about, because the whole thing was a stunt by Chevrolet, and Fox was completely in on it.
Man, I realize it’s Fox, and this shouldn’t surprise me. But up in that booth we expect the guys calling the game to be journalists, and behave accordingly. They are to report on what is happening on the field of play, use whatever expertise they might have to provide insight on that, and, yeah, pimp sponsors and the network, but there should be no question when said pimpage is going on.
That said, with some regret, we award an Oreck Vacuums “You Just Suck” award to Joe Buck. Your dad would never have done that, Joe.
(Giving McCarver one along with him would be redundant, as a charter member of the Suck Hall Of Fame.)
If you’d told me fifteen years ago that Bravo would be one of the cable channels I watched the most, I would have laughed at you. In my defense, fifteen years ago nobody had a clue that Bravo would abandon their schedule of shitty opera performances in favor of shows like Celebrity Poker Showdown, the Queer Eye’s, and Blow Out.
That said, whoever writes the ad copy there needs to be beaten with a hammer.
In running an ad for the execrable Chris Farley / David Spade vehicle “Tommy Boy”, they referred to the insult-to-celluloid as “The Caddyshack of the ’90’s!”
Huh?
It’s a) not about golf, b) not particularly funny, and c) not particularly beloved.
Rodney must be spinning in his grave right now.
So there was much buzz over the start of this seventh installment of The Amazing Race, particularly with the inclusion of the champion and runner-up from Survivor All-Stars, Amber Brkich and Rob Mariano. Their (well, okay, Rob’s) scheming was generally resented on Survivor, and were they just trying to extend their fifteen minutes by running in the Race?
I never thought I would say this, but there is no team in this field I want to win the million dollars MORE than Rob and Amber.
While Rob’s scheming nature might have been distasteful on a social game like Survivor, it’s PERFECT for the Race. Amber is very much along for the ride (as she was on Survivor; her victory was more a matter of the jury not wanting to give the money to Rob than wanting to give it to her), but she’s pleasant eye candy, so we’re fine with that. Rob is the only guy out there PLAYING the game – bribing bus drivers, taking advantage of his (waning) celebrity to get help from the locals, even talking contestants into abadoning challenges in favor of a four-hour penalty – it’s obvious he CARES about winning and will go to whatever length to do that. And the other teams are standing there slackjawed, and bitching and whining instead of giving as good as they’re gotten. Bravissimo.
This morning, while I was getting dressed for work, I flip on the TV, and there’s The Today Show on NBC, and Matt Lauer is introducing Jose Canseco, live and in person at the NBC News studios at 49th Street and Rockefeller Plaza.
For the non-sports fans, Jose was a baseball player who enjoyed some success in the late 80’s and early 90’s, most notably in 1988 for becoming the first player in baseball history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season, before losing in the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games. (As a former Dodger fan, I had to get that shot in. :)) Unfortuntately, those ubiquitous “personal demons” caught up with him, and the twilight days of his career were spent in relative obscurity, if not notoriety.
And now he’s written a book, which I refuse to plug by name (if you really wanna know, search Amazon, I’m sure it’ll pop right up), a tell-all where he not only admits to having taken steroids during the majority of his playing career (and if you’ve seen him, you can file that one directly under “N” for No Shit), but he also outs several other players, including Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Bret Boone, as being regular steroid users themselves. And, of course, the media being what it is, this is causing some controversy, and Jose’s doing the talk show circuit to drum up some more sales.
No shock here. This is the same Canseco who ran a 900-number in his heyday where you could find out what he had for breakfast, who has sold off a great many of the momentos of his playing career, including MVP trophies, equipment, milestone baseballs, and stuff of that nature. Jose’s always been about the Benjamins.
Now, the great thing about writing a tell-all book is that you can pretty much make any accusations you want and the people being accused don’t get a floor to respond. So, of course, Lauer lays in with the questions. “How do you respond to their denials?” “Is it all about the money?” “Why are you selling your World Series ring?” (He was a member of the 2000 Yankees, I believe by trade. One at-bat in the Series itself. He struck out.)
(Oh, now, THIS is interesting. I was gonna link to the ring on Jose’s online store, but it’s no longer there, and at $40,000, I doubt it found a buyer. But you can get a game-worn autographed jersey from when he was with the White Sox (I don’t even remember him BEING with the White Sox) for the low low price of $745.95.)
Of course, Jose neatly dodges everything thrown at him, and, with some blather along the lines of “Something’s gonna happen in a month. I can’t talk about it, but you’re gonna wanna keep watching. ‘Cuz something’s gonna happen. That I can’t talk about. In a month. The something, that is.”, strongly hints that he’s gonna take a lie detector test to prove the veractiy of his claims…on Pay Per-View.
You see it coming, of course. In cooperation with our friends at Oreck Vaccuums, we proudly offer a “You Just Suck”…to Matt Lauer. For letting Jose get away with it.
If Matt really wanted to, he could have put the screws to Jose, but he didn’t. Every time Jose started dodging a question, Matt just took it, and moved along to the next question. Yeah, sometimes he pressed for an answer, but he never once called him out outright for not giving one. Big fat softballs, right across the plate. Might as well have been Larry King.
(And a second one should go to whoever booked Jose’s dumb ass on the show to start with. Because if you had done ANY research at all on the guy, you should have been able to tell that this was EXACTLY where the interview was gonna go.)
So let me get this straight: The same Donald Trump who shitcanned a contestant last week without the benefit of a second Boardroom session and allowed a player to forfeit an Exemption outright on a complete and total whim last season now refuses to fire a player at the behest of his ENTIRE TEAM who completely and utterly sandbagged their efforts because he was Exempt himself and could get away with it? All of a sudden, “rules are rules”? When the hell did THIS start?
Is that a single fin I see behind the landing ramp? The theme from “Jaws” I’m hearing? Evgeni Nabokov out for an afternoon swim? Why, it must be!
In a truly class move, Jay Leno is scrapping tonight’s guest lineup (which included Paris Hilton, actor Ian McShane, and musical guest Ani DiFranco) for a special show featuring Ed McMahon, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, Drew Carey, and k.d. lang.
Set the recorders, folks. I have a feeling this one’s gonna be a keeper.
(Okay, I’d have rathered someone other than k.d. lang. Not a favorite of mine. But she owes much of her career to her success on Tonight, so I’ll let it slide.)
So I woke up this morning to learn that Johnny Carson died, at the age of 79.
I love making people laugh. But I’m a technology geek, which means I like knowing how things work, and often that nerdity extends to everyday life, so I’ve always been fascinated with HOW to make people laugh….I know I have a gift, but what is it exactly that I have?
Nobody, but NOBODY, knew more about HOW to be funny than Johnny Carson. That’s what I admired about him…not just that he was innately funny himself (and god, was he), but that he understood what was happening that MADE “funny”, for lack of a better term.
Timing, perhaps? Carson was the Babe Ruth of comedic timing. And he knew it. At his home in Malibu, he has a throw pillow upon which is embroidered the phrase “It’s All In The Timing”. There were times on his show when Johnny was funnier just saying nothing that whatever could have POSSIBLY come out of his mouth.
The characters: Art Fern, and the Tea Time Movie. Floyd R. Turbo, American. And of course, the Visitor from the Far East, Carnac the Magnificent. Yeah, Steve Allen started the gimmick with the Question Man, but like with so much else, Carson made it something great. May a yak in heat become your sister’s French tutor.
When Johnny left television, he took something with him. But at least we knew that he did it with some time left to enjoy his twilight days engaging in what is often the best of all possible pastimes: nothing. And now that he’s teed off of this mortal coil, he’s taken it with him again. But now it’s gone, and we’re all worse off for it.
It’s a shame my ride to work doesn’t pass by the Slauson cutoff. (I’ve actually seen it when I was in LA once. Wish I’d taken a picture.) I would consider it an honor to get out of my car, cut off my Slauson, and get back in my car, all for the man more people have gotten laid to than anyone else on television. :)
I envy St. Peter. You have to think he grabbed the mic when he saw Carson on line at the Gates and said “I’ve been waiting to announce THIS one for a LONG time!”
I only hope he gave him all the time he wanted for the monologue. I imagine Johnny had quite a lot to say.
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