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marigold:
An interesting article: yes please do bring back The Apprentice

TRUMP OUT OF NYC? DONALD RANTS ON TAXES, GRANDPA AND ORIGINAL-FLAVOR 'APPRENTICE'

WHAT would the Trump Tower be without the Trump? Or New York without The Donald, for that matter?

More flat -- for one thing.

But if New York's governor doesn't kill the proposed millionaires' tax, TV's toughest rich guy is going to take this town and shove it.

Presumably, he won't take his show with him. But he is making noises.

In fact, Donald Trump had just gotten off the phone with Gov. Paterson when we called -- and got an earful about the earful he'd laid on the governor.

"It's very dangerous, what's going on in Albany," he ranted. "Rich people are going to leave this state -- why should they pay New York State taxes on money they made out of state?"

Will he be leading the parade out of town?

"No comment," he seethed, "And you know what that means!"

"I told the governor, everyone is going to move to Palm Beach, the nicest place in the world, where there is no income tax!"

But if you believe that he'd really move his empire and, more importantly, his board room to Palm Beach, then you probably believe his hair is naturally y-or ange.

The Donald is New York, for one thing, and for another, the man does exaggerate.

However, exaggeration aside, his show, "Celebrity Apprentice," finally caught fire last week. The ratings were way up and the celebs weren't out trying to sell cupcakes anymore -- but trading places with hotel waiters and limo drivers. Great stuff.

Apparently, the network thinks so, too. "NBC actually is thinking of doing "The Apprentice," and "Celebrity Apprentice" together in one season," he boasted.

Bringing back the original "Apprentice" would make sense because, since its absence from American TV, it has developed world-wide appeal.

"We're already on in 100 countries!" Trump boasted. Right. The truth is closer to 75 -- 50 countries airing Trump repeats and 25 countries producing their own brand-new versions, with their own Donalds. (Trump and Mark Burnett own the franchise.)

The Japanese version has a female Donald, and the English version has a noble -- Sir Alan Sugar -- who has become the biggest sensation on Brit TV since Simon Cowell.

Not that The Donald's impressed. "He does OK," Trump sniffed.

Hey -- anyone can become a "Sir." Not everyone can become a "The," right?

Hard to imagine, but "The" is not just a father of five now, including baby Barron, nearly 2, but he's a grandpa of two thanks to his son Donald Jr. and wife Vanessa.

There's Kai (almost 2) and Donald Trump III, a month and a half.

The Donald has mixed feelings about the whole thing.

"Egh, I don't like being called 'grandpa,' " he grumbles. "But whether I like it or not, that's what I am."

Clearly, grandparenting isn't going to replace moguling as his favorite activity, so Trump switched the talk right back to the real estate market. "It's a depression, but I'm buying. I'm planning," he said.

Unable to contain myself, I finally broke out and asked if he's got any blueprints in the work-in-progress that is on his head.

"I've combed my hair this way for years!" he crowed. "It's been very good to me -- so, no, I have no plans to make a change.

"The NBC execs love me and don't want any radical changes." Right, but really, if his hair got any more radical, they'd have to send it to Gitmo with the rest of the terrorists.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04062009/tv/trump_out_of_nyc__163107.htm

apskip:
All I say say is WOW! There were 2 major surprises and one expected surprise last  night. However, as in all episodes of Celebrity Apprentice the winner seems to be ....Ivanka Trump, who always looks great and has incisive comments about teams and tasks. This episode opens benignly with Tionne Watkins presenting a check for $20,000 to the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia.

Trump announces there will be new teams. He sends Jesse to Athena to join Annie, Melissa, Brande and Tionne and KOTU has Herschel and Clint get Joan, Natalie and Khloe.  This has the effect desired by Trump of splitting up Joan and Melissa.  Joan is now getting much more strident about helping her daughter and Melissa says she wants to become more independent of her mother, so this could accomplish that. Brian is away singing and will be placed by Trump when he returns next epsiode.

Trump presents Kevin and Janet from All Detergents, who ask for a viral video (one that will be pased along from friend to friend on the internet) no more than 60 seconds long that will feature All's new All 3X Detergent. It will be judged on originality, buzzworthiness and branding. There actually was a fourth criteria that Janet did not mention, "doesn't offend anyone" but they did not mention that!

It's time to select Project Managers. KOTU goes with Clint and Athena with Melissa. Teams start their tasks and it is apparent early on that the Clint's "hold it close to the vest" style is offending Joan. Throughout this task she has ideas, which he claims are either not complete or half-baked on characters, script and editing so he ignores them totally. The KOTU team essentially became Clint against Joan and Natalie and Khloe, as Herschel was not there for the first 2/3 or so of the task. Both teams looked at Internet darta about viral videos and concluded that using midgets (or little people if you wish but I will go with the shorter one) frequently results in successful viral videos.

So the creation of characters was the result of a story line, which became basically only Clint's. It was the use of the words "dirty laundry" as code words for sex between a husband and wife. Originally they tried to use a midget in the part of the husband but the one they got was not acceptable and they sent him packing. Clint took over the husband role. The result was, in my opinion, OK but on the edge of good taste.  Clint also took total charge of the production of the video, asking no help from his team. When Herschel did get there he suggested the addition of cartoons to the nearly-completed commercial.

Athena also used midgets and they got 3 good ones. The script was that Jesse is a mechanic at the laundromat and when he tries to wash his clothes these midgets surround him and beat him up. As the midgets leave they curse. I found that cursing unnecssary and a bit offensive. Melissa as the PM ran the production but made good use of her team, particularly Tnnie and Tionne who were sent to do the costume, which was for all 4 actors and was spectacular in its focus on ALL.

So the target audience apparently is a mid-20s woman with children. How does this play to her is the only criterion that Kevin and Janet use. They do get the assistance of media darling Perez Hilton, who says that the Jesse James cartoon (that's what it really is) is funny and the Clint Black one not funny. Trump apparently plays no part in the determination of which team won. He doesn't need to.

Teams get to the boardroom and the initial focus is on Joan vs. Clint. Joan says that she is throwing out all of of Clint's music that she owns and she will never speak to him for the rest of her life (wouldn't that be interesting to see close up?). This was dull, uninteresting stuff because 5 minutes of it is more than enough and Mark Burnett and the editors of Celebrity Apprentice don't appear to have good judgment on how much it too much. Trump has both finished videos played and the KOTU women were totally cracking up at the Athena video.  Perez Hilton's tape says that he  really loved the Jesse James version. Trump then deflates everyone's balloon by saying that while they liked some aspects of the videos, Kevin and Janet found the tawdriness of them bad for the target audience. Their judgment was that both of them were unacceptable. I don't think Trump himself agreed with that, as he made oblique coments about it.

So now we come to the core boardroom task. Trump says that each PM will nominate 2 individuals to come with him/her to the boardroom and 2 of the total of 6 individuals will be fired. So Clint selects Natalie and Khloe, but not Joan who would be the person who earned it and not Herschel who might have salvaged the situation had he been around longer. Natalie and Khloe did not have the opportunity to do much, but that was not their fault. Clint apparently surmised that Joan is a sacred cow with Trump and is essentially immune.

Next Melissa names Tionne and Brande. Did they do less than Annie(Jesse is not conceivably in the running)? Yes, they probably did but neither should in any normal environment be in the boardroom for this.

So Trump starts with Athena. He reviews the sins of Melissa (productive and knowledgeable but sometimes obnoxious like her mother) and talks to Tionne and Brande. It was obvious he wasn't going to fire Melissa. Tionne stated as  she was picked by Melissa she volunteers for this for the good of the team. Trump knew that she had won $20,000 for her team last episode and would not cost him any additional appearance money. I believe that was critical in his decision to fire Tionne, which was a shocker to me and I expect to you. Why should someone blameless get fired?

Next Trump turns to KOTU. It is bovious that he likes Clint and does not want to lose him, possibly because Mark Burnett and production want the sparks of future interactions between Joan and Clint. Trump tells Clint that if he had brought Joan in to the boardroom, Clint would have been fired. So who was worse of Khloe and Brande. For this episode it was even, as neither was allowed to cvontribute much. Hoever, over the longer pull Khloe had performed quite a bit below Brande. I hope that that evaluation was in the back of Trump's mind. What he chose to do was bring up Khloe's DUI as the reason for her non-participation on the first day at Loew's Regency Hotel; she had a court-mandated appearance. Trump makes a big deal of something totally irrelevant to Celebrity Apprentice and uses the morality of that as the excuse to fire Khloe. Boo! Hiss!

What I do see as a possibility is for Trump to set up Joan vs. Melissa in the finale. What do you think? I further think that Joan's special status is revloting to me as a viewer and I expect Trump may correct that by firing her before the finale. I hope so.

Two additional thoughts occurs to me. It is that Donald Trump, Sr. has joined the ranks of Chef Gordon Ramsay who makes somewhat arbitrary decisions to fire individuals from a team supposedly exempt as the winner who do not deserve to get eliminated/fired. The only reason that I can see is to protect Clint and Joan and Melissa in this episode. After all, Trump had to fire 2 people only because he said he did. Second, it will be interesting to see Joan and Clint forced to work together when neither is the Project Manager.

RealityFreakWill:
'Celebrity Apprentice': Board room blitz

I don't know about you, PopWatchers, but I found last night's episode of Celebrity Apprentice to be infuriating. It was nice to see the teams shaken up (Joan, Natalie, and Khloe were sent to KOTU, and Jesse and Brian were sent to Athena), but the arbitrary board room results made me resent the fact that I had just spent two hours watching the show. Really -- why make us invest time in watching the celebs complete their task when their performances aren't going to have anything to do with who gets fired?

This week, the teams had to write, produce, and edit a viral video for All Small & Mighty 3x concentrated laundry detergent. Inexplicably, both teams interpreted ''small and mighty'' to mean ''midgets.'' Athena's ''Jesse James gets washed by midgets'' sounded awful in concept but turned out really funny, and KOTU's ''Laundry innuendo'' sounded funny in concept but turned out really creepy and weird.

While the Athena video was clearly funnier and approximately 150 percent less creepy than KOTU's (even Perez Hilton agreed), the All execs nixed both ideas and Trump sent both teams to the board room. Melissa, proud of the way her team performed, figured she'd be eliminated because no one really messed up, and solicited volunteers to accompany her to the board room. Timid Tionne stepped forward, which ultimately backfired when Trump fired her for volunteering. Unfair? Sure. But she could've done her homework before going on the show and found out that Trump hates when people volunteer for the board room. As aggravating as it was to see her go, the second elimination was even more exasperating.
</p>The whole episode centered around the idea that project manager Clint commandeered the entire KOTU video -- came up with the idea, directed it, edited it, and wouldn't listen to his teammates when they told him it was nonsensical and strange -- so when he arbitrarily picked Khloe and Natalie to accompany him to the board room and Trump didn't spend one second questioning him about the shambles of a viral video he made, I knew one of the ladies was in trouble. And when Trump started lecturing Khloe about the DUI that everyone with an Internet connection already knew about, I knew her number was up.

Khloe got a DUI, spent time in jail, and is taking court-ordered alcohol education classes. Sure, she seemed a little cavalier about what happened, but after watching a marathon a couple of episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, I'm pretty sure she's cavalier about absolutely everything (and I kind of love her for it). Clearly the producers on the show knew about the DUI (that happened more than a year ago), so the fact that Trump didn't know about it until Khloe mentioned it was pretty puzzling. I can understand having such an emotional reaction after learning that someone you know did something so reckless and irresponsible. We all know reality shows aren't always judged entirely on merit and fairness, but really -- what else was this girl supposed to do? She served her time, apologized, and seems intent on never doing something so stupid again.

Were you shocked by the double elimination? I wasn't surprised that it happened, but I was surprised that Clint didn't go. Who do you think should have gone from each team instead? Did Clint's behavior bother you? Did you like Joan's impromptou QVC ad? And whose video did you like more?

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/celebrity-appre.html

tory:
jmo i am sure i need to hid under the chair but... i though trump was an ass tonight on the show, how does that womanzing hoe trump judge cloie like that. i stoped watching this show a few yrs ago cause it got to b one big commercial for what ever project they were doing , but this yr i was watching this train wreck caus i like jessy and cloie and a few other stars so i thought it would b fun to watch, but last night trump getting up on his high horse please wtf, he just wants to keep the most famous cleb's on as long as he can for rateings, he should have fired clint. and save the double elm for next week. i hope desprat hw comes bk on next week i dout i am going to watch  cleb app. any more TRUMP THE WOMINZING HOE WTF.. :hides :wall:

marigold:

Annie Dukes Blog:

Episode 6 of Celebrity Apprentice: Clint Dictates and Jesse Gets Dirty With Midgets

Before I get into Celebrity Apprentice, I am so excited because this morning I am taking the kids to Costa Rica! We are going down there for spring break…yay!

So, this week on Celebrity Apprentice the task was to create a viral video for All Detergent. As I suspected going into task delivery, the teams got shuffled up. I stayed on Team Athena along with Melissa Rivers, Brande Roderick, Tionne Watkins and Jesse James. Team Kotu becomes Herschel Walker, Clint Black, Joan Rivers, Khloe Kardashian and Natalie Gulbis. Brian McKnight was away at a concert but I assumed whichever team lost the task would end up with Brian on their team when he got back. Melissa volunteered to Project Manage Athena (since she has experience in production) and Clint volunteered for Kotu.

So, let me start with Athena because, once again, the less interesting stuff happened on Athena. As we were heading over to the war room, we started throwing out ideas. So we come up with this idea that Jesse could get scrubbed in a bathtub by midgets. Now, the original idea was Joan getting into a bathtub, little people scrubbing her with All Detergent, and Brande coming out of the bathtub. That would have been hilarious. But we didn’t have Joan on the team anymore, which really bummed me out because I figured Joan was the ace in the hole on this task. The reason we were focused on midgets was that the detergent was called All Small and Mighty and, as Isaid repeatedly over the course of the task, you can’t really say All Small and Mighty and viral in the same sentence and not expect to get little people. And, as you notice, KOTU wanted to use a midget as well but after the first guy couldn’t act the agency had no more options to send them since Athena had already booked the other three they had available.

At first, Jesse was very resistant to get scrubbed by the little people. To be fair, we did want him in a Speedo in a bathtub so the concept did evolve from what he initially refused to do. Let me tell you, when he was initially refusing to do it I was pissed off! I was very happy when Jesse got moved to our team (and even more sad to see Natalie move over to KOTU) but when Jesse said no to concept that the rest of our team liked I was really annoyed that he wasn’t being a team player. That being said, we did finally convince him and once he said yes he was the best addition to the team ever. Slightly bumpy start but then huge asset after that. And, yes, he is a totally awesome dude, too.

So, the concept is that we will have three little people dressed as All Bottles. I was put in charge of brand messaging. Tionne and I were also assigned to get the costumes and props. After doing the brand research I needed to and after Tionne found the places where we could get the costumes and props, T and I went off to do our errands while Jesse, Melissa, and Brande stayed behind to write the script. While I was gone, Melissa obviously took some shots at me in her interviews, saying she wanted me out of the room because I was disruptive and wanted to run everything. As usual, she said all that behind my back and not to my face. One of the reasons I love Brande so much is that the one time we had an argument she told me she was pissed off and why she was pissed off right to my face. She was direct and I love that. Melissa, on the other hand, could not have been nicer to my face at this point in the game. Yet, obviously, she was somewhat sniping when my back was turned. Lucky for me, every time we had been in a boardroom, Trump had asked the PM if I overstepped my bounds or stepped on their toes. I think Trump kept asking that because he suspected I was the type who would want to be the leader on every task. Yet, every PM who was asked that insisted I was very deferential, including Khloe on the Zappos Challenge. So whatever Melissa was saying about me wanting to be in charge, she was confusing that with me being willing to stick my neck out and get my ideas across. I actually specifically always deferred to the PM because I had seen on the previous season that not doing that was a huge mistake in the game. And, anyone who has watched the last three episodes has seen an Annie that was in the background, causing no conflict and doing whatever the PM told me to do. So, I obviously knew how to subordinate and not take over.

So, anyway, Tionne and I went off to get electric blue unitards, yellow wigs, blue gloves, and high tops for the actors to wear (so they would look like the All bottles). When we were at Home Depot getting the Scrub Brushes (we found yellow ones!) Tionne found these electric blue rubber gloves the same color as the unitards and she also found these yellow hard hats. I really enjoyed the afternoon with Tionne. I hadn’t gotten to spend much time with her before plus she had been sick coming into the show with a horrible sinus infection. That was finally clearing up at which point the real Tionne was emerging. She got her energy back and she is really freaking hilarious. She did a great job finding all the costume stuff and I had a really good time getting to know her better.

After we got all the stuff, we brought it all to the laundromat where they were setting up to film. I wasn’t at the war room when Don Jr. came by so I don’t know how true the edit was on the meeting but if it was edited fairly I wish Melissa had paid more attention to Don Jrs concerns about taming it down a little because in that case we could have left off that end bit with the midgets swearing. That is not to say I don’t stand behind the video, because I do. Melissa and Jesse did an amazing job writing it and it was really, really funny (as you saw when it got played in the boardroom). But Brande seemed to pay attention to what Don Jr had to say since she was concerned it might be too out there so it seems liek maybe the edit of that meetin was fair.Again, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

Anyway, we got back to the set and dressed up the midgets and the rest of the day was just ridiculously fun. Jesse was a good sport and had a blast the whole day. He was awesome in the video. The midgets were amazing and game for whatever we did. Melissa did a really great job directing and producing. I made sure the branding was there. Everyone contributed and we all had a blast, never stopping laughing the whole day. Editing the piece was even more fun because even after watching it over and over we still thought it was hilarious, the sign of a good viral. I can’t remember the last time I laughed as long or as hard as I did those two days.

We had a harmonious team, and we produced a really funny product. It was a great day.

Now on to KOTU. Oh my lord. During the whole task, Melissa was getting texts from her mother telling her what was going on. We were also getting reports from Khloe and Natalie. By saying they were telling us what was happening, they weren’t selling out their team by telling us their ideas. They were texting us about what was happening with Clint, that Clint was locking them out of the process and being a complete dictator. The interesting thing about this challenge was that I was so upset that Joan had been moved to the other team when I heard what the challenge was. Joan Rivers starring in a viral video would surely get passed around by the target audience. We substituted Jesse but I figured Clint would obviously have Joan be the star and I knew we would lose to that. Joan was a huge asset for them. Also, this is right up Joan’s alley for what her wheelhouse is in the writing department. Joan is obviously known for being outrageous and pushing the envelope. And viral videos are meant to be outrageous. So here is KOTU with the most obvious star for the video and the most obvious writer for the script. I figured we were ****ed.

But then it turns out we weren’t because Clint became a dictator, not a project manager, and decided to do the whole thing himself. And by himself I mean he locked out the rest of his team from doing anything, literally he locked them out of the editing bay. Clint wrote the piece (which was a dirty joke about masturbation which was not funny, offensive, and didn’t even make sense), he directed it, he made all the decisions about the actors and the editing. He was a one man show and despite his teams constant objections to the idea (and Ivanka’s objections as well) Clint refused to listen to any of them and just went full steam ahead. Ignoring the biggest asset he had on his team (Joan) was completely ridiculous and, frankly, disrespectful. I can’t say it enough, I thought Athena was sunk. In the target demographic there is no way we could compete with a Joan Rivers viral (even with Jesse starring in ours). All her ideas were very right on target and funny that she threw out on the show. Clint should have listened.

So, we get into the boardroom and, obviously, Joan was really harsh on Clint. No love lost between those two. Joan got very personal. Instead of focusing on why Clint failed as a project manager (as Khloe and Natalie did) Joan focused on why Clint failed as a human being, talking about how she never wants to see him again and that he is a bad man. Personally, I believe that no matter what your personal feelings are about someone that the boardroom is supposed to be about the task and who did their job well and who didn’t. So I felt Joan stepped over that line several times in the boardroom with Clint. While I wholeheartedly agree that Clint really screwed up as PM in a huge way, I feel the comments should have been kept to just that, the copious ways in which he screwed up as PM. The deeply personal comments made me feel bad for Clint in there.

Athena had no drama in the boardroom. We had all gotten along well and all stood by our product. In fact, when they showed our video the other team was laughing their asses off and we were told that Perez Hilton loved our video (thank you, Perez!) and hated KOTU’s. Seemed like a sure win. NOT.

The All executives hated both virals . While they loved the branding in ours (yay! I was in charge of that) they thought the rest was offensive. Now, I take offense to that in a lot of ways. Our video was great. Melissa did a fantastic job. Jesse did a great job. They wrote a really, really funny and, more importantly, viral video. Everyone on our team was on board and thought the thing was hilarious. And Perez thought it was really viral and really funny. So, my only explanation is that the All executives wanted a commercial and not a viral. I am not sure they understand the difference between a commercial and a viral because there is no question that we produced a viral, we gace them what they asked for. As I said the whole task, you can’t really say the words viral and All Small and Mighty in the same sentence and not expect little people dressed up as All bottles. Both teams went to the midget thing, afterall. I also feel like if All didn’t like either of them then Perez should have been the tie breaker. Why was he there otherwise?

So, we find out both teams lose (no surprise on the KOTU side). So both teams have to send people into the boardorom. Melissa picked Tionne, because she volunteered, and Brande. I think Melissa knew that I couldn’t get fired since the branding was the only thing praised with our video and Jesse couldn’t get fired since he had done an amazing job and worked his ass off. Brande got chosen kind of by default just because she hadn’t contributed quite as much as the others.  Melissa got shafted, as far as I am concerned. She should have won as PM. But Tionne is really the one who got shafted here. Tionne did an excellent job on this task and had just come off a great week as project manager. She was just coming into her own in the game having finally gotten over her really bad sinus infection. When Melissa asked for volunteers, Tionne was the only one who wanted to support her in the boardroom which was a really nice gesture. Look, I knew not to volunteer. I know how Trump reacts to that. At the same time, Tionne didn’t volunteer to be fired, she volunteered to be by Melissa’s side. That makes her a really good person (better than I am for sure) and I was sorry to see her punished for that. Melissa knew she got a get out of jail free card on that one for sure. Trump made it clear that if T hadn’t volunteered that Melissa would have been fired.

Then there was the KOTU firing. Clint, to his credit, didn’t bring Joan in the boardroom with him. He was smart enough to know that Trump would never fire her for this task. So he chooses Khloe and Natalie who did absolutely nothing wrong. Also very much to Clint’s credit, he told Khloe and Natalie that he was absolutely the only one responsible for the failure and he would take the bullet, as he should. Whatever happened in the task up to the point, I feel like there was definitely some redemption here for Clint because he didn’t make any excuses. He took 100% full responsibility for what he had done.

In the boardroom, Trump commended him for just that. It was clear Natalie wasn’t getting fired since Trump was quizzing Natalie about Clint’s performance and not criticizing her at all. I really commend Natalie here because she kept her comments completely on the professionial level. She slung no personal insults towards Clint at all, just really descrbing his failures as a leader on the task. Then there was Khloe. As you are sitting there completely expecting that Clint will get fired (after all he was basically insisting to Trump that he take the bullet) Trump starts this conversation with Khloe about her DUI. Now, I want to make it clear that Khloe is doing everything required of her in regards to the DUI and I happen to know that she is deeply regretful of driving drunk and is making reparations. Trump didn’t care and fired her for it.

I can only say in regards to this WTF??? How does Khloe’s DUI have anything to do with the game? I have to say I was completely confused. Clint admitted it was all his fault. He LOCKED his team out of the editing room. Short of breaking down the door, his team had no way to even give any input in the project. There was no one else to blame but Clint. Instead of Clint getting fired, though, Khloe got fired for something she had done 6 months before she even came on the show. I found the whole thing bizarre. And, needless to say, I was shocked, everyone was shocked, when Clint walked out of that boardroom safe. I guess sometimes Trump acts in mysterious ways.

One thing, as a closing note…Herschel came up with a ridiculously funny idea for his team’s viral that wasn’t shown on TV. He wanted to get into a bathtub, have midgets scrub him with All detergent and then he gets out of the bathtub a white man. I thought that was hilarious (and similar to the Joan Rivers/Brande idea we had). Too bad Clint didn’t listen to that one. I am sure the All executives would have found it offensive but at least KOTU would have produced something that was really funny.

http://www.annieduke.com/2009/04/episode-6-of-celebrity-apprentice-clint-dictates-and-jesse-gets-dirty-with-midgets/

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