sign in sign up
<<
Home , Brian Forster, La Toya Jackson, Life with La Toya, NeNe Leakes, Niki Taylor, Sexbox

Premiere Recap: Tom Scharpling Shoots Fish in a Barrel

 By Tom Scharpling

When the fine people at Vulture asked me to recap season eleven of The Celebrity Apprentice, the first thing I did was pick up the phone and call famed funnyman Paul F. Tompkins, who is currently doing a stellar job recapping for this very same website. Paul said that Idol was sometimes a challenge because there’s certain amount of redundancy in covering a singing competition. “You will not have that problem,” he predicted. “You’ll be shooting fish in a barrel.”

And yes, recapping this show will be shooting fish in a barrel. Mentally ill fish. In a big glass barrel designed expressly for mentally ill fish. With a gun filled with mentally-ill-fish-killing bullets.

I am well aware that the contestants appearing on Celebrity Apprentice are not doing the show against their will: This is not The Running Man. Or Rollerball. Or any of those movies in which people are forced to enter some sort of competition against their will.

But there is something slimy about the whole thing. Unlike American Idol, which, underneath its gross plastic exterior, has some sort of purity at its core by asking, "Who is the best unknown singer in the ?" Celebrity Apprentice exists to give the half-talented and once-famous another sliver of fame in exchange for publicly rubbing their face in a big, fat pile of shame.

1

Yes, I know that there are charities involved and it is truly great that some extremely deserving organizations will get both cash money and national exposure. But it all comes down to these contestants wanting one more sip from the Thermos of Fame. And the show makes no bones about what it is putting out there, whether it’s the announcer promising that this season’s cast will "bring the crazy" or saying at the top of the show, "the circus is back in town and you’re looking at the ringmaster."

But I LOVE IT. Love Love LOVE it! Celebrity Apprentice is absolutely riveting to me and has been for a long time. Even though the whole thing is as phony as the moon landing, it somehow becomes completely compelling and strangely real in its hyperfakeness. When the celebrities are honestly and sincerely fighting to win something that is completely not real, it is moving and I am but a ring wrapped around its little finger.

Those vying for the title of Celebrity Apprentice this year are:

David Cassidy, formerly known to the world as Keith Partridge and currently known as America’s top Orrin Hatch look-alike.

Dionne Warwick, formerly great singer and Psychic Friends Network pitchwoman/charlatan.

Gary Busey, once nominated for an Oscar but now kinda just bumming everyone out.

John Rich, perennial cowboy hat wearer and one half of purported country greats Big & Rich.

Hope Dworaczyk, Playmate of the Year for 2010.

Jose Canseco, former baseball great and current steroid stoolie.

La Toya Jackson, the most talent-liberated member of the .

Lil John, rapper best known for being parodied by Dave Chappelle.

Lisa Rinna, soap-opera actress and life companion to Harry Hamlin.

Mark McGrath, douche-rock pioneer and former Extra! Host.

Marlee Matlin, the woman who won an Oscar for WHAT THE FUCK IS MARLEE MATLIN DOING ON THIS SHOW?! SERIOUSLY!

Meat Loaf, proto-Weird Al best known for his multi-platinum Springsteen parody album Bat Out of Hell.

NeNe Leakes, star of Real Housewives of . I am assuming she was the horrible one.

Niki Taylor, former who reminds everybody that she’s a mom now every five seconds.

Richard Hatch, winner of the first season of Survivor and convicted tax cheat.

Star Jones, former host on The View and JOKE REDACTED.

2

The show starts off with Trump greeting his charges — and the shady-looking sign-language interpreter for Marlee Matlin — in the lobby of Radio City Music Hall, a room ornamentally tacky enough to remind Trump of the chandelier warehouse he calls his home.

The Donald makes some small talk with the contestants — noting that he was "a real friend" of to La Toya (what was that "friendship" like?! Can we just talk about that for two hours, please?) — before creating the two teams by dividing the men and women and sending them off to decide the name of their respective squads.

The ladies quickly name themselves "Team ASAP," which stands for "Artists, Singers Authors, and Professionals for a Purpose." Which is technically ASAAPFAP, which is actually kind of catchy. The dudes go with Team Backbone, disregarding Gary Busey’s suggestion of "Sperm Farmers."

They also determine that Richard Hatch and are to be the team leaders for the inaugural challenge. Then both teams are summoned to the board room, a room which Lil John claims is scary because "you can feel the souls of all the people who got fired in there." This guy knows this whole thing is fake, right? I mean, he’s not going to get executed if he doesn’t sell enough pizza.

And yes, pizza pie is the order of the day as the teams are told they will each be running competing pizzerias, with the goal being to raise the most money by selling the most 'za in one day. And it dawns on me that this installment of Celebrity Apprentice might actually be an elaborate sting operation, luring all these mutants into one place where they can be hauled off by the feds for past crimes, with Marlee Matlin being the straight shooter they asked aboard to make the entire enterprise seem legit. (And I’m really not sure about this interpreter of hers either! He seems like he’s up to something!)

So the dudes go to their downtown pizzeria — one of my disappointments was not hearing Gary Busey use the phrase "pizza parlor" — and the ladies go to their slice dispensary in the theater district. And yes, I’m running out of words to use instead of "pizza" and "pizzeria."

And, like clockwork, we slide into a loooong montage showing how good or bad each celeb is at rolling up their sleeves and doing the work that the Salt of the Earth do every doggone day without blinking. can’t operate the credit-card machine. isn’t good at generating a sufficient amount of toppings. And Richard Hatch is a major league dickhead who has singled out David Cassidy as his whipping boy.

Watching the former Survivor winner utilizing his reality-show skills — Hatch shoves and prods the much smaller Cassidy like a playground bully — on his first unsuspecting victim makes me sad. Cassidy has no idea that he’s being toyed with by a truly demented weirdo who is In It to Win It. It makes me wonder if this is a possible glimpse of the future: Perhaps in 2047 Justin Bieber will be on season 58 of The Celebrity Apprentice, competing against and being tormented by the winner of Survivor: Phobos. I certainly hope not/so!

I thought that NBC started showing an episode of The Event in which the aliens take over a pizzeria, but it turns out that it’s just the plastic-surgery damaged crew that comprises Team Backbone doing their thing pizza-wise.

And since this is "Celebrity" Apprentice, we are treated to these D-listers working their phones to get their famous friends to overpay for slices in an attempt to run up the totals. The ladies get Russell Simmons and Wendy Williams, and the guys deliver some pies to Marc Ecko. David Cassidy laments that he doesn’t have the Rolodex that the others seem to possess — what, no call to Jeremy Gelbwaks? — so he phones his "famous" daughter who is apparently on Gossip Girl to come down and spread some of that free-flowing CW money around.

3

One thing that drives me bonkers that occurs on Celebrity Apprentice nearly every week: the contestants wearing baseball caps emblazoned with the name of the business they’re representing while still being dressed in glitzy clothes. It’s a jarring clash of styles and I’ll never get used to it — the best comparison I can make is when you see a non-musician holding a guitar at some charity event, acting like they’re "rocking out." It’s almost as unsettling as oh, I don’t know, eating a pizza that has dripped sweat upon?

The usual "problems" that occur during every competition on every version of The Apprentice ever take place: The ladies get stuck in traffic trying to deliver some pies and Gary Busey is in front of the pizzeria throwing pepperoni slices in the air. And then just like that the competition is over and everybody gets dragged back into the boardroom to face the music.

Trump and his two associates — who also happen to be his children — join in on the feeding frenzy that is the board room, trying to get the celebs to fight and scrap before they know whether their team won or lost. And during a particularly intense argument in which Trump child Don Jr. — who looks like the "before" scenes in a movie in which a dorky shoulder-less protagonist gets magically transformed into Eric Bana — baits the ladies into battling over whose responsibility it was to deliver the pizzas in a timely manner, Gary Busey’s cell phone starts ringing. I was kinda bummed that his ringer was set to the classic "rotary phone" ringer; I thought he might have something more representative of his mindset, like "War Hero" by Void or the sound of an animal being branded.

It turns out that the ladies won this competition quite handily, earning 115 grand to the paltry $54,000 generated by the guys. Trump sends the ladies back to their suite to celebrate while the guys are left to determine who will be getting fired.

And what a bloodbath it is, with Richard Hatch going after David Cassidy by referring to him as “little” and “delicate”. This incurs the wrath of Jose Canseco, who responds by calling Hatch a liar. Hatch then insults Canseco’s intelligence.

There’s a real Willy Loman vibe to Cassidy, whose forehead is basted in sweat, taking the bait every time Hatch lays into him. You can feel the air in the room shift as Hatch — who clearly should’ve been sent home if we’re judging by sheer merit — proves to The Donald that he is better television than the former Keith Partridge. And just like that David Cassidy is fired, leaving the overinflated parade float that is Jose Canseco to walk back to the Team Backbone suite with his new best enemy Richard Hatch.

Next week: It looks like we will be getting a good amount of next week! And the ladies roar! And Marlee Matlin GOES OFF!

4

The Celebrity Apprentice Recap: As Players Put On a Kids Show, Tom Scharpling Fears for the Children

 By Tom Scharpling

Please allow me to provide a bit of context surrounding the writing of this column. As you may or may not know, I am the host of a radio talk/comedy show called "The Best Show on WFMU." We just concluded our two-week fund-raising marathon on Sunday night with a live karaoke event at legendary rock club Maxwell’s in beautiful Hoboken, , in which all of the station’s disc jockeys do their best to sing.

I performed at around 12:40 a.m., singing/screaming a medley of Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle Again” and “Nervous Breakdown” by Black Flag. I promptly beat feet afterwards and got home by 2:54 a.m. to begin tonight’s recap. So I’m writing this on post-performance adrenaline and a lot of coffee from the Quick Chek off Exit 14A on the Jersey Turnpike. My hands are shaking but I am ready to do this. So let’s get right to it!

This episode — the first without David Cassidy to kick around — starts with a post-firing powwow, with boardroom survivors Richard Hatch and Jose Canseco limping back into the suite to join the rest of the cast. Hatch is clearly invigorated by his razor-thin victory not unlike the way that Emperor Palpatine seemed juiced up to drag Luke Skywalker to the dark side. This guy is wormy and does he ever know it.

5

Star Jones then donates the check that she made from winning last week’s competition — running a pizzeria — to the American Heart Association, an organization that helps people deal with the health problems that come from harmful activities like eating food at pizzerias.

And to anybody who thinks I’m crapping on celebrities trying to make money for charities that are most certainly very deserving of everybody’s support: There are other ways to raise money for a charity. This show serves as a way for these fading stars to get their faces back on TV. The altruistic element is a by-product — half of these contestants would be on the show if the grand prize were cab fare and a fish sandwich.

Trump gathers the contestants in front of Madison Square Garden — the first place I ever saw anyone do cocaine, for the record (it was during a Scorpions concert and some dudes in the row in front of me were tooting it up off a Scorps tour program! I was 12 years old and terrified! Where were my parents?!) — to announce the rules of the next challenge. The teams must write and design a children’s book, with one of the contestants as the main character, that will be performed in front of a group of children. Wow, they’re out of ideas already!

And there’s no Ivanka this week! In her stead is her brother . Eric Trump? Who?! A quick Wiki search reveals him to be “Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization, ” as well as “Founder and Chairman of The Eric Trump Foundation." Sounds like a real go-getter! Very individualistic! And what is the Eric Trump Foundation? An organization dedicated to publicly validating the existence of Eric Trump? Eric is best described as Craig Kilborn crossed with Donald Trump crossed with Craig Kilborn.

Marlee Matlin’s interpreter, Jack — WHO IS NOW TWEETING AT ME! — inserts himself right into the mix, even speaking for the women at one point! Man, this guy is a sea of questions that I want answers to. Does he hang out in the ladies’ suite with all the other contestants? How much of a presence is he? For example, is his shaving kit on a shelf somewhere in their bathroom? Does he cover his ears when they talk about lady things like bras or Spanx? And can Matlin shake this dude when she doesn’t want him hovering? Because man, does he seem like a hoverer.

Lisa Rinna is appointed the team leader for the ladies because, as we learn from NeNe Leakes, they thought they could get rid of her sooner rather than later by putting her in the hot seat as soon as possible. Which is ironic, because ASAP is the name of the women’s team! Meat Loaf is named team leader for the dudes. He says that as project manager “the sword of Damocles is hanging over your head,” which actually sounds like a lyric from Bat Out of Hell 2: Back Into Hell.

But Meat isn’t worried about assembling the children’s book because he says that he’s got two writers in the room — Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray and of Big & Rich. Excuse me, but did Jose Canseco not write a book about professional baseball players, who are undoubtedly the biggest children on the planet?

But that’s Meat Loaf for you — you have a best-selling author two steps away but you hand the keys to the car to the brain trust behind songs like “Danzig Needs a Hug” and “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich).” And hasn’t Lil Jon maybe put some words down on paper, what with him being a rapper and all?

The ladies start fighting right away, arguing over who should do what, with the end result being everybody being generally unhappy with Lisa Rinna. I’m sure she just loved hearing the sound of Jack the Interpreter’s voice joining the fray, saying, “Lisa, you’re in charge. Take charge.” I’m not saying I didn’t like it, Jack. And keep tweeting me! I’m still @Scharpling!

6

Dionne Warwick — whom I never had an opinion of either way outside of her ability to sing Burt Bacharach songs better than Burt Bacharach, which is not a difficult proposition — seems like a truly horrible person. She actually gets irked about the idea of there being too much diversity put into the children’s book, which at this point features as a lion who cannot roar.

At one point Warwick argues with Jack the Interpreter, not even looking at Matlin, who is signing away like the dickens one foot away! Plus, Warwick is wearing a dumb, dumpy sweatshirt and a ridiculous baseball cap that says "WORLD PEACE" on it. You’re on TV, lady — this isn’t laundry day!

But at some point the squeaky old wheel gets all the grease and they decide to let Dionne create the concept of the book, which is to "be yourself." Lots of people in the room are vocal about how flawed this concept is, stating that individuality is a concept that little kids simply cannot grasp. Even Lil Jon himself later says in the episode when told the theme of their book, “Hell no! They don’t even know who the fuck they are yet!” (I’m with you, Lil Jon. And I’m rooting for you, even though at some point you’re inevitably gonna get shivved by Richard Hatch.)

Maybe Dionne could’ve made the children’s book about a lion who is unsure of herself, so she starts calling a psychic hotline that is running commercials on television all night that star a famous singer talking about how great the service is. The lion pays $3.99 to get psychic advice designed to keep the lion on the line for as long as possible. Just an idea.

The guys have agreed on a subject for their book: It’s called Not So Lil Jon and it’s about Lil Jon not learning how to speak up or something like that (apparently to all of the windbags on this show the biggest weakness in the world is the inability to be loud).

So as they are prepping for their live performance, Meat Loaf accidentally sends the team members delivering the stage props to the wrong location thanks to his inability to correctly pronounce words written on a piece of paper. Canseco — who is one of the delivery guys — starts to get mad. It starts to feel like he’s going to turn green and rip through all those puny Ed Hardy clothes covering up his human form! CANSECO SMASH!

Things are even worse with the women at this point. Star Jones and Dionne Warwick are both lobbying for individual credits on this non-existent children’s book. And now Star Jones is in full-on dirtbag mode, showing her true colors as the skin crawling person that we all remembered her as on The View. How Marlee Matlin hasn’t smashed a chair over everybody’s heads yet I will never know.

The two groups do their performances to an audience of children. The women wear strange masks onstage like they’re in the house band at the Eyes Wide Shut mansion. It’s disconcerting and if I were a kid I would be really freaked out by them, because as an adult I was pretty freaked out by them. But the performance doesn’t go too badly overall, and Lisa Rinna declares that once they put the drama and bullshit (pronounced ‘dra-MA’ and ‘bull-SHIT’) behind them they made art up on that stage.

The guys’ production is unsettlingly low-rent and costume-heavy, bringing to mind pirate Mexican television, if there is such a thing. Gary Busey gets some laughs from the kids with his portrayal of a little boy — Busey is for the children! — and while Jose Canseco dressed like an attractive Barbara Bush is pretty stiff performance-wise, he is at least game and makes a go at it.

And then in the middle of this all, there’s a moment where I remember that the premise of The Apprentice was to teach business skills. It was referred to as "The Ultimate Job Interview” by its creators. Yet what I’m seeing on my television is convicted tax evader Richard Hatch dressed like a little girl jumping around with a bunch of other grown men in costumes, all of them aggressively

7 throwing confetti at a group of seemingly terrified children. Unless I have fallen asleep and this is some sort of dream I’m trapped in, things have gone waaaay off course at some point.

With the performances completed, both teams are summoned to the boardroom. Meat Loaf gets all emotional talking about the accomplishments of his team, and you can just see the screw loosening on this dude right before our eyes. But overall the guys play it cool and for the most part compliment each other.

The ladies are another story, with the Lisa Rinna pile-on in full effect. And when Team ASAP discovers they lost the competition, the fighting only gets worse. It all boils down to Rinna versus Jones and Warwick in the boardroom.

Donald and Don both complain that Lisa isn’t ripping her teammates — who were responsible for the primary elements of the book that the judges panned — with the proper amount of force. So Trump is once again forced to fire someone who probably wasn’t the guiltiest because they aren’t shitting on their opponent with optimum force. Lisa Rinna is out.

This show is an f-ing crock, man. An f-ing crock.

But I will be back next week. Why? Because next week Gary Busey is Project Manager! I am signing off as the sun comes up, ready to sleep the Sleep of the Just.

8

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling Says Dionne Warwick Is Not What Friends Are For

 By Tom Scharpling

It’s shocking that it has only been a week since we last checked in with the misguided and vaguely damned participants that make up the cast of The Celebrity Apprentice. A large part of that is probably thanks to Comedy Central’s airing the Donald Trump roast last Tuesday. For those who missed it, the highlight was Marlee Matlin giving it to the Donald by way of Jack Jason, her interpreter and a guy who I still feel is up to something, no matter how many denials MM herself makes on .

And how about Donald Trump’s segment at the roast? He actually had the nerve to start acting like he’s serious about running for president in 2012 by making his routine into a weird roast-stump- speech hybrid. As if there are undecided voters at home who are saying, "You know, even though he was sitting four feet away from people making jokes about how The Situation has AIDS, I wasn’t sure whether he should be leading our country. But when he quoted Charlie Sheen, he got my vote!"

But on last night's CA, as soon as the dudes get back to the suite, the arguments start. Gary Busey gets in Meat Loaf’s face, complaining that he isn’t receiving the respect that he deserves. Meat Loaf comes off like the bedraggled manager of a TGI Friday’s, desperately trying to rally his disinterested employees into believing in the concept of Teamwork when all they can think about is punching out. But it’s sincerely touching to see Meat Loaf give a check to his charity the Painted Turtle, an organization that gives seriously ill children a chance to go to camp. It’s a legit thing and Meat seems like a good dude underneath all his loose screwiness. Good on you, Meat!

9

When the cast is gathered to learn the rules of the next challenge, I had to pause to fix my television. Something was severely off with the color, because Trump’s hair was the shade of a melted Creamsicle and his skin brought to mind an Oompa Loompa trapped in a tanning bed, replete with pale goggle marks around the eyes.

The cast looks ready for this next challenge — La Toya Jackson is clearly still an officer in the same paramilitary organization that her brother proudly served in, and Hope Dworaczyk is wearing a shockingly bright green jacket, representing the only statement she has made on the show to date.

And the theme this time is CAMPING! The teams are to create an outdoor camping experience with RVs donated by some company that I won’t say the name of here because they have gotten enough publicity on my TV last night and I wouldn’t want the exposure here to provide the tipping point. I would not be able to live with myself if there were riots at their stores tomorrow because too many excited recap aficionados caught Camping Fever through my wordsmithery.

Team Backbone selects Gary Busey as their project manager. I love how John Rich — who is one of those country dudes who doesn’t hesitate to brag about how country boys can do this and can do that and are the greatest thing that ever walked the earth — is suddenly quiet when it’s time to pick someone who might have some experience with the fucking outdoors. I question this guy’s country cred — or should I say his bona fides? Anyway, he looks more like Joey Pants auditioning for Midnight Cowboy 2: Buck in the Saddle than an actual country singer.

Team ASAP selects as their project manager because she claims to know about camping. But before you know it, Star Jones is back to her meddling ways. She’s dominating the proceedings, even though she claimed that she was done with such shenanigans. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that she was going back on her word. You’d almost think she was on a reality show!

Both teams get sent to a site to do some shopping for their campsites. The ladies arrive first but leave last because they did so much shopping. And the guys breeze in and out seeming not to care about buying things. It was so stereotypical that I had to check the credits to see if this episode was written by Bill Hoest! Get it?! The guy who wrote The Lockhorns?! You get it.

As Team Backbone rides back to their home base, Richard Hatch makes the mistake of calling the fans of "less educated," and John Rich immediately takes offense, basically saying that he’ll fight anybody who could possibly think that fans of "Drinkin’ ‘bout You" could be "low intelligent," to quote the country superstar.

And now this guy is Joe Country all of a sudden. Where was all this country ’tude when it was time to pick a project manager? And I will say this: I don’t think that country music fans are dumb. I love plenty of country music. But I do honestly think that fans of this guy — award-winning director Phil Morrison excepted! — are maybe a little dumb. Remember that Big & Rich are the pioneers of "hick hop." They’re the same guys who introduced the world to Cowboy Troy, and we must never forget.

Once the dudes return to home base, Gary Busey shows his questionable leadership skills by telling both Mark McGrath and Richard Hatch that they could pull the trigger on ordering shrubbery for the outside of the campsite. And when McGrath questions Busey’s mistake, he gets belligerent with the self-described "rocker/TV host," denying he ever granted McGrath’s request. Even though he seems a little whiny at times, Mark McGrath possesses an affable likability. He’s the meathead who used to hang out with horrible people but knew when to get out, like Dirk Diggler or Ishmael.

Ivanka Trump — whose Ivana-heavy genetics have worked hard to expunge any blockheaded physicality of her father — visits the dudes and finds them with absolutely no sense of purpose. It

10 almost feels like a porno movie watching her walk into the RV to find Jose Canseco lounging on a couch, looking like a stuntman taking five from filming Ed Hardy: The Movie. She rightfully leaves Team Backbone with serious questions about their focus.

Every season of The Celebrity Apprentice seems to have one contestant who doesn’t really want to be there. They’re excited to be back on television, but the notion of actually participating is just beneath — or beyond — them. Past sleepwalkers included , , and , and it seems we can add Dionne Warwick to the ranks of the disinterested. But unlike those aforementioned fun-loving scamps, Warwick seems truly unlikable. She comes off as the World’s Worst Grandmother, more interested in ducking out of the trailer to do some pointless shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond than actually staying behind to do some work.

And then with one hour to go before the presentation, Warwick is on the phone paying her bills. You were not drafted to be on this show, Dionne. And the world should not suffer because you cannot live without some refracted version of your past fame filtering back through your dumb tinted sunglasses. The Dell Dude would’ve filled your seat with an enthusiasm that would’ve made our hearts sing!

Over at Team Backbone, things have not gotten any more productive — Busey and Canseco actually put on baseball mitts and start playing catch. This enrages McGrath so much that he starts filming them with a cell phone so he will have proof of the project manager horsing around when the fight goes down in the boardroom. I’m with you, Mark. If only there were some cameras present to document such egregious behavior!

But somehow the dudes get their site built up to the point where it doesn’t look too horrible. And when it’s time to show their site to the public, they have their raps down cold, with the exception of Meat Loaf, who fails to realize that there’s a flat-screen TV hidden behind a panel outside the RV. McGrath starts whining to him about how they now "look like idiots." Isn’t (wasn't) this guy a rock star? Doesn’t he realize that none of this is actually real?

The ladies are not faring as well. Niki keeps getting our century wrong, saying "20th century" instead of "21st century" to the customers during her spiel. She is subsequently compromised by Warwick throwing a mini tantrum in front of the public. Niki thankfully gives her the royal brush-off, which drives a huffing Dionne to call Niki a "hussy" behind her back. Hussy? Seriously? But in her defense, she’s 70 years old. She’s probably a little tired from all those years of singing. And from ripping off people who believe in phone psychics. And from not paying all those taxes that she owes the state of California. (What is it with this show and tax cheats?!)

Even though I never watched NeNe Leakes on of Atlanta, I like whenever she talks to the camera on the show — she’s pretty funny and has a fun edge to her, like she realizes the whole thing is a goof and she’s having fun with it. And La Toya Jackson seems so sweet and broken and scared, trying so hard to hold it together. When the dude from Camping World said that she knew the RV better than some of his employees, I wanted to cry for her a little bit. She’s the opposite of NeNe — she seems to be taking the whole thing very seriously — but I salute them both! And yes, I realize I said the name of the company two sentences earlier. If you dare venture to one of their locations tomorrow, don’t blame me if you get your head stomped on like a Minor Threat audience member at Buff Hall the second “Small Man Big Mouth” kicks in!

Both teams get dragged into the boardroom and the inquisition begins. And we learn that Marlee spotted hearing problems in Busey and convinced him to visit her doctor, who inserted hearing aids in his ears that now make him feel like a complete person. Is there anybody watching this show that doesn’t love Marlee Matlin? (Although I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Jack the Interpreter takes credit for the Busey thing when he’s out of lipshot.)

11

After Busey talks about feeling whole again, Lil Jon and McGrath promptly throw him under the bus for being a horrible project leader. Lil Jon says that Busey’s leadership was "literally a train wreck," which is not how the word "literally" works, but you get the point. Busey doesn’t like the criticism and lets everybody know that he feels there’s a conspiracy against him running throughout Team Backbone. Who knows how high up the ladder this conspiracy runs? Maybe all the way up to Jose Canseco, man!

But there’s something telling about this exchange in regard to Mark McGrath, who is pretty brutal in his assessment of Busey. What I read as whiny might be more weasly, and that might take McGrath farther in this contest than I had initially thought.

Then John Rich starts bragging about how he picked up a large generator because — get ready for it — he’s a country boy. Seriously, can we all get past this kind of thinking? Anyway, Trump announces that the men won the competition and the women are left behind to be judged.

And then a colossal what just happened as Niki falls on the sword for the team and tells Trump she should be fired. Un-Fucking-Believable — it was the perfect week for someone with a little initiative to run Dionne Warwick off the show. What a bummer. And like that, it’s over.

But next week it looks like NeNe can’t take it anymore and brings the heat to Dionne Warwick! I cannot wait!

Corrections Department: I didn’t realize that when Meat Loaf mentioned "the sword of Damocles” last week he was quoting a lyric from one of the songs he sang in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I didn’t realize that because I am not a nerd who went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend. I was busy sitting at home watching every weekend, thank you very much.

12

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling Warms Up to NeNe, the Warwick Slayer

 By Tom Scharpling

To paraphrase the philosopher Alfred Joseph Benza: Reality shows, ain't they a bitch? Last week’s Celebrity Apprentice was bizarre to the point of confusion — Gary Busey leading his team to victory? Niki Taylor just quitting in the boardroom? Strange and unexpected stuff indeed.

So I went into this installment hoping for some of the bread-and-butter moments we were denied last week: The finger pointing after a team loses a challenge. The moment when the project manager spitefully drags two other contestants into the showdown. The crazed accusations meant to swing the Donald’s final verdict. These are the staples that make the show so sickeningly watchable, and if wanting them in every episode makes me a monster, then paint me green and turn me loose on the villagers because I want it.

This episode starts off with the dudes of Team Backbone letting Gary Busey know that they were less than impressed with his leadership on the last task. Mark McGrath and Richard Hatch are especially vocal about Busey’s inability to command the team. And the ladies of Team ASAP are puzzled by the Busey victory: NeNe Leakes puts it best when she says incredulously, "We lost to Gary Busey? How did that happen?"

But since he was the project manager during the winning week, Busey gets to present the charity of his choice with a check. And Gary has chosen the Center for Head Injury Services, the organization

13 that helped him after his horrific motorcycle accident back in 1988. This charity clearly means a lot to the man, and underneath all that crazy there is a dude who has a fair amount of heart.

I wish I could say the same about both Donald Trump and Camping World, the business that was showcased last week. They pony up a whopping twenty thousand dollars each for the Busey’s charity. So Camping World gets a two-hour commercial on NBC and can only part with twenty grand? I’m sorry, but that’s pretty F-ing cheap. And Trump can eat at the Sultan’s Feast buffet at his Taj Mahal casino — which is actually worse than telling someone to eat shit! — if he thinks we’re supposed to be blown away by his meager donation.

Donald Trump gathers the contestants in the lobby of one of his tacky gold buildings to inform them of the next competition, presenting two meatheads from a company called ACN. Seriously, these guys are creepy; one of them can best be described as a more evil-looking Jay Mohr, if that’s at all possible.

The teams have to film a commercial to showcase the company’s dumb-looking videophone. The dudes select Lil Jon as their project manager and the ladies choose NeNe Leakes to break their slump, after Dionne Warwick not-so-sneakily tries to dump Marlee Matlin into the PM seat by saying, "I think it’s already been decided. She uses [the same phones].”

Thankfully, Matlin’s interpreter steps in and explains that Marlee’s phone is specifically for deaf people. What a troll Dionne Warwick is. And what’s up with that ridiculous sparkly hat she’s wearing? It’s like something left over from the wardrobe from Baz Luhrmann’s failed Broadway adaptation of Newsies.

The guys settle in on a concept that they can’t stop referring to as “hip” and “cutting edge”: A young man speaks to his grandparents over his videophone to introduce his fiancée to them, with the reveal being that he is engaged to another man, who will be played by Jose Canseco! I know, shocking that two guys might love each other in 2011, right? Although this might be a groundbreaking concept in the eyes of the stiffs at ACN, who seem like the type who would go to a hair salon and say, "Give me the Mitt Romney."

The ladies decide to do a more heartfelt spot: A young woman in France checks in with her parents via this crummy videophone and speaks sign language to her hearing-impaired mother. And yes, I know the obvious choice is to give Oscar award winner Marlee Matlin the role of the deaf mother, but I really, really, REALLY wanted them to give it to Dionne Warwick. Just close your eyes and imagine how offensive this nightmare of a woman’s attempt at sign language would’ve been and you’ll agree.

And the ladies start cooking right out of the gate. NeNe is a pretty great project manager, delegating to everybody and getting things rolling. But it’s not all chocolate and Spanx on their team — Hope Dworaczyk says that the only thing she’s good at is “finding props,” causing NeNe to break off the greatest eye roll I have ever seen in my life. She is so great on this show and I am now rooting for her big time.

As the dudes prep their commercial, it becomes apparent that Gary Busey cannot go five seconds without being the center of attention. And he is sooo far off the mark performance-wise: He’s playing the role of “the Grandfather” like he’s auditioning for the Frank Booth role in a Blue Velvet webisode.

Oh, and one other thing with Busey: He doesn’t wear anything under his robe. And at one point the robe flew open, exposing what he refers to as “Big Wednesday” to anybody unfortunate enough to be huddled around Video Village. And this is the last we will ever speak of “Big Wednesday” around these parts ever again.

14

Jose Canseco has concerns about his portrayal of a gay person, and not only because his “Twitter is going to blow up” upon America seeing him act in this fake commercial. Jose is concerned that his father will lose his marbles, saying that “if my father sees this he’s basically gonna kill me.” If he sees it?! What’s your dad so crazy busy with that he might not get around to watching his son on a reality show? And how big is your dad if he can kill you at this point in his life? And if any of you readers want to make Jose’s Twitter really blow up about something, let’s get him acknowledging these recaps: Tweet @josecanseco about this and let’s turn this whole circus into a car wash!

NeNe slides right into the director’s chair like an old hand. Within minutes she’s saying "action!" and "quiet on the set!" with the detached regularity of someone who has directed television for years. And she admits that she likes it, claiming to have been "bitten by the directing bug," which is not shocking because directing something is the greatest feeling ever. Seriously, being in charge of a bunch of people who will do whatever you say? Who wouldn’t like that?

After concluding their shoots, the teams head off to edit their respective commercials. Except for Dionne Warwick, who begs off from the editing session because she’s tired. Or as she put it, “My body said ‘girlfriend, it’s time for you to lay down.’” Who doesn't hate this woman at this point? Anyone?

And then I thought I accidentally switched over to the conclusion of Inglourious Basterds until I realized I wasn’t looking at a theater filled with Nazis but rather a roomful of ACN executives gathered to vote on the commercials. The A-Hole Quotient in that theater was through the roof — all the suits gave Trump a standing ovation as he gracelessly clomped to his front-row seat. These are the people who can’t wait to vote for this dope.

And on a side note, who wants to break it to the brain trust at ACN that their product can be replicated for free by anybody who has a webcam and Instant Messenger? What a truly gross spectacle; if the producers had any guts they would’ve ditched the imperious keyboard music that accompanied Trump’s entrance and replaced it with something more appropriate, like “Greedy & Pathetic” by MDC.

The ladies’ presentation goes well. As creepy as Star Jones can be, she knows how to talk to an audience, and she brings it all the way home. Their spot is maudlin but effective, inadvertently coming off like a trailer for Taken 2: Re-Taken.

The dudes get up there and man does Lil Jon work them hard. He’s in control of the audience from the get-go, pumping them up and getting them to think that their already-outmoded product could be "cool." And they take the bait, whooping and hollering along with him. I’m surprised he didn’t drop the mike on the ground as he left the stage.

In the boardroom, the guys seem pretty confident that they won this challenge, with Lil Jon saying that the difference was their willingness to "think outside the box." Lil Jon mentioned thinking outside the box so many times throughout the episode that I suspect he’s getting kickbacks from the National Association of Box Makers.

Trump needles the guys about the possibility of their commercial being too "out there" or "risqué." Come on, Trump — as awful as you are, even you are better than trading on the fear of gays in society for false reality show tension. I would expect more of the next President of the United States.

During the men’s presentation, NeNe unexpectedly starts crying to herself. She says it’s because she wants to win so badly because her charity is My Sister’s House, which aids abused women and she wants the money. It’s a strange moment and it makes me feel for her. While she might be a total

15 lunatic on Real Housewives — which I haven’t seen — she comes off as real as a human can on a show like this, and I like her even more.

Trump tells NeNe that she did beautifully during the competition, and he’s right — she really did do a great job. Their commercial might’ve been a little sappy, but it was as effective as any heartstring- tugging spot on TV right now. LaToya said the commercial made her cry, which I guess would mean that water would drip out of her ears at this point?

But the men squeaked out a narrow victory in the competition, leaving the women to duke it out in the boardroom. And the ladies went at it like nobody’s business. Star goes after Hope and LaToya; Marlee zings La Toya. And thankfully — finally! — NeNe turns her sights to Dionne. It’s clear that everybody is scared of this woman because she’s a legend. Whoop de doo, she sang on some records and had eleven top ten hits over her career. Would they all be tiptoeing around Buffy Saint-Marie? Or Mark Farner? Or Buckner? Or Garcia?

And just when it’s about to get good, it gets over! Dionne tells Trump that she agrees that she should be fired if that’s what everybody else thinks. But when Star Jones confronts her on quitting on her charity — which is the Hunger Project (which I had assumed would benefit people starving from losing their savings to the Psychic Friends Network before I learned it’s a solid charity that promotes the sustainable end of world hunger) — she decides she wants to stay on the show after all. Does she even know how this program works?

It’s too late anyway, because Trump promptly sends her packing. And she goes out like a total monster, calling NeNe a "coward" while waiting for the elevator. I am so glad to see her gone, but I am a little scared that I’m going to miss her colossal horribleness.

And that’s that — another shortchanging in the boardroom and I’m starting to get a little frustrated. It might be time to switch up the teams. A suggestion: Maybe Trump should consider moving Marlee’s interpreter to the men's team?

Next week: It looks like Meat Loaf has a meltdown. I cannot wait!

And let me take this opportunity to address a couple commenters:

To JJULIANCHRISTOPHER on the Vulture Comments section: I’m sorry I didn’t know that Meat Loaf didn’t sing the "sword of Damocles" lyric from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But it kinda does make you a Rocky Horror nerd to know that. Own it! Be proud of your garters and toast or whatever it is you guys throw at each other!

To DJC9, also from the Vulture comments section: You say that you used to watch SNL then go to the midnight showing of Rocky Horror? Really? Because here in America, Saturday Night Live would come on at 11:30 p.m. So unless you consider "watching SNL" to be catching the first half of the cold open then rushing to your local movie theater to see Rocky Horror, you are full of it. And you posted the same post three times. How can I take anything you say seriously if you don’t know how to hit "send" without upsetting the apple cart?

And to Ben Curtis (a.k.a. "the Dell Dude") on Twitter: Even though I mentioned that you would be great on The Celebrity Apprentice, I do not have the power to get you hired on the show. I do hope you get on next season and I’m sure that whoever is recapping next season will like you as much as I do. And let’s hang out some time! You seem like a fun guy!

16

The Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling Marvels at the Meat Loaf Meltdown

 By Tom Scharpling

Before I get to the recapping, can I deal with the elephant in the room? You know which elephant I’m talking about — the bloated windbag of an elephant who keeps speculating that Obama wasn’t born in this country while pretending to run for president.

Seriously, just imagine Donald Trump participating in a presidential campaign. Picture the look of absolute disgust on his face as he’s forced to eat some yokel’s award-winning sweet-potato pie at an Iowa diner. Within two minutes he’ll be screaming at the rubes to stop breathing his air as he scrambles back to his private jet. It’s not going to happen.

Okay, back to the reason we’re all here. The ladies have suffered their third-consecutive loss and the dudes are gloating in a way that is all foreshadowing — Lil Jon yells “We keep winning!” like he’s begging for a fake thunderbolt to come from above to faux smite his nonexistent team for their pseudo-arrogance.

The women are in bad shape. NeNe Leakes is still rattled over Dionne Warwick’s brutal farewell, muttering “Dionne is rude!” over and over.

As everybody talks down NeNe, La Toya tells Lil Jon she believes that her teammates are setting her up to fail. She tacks on a heartfelt “I’ve always known that you can’t trust anybody” — a motivational

17 aphorism that just sends my heart soaring! — before Trump calls everybody back to the boardroom to learn their next challenge.

Trump prefaces things by saying he’s a fan of art — “I enjoy looking at the art. I enjoy touching the art. I have fun with it” — before challenging the teams to create and sell some art. For a moment it seems like this might be an episode that allowed the contestants to fly free without the confines of whatever low-rent corporation threw some money at NBC this week.

But that lasted three seconds before Trump mentioned some baseball-cap company. So in addition to creating paintings, each contestant has to paint a baseball cap. Wow, they’re running out of ideas on this thing like nobody’s business. But you should’ve seen the look on Jose Canseco’s face when Trump said the word "baseball." It was like when I used to say the word "food" to my dog.

It’s at this point that I realize we didn’t get to see Lil Jon present his charity with the prize money he earned from being project manager last week. What gives? My guess is that since his charity is the United Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur, Georgia, NBC and Trump were too cheap to buy someone from the organization a coach ticket to New York.

So let me tell you what the NBC website doesn’t feel the need to promote: The United Methodist Children’s Home housed two children who were adopted by Lil Jon’s family. He got a brother and sister from this place! Good on Lil Jon for donating to an organization that is considerably less flashy but wildly significant to him.

And in NBC’s defense, they only have so much room on their website and they need to make room for Don Trump Jr.’s Boardroom Blog. Where else could you get valuable insight into the show like “I think Dionne must have known once she challenged my father it was over”? Hmmm … the only place I can think of is ON THE ACTUAL SHOW WHEN TRUMP SAID PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING.

Marlee Matlin and John Rich are appointed respective project managers, and it doesn’t take Rich five seconds before he starts in with his country-boy hokum once again. This time he’s blathering on about how generous country-music fans are. Yes, I know they can be giving when it’s time to donate to organizations that put up WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE billboards, but we will see if they can pony up for less worthy endeavors.

And for the record, I assumed that John Rich’s charity was going to involve removing too-small cowboy hats stuck on the heads of urban cowboys, but it turns out that he’s competing for the very worthy St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Once they break off into their teams, it’s all business. Rich tells his teammates that he expects them to raise as much money as possible and those who do not earn will feel his wrath in the boardroom. He’s so intense you’d think he was auditioning for the Alec Baldwin role in a down-home version of Glengarry Glen Ross (“As y’all know, first prize is a Massey Ferguson tractor. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of shuckin’ knives. Third prize is you get skedaddled”).

Jose Canseco gets a call that his dad’s health took a turn for the worse and he has decided to leave the show to go attend to family matters. So Trump handles this in the classiest way possible — he drags Canseco into the boardroom and talks to him across the table as if this whole show isn’t fake. It was really skin crawling. Before Canseco leaves, Trump throws $25 grand to Canseco’s charity, which was B.A.T., an organization that helps out former baseball players and baseball personnel who have fallen on hard times. And Canseco’s dad passed away shortly after filming this, so he made the right decision. Rest in peace.

18

But that doesn’t stop the rats from being ratty. Richard Hatch speculates that maybe Jose faked the severity of his father’s illness so he could avoid the episode in which everybody was expected to raise money. You know, since Canseco is a pariah and would have a hard time raising money.

First thing — fuck off, Richard Hatch. Not everybody would stoop to those depths. You know that Richard Hatch is one of those guys who fails that "serial killer funeral test" that gets e- mailed around every year or so. (Incidentally, the premise for that test could be Katherine Heigl’s next movie: “She wanted to meet the man of her dreams again, so she did the only thing she could: She murdered her father!”) And second, I am certain that when it came time to bring in the bucks, Canseco would’ve gotten BALCO to write him a huge check.

Even though I will get flack for it, I will not discuss Mark McGrath saying, “Let’s get out of the van! Gary farted!” I just won’t. Sorry, sickos. Write about it on your own weird amateur recaps.

As the gentlemen shop for their art supplies, we get our first taste of the Meat Loaf meltdown the show has been hyping for the last week. Gary Busey asks Loaf if he’s buying canvases for everybody. Meat Loaf somehow interprets that as Busey saying "You're buying my stuff!" and rolls his shopping cart off in a . I don’t like where this is going at all.

La Toya Jackson has a rare shirt of her brother Michael — wait, she’s related to Michael Jackson?! How did I miss that?! — that she will donate to the auction. And while this shirt appears to be the kind of garment that one might obtain by finding themselves on the receiving end of a shirt cannon launched by a sports mascot, I am not one to question her generosity or the kindness of her intent. She seemed really touched to give it to the charity, so I say good for you, La Toya.

When the dudes get back to their workspace, Meat Loaf instantly goes off. He accuses Gary of stealing his supplies and screams at him like a lunatic. I will say this: Meat Loaf might’ve come up with the line of the century when he screeches “I bought those motherfucking sponges!” in Gary’s face. Can anybody please turn this into a ringtone?!

Meat Loaf then tells Gary that he does not want to fuck with him because if you look into his eyes you’ll see that he’s the last person in the fucking world you’d ever want to fuck with. Which is kind of funny, because when you see the reaction that the motherfucking sponges is getting, Meat Loaf might be the first guy you’d want to fuck with! Who wouldn’t want to hear him scream, “You’ll be in the hospital in about four minutes!” after calling him to ask if his refrigerator is running?

And surprise of surprises, they find Meat Loaf’s supplies were under a chair the whole time. But that doesn’t stop Meat Loaf from still yelling and raging away like a 4-year-old. What a dick.

The ladies are having some struggles. NeNe and Star are going at it a little bit, with Star mad that the computer is offline, and NeNe — who cares?! I want to talk about Meat Loaf some more! Watching him "paint" is a sight to behold. Let me set the scene: Meat Loaf in his bare feet, his T-shirt on inside- out with the tag sticking waaaay up, rolling a basketball covered in paint across a canvas while muttering "come on … come on … " If this isn’t outsider art, I don’t know what is. Can we get Phil Morrison to make Junebug 2: Even Buggier with Meat Loaf as the lead? Fingers crossed!

But there are other guys on the team, like Lil Jon, who seem excited about painting. A tip of the hat to the producers for cueing some "urban" music as soon as Lil Jon talks about his painting. Who did the music for this episode, Jimmy the Greek? Gary Busey paints some kind of animal and he seems to be having fun, which is awesome for him. And poor Richard Hatch is feeling the heat because he doesn’t have the Rolodex that the others have. Come on, you can’t get Rudy Boesch to toss in a few bucks?

19

And for the record, Richard Hatch is currently in jail for failing to file his income tax! For the second time! Isn’t that enough to sink Trump’s political aspirations? I’ve seen negative political ads based on less: “Donald Trump willingly hired a tax cheat for his own commercial gain. If this is how he runs his reality show, how is he going to run the country?”

The dudes set up at the gallery with so much time to spare that Mark McGrath and Lil Jon decide to see how the ladies are making out. They arrive to find their gallery completely empty — Team ASAP is stuck in traffic and Marlee is starting to royally freak out, wondering if they’ll have enough time to properly set things up.

So Mark and Lil Jon do a completely un-hilarious version of MTV Cribs at the gallery, with Lil Jon giving a non-tour of the barren room. This is why the world needs writers to provide words to come out of the mouths of performers, everyone.

Back at the Team Backbone gallery, Meat Loaf apologizes to Gary for yelling at him. He actually apologizes in the worst possible way, making himself the victim in the scenario, crying about how sorry he is, etc., blah blah blah. But when Gary breaks out an acronym for the word FORGIVE, Meat Loaf looks like he can barely contain his desire to yell at him again! What a despicable hothead — I guess when Phil Rizzuto said “we got a real pressure cooker going here” in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light," he was talking about the empty overheating cauldron socked squarely between Meat Loaf’s ears.

The ladies finally arrive at the gallery but their art isn’t there yet! There’s a real sense of panic in the air and you can feel Star Jones getting ready to drop this all on Marlee’s head. Let’s hope that the Year 2000 — my nickname for Marlee Matlin! — can pull it together.

Meanwhile, things are just peachy for the guys. They’ve opened their gallery to the public and business is booming. The Maloof Brothers bought some Lil Jon–decorated tequila bottles for $5 grand each, and sent over an additional five thousand bucks. With this level of clientele, I was half-expecting a donation from the likes of Robert Shapiro or the Human Carpet, but these fantasies paled in comparison to the reality of John Rich’s country buddies rolling into the Big Apple.

That’s right, Two Foot Fred and Charlie and someone I think was called Big Six got off their private jet and headed straight to the gallery. I have no idea how these guys are making that kind of money — and it scares me to entertain the possibilities — but they’ve come to contribute to a good cause so I won’t give them too much grief.

Team ASAP is finally getting things rolling once their artwork arrives at the gallery. After a somewhat slow start, their coffers are filing up nicely thanks to the amazing hustle that the Year 2000 is throwing down. And even though I tease John Rich, he did a seriously amazing job getting people to donate. A respectful nod to the two of them.

But Richard Hatch is still moaning about how nobody wants to buy his painting because he’s a relative nobody in the scheme of things. If he had any sense of the NYC art world, he should’ve painted Meat Loaf green and locked him in a cage while playing some appropriate music — maybe “Warzone” by State of Alert on a constant loop? — if he wanted to make the Big Bucks.

I didn’t even mention that the dude who played Furio on The Sopranos came by to judge the quality of the hats each team painted. I know I doubted Trump’s artistic acumen earlier, but he clearly knows his stuff considering he booked Furio from The Sopranos as a hat-art judge. Was Robert Wuhl not available?

20

The numbers that both teams are raking in are climbing. Marlee has roped in three people pledging $99 grand each, and John Rich sold his guitar to his country friends for a whopping $470,000, although I would pay twice that amount if John Rich were selling me the last guitar he would ever own.

And then it’s all over and we’re back in the boardroom. When Trump — who at this point looks like a curious shaved orangutan who stuck his head inside a cotton-candy machine — asks Meat Loaf about what happened with the paint, he gives an unsurprisingly tainted and self-serving version of the events. And if that’s not enough, he looks like he wants to punch out Gary for relating a surprisingly evenhanded recollection of the incident. Classy!

Mark McGrath tells Trump that John Rich ran the team perfectly, exclaiming that he’s “one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever met in my life." Those are strong words when you consider that McGrath probably knows all the guys from Lit!

After some uninteresting speculations that I won’t bore you with, the final numbers are revealed. The men raised $626,908, which is amazing. But the women raised a staggering $986,000! It’s so moving that Jack the Interpreter starts crying, causing Marlee to tell him to knock it off. I can only imagine the other circumstances under which Marlee tells Jack to knock it off, but that’s a thought for another time.

Trump makes a big show out of throwing in an additional $14 grand so Marlee’s total can be a cool million bucks, then asks the ladies whether or not they want to allow the guys to consider Jose Canseco’s departure as their firing for the week. They decline the offer, reminding everyone that it’s all business. I love it! Finally some boardroom heat!

The guys try to tip the focus toward getting rid of Gary Busey because of his lack of focus, but Trump asks Marlee — who is in the room with the rest of the ladies, an Apprentice first! (who cares!) — who she thinks should get fired. She says Richard Hatch has to leave since he made the least amount of money. Holy crap! Marlee Matlin is playing the game.

Trump agrees with her and fires Richard Hatch. Marlee ran things like a shark. This might’ve been the only opportunity to get rid of Richard Hatch because to paraphrase Dean Wormer, he’s a sneaky little shit and could’ve run the table if he had the chance. Crafty stuff from the Year 2000!

Next week: The dudes all pile on Gary, and La Toya versus NeNe!

Commenter’s Corner:

To ROBBIEMALKS in the Vulture comments section: Yes, I have heard of “time zones." Have you ever heard of “time”? Because that’s what it takes to put on your monster makeup and get in the car and park and buy a ticket to Rocky Horror. I call you on whether you can watch more than the first half hour of SNL. It’s called “entertainment” for a reason — you should enjoy it rather than run around trying to do everything. And your advice about me taking a chill pill has stumped both me and my physician. He has put me on something called "Thorazine" — is that what you were talking about?

To KERRIORIFKIN in the Vulture comments section: I am sorry that your enjoyment of Dionne Warwick’s music has been compromised by her appearance on Celebrity Apprentice. You might want to consider giving Big & Rich associate Cowboy Troy a listen; his album Black in the Saddle is currently in stores now. What’s that? It’s not in stores anymore? Well, I tried.

21

And the Twitter Retweet Challenge still stands! The first person who can get any of the primary participants on the show — no Marlee Matlin or Jack and no cameramen! — to talk about these recaps will get a Special Prize from my own personal house! So get tweeting about @scharpling, you apes!

22

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling on the Unraveling of La Toya

 By Tom Scharpling

Sitting in front of my TV? Check. Laptop across my torso, cooking my innards? Check. Two venti Starbucks iced coffees handy? Check. Then to paraphrase the Thing, “It’s recapping time!” And when I say the Thing, I mean Ben Grimm, not that gross pile of dogs from that John Carpenter movie!

The last time we left the men and women of The Celebrity Apprentice, Richard Hatch was just booted from the boardroom into the Town Car of Fate. But things were not all prime rib and FloMax on the guys’ team. The remaining four dudes have just about had it up to here with Gary Busey.

Meat Loaf in particular is at the end of his rope, starting to sound like the protagonist in a revenge movie who just got told by the police that their hands are tied and they can’t do a thing about the dude terrorizing his family. It seriously seems like Loaf is about to go Full Bronson on Busey, who is bizarrely — or willfully? — oblivious to the seething hatred gurgling up all around him.

Things aren’t much peachier on the ladies’ side of things. La Toya Jackson is once again moaning about how the rest of her team is scheming against her. Perhaps she can seek solace in the lyrics her late brother penned when he was feeling that outside forces were conspiring against him. He sang, “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me, kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me” to keep his demons at bay. Hopefully La Toya can find comfort in these words as well.

23

Since she was the project manager for last week’s competition, Marlee Matlin hands over a check for last week’s winnings — ONE MILLION DOLLARS! — to the head of the Starkey Hearing Foundation. Now I’m sure that Bill Austin is a great guy. His charity does some seriously great work by helping hundreds of thousands of people around the world get hearing aids.

But the way this dude stays slumped back on the couch when Matlin drops a check for ONE MILLION DOLLARS in his hands was puzzling. He reacted with an enthusiasm comparable to a grandfather opening a birthday card with an Olive Garden gift card inside, after he thought he made it perfectly clear that he didn’t like eating at Olive Garden anymore.

No joke: I tip my cap to Matlin for her insanely amazing accomplishment and hopefully someone working at Starkey can get Bill Austin a cup of coffee the next time he’s on the receiving end of a seven-figure donation.

The two teams meet on the rooftop of one of Trump’s skyline blights to find out the parameters of their next dumb task. Before Trump can get to the inaugural mention of whatever third-rate company ponied up enough money to be on the show, John Rich obsequiously thanks the Donald for his benevolence in allowing both of last week’s project managers to donate their money to their respective charities.

Trump reiterates that he wouldn’t have allowed it if he were in the competition but the two PMs must be nicer than him. It’s kind of hard to imagine someone being more unlikable than Trump at this point — Michelle Malkin? Colin Cowherd? — and it’s very telling how Don Jr. laughed just a little too hard at his dear papa when he made the same observation last week.

This week’s competition is stupid even by Celebrity Apprentice standards. Both teams are required to decorate a ten-by-ten box in the middle of New York City to promote a suntan lotion called Australian Gold. Maybe I’m wrong, but I would prefer that the one thing standing between me and skin cancer not sound like it’s named after a strain of kind bud.

The guys select Mark McGrath as their project manager, and La Toya Jackson volunteers herself to lead the ladies. NeNe Leakes looks at the Other Ms. Jackson like she’s insane — to paraphrase during one of our many Celebrity Apprentice discussions, you can almost hear NeNe Leakes roll her eyes!

Mark McGrath talks about how he’s playing for Save the Music, an organization that helps keep music education in public schools. Which is pretty selfless when you think about it, because the first thing that any music teacher would explain to a group of kids is that bands like Sugar Ray are fucking horrible.

And the cheap shit suntan-lotion company proudly announces that they’ll match Trump’s meager twenty grand with a twenty grand of their own. That might sound generous if you’re one of the people who only experience this show through these recaps. But if you’re actually watching the show, you know that works out to about three dollars for each time they say the words "Australian Gold." By the end of the episode I was so sick of hearing about Australia that I threw my Saints records into the street and canceled the Google Alerts I had for Natalie Imbruglia and Hugo Weaving!

The dudes break off to figure out their marketing strategy, eventually settling on the concept of pirates hoarding the buried treasure of … suntan lotion. Gary Busey disagrees with this because he has never seen a pirate slather himself in SPF 15, and as dumb as that sounds right now, you will be shocked at how prescient it is later.

24

On the ladies’ side, La Toya is running things with an iron fist, delegating jobs to everybody but herself. And she won’t settle on an actual concept. She was running things with what could best be described as “a Charmin fist." If she were half as indecisive during the recording of her album as she is on this episode, she must’ve driven both the executives at Pump Records and Menace — the producer of the album’s hit single, “,” duh! — positively crazy!

(As a sidebar to the above sidebar, if you’re watching the show on DVR and want to effectively fast- forward through the commercials, here’s a tip: go full steam ahead and stop only when you see either Paul Reiser’s face or Christina Aguilera sitting in an abnormally large chair.)

While Team ASAP is trying to figure out the whims of La Toya Jackson, the trio of Australian Gold magnates shows up to give them guidance. Man, this is a uniquely creepy-looking group of executives. The two women look like the kind of overly made-up pharmaceutical reps who drive around clogging up doctor’s offices across the country — something I’m hoping President Trump changes when he gets into office! — but the guy is something else entirely. The best way to describe him is this: First, imagine that the occasionally goateed cadaver who hosts Good Morning LA hides a painting in his attic that ages while he continues to look the same. Got it? Now imagine what that painting would look like: "A Picture of Steve Edwards," so to speak.

The execs encourage Team ASAP to utilize their brand mascot Sydney the Koala in their challenge. Now I love koala bears just fine, but Sydney the Koala looks like a straight-up dick, wearing dark sunglasses like he’s too good for the rest of us. Sydney looks like a jerky koala the way that main dude in Avatar looked like a fratty version of a Na'vi.

When the lotion execs visit the dudes at Team Backbone, Busey makes a point of mentioning that their product gives people "a ." And Meat Loaf once again inflates the horror of what Gary said, claiming that Gary told the female exec that the product makes him "horny." Meat then chastises Busey for his foul talk, saying, "This is not a Barry White record and we’re not in a bedroom." Pretty judgmental talk from a guy whose biggest hit was overstuffed with so many moans that it may as well have been recorded at Plato’s Retreat.

The ladies settle on a concept based around two bathing-suit-clad people painted gold in an attempt to highlight the concept of "the gold life." But La Toya nixes the idea of making one of the models Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk, because La Toya needs her to work the calculators for the team. I’m surprised Trump himself didn’t come down to their office and demand that Hope strip down to a bikini for the challenge, but the man has class. Or he’s too busy looking for Obama’s birth certificate. Either or.

And can Star Jones please leave her dog at home? Nobody loves dogs more than I do, but trust me — your dog wants a break from you once in awhile! They like sleeping at home! That way they can rest up to give you everything they’ve got when they hear your key in the door! Plus you don’t have to make everybody else you work with hate you and your pet because they're sick of seeing your dog's face every day.

Star is faced with the unenviable task of explaining to La Toya that while she wants twelve promotional banners for the presentation, the costs will reach $7,200 and their entire print budget is $3,500. La Toya responds to this information by basically saying “Daddy, I want an Oompa Loompa! I want you to get me an Oompa Loompa right away!”

Is it surprising that she has no idea how money management works considering that her brother had enough money to buy the moon and still went belly up? And, like clockwork, La Toya takes this as

25 more proof that Everybody on Her Team Is Conspiring Against Her. And suddenly I’m not rooting for La Toya at all.

Lil Jon is stuck babysitting Gary Busey while the other guys plan out the construction of the glass box, so they head off to the costume shop to gather some props. And it is here that Gary Busey says what might be the scariest line ever while admiring a wall covered in Halloween masks. “Look at those masks … I’m in heaven!” Now, I might be overreacting, but Gary Busey should need some sort of governmental permission to buy any kind of face-concealing garment. Again, we can only hope that President Trump will look into this matter!

It is strange at first hearing the dudes constantly throw around ad-speak as they prepare for their task, mentioning what might offend the client and how they need to think outside the box when it comes to marketing the product. But it all makes sense when you remember who they are: a bunch of marginally talented musicians who have managed to keep themselves afloat in an industry that prefers people go away once the hits stop coming. These guys have kept themselves in the game whether people want what they’re selling or not, and for that I give them some qualified respect. To paraphrase the Minutemen, it might be a four-way tie for last, but these guys are in it for the long haul.

The women are operating on the other end of the spectrum. Everything is pure chaos, nothing is coming together, and God help me but I’m gonna stick up for Star Jones. You can love her or hate her, but this woman does do the work. I thought she’d be one of the biggest creeps on this show, but she manages to keep her head down and focus on the matter at hand more often than not. Good for you, Star, although I have a feeling I’ll eat these words Very Soon.

La Toya manages to tap into another layer of crazy the next morning when she suggests that the women add a winter theme to the summer theme she’s been beating everybody over the head with. That might not sound too bad, but the day before her flight of fancy she made the women pick up 175 bags of sand from the hardware store. At 50 pounds a bag! NeNe’s eyes rolled so hard at this development that I thought this was the moment that she would ditch this nonsense to assume her rightful place as a nosy neighbor on a sitcom.

The dudes start setting up their presentation — and can we just marvel one more time at the colossal stupidity of dressing up a huge glass box at the South Street Seaport to sell suntan lotion? — and McGrath is concerned that it’s just not coming together the way it should be. And then, like the beacons of inspiration they are, Lil Jon and John Rich show up dressed as pirates. And they've got Two Foot Fred with them! Apparently he stayed in New York for the week! (I’m assuming the two other degenerates whom Fred showed up with last week are reveling in authentic NYC experiences like eating a bagel or visiting the 9/11 site.)

Team ASAP is prepping their stuff as well, and there are few things as unforgettable as watching NeNe Leakes badmouth La Toya Jackson while wearing a full-body koala suit. She tells the camera during one of the confessionals that "if we win that means the guys sucked." I love you, NeNe!

Trump drags everybody into the boardroom and before you can say “NeNe shits on La Toya,” NeNe starts shitting on La Toya! In previous weeks, the look across LTJ’s face read as “scared fawn in the big city.” But now it seems like she’s doing everything she can to not blurt "Don't you know who my brother is?!"

When Trump turns the spotlight on Team Backbone, Mark McGrath says that his team will live and die by its risky marketing edge and that he will take the responsibility if his team loses. But the team is high on their chances — John Rich brags that “people who could not even speak English were

26 having a blast with us!” That is until you and Two Foot Fred called the INS on them and had them kicked back into the Atlantic Ocean.

Trump has a bombshell of a reveal for Team Backbone: The executives didn’t like the pirate concept at all and the women won. You were right all along, Busey, you magnificent bastard!

This should be over quickly since McGrath said he’d fall on the sword if they lost. But nooooo, suddenly the discussion is all about how Gary Busey is the big problem. And guess who is leading the charge? Meat Loaf!

Meat gets so worked up about Busey because I think he realizes that they're pretty much the same person: two vaguely over-the-hill performers with a tendency to lose their marbles at any given time, albeit in wildly different ways.

I think the solution to this dynamic is for these two guys to bury the hatchet and take their routine to Broadway. They could star in True West together, trading off the roles every five minutes instead of every other week!

Even though the ladies won, you’d think they were in the hot seat the way NeNe and La Toya are brutalizing each other back in the victory suite. NeNe pretty much lays it out, telling La Toya that she disappeared during the task — she even calls her Casper! — and ends her tirade by saying the only reason she has gotten where she is in life is because of her last name. The "reality star" part of NeNe is coming out and it kinda scares me.

Back in the boardroom, McGrath is backing off his nobility like the sneaky little sneak I knew he was, telling Trump that he should fire Gary because he’s such a liability. Trump asks Mark to pick two other members for the final confrontation, but he says he can only pick one because all the other guys were so scary perfect. So it’s Mark and Gary going down the line.

The final battle between Mark and Gary is pretty ponderous mainly because Gary doesn’t put two coherent thoughts together. And as much as I don’t pick on Busey, I can only imagine how colossally annoying it must be to spend more than ten minutes with this guy. Think of it this way: If the five guys on Team Backbone are the band Pavement, at some point Gary Young just has to go, no matter how chaotically thrilling he makes things. It has to happen.

But Trump holds McGrath to his word and fires him. It’s kinda great at first because the dude was being such a weasel, but ultimately I’m saddened by it because the only reason Trump didn’t show Gary the door is because he knows that Busey makes better television.

Maybe Trump is trying to gaslight Meat Loaf in front of America. Make him think he’s crazy. Get him to confess where he buried those diamonds. Then shove him off the roof of Trump Towers! It’s a perfect plan, although I can picture Don Jr. getting kicked out of the escape helicopter by his father when the plan falls apart, screaming “We had a deeeeeeeeeeal!” as he falls to his death.

Next week: La Toya is out of control, and the dudes work overtime to run Gary off the show!

COMMENTERS CORNER:

To DANIKRIST in the Vulture Comments section: Where’s Tompkins? He’s writing two recaps a week for American Idol. Do you think he’d want to write these recaps also? Should we ask him? I’d bet he’d be into doing recaps around the clock! And if you don’t like me complaining about the

27 politics of Donald Trump, I’m really sorry. I know Mike Huckabee is recapping Celebrity Apprentice over at Newsmax, so maybe that’s more up your alley!

To MATH_UK in the Vulture Comments section: It is clear that I accidentally tripped up and used part of a joke that Seth McFarlane did on the Donald Trump Roast when I wrote last week that Trump looks like a curious shaved orangutan who stuck his head inside a cotton candy machine. MacFarlane asked Trump during the roast if he fell head-first into a cotton candy machine.

But do me a favor and Google “Donald Trump cotton candy.” See how many references there are to the Donald’s hair being like cotton candy. Your hero didn’t create that comparison by any stretch of the imagination. There are articles using the phrase going back to at least 2004. And the “curious orangutan” part? I came up with that … but when you Google “Donald Trump orangutan,” people have making that reference for years as well! You’d almost think this Donald Trump was a famous guy or something!

So basically I made the mistake of using the concept of a cotton-candy machine. And for that I apologize. But you do realize I write these things in one straight shot from 9 p.m. until 7 a.m., right?

But in conclusion, I will gladly mail MacFarlane his share of my profits from this column if he writes me with a mailing address and/or PayPal account. I’ve run the numbers and his cut for my using the word "machine" is about five-eigths of one cent. I’m on Twitter, Seth! I’m @scharpling! Look me up!

To ROBBIEMALKS in the Vulture Comments: Thanks for the grammar lesson! You seem like a fun guy — maybe you and DANIKRIST should start hanging out!

To RYAN2011FORREAL: Firstly, I’m glad I’m not talking to some faux Ryan 2011. And secondly, you’re "so glad you don’t know Tom Scharpling"? That wasn’t nice. And yes, there are things I don’t hate. Some of them include … I can't think of anything! You nailed me cold, Ryan. I am a hateful little man who expresses all my jealousy and rage through these lowly recaps. I guess the only thing I like is … you.

To all the tons of nice people who said nice things — thank you.

And how is it that we haven’t gotten one damn retweet from any of the contestants on the show! I guess I have to up the ante — I will give the first person who gets me an actual retweet from one of the contestants on the show (NOT MARLEE OR JACK!) a T-shirt from the Stereolaffs warehouse and a ten dollar gift card for Panera Bread! I’m serious! Get to it, you guys and see you all next week!

28

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling on the Gary Busey Debacle

 By Tom Scharpling

Before we get started, I realize that I blew a golden opportunity last week with one of my golden zingers. I said that La Toya Jackson acted like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka, screaming that she wanted an Oompa Loompa. Now, for me to be writing a recap of a show fronted by Donald Trump — a man with a skin tone so orange that it wouldn’t surprise me to see Rajon Rondo mistakenly pick up his head and brick a twenty-footer with it — and not bring it back to the Donald having some Loompa-like traits is just unforgivable. I hope you will all find it in your hearts to see past this travesty and hopefully we can all move on. Yes? Yes. Let’s go!

This week’s episode begins with the remaining contestants speculating on whether or not Mark McGrath or Gary Busey will get the boot from Trump. Meat Loaf in particular can’t handle another minute of Busey, leaning over a chair in his half-completed Nudie suit like he’s an overweight mountain lion getting ready to pounce on a deer with a gimpy hoof. So when he sees Busey amble into the room all stone-faced, it’s actually kind of sad. He desperately drains a shot of alcohol like the spirits will dispel the melting Dennis the Menace that stands before him, but no — Busey’s return is real and he is here to stay.

John Rich confronts Busey, saying to him, "you’re either crazy or you’re a saboteur." It’s kinda great seeing a weirdo like Busey legitimately spook a dude like John Rich. The country singer has no tolerance for that kind of behavior, although if you stuck an ascot and a blinding hatred for the president on Busey, Rich would be standing next to fellow McCain supporter Jon Voight. Maybe the

29 two of them could spend the night trading tips on how to Photoshop Obama’s face onto any variety of offensive images.

We then see La Toya Jackson as she gives her donation to AIDS Project LA, an organization that helps feed and assist HIV-positive people in the Los Angeles area. Seeing her behind the counter of the shelter handing out food and trying to interact with other humans is a little painful and clunky — did she have to wear the fur coat? — but her heart is clearly in the right place and it’s a great cause.

And just like that, we’re back to business! Trump summons the remaining nine contestants to the Trump Tower Grill to learn of their next assignment. Regarding the Trump Tower Grill: I wish that Donald Trump would show the paperwork that proves his restaurant isn’t infested with rats. What’s he so scared of? It’s just a piece of paper, and he sure seems to not be making it easy for us to see that paper that confirms your dining experience won’t feel like a Ratatouille Fantasy Camp. Show us the paper or we have to assume the worst, Trump!

For this week’s challenge, the two teams have to produce an infomercial touting the greatness of Omaha Steaks. The two brothers who run this family owned business are on hand, and they could not look more dissimilar — one is like a poor man’s Dr. Drew and the other one could be a stand-in for Dick Cheney if he ever ventures back into the realm of sitcom acting: Who can forget his two- episode arc on The Bernie Mac Show, portraying the Mac Man’s business manager, Chooch?

Now, I’m not gonna resort to making fat jokes, but both Meat Loaf and Star Jones seem really excited by this task. Remember — I’m not making a fat joke here! They are just thrilled to do this one, and Meat Loaf kinda leans forward as if he’s trying to catch the scent of steak off one of the Steak Brothers. But that was not a fat joke. The one I did earlier about the overweight mountain lion? That was a fat joke.

It’s time to pick project managers. Team ASAP names Hope Dworaczyk, whose appointment makes Trump instantly turn to who from this point on will be referred to as the Steak Brothers and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, our Playmate of the Year, fellas," as if he’s expecting her to whip off her blouse in exchange for rib eye. This guy is so defective in so many ways that I am half-hoping he actually does decide to run for president.

Meat Loaf quickly shoves Gary Busey forward as Team Backbone’s project manager. It’s so clear that all the guys are hoping that Busey turfs out. Trump adds that he can’t figure out whether Busey is "a genius or a moron," and nobody laughs as hard as Trump probably thought they did. This guy actually thinks he’s entertaining, and it’s painful to see him gracelessly clomp through these situations thinking that he’s knocking everyone dead. Part of me wants to see him become president just to imagine his State of the Union address, talking about all the things that he and Vice-President Vince McMahon achieved and why America is now bigger and better than ever, even though there are roving gangs killing people in the streets for potable water.

The dudes break off to strategize. Busey immediately appoints Meat Loaf to be the chef for the infomercial, even though Loaf doesn’t know how to cook — but both Lil Jon and John Rich do! The Steak Brothers show up to see how the men are making out, and Gary keeps getting hung up on the weirdest details, zeroing in on the one brother’s offhand use of the phrase "suspended animation" to describe their meat-delivery process (which sounds disgusting, for the record!). And that is the moment when I got off board with Gary Busey once and for all.

I know that Busey suffered drastic head trauma after his horrible motorcycle accident and he’s not all there, but he is also a dick. He’s the embodiment of what made me quit every William Burroughs book I tried to read after 50 pages — I’d rather simply own that I’m not smart enough and move onto

30 something befitting my intellect; a novel by Janet Evanovich, perhaps? — than hand myself over into someone’s crypto-intellectual word salad.

On the ladies’ side of things, Star is doing her Star thing, which is to talk over everybody else and to try to take over. NeNe Leakes is instantly furious at her, burning holes through her with those awesome saucer-size eyeballs of hers. And when the Steak Brothers visit, Star asks them what the leanest cut of meat they sell is because she had open-heart surgery a couple of years earlier. Hey, here’s an idea! Maybe you shouldn’t be eating any steak after having open-heart surgery! Things like that are usually what we refer to as a "sign" to "change your eating habits."

Meat Loaf wants to go meet with the guy who will train him to cook and tries to take Lil Jon with him. But John Rich says that he wants to go along as well. So they all go to the meeting with a sullen Gary Busey in tow. And this is the big problem with this episode — it’s so boring watching three guys be passively mad at another guy for two hours.

It’s not much better at Team ASAP. Watching La Toya Jackson slide into Persecution Mode yet again just because someone had an opinion that impacted her in the slightest possible way — NeNe wanted her to prepare a hamburger instead of a steak — is draining and not much fun. I can only imagine what it would be like to have grown up in the horror house that La Toya was raised in.

As Meat Loaf is being taught how to cook, Lil Jon and John Rich have absolutely zilch to do. Rich has taken to wearing the kind of dumb reflective sunglasses that poker players wear on late-night poker shows because I’m assuming he just doesn’t want to look Busey in the eyes anymore.

Busey isn’t helping matters by trying to name their steak package things like "When the Ocean Meets the Land" or "The Omaha Multi-Flavored Steaks Pack," which forces Meat Loaf to tell Gary in his best Jack Lemmon–esque stammer that there’s no such thing as multi-flavored steaks. So when Gary suggests that perhaps the company would consider making the steaks pre-flavored, Meat Loaf just rides out the situation without losing his shit like he did over those motherfucking sponges a few weeks ago. I’m feeling for Meat Loaf now — he’s just trying to get through this thing the best he can.

As the women learn how to cook, La Toya Jackson admits that she’s never, ever, cooked before because she has lived her entire life with a personal chef. Although she laughs about how she made an egg once! Tee hee hee! I take back what I said about the horror house she grew up in. And NeNe is predictably furious at La Toya when she hears this; in her estimation, no self-respecting adult should not know how to make his or her own food. I’m with NeNe 90 percent of the way on this one, with the other 10 percent being split evenly between "I Don’t Know How to Cook That Many Things Either" and "If I Had a Personal Chef I Would Probably Be Worse Than La Toya Jackson."

NeNe is also on the warpath when it comes to Star Jones, wondering if she is hiding behind her perennial role as Team ASAP’s graphic designer as a way to not have to do other tasks. NeNe sure does a fair amount of complaining about other people on this show, although her direct addresses to camera are great and hilarious. This show would be doomed without her.

When Don Jr. — who seems really uncomfortable in his own skin and brings to mind a regional theater’s stage production of American Psycho (with original music by the Alarm!) — Star instantly starts explaining how valuable her contributions are to the team. But Don Jr. sees through this shameful attempt to grab undeserved credit, probably because he grew up under the roof of the biggest glory hound since Thomas Edison or Bill Walton.

As they sit inside a van, John Rich and Meat Loaf do more of the same thing — complain about Busey. Apparently Rich got called "boy" by Gary off-camera, and John is nobody’s boy. But aren’t

31 these guys always throwing around the word "boy" when it’s got the word "country" in front of it? John Rich even has a song called “Turn a Country Boy On." The lyrics are so ridiculous that someone who was working to get country boys deported from the U.S. wouldn’t go this stereotypically on the nose: “Crank the Hank, find a football game and chug a beer ice cold if you want to turn a country boy on." Although I might just be crabby because I wasn’t able to score the limited-edition 180-gram vinyl LP of John Rich’s Son of a Preacher Man on Record Store Day this past Saturday.

Team ASAP is hard at work preparing their foods. After we are treated to Marlee Matlin making a pornographic plating joke relating to the amount of garnish NeNe was using, La Toya nearly torches the aforementioned Ms. Leakes when her hamburger catches fire, prompting NeNe to claim that La Toya was "trying to do the Michael Jackson on me." Wow, does she hate La Toya! Even Hope — who has barely said boo about anything during the previous six weeks — says that if La Toya doesn’t cut out the annoying baby talk, "somebody is going to end up hitting her." Sounds like Team ASAP needs to put down their copy of Flex Your Head — it’s getting way too aggro up in there!

Things are falling apart for the dudes. They’re running out of time and won’t even have a chance to rehearse before doing their infomercial, which drives Meat Loaf up the wall. And BoyGate comes to a head as John Rich confronts Gary Busey about it. Gary tries to apologize, but John Rich will not accept his apology.

If John Rich is gonna be this touchy about things, he might want to consider changing the lyric in “Turn a Country Boy On” to something like: "Crank the Bright Eyes, find a cool used bookstore and chug a coconut water if you want to turn a country boy on." Try not to get your bolo tie in such a knot, John Rich! You’re only giving Busey waaaay too much credit for being some sort of mastermind when he’s just out to lunch!

The ladies film their infomercial. La Toya Jackson tells the studio audience that her family eats Omaha Steak burgers and that the dessert — a lemon lava cake — is unlike any dessert she’s ever come across even though she has eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world. I call shenanigans on this whole exchange: I generally eat at places that involve me carrying a plate from steamer tray to steamer tray and I have definitely seen desserts that looked better than that meager excuse for a dessert.

Star Jones presents her "romantic dinner for two" to the studio audience, who are playing the role of infomercial audience members to the letter of the law, with the exception of one guy — a mustachioed hipster who looks so Brooklyn that I would guarantee he’s commissioner of at least one of Williamsburg’s four Duck Duck Goose leagues.

And as NeNe does her presentation, one of the two Steak Brothers complains under his breath that they’re not saying the full name of the product enough. It’s fake, you idiot. This whole thing is fake. Now I’m hoping that the dudes’ presentation goes south so hard that Omaha Steaks goes bankrupt by Easter.

And I am not disappointed! Meat Loaf comes out and starts cooking one of the steaks, casually connecting with the audience with an ease that we haven’t seen from him since the days when he wore a sweaty prom suit with a too-tight cummerbund onstage. So far so good. But then the floor is handed over to Gary Busey, who talks about the concept of an anniversary meal in a manner so singularly bizarre that anything I say about it will pale in comparison. So I have transcribed the speech:

The anniversary meal is a lovely connection for soul mates. It’s a time when you get together to remember when you fell in love for the first time. The

32

anniversary meal — because of the flavor and the power of the Omaha Steak in your stomach and on your taste buds and after you eat the digestion is clean! And therefore you’re open, you’re ready to look in the eyes of the anniversary partner and see in the eyes the love you have. The tears will well up and they’ll say ‘I love you’. And what condition that moment of love is what they ate. And what they ate in the Anniversary Meal — what is it? Omaha Steaks. Say it together — one, two three! Omaha steaks! Don’t forget that — if you forget it I’m gonna come get you, take out your garbage for a week.

I would love to see this speech used as audition pieces in acting classes. It encapsulates everything that is the Human Condition. Love. Loss. Tears. Digestion. Counting. Seriously, would you rather hear some pretentious theater drip perform something from The Glass Menagerie for the millionth time, or would you rather hear them sink their teeth into this masterpiece?

But if that wasn’t weird enough, Gary transitions into another speech after Meat Loaf makes some more food. This time he’s telling the tale of a young brother and sister who make their father a steak for Father’s Day. The audience is somehow hanging with him fair and square … until he starts talking about the family flying a kite with the Omaha Steaks logo on it over their neighborhood. The audience immediately looks passively terrified.

I was hoping that Busey would consider pulling a Karen Finley down the home stretch to really make the people remember the name “Omaha Steaks” one way or another, but the whole thing kinda just peters out. And will I transcribe the Kite Speech? No. This one might be better left to the imagination. Or YouTube. Either one.

Both teams get dragged into the boardroom and within two seconds Meat Loaf is complaining about Busey. He’s so flustered with the whole endeavor that he can barely speak. A typo is pointed out on Team Backbone’s menu by Don Jr. — “I was wondering what ‘key lim pie is!’ he exclaims to an embarrassingly deafening silence (not even a mercy laugh from his own father!) — and Gary retells the Kite Speech in its entirety and nobody knows what’s going on and this whole this is boring because it’s clear that the dudes lost and that Gary is gonna get the boot.

And that’s exactly what happens. It was inevitable. Yes, Gary tries to spin his calling John Rich "boy" as him calling him "ka-boy," which he claims is a variation of "cowboy." But it doesn’t work: Gary’s bag of tricks has been exhausted and Trump has gotten as much mileage as he can out of this broken man. So he gets fired, but not before Trump so classily says that "the only one with a bigger problem with that name [being called ‘boy’] would be Lil Jon." Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States!

The three cowards on Team Backbone don’t say good-bye to Busey after he gets canned, opting to "let him clear out" on his own while they stall just outside the elevators. What a group of chumps. But their petty ways don’t matter one bit to Gary, who says that he’s happy to have left when he did because the other guys wanted him gone. Besides, he tells the camera, he can "turn a thunderstorm into a rainbow." Indeed, Gary, indeed.

Next week: The guys are happy that Gary is gone! But the ladies are starting to come undone!

COMMENTERS CORNER:

To DANIKRIST in the Vulture Comments: I’m glad that you enjoyed last week’s recap, but I’m not sure what you meant when you said about Trump’s politics that you don’t enjoy raisins in your Fruit

33

Loops. First of all, if you’re gonna say something that bizarrely stupid — was "Raisins in my Fruit Loops" a chapter heading from an unpublished Don Imus memoir? — you waive the right to say what is and isn’t funny. But at this point I’m more interested in getting an explanation! Please cough up the details!

To KILLSCREEN in the Vulture Comments: I don’t know if Mascis-Barlow tracks as a perfect match to the Busey-Meat Loaf feud. I would think more along the lines of Roger Waters deciding not to pick Syd Barrett up before a gig in 1968 because it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Mascis-Barlow was two equals who needed a world of their own to fill up. Waters-Barrett embodies the loose cannon thing that Busey has in spades.

To MISTER_DANGEROUS in the Vulture Comments: I’m glad you are getting so much satisfaction out of this season of Celebrity Apprentice. More power to you!

To Various Commenters on the Vulture Comments: There are always going to be great moments that I don’t get to write about in the recaps! Oftentimes I see someone say "why didn’t you mention this moment" when I know I had to edit my reference to that very same moment out owing to these recaps going on waaay too long! I didn’t forget! But I feel your pain, and those special moments that I neglected to cover are now yours to mention in the comments!

And still nobody has gotten a single F-ing retweet from any non–Marlee Matlin cast members. Either I’m doing something wrong or you’re not trying hard enough, people! I will double the prize — a twenty dollar Panera Bread gift card and two items from the Stereolaffs warehouse for whoever gets the first tweet! Make it so, people! Thanks for all the love and see you all next week!

34

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling on the Worst Task Ever

 By Tom Scharpling

Ah, the point of no return. When you are as close to the beginning as you are to the end. If I were smart enough, I would work in some reference to the Rubicon, but I just found out that "Rubicon" isn’t a gathering of Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts. But why would I even make these references? Because that is where we are at in our journey, fellow traveler. We are at the point of no return. What was once a Celebrity Apprentice packed with sixteen hopeful contestants is now eight beaten-down men and women forced to engage in humiliatingly fake tasks in the name of a fake team to hopefully win a fake contest. Hey, why isn’t Gaspar Noé hosting this show?!

Last week’s episode ended with Gary Busey getting shipped off, and as the remaining three members of Team Backbone headed back to the lavishly tacky (or tackily lavish?) suite to celebrate, they could not have been happier. Especially Meat Loaf, who seemed positively giddy that the man who drove him to the point of screaming, “I bought those motherfucking sponges!” on national TV was no longer a part of his world.

John Rich tells the camera that he sees Gary’s departure as a chance for Team Backbone to soar, declaring that "we have three racehorses now." Meat Loaf is in a different place — he uses this moment to recount "the flavored steak incident" from last week as if it was the funniest thing that ever happened. Trust me, Meat — it wasn’t. You handed Busey the keys to your head and you’re not that far from Crazy Town yourself, in your head and in your music.

35

On the women’s side of things, NeNe Leakes doesn’t feel like celebrating after Team ASAP’s victory. She wasn’t happy that La Toya Jackson positioned her as a negative force in front of Mister Trump during the boardroom confrontation. I don’t know where La Toya would’ve gotten any inkling that NeNe was anything other than wildly positive. You know, outside of the time she told Jackson she thought she was a piece of garbage riding on her late brother’s coattails. Where does La Toya get off making up such things?

After the commercial break — and who out there can’t get enough of Alec Baldwin?!! — we see last week’s Project Manager Hope Dworaczyk handing off her check to her charity, which is Best Buddies International, an organization that creates opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Hope is bowling with her buddy and eating a spread that seems weirdly elaborate for a bowling alley — the most gourmet thing at the lanes near my house would probably be something from the Skittle family — but she did a great job and donated money to a great charity. Well done!

The two teams gather together to learn of their next task at the Trump Soho, an ugly downtown hotel that is responsible for tying up traffic outside the Holland Tunnel. What a great location — 200 feet from where eight million cars a day are trying to leave Manhattan. Well planned, Trump!

Before telling everybody what’s what, Trump asks the contestants if they’d vote for him for president. Meat Loaf looks way too excited about the possibility, and the other contestants half-heartedly go along with him, acting like they would of course vote for the guy controlling their fate on this reality show they’re currently on. He seems to know that they’re just not saying they wouldn’t vote for him, but you can tell he kinda thinks that when push comes to shove he has their votes.

It turns out that the crummy corporation that the show is shilling for this week is … none other than Trump itself! Oh, so that's why the show hauled ass to this segment, blowing through the post- boardroom stuff like a liar who just discovered that his pants were alight! The goal is for each team to create a conceptual advertising campaign for the Trump Hotel Collection, with the winning ad earning a four-page spread in Saveur magazine, which is apparently a magazine about food. Look, I’m not so much of a “foodie” as I am a “fooder." I like good food, but I am also very happy eating a hoagie in a Wawa parking lot while listening to sports radio. (Where and what do you like to eat? Tell me in the comments section below!)

Trump announces that Ivanka and some dead-eyed white dude from the Trump organization will check in on the teams’ progress while his two sons will assist him in the boardroom. Yes, the Trump boys — Don Jr. and Eric. By now I feel like I know Don — the weak chin, the slicked-back hair, the vaguely Ray Romano–esque cadence of his voice. He looks like a guy who in a different life would be collecting autographs outside a porn awards show held in one of Trump’s shitty casinos.

But holy moly is Eric Trump a different thing entirely. Yes, he has the same Pez dispenser head that Don has, a noggin bent too far back like someone shoved one candy too many inside. But he makes Don Jr. seem like George Clooney — this kid is so sadly overeager, reciting his prepared lines with all the suave confidence of Stephen Sealy from Pre-Teen World. Simply put, he is Fredo Trump.

It’s time to pick a Project Manager. The ladies select Star Jones, but suddenly none of the three racehorses on Team Backbone wants to leave the starting gate! John Rich eventually gets forced into the PM slot, and blathers on and on to Trump about how he knows nothing about hotel advertising. Guess what? Hardly anybody knows anything about hotel advertising! This is an inherently dumb task even by this show’s increasingly low standards, and if anybody should get the boot this week, it is whoever suggested this challenge.

36

Trump tells the guys that they are operating at a disadvantage when it comes to the concept of "super luxury." Seriously? Do people in this America really like having unattainable concepts like this shoved in their face? And the guy isn’t even walking the walk — for anybody who has ever been to one of his atrocious casinos in Atlantic City, you already know that his definition of "luxury" is cigarette-burn marks on tacky purple carpeting and hotel rooms that bring to mind the final scene of The King of Marvin Gardens.

The ladies start brainstorming about their project, with Star talking about how she knows how it is, having walked the streets of Paris and London and Morocco and San Tropez. She knows super luxury, people! And she sums up this lifetime of extravagance with the advertising concept of "individual elegance, collective luxury," which means absolutely nothing! Just think about it — collective luxury? It sounds simultaneously exclusionary and futuristic, like something from Atlas Shrugged in Space (which they’ll make if the first two movies do well!).

But La Toya isn’t buying what Star is selling. She thinks Jones is an overconfident bully who flattens everybody in her wake. And she’s not one bit wrong, although I’m not sure what La Toya thinks she’s bringing to the table either, but who am I to judge? I’m the guy who eats hoagies in his car, remember?

On the dudes’ side of things, Meat Loaf pitches an ad with a guy looking in a mirror with the version of himself that he aspires to be looking back at him. This sounds more like the cover of a Roger Daltrey solo album than an ad campaign for a hotel chain, but I guess that’s where this guy’s head is at. And surprise of surprises, John Rich starts talking about Meat Loaf in exactly the same way that Meat Loaf used to talk about Gary Busey, saying that he can’t understand whatever it is he’s talking about. Oooh, suddenly John Rich’s team of racehorses has a crazy horse in its ranks!

Star begins delegating jobs to her team members, pairing up La Toya and NeNe as errand runners. And that is the moment that all goodwill for Star goes right out the window, because she is playing the game by jamming two enemies into artificially close quarters. NeNe catches on within five seconds of her plan, recognizing it as a power play designed to create a meltdown between one or the other of them and demands that it be addressed.

And her way of addressing something is for her to just start crapping on La Toya right in front of her by saying stuff about who is real and who is fake and blah blah blah. So the two of them start having it out right then and there, with the words flying so fast I thought Marlee Matlin’s interpreter/hanger-on Jack was going to break his fingers in an attempt to keep up. Eventually they all reach a compromise, and La Toya and NeNe hug it out like the heroes of my previous favorite Sunday night program, Entourage, used to do whenever they quashed a beef.

Before long, the ladies are navel deep in super luxury as they shoot their campaign. They’ve got manicures. They’ve got bathtubs with rose petals floating atop the water. They’ve got male models, including one dude who looks like a homeless Stroke and another who answers the question, "What would it look like if Alec Baldwin had a kid with Daniel Baldwin?" As she’s getting the aforementioned manicure, Star pompously speculates that there’s no way this kind of super luxury is happening with Team Backbone.

How right she is! There’s a quick cut over to the guys showing Lil Jon burping while they sit around, followed by a shot of Meat Loaf’s face with a quick fart sound quickly dropped in.

Now I don’t know what to make of this — it certainly sounded like the fart was added in postproduction. Which is horrifying. But there’s also the possibility that Meat Loaf actually befouled himself in front of his compatriots, which is actually pretty believable. But why would they put that in

37 the show?! When it’s November 2012 and you’re in the voting booth considering flipping the lever for the Trump/Santorum ticket, remember that one way or another Donald Trump made sure that Meat Loaf farted on Celebrity Apprentice. I mean, yeah that stuff is fine for a Descendants album, but this is network television, for goodness sake!

Don Jr. catches up with Team ASAP and promptly cracks one too many jokes about how attractive Hope is, eventually drifting into a riff about how he’s gonna be in attendance when she does her photo shoot in the bathtub. The Donny protests too much! Although I don’t know what the big deal is — I heard that there are security cameras hidden in every Trump hotel bathroom. I mean, there probably aren’t really, but who knows? Either way, we should just assume that there are until proven otherwise, right? To quote Eric Trump talking about Obama’s citizenship, “I have no idea. I think there is a real question.”

It’s time for the guys to get their photo shoot rolling, and it is supervised by Meat Loaf, who is holding a Francesa-size cupful of soda while pumping up the actor portraying a hotel employee like he’s winding up a boxer before a big match. “You are the best of the best of the best of the best!” he intones. “No one is ever better than you. Anybody walks in this hotel, they look at you and know you’re the best!” It’s a little too intense for the job at hand — the actor is standing as still as a mannequin and is never asked to change his facial expression once! — and you can kinda picture Meat Loaf saying the same things to himself Dirk Diggler–style as he tries to get revved up to sing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” for the four millionth time in whatever tertiary market he’s playing that night.

NeNe and La Toya arrive from their errands, and Star immediately jumps on them for being late, saying that they have five minutes to get ready. NeNe doesn’t like this at all, feeling that she’s being set up by Star to fail. After yelling back at Star for intruding on her photo shoot, NeNe brags that she’s the only one who will snap at Star. But to be fair, I think that NeNe would snap at the Kraken if it were starting to irk her.

The guys are prepping their ads for production, and John Rich is losing his composure, driving home the point that there can’t be one misspelled word on the entire thing. So naturally these three idiots start shouting the proper spellings for words across the room. What’s wrong, John Rich? A country boy like yourself can’t cotton to a big city contraption like spell-check on your ‘puter box?

Then it’s show time for Team Backbone, who put together a presentation so sad and off-kilter. The lettering on one of the ads is absolutely bizarre, doing a better job at conveying what the next Ariel Pink album might look like than any concept of super luxury. And the two dead-eyed executives judging the proceedings just sit and stare at the guys the whole time. Man, are these dudes horrible! The exec that works for Trump reminds me of every white guy trying to tear down the rec center to make room for a parking garage in every eighties breakdancing movie. And the editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine looked like his head was literally going to explode from struggling to tamp down the contempt he had for the three boobs standing in front of him.

As the guys leave the room, John Rich halfheartedly claims that they "knocked it over the fence," not even mustering the ability to say they knocked it out of the park. You know it’s bad when you’re pulling your punches with your shitty metaphors.

Team ASAP does their presentation, with each lady reciting a one-word catchphrase to the two lumps of goo behind the table. Atmosphere. Escape. Lifestyle. Discreet. Uncompromising. Original. It’s so stilted and overly formal that at this point I wonder whether the execs will be bamboozled by it or not. This is the kind of stuff that guys like that eat up when it’s served to them the right way, but they’re holding their cards pretty close to their vests.

38

And as soon as the women leave the room, the two execs tear both teams to pieces. Look, I’m not saying either side did a great job. Or even a good job. But the with which these guys tore the ladies apart spoke volumes: No matter how hard someone like Star Jones — who I am not a fan of! — tries, she’s always going to be on the outside looking in at the pretentious dickwads who never bring two ideas to the table themselves but somehow seem to end up in charge of everything. Maybe the Saveur guy is some sort of genius — I have no idea and I don’t really care. But I wouldn’t be so quick to judge anyone if I were wearing the dopey jacket-and-tie-and-jeans combo he was sporting.

Trump pulls both teams into the boardroom and lets them spin their pinwheels about how great a job they each did, knowing full well that the execs panned everybody up and down. But it’s not all smooth sailing — NeNe says that she thought other women on her team were "crawling up Star’s ass," and Trump interrupts her to make the cogent point that the act of crawling up Star Jones’s ass would be "much nicer now that she lost all the weight." Which is so unfunny and dumb and inappropriate, causing Don Jr. — always ready with the heightener! — to say that he’s “having a hard time getting over the visual.” Don needs to start an improv troupe right now. What would it be called? Give me your suggestions in the comments section below!

Trump eventually tells both teams that they did horribly — the women created a campaign that was too cluttered and had too many photos, and the guys forgot to include any telephone number or website in any of the ads in addition to having numerous spelling mistakes.

The Donald says that these were the worst results he ever got from two teams on The Apprentice, which again might be because it was a flawed challenge. Why would you expect people to figure out how to do an advertising campaign in one day and hold them to the letter of the law in the process? The creep from Saveur singled out that there was an unopened Champagne bottle in a shot in which Hope was drinking Champagne, which is nothing more than playing an extended game of "gotcha." The producers blew it and the teams took the fall for their sloppiness.

And after beating up both teams, Trump reveals that the ladies did worse than the men. Which means that with Star Jones as the PM, we are going to get some good old-fashioned Passing of the Buck and Shirking of the Blame.

And oof, do we get it! Star starts with the lawyer talk from the get-go, trying to spread the blame anywhere but on herself. La Toya says that Star needs to take the fall for such a flawed job, but Marlee initiates a La Toya pile-on that seems to keep growing and growing until Star drags NeNe and The Other Ms. Jackson into the room with her for the final verdict.

La Toya is at a disadvantage because she’s suffering from laryngitis — from the countless hours she’s spending in the studio crafting her upcoming record, Startin' Over? And while she tries to put up a good fight, both Star and NeNe stick it to her and Trump has no choice but to fire her. Actually he does have a choice, but why fire Star — who was responsible for the components of the presentation that led to their loss — when she’s gearing up to do battle with NeNe on a cosmic scale?

As La Toya leaves, she refuses to say a word to Star, but gives NeNe a farewell hug. And once she’s in the town car she rips into Star, saying that she’s an evil person and that Trump made a mistake. She’s got a point, but the teaser for next week’s episode pretty much validates her booting, because in the one-minute preview, NeNe rips on Star even harder, like she’s getting paid per zing! And just when I was starting to flag with this show, once again I cannot wait till next week.

39

COMMENTERS CORNER:

To MORRISTHEWISE from the Vulture comments: You say that America has "had enough of a sweet guy as president" and now wants "a leader that will kick arse." You say “Vote Trump,” but why would you use the word "arse" if you were from the U.S.?! How dare you insert yourself into our political landscape? Do we ever get involved in the politics of your country? Except for everything that the U.S. has done in the last 110 years, I defy you to cite one example of this country sticking its nose into someone else’s business!

To MUZIX_38 from the Vulture comments: Thank you for clarifying that the “Steak Brothers” weren’t actually brothers but were cousins, thus explaining why they didn’t look like brothers. So while they are justified in not looking alike, they are not off the hook for looking dumb and weird.

To BANANARAMA from the Vulture comments: Yes, I was a writer and executive producer for the show Monk. I am glad that you enjoyed the show, but if you didn’t, that’s fine too. But what homies am I supposed to be pouring some out for as I rise? Is going from executive producer to Celebrity Apprentice recapper "rising"? I don’t remember pulling too many all-nighters when I was working on Monk, but now I’m writing while the sun comes up every Monday morning. If this is "rising," let me fall!

Still no retweets from anybody else on the show. Sickening. The prize goes up to 30 dollars in Panera Bread gift cards and three items from the Stereolaffs warehouse! Come on, you degenerates — get me a RT from someone on the show other than Marlee or Jack!

40

The Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling on Bin Laden’s Death Trumping the NeNe/Star Nonsense

 By Tom Scharpling

The hardest part of writing these recaps is often the first paragraph. I need to sum up everything that has happened on the show both week to week and across the length of the season, all the while attempting to reflect on the actual impact — or lack thereof — that Donald Trump has on the world outside of his dumb fake boardroom. But tonight? This is a piece of cake. During the final ten minutes of the show, NBC News cut in to announce that Osama Bin Laden was killed.

So as I write this, I have no idea who got fired. And I could not care less, really. There is news going on, and it makes a commitment to something as wildly unrealistic as this show seem even more plastic and pointless.

But I did commit to this season, so let's get the recapping under way! The remaining players are in the suite speculating about who is going to walk through the door, with the general consensus being that NeNe Leakes will get shuttled. And the second that NeNe and Star walk through the door without La Toya Jackson, it is ON. Star proudly admits that she utilized her amazing Lawyerly Powers to spin her project managerial loss into La Toya getting the heave-ho, which irks NeNe to no end. She admits to the camera that she is going to take it to Star, elegantly stating that she is "gonna fuck Star up." And finally there’s a heavyweight fight on this show!

41

My fingers are crossed that this will rival some of the most dynamic matches in recent memory, like Charlie Sheen versus Chuck Lorre, the people versus Linsday Lohan, or the digestive system of anybody who eats at the Taj Mahal buffet versus their "famous" crab legs. Seriously — read some of the reviews at Yelp of people eating at this dump.

John Rich brings his check to his charity, which is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He visits with Colin, the cute kid from a few episodes ago, sitting down to paint with him. It’s sweet, and John Rich rightfully makes no bones about how dedicated he is to this charity — which benefits children suffering from cancer and catastrophic illnesses. A tip of the hat to him for raising a whopping $646,000 for this worthy cause, although John Rich would probably not tip his hat back to you since it seems to be welded to his head.

The remaining seven contestants gather at some weird place — an abandoned chop shop? — to learn their next task. This time they are told they will be putting together a hair-care demonstration for Farouk Systems. Trump makes an obligatory joke about the fire hazard resting atop his melon head with absolutely zero sense of self-deprecation: Who out there has less of a sense of humor about themselves than this guy? Billy Crystal? Mike Francesa? He then welcomes the head of Farouk Systems, who is hell-bent on mentioning how his products are great because they don’t burn your head. Which is weird to me — how many businesses brag about how their product isn’t horrible? Is the state of hair-care products so bad that you don’t have to say anything about how your product might actually be good?!

It’s time to pick project managers. Meat Loaf and Lil Jon play Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine the winner, with Lil Jon coming up short. These are the guys who described themselves as "racehorses" last week, now playing a game to determine who their PM is? Pathetic. The women decide that NeNe Leakes is the project manager for the ladies. Which sends NeNe into an attack that goes on and on and on and on. I’m sure it’s still going on in one of some alternate reality — maybe we’ll see it in Source Code 2!

Some of the things NeNe says to Star include:

“It’s going down!” “I will take you down!” “You talked a good game. Now bring your street game.”

While these lines sound like quotes from Rudy the ventriloquist dummy from the Funhouse pinball machine, in this world they are Fighting Words, and they drive Star Jones to say that she is out to show America how an educated black woman handles stress versus how someone who is not educated handles it. It is not my place to explore this dynamic, but I do think I am within bounds to confidently say yikes!, then leave this to others to discuss!

The dudes plot their strategy on how they are going to take on this task. Once again they are saddled with a challenge that lives far outside their comfort zone — these guys know zilch about hair styling: John Rich would probably rather chop off his head than remove his cowboy hat; Lil Jon says that he doesn’t know about hair care because he has dreads; and while Meat Loaf used to be closer to J Mascis in the hair department, nowadays he’s living closer to Murph’s neighborhood.

But they dig in and do the work, with John Rich coming up with the bright idea to ask supermodel Niki Taylor — who was booted from the show in week three — to do some modeling for the guys’ presentation. He rightfully sees it as a way to spook the ladies of Team ASAP, which shows that this country boy is now a-playin’ the game the way a city slicker might! Maybe he’s got a big ol’ brain underneath that John B!

42

Over on the ladies’ side, things are as tense as can be. NeNe wonders why everybody is tense. If only there was some way to figure it out! Maybe they’re all tense because you are screaming at your team! And it’s at this point that I start to truly tire of NeNe Leakes and the push-me-pull-me game that she keeps playing. You can’t say horrible things and then complain that everybody is saying horrible things to each other!

She’s acting like a ventriloquist who complains about the horrible things that his dummy is saying, when all he wants to do is talk to the nice people in the audience! And yes, I am saying "he" when genderizing the ventriloquist, if only because women have it hard enough already in this world and don’t need to share the mighty shame that this brand of puppetry engenders.

But then inspiration strikes NeNe as she decides that “shake your beauty” is the perfect catchphrase for the presentation. And within two minutes the ladies are dancing around and twirling their hair like they’re trapped in a montage sequence from a Katherine Heigl movie. They’re all laughing and dancing and having fun, compelling NeNe to notice that the ice she created is starting to melt.

In a weird turn of events, La Toya Jackson visits Trump in a surprisingly dumpy office — a narrow Manhattan shoebox with dumb pictures of himself all over the place — to express how she felt she was wrongly terminated from the show. La Toya explains that Star Jones utilized her Lawyerly Ways to transfer the blame onto her shoulders. Which is the sole point behind those boardroom fight scenes, but I guess we’re supposed to ignore that?

La Toya tells Trump she wants to come back to the show. The Orange One says he will give it some thought, mentioning that he has never done anything like this in the fake history of the show. Trump says "nice pants" to La Toya as she walks out of the room, which comes off as completely gross and inappropriate. This is how we want the next president of the United States to act?

The dudes of Team Backbone try to figure out what their presentation's hook is going to be. Meat Loaf goes to the bathroom and continues to shout out dumb ideas from behind the door. Then Lil Jon hits upon the notion of “feeling good in America,” which draws a bizarre — and most likely artificial — toilet flush, as if Meat Loaf is our new Archie Bunker (does that mean that Busey was his Meathead?).

What ax are the producers grinding with Meat Loaf? Last week they tacked a fart sound onto an image of him, and now they’re laying in toilet sounds; it’s like they’re trying to turn him into a one- man Farrelly brothers movie. And as a side note, can we get some answers on whether the fart thing was faked? Any chance Alex Jones wants to run with this one? Let’s hashtag #MeatLoafFart on the Twitter and force the Donald !

There’s more of NeNe moaning about Star, etc. blah blah blah. Seriously, it’s all the same. All of it. You’ve seen one anti-Star rant, you’ve seen them all.

The guys are setting up their presentation, and Lil Jon takes the models shopping at Lord & Taylor. And while he’s walking around the store, the soundtrack is once again offensively "urban," replete with fake scratchin’ sounds. Guys: If Obama can work an Ol’ Dirty Bastard song into his Correspondents’ dinner video, you can create a soundtrack for a man of color that doesn’t sound like an outtake from the Fresh of Bel Air soundtrack.

Eric Trump — whom we’re going to keep calling Fredo Trump — shows up to check in on the ladies. NeNe complains to him about Star, which is boooo-ring at this late date. The more I see this guy, the less he looks like his father. I’m inclined to think that maybe Ivana had an affair with Martin Fry

43 from ABC during the Beauty Stab tour. I mean, it’s completely speculative, but there is a real question here that I’d like to get an answer to. Let’s see the birth certificate, Fredo!

And for the record, watching a TV show in which people style hair is exactly as exciting as, I don’t know, going to a hair salon and watching people style hair. This episode is uniquely boring even by Celebrity Apprentice standards. What a total snooze. There are only three of these things left after this one and I’m kinda glad — this season, for all its claims of being crazy and out of control, was surprisingly limp and uneventful.

The men and women are both at the hair salon getting their models prepped for the presentation, like a bad sitcom that has two feuding siblings sharing a bedroom with tape running down the center. I only hope that the bathroom is on the guys’ side because Meat Loaf is such a bathroom enthusiast that he might as well be on the cover of the next issue of Toilet Aficionado. He needs his access!

Niki Taylor shows up and the ladies are instantly surprised that she’s going to help the guys out instead of her former teammates. NeNe in particular seems flustered by this, hurriedly calling Hope Dworaczyk to warn her against sharing team secrets with her fellow good-looking pal. Marlee Matlin considers Niki’s move to be a betrayal, and I agree with her. Niki fell on the sword for the team on her own accord during her PM turf out, and now she’s mad at the other ladies? Out of bounds, Taylor! Out of bounds! I’m with Marlee all the way down the line on this show — she’s the only contestant who has grown more likable with each week.

The ladies’ presentation starts off with some dancers doing some choreographed moves to some generic high-energy music. Then NeNe comes out wearing a headset to address the audience like she’s hosting an infomercial. She declares that Farouk Systems is all about the slogan "Be Safe, Be Real, Buy American" as she welcomes a pair of stylists with amazingly thick accents to the stage. What happened to "buy American"? Somewhere, Floyd the Barber is sitting in an empty barbershop staring at a jarful of combs floating in blue water while these two interlopers steal our scissors from right under our noses! Unacceptable! USA! USA! USA! (And for the record, I wrote this "USA!" joke before finding out about Bin Laden.)

Even though her team is working hard, NeNe can’t help but badmouth her team. This time she’s ripping Hope’s admittedly wooden attempt to walk the runway, saying that she looked like Big Bird. Again, boring!

The guys’ show starts off slowly — Lil Jon comes out and hypes the crowd, imploring the audience to "make some noise." And he brings out to the stage some American hair stylists! After a point, Lil Jon also welcomes Questlove from the Roots to step onstage to show off his admittedly impressive Afro. The one surprising thing is that Questlove wasn’t tweeting while walking up the stairs, because if his feed is any sign, he’s tweeting every second of the day. A word of gentle advice to Questo: Please change your Twitter picture to anything other than the current shot of you with Obama. Every time you tweet, I think it’s the president, until I realize he’s probably not tweeting about .

Then they both get dragged into the boardroom. Trump asks Nene how she thought her team responded, and she says that she felt her team wasn’t living up to its full potential. She then shifts her critique to Star and tacks on that Hope is Star’s puppet. Trump then swings the spotlight to Hope, asking her how she manages to stay under the radar. Hope says she doesn’t like to fight, but she does her job fair and square.

And as NeNe begins talking about Star’s reputation on the show, a message that Obama is going to make an important statement crawls across the bottom of the screen. And the possibility of Obama messing with Trump’s show becomes a reality! I was hoping that Obama would break into the show

44 to the opening notes of Black Flag’s “You Bet We’ve Got Something Personal Against You” right as Trump started to declare who got fired, yelling about how he’s bringing his street game, but for some reason it didn’t happen.

Trump asks the guys how they thought they did, and all three guys manage to hold firm to their impenetrable "there are no weak players on our team" story line.

The Donald reveals that the men have won the challenge again, primarily because they stayed on target with branding and messaging, while the ladies suffered from NeNe being a weak emcee and the overall lack of a theme. He then reveals a surprise for Team Backbone — La Toya Jackson is asked into the room and is told that she will be rejoining the men’s team as a makeup call for Jose Canseco’s early departure. And just like that, whatever rules are established on the show are tossed out the window. But why would anybody put any stock in this ridiculous show?

Team ASAP stays in the boardroom to argue things out, and as Trump asks Star who she would want on her team, boom!, we are interrupted and the news that Bin Laden is dead is announced! Suddenly The Celebrity Apprentice seems very dumb and very inconsequential, and the gulf between Donald Trump’s faux-populist bullying and the iron will it takes to actually run the country has never seemed so massive. What do you think the first hundred days of a Trump presidency would be like? Tell me in the comments below!

And a couple of hours later I found out on Twitter — from Hugh Hefner, no less! — that Hope was fired by Trump because she was too busy flying under the radar and Trump determined that Team ASAP’s best chance of surviving hinged on both NeNe and Star staying on the show. Which is a load of garbage — he’s keeping them both on because they are fighting with each other like two lunatics and Hope has shown that she does not like conflict. Once again Trump chooses crazy over fair, and while the show might benefit in one regard, it suffers in a larger sense.

COMMENTERS CORNER:

To FUNBUD23 from the Vulture comments: I’m sorry you didn’t like Monk, which I wrote for. But I don’t care for two reasons: 1. It’s over forever. 2. Lots of people did.

I got very used to working on the show that my friends’ parents loved. And that’s fine — someone’s gotta write things for the parents of the world. The show was obviously inspired by Columbo — duh — but you lose me with your put-downs of Tony Shalhoub (and spell his name right!). The guy is a great actor and if you don’t like his talent, then you are the lesser for it.

And don’t think I’m not suspicious of you just being a troublemaker trying to get my attention with a deliberately provocative comment. Which is why you are the last of that breed that shall get show up in Commenter’s Corner. Enjoy it while it lasts.

To JJJUICE in the Vulture comments: You came up with my favorite Trump improv troupe name. “Chump Towers” was simple and dumb. Well done!

To JOJOJO from the Vulture comments: … although I think "Three Smile Island" might be my favorite! Waaah! I can’t decide!

45

To NOMOREFAN from the Vulture comments: I agree and support anybody taking the initiative to let Trump know that his newly altered opinions on gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose impacts their decision to spend money at any of his businesses.

And still nobody has gotten anybody to retweet the recaps. Shameful. I’m taking the offer off the table after this week, but if you get someone other than Marlee or Jack to tweet about the show, I will give you 40 DOLLARS in Panera Bread gift cards.

Thanks and see you next week!

46

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling Wonders If Meat Loaf Is Emotional or Unbalanced

 By Tom Scharpling

Three hours. There’s not a whole lot I want to do for three hours. I would not want to watch my favorite band play for three hours straight. A three-hour movie is pure torture to me. So when I heard that tonight’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice was three hours long, you can imagine the joy that spread through my hearth and heart! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the makers of The Cape for not creating a show that could’ve stayed on the air long enough to have potentially filled at least an hour of this dead May night. Thanks, guys!

But I have other people to be mad at tonight. And this episode promises some fireworks: The ads have bragged that Trump will fire three people this week, thus making this installment his The Process of Weeding Out, so to speak. Now let’s get to it! NeNe Leakes and Star Jones survived the turmoil of last week as they kinda teamed up to send Hope home — I will not write her last name because I refuse to search for it on the Internet for the tenth week in a row. It begins with a D.

They go back into whatever that tacky room is that all the surviving contestants hang out in — is this the kind of room that rich people hang out in? With those stuffy-looking chairs and the oppressively heavy curtains and leather-bound books? Because I am a Slob and I generally don’t sit in places that are much nicer than the lobby of a Courtyard by Marriott these days.

47

After winning his second challenge as project manager, Lil Jon presents his check to the head of his charity, the United Methodist Children’s Home of North Georgia Conference. It’s a seriously great charity, helping out people in need in a variety of ways, from helping them get their GEDs to supplying diapers to people who can’t afford them. Lil Jon’s brother and sister were adopted from the charity. So I give him a world of credit for going to the mat for a deserving and underpromoted organization. Good for you, Lil Jon!

The contestants are gathered at the Gotham Comedy Club and already I’m worried about what this is going to be. Those fears are sent through the roof when it is revealed that Jim Cramer — he of Mad Money fame — is onstage with the Donald and Ivanka. I was hoping that they were going to break into some improv — “Hey, my name is Donald and we are called Chump Towers! Can we get a location and a first line from the audience? What’s that, Meat Loaf? Okay, we’re at a cheerleader camp!” — but it is sadly/gladly not to be.

Instead, we have Donald Trump trying to broker some peace between NeNe and Star, but it’s not gonna happen. So he switches up the teams, sending Meat Loaf onto Team ASAP and NeNe onto Team Backbone. The challenge is revealed, and each team has been asked to produce a comedy show for which they will sell 50 tickets for their shows for however much they can raise.

The two teams immediately talk about which mirthmakers they can get to participate in their respective shows. Jon Rich says he knows Larry the Cable Guy and can call him. I’m shocked — I would’ve thought that John Rich was more of a Rick Shapiro kind of guy, but you learn something new every day.

La Toya Jackson steps up to be the Project Manager of Team Backbone, and Meat Loaf is appointed the PM of Team ASAP. And in response to this, Meat says, “I didn’t take The Celebrity Apprentice because I needed attention. I took CA for one reason only — to earn money for those kids.” And even though this guy gets on my nerves and is like a carnival wheel with his emotions — “click, click, click… and it lands on … Unbridled anger! He’s probably gonna have a question or two about those motherfucking sponges he bought!” — I do think his heart is in the right place. He seems vaguely overmatched on this show at times, but he’s trying.

The teams disperse, but Nene fails to show up in the Team Backbone boardroom. The remaining members can’t wait for her anymore, so they just jump in and start working their connections. John Rich tells the group that he’s got connections to Jimmy Fallon. In addition to Larry the Cable Guy!? This guy is a regular down-home Budd Friedman!

Rich leaves Fallon a message asking him to participate in the charity, saying it’s a one in a million chance that he’ll even participate. One in a million? That’s really the odds on this? John Rich realizes that Jimmy does his show on the same channel that this show is on, right? And guess what? Fallon calls him back saying he’ll do it! Jackpot!

And as we come back from commercial, we see random establishing shots of NYC, but one of them shows a MISSING flyer pasted on a construction site with NeNe’s face on it. The guys doing postproduction on the show are clearly bored out of their gourds, between this and the fake Meat Loaf fart and toilet-flushing sound effects from previous weeks. In their defense, I could only imagine what it could be like to assemble this travesty, getting editing notes from Eric Trump complaining that it looks like he swallowed his own chin in every shot.

Jim Cramer rolls in to check on Team ASAP and he basically says, “MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!!” before stepping into a nearby corner to watch the proceedings like a housebroken James Ellroy.

48

Star heads off to film a segment with Tracy Morgan for their show. And man is it ever low rent — it’s basically her Flip videoing Tracy in his dressing room at 30 Rock, and I’m sure that NBC didn’t weigh in on this one either. I was expecting a real battle of the titans between Tracy and Star — his impression of her was pretty brutal during the View parodies on SNL — but before you can say "I’m gonna get you pregnant!" it’s over.

Trump calls NeNe from that cheap-looking office of his to implore her to come back on the show. NeNe says no, she can’t, because Trump showed favoritism to Star when he split the teams up. And to her credit she straight-up quits the show, telling La Toya in a text that she’s out for good. So wait, that was one of the "firings" that was hyped this week? Is this the type of false promise we can expect from President Trump?

The two teams audition some comics for their shows, and they all seem like nice enough sorts. I was worried that the editors would start messing with the stand-ups by making them "bomb" via a strategically placed lumbering oboe riff, but they didn’t. So good for them? Meat Loaf was working the phones pretty hard for his charity and after a slow start the calls start coming in, with Billie Jean King and Herb Alpert checking in to donate. Billie Jean King and Herb Alpert? Where were they calling from, a pay phone on the set of The Merv Griffin Show in 1974?

But it’s not enough for Meat Loaf — he’s really feeling the heat from this competition and doesn’t want to lose because he’s terrified of asking people to donate to his charity only to have the money go to La Toya Jackson’s charity if they don’t raise enough. Yeah, I’m sure Herb Alpert is gonna scream bloody murder at Meat Loaf when he realizes his money went to help sick people with AIDS rather than sick children.

John Rich is starting to doubt La Toya’s fund-raising abilities — she gets the Hilton family on the horn but only hits them up for a thousand bucks because she didn’t want to push it. Which I’m sure tees up a couple primo Paris Hilton jokes — “Hilton family + a thousand bucks + not wanting to push it =?” — but I’m not writing these recaps for some low-rent site like Zap2It or TVGasm. This is Vulture, damnit! Let’s show some class around here! Although people are welcome to put their punch lines into the Comments section below.

Meat Loaf starts freaking out about the possibility of losing this money to the other team. And I mean Freaking Out — he’s a complete wreck, violently bawling his eyes out. And yes, now we are watching a TV program that is using the concept of donating money to sick children as entertainment. What’s next, a show where fat people try to lose weight for our pleasure?

Meat Loaf is blubbering so much that Star picks up the phone and asks Trump if he would consider instituting a team-by-team money split like he did the last time there was a lot of prize money on the line. Trump says that he can’t agree to that right now and maybe Meat Loaf should just focus on winning the task instead of trying to negotiate some pre-boardroom deal.

And you know what? Trump is right! It’s a TV show! And if Meat Loaf wants to raise money for the kids, do some concerts! Get the cast of Roadie in a dunk tank for charity! I for one would love to throw a baseball that might knock Art Carney into a tank of dirty carnival water! Wait, what? Art Carney is dead? Does it make me a horrible person that I still might want to do that?

Jimmy Fallon shows up to the Team Backbone trailer and gives John Rich a check for ten grand. He sits down and debuts a song he wrote called "You’re Fired" and plays it for the group. It’s a nice moment and Jimmy Fallon’s honest-to-goodness nice-guy-ness comes through.

49

Meat Loaf is coming apart at the seams, so Marlee gives him a pep signing and her interpreter Jack joins in with a pep interpreting. She basically tells him “when you start something you have to finish something." Could Marlee Matlin be my favorite on this show any more than she is? No! But that doesn’t mean she’s not playing the game — she says she has seen Meat Loaf’s weakness as a project manager. Which kinda makes me like her more.

Now it’s show time. The crowd trickles in for the Team ASAP show, with celebrities like Billie Jean King in attendance. It looks like Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates are in the front row, but no mention is made of them, so either they’re friends with Marlee or one of them is gonna have a show on NBC really soon. I don’t see them hanging out with Meat Loaf, unless they are fans of crying guys who can’t control their bowels polluting their presumably awesome NYC apartment.

The comedians do their sets and it’s perfectly fine — we get one or two lines from each of them and they all seem funny. The Tracy Morgan video is played and it’s just as boring and lifeless as it seemed when they filmed it. Then Marlee takes the stage to do some stand-up, and it’s impressively funny, and Jack the Interpreter hits his comedic marks like nobody’s business. Does anybody out there remember whether he was in Children of a Lesser God with Marlee? And if so, did he get a co-Oscar? Or does she have to share it with him? Or at least break off a part of the Oscar for him to keep at his apartment (there’s no way he owns a home!)? These are the things I need answers to and I don’t seem to be getting them!

Team Backbone then does their comedy show, with noted humorist La Toya Jackson hosting. Maybe she could’ve asked Jay Leno to lend her one or two of the eight tons of Michael Jackson jokes he wrote over the last 75 years and told on the network she’s currently appearing on. The comedy from these comedians is equally fine, and then Jimmy Fallon takes the stage to perform a live version of “You’re Fired.” Hearing Fallon say “I wanna thank Team Backbone” kinda creeped me out, because this was taped months ago and he had no idea who or what Team Backbone is at that point.

Now it’s time for the boardroom. And within seconds Meat Loaf is crying again. He tries to explain his fears about the whole thing, saying that the possibility of losing this money to the other charity is comparable to “a father going to with the rent money and the child’s food money.” I would suggest that this fictional father check out one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City instead — it must be easier to win there because his casinos seem to be filing for bankruptcy every few years. But Phantom Dad should stay away from the Taj Mahal’s buffet at all costs — it was one of the worst meals I have ever had in my life. Don’t believe me? Then read what the people at TripAdvisor had to say. It’s truly hilarious stuff!

Speaking of nonexistent people, Trump fires the absent NeNe, noting that "everybody who leaves prematurely says it was the worst decision they’ve ever made because everybody calls them a loser and a quitter." Everybody says it? Really?

He then focuses on Team Backbone, saying that this show is not good for Lil Jon’s image, because it portrays him as "solid" and "establishment." Because of course hip-hop is all about appearing as unsuccessful to your audience as possible. Unbelievable, Trump. Simply unbelievable.

John Rich — who seems vaguely exhausted by Meat Loaf’s sobbing — tells Meat that he will personally donate whatever their team had raised to his charity if he loses. Which then sends Meat Loaf into overload. He leans into the boardroom table and gives the following insane speech to Trump:

This show has made me want to be a better person and has taught me things that I didn’t know I knew, and I have to look you right in the eye and say to you

50

personally thank you very, very much, Mr. Trump. I really from my heart to you mean that more than you could ever imagine and I thank you.

It’s like a Trump 2012 campaign commercial, except read by a man who will scare 99 percent of America’s voters, only appealing to the faction that had their voting privileges revoked by way of the American judicial system.

The numbers are revealed and Team ASAP wins! Which makes Meat Loaf cry even more! How does this guy have any fluid left in him? Meat Loaf says he’s sorry to La Toya Jackson. Wait, he’s keeping all the money for his charity?! Trump never said it was impossible to share the money! What a total creep — when he wasn’t sure if he was gonna win he wanted Trump to offer him protection. But when he won, he took all his spoils without looking back!

It’s this kind of underhanded cowardice that makes Meat Loaf my least favorite contestant — he’s whiny when it suits him but all business when he’s ready to be. Just think: If the people of 1977 would’ve done the right thing and bought Rocket to Russia instead of Bat Out of Hell, we wouldn’t be dealing with this jerk right now and maybe we’d have Marky Ramone in that boardroom instead!

Trump fires La Toya, saying that she is the first contestant to ever get fired twice on the show. As she leaves the building, she puts on some sunglasses over some mock-“Billie Jean” music and a couple sidewalk tiles light up beneath LTJ’s feet. Hey, postproduction guys — if you’re that bored, I’m sure there’s a computer in your office that needs to be defragged! If you’re leaning, you could be cleaning!

And this is usually the point when I get to wrap things up. But not tonight! Because there’s a whole other challenge to go! Before the next challenge is presented, Star notes that from this point on the show becomes more of an individual competition, “and that’s when you go in for the kill.” Threatening words indeed — but who will they end up killing?

Trump greets the contestants at some NYC auto place to reveal that the awful corporation behind this challenge is OnStar. Each team will create a commercial for OnStar that highlights the fact that you can now have it installed in any car at your local Best Buy. Any other company names we want to fit in here while we’re at it? Is there a brand of soda the customers should be drinking while waiting for the Best Buy employees to install the OnStar? And for the record, the two execs from OnStar on hand are looking pretty wormy — one brings to mind a shrunken-head version of Richard Hatch, and the other guy just looks like the product of human-hamster cross-breeding. Happy Mother's Day, everybody!

Marlee Matlin is named the PM for Team ASAP, and John Rich steps up to be the PM for his two- man squad. Rich makes note that there has never been a three-time Project Manager in the history of the show. He might also be the only person on earth who knows or cares whether that’s actually true or not.

And if that wasn’t enough Celebrity Apprentice Sabermetrics in action, Rich then explains that he has “raised more money than any man in the history of this entire show and only one human has ever beaten me.” Any man?! Couldn’t you just say you raised the second most in Celebrity Apprentice history? I’m not sure if he’s more macho than weird at this point. I do like his dedication to the cause, but when you have to qualify your victories like that, they might not be that victorious.

The trio of Meat Loaf, Marlee, and Star jump into their campaign, with Meat Loaf squarely in the creative driver’s seat. And the spot he comes up with is pure insanity — it will cut back and forth from Star Jones as an OnStar rep who is dealing with a woman in trouble and the cop who helps her,

51 but then the whole thing transitions to a doughnut shop that the cop wants to eat at, with all three of them eating at the counter while a kid on a skateboard does a stunt holding an OnStar unit.

He may be a two-faced crybaby, but I’ll give Meat Loaf credit for not holding back. With a concept this out of control you’d think he was lobbying for the chance to direct Magnolia 2: Froggy's Revenge. Star marvels at how much control Marlee is handing over to Meat Loaf, which seems like a pretty good strategy — if she can turn this whole thing against Marlee and get her canned, it’s her against Meat Loaf from that point, which seems like a bet worth taking.

John Rich is having a hard time working on his spot because he’s fighting some sort of sinus infection. (Was it was the worst sinus infection that any male on Celebrity Apprentice has ever had?) But Rich is having a hard time seeing straight and eventually ducks out to try to find a place to write the script in quiet. He’s falling apart, but he rallies himself because he knows he’s here for his charity and that he has to do what needs to be done. And while I have been hard on John Rich for so much of this thing, whether it be his truly horrendous music or his creepy Republican values, he has done the work each and every week and always seems to bring some level of inventiveness to the proceedings.

Team ASAP starts shooting their commercial, and as they start rolling, the show’s camera crew shoots directly down Marlee’s shirt as she bends over to watch the monitors. And I mean right down Main Street. Come on, camera crew — save your pervert action for America’s Got Talent!

Their commercial seems a little out of control, a situation not helped by Meat Loaf insisting that there be no actual script. Great, he’s now bored with being Paul Thomas Anderson and is now fit to become the next Christopher Guest. I figured this was because Meat Loaf was such an artiste that he couldn’t be pinned down, until he told the DP that they would film everything he wanted to because he once did a movie in which he did 47 setups in twelve hours. Yeah, but what movie was it? I’m guessing it was Rustin, in which he famously played Coach Trellingsby. Please check out Meat’s IMDb page and list your guesses in the comments!

Team ASAP manages to get everything that they want, including Meat Loaf’s hilarious gag involving a cop who is hungry for doughnuts. Star is not happy, though, feeling that the commercial is out of control. I’m sure she’ll hum a different tune when she sees Meat’s interpretation of Officer Dominic Boddy in all its glory on the flat screen.

Team Backbone chooses a simpler approach, modeling their spot on the Apple Mac versus PC spots that used to feature until they replaced him with Jackie Martling, a decision I think they will all live to regret. Their decision to play it short and sweet seems like the smarter call — everybody knows that these commercials are all shot and edited in day and don’t expect them to look like anything better than a pile of steaming garbage.

With the spots filmed, it’s off to the editing bay. As someone who has spent a decent amount of time in the Chopping Den — it’s industry lingo, guys — I know how frustrating it can be. It took us a couple weeks to get the Titus Andronicus video I directed to the finish line. So it is with no small amount of expertise that I say the editor working with Team Backbone seems like the most nervous dude on this — or any! — planet.

He seems absolutely terrified of the whole process, almost like he’s trying to talk them out of finishing the thing. It’s a bizarre stretch and feels like show is killing time more than ever. But it’s not all gray skies — maybe this will inspire Meat Loaf to include a nervous film editor character in Magnolia 2.

52

Both teams are summoned to the boardroom, and what Trump kicks off with is so strange I’m still trying to process it. He comments on the fact that Meat Loaf looks more relaxed than he did in the last boardroom, saying, “I’m not a gay man, okay? I think gayness is wonderful, but I’m not a gay man.” And his son and George the Eternal Sidekick and just about everybody else fake-laughs their way through the Emperor’s undeniable hilarity.

The evaluation of each team’s spots are pretty comparable — they liked both teams’ energy, but there were performance issues in both spots and they weren’t crazy about Meat Loaf’s portrayal of Officer Dominic Boddy because he was playing cops for laughs and OnStar considers them to be heroes. As do I! Because they are! And because I could use another one of those cards that get me out of speeding tickets — the ones I have are from like two years ago! Contact me on Twitter — @scharpling!

When it’s all said and done, Team Backbone wins again and the dynamic duo of John Rich and Lil Jon have done it again. And yeah, they deserve some credit — they play well together and work hard to get the job done.

Team ASAP is in the boardroom now and Trump is deciding who will get fired. And they all turn on each other — Marlee says that Meat Loaf should be fired, and Meat Loaf says that Star has to go. Trump kicks them out of the room to figure out his decision and before you can say "Meat Loaf tricked Phil Rizzuto into saying stuff that he didn’t know would be used as a metaphor for sex on ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light,’” Loaf and Star are going at it in the waiting room.

Meat Loaf calls Star "sweetie" in an attempt to talk to her about their disagreements, and that sets Star off big-time. To Meat Loaf’s credit, he’s not scared of Star and her lawyerly ways, giving it right back to her. And his fearlessness seems to throw her — at one point she actually says to Meat Loaf “case closed!” as if she’s in a courtroom!

When Meat Loaf wants to know why she won’t continue to discuss the matter, she haughtily says, “You have to come with my credentials to get me to debate with you. Enough. Enough!” And that’s when I was seriously hoping that Star would get the boot — that brand of intellectual snobbery is horseshit and it’s what makes everybody alternately fearful and contemptuous of lawyers. I’m certainly not crazy about people belittling women with terms like "dear" and "honey" when they’re in a discussion, but Meat Loaf willingly backed off his saying this. Star did not back off her intellectual snobbery one inch.

In the boardroom, things start to strangely shift against Star because she was in charge of the media portion of the ad and she let things get off track in regard to the message OnStar wanted them to embrace. And once the avalanche starts, sometimes you can’t talk your way out of it. And Star could not talk her away out of it — despite her best lawyer-speak, she is left holding the bag and Trump fires her.

To her credit, she gives Marlee and Meat Loaf huge hugs on the way out, which kinda proves that she saw the whole thing as a game and was just trying to win it all. Which I can respect, because — duh — it is a game!

Next week: Trump brings back a group of past winners to grill this year’s contestants and two people get fired!

COMMENTERS CORNER:

To FUNBUD23 in the Vuture comments section:

53

So you don’t like Monk — which I wrote for — and you can’t understand how it was popular. I don’t know what to tell you — people liked it! Lots of them! It was on the air for eight years! You weren’t one of the people who liked it but others did. Is that so hard for you to understand?

But you go on to explain in detail your dislike of Columbo (unless “Columo” is a real show?), and House and Remington Steele and Moonlighting. I’m not trying to say I’m a detective myself, but all the clues point to one thing — you don't like watching detective shows. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and stop watching them. Can you wrap your head around that?

And please don’t take this as an invitation to over-explain your TV preferences. But let me end this by saying that - in the manner of every episode of these shows you don’t know you don’t like - my summation is that you did it. And by "it," I mean "wrote the most pointless comments over the last nine weeks."

To JUST2MUCHFUN in the Vulture comments section:

You want to know why I write about the show that you think I hate.

Firstly, I don’t hate it! But I am making jokes about it! It’s what I do and it’s the point of these recaps. If you don’t like them, I’m sure there’s someone else out there writing recaps that take you back to the magic moment when Gary Busey bothered the executives from the suntan lotion company without any jokes standing in the way of the memories.

And I am hardly "fed up with life." I am having a blast writing these things and I’m getting paid for it. If The Celebrity Apprentice is a means for you to “escape for an hour or two” (and what are you escaping from? The life that you are fed up with? Physician heal thyself!) I am truly happy for you. It’s important to have things in your life that you find fun. But if it has taken you nine weeks to realize that I have been making jokes about the show, you might want to spend your Mondays doing something other than reading these recaps.

And for someone with a name as joyous as yours, you are hardly "2 Much Fun." Maybe consider changing your handle to “RunningFromTheNightmareThatIsLife.”

To MEGAN202 from the Vulture comments:

I don’t despise the show intensely. But I am not going to avoid the fact that Donald Trump has gone from a brash boor who tried to sell his junk to anybody who would listen to a brash boor who was making veiled racist remarks about the President for the last month-plus.

But I ultimately don’t believe you’re real. Your Obama/Osama zinger was a little too on the nose. And if you are gonna pull the "you’re getting paid to do a recap," I can assure you while I will take the money they’re giving me, I’m not doing it for the money. I’ll probably just end up putting it into another like the one I did for Titus Andronicus a couple weeks ago.

Although I did like you "firing" me at the end of your comments. Nice touch!

I am pulling the plug on my goal to get the celebrities on the show to retweet about this column. No more prizes, no more nothing. If you want to do it, you are doing it for your own personal glory.

There are two episodes left so I will see you next week! Bye!

54

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling on the Final Two

 By Tom Scharpling

And then there were four. The cast of Celebrity Apprentice has shrunk from sixteen to this quartet: John Rich, Marlee Matlin, Lil Jon, and Meat Loaf. Lil Jon makes a point of screaming about how this is the Final Four, but I prefer to think of them as the Fantastic Four. John Rich is Mister Fantastic, stretching his head into that cowboy hat. Meat Loaf is The Thing, lumbering through life like a horse with an empty bag of oats stuck over his head. Marlee Matlin is the Human Torch, burning up the Competish with her incendiary fund-raising skills. And Lil Jon is The Invisible Dude, getting things done in the shadows as he remains unseen behind his enormous glasses. And who does this make Donald Trump? Professor Eccch?

John Rich and Lil Jon are thrilled to learn that Meat Loaf survived the attack after he stumbles back from the boardroom. But Marlee is a little shaken by the events — she's actually crying. Meat Loaf stammers out an apology to her, explaining that he had to defend himself in the boardroom. As if Marlee wasn't sure how the show worked.

I'm sure she was relieved when Trump imperiously walked into the room. And everybody stands up out of deference, with John Rich even likening the moment to "when a five-star general walks into the room." Which I'm sure Trump loves hearing: If (when?) he's president eighteen months from now, it would not surprise me if he adopted some sort of paramilitary look. He could always get La Toya Jackson to help him sew epaulets on his jackets.

55

Trump explains that the remaining quartet is going to be interviewed by three people who are very special to him — , , and . I thought for a second that Trump got inside my head Inception-style and managed to find my personal list of "People I Would Not Want to Be Handcuffed to While Running Through the Bayou Like in That Richard Gere Movie." (Others on the list include John Kruk, the little kid from the Highlander commercials, Ernie Anastos, Ronald McDonald, G.E. Smith, Reginald VelJohnson, that kid who barks "WHUT" at Gary Cole in that State Farm commercial, Merle Allin, and the jerk at the Apple Store who wouldn't migrate the stuff from my Mac Pro — which died a few months after the three-year AppleCare warranty expired — to the new iMac I bought. Come on, Apple: Customer loyalty is a two-way street.)

But I realize that Michaels, Rivers, and Morgan are all past Celebrity Apprentice winners, and Trump says — how he got this out without laughing I have no idea — that he takes what they say "very, very seriously." So he is going to have them interview each contestant to see if they have what it takes to be the next Celebrity Apprentice.

Trump sits down with these former faux greats — who are all jammed onto a couch that is waaaay too small for three people — and asks them what they thought of the contestants. And after they blather on for a few minutes, we cut to the conference room where they're talking to John Rich. So wait — the interviews happened already and they're playing with the timeline?! This is like The Social Network! Except not good!

John Rich holds his own in the conference room. Piers Morgan asks him who he would chuck under a bus. And without blinking he says Meat Loaf, the guy whom he was just partying with two minutes ago. And on a related note, I would hate to be a passenger on any bus that had Meat Loaf chucked under it. I might bet against the bus in that standoff.

Piers Morgan continues his hard-line questioning of Rich, saying that he's not impressed by the singer's repeated discussions of how his songwriting skills impacted the contests. Then he refers to his cowboy hat as "annoying," and I find myself furious at this guy for crapping on the horrible people that I have spent the last three months crapping on. I'm suddenly transformed into the classic Philadelphia sports fan, taking offense at others heckling my team, because they're my team and I'm the only one who can throw shit at them.

Besides, Piers Morgan? Joan Rivers and Bret Michaels have accomplished things in their careers. Piers is one of those guys whom nobody actually likes. He's like Billy Bob Thornton or the Foo Fighters; nobody is actually a fan of what they do, but they've all carved out some unclaimed corner of the marketplace: In Morgan's case, it's "Simon Cowell Without Standards."

Bret asks John Rich whether he has it in him to tell Lil Jon that he's not gonna win this thing, and Rich slides into full-on shark mode, saying that the other players "will experience John Rich in a way they have not experienced him yet." What way? With talent? (See, it's okay when I make fun of them!)

Then it's Lil Jon's turn to be interviewed. And he slips up right away, saying that he thinks John Rich and Marlee Matlin will be the final two. Piers calls Lil Jon "a loser" because of this mentality. Actually, he's a guy who doesn't have to "win" this fake show because he still kinda has a career going on. But it's pretty clear that this was a big faux pas for Lil Jon and is exactly the kind of thing that Trump latches onto.

Lil Jon wants it to be understood that he did Celebrity Apprentice to show that "all rappers are not blunt-smoking, crack-selling ignorant people." Joan Rivers responds by saying, "Could you give us names?" which is one of those weird non-jokes that Don Rickles gets away with all the time just

56 because he's a legend. So it's kinda heartening to see that Joan Rivers is at the point in her life where she gets solid laughs with that dud.

Trump is "very proud" of his three champions, taking credit for their "success," hilariously wondering where his 25 percent commission is. Wait, what success? Joan is still doing what she always did. Piers Morgan is in a freefall with his horrifyingly bad talk show — which is the New Coke of television, actually making people nostalgic for when was behind the desk. And Bret Michaels is — outside of distributing LINE REDACTED to county fairs across the Midwest — not doing much of anything.

It's Meat Loaf's turn to get grilled. Piers asks him if it's wise to show such a weepy/semi-psychotic side in a business competition. Business competition? This show is one step away from dumping goo from the ceiling on contestants if they lose a challenge. This is not real life and the constant insistence that it is has started to catch up to me. I cannot take the solemn seriousness of this show anymore. This is not life and death and it's probably a good thing for all of us that there's only one more episode to go after tonight's snoozer.

And on a related note, this whole season kinda sucked. It was a year where you just waited for things to start, only to realize that they were well under way and that the sour flavor you're tasting is actually the main course.

Meat Loaf insists to the group that he's a fighter and he puts himself out there every time. But Piers asks him if he's got anger-management issues. This is kind of insulting, because saying that Meat Loaf has anger-management issues diminishes his ability to break into tears at the drop of a hat. Although it's probably not John Rich's hat dropping, unless his head is still attached to it.

It's Marlee's turn to be interviewed. Being the pervert he is, Bret has to mention that "she's hot and not hard to look at at all." Do I really need to hear this creep — who looks like a troll doll that accidentally got put in the dryer — gauging the attractiveness of another human? It's just gross.

Marlee says that since she's deaf, people instantly underestimate her and put her in a box. She says that "people who know me know I can do anything, people who don't are amazed." And she's right: it's pretty hard not to be amazed by Matlin, both on this show and in the real world. She's a true fighter and I have been continually impressed by how she conducts herself and the spirit with which she lives her life. I hope she wins this whole thing!

But Piers being Piers, he says that he thinks being deaf on the show would be an advantage, because when he played it, he wished he didn't have to hear Omarosa. Funny stuff! Why doesn't this ape just cut to the chase and join the WWE as a heel manager? He could call himself the Chap and patrol the ring wearing a bowler hat and holding an umbrella. Here's to Larry King pulling a Leno on Morgan and taking back his old show!

After the interviews, Trump gathers his foursome into the boardroom. And his look of weird pale eyes surrounded by bright orange skin is only getting weirder — it's like he's looking out of a jack-o- lantern. He asks the contestants whom they would pick as the final two. John Rich says himself and Marlee. Lil Jon says himself and John Rich. Marlee says herself and John Rich. And Meat Loaf says himself and John Rich. Have these people heard his music? Or maybe they have and they want to keep him on this show and away from his guitar for as long as possible?

And like I thought, Trump hammers Lil Jon for saying he would predict himself over others for the final two. And that gets him fired. Just like that, over one dumb statement in a meeting. But it's good! Go, Lil Jon! Go! Run back to your Actual Career! Trump gives Lil Jon some advice as he leaves,

57 telling him to "go out there and knock 'em dead," tacking on a "great going, man" for good measure. Maybe he really does have a great relationship with "the blacks" after all!

Lil Jon did well on the show — he got some good exposure for the United Methodist Children's Home of North Georgia Conference. I give him a ton of credit for managing to succeed on his own terms on this show while never taking off his sunglasses once. (I looked at pictures of Lil Jon without his sunglasses on and it was pretty unremarkable — it's a guy not wearing sunglasses! Although I don't know what I was expecting.) And as he steps into the elevator, he gives a final knowing nod to the secretary who sits behind the desk in every single episode of this show scribbling who knows what on a pad while waiting for Trump to bellow "let them back in."

John Rich praises Lil Jon for his performance on the show, saying that he broke down a stereotype. Yes: It was a stereotype perpetrated by a lot of people in John Rich's fan base, but that's splitting hairs. Then comes the worst loop line I have ever heard in the digital age as Trump says, "One more of you is about to be fired." I haven't heard a loop that bad since a generic hoodlum yelled "It's not working! Kill the motherfucker!" to his fellow gang members in Death Wish 3.

Then Trump turns the spotlight onto Meat Loaf. Trump hammers him for being overly emotional and then says that it's a beautiful thing — he even wishes that Meat Loaf would teach him how to cry, because it might be good for his image. I don't think that's such a good idea, because, for starters, the orange paint covering Trump's face will only stain his bespoke suits. (Although, on the plus side, his blue suits will be transformed into an orange and blue concoction that he can proudly wear to any Knicks game.) Also, if Trump starts crying, he might never stop crying for the horrible life he has led and all those that he has screwed over for an extra dollar.

But after humoring him for a couple of moments, Trump has to do what he has to and he fires Meat Loaf. Which launches Meat Loaf into a rambling thank-you speech that I would put against Gary Busey's now-legendary "kite" speech from a few episodes back. Meat says, "That's perfectly okay but listen — let me — I'm gonna get emotional again [laughs]. Let me thank you for being on this show and finding out stuff that I didn't know about me and finding out stuff that I didn't know I could do. And can I shake your hand? I admire you more than you could imagine."

It's just too much — this guy is a mess and probably needs some time off to get his head straight. I'm on his side in a lot of ways — he does truly care about his charity, the Painted Turtle. But he also acts like a total kook way too much for it to be acceptable. He complained about Gary Busey because he was Gary Busey. And as he leaves, he slaps the elevator guy five and gives the doodling receptionist the devil's horns as the doors close.

So it's down to Marlee Matlin and John Rich. The final two. And the most deserving — they both kept their heads screwed on tightly throughout the entirety of the season. John Rich says he's going to give it everything he's got. And so is Marlee. And man are they padding this thing out.

We pick it up for the start of the final challenge in the lobby of one of Trump's buildings. Trump addresses Rich and Matlin, and it's clear that he's got a cold. It's hard to describe his voice in this state, but if you set your GPS to speak in the "New York Dolt" setting then let it warp in the sun, you might get a fair idea.

The head of 7-Up is on hand. And I'm not gonna make fun of the guy's appearance but he does look like Jon Polito. That's not an insult, is it? Especially since Jon Polito is better-looking than this guy? Whatever — this guy sells soda for a living and the best thing I did for myself in the last decade was quit soda cold turkey. There was a seven-day period when I wanted to murder everybody around me, but after that I felt great. It was like the difference between the studio version of "My War" and the

58 version I just heard on the Black Flag '82 demos — being stuck in molasses versus having wings strapped to your shoulder blades.

The task is for each player to coordinate a promotion for the launching of 7-Up Retro, which has real sugar in it! (Try water, people! Seriously! Or even juice!). This involves putting together a new can design, a store display, a commercial, and a big "star-studded" (I'll be the judge of that!) event. And since the theme is "retro," one team will work with the seventies and the Harlem Globetrotters, and the other will work with the eighties and Def Leppard. What's wrong, was Meat Loaf busy? Har-har, that was a joke because we're done with him forever and I hope to never hear him cry/yell again. Marlee selects the seventies and Rich gets the eighties.

But how can these one-person teams do all that work themselves!? They can't — but they can with a little help from their fake friends! And like magic, in come past contestants from the show! It's like when Han Solo zoomed to the rescue in Star Wars, except these people are all bummers and it only means I have to keep remembering to put the space between "La" and "Toya".

Rich and Matlin divide them up playground-style to build out their teams. It breaks down to John Rich having Lil Jon, Mark McGrath, and Star Jones on his team, with Matlin selecting Meat Loaf, Richard Hatch, and La Toya Jackson. And yes, I am suddenly back in the Meat Loaf business.

And after Marlee and John are given 50 grand each for their charities, they head back to plot their campaigns. And Meat Loaf starts in with the same old shit, overplanning the campaign as if he were actually good at it; it was a week ago he tanked the OnStar commercial, right? He's pushing to get in a fairy suit with wings, using the can as the magic wand. La Toya Jackson can't believe how all over the place Meat Loaf is, and she's 100 percent right. I kinda think Marlee miscalculated by bringing Meat onboard. Their team eventually settles on the slogan "7-Up Retro — Feel the Love".

They start shooting pictures for their store display and settle on having Richard Hatch hold up a 7- Up can in a disco pose. And I'm sure the 7-Up execs love a convicted felon showcasing their product, although to be fair they are shooting it in silhouette, which actually gives Hatch the chance to become the Jerry West of Soda.

John Rich is leading his group, which at this point seems more efficient than Matlin's. They come up with "7-Up Retro — Keeping It Real." Which is pretty good. Ivanka checks in on the team and John Rich keeps raving about how working with Def Leppard plays to his strengths, by which I'm guessing he means that he understands them because they suck as badly as he does?

Meat Loaf is legitimately unhappy to discover that Marlee has decided to ditch his idea of having the soda case be shaped like a boombox, with no concern that the boombox was more of an eighties thing than a seventies thing. And he really starts getting dramatic about it.

What a dickhead — he truly can't control his temper and comes undone over the slightest event. And I know you're tired of me talking about it. I'm tired of hearing him talk about it on my TV. Imagine what it's like to have him doing it to you in person. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy — except maybe that kid at the Apple store. It's a migration! All you do is transfer files to my new computer from my old computer that doesn't work anymore because you guys don't make things that last.

But they keep moving forward. Their concept is to show the things from the seventies that 7-Up has outlasted. They decide to invite original seventies 7-Up pitchman Geoffrey Holder — the guy with the booming laugh who was in Live and Let Die — to reprise his role in their spot as a reference to the history of 7-Up. He says he's interested in doing it. And it's a fun idea if they do it right, but who

59 knows what he looks like these days? If this dude shows up looking like Joan Rivers in a white hat, they're doomed.

John Rich's team is cranking — they've come up with an idea very similar to the other team. They want to have their commercial depict eighties auditions, with various eighties-rock look-alikes auditioning against a guy whom we eventually realize is from Twisted Sister! John Rich describes him as "far and away the most visually ridiculous icon you can come up with," while wearing a cowboy hat that I will probably spend the rest of my life pondering for a multitude of reasons: Does he ever take it off? How many of them does he own? Does it hurt his head to have it on all day long?

Dee is into doing it, but there's a big problem — he's sporting an enormous Fu Manchu mustache because he's in the cast of the musical Rock of Ages and he's contractually obligated to keep the mustache! What a bummer! But Dee agrees to check with the producers and eventually calls back saying that yes, he can shave the mustache, which only speaks to how little the producers of the musical really care about his facial hair.

The commercial shoots are under way. Meat Loaf has written his team's spot and it is classic Meat Loaf, with some of the most bizarrely personal touches; this guy should revive the Dogme 95, although after fifteen minutes he'd have Lars von Trier begging to check out the latest Pirates of the Carribean movie. Richard Hatch plays a disco guy and La Toya Jackson plays a superhero — how is that specifically from the seventies? — and Meat Loaf himself dresses up like he used to circa Bat Out of Hell, with the prom suit and the long hair. The wigs are cheap and the dialogue is terrifyingly bad — Hatch says, "I'm in the crib, can you dig it to the max?" — which sounds like an updating of "acid is groovy, kill the pigs." And I'm not sure if Marlee made the right decision by letting this guy do his thing to this degree.

Suddenly the commercial that John Rich has been working on sounds dumb. A look-alike and an Axl Rose look-alike are humiliated, but Dee Snider is the "real" one, even though his music is instantly more disposable than most anybody from the eighties. Even that last Blancmange album holds up better these days!

But they shoot the spot with Dee and he eventually gets into full Twisted Sister makeup and you know that Trump is gonna ask him to be on the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. And in his defense, he Does the Thing and it's just fine.

During all this, John Rich is trying to hold it all together but hits a wall when the tour manager of Def Leppard refuses to have the drummer play a kick drum during the charity show. John Rich decides to challenge the guy, which Mark McGrath thinks might be foolhardy considering how many records Def Leppard sold back when there was a functioning music industry.

There's no shortage of drama on Marlee's team. Meat Loaf throws another one of his patented shit fits because Geoffrey Holder's lawyer refuses to allow his client to sign the release. And with no Plan B they are not sure what to do. Meat Loaf threatens to throw the fucking phone across the room.

The tension is so thin I can't take it!

NEXT WEEK:

Will Geoffrey Holder show up? Will Def Leppard allow the use of a kick drum onstage? And who will be named the next Celebrity Apprentice?

60

COMMENTERS CORNER

To MEGAN202 from the Vulture Comments section:

Complaining about Obama as a community organizer (and putting it in quotes like it's code for something else), moaning about Jeremiah Wright and Michaele (not Michaela — show some respect!) Salahi? Haven't you gotten any talking points since early 2009? And don't you have an Operation Rescue Fun Run to train for?

I would say that I'm sorry that you don't like the recaps. But I'm not. Not at all. I'm really glad you don't, because you seem like a truly horrible person. I truly pity you.

And thank you for mentioning the vain attempts to promote my music videos — I almost forgot to link to the and the Pharmacists video I directed! Enjoy!

To MOVIEWATCHER from the Vulture Comments section:

I didn't miss the whole "sweetie" thing — I simply ran out of room! And please explain how Meat Loaf might have OCD! I'm interested in that theory!

To FUNBUD23 from the Vulture Comments section:

Have you met Megan202? You two would get along like gangbusters — you can talk about Ironsides and she can show you the pair of Mike Huckabee's pants she bought off eBay.

Thanks to everybody. And next week I AM FREE.

61

Celebrity Apprentice Recap: Tom Scharpling’s Epic Take on the Finale

 By Tom Scharpling

The competition. The battling and the striving and the struggling. The outpouring of heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears. The endless fight. Watching lesser candidates fall by the wayside as the truly great keep powering on with only one thing in mind — reaching the promised land of ultimate victory. But enough about the NBA Playoffs, which I am not watching tonight because I’m contractually obligated to recap the finale to The Celebrity Apprentice, the biggest and fakest show on television!

I’m not trying to be too hard on this show. Yeah, this season has kinda sucked and had more vamping than a band comprised of vampires playing bluesy extended versions of Vampire Weekend songs. Sorry about that one, but they all can’t be winners!

But in all seriousness, this show can be so incredibly frustrating — every time it seems like there’s an interesting dynamic being established the air comes out of the balloon and we’re back to watching endless sequences of whoever the editors have deemed the Crazy One this week doing their crazy thing.

But now that there’s some real money on the table, the focus has shifted from “celebrities primarily interested in getting their faces back on TV to also raise some money for charity” to “celebrities trying to raise some money for charity and it’s not such a bad thing to be back on TV too.” And with

62 that in mind, I will tell you right now that during this recap I will occasionally slide out of Attack Mode because there were a few “goof proof” segments in the show that hit me square in the heart. I never said I wasn't a human being!

But don’t worry — most of this thing was still the same old Celebrity Apprentice that we’ve come to know and tolerate, and I will treat it accordingly. Like the show’s opening, which might actually be the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life. And that’s coming from someone who bought 21 VHS tapes filled with episodes of the Morton Downey Jr. Show off eBay.

Things start off with Donald Trump stepping out of one of his ridiculous buildings — saying things that at this point sound like “TRUMP BEST MOST BIGGEST BEST BEST MOST BIGGEST TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP” to my tired ears — before walking down a New York City street on a massive red carpet that is being rolled out by a couple of guys a few feet ahead of him.

Does Trump really think this bizarre show of faux-majesty is in any way regal? Because it’s actually kind of insane watching him stomp down the sidewalk on a carpet that’s being unspooled by two slobs who would be his sons if they weren’t to the tacky manor born. And it also sums up Donald Trump perfectly — what he thinks is spectacular is merely spectacularly low-rent to the rest of us.

The two working stiffs run out of red carpet and Trump hilariously "fires" them before entering the Skirball Center at NYU, which I believe is the room that GG Allin performed at in his biopic Hated. Trump steps onstage to rapturous applause from an audience packed with sad sacks who clearly think landing tickets to this "event" was some sort of "get." Even his own children applaud him, which made me sad.

And that audience is a virtual "who’s who" — and I mean that in the most literal sense, as in "who is that other guy with the cowboy hat?" and "who else here is famous except for Dee Snider?" You know you’re in bad shape when Two Foot Fred doesn’t even turn up for your taping.

Trump sits down at a fake desk — including a fancy blotter! — and launches into something that feels like the worst installment of "Weekend Update" ever, stiffly reading "funny" lines about how NeNe Leakes fought with everybody on the show.

Then it’s Recap Package One, summing up the exciting season that we just slogged through. I am legally unable to recap this because I am a licensed Recapper, and this is the job of a Re- Recapper. Let's hear it for the Recappers Local 149!

But I will remind you that Marlee Matlin and John Rich are the two finalists and their task is to produce a multi-tiered advertising campaign for 7-Up Retro — a soda with real sugar in it, fatsos! — including a display, a commercial and a live presentation. They have each picked a decade to represent in their respective ads, with Matlin taking on the seventies with assistance from the Harlem Globetrotters, and Rich doing the eighties with a hand from Def Leppard.

We pick things up with Marlee’s team shooting their commercial spot. They’ve lured Geoffrey Holder — the original stentorian voice of 7-Up from the seventies — to do the spot. But he hasn’t shown up because his lawyer objects to the contract; which, as someone who has worked with NBC, I’m sure was amazingly fair.

But then like a bolt of magic that wants to get his face back on national television, Geoffrey Holder shows up! And the hatemongers who provide the musical cues for this show do not disappoint: In the past, they’ve repeatedly dropped cheapo hip-hop on us whenever Lil Jon was "doin’ his thang" onscreen, and for Holder they’ve got some lousy canned Caribbean music ready to go. (Somewhere

63 there’s a gong and a koto gathering dust in their studios just waiting for an Asian contestant.) Holder nails his lines and makes everybody happy.

John Rich heads over to the venue with Star Jones to work out the logistics for his presentation. He has his own set of struggles to deal with because the tour manager for Def Leppard won’t have the band play a kick drum onstage to introduce themselves. It’s maybe the least dramatic piece of drama in the history of television and all I can do is wonder what’s going on with the Bulls-Heat game.

We return to the live broadcast, and Trump tells America that both Ivanka and Don Jr. are expecting kids and that he thinks they’re both great. And in that moment, a new layer of Donald Trump is revealed. He’s a little doddering, trying his best to show us all that he’s normal and has the capacity to care about things that everybody else cares about. With all of the presidential nonsense behind us forever — nobody will ever take him seriously again on any sort of national stage — it’s clear how ultimately unimportant this guy is. He’s back to being the buffoon who will never do more than shill mattresses or stuffed crust pizza. He’s an obscenely wealthy version of Erik Estrada or William Shatner, a cultural punch line who still has to exist as a human. And the worst part is that no matter how many times he tells us how mean he is, he needs us to like him so badly. He needs this show more than we need it.

John Rich finally gets Def Leppard to show up and gives them the hard sell about his charity and why he needs them to play that kick drum. But for whatever reason, Def Leppard — the five of them coming off like such a parody of the dazed British rock star that Russell Brand would call foul — refuse to do it. And they’re slightly condescending to Rich, which makes me feel weirdly protective of him. Like I said last week, he’s my punching bag, not yours! What’s the big deal about playing the kick drum? Get back in the presidential race and declare war on England, Mister Trump!

Back to the live presentation. Trump brings out the fired contestants one by one to join him on the stage. Can you believe that they’re all here?! David Cassidy, Lisa Rinna, Niki Taylor, Mark McGrath, Hope Dworaczyk, Lil Jon, La Toya Jackson, Star Jones, Meat Loaf, Gary Busey, and NeNe Leakes! The star power is blinding! And notable by their absence are Dionne Warwick, Richard Hatch, and Jose Canseco. I’m not sure where Canseco and Warwick are, but Richard Hatch is sitting behind bars for failing to file federal income tax returns.

Trump asks David Cassidy — whom Hatch bullied during the Week One showdown that got the former Keith Partridge fired — if he’s happy that his nemesis is in the clink. Cassidy has had months to ponder his retort, but when he launches into his putdown he inhales on the pea shooter, failing to say anything clever and coming off like a dick in the process. “He’s in the right place at the right time,” Cassidy stammers. “When you take the low road, where else would you end up but on a cold slab somewhere, and frankly I think it was just.” Firstly, a cold slab? He’s in jail, not the morgue. And where does Cassidy get off acting like some white knight? He barely evaded jail time from a DUI last November! Seriously, between him and , it’s hard to find someone in to root for! Thank goodness for Brian Forster or I might have to jump ship to the DeFranco Family!

Trump asks Lisa Rinna whom she blames for her firing, and she hems and haws about answering for some strange reason. A dim bulb in the audience shouts out “STAR!” which is the correct answer for anybody who saw the episode where Jones ran her off the show. And then it’s clear — Rinna won’t mention Star by name! Jones responds that Rinna should’ve brought her "A game" to the show. And now I’m back to feeling sad because these people are pretending that there’s a game to be played on this dumb thing. Trump changes the rules every third week and you can potentially argue your way out of anything. Imagine a sport where if you pleaded to the refs enough they’d make a call in your favor. Actually, I can imagine that sport — it’s called Miami Heat Basketball. Is there a bigger group of whiners on the planet right now?

64

And on a sidebar to the sidebar — lawyer talk! — there is a commercial that has been shown more than once during The Celebrity Apprentice that freaks me out a little bit. It’s the Samsung Focus spot with the dude staring at his phone while his ladyfriend is showcasing her lingerie in an effort to garner his attention. It’s not the commercial per se; it’s the way the woman moves her arms robotically down her body while maintaining the same facial expression. She seems like an animatron you’d see at an adult Chuck E. Cheese. (Which would be Dave & Buster’s, right? I’ve never been to one. Do they let kids into that place? And if they do, are they serving alcohol all day? Are there drunk adults playing Whac-A-Mole alongside children? Answers in the comments, please!)

As we come back from the creepy commercials, The Celebrity Apprentice pays tribute to the one and only Gary Busey with a montage of him desperately trying to get everybody’s attention with his "witticisms." Now, I have gotten an e-mail or two from people who felt I was picking on Busey by calling him a "dick" during one of the episodes. And to that I say a respectful “Give Me a Break."

I have never made fun of this guy because of his head trauma. But if you think that someone who suffers from a head injury is incapable of also acting like a dick at some point, I am not sure what to say to you. The guy is a human being just like everybody else, and just as I have afforded him the respect for overcoming his head injury, I won’t declare the guy to be any less imperfect than everybody else.

Trump asks Busey if he’s “crazy, or crazy like a fox,” and Gary — who is seated next to Meat Loaf! — starts blathering that mumbo jumbo he’s been spouting for the last three months, eventually claiming that he is trained in neurolinguistic programming, which allows him to tell when people are lying. Perhaps he should take a course in Getting to the Fucking Point Once in a While. He then transitions into his classic Omaha Steaks monologue about the children making steak for their father, but Trump cuts him off.

Meat Loaf tells Trump that he’s cool with Busey and gives him a very weird hug to prove it, although his primary goal might’ve been to show the world that he finally got the other sleeve of his jacket Bedazzled. Busey manages to slide back into his Omaha Steaks tract, but Trump cuts him off again to ask Lil Jon what he thinks of Busey. Lil Jon says now that he’s had a break from him they’re cool and that they even hung out in Vegas together.

And Busey repays this compliment by going back into the steak rant for a third time, now talking about the meat-themed kite that he envisioned the two kids flying in honor of their father. He reaches in his jacket and pulls out his mock-up of the kite, which he fails to unveil properly. And be honest — who here thought he was going to pull some sort of detonator out of his jacket?

Back to the Battle. John Rich is setting up the presentation room, prompting Mark McGrath to gush that the eighties can is like “staring at the Mona Lisa but with 7-Up Retro cans.” Why this guy isn’t in some sort of juiced-out version of Glengarry Glen Ross is beyond me. Think about it — Joe Rogan, Dane Cook, Hulk Hogan, Kimbo Slice, and Glen Danzig all rocking the Lunt Fontanne with McGrath (who will be playing the James Lingk role while doing a different P90X session each night!). Paging Dave Mamet!

Some people show up and drop 25 grand on John Rich’s charity, which is nice of them. Maybe they could’ve gotten their names on the show since this thing is one giant commercial and that’s five grand more than any of the corporations have coughed up all season long, but that’s not for me to decide.

Meanwhile, Marlee’s team is prepping their facility to host the Globetrotters. Richard Hatch moans about how Marlee isn’t asserting the proper leadership, which makes me happy that he’s behind bars

65 on some cold slab. They get the room in order and while it falls short of the Mona Lisa, it still looks pretty good. And as the event begins, Meat Loaf greets everybody at the front, which seems a little hokey but makes the whole thing seem very managed in the best possible way.

Marlee’s presentation is pretty impressive — she’s wearing a cool green 7-Up-inspired outfit as she unveils her commercial to the room. And man that commercial is something else. It’s half weird, filled with Meat Loaf–ish touches that Lars von Trier would find out of bounds. But it’s also half solid. The casting of Geoffrey Holder seems to work fine, and the 7-Up execs are impressed.

Then Marlee leads the room into a gymnasium for an awesome display of Harlem Globetrotters basketball. Which reminds me to pause the DVR and check in on the Actual Basketball Game Going On, which makes me a little angry because the Heat are putting things away and the notion of Chris Bosh getting a ring makes me sick to my stomach. Am I wrong on this? Comments, please!

As their demonstration ends, Marlee seems really happy with things because she worked hard and everything came off without a hitch. And she’s right to feel good about it — there’s honestly not much to fault about the whole thing.

Meanwhile, John Rich is gearing up for his presentation. Right before it starts some other dude shows up and lays 250 grand on him, which is really impressive. And again, I don’t know his name, while I am way too familiar with the cheapskates at Camping World. I’m assuming this guy is in the music business, which only solidifies my belief that it might be time for me to "go country." There is still money in acting all down home, and while I know there are talented country performers, I believe in my heart of hearts that I would get sent to Hollywood if I sang a country song for the American Idol judges, and my voice is much closer to Pink Eyes than Pia Toscano (who was robbed!).

The 7-Up executives are bummed that they were neglected by John Rich when they arrived at the presentation — waaaaah! The man with the big dumb hat didn’t talk to us! John is too busy corn- poning it onstage as he unveils his team’s commercial. And wow it is a wad of hot garbage. John Rich and Star Jones play a pair of casting directors auditioning various eighties archetypes, and their performances are so all-encompassingly bad that I’m sure there are porn stars at home screaming out acting tips at their televisions.

But when Dee Snider transforms into his "classic" Twisted Sister look, the audience goes bonkers. Why exactly am I knocking myself out in this life of mine trying so hard to be Actually Entertaining when the bar seems to be sooooo low? I might have to refine my goals and become an advertising exec catering to the country audience, writing up commercials for things like novelty long-form birth certificates and cowboy hat cozies. (They exist!)

After the spot ends, John Rich starts his a cappella Def Leppard intro, stomping his feet and shouting "Seven-Up Retro, keeping it real!" again and again before welcoming the band to the stage. Except they never show up. Because John Rich mis-timed things — they’re not due to appear onstage for another fifteen minutes! What a total flop move, and it was kinda great to see the guy who ran his soup coolers for the last three months about how you can’t underestimate a country boy get flummoxed by a bunch of British dudes.

There’s a long weird moment where John Rich is figuring out what to do. He decides to come out and play a few of his terrible songs while waiting for Def Leppard to take the stage and play their terrible songs. He picks up an acoustic guitar and entertains the crowd with classics like “Don’t Fire Me, Mister Trump,” looking upwards at the Donald — who stands in the balcony looking down at the stage in what I’m sure he sees as an imperial move — and Rich appears weak for the first time ever.

66

Then, after a few songs, it’s Def Leppard time and John Rich goes back into his foot-stomping introduction, which gets Don Jr. to lamely chant “7-Up is rocking the country!” like a broken robot — one that would presumably be tucked in the back room of a Dave & Buster’s.

Def Leppard play their reedy but catchy hits, and I am reminded that while I know all these songs, I never needed to actually own a Def Leppard album. If they do it for you, more power to you. It’s hard to find things that you can enjoy in this hard life we’re all living, so enjoy your Def Leppard records all the livelong day, Fans of the Recap.

With the presentations wrapped up, we go back to Trump Towers. The Donald talks to the 7-Up execs, who tell him they liked both presentations overall. They were impressed with how Matlin met with them but were underwhelmed by the relative lack of signage throughout the venue.

The suits were not pleased with how John Rich didn’t meet up with them until afterwards and how the presentation was mistimed. Which I blame on a general lack of blood flow to Rich’s head because of that cowboy hat. But I am not trained in the arts of hat science, so what do I know?

As we return to the live show, the two 7-Up executives toast teach other with the two 7-Up Retro cans just in case anybody wasn’t yet feeling like they had been dipped in a vat filled with advertising. Trump squints to read off the cue cards to tell us that we can get those cans in stores now! So go buy them — you were ordered by The Donald!

We then check in on the NeNe Leakes Show with a package documenting her flipping out at everybody in her general vicinity. Trump asks her why she quit the show so abruptly, and she tells him that she needed to do what was best for her at the time. Which makes sense? He then wants to know whether Star and NeNe have come to grips with their feud, and Leakes says she’s ultimately cool with Jones.

But Star says something that I’m not exactly sure about because the camera seems to be going directly down Lisa Rinna’s shirt like this is some sort of bra commercial. Or lack of a bra commercial. I’m not sure. But Star says that she’s not happy that NeNe used the noble platform of the fake contest hosted by the guy who pretended to be running for president to “attack every black woman on the show.” Star and NeNe bicker back and forth and it’s a whole lot of not fun.

Trump consults La Toya Jackson on the matter, who says that she has forgiven NeNe for calling her “Casper,” because after she got to know Leakes she realizes she’s a good person. Which doesn’t exactly make sense, but this is La Toya Jackson we’re talking about here. Trump predicts that NeNe and Star will be friends someday — why is this guy so concerned with making sure everybody gets along?! — and they both disagree, with Star tacking on a “when pigs fly,” which only makes me want the two of them to see the Pink Floyd Experience when they rock the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California on July 17 because this tribute band actually has a flying pig!

As we come back from another commercial break — and God have mercy on the person who is scheduled to recap Love in the Wild — we are "treated" to a skit featuring the Donald and Marlee Matlin’s infamous interpreter Jack Jason. Trump tells Jack that he’s going to be famous and that he wants 25 percent. Which is a line he has used at this point slightly more than Red Buttons complained about never having had a dinner. Jack pats his pockets looking for money like a trouper and I say to you now Jack that you are a star to me and you always will be.

And now it’s time for the final boardroom of the season! Except nobody’s gonna get fired in it because it’s on tape because Richard Hatch is there and not on a cold slab! Matlin and Rich both talk about how their respective teams did a great job. And to be fair, they both did a good job. The only

67 thing separating them is the Def Leppard timing issue, so I give them both a world of credit for navigating through this nightmare of a show to reach the finish line without dropping the ball.

John Rich starts blathering on about how his soda can looks better than Marlee’s, bragging that "their can does not explode like our can does." Attention: Avoid the exploding 7-Up Retro cans at all costs! Do you want your face taken off by a powerful blast of carbonation and sugar? You do? I guess I don’t know you like I thought I did, Recap Nation.

Marlee says that her presentation could not have gone better, prompting Trump to declare that the Harlem Globetrotters have "a certain warmth." (See? He likes the blacks!) Ivanka adds that their event was seamless, and that Meat Loaf greeting everybody and Marlee’s attention to the executives was most definitely noticed.

John Rich says he was happy with his presentation and claims he mistimed the presentation because he got so rattled by all that money he got handed at the last minute. Which causes Marlee to call foul, because this wasn’t a fund-raising challenge. And she’s right! This country ape has a lot of nerve bringing up the money as a way to deflect attention from the plain fact that he didn’t pace out his presentation efficiently.

And now we return to the live show for the final square-off between Matlin and Rich. John Rich comes out and gives the Donald a black cowboy hat, which he actually puts on his head for a second, although I’m not sure how it fit over that weird reddish coonskin cap he was already wearing. And that was the last Trump hair joke of the recaps!

Trump solicits the panel of losers over who should win. And most of them say they love them both but with certain people leaning toward John Rich and others leaning toward Matlin. It kinda irks me to see more people siding with John Rich than Marlee Matlin, but at this point I feel like it’s okay if either of them win because there’s not a true "villain" in the finale. And that’s another thing that happened this year — there was never any real vitriol between the non-crazy players. Sure, things were running hot when Dionne Warwick was calling Niki Taylor a hussy, but they were never true contenders.

We then see a produced piece for each of the finalists showcasing their charity. Marlee goes to Kenya to bring hearing aids to children who are deaf and hard of hearing on behalf of her charity, the Starkey Hearing Foundation. And it is insanely touching to see children actually hear for the first time. Within a few seconds I am crying my eyes out watching this. Seriously, when you see the faces of these kids light up as they register sound, it is truly humbling.

Then we see John Rich go to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital to visit sick kids and their families. And it’s equally touching seeing these poor children getting some help. And again I am crying.

And it’s at this point that the show is doing something undeniably good. They’re getting some real money to some seriously deserving charities. At this point in the season, we’re talking about some real money — both Matlin and Rich have raised over a million dollars for their respective causes and I give them all the credit in the world.

John Rich and Marlee Matlin then do a song called “For the Kids” together, with Rich singing and Matlin — along with the New York School for the Deaf — signing along. My friend Phil e-mailed to claim that the violin part in the song was lifted from the Go Betweens, but I am too tired to verify this. I certainly hope he is not planning some sort of class action lawsuit against the composition, and I hope even more that I am not called upon to testify in the case of The People of Australia v. The

68

Kids, because I will most definitely skew my testimony toward The Kids. And, in all seriousness, I get choked up during this part of the song and finally I know what it is like to be Meat Loaf.

After the song they each make their case to Trump. Marlee says that she should be the Celebrity Apprentice because she is a living embodiment of the fight that deaf people have to overcome and that people have always counted her out. John Rich says that he should be the Celebrity Apprentice because he performed well over the course of the season and because his charity helps children who are dying. Which is true, I guess. But the contest isn’t about whose charity is better. It’s about who won the final competition, right?

And then Trump says he’s going to do something different here, then pauses for a second and declares John Rich the winner. Which is ultimately a load of shit because I guess it boiled down to the competition being about whose charity helped kids in more immediate danger of surviving. Which is a very noble thing, yes. I’m not minimizing the righteousness of John Rich’s cause by any stretch.

But Trump never offered any judgment on who did a better job with their final presentation! Basically the whole thing came down to John Rich pulling a bait and switch because he clearly lost the final challenge and getting Trump to go against everything that this windbag has always said he stood for, i.e., everything being "business."

Kids on the playground have more inherent logic in the games they just made up than Trump does in the eleventh season of his show. But what is to be expected from a show that is decided by a grown- up version of a child emperor?

I’m glad that St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital got an extra pile of cash. It’ll go to a good cause. But insofar as the Actual Competition goes, Marlee Matlin got jobbed big time. I’m with you, Marlee! You were my choice all along and that is why I will now donate the money I got paid for this recap to the Starkey Hearing Foundation! Who says that recappers are stingy?

COMMENTERS CORNER

To MEGAN202 in the Vulture Comments section:

You say you want “the guy who does the Jersey Shore recaps to do the next Apprentice recaps”. First of all, those very funny recaps were done by Melissa Starke and Paul Starke. So nice job being a misogynist — I guess in your world a woman should be chained to the stove and it’s a man’s place to do the recapping. That’s not how it is in my house.

And I assure you that I don’t own an Obama "nodding head doll" because nobody outside of you and your weird household — which I’m sure consists of a Michelle Malkin standee and jars of your own bodily fluids — calls them "nodding head dolls." Join us here on Earth where they are known as "bobble heads."

And I want you to never forget this: I hate you. I really do. It’s people like you who make this planet an infinitely worse place. Enjoy the next four years under Obama, unless a miracle takes place and the White House becomes the Wuensche House! As in Republican presidential candidate Vern Wuensche!

Oh, and I don’t think I told you about the New Pornographers video I directed! Check it out!

To BUDDSPAL in the Vulture Comments section:

69

I truly and sincerely do not apologize for making you look up Dogme 95. I guess I “could’ve just mentioned keywords like Danish and manifesto” so you could be assured that you wouldn’t be interested at all. But I’m not gonna dumb down my thing for you, mainly because my thing is already pretty dumb.

Did Greg Ginn dumb down Black Flag for the kids who just wanted to hear “Gimme Gimme Gimme” for the three hundredth time? No! He made some really crummy Sabbath-inspired albums! So consider this section of the recap to be side two of My War, okay? But thanks for liking the recaps overall!

To @sideshowMel, @snakefarts, and @dropframe on Twitter:

Thank you for all the nice things you said. Especially you, SnakeFarts. But please consider changing your handle. Seriously.

And to everybody who read this recap, I want to say thank you. It was a lot of fun to do and I hope you had a good time indulging me as I tried to do as many dopey things to amuse myself along the way.

Will I ever return? Who knows. Maybe I’ll take my recap cap — yes, I wore a cap the entire time I wrote these pieces — to a different show. Or perhaps you’ll see me writing ‘caps for someone new, like The Atlantic or Hustler. Or maybe I’ll hang up the cap for good. But know this: If you see my name associated with The Celebrity Apprentice ever again, something went very wrong in my career. I mean SERIOUSLY wrong.

Thanks and good-bye!

Your friend, Tom

70