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The Celebrity Apprentice 2012: Now Featuring Celebrities

25 Jan

Januray 25, 2012

OK, time to eat just a little crow. I have always blasted this show for scrapping the bottom of the celebrity barrel. However, this time they have a few real, legit celebrities. Sure, there are still some models on the show only for their boobs but there are some real deal celebs on the list this time around. In fact, a couple of them are still big enough to not need this show. Seriously, what is Penn Jillette doing here?

GEORGE TAKEI

Sulu today.

It is too easy to dismiss him as Sulu. In fact, were this a few years ago I’d have run a 40 year-old shot him on the Enterprise and called it a day. But not now. He’s reinvented himself as, of all things, George Takei. He’s all over the internet and he’s become something of a voice for the gay community. And of course he is the face of SocialSecurity.gov

TIA CARRERE

Relic Hunter! Remember that show? I LOVED THAT SHOW! Seriously, I did. I’m rooting for her. And that picture has nothing to do with it. Doesn’t hurt though.

CLAY AIKEN

Insert your own funny caption here.

Oh my, as George Takei would say (and on the show I guarantee he will.) Where to start? I should say where to start that won’t get me in trouble? Clay Aiken isn’t a has-been, he’s a never-was. After he won American Idol everyone expected big things from him and- what? He didn’t win American Idol? Ruben Studdard won? OK, Ruben Studdard may have done as little as Clay Aiken but at least he hasn’t embarrassed himself. I think you can take it from here.

MICHAEL ANDRETTI

I’m sure he’ll bring a lot to the show, like the ability to drive fast and, um, drive fast. Somebody tell him this isn’t Top Gear. Oh well, if Celebrity Apprentice doesn’t work out he can always become the wheel-man for a gang of jewel thieves. Really, who better to drive a getaway car?

LISA LAMPANELLI

I'm pretty sure that's her on the right.

You might have seen her on the Comedy Central celebrity roasts and probably nowhere else. She is usually the target of some of the dirtiest and foulest jokes I’ve ever heard but to be fair she is kind of funny herself. Here are some of her jokes:

Betty White is so old that on her first game show ever, the grand prize was fire

… he was a very nice guy, very supportive, like Oprah’s husband … Gayle

OK, I only managed to find two funny ones.

DAYANA MENDOZA
PATRICIA VELASQUEZ

Nuff said.

ADAM CAROLLA

My usual line whenever one of these “celebrity” shows has an untalented radio guy is “Baba Booey was unavailable” but not this time. Adam Carolla is unfunny and annoying. His voice is grating and he is uncomfortable to look at. I hope he is the first one fired.

ARSENIO HALL

Arsenio hasn’t worked much lately, has he?

TERESA GUIDICE

One or another of those Real Housewives who were never real housewives. Don’t know her but I expect her to be a total bitch. Why else have her on the show?

LOU FERRIGNO

Ok, let’s get it out of our systems; he’s the Hulk! HULK SMASH CELEBRITY APPRENTICE! RIP WIG OFF PUNY TRUMP’S HEAD! Ah, feels good. But seriously, he overcame partial deafness and became a champion weight-lifter and a successful actor. OK, playing The Hulk may not be a stretch but he also played himself on The King of Queens which, well yeah, OK, may not have been much of a stretch either. But he’s a good guy and I’m rooting for him. Don’t expect him to win though.

VICTORIA GOTTI

You’d think it would be enough being John Gotti’s daughter. Not for her. Not only is she the lowlife loudmouth daughter of a Mafia don, she has her own lowlife loudmouth reality show. Along with Snookie, she makes me ashamed to be Italian, which is a truly major accomplishment because I am not Italian.

CHERL TIEGS

From wikipedia: She is best known for her long-running affiliation with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, which featured her on the cover in 1970, 1975, and 1983. The 1978 poster of her in a pink bikini became an iconic 1970s pop culture image.

That tells me she should have been on this show thirty years ago.

AUBREY O’DAY

If you can tear your eyes away, look at the goof on the right.

She’s one of those people I know only because there are a lot of pictures of her looking hot on the internet. She was a member of the reality-show pop-group Dannity Kane which I know primarily as something I laugh at. She’s done some reality shows and is as far off my radar as a hot blonde can be.

DEBBIE GIBSON

Remember when she sang “I Think We’re Alone Now”? It was all downhill from there, unless you count her roles in SyFy Channel epics like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. (I was rooting for the Gatoroid.)

DEE SNYDER

He does not need this show. Twisted Sister does well enough without this show. Why is he here? He must have liked it when he guested last season. I only hope he wears his makeup to the boardroom.

PENN JILLETTEThis man is smart. Too smart to be on this show but you know what? He says he has wanted to be on this show for years. I expect he’s using this show just for material. HE is much more than a magician but you can read about when I attended his Vegas show right here.

PAUL TEUTUL SR.

He’s loud. He screams. He abuses his son. He takes credit for other people’s work. He lets Monkey Boy kiss his ass. I LOVE THIS MAN! This is why I will watch every episode of this show and if he gets fired early I will NOT be happy. Paul Teutul Sr. is the reason I will recap this show every single week. Period.

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My Secret Life Upon The Stage

19 Jan

January 19, 2011

Some of you may not have known this. In fact, I’d bet that none of you had an inkling of this. Being the mostly-unknown and lightly-read blogger that I am today was never my career goal. I didn’t set out to turn Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride into the underwhelming sensation it currently is. No, my secret ambition was to be an actor. Yes, to tread upon the stage.

And some time ago I did just that.

The Time: 1980
The Place: The auditorium of PS 247.
The Production: The Fifth Grade Performance of Peter Pan and Wendy Go Around the World. (One Night Only!)

Yep, I was not even 10 years old when I made my stage debut. Of course, this was not my first job in acting. Two years earlier I had been cast as a jaybird in my third grade play, but that was just staged in the classroom, we didn’t get to stand behind the footlights. It doesn’t really count. Plus some of the other kids teased my by saying “the jaybird is a gaybird” and even though I had no idea what that meant back then, I hated the teasing and told the teacher that I didn’t want to be in the play. Looking back, I may have been the victim of gay bashing. I have a very limited personal experience with homosexuality. I was once hit on by a construction worker when I was 19 but that’s a (true) story for a different time.

Anyway, the fifth grade class of PS 247 was putting on the play Peter Pan and Wendy Go Around the World. It was written by one of the teachers in the school and only much later on did I realize that the title sounds like a 1970’s porno movie.

It was very topical. The premise was that Peter and Wendy went on a tour of the world and saw all the world’s troubles. It was a downer of a play. After flying around the globe and seeing all the wars and poverty and injustice, Peter and Wendy appealed to Tinkerbelle to use her magic to make the world a better place but she turned them down. The end of the play was an appeal to the world, via the audience of around 200 parents, for peace and love and understanding. Turn on the news and see how well that turned out.

This was back during the Carter administration and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. In one scene, Peter and Wendy flew over Iran and dropped in on the American hostages. For whatever reason, not only were Peter and Wendy invisible to the hostages, they were also unable to free them. I am not sure that gaping plot hole was ever explained. Anyway, after the hostages on stage moaned about how awful it was to be held hostage, and Wendy and Peter told the audience how terrible it was to have hostages in the world, it was time for me to hit the stage. My big part, my big line.

I marched on from stage left, strode to center stage, looked out at the audience, and announced “The Ayatollah Khomeini wishes to see the American spies.” Then I marched offstage. Yes, I was an Iranian soldier.

Now today it is cool to embrace the bad guys. Everyone goes to comic cons and dresses up like Darth Vader but at no time were Iranian soldiers ever embraced by society at large. I wasn’t crazy about the part. Plus I only had one stinking line!

But I made the most of it. While I was scripted to say my line and march offstage, I,  like any problem actor, pestered the director, who was my teacher, to make some changes. I argued that being a mean soldier I would never just walk offstage. If the Ayatollah Khomeini wanted to see the hostages I wouldn’t count on the hostages just walking over, I’d march them over at gunpoint. Finally my teacher agreed, or just got tired of me, and that’s how I got to bring my BB rifle and cap pistol to school. (How times have changed.)

We were in charge of making our own costumes. I wore slacks and a blue dress shirt. I took the shoulder braid from my Cub Scout uniform to make it look more military and stuck my silver metal (and very real looking) cap pistol into my belt and slung my (very real) BB rifle across my back. I also wore a blue or black baseball cap.

So I strode onstage, walked to up front and center, paused, looked around to find Mom and Dad, and said my line. I took the rifle off my back and stuck it (hard, I took the role very seriously) into the back of one of the hostages and waved my gun at the other and marched them offstage.

And that was it.

But that wasn’t my last time upon the auditorium stage. I think the acting bug had bitten me. Later, my friend and I tried out for the talent show. We reenacted the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader battle from The Empire Strikes Back using homemade lightsabers. We took (OK, my Dad took) translucent blue plastic and rolled it into tubes which he then taped atop normal flashlights. In the dark they looked pretty good but the plastic was very chemical-smelling and sniffing it too long made me sick. My friend and I had so much fun fighting with the lightsabers that we never came up with a script. When we auditioned we had the lights lowered and the crowd ohh’d and ahh’d over the cool lightsabers and then laughed as be banged them together while saying, over and over and over, VADER: Luke, I am your father. LUKE: No you’re not! VADER: Yes I am!

We did not make it to the talent show but a few years later my buddy Marc and I proudly joined our junior high school talent show with a production of The Partially Paid For Nightly Network News, which was the two of us sitting behind a desk acting like news anchors and telling bad jokes. We were heckled.

Other acting highlights included the night I got sick and missed my Cub Scout production of an Indian war dance and the time I was at summer camp and I played the father in Bye Bye Birdie. That was my singing debut. (“Kids! I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!”) Not that I recommend watching it, but if you come across Bye Bye Birdie on cable, I had the Paul Lynde part.

Birdie was played by our 50 year old female director who stepped in at the last moment when the kid playing Birdie threw a tantrum and refused to go on.

Looking back on my acting career, I have no regrets, just a question. Why didn’t those hostages jump off the stage and run out the fire exit when the guard wasn’t around? It was only about 30 feet away.

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