The Apprentice:Martha Stewart week 2 started off with Jim and Dawn returning to the suite after having survived their boardroom battle with Jeff. Jim was…well…boastful would be a tame term for his attitude. But on to the second task.

The teams were assigned to open flower shops with the biggest dollar amount winning. Matchstick chose Chuck as their project manager, as he had experiance in the floral business, and Primarius chose Carrie. The teams took two very different tacts with their flower shops. Matchstick went with freshly imported tulips from Holland, while Primarius wanted to go with selling flower arrangements from a big name designer.

The writing was on the wall early in the episode as Chuck wanted to give up very early in to the task. He also made silly decesions like having girls dress up in short Dutch girl outfits…it was just a mess all the way around, and while they were self-destructing, Jim & Dawn turned into bickering 5 year olds. Primarius started off slowly with their sales, but late in the day, Howie convinced his team to lower the prices, and powered them forward to a win that had them take in double the money of Matchstick. That makes two tasks in a row where Howie has played a heavy roll in a Primarius victory. Interesting.

In the boardroom, Martha went up one side of Matchstick and down the other. Chuck brought Jim & Dawn back into the boardroom, but in the end, Chuck went home because he had a quitters attitude, something Martha can’t stand.

Two interesting notes:
1)Martha, unlike The Donald, waits in the boardroom for the team to sit down, and doesn’t enter after them.

2)Martha did not say “You just don’t fit in”, but she did write the letter. Guess the letter is the ‘catch phrase’.

Not that I doubt anoyone is that riveted to them, my reality show recaps are running behind because my laptop had to go to the shop yesterday when it just started randomly rebooting. So to help you all out.

Dear lord, could *insert reality idiot’s name here* be any stupider? Needless to say *his/her* team lost and they were (choose one)

Evicted
Booted
Fired
Received A Letter

I love the record companies. If ever there was a cess pool industry where bottom-feeders thrive, it’s at the record companies.

They have been approaching Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, about raising the prices of songs in the iTunes store for the newer releases. They want them higher than $.99, but Steve Jobs has said that’s a bad idea as he feels it will make online piracy grow again.

So fine, Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has a solution to all this…Apple should give the music companies a cut of the sales of all iPods. To quote the article:

Bronfman’s solution? Well, if Apple is “artificially” keeping the price of downloads low to promote sales of iPods (you can debate amongst yourselves whether 99 cents is artificially high or artificially low), then as he sees it, the labels should get to share in those [iPod] revenue streams.

Um…can we just file this under “insane greed”? Maybe the music companies needed to be reminded if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs/the iPod/iTunes, MP3s would have never taken off like they did. Sure, they existed before the iPod, but if it wasn’t for Apple, who knows if the record companies would even have this revenue stream now.
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On a totally different subject, but still on music company greed. This past Saturday night, Coldplay was supposed to play in Houston, TX. Due to Hurricane Rita, they naturally cancelled and will be unable to reschedule the show. So, refunds are being issued on all tickets. Everything sounds fine so far, up until you get to the folks who had VIP tickets.

The VIP ticket folks got assured parking, the main reason a certian friend of mine bought them, and you got free gifts of a pair of cheap headphones and a laminate pass. Well, my friend and her family member who was going with her, got their tickets refunded and thought all was good. That was until they got an email from Coldplay’s management asking them to pay $15.00 for the free gifts they received since they had their tickets refunded.

Let’s never mind the fact Coldplay probably spent $2 to $3 on the items at most, but this town just went through a mass evacuation, survived a hurricane, things are not running normally, but you owe us money. This is beyond heartless. It is low, greedy and just insane to be blunt. I really doubt if Coldplay will ever get any money from me, or my friend, ever again. Yes, they were free gifts, yes the tickets were refunded, but the management company could be a little bit bigger hearted considering the circumstances.

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I really wanted to buy Natsha Bedingfield’s album “Unwritten” since this is her first release in the USA, and I want to support her. The CD is copy protected and can not be converted to MP3, meaning it can not be imported to iTunes or transferred to my iPod.

Sorry folks, but once I buy an album, if I want to put it on MY iPod, that is my choice, you should have no say in that. So sorry, but you won’t be selling me a copy now.

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So, here is my solution, the only CDs I will buy from now on will be used. The RIAA will have no record of the sale, the artist will receive no royalties and the music company does not get a cut of that sale. If I want an MP3, I will use allofmp3.com since it is out of Russia and pays no royalties, which is legal there.

Wow…could that title for Apprentice 4 be any longer? Probably not. Yes, I know this aired five days ago, but I was bored with it and not in the mood to write it up until today.

Here we go again, time for The Donald to school us all in hair care…I mean…in business, yeah, business. Anyway, this time he had the losers…I mean candidates…meet him out on his “world class golf course”. (No one can ever say The Donald doesn’t appreciate hyperbole) He splits the candidates into men and women and tells them they will be working at two different Bally’s gyms where they will have to come up with a new exercise class. Two new little twists for the start:1)The winning teams project manager will NOT be exempt unless their team agrees to them getting it and 2)The first team member to find The Donald’s “hidden” helicopter will have their team fly two members back to the city where they get first pick of the gyms and a leg up. (the helicopter wasn’t all that hidden)

The guys find the helicopter and send two native New Yorkers, Brian and Josh, back in the helicopter. They choose the gym downtown as they feel the neighborhood will be more affluent. While this is going on, the other men are all in a car on their way back and choose Markus as their project manager. Let the most wishy-washy, whiny project manager in history begin. Oh my lord he would not shut up!

Over on the girls side, they had chosen Kristi, who was an All-American athlete, to be their project manager. The biggest problem with this team was in the form of Hispanic contestant Melissa. I mention she is Hispanic only because she mentioned she was Hispanic at every possible moment. Did I mention she was Hispanic? Well she is Hispanic.

The men went with the policy of recruiting from existing gym members, the women tried to bring in outisde people. After a few other mis-steps by the women, they lost the competition by $11.00. The men’s reward was dinner at the Friar’s Club with The Donald, where Markus continued to talk non-stop. Also, his team did not award him immunity for the following week.

In the board room, after everyone attacked Melissa, Kristi asked if she could bring just one person back into the boardroom with her. The Donald said yes, and naturally it was Hispanic contestant Melissa. (Did I mention she was Hispanic?) After not much debate, Melissa, the Hispanic, was sent home.

I know I missed “Katrina Sunday”, but there wasn’t much to say this week except that the ninth ward flooded again. Boy, Mayor Ray Nagin sure called it right asking everyone to come home so early didn’t he?

As for Hurricane Rita, they are still discovering all the damage. Sadly, five people were found dead today from carbon monoxide poisioning from using a generator inside their apartment. This is truly tragic, but it does illustrate that while having a generator is a good idea, you can not run them inside.

This is not a joke, a hoax or anything else. Have you seen this man?

His name is Melvin Keeling and he murdered a 13 year old girl who was slated to testify against him in a sexual molestation case on his own daughter. This girl is related to a friend of mine. This is a disgusting crime no matter what, but I have a personal beef in this case. After murdering the 13 year old girl, he went to kill two convenience store clerks. Please go read the case file posted by America’s Most Wanted here.

If you see him, do NOT approach him, he is considered armed and dangerous. Please call your local authorities or AMW at 1-800-CRIME-TV. This “man” (and I use the term lightly) must be brought to justice.

So we are two weeks into Survivor Gautemala and….I’m failry bored. Nakum won reward , which was fishing gear. Blake was still moping about due to his arm. Immunity was a tug-of-war in the mudd and Nakum won, sending Yaxha to tribal council.

There was some brief discussion of sending Stephanie home, but in the end it got down to a fight between Morgan and Lydia. In the end, Morgan went by a 8-to-1 vote.

Folks, I don’t know what it was, but I can’t remember the last time an episode of Survivor bored me this bad!

So, The Apprentice:Martha Stewart started last night. I’m not even sure where to start. It follows the same format as The Apprentice:Donald Trump (applicants, tasks, suite to live in, the boardroom and so on), but there are a few changes. The theme song is “Sweet Dreams” by The Eurythmics, instead of “You’re Fired”, the phrase is “You just don’t fit in.” and this is followed up by Martha writing them a letter…I kid you not…she writes them a “thank you” type letter.

The teams were made up of creative vs corporate people with the teams taking the names Matchstick and Primarius respectively. Their task this week was to rethink a fairy tale for modern times for the publisher Random House. Their books would be read to groups of children, with Random House gauging which book engaged the children the most. Matchstick picked Hansel and Gretel and Primarius took Jack & The Beanstalk. Each time would rewrite the story and be given access to designers and illustrators.

Now, the boredom sets in. As with every version of The Apprentice, you had an idiot team and a well thought out team. Matchstick’s biggest problem was with their project manager, Jeff. He made executive decesion after executive decesion without any thought to input from his team. He originally wanted Dawn to write the book since she had a background in writing. They butted heads when she asked for quiet while she wrote, and this was just not acceptable to Jeff at all, so he decided he would write the book himself. Speaking as a person with a history of proffesional writing, it is a taxing endeavour and I also needed quiet when I wrote. No music, no TV and as little talking as possible. Like any “art”, you can not just ask someone to turn the faucet on and off on command, and if she needed quiet, she should have been afforded that.

Over on Primarius, they decided to actually talk to kids about what they liked about what they were writing. They worked as a team and pulled it together. So let me cut to the chase, they won and their prize was dinner with Martha. (since this was filmed during her “house arrest”, I was surprised dinner wasn’t at her house, but oh well)

As the time for the boardroom approached, Jeff made it clear he wanted all the blame to rest with Dawn, but Jim decided the team could get rid of Dawn at any time and Jeff made a lot more sense strategically. While I agree Jeff should have been the target, Jim went about his attack all wrong and landed himself in the boardroom with Dawn and Jeff. In the end, Martha saw the blame really did deserve the blame and he was told “you just don’t fit in” and received the afore mentioned letter. (Which I shall now refer to as the LoD, Letter of Death) On their way out, Jeff and Jim traded some barbs, but they were really boring, pretty much like the entirety of the show.

Interesting small tidbits, Martha’s henchpeople are her daughter Alexis Stewart and her Chairman of the Board, Charles Koppelman. This is where things got a bit odd as it turned out Charles knew one of the candidates. Bethenny is an old friend of one of his daughters, but he assured everyone she would be treated no differently than anyone else.

Of the candidates, only a few stood out immediately to me:

Shawn – A television anchor from Orlando came off as abbrassive and too forward in my opinion. Way too much in your face and is probably painting a large target on herself.

Howie – Howie cracked me up. After his team dinner with Martha, he was pretty sure he now had a small crush on her. Quite amusing.

I am sure I will give the show a few more episodes, but for now, something just doesn’t ‘feel’ right about it. Not sure what it is yet.

The first product for my new company, MunkiZ LLC, arrived in my warehouse today. (Picture here, note it is horror movie based, so some may go “ew!”) This has been a whole new experiance for me because I have never been on the manufacturing end of things.

Sure, getting to this point had it’s rough spots, but now a whole new set of headaches pop up. Have you ever shipped to a large distribution wholesaler? Oh my goodness this is not fun. Packing lists, carton labelling, trying to figure out if the boxes can weigh 40 lbs or 70 lbs (depends on what page of the shipping guide you read), trying to decide why we are paying the shipping when the guide has instructions on who to send the shipping bill to….I think I have gained three more gray hairs today.

And guess what I have learned? Tshirts, packed in plastic bags, suck all the moisture out of your hands! It’s been a fun day…not.

Since so many of you always complain about how I never take any time off from work, (my last official vacation was Labor Day weekend in 1996), you will be happy to know….I am taking a weekend off! Yes folks, it’s true. I will taking off November 26th and 27th so that I can go see the musical Wicked in St. Louis. No one pass out please.