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My Review of Semi-Celebrity Apprentice 2010

14 Mar

March 14, 2010

Remember when words meant something?

Back in World War II, a soldier who threw himself on a live grenade, sacrificing himself to save his platoon, was a hero.

Now a hero is the guy who got ABC back on Cablevision.

And stars? Stars were glamorous Hollywood actors and actresses with large bodies of great work behind them.

Today we call Rob “Deuce Bigalow” Schneider, a star.
And some things called “Snookie” and “J-Woww.” (I assume those are new Muppets I haven’t seen yet.)

And that brings us to the word Celebrity, as in:

Meet The New Stars of The Celebrity Apprentice 2010!

Ugh. What a motley crew. Donald Trump’s hair is a bigger celebrity than this collection of mostly has-beens, never-weres, and won’t-bes.

Leading off, Darryl Strawberry.
You know about the drugs, the booze, the tax evasion, the jail, the wife beating. Let’s look at what really counts:
Career Statistics
Batting average 259
Hits 1401
Home runs 335
335 home runs in a shortened career. Not bad, huh? Well, let me tell you, as a long-suffering Mets fan, HE STINKS! 335 homers? Every one a GARBAGE TIME home run. Try and find a game-winning blast. I HATE him. He’d hit monster shots over the bleachers, but only if the Mets were up or down by four or five runs. His best hit came when he decked Wally Backman during a team photo shoot.

Bill “Goldberg” Goldberg.
Goldberg is a recently retired professional wrestler. He is still relatively young and in shape, showing that he had the smarts to get out while he was healthy and before he became a paunchy joke like Hulk Hogan. None of this, though, indicates that he had any wrestling ability. He didn’t. He was simply a big ex-football player that a promoter met in a strip club and offered a job. The fans liked him and WCW decided to promote him as unbeatable and started keeping track of his record. One week he’d be 3 wins and 0 losses. He’d win a match and be 4-0. A few weeks and a few matches later, 10-0. But that wasn’t good enough for WCW. He’d be 23-0, and the following match they’d say he was 27-0. He’d win a match and be 32-0. Somehow during the course of a broadcast he went from 56-0 to 59-0 despite not having appeared in the ring. The announcers covered this by saying “he already beat up three guys backstage.” Eventually, despite being overwhelmingly supported by the fans, WCW decided they didn’t like him and totally squashed him, meaning he lost a big match in a bad way and was never pushed again.

My father and grandmother once went to lunch at Katz’s Deli in NY. As they were walking in, Goldberg got out of a giant limo and went in for lunch. Dad had no idea who he was by my 70 year old grandmother said “there goes Bill Goldberg!” That’s how popular he was.

Sinbad.
Early in his career he did comedy tours of prisons. Yes, he was so unfunny he had to tour prisons to find an audience.

Curtis Stone.
Giving new meaning to the term “who’s that?’ is Curtis Stone. He is an Australian chef. Memo to Donald Trump- he is not a celebrity. Australian celebrities don’t count.

Maria Kanellis.
Maria is a former WWE female wrestler. Actually, WWE bills them as “divas,” so you can guess which is more important- ability to get an opponent in a head lock or ability to wear skimpy outfits. Think WCW handled Goldberg badly? Here’s Maria and the WWE, about to get a big boost of publicity from Celebrity Apprentice, and what does Vince McMahon do? He fired her last week. Just makes me suspect that Maria doesn’t do very well.

Michael Johnson.
Summer Sanders.
Just in time to capitalize on the Winter Olympics is a pair of Olympians.
Summer Olympians.
Sheesh.

Further watering down the definition of “celebrity,” Rod Blagojevich.
Quoting from Wikipedia, the lazy man’s friend:

During the course of his political career, Blagojevich was involved in a number of controversies including at least a dozen separate federal investigations; the Tony Rezko indictment and trial; feuds with his father-in-law; contested state appointments; his residency, commute, and work hours; and allegedly withholding state funds from the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. In 2008, Blagojevich was investigated for and charged with crimes resulting from his role in the sale of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, as well as allegations he attempted to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

Blagojevich was arrested on federal corruption charges on December 9, 2008. The charges involved conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. The Justice Department complaint alleges that the governor conspired to commit several “pay to play” schemes, including attempting “to obtain personal gain … through the corrupt use” of his authority to fill Barack Obama’s vacated United States Senate seat. In a press briefing  on the investigation, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald characterized the scheme as auctioning the seat off to “the highest bidder”. The federal trial date has been set for 3 June 2010.

America, meet your new Cleberity Apprentice! Now appearing in cellblock six.

Holly Robinson Peete.
Despite not working much lately in favor of being a mother, (she is a mother of four, one of whom is autistic) Holly Robinson Peete is a very talented and attractive actress. She was in the underrated 21 Jump Street and she managed to put up with Mark Curry in Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper for five seasons so she deserves as much slack as you can give her. She is very intelligent, having studied language at the Sorbonne and has written two books. What the Hell is she doing with this crowd?

Selita Ebanks.
Balancing out Holly Robinson Peete is Seltia Ebanks. She is a former Victoria’s Secret Model. She was engaged to Nick Cannon before Mariah Carey came along. Her Wiki says she was “accepted” to some colleges but doesn’t say if she “attended” any colleges so I’ll use short words in case she is reading this.

Brett Michaels.
1983- Poison tops the charts.
2005- sex tape with Pamela Anderson
2008- MTV’s Rock of Love with Brett Michaels
2009- Michaels suffered a fractured nose and cut lip at the Tony Awards show after performing Poison’s song “Nothin’ but a Good Time.” When he turned to exit the stage, a descending piece of the set hit him in the head before he could duck under it, knocking him on his back.
2010- Celebrity Apprentice

‘Nuff said.

Cyndi Lauper.
A big deal at one time, Cyndi hasn’t been too busy lately, explaining why she has time for this show. You see, real celebrities are busy working on projects, or are simply too big for this show. Cyndi, however, has some free time on her hands. You might remember her from the Captain Lou Albano hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Cyndi is on the right.

Carol Leifer.
A funny comedian you may never have heard of, her claim to fame is that she is allegedly the inspiration for Elaine from Seinfeld. Frank Sinatra once praised Leifer as “one funny broad!” You can’t buy publicity like that.

Sharon Osbourne.
I firmly expect her to win. She is sharp, manipulative, savvy, and very well-connected. She has managed Ozzy Osbourne’s career for years and, more importantly, managed to live with him, so dealing with Donald Trump should be a piece of cake. She has her own career, which consists of being Sharon Osbourne on a variety of shows.

So there you go, America. These are your Celebrities!

God help us all.

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Antique’s Road Show, Ring-A-Ding Ding

1 Mar

March 1, 2010

Watch Antique’s Road Show? I do. It is the only PBS show worth watching (unless you count Russian ballet. Something about those tights…) Anyway, they show some amazing finds, like the woman who paid $60 for a $50,000 Norman Rockwell painting, or the guy who bought jade from the Ming dynasty (or whatever) at a garage sale.

What they don’t show you are the real duds. Here is what didn’t make the air:

  • Can of corn with dent that looks like Eisenhower.
  • Letter written to “World War Two” by Uncle Jed, never delivered.
  • Genuine Japanese samurai sword (made in Toledo Ohio, 1978)
  • Autographed picture of Ron Palillo
  • Shroud of Turin
  • Spam

There was a real doozy this week. You may have seen it, as this one was all over the interwebs and I, being a lazy blogger, decided to write it up too.

Here it is, the ACTUAL FRANK SINATRA LETTER TO MIKE ROYKO:

What do I take from this? That Frank Sinatra was a very gentle man, by his own admission not tough, and people liked to do him favors. Why? Oh, I don’t know, um, probably because he was Mafia up to his eyeballs and had goons to beat people up. (Sure I can write that. How can you slander a dead man? And better yet, dead men don’t sue.) I’m sure the Chicago PD just happened to all be on duty in his suite that night by coincidence.

He sure did write a good letter, though.

Here’s a favorite letter of mine, to the Warner Brothers, from the Groucho Marx , re: A Night in Casablanca:

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks—Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.

Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows—perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.”

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it’s not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.

I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well—hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won’t get away with it! We’ll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we’ll remain friends till the last reel of “A Night in Casablanca” goes tumbling over the spool.

Sincerely,
Groucho Marx

Clearly, letter-writing is a lost art.

And so is blogging, judging from the fact that I actually wrote very little this week.
(This was a good week.)

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