Even with celebrities, the Apprentice sucks, advice for ABC Family the League of Dictators

- Hmm, if you take an unwatchable reality show, mix in a dozen or so celebrities of varying degrees of fame, some of them hot women, does that show suddenly become watchable? My vote is no, so I’m going to go ahead and plan on missing Celebrity Apprentice. Yes, Jennie Finch is smokin’ hot. Yes, Trump’s own daughter Ivanka, who appears regularly on the show, is a hot blonde as well. Yes, having two hot blondes in the same room fulfills a major fantasy for a lot of guys. Still, why do I want to spend an hour each week watching Lennox Lewis, Gene Simmons, Stephen Baldwin, etc. vying to win this competition? So the winner gets $250,000 to donate to their favorite charity? Great, except all of these people could donate that amount  ten times over without the help of the show. Now if you want to have an all-Baldwin brothers Apprentice, then we can talk, because you get those four together with all of their issues, you have something. Besides, wasn’t a big part of the appeal of the original Apprentice seeing aspiring businessmen and women pushing for their big break, for their chance to work for the famous Donald Trump and build a distinguished career in his business ventures? These celebrities all have careers in acting, sports, etc., and they’ve all made a fair amount of money on their own that they could donate to charity. What do they need this show for, as a nice diversion from their normal lives so they can pretend to be real working men and women? Nice try, NBC, but this franchise is dead and it has been since right around the time you gave that insider-trading domestic diva Martha Stewart her own version of the show. Besides, any time a reality show plays the celebrity-edition card, you know the show has jumped the shark and isn’t long for the airwaves.

 

- Memo to ABC Family: Your concept of 25 Days of Christmas was lame to begin with. Ditto for your 13 
Night of Halloween. Showing 13 or 25 nights of movies all centered around the theme of a specific holiday is something no one really wants to see, so what I’m about to say should be painfully obvious to you, but clearly it is not. When you have a countdown to something, as you have with the aforementioned programming ideas, the most moronic idea possible is to have a countdown…..to your countdown. Freaking asinine, ABC Family. Why you’re having a countdown to your countdown of 25 Days of Christmas is stupefying and infuriating. Why not just extend the countdown year round and have an endless string of countdowns, with each countdown preceded by another countdown, right into infinity? Look, I know that your network is mostly reruns of old shows, with a few new ones (most bad, with the exception of Greek, set to return around March), so you need to be really creative to try and drum up viewers, but this isn’t the way to go about it. You’re really just making yourself look pathetic by trying to stretch an already bad idea out a few more days to cover more time in your schedule. It’s not cute, it’s not clever, it’s not even marginally intelligent. And while you’re at it, stop boasting about having countless hours of America’s Funniest Home Videos like that’s a good thing. The videos on the show are lame, they’re staged, they’re the same four or five basic scenarios over and over and they’re not actually funny now, nor were they ever. I’m here if you need any other help with programming decisions, ABC Family, don’t hesitate to ask.

- New motto for Liverpool John Moores University in jolly old England: We will, we will, rock you! Either that or “We are the champions, my friend. And weeeee’ll keep on fighting….till the end….” but that just sounds a bit show-offish. Why the rock and specifically Queen-centric mottoes, you ask? Well, early next year the university will name former Queen guitarist Brian May as its chancellor. May, who recently earned his PhD in astrophysics, will now occupy what is largely a figurehead position at the school, which is a renowned astrophysics institution. The university’s vice chancellor, Michael Brown, lauded May’s appointment as a welcome addition to the school. “In this age of celebrity culture, it is rare to find someone who has fame, fortune and universal acclaim and yet remains true to his core values of learning and enlightenment. In other words, most rock stars would rather get with groupies, snort coke, drink whiskey and sleep til noon. Again, as I said when May earned his doctorate back in the month of May, kudos to him for returning to school nearly four decades after leaving to join Queen, and props for scoring a cushy job where he can earn even more money he doesn’t need.

- There’s the American League, the National League, the League of Women’s Voters, the League of Justice…and now the league of despotic dictators, membership: two. Those two would be Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, he of the shooting civilians who dare protest his proposed constitutional reforms, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian fascist dictator whose country consistently oppresses and abuses women. Chavez, visiting Ahmadinejad earlier this week, joined with his Iranian partner in despotism by saying that the two of them are united “like a single fist” in opposing American influence around the world. Yes, like a single fist, sharing a single, tiny brain….but I digress. Chavez, like so many anti-American voices globally, cited the fall of the value of the U.S. dollar as a sign that “the U.S. empire is coming down.” First, you ass hat, there is no “U.S. empire,” we’re a democracy and a republic, not an empire. Second, we and our dollar will be just fine in about a year when we get rid of that big tub of dead weight we’ve been dragging around since, oh, about 2001…at least I think that’s when W. took office. But once we eject him from the Oval Office and back to the third grade where he belongs, our country and our currency will rebound just fine. Now go back to your second-tier, riot-laden country and keep our name out your mouth…..

 

- If there’s one thing the French excel at, it’s quitting. Point so much as a squirt gun at them and you can get their army to surrender….sorry Frenchies, but history says I’m right on that one. Well, one particular group of Frenchmen is doing a great job of quitting right now, and it’s you, French civil servants. Rail workers stretched their strike into a ninth day Wednesday, continuing to cripple the country’s transportation system. The striking rail workers were joined on Tuesday by other French civil servants, a sort of mass quitting if you will. The moves are designed to put pressure on President Nikolas Sarkozy to backtrack on some of his recent political and economic reforms which have affected the striking workers negatively. The question is, how do you have a successful negotiation when both parties are French and thus apt to surrender and acquiesce to the other side’s demands at any moment? Best wishes for both sides in this one, you both need it.

 

- What exactly is your problem, New York Knicks fans? You act like your team is off to a 2-8 start, has lost seven in a row, was recently the plaintiff in a sexual harassment lawsuit, hasn’t made the playoffs in several years and has an inept coach/GM who once ran an entire basketball league into the ground, then lost another coaching job before coming to your team, acquiring an entire roster of vastly overpaid guys who all play the same position and ran your franchise right into the ground. Oh, you mean that is what you’re mad about? That’s why you could be heard chanting “Fire Isaiah!” during Tuesday night’s l08-82 loss to the Golden State Warriors….now it makes sense. Honestly, there’s not a single person who can fault you for booing or chanting to fire Isaiah Thomas, because his reign of incompetence might be the single most inept ongoing regime in the entire United States if not for that ginormous tool in the Oval Office at the moment. Unfortunately for you, Knicks fan, the man in charge for the Knicks, owner James Dolan, is nearly as big a moron as Thomas, so he’s electing to stick with the embattled coach/GM. Heck, late last season Dolan gave Thomas a contract extension because the Knicks actually looked like they were moving from the abyss of crappy play they’d been in toward mediocrity. Of course, as soon as Thomas got that extension the team went down the drain, bombing out to finish the season and continuing their poor play to start this season. The Knicks are 6-23 since Thomas received his extension, making this quite possibly the soonest any owner has regretted giving someone a new contract in NBA history. I wish I could tell you this will get better soon and that you’ll get your wish and have Thomas fired, but that’s anything but a guarantee at this point.