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 disgusted 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 conveniance 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.

I am one of those fun people who can predict the weather by different things that happen to my body. It is not a fun trick because different weather events make me feel like…well…not a good word. The most fun is pressure systems. Those lovely things directly effect my Eustachian tubes. This is the same thing that causes your ears to pop while going up into mountains or flying in a plane. Mine go off for just about any reason, which then causes my nose to run.

I know, gross, but is all I can think of right now.

Until further notice, Sunday’s will be “Hurricane Katrina Catch Up Day”. Why? Because I think we will be making a huge mistake if we forget the lessons this event has taught us. It will be like bullet points discussing various stories about the hurricane from the previous week.

Jockeying Over Return to Big Easy Ongoing - This story talks about Mayor Nagin’s plan to start bringing back 180,000 of the residents bck into the city over the next week and a half. However, the head of the fedearal disaster relief, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, says this is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Lack of potable water, no electricity in most sections, toxic sludge, no phones with 911 service and so on. And this is not only the Vice-Admiral saying it is too early. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also saying the city is not yet safe to return to.

I have to go with the Vice Admiral on this one. I think the mayor has the right idea in letting business owners back in to start working on rebuilding their stores, but those have to be ready before you let the population back in. I understand the Mayor’s desire to get people back to their homes, but the city is still a hazardous place, just allow a little more clean up time. Allow the resturants to reopen, the stores to restock, you can’t just plop people down with no support. Never mind the hospitals, which leads us to…

New Orleans’ Health System Faces Crisis - Joe Cappiello, vice president of the national hospital accreditation organization, said “Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone ? it no longer exists”. He also said some hospitals were damaged beyond repair and he feared others would try to rush back in to service too fast. With the national shortage of nurses, he also feared other cities would snap up the nurses who are currently without paychecks.

Short one this time as I just got this idea today. Hopefully, future ones will be longer.

Since the season is now just down to Maggie and Ivette, I figured I might as well give my end of the season thoughts. There are several things broken with this show that are in desperate need of fixing.

Voting - This is getting boring folks. You can see who the targets are from a mile off, the Power of Veto has become a joke and once an alliance gets the upper hands for two weeks in a row, the writing is pretty much on the wall for the outcome of the whole season.

The fix? I know this won’t sit well with a lot of people, but oh well…go back to the audience voting. It works in the 3 kazillion other Big Brother houses around the world. We did it for the first season, but then Arnold Shapiro (who feels he is god like if you ever read an interview with him) took over the show. You could still keep the Power of Veto, and even the Head of Household, but it would eliminate the whole “pawn” strategy that has been used so many times. It would also kill the never-ending strategy talk in the house. I no longer feel like I really get to know the hamsters because all they do, day-in day-out, is to talk strategy. ENOUGH ALREADY!

Food Competitions - The peanut butter & jelly diet has got to go. I am so sick of this it’s not even funny. Again, looking back at the first season, we had the hamsters compete for more or less grocery budget, and that is how all the other versions around the world do it. Nothing like seeing a bunch of cocky hamsters wager their entire grocery budget and then having no money for food. Far more entertaining then the never-ending whining about how much someone hates PB&J.

The Themes - Summer of Secrets should have been renamed Summer of Snores. The pairs with the pre-existing relationships was interesting for about two days. I think after that it just became a joke. Everyone was trying to break up the pairs more than anything else. Strategy went out the window several times just so a pair could be broken up. The only one of these stunts that was halfway workable was the twins from last season. This SOS stuff though just put me to sleep. And in that same vein…

The Returning Houseguest Twist - It’s been overdone. The hamsters knew it was going to happen at some point. It’s boring, the person is gone, let them stay gone. And if you are going to do it, let it be a competition for who comes back instead of an audience vote in, that way there’s more chance of a real shake-up.

The Pool - Just give it up and give them a full size pool would you? Much more potential fun.

Privacy - I know you can’t show us anything nudity wise (because our country is a bunch of prudes), but make it harder for them to get that privacy. The Gold Room was a nifty idea in that it was hidden, but then it became too much like a bunker once it was opened. The door should have been taken away.

Julie Chen - Yeah, I know she’s not going anywhere anytime soon, but I can dream can’t I? At least get rid of her saying before every interview “Just put your bag down over there.” And the stupid “walk” at the beginning of each episode where she goes into her little hut. Ugh!

An idea for an addition, Austrlia had so many rules being broken in the house this year that they started deducting from the prize money for each infraction. Was quite funny. Also, add in the audience hearing Big Brother speak more. Australia has the BEST Big Brother voice EVER! All deep and sinister sounding. Give us that, make us think of these people more like they really are….puppets that dance for our amusement. MUAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHA

Time for another season of Jeff Probst running the Survivor’s through their paces. This time we are whisked off to Gautemala, and the ruins of the Mayan empire. The big opening twist was as the two new tribes (Nakum, who wears blue, and Yaxha, who wears yellow) met with Jeff, they were told they were being given an extra “tool” each. Out walked Bobby Jon and Stephanie of the ill-fated Ulong tribe of Survivor Palau. Jeff makes it clear that each of these returning Survivors are full-fledged members of their tribes and that they have the same chance at the $1 million dollar prize.

After all that’s over, Jeff informs both tribes they have a 11 & 1/2 mile race to do to determine who gets the better camp and gets flint to start fire. They are also given food and water they can take with them, but are reminded that they must carry it for the full hike. Both tribes grab up their items and head out with their compasses to find their way. What followed was the usual Survivor catastrophes. Falling thorny branches, dehydration, cramping muscles and darkness of night. Both tribes had to camp out in the forest for the night and continue the race in the morning.

Nakum ended up winning the race, but at a high cost. All the men on the tribe were injured in some way by the end of it. Bobby Jon was dehydrated to the point of almost going into shock, Blake, who had been hit by the thorny branch, was throwing up as was Judd. Winning had cost them dearly, and if it hadn’t been for the nurse on their team, Margaret, several of them would have been in even worse shape.

I won’t bore you with all the details (plenty of other sites do that), but suffice it to day that Nakum lost Immunity and Jim, the retired fire fighter was voted out.

Quick overview of some other points:

Steph and Bobby Jon got probably too much attention in the “confessional” videos.

The players are getting to be way too self-aware and referencing past seasons too much.

I will give kudos though because I have no idea how Survivor keeps finding so many new twists too add!

So, Nintendo unveiled the Nintendo Revolution controller.

Need I really say anything?

Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. Is it just me, or has filing for this become like a fashion accessory? I can remember when this was a big deal, but it seems now it’s like an every day occurance.

So remember kids, if you get bored, file for chapter 11!

As I have said many, many times before, I adore Skype. Matter of fact, I would go so far as to say I am in love with it. Today though, I learned that others had eyes for my lover, but they were buying them. This was done by none other than eBay.

eBay came rolling in with a large bankroll and swept up “my girl”. You can read all the gory details in this press release. eBay is paying them $1.3 billion dollars in cash, and another $1.3 billion in stock options for a total of $2.6 billion upfront. Not mentioned in the release, but I found in this news story that eBay will pay another $1.5 billion if Skype reaches it’s projected sales goals.

Ok, here’s what I don’t get. Skype’s sales figures show they will do $60 million this year, and projections of $200 million for 2006. How in the world does a company doing that amount warrant a purchasing price so out of line with it’s projections? Is there some thing I am missing here? eBay does say they will use the Skype software to bring buyers and sellers closer together, and possibly charge sellers a fee for a successful contact. Still, doesn’t seem worth the value to me. If they had a crazy idea about charging for Skype-to-Skype calls, Google Talk and Yahoo Instant Messenger have pretty much killed that by also adding free VoIP to their systems.

This will be interesting to watch, because for now, I think eBay WAY over paid

Ofcom (Office of Communications), an independent regulatory group in the UK (Wikipedia entry here), has announced that MakePovertyHistory.org can no longer advertise on British television or radio due to being too political. (News story here)

For those of you unfamiliar with the MakePovertyHistory (MPH) movement, it is a lobbying group asking for all the members of the G8 to rethink their policies towards the third world countries and to, hopefully, bring down their debts so that they can concentrate more on improving their countries than paying back debt to countires such as the USA and the UK. MPH does not support any one political party over another. It supports the concept of fairness to all countries. I was not aware that morality was not considered a political movement, but it seems that Ofcom thinks so.

From the above mentioned article, I love this bit:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his finance minister Gordon Brown have both praised Make Poverty History as having been the deciding factor in convincing the G8 in June this year to agree to write off more than $40 billion worth of debts.

So, an orginization that is doing good, having a positive effect on the world, and it is deemed as being too political….I am sorry, but does this puzzle anyone else? I know I have complained about stupid wristbands before, but I think the time has come to actually buy one. If for no other reason than to thumb your nose at stupid people making silly decesions.