It's Celebrity Apprentice Time!

I know I've posted about this last season (which really had some truly egregious behaviour in it) and the prior season (only one or two posts) but it is hard to post at length about this show. The show certainly has length - two hours each episode - but there is a lot of infighting and backbiting. In between shots of each individual griping about this or that person, there were shots of the "teams" trying to run this or that business.

I don't know anyone who's said that running a business is easy. And I would laugh at the person who would. It is a lot of work to run that kind of thing, and the wiring your brain needs... well, I think highly of those people who can do this. But all these "stars" swagger into Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice absolutely sure that he or she can run a business.

Two most common traits: bad delegation/no delegation and not understanding how to use different personality types. Once in a great while the right person steps up, but mostly these famous people all have some major flaw that inevitably trips them. Or inserts both size eights into their mouths.

I am far from perfect, but then, I will never attempt to make my own business or run one. I have a running list of imperfections and that is a job I could only fail. And I'd hate it to boot.

Back to this season. There are some really interesting characters in this pool of famous and infamous people who at some point or another had a moment in the limelight. Me being me, I only know some of them, but I'm not crazy about too many of them... known or not. Here's the roster:

Sinbad, stand-up comedian
Cyndi Lauper, music/singer
Darryl Strawberry, baseball athlete
Rod Balgojevich, ex Illinois governor
Sharon Osbourne, wife of Ozzy Osbourne (I don't know what else she is noted for)
Bill Goldberg, wrestler
Maria Kanellis, wrestler
Curtis Stone, chef
Summer Sanders, Olympic gold medalist
Holly Peete Robinson, actress
Bret Michaels, front man for Poison
Carol Liefer, comedienne
Selita Ebanks
Michael Johnson, athlete

I wasn't excited one way or the other about most of them, but I do like Cyndi Lauper (amazingly enough, I saw her in concert when I was 17, threw my hat to her and in an interview on the telly, saw that hat on! Kinda neat, assuming it was the same hat), and I like Bret Michaels. Poison is a good group. I was appalled at the inclusion of Rob Blagojevich, the lying, cheating, embezzling rat that was Illinois' former governor. And he is still an idiot. He gives those typical politician's circular answers that mean nothing, and he insists he was framed. Yikes.

On the first episode, the teams (Rock Solid for the men and Tenacity for the women) had to each run a diner. It was interesting to watch. I bet all of those people walked away with a new appreciation for the staff of restaurants (possibly the chef knew what this would be like, depending on past experience). Cyndi was not a good server, but she put her heart and soul into it. The men were slow starters and had a bad thing going at first, with prices like $250 for a burger. Yes, it is for charity but there is a huge amount of the population that is not running around with $250 for a sandwich!

Surprisingly, in the end, the men won - I forget what crazy amount of money it was but some of them called in every favour they could from other rich and famous people. That is the idea, and they raised a boatload of money for the American Diabetes group, so they were exempt from having to return to the board room.

Cyndi was the team leader and not an inspiring one, but the weakest link there was Carol Leifer, who obviously did not want to be a server, busser, etc. I wasn't unhappy with that decision. It will be interesting to see how far Cyndi will go.

Well, it is too late already, so I will write anon about Episode 2.