Saturday, October 15, 2005

The Apprentice - October 13, 2005: A Review

I viewed only a portion of this episode of The Apprentice, as I was busy being distracted with not watching The Apprentice. I tuned in about twenty-five minutes into the show and watched the rest of it intermittently between doing laundry, cleaning out the gutters, writing my congressperson a letter about my neighbors’ trees spewing organic debris clogging up my gutters, mowing the carpet (don’t ask) and building a mechanical bite size nugget. I’m telling you, positive procrastination is the uncle of necessity. As it turns out, what I did witness of the show was plenty.

The contestants were split into two teams. Coincidentally, all of the men were on one team and all of the women were on the other team. I thought segregation was an outmoded practice in our society. Who am I to question Trump? I wonder if they were each bussed in from varying apprentice districts. Their challenge was to create a mascot and marketing strategy for Dairy Queen. I didn’t know Dairy Queen still existed. Apparently they are in the need for some strong new and exciting marketing. Being desperate, they turned to reality television to save them. If I were them, I would have waited to see what happens with the INXS’s career before making that decision. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but the consensus in these parts is to attend the new tour to see the Lovehammers and then head back to the bar before the JDINXS hits the stage. But it may work out for them. Who knows, maybe reality television will become the newest trend in business consultation.

My induction into The Apprentice experience began with the passively hostile women’s team mitosising itself into two work groups, although I’m not sure what the purpose of each group was. From their behavior, I assume their purpose was to berate the women in the other group behind their backs. The men were portrayed in a more communal and amiable light. In defense of the women, I don’t know if I merely missed dissension among the men, due to my gutter cleaning, or if it was withheld by the editors of the show, or if there was none to be shown. I’m sure the women are all kind, generous people looking to climb up the knives in other people’s backs to the top. That’s how I got to where I am today. Actually, as I type this, I’m not sure who’s house this is, but they sure do keep their refrigerator stocked, and they own unusually comfortable underwear. But the point is I got here by back-knife climbing. I don’t know how I’m going to get back down.


The women’s team created an ice cream malformation of Inspector Gadget afflicted with Grave’s Eye Disease wielding a giant rubber spoon. This thing, named Zip, was their proposed mascot. Their presentation suggested that this milky mutant would appeal to children and teenagers alike. And by "appeal" I can only imagine they meant "scare the shit out of". The DQ marketing geniuses seemed to be a little freaked out by it themselves. As we'll learn later, it would have behooved the ladies to incorporate a giant set of hooters on Zip to help make the DQ guys stand at attention. The DQ guys didn’t buy the spiel, especially since there was no mention of the Dairy Queen brand in the character (and no boobies). One of the team members suggested that the signature ice cream swirl (barely identifiable as the body of Zip) and the behemoth rubber spoon were clear expressions of the Dairy Queen charm. Maybe if she would have described it the way I just did, she may have had a better chance of the DQ suits falling for it. But she didn’t and they didn’t.

Surprisingly, the men chose to recreate Barbara Eden as a snow genie who dispenses soft serve ice cream from her nipples. Even more surprisingly, the DQ rakes took to the idea like...uh...er...well...like a man takes to ice cream dispensing nipples! One of the team members was dressed in the coquettish costume portraying "Ginny the Genie", whose soft serve hair, shapely silhouette, plunging neckline and man hands sent ripples of hubbub through their assessors. As soon as the mascot manifestation strutted into the room, the DQ guys transformed into Pavlov’s dogs and doused the conference table with drool. The men’s team of innovators held fast to their underlying premise: everybody, especially ice cream eaters, loves cleavage. Whether that is true or not did not matter as truth plays a very small, if non-existent, role in marketing. The DQ dogs agreed, stating that the mascot gave them boners, which was all they were pretty much after, since in addition to cleavage, they felt everyone, especially ice cream eaters, loves boners. They didn’t even seem to mind that the mascot was a man dressed in fantasy drag. Speaking of which, the guy in the costume, let’s call him Genie, since I forgot his real name, refused to have his package duct taped down so as not to protrude the groinal region of the get up. Genie, sir, if I can offer some advice, don’t knock it until you’ve try it. But that’s a tale for another article. Even the bulge in the costume didn’t subdue the DQ henchmen. It helped them notice the "DQ" belt buckle on Genie’s costume, which would be easily noticed as dirty old men switched their gazes back and forth between Genie’s snow hills and her glacier crevasse. And then they’ll buy ice cream!

Amazingly, Zip the wonder whatever it is didn’t make the cut. Consequently, the men’s team won, sending the women’s team to the boardroom of death. There, Trump allowed the women to cat fight at will. I’m not sure what all the bickering was about. It was evident that Toral, a tool and dye machinist, was able to get only one other girl, a cripple who had broken her ankle trying to climb up Trump’s ass in an earlier episode, not to want to scratch her eyes out. Trump picked up on this and ripped her a new orifice. This was the best part of the show, although I think it would grow old if I saw it happen more than six and a half times. As soon as Trump smelled the blood resulting from the cat fight, he pounced. He was relentless. At this point logic was futile. Toral tried to fire back, but she had no chance. If I were her, instead of arguing, I would have kept repeating "nice hair" at him until he started to cry or until I was removed by security. Toral left in a cab telling us that those Apprentice grapes were sour anyway. The rest of the women returned to their lair to sharpen their nails for next week’s episode. Trump stopped by and finished cleaning my gutters so that maybe I could watch the entire episode next week. I don’t think so, but at least my gutters are now clean.

19 comments:

Sid said...

Good stuff. I was on Toral's side since the others were being mean girls, until Toral started yapping in the board room. I'd've canned the whole buch of those yammering ninnies.
For the first time, I've been watching this season from the beginning. Now that you're on board, I might have some commentary to add and catch you up on previous doings.
I like the "nice hair" strategy. Beauty.

Anonymous said...

Woo hoo, we have a show! Okay, uh, what channel?

I seem to be getting NBC now. I think someone must have a dish antenna or something, and my rabbit ears are picking up their signal.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to go to a retailer and watch their sample TVs.

Andree

Anonymous said...

Oh my, Moist. You captured the nutshell of this waste of space show in fine style.

The first season, this show was awesome. The second was less so. Now that we're into the 4th round, my interest is perfunctory. I usually keep the show on while I peruse porn or write erotica.

But can't wait for more from either you or Sid. I love to hear new perspective.

Anonymous said...

Does Trump do anything on this show besides show up at the end? His sidekicks follow what the teams do. They should get to fire the people.

Anonymous said...

Letterman used to do a bit on his show called Trump or Monkey. They would cover a picture so that only the top of the head showed and by the hair, they would have to guess if it was Donald or a monkey. The funny part was that they usually got it wrong. Good stuff.

Anonymous said...

Donald Trump signs the cheques. It's his decision to make.

EPMB is involved at the editing end, so look for misdirection, hidden-in-plain-sight and hokey contestants.

My latest Survivor recap is now up on ezboard at Red Herrings & Sticky Wickets, if you like talking about the bits that stick in your mind and decide which edit they are; Sucks if you want to diss something or analyze the shit out of everything to do with the show; and NPN if you don't want to talk about it, but there are multitudes of other things you do wanna talk about.

Such other shit you'd like to talk about could include movies, books, people who piss you off.

It's fun to do; it's mental exercise. At Sucks I like to take part in Edgic, the editing analysis thread, where we've developed a system of rating each episode's presentation of each character's game, and determining as early as possible who the editing says is the winner.

We're not all always right, but it's a ton of fun. We make efforts to remain "spoiler-free."

Failing to get tickets for the shows in Toronto must prove I'm just not that motivated to put money into INXS' pocket. I've set my ticket alert at TicketMaster to buzz me for Green Day.

That's with whom I'd really rather see The Lovehammers, if you wanna know. What a cool awesome bill. In Australia back in the 70s/early 80s, they used to do marathon concerts, with 3 international big name bands and 3 local big name bands. One concert I took my sister to had AC/DC and Skyhooks, some chick we'd heard of who was okay.

Another one I went to had Fleetwood Mac, Santana, Little River Band + 3 other acts. Huge, 6 hours put on at the racetrack.

So, I'd like to see

Did any of you see the one with Sir Richard Branson: Rebel Billionaire? Overall a much, much better show than this one. I think it's responsible for putting Trump off his game. He had a good show Season 1 and he tweaked it somehow and it's crap. The backbiting and bullshit.

He needs another tweak. Like he doesn't fire them, he offers them a job befitting the qualities displayed, like "Would you be my toilet bowl clearner?" or something.

Anonymous said...

The awesome bill I'd like to see?

Green Day
Offspring
Metallica
The Lovehammers
and either bands I figured would end up here because Marty gets to pick and I hear in my head, "Franz Ferdinand," which band I kind of can't stand. LOL.

Oh and INXS shows up "unexpectedly" to play 3 songs, since that's all they can manage before needing a laydown and an oxygen break.
select bunch from the RS:NXS show
and couple other bands of whom I've never heard, or just can't think of right now.

Sid said...

wasn't somebody starting a message board around here?

Anonymous said...

Sid, there are no free lunches or free message boards to start. They seem to want money.

There are a handful of people that post regularly here in the comments section. Would people be willing to come to a different place where they'd have to pay and not have the benefit of your lovely blogs? Probably not.

If it were just a general chat, we could probably start a chat thread at any one of the sites already established. Or just chat amongst ourselves there in other threads.

However, I also wonder how many hits you might lose as a result of starting a non-Leper Pop board. Maybe there are people that come for the blogs AND the comments.

If the comments move elsewhere, it wouldn't be the same. I come for the blog AND the comments too. Now. First it was just the blogs. But there were six blogs a week. All hilarious.

Anyway, I don't think the message board idea will work unless you guys do it and link to it from this site. Ah. I dunno. You didn't answer if you have separate hit reports for each area on this site.

Andree

Sid said...

don't read too much into my question - i was just asking. i don't have any problem with the comments format or the posters and it seems to work well, but it seems a message thread would be more conducive to topics like favorite artists and concerts, etc. the word conducive is not to be taken as sid f'er trying to run anyone off.
continue to use our little space however all y'all see fit - we enjoy the company.
i don't believe we have separate hit counters anywhere, but i'm not too obsessed with it. it's cool to get an idea of the activity, especially since my last site garnered only about 2k over the course of a year, but i don't want to start taking this thing too seriously.

Anonymous said...

don't want to take this thing too seriously...

Oh well, I guess there's no point in taking calls from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt about having them play you two in the movie of The Little Bloggers.

Anonymous said...

I come here for the blogs AND the comments, and the free coffee and donuts. Oh wait, maybe I dreamed the coffee and donuts ...

BTW, glad to see that you talked your way out of hell, Sid. Moist said you would.

Anonymous said...

Aw, really? I was working on get that "Sidnicated" trademarked. For you guys. Then there were the late night talk shows I had lined up. Leno and Letterman. That wacky Craig Ferguson. And Conan O'Brien, only so you can mock the whole show you were on in a later blog.

There was the radio show that Howard Stern was going to bankroll to get you started.

There was the new TV show "Sidfeld and Rub", like a combination of Seinfeld and Seigfried and Roy. You'll have to figure out how that was going to work. But the networks were bickering over getting the show and offering obscene amounts of money.

I've accepted that money on your behalf, as your agent, and you'll never find me, now that I'm in the Bahamas, writing this from my beach front home on my own island.

Andree

Anonymous said...

I apologize for my long-winded comments last night.

I was so long-winded I even signed my name in full, AMAI is short for AllMenAreIslands.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Moist Rubber, I like you, you make me laugh...

Anonymous said...

By the way, Moist, my guess is that you don't look too closely at the cereal images.

This one is scarier when it's bigger:
http://shop.safeway.com/productimages/100x100/111010216_100x100.jpg

Another version of the killer squirrel:
http://shop.safeway.com/productimages/100x100/111011220_100x100.jpg

Holy crap! If this is what the cereal does to kids, no kids are getting any at all:
http://shop.safeway.com/productimages/100x100/111010150_100x100.jpg

Sedatives? Or something he smoked?
http://shop.safeway.com/productimages/100x100/111010150_100x100.jpg

Close Encounters of the Bee Kind:
http://shop.safeway.com/productimages/100x100/111010451_100x100.jpg

Unfortunately they don't show the kid on the store brand bag cereal of Frosted Mini Wheats.

Even Captain Crunch and Toucan Sam have changed over the years. Not sure if I'd trust the Captain to take the helm. He's looking a bit senile.

And Sam? Is the beak getting larger or are ya just glad to see me?

Andree

Anonymous said...

*Mr. Moist Rubber, I like you, you make me laugh...*

He makes me laugh too.

Anonymous said...

Wow, just watched this week's show. They all need to be fired. Oh my god. Those two bickering nightmares. They should both go. Show's not over yet.

I swear, I've never seen a group, make that two groups, of people that can't work together. Too many chefs, not enough servers. Too many captains, not enough helmsmen. Whatever that saying is.

I really hate that horse's ass. Yes, the one with the pony tail. Ah, Jennifer.

Then we have Kristi.

Oh. GEEZ. They both suck. And Trump kept Jennifer? Shoulda fired them both.

Where do they GET these people? And how do those morons move up the corporate ladder, being such morons?

It's another life mystery.

Please do another review of the show, guys, if any of you blog-guys saw it.

Andree

Anonymous said...

Working for Donald Trump doesn't seem to have any upsides, that's what I'm taking away from watching The Apprentice.