"So I lost. 'Celebrity Apprentice.' Big Deal. What they don't know is that they are on a show called 'Charlie Sheen' and they all lost."

"Cracked-Out Shark-Jumping Awesome"... or not?

After giving the opening episode an A and saying "This Show Is Going To Be Cracked-Out Shark-Jumping Awesome," Jacob at Television Without Pity gives the second episode an F and says "Well, that was a new low... the worst ***damn show on television." I TiVo'd but didn't watch it. My TV time yesterday was limited to "Meet the Press" and an episode of an ancient season of "Survivor." I was going to decide whether to watch the new "Apprentice" episode based on Jacob's grade, and F is so bad you just have to look, right? I'm not quite sure what's going on with Jacob's wild mood swings, but it is clear that he's very deeply offended by the Playboy Mansion. And somehow juxtaposition with Hugh Hefner makes Donald Trump seem more loathsome than usual.

"I thought is was important for me to get up on that rock and supervise."

We hear Martin saying that, in voice-over on "The Apprentice," right after Frank says, everyone but Martin dug in and helped. Earlier, introducing himself, Martin offered to give Donald Trump a hug if he'd "let him go to the bathroom." Eee-yikes! To be fair, Trump had, a moment before, given a hug to another contestant, a woman who was a three time Olympian, with a gold, silver, and bronze medal. But, still... Martin... what are you thinking? Does it ever work on "The Apprentice" to play the fool? But at this point -- yeah, I guess I'm simulblogging -- Frank is way more annoying than Martin. He thinks he's showing leadership, but he's bossing everyone around so much that he causes Trump to lean out the window of his mansion and tell him to pipe down. Trump, you should know, has a mansion that overlooks the building that houses the Apprenti.....

Teams are chosen by the two leaders who emerged in the first segment (which was about erecting a tent). The leaders are the incredibly annoying Frank and the not-yet-really -noticed Heidi. Now, they're sent out to wash cars, and Heidi starts to gel as a character. She says: "We're here in West Hollywood, which is a homosexual area... so we hired two guys to stand on the street and hold signs...." The signs look like hell. Who would trust them to do a deluxe "hand wash" on their car?....

"You're going to have to wash your teeth and face and whatever the hell you do. I have no idea nor do I give a damn, okay? Whatever you do, it's going to be outside," says Trump as he lets the losing team know they have to live in a tent until they win....

We see the winners going to dinner with Trump at Spago, and the food looks less than glorious. Meanwhile, the losers are camping out and eating together outdoors overlooking LA. It's beautiful, and they have each other. Why don't they revel? They're acting like it's "Survivor." But they're in LA! And they've got a spectacular view. And they don't have that gasbag Trump interrogating them. I know it's all in the editing, but I despise them for not loving life.

Martin figures out that he needs to direct all the negativity at Frank. Martin -- who's a lawyer and a professor -- does a damned good job of identifying one bad thing about Frank and making it stick in everyone's head. (It's the dreaded failure to establish a "price point.")...

"Are you a lawyer?" "I am an attorney, sir." Mmmm... doesn't that make you want Mr. Attorney to go home? This is a lengthy boardroom struggle, with Frank fighting desperately for his life, and Martin -- Mr. Attorney-- sitting back and hoping Frank will implode. Much as I found Frank annoying as hell in the first half hour (of this 2 hour show), I'm rooting for Frank now.

And Frank wins! The man on the rock goes home.

ADDED: Tung Yin is following the new season. Jacob at TWOP is recapping but not happy.

Should I have watched "The Apprentice"?

Sorry. I forgot to watch TV last night. I've got it on the TiVo. Was it any good? The TWOP forum is not encouraging. I knew the tent twist from seeing Trump on Letterman... Eh. Do I need a new (season of an old) reality show? Well, I like to have 2 reality shows to follow. That's about all I can take, but I also like it. "American Idol" is about to re-start. Think I'm going to blog that again this year? Hmmm, I wonder! Currently, I'm still hanging onto "Top Chef." It's pretty good. I was watching "Survivor" and really enjoying it, to the point where, even before it ended, I bought the DVD of the Pearl Islands season. I've now consumed that and -- oh, help me -- bought two more old seasons! What a great show! All that suffering. By comparison, Trump now puts his losers in tents... in LA... Plus, he yells at them a lot... That hurts a little.

About those pop culture law school exam fact patterns.

I'm always basing my Civil Procedure II exam on some pop culture thing. CivPro2 here at UW covers jurisdiction and related topics, and I always need a fact pattern -- it doesn't matter what the substantive law is -- that involves a lot of people and places so I can generate some questions about who can join together in a lawsuit and where they can bring the suit and so forth.

In any given year, students could take bets on what pop culture phenomenon will turn up on the exam. If they'd done it this year, it would have been terribly easy to guess. It's "Borat." I changed the name, but basically it's a comedian traveling across the country provoking encounters... and sowing the seeds of lawsuits. It never matters whether the claims are sound or not. (I hope they're not!) I've simply got to create a controversy that has a somewhat complicated mix of people and places.

Does it add some fun to exam-taking, or is it annoying? I hope that, afterwards, it doesn't spoil the fun of the movie for the students. Ack! That was my Civil Procedure exam! I don't mean to do that.

Here's a list of a few things I've used for CivPro2 exams in the past: "The Apprentice," "The Blair Witch Project," "America's Funniest Home Videos," the Beach Boys' legal problems with Eugene Landy, "Supersize Me," "The Real World," the Cat in the Hat balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, paparazzi and the deaths of Princess Diana and Sonny Bono, stage diving at the Rave, the U.S. News law school rankings.

Trump fired Carolyn Kepcher!

Oh no!

"She became a prima donna," said one insider. "Being on 'The Apprentice' went to her head. She was no longer focused on business. She was giving speeches for $25,000 and doing endorsements."...

"George has been around a long time. He's seen everything. He didn't get excited even when women on the street started screaming when they saw him on his way to work," said one source. "But Carolyn took it very seriously. She thought she was a freaking movie star."...

"Trump told her what she had to do was take some time off and spend it with her family, and then get another job," said an insider. "They have a great relationship."

Well, really, why should Carolyn have to be bothered with running Trump National Golf Club? That was the job you know. And she may not be a freaking movie star, but she's a freaking TV star. On the other hand, how many tough blondes does Trump need on the show? He's got Ivanka, and much as we "Apprentice" fans love Carolyn, we also love Ivanka.

Meanwhile, Carolyn has her book, "Carolyn 101: Business Lessons from 'The Apprentice's' Straight Shooter," and her speaking tours, and plenty of money. It's just beneath her to be running a golf course. Though it is kind of embarrassing to get kicked off the show. I've got to think making room for Ivanka was part of it.

TV.

Is there anything good on? I kind of like to watch an hour or two of TV at night, but everything I was watching just ended. "American Idol," "The Apprentice," "Top Chef," "The Sopranos," "Big Love" -- all gone. I'm reduced to watching episodes of "I Shouldn't Be Alive" the TiVo dragged in weeks ago.

UPDATE: "So You Think You Can Dance?" is on. Shall we watch?

Sorry, I originally put this update on the next post by mistake.

There's one thing about So You Think You Can Dance?" that scares me off: Mary's teeth. I can't understand them. Are they plastic teeth that fit on over her real teeth? She seems to need to bite them together to keep them in place. And they are so huge. And so white.

Why don't they make a reality shows about teeth? "Top Teeth," "So You Think You Have Teeth?," "America's Scariest Teeth"....

Audible Althouse #53.

666! Don't be superstitious. How about a little wisdom? The question whether Althouse is the agent of Satan. She was for Taylor Hicks and Sean on "The Apprentice." And George W. Bush in the 2004 election! Reminiscing about sitting around watching the election returns sets off a secondary digression about Burger Chef, the defunct fast food restaurant where Althouse worked, long ago. How the Satanists are responding to 6/6/06. The man who yelled "God will save me, if he exists" as he crept into the lion's den (and his death). Naming the electric chair... and the lethal injection. Jim Morrison singing "Soft Parade." Architecture! Docents! Tattoos! Including a tattoo of a bathtub. You know, Jim Morrison died in a bathtub.

It's a new podcast. You can stream it right on your computer -- no iPod needed -- right here. But all the cool people subscribe on iTunes:

"I'm dying for me to shut up. I get on my own nerves, like, 'Please, not again. Please.'"

So says Sean Yazbeck, the winner of the recent "Apprentice" season, in an interview with TV Guide.

Here's the context:

TVGuide.com: I want to thank you and Tammy for bringing a hint of romance to what to date has been a surprisingly asexual reality series.

Sean: I have to say... I cringe every time I see myself go on about Tammy. [Laughs] I'm dying for me to shut up. I get on my own nerves, like, "Please, not again. Please."

Ha ha. We don't hear enough about what it's like for reality show contestants to watch their edited selves on TV. And really, wouldn't we all, watching a video of our own lives, get on our own nerves?

Speaking of things rarely heard, how about this question asked by TV Guide:

[C]an you discuss Aristotle's concept of "eudaimonia"...?

And they really mean it, and he really answers. And the answer makes you think: my God, why do I watch TV?

"The Apprentice" -- the finale!

Sean or Lee. Lee's young. Sean's in love. Oh, it's obvious! Sean is the most charismatic finalist they've ever had on the show. Lee is a cool guy, but Sean's an original. Who care's about the boring charity tasks they just did? We're looking at the big picture, the whole season. Come on! It's Sean, right?

UPDATE: And it's Sean! Who just said he's going to marry Tammy, by the way. The ultimate winner. He gets the job and the girl. And he's adorable.

"We're just gonna bury them so deep, you know?"

Says Lenny, the Russian, expressing crazy confidence in the team Lee chose for the final task on "The Apprentice." Meanwhile, Sean chose the perfect team: Tammy, Andrea, and Tarek. These do seem to be the three best. Plus, he's in love with Tammy. He wants to win, get married, get everything. He's adorable expressing his utter confusion at Lee's choices, and jokingly theorized that Lee has some genius plan. But what Lee did was go to Lenny. He's weirdly bonded to Lenny. (And the last thing Lenny did to Lee was to bring him into The Boardroom -- nonsensically -- after Lee had supported and stood by him.) What strange mind control does Lenny have over Lee? Then Lee just sits at Lenny's knee and takes advice about who the other team members should be, completely buying the notion that what counts is how sincerely and passionately the players want Lee to win. Lenny says Roxanne and Pepi. Roxanne was Lee's opponent in the last round, and doesn't seem likely to care much about seeing him win. And the other one, Pepi, is a guy who was such an unsuccessful player -- eliminated in Round 2 -- that after Lee announces his team and leaves The Boardroom, Trump is all Pepi?! Who's Pepi? Was he even on the show? Did I ever say "Pepi, you're fired?"... while Carolyn cackles hysterically.

Oh, I'm still laughing...

About the uniforms Roxanne and Allie cooked up on "The Apprentice." (Or should I say "The Apprentice does Project Runway.") And the snuggling in bed before the boardroom. And then the way the two women clawed each other to death in The Boardroom.

"I thought I was replacing The Donald."

"It was even discussed that I would be firing The Donald on the first show." That's how it sounds to be Martha Stewart explaining why your TV show just ... didn't ... succeed.

Here's how it sounds to be The Donald: "I think there was confusion between Martha's `Apprentice' and mine, and mine continues to do well and ... the other has struggled very severely. I think it probably hurt mine and I sort of predicted that it would."

So what's your theory about why Martha's show was never nearly as good as Donald's? Mine is that she always cared too much about her image (and the image of her company, Omnimedia). If you're going to be a bitch, be a bitch. You can't be a please-like-me female at the same time. That's icky. Trump lets himself be a truly weird buffoon (even as he makes a lot of sense a lot of the time). Stewart can't bear to play into her own bizarreness.

Second theory: Trump has Carolyn Kepcher. Everyone loves Carolyn. And Martha had that guy that wasn't quite George. She needed better sidekicks!

Third theory: Trump's show has fabulously dramatic photography, editing, and music. It's just mesmerizing! By comparison, Martha's show felt flat and bland. Did they just not give her as much money, or were the aesthetic choices like her interior decorating choices? Beige, beige, beige.

What do you think I'm not talking about?

Yesterday, in the comments to my post on "The Apprentice," one of my regular commenters raised -- in three long comments -- a subject he thought I should be addressing. That brought these sensible remarks from another reader:

[P]erhaps you're not familiar with the concept, but there's this thing called "etiquette". The way it works is, this is Ann's blog, and she writes about what she wants to write about. So that there is some organization, she might choose to - say - talk about a silly TV show in one thread, and talk about Supreme Court nominations and the law in another. This makes it easy for the rest of us to be able to read the things we like to read, while skipping the rest.

If you have a discussion topic you'd like to propose to Ann, there's this other thing called "e-mail" that you can use. It's handy - it lets you have a private conversation without the rest of the world listening in. For example, you could suggest that she write about something that you'd like her to write about.

I suppose it is possible that you are acquainted with both of these concepts, and are simply ignoring them because you have something which you feel is so important that it must reach the Internet at once. In that case, there is an admirably simple solution: you can get yourself what is called a "blog", and write about whatever topics you wish, and people who share your interests or who find your writing interesting may join you there.

It's really a very lovely set of concepts.

He's right! But it occurs to me that some readers don't want to reveal their email addresses to me, and I don't mind taking requests, though you can't expect me to address every topic. I can't explain every point of law you want explained, and there are some topics where I don't see myself adding any value. That doesn't mean I don't think they're important. It's an attitude I'm most likely to take about things that are especially important.

Anyway, I thought it might be a good idea to put up a post where it is on-topic to raise new topics. What do you wish I would blog about or blog more about -- or podcast about?

IN THE COMMENTS: My favorite suggestion so far is from SaysMeow:

I'm hoping for a compendium post on "The Althouse Man"--you keep tantalizing us with tidbits but don't give us the full-scale doodle. So far we've learned that:

He joyfully dons his Andy Warhol wig--
Yet he does not look like a Stooge (strange, I thought Moe's haircut was quite a lot like Andy's)--
His facial hair, if any, does NOT resemble the Creepy Guy from "Joy of Sex"--
He doesn't cry in public--
He does not wear shorts, no never--
He's pro-Hadley, anti-Baxendale...or is it the other way around?

But there's so much more we want to know!

Maybe all you readers could also help me out by reminding me of various "Althouse man" elements from bygone posts.

"The Apprentice."

Great episode tonight. I don't know why things like that still surprise me. Feel free to spoil in the comments. I have a new favorite character tonight after having a single favorite character since the first episode.

"Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event."

Jacob at Television Without Pity gives last night's episode "The Apprentice" an A+. It was rather good. (Spoiler alert.) Is Markus out of his mind? Who talks like that? Who thinks he's got something to say, even thinks he's articulate, and then meaninglessly jumps from one empty phrase to the next? It was so satisfying to see him so severely shredited. And the cab ride where he kept trying to explain himself until, it seemed, he too had gotten tired of hearing himself speak -- hilarious!

Jacob:

You'd think that Markus getting fired would be the best part. It isn't. The best part is in the Boardroom leading up to Markus's firing, where Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event and goes completely apeshit. And I mean to say that you have never seen this kind of behavior in your life. He first abruptly asks Clay if he's gay, acts stunned that Clay is gay, ascertains that Clay is therefore not attracted to women, clarifies that this Venn diagram excludes even women such as Alla, and then explains to us that this is why restaurants have menus: while Trump likes steak, other people like spaghetti.

Later, without even stopping to breathe almost, he: asks Adam straight up if he's a virgin (he is, but won't admit it), counsels him not to be afraid of sex because it is "not a big deal," posits that Adam will ten years from now be more "comfortable with sex," shares that sex has gotten him into "a lot of trouble" and cost him "a lot of money," discusses at length whether Adam is "soft" or "hard," and wraps up by telling Adam that there's "nothing like" sex, and that he should look forward to having it one day, in the creepiest, ickiest, most pervuncular way imaginable.

Ha, ha. I love the way the TWoP recaps bring all the memories of the show flooding back -- and even funnier. Ah, yes, Trump was exceedingly Trumpy last night. He should talk about sex more often!

We're still laughing about "The Apprentice."

Hilarious episode tonight. Pretty boring right up until the end, but the payoff was damned amusing.

Audible Althouse, #12.

Audible Althouse, it's a podcast about the last few days here on Althouse. Look out, it's long, nearly an hour. Topics: TimesSelect, underachieving boys, conservatives in academia, bad writing, gender-neutral writing, shrediting, "The Apprentice," Iraq, squirrels, deadlines, blogging, Amazon, eavesdropping, fortune cookies.

Coined word: shrediting.

Shrediting: shredding someone through editing, as typically seen in a reality TV show, where a film editor, to create a story line, selects clips from hours of footage to give a very negative impression of a person. See "The Apprentice," Season 4, Episode 4 (character: Toral). See also, "The Comeback" (a sitcom in which the central character is filming a reality show without realizing when she is unwittingly providing the material that will be used in the final edit to shred her).

"The Apprentice" -- oh, the irony!

Spoiler alert. How exquisitely amusing: the fall of Toral! The entire show was edited around the misdeeds of the Wharton School graduate who knew she was so much better than everyone else and had fixed on the strategy of lying low, doing nothing, while the other women -- those inferior women -- "stepped up to the plate" (the inevitable metaphor) and made their inferiority obvious. Last week, Toral had only the work of sitting on a sofa, showing seniors how cool and easy-to-use a nice, new TV was, and she could not operate the remote control. But Rebecca, who was awed by the great name of Wharton, did not finger Toral for the final boardroom showdown. As a result, Rebecca nearly went down, and Toral survived to the next week. But Trump spared Rebecca. He admired her loyalty and said she was "either going to be great or a disaster." And this week, when Rebecca reluctantly admitted that she would now fire Toral, Trump fired Toral on the spot, preempting the usual identification of three potential victims for a separate boardroom ordeal.

How funny it was seeing Toral shirk everything. The women (other than Rebecca) plotted to make Toral's outrageous passivity obvious, and they insisted that she be the one who wears the mascot suit the team had designed for Dairy Queen. But Toral said that was not for her. Oh, it was fine for the other girls to debase themselves, but you need to understand that she is a prestigious businesswoman, and the wearing of mascot suits is just not something she feels comfortable with. After the team loses, Toral reframes her argument for why she did not want to wear the mascot suit: it's against her religion. Did you ever say that before, Toral? Trump asks. "I believe I did," she says. "Believe"? All the other women cry, no you did not! "Believe"? Trump snaps that she said "believe" because she did not say it before and she knew it. Hah! So you wanted people to give special respect to religious belief -- and the fact is the team would have yielded if she had played the religion card -- but you used the word "believe" in a way that made it synonymous with lying. Oh, the irony!

And the further, hilarious irony is that in her attempt to stay aloof and to insist that everyone else be debased before her, Toral set herself up for one of the most humiliating defeats we've ever seen on the show. Riding away in the taxicab, Toral speaks to the camera and tells us she's glad to be rid of those people who are so beneath her -- her, a Wharton graduate, a businesswoman who must maintain an aura of respect around her. She's in a taxicab reveling in her superiority, and we're at home watching her, laughing at her foolish conceit and loving her debasement.