Tim's Apprentice Recaps

What the Hell is "Tim's Apprentice Recaps"?

2009-03-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

Good question. What we have here is a collection of two things:

1) My weekly recaps of my season of The Apprentice (for those whose memory has faded, it was the season with the tents, and I was the one who botched it by going for the girl). We filmed the show in the summer of 2006, and it aired in early 2007. After every episode aired, I'd send a recap to my friends and family, telling the whole story. Here they are.

2) My Celebrity Apprentice recaps. The next season of The Apprentice after mine was the first Celebrity Apprentice. I wrote weekly recaps for a website called Inside Pulse. Those are down below.

If you'd like to view the actual episodes along with the recaps, they are all here. The Apprentice LA (my season) is "Season 6" and Celebrity Apprentice is "Season 7."

And click here for my blog.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 1

2009-03-08T18:51:00.001-07:00

Alright, here we go with the recaps. A few notes:

-Each recap was written in the week after that episode aired.

-Everything in a given recap is what my thoughts were at the time that episode was filmed, not now. Basically, I tried to duplicate what would have been my journal at the time if I had written a journal at the time. And this was part of my purpose in writing-- in addition to providing people I know with recaps, they will stand as my journal of the experience. For this reason, I provide a lot of detail. [translation: they're long.]

And without further ado, recap #1--
_____________________________________________________

so i have an immense amount of things to say, and i can't really figure out how to organize them. i'm gonna try going somewhat chronologically, we'll see how that goes. and screw capitals-- this is going to be way too long an email to deal with the shift key.

also, i'll write a lot about what i was thinking at the time, but nothing about the future. i will do my best not to foreshadow anything, and i'll compartmentalize my opinions to what my opinions were up to the end of the episode.

so-- backing up to a few days before the filming began. we all arrived, one by one, at a hotel/corporate housing place on a sunday, may 28. i was under the impression that the show was starting that day, but as it turned out, the filming wouldn't begin until friday (as i was told upon arrival). this was upsetting because i was very anxious to stop thinking about it and start doing it, and couldn't believe i had to wait another week. so i was brought to the room i'd be staying in for the next 5 days and told to meet in the conference room in the main building at 6pm that night.

so at 6 i head to the conference room and see 4 or 5 people sitting there. i recognized some of them from the finals of the application process, but this was the first time i saw who any of the fellow cast members were. one by one the rest trickled in. i made eye contact with a few who i remembered from the debates of the finals, and shared a knowing glance/silent mutual congratulations with surya, derek, and marisa.

the thing was, we were constantly supervised and strictly forbidden from any form of interaction whatsoever with any of the other cast members, and that would be the case until the filming began five days later. so we're all sitting in the conference room around a huge table, kind of eyeing each other. really tense but also very exciting. no one was saying anything, and i remember one of the casting directors (the people who cast the show are the same people who supervised this pre-week) saying to us, "this is just one of what will be many awkward silences this week." the reason for this is that they want all the initial impressions to be captured during the first day of the filming. it would ruin the show if it started and people were already friends with each other.

some initial thoughts on the cast were:
-i can't believe carey, james, and aaron had made the show (i knew more about the guys than the girls because our debates at the finals were against our own gender).
-i was extremely unhappy to see frank there
-i was extremely unhappy to see martin there (i completely loathed him at the finals)
-i was pleasantly surprised at how many attractive girls there were
-this was the first time i had seen angela, and realized immediately from looking at her that she had to be the olympian

finally jay bienstock, the executive producer, came in the room and congratulated us and he and a few other producers explained a bit about the process and a bunch of the ground rules for once the filming began, and warned us about being a pain in the ass to the producers like omarosa, ivana, and a few other former cast members apparently had been.

we were given a schedule of the week, which consisted of half a dozen photo and video shoots. every photo and video currently on yahoo and nbc.com, as well as the show's opening credits and the tv commercials, came from shoots we did this week.

my main focus during the week was to sleep. but i always have a hard time falling asleep before midnight, and most of the days we had to meet in the lobby in suits at 5:45am or some ungodly hour in the morning. so by the time thursday rolled around, i was underslept. like an idiot.

thursday we were told that we had to be in the lobby with our bags, in suits and "camera ready", by 4:30am sharp the next morning. thursday night i got into bed at 8 and between the excitement and anxiety and everything else i didn't fall asleep until after 1am, and my alarm went off 2 hours later. not an ideal way to start.

so i did about 150 jumping jacks in my room trying to wake myself up, and headed to the lobby. we were assigned one of the four lexus suv's and sat in there driving around for over an hour while they got all the "us in the lexus's driving to the mansion" shots.

finally, we got out of the suv's at the huge mansion on mulholland drive where we'd be staying. as we got out, mark burnett came over and said hi to us. cool guy. he told us that in his mind this is the most grueling reality show. he compared it to survivor and said that on survivor nothing happens when the sun goes down so people sleep a ton, and on the apprentice people sleep so little that deep exhaustion sets in quickly, and the stress is overwhelming. good to hear. he also said, "you guys will be feeling the heat of the fire tonight." of course, it wasn't until i was sitting in the fucking campsite next to the fire 12 hours later that i understood his little comment. that clever fuck.

after burnett left, we were brought up into the driveway and stood there in a line (this is what you saw when we introduced ourselves to trump). but here's the thing-- we hadn't seen a camera yet, and suddenly, stepping into the driveway, there were no less than forty cameras lined up in front of us. short ones, tall ones, cameras on the roof, and a moving camera on a huge crane. it was positively terrifying. there were 2 or 3 cameras on each of our faces. and we stood there, deers in headlights, for 45 minutes until trump's limo pulled up.

he walked into the driveway and asked us all to introduce ourselves. this was really frightening, seriously-- because this was the first time any of us had heard the others speak, and the first time we were in front of the cameras, and i knew that if i fucked up my sentence here it's something trump would call me out on. high stress.

so then martin made his infamous bathroom comment. in his defense, none of us had been able to go to the bathroom since we got to the lobby at 4:30 that morning, about 5 hours earlier, and i felt his pain. but mainly, it was a bad joke. he was trying to be witty and it's one of those things where if trump laughs, everyone else would laugh too and martin's a hero, and if trump criticizes it, everyone rolls their eyes and martin's the worst. unfortunately for martin, trump wasn't amused. terrible start.

so trump told us to go set up a tent. we all went into the back, and it was complete and immediate chaos. this was the first time we had ever interacted, and everyone started yelling things and everyone was trying to lead. i was in a state of shock mostly-- i was looking around, the whole thing was unbelievably surreal, and i just kept thinking, "god i wish i could tell my friends what was happening right now." it was 100 degrees, there were cameras everywhere, i was on 2 hours of sleep, and everyone was yelling. and then it hit me that trump was probably going to fire someone right after this for dramatic effect based on everyone's performance, and it suddenly became stressful as hell. it was my first taste of the bizarre, unique combination of intense stress and unheard of surreality.

so it finished, and we went into the boardroom. another surreal blast-- i've watched this show religiously for the past few seasons, and i've sat on my couch for dozens of hours watching a bunch of douchebags in a boardroom with trump, and suddenly, i was watching another one except I WAS THERE. try to imagine how weird that is.

so heidi and fat loud frank pick teams. here was what i wanted at the time:

-to be on a team with derek, surya, nicole, marisa, and heidi
-to not be on a team with frank or martin

seriously. so you can imagine i was less than please when almost everything went the other way (my team is frank, martin, aaron, james, carey, nicole, stephanie, and michelle). after the teams were picked, i remember thinking that i was on the loser team, fully. the only person who i was happy to be on a team with was nicole, who seemed like a winner to me. and no, i'm not just saying that now.

so we were assigned our task and we all piled into the 180 degree van and headed to the carwash. people started throwing out ideas and strategies and it was ridiculously intense and i didn't even know anyone's name. as weird as the tent and boardroom were, this was weirder. again, i've watched dozens of apprentice tasks, from my couch. suddenly, there were all these people frantically discussing carwash strategies, and in my exhaustion, i honestly went back and forth between thinking, "oh, i'm watching the apprentice. i wonder what this team will come up with" and then thinking, "OH MY GOD I'M INSIDE THE TV I'M IN THE VAN I'M ON THE SHOW HOLY FUCKING SHIT." far and away the most surreal experience of my life. (not that different from being addicted to Lost for years and suddenly being on the island with jack, lock, and the others). this is the shit the camera can't capture.

the other thing that's so odd, is that i wasn't sure what it really was-- it's certainly not real life, but it felt way too important to be a game, and it felt nothing like a tv show. it was just this bizarre, super-intense mission i was on with these weird strangers and there were cameras everywhere. and with a serious element of fear-- getting fired first is a huge embarrassment, and someone had to be the first. all in all, i had never experienced anything remotely like it.

so we got to the carwash, and the editing was pretty accurate. frank was incredibly hyper. we had exactly 3.5 hours until the task was over, and he was acting like we had 15 minutes. we should have had a 5-10 minute group discussion. but of course, as surreal as it all was for me, frank was the project manager, which must have been even more terrifying, so it's hard to criticize him too much.

the rest is pretty accurate. i ended up being the pseudo-leader with frank gone, and james and i sold well, while martin was lackluster and without the charisma and energy needed to “upsell” someone to a $35 wax who came with the intention of buying a $10 carwash. i don't know much about what the girls were doing on the street, except that stef threw up a few times apparently from dehydration (speaking of which, it was literally 100 degrees and we were running around sweating in the sun for 3.5 hours and none of us had a sip of water the whole time).

the car wash was the first time i was actually having fun. the stress wore off once i got a bit more used to the cameras, and realized that i was selling the shit out of the cars and wasn't in danger of getting fired, and i found myself much less intimidated by the people, and the cameras, and the whole thing than i had been at the beginning of the day.

i also thought we won. of course, they made it look like a landslide because they want it to look like a clear-cut winner and loser, but we lost by $100 ($2,300 to $2,400). it was neck and neck. we did have a low volume of cars, but james and i both sold a handful of $100 details, which cost as much as 10 carwashes each.

so we go back, find out we lose, and head to the backyard. i wasn't that upset about this. the camping seemed kind of fun. granted, the showers were ice cold, we had to sleep on the ground using a sweatshirt as a pillow (and the sprinklers assured that none of us slept more than 4 hours), and the food sucked, but it was kind of fun to me. we all plopped down in the fold out chairs, drank beers, and started to get to know each other. of course, in the small time the editors have they show mainly the fighting and the adversity, but 95% of the time in the backyard during the course of that episode was pleasant and fun. they had to make us look miserable to properly contrast us with the winning team in the house, but we had a good time (although we were all legitimately upset to have lost).

we also had a few productive discussions about everyone's strengths and weaknesses and some general strategies for marketing, sales, and delegation in the future. there was also a discussion about who would be the next project manager. no one besides nicole showed any interest in the job. i was not at all eager to take the lead at that time-- i actually felt like i could lead that group well, but knew that it would put me in a serious danger of being fired second, and why take that risk so early. my tentative plan was to step up task 4 or 5.

eventually, day 1 ended. (remember, i had woken up that morning alone in my hotel room. long fucking day.)

my new thoughts by the end of day 1:
-i had a total turnaround on martin. he was witty as hell, incredibly smart, interesting, and great guy to sit around with. he has 2 kids and loves them more than anything, and is just a genuinely good guy.
-i was completely smitten by nicole.
-stefanie didn't seem like quite the bitchy old hag i had thought she was prior to the filming. She actually seemed perfectly friendly, but she still made me uneasy and i wasn’t sure i really trusted her.
-i had turned around on aaron, and now really liked him. just a genuinely nice, friendly guy.
-frank had gone from a bit absurd and a bit intimidating, to completely absurd, kind of endearing, a little annoying, and not intimidating in the least.

anyway. the next morning, after tossing and turning the whole night, i came out of the tent and did a faceplant. of course, heated arguments were omitted from the episode. witty comments, omitted. people throwing up at the carwash, omitted. but the faceplant—the faceplant makes the cut. i remember emerging from the ground and seeing a camera guy 2 feet away, and thinking, "well that's great."

so the next day, we all had long (3-4 hour) interviews, which provide the show's narrative (i'll explain more about the interviews and schedule in the next recap since this one is already about 30 pages). that night, i was sitting and chatting with nicole and frank when i decided that if i was going to throw frank under the bus in the boardroom (which i intended to do), i wanted to tell him now and not surprise him then.

here's the awkward thing-- everyone was on such polite and good terms because it was the first task, and frank and i had been buddies all day, and yet the whole time i know that i'm going to tell trump that frank should be fired the next day.

anyway, this is was the first time anyone mentioned the boardroom, and it was a heated argument. they showed about 30 seconds but it went on for over an hour, with everyone on both teams listening (although i didn't learn that the other team was eavesdropping until i saw it in the episode). basically, i had about 4 good arguments against frank and he kept getting angrier and angrier and i remained completely calm, which in turn made him even angrier.

why frank? it was obviously him or martin, and i really liked martin, and frank was loud and annoying, and seemed like he'd be a complete distraction in future tasks-- and in the long run, if your team wins more than not you'll last longer and have more fun while you're there. you really don't want to be on the losing team. and, the idea of getting frank riled up seemed kind of fun.

so i brought it up, and we went back and forth for about an hour, and it ended with him asking me to spend time thinking about it and at least remain open-minded about who i'd say should be fired, and i agreed that i would. the next day he asked me if i had thought about it and i said yes, and he asked if i had changed my mind and i said no. it was awkward.

side story: somewhere in the middle of all of this we named our team "Arrow Corp" (michelle’s idea—other ideas were everest, angel, and blue motion. thankfully, arrow won out). we were told to come up with a sign and present it to trump. we all came up with ideas for the design, and the team chose mine and i sketched it out. the team loved it. then trump came to the backyard to check it out (with regis philbin, randomly-- who looks 10 years older in person), and said he liked the name but the sign (which was all me) was just "okay." awkward.

so, the afternoon of day 3, the producer pops by and tells us that we have to be dressed and ready for the boardroom in 2 hours. gulp. i felt completely safe and i was terrified, so i can't even imagine what frank and martin were going through. so we headed to the boardroom with our bags (we all had to pack for a night's worth-- the loser takes the bag with him and heads to the same hotel we were at prior to filming, and comes back the next day, when everyone is out on task, to get the rest of his stuff. since no one can unpack when you're living outside anyway, this part was not difficult).

so we sat down in the boardroom (assigned seats-- one of the only things that's staged), and ivanka and heidi are sitting there. weird seeing heidi sitting there. trump comes in, and suddenly, i'm back in "oh, i'm watching the apprentice-- i hope it's a good boardroom OH MY GOD I'M INSIDE THE TV I'M SITTING IN THE BOARDROOM" mode, and the adrenaline is pumping. the first thing i noticed was that in her role, heidi had elected to be a bitch. interesting tactic, and one that none of us had expected. there was no precedent whatsoever for how the winning PM acts in the boardroom. Trump: "heidi, what have you heard about this team?" Heidi: "i heard they didn't win." (later that night, back in the campsite, nicole went on a fuming rant about how much she fucking hated heidi after her smug bitchy performance in the boardroom-- good times).

so it gets going-- i'm basically thinking this: i have about 12 rock-solid arguments lined up against frank. i may use them, i may not. i'd like to see frank go for sure, but not enough to be adamantly active in this boardroom. i'll lay low, and if i get the opportunity or frank attacks me, i'll lay it on thick.

the first portion of the boardroom (the part with the whole team) went on for about 30 minutes. at one point trump asked me, "tim, how was your experience at harvard?" i replied that it was great. he asked, "is harvard better than wharton (wharton is his pride and joy)?" and i basically sat there and stared like a deer in headlights for 5 seconds until he said, "good answer."

also, heidi at one point said "could have went" in a sentence (which ended up on the air). after 10 seconds of talking trump said, "hold on-- i'm sorry-- could have GONE" and then said, "you know what? heidi, you're fired." everyone's heart stopped, and then he said, "just kidding." at another point, frank made some glaring grammatical error, and trump corrected him. i later asked a producer about that and assumed that this happened a lot but just never made the air, and the producer said that trump has never had to correct anyone's grammar before on the show, and was surprised that he didn't fire frank on the spot for it.

anyway, frank calls me and martin back into the boardroom. this was no surprise-- i led the whole charge against frank, and there was no one else he could have taken. so we go outside on the couch and wait. we're out there for about 20 minutes. i'm thinking that i'll keep quiet and the instant frank attacks me i'll get into it with him.

we get called back in and frank does attack me, albeit lightly. i have so many things to say-- he attacked me as the "sales PM" after i only assumed that role on my own after he left. second, i raised frank's shitty pricepoint to a much higher one which worked well. third, i sold extremely well. fourth, sales was not the problem-- we were sitting there half the time with no cars to sell to because the marketing wasn't working. fifth, we had $1000 seed money given to us (every task has a different amount of allotted seed money, the remainder of which you hand over at the end-- it does not factor into the sales totals), and we used $72 of it. frank had all the money with him the whole time and could have very easily used it somehow-- it could be as simple as handing 5 strangers $200 each to make signs and market. sixth, frank was gone for over half the task, getting flyers we didn't end up using. (incidentally, you may not want to hear me vent and tell my side of the story in every situation. well too bad. that's what you're all here for-- to hear me vent and be bitter and tell my side of the story.)

in the end, frank probably should have been fired, but then again, PM on the first day is a tough spot, and trump appreciated his simplicity and sheer sincerity and found him endearing. frank got very lucky that someone else stood out as a weak link-- if martin had sold well, frank would have had no outs and would have absolutely been fired.

so then trump lets me leave and i head back to the tents. i walk into the backyard and they're all standing there waiting and they see me and scream "oh my god he fired both of them?!!" and i explain that no, they were still going. they demanded that i tell them everything that was happening in there and my explanation was, "basically frank is kneeling on the table crying," which as you've seen was not much of a stretch.

so they handed me a beer and we all hugged, and we stood around for about 45 minutes waiting for either frank or martin (or possibly neither) to emerge. the other team was on the other side of the hedge anxiously trying to get the scoop too.

and finally, frank and his big fat head came around the corner.

additional thoughts:

-i got ridiculously sunburned at the carwash, hence my red boardroom nose. fuck off.

-watching the boardroom yesterday, i rewound and watched frank's reaction to martin being fired about 40 times, and was laughing uncontrollably. seriously-- if you have it tivo'd, go do this now.

-poor martin. he was so upset when he was fired and so surprised. and he of course was crucified by the editing, but everyone in the cast would tell you he's a great guy. although of everyone, he'd probably take being first fired the best-- he's had a good sense of humor about it ever since.

see you next week—

The Apprentice LA - Episode 2

2009-03-08T18:50:00.002-07:00

In a way, this one is more overwhelming to type than last week’s, because so much happened and so little was shown. On the screen, Task 2 looked like it took a us few hours and that was that. In reality, from the time the phone rang telling us to meet Trump at the coast to the time the winner was announced spanned 36 hours, during which not one person on my team slept one minute.

Before I delve into the hideous Trina Turk experience, I want to explain some general things about how the filming works:

The show runs a strict routine (the first task was an exception because of all the initial stuff and because the task itself only lasted a few hours), and it goes something like this:

It’s a 3 day cycle. On day 1, the phone rings around 4:30am and the weird-looking blond secretary tells us to meet Trump some place or another by sometime between 6:30 and 8:00. We get ready, gather things we need for the task (pads of paper, pens, our two allotted cell phones and chargers, Red Bulls, granola bars, a calculator, a change of clothes, our two allotted laptops, etc.—during a task, sometimes someone buys a tool like a map or a phone book. Anything like this that we bought during a task is confiscated after a task. When a task begins we’re only allowed to possess the above listed materials that they gave both teams at the beginning. The idea is that every task is a clean slate and no earlier task can affect a later one. And of course, our wallets, cell phones, and other personal things are taken from us before any of the filming starts), and head to the van (each team has two vans, and a driver for each. When we get into the van, we have to let a camera guy get in first and close the door. Then we can open the door and get in (so he can get the shot of us getting into the van). When we stop we have to let him get out first and close the door, and then we can get out).

We head to the place where trump will announce the task, and often wait for up to an hour for him to get there (during waiting times like this the cast is on “lockdown” which means no one is allowed to say anything to anyone or interact with each other, since if something important happened like a fight, they couldn’t really show it because it would make no sense that we were standing around doing nothing at the time—these moments are pretty rare, and don’t really disrupt the flow of things very much). Trump arrives, and announces the task. Sometimes when something goes wrong with a camera or something he’ll joke around with us a little in the brief downtime, but for the most part our only interaction with him is what you see on camera.

Trump leaves, and we are given detailed “dossiers,” explaining the exact rules for the specific task and every limitation and allowance. The two teams move apart from each other and each gathers around and someone on the team reads it out loud. This, for me, is a time of half listening and half serious solo brainstorming. We’re also given a money purse with that task’s allotted cash inside (ranging from $1,000 to $50,000), and a spreadsheet on which the accountant (one team member is designated the hideous job of accountant, sometimes by volunteering and sometimes being assigned the job by the project manager) must write every purchase made and must have a numbered receipt to go with every item. This is taken extremely seriously by the show and as much as a dime off will warrant an investigation.

At that point—usually around 8am—the task begins. It generally ends about 30-35 hours later, sometime the next afternoon, and sleep during a task was rare. They purposely create tasks that would normally take a couple weeks, so that there is almost no chance for down time and no matter how hard you work through the night there will be stressful panicky moments the second day.

When the task ends, we’re brought somewhere for task resolution, when the winner is announced. After 35 hours, this is a big moment.

Then the teams head back to the house/backyard. That night (day 2 of the 3-day cycle), the winning team goes on their reward, and the losing team hangs around somberly.

The next day (day 3), are interviews, all day. The first people (order is random) have theirs at 8am, the last are in the early afternoon. These are the long interviews (more in a second).

That night is the boardroom.

Then the next morning, at 4:30am, the phone rings and the next task has begun.

So it’s a strict, 3-day routine, and as you may have noticed, there’s not much time for sleep (only between day 2 and 3 is a good night sleep possible, and often you’re woken up very early on day 3 for an interview).

To explain a bit about interviews—if you’ve noticed, about half of the show is a narrative by the cast, sometimes over footage of the task, and sometimes just showing the interview itself. These interviews come from two types of interview: OTF’s and formal interviews. In both cases, the producer stands right next to the camera and asks you questions, and you look at him when you talk—hence the cast members looking just off to the side in the interviews. OTF’s (on the fly’s) are short and happen during tasks. A producer will make eye contact with the cast member he wants to interview, and signal for you to subtly make your way out of the room with him. They’ll have a camera/lighting setup ready somewhere nearby. OTF’s can be as short as 30 seconds and as long as 45 minutes, generally in the 10 minute ballpark. They’ll sometimes ask questions about “how it’s going?” or “what’s happening?” or “what’s the plan right now?” and sometimes they’ll ask about something that just happened after an argument or something. OTF’s can be stressful. During the carwash, for example, I remember being OTF’ed for about 15 minutes, and the whole time I was freaking out because I was so immersed in selling carwashes and time was running out and I was standing there down the block answering questions.

Formal interviews are the ones that everyone on both teams does on day 3 of the 3-day cycle, the “off-day” (you know which one is which, because in OTF’s the clothes are the same and in the formal interviews the clothes are different). Each person is brought to some location in the city (sometimes an hour away) where the crew has a whole nice set up. The interview lasts for 3-4 hours, during which time they ask you process questions and opinion questions. Process questions suck—the question would be “what was the task” and you’d answer “For this, task, we had to design and manufacture six swimsuits for…” this part is boring and tedious. The other part—the opinion part—is fun. You basically vent and say your thoughts on everything that’s happening and everyone around you. This can be very enlightening and cathartic, almost like a therapy session. And it’s a nice small chunk of downtime in the midst of the chaos of the whole thing. The other purpose of these interviews is that it gives the people on the campsite time to talk about the people who are on interviews without them there to hear it. Especially in a situation like the backyard, it’s pretty tricky to talk about anything in privacy.

Also, a note on the crew. There are over 300 people on the crew for the show, and we’re strictly forbidden from interacting with any of them. It’s a very odd experience, having 300 random young people all around all the time and 18 of us and they all know everything about the 18 of us and we don’t know anything about them. We aren’t allowed to know their names or as much as exchange a smile. The reason is that if camera people start forming any kind of friendships with cast members, they might start being biased in their filming. A few weeks after returning to the real world I ran into 3 crew members outside a restaurant. I recognized them immediately as if they were close friends of mine—but I didn’t know their names or anything about them. They recognized me right away too. It was awkward because I’m pretty sure they’re still forbidden from talking to me, at least until the airing is finished.

Anyway, the crew is huge. There are a bunch of camera guys, each accompanied by a mic guy, there are people that deal with locations, people that deal with clearance (more on clearance another time), people that take photos, people that direct, people that produce, people that deal with tech stuff, people that deal with our microphones (except during sleep, every cast member wears a mike strapped around their waist at all times), etc. etc. etc.

The only ones we talk to are the producers. There are 8 total, 4 for each team. They work in pairs and alternate tasks. So we’d have 2 of them for a task, and then 2 others for the next, and then the first 2 again. It only takes a few days to get to know these 4 people really well. They are with the team 24/7, they take notes on everything that’s happening, they walkie talkie communicate with each other constantly, in a whisper. They do all our interviews. After it’s all over, they (with the help of editors) edit the whole show and create the finish product. In other words, these 8 (along with Jay Bienstock, the show’s Executive Producer) create, shape, and run the whole show. They also play a large part in the final casting decisions.

They’re also our disciplinarians. The producers and cast immediately slip into a camper – camp counselor relationship. We do a bunch of things that we’re not supposed to, and they constantly tell us to stop. Among such things are:

-talking, smiling, shaking heads, pumping fists, writing notes, or interacting in any way during a lockdown.
-talking about the cameras, crew, producers, former Apprentice seasons, other TV shows, the fact that this is a “TV show”, etc. since they can never use that footage.
-eating food that’s supposed to be strictly for the crew (I think I’m the only one who did this, and it was just once, and it did not go over well).
-being in illegal “groupings” (as a team, we can never split into more than two groups during a task, and no one is allowed to be alone—in other words, if we need a map, I can’t run and get it alone, I have to go with another team member, and during the time we’re gone, the rest of the team has to stay together. This is because if the team split into 3 or more groups there wouldn’t be enough camera people to follow them all)
-violating the dossier in any way. They are really strict about this. In general, I will give credit where credit is due—the producers maintain a high level integrity for the show. They are extremely careful to make sure that both teams have the same exact opportunities and advantages, and that no one breaks a rule.

One more thing that is important to touch on-- in general, after writing the above I’m reminded how incredibly fun this was. I may begin to confuse you with my opinions and descriptions of my emotions, because while on one hand this was the most intense, stressful, at times upsetting and always exhausting experience of my life, it was simultaneously immensely fun. Some people went there desperately wanting a job with Trump. Others went there with a very specific vision of how they wanted to act and be viewed. Because neither of these was true for me (the actual job was not what drove me at all, but rather my absurd competitiveness and desire to come out on top, and as for how I’d come off, I soon figured that I was just 100% going to be myself and that the viewers would have the pleasure of seeing the good, bad, and ugly—in a process so involved and intense and long, it’s not possible to act the whole time or hide parts of your personality—it’s just not), I really saw the whole thing as a big, long, hard, game that I was trying to win. And a two-part game—a team game, trying to win as a team, and a solo game, trying to beat your own team. It involved an element of strategy and manipulation (as the solo quest), and a lot of creativity, intelligence, cleverness, and common sense (as the team game). Basically a 300 person crew with millions of dollars to work with was there to facilitate a (potentially) 6-week elimination game, and you were being interviewed along the way about the experience, and as an extra twist, there were cameras everywhere filming this big weird game you’re playing for the summer and everyone you know would watch the game and write you emails about it. And it felt important, kind of like how an NFL player is, in the end, just playing a game, but it most certainly feels like an important game, that actually matters in the real world. This as like that. Now—looking at it that way, as an extremely competitive person not afraid of being embarrassed here and there, I’m having trouble thinking of anything that could possibly be more fun than that. And while there were times of otherworldly stress and through-the-roof misery, there were more times when I would think to myself, “how fucking fun is this?” Because for someone not thinking of it as a job interview or worried about a public image like a politician would, it was, more than anything, a spectacular recreational experience.

Okay, I’ll leave it at that. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people and I hope I answered some of them.

Anyway, episode 2. Like last week, I’ll restrict every thought and opinion to exactly what I was feeling at the time, so if I’m acting unconfident and nervous, it doesn’t mean I’m foreshadowing getting fired soon, of if I’m acting really confident that I’ll “be around” for awhile, it doesn’t mean that I will, only that at the time that’s how I felt. I’ll also get pretty detailed here and there regarding a situation or my thoughts, and this is largely because I stupidly did not keep a journal, so I’m trying to get back in the moment in my head and capture the experience at the time. So this will function as my long-term journal as well. In other words, concise is not something I’m aiming for.

So to back up to the final night of task 1 (day 3 overall)—after getting back to the backyard after being released from the boardroom, I saw more than one camera planted on my head, with the intent of capturing the “Tim is angrily brooding and shaking his head because his nemesis Frank returns from the boardroom unscathed” reaction (I’ve seen the show enough times to know that they wanted that shot). So I did everything I could not to give them that satisfaction. Make no mistake—seeing Frank’s big fat head turn the corner, I was not happy (would you be happy?), but I did my darndest to keep a smile on. I thought I had won this battle for a few minutes of the episode, until the scene came on where Frank was screaming in all of our faces “now you see the real Frankie Suits!” and they captured a shot of me looking down with the “I cannot fucking believe this guy is going to remain a large part of my life” face on. Touché, cameras. Touché.

And Frank’s rant was even more absurd and animated than they showed on camera. He was screaming things like, “I was just in front of the most powerful man in the world and he spared me—and I saw him say it! Right there, he said it, ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’” and this wasn’t an act—he was jam packed with adrenaline. As I sat there and watched him scream at full volume, I had two thoughts: 1) this guy isn’t going anywhere for awhile, and it doesn’t make much sense to continue to be in a tense clash with him, and 2) he’s not much of a threat, and if you look at it from a certain angle (a very narrow, specific angle), he’s kind of funny, like a loud, annoying, dog who’s fun to play fetch with. Maybe I can even learn to have fun with this dude.

Don’t forget, you spend 24/7 with these people, and you’re all going through this weird shit together, and you really want to win as a team—and even though they only show the tense team moments, 95% of the time the team is having fun together—so why would I want to have an adverse relationship with anyone, unless I absolutely had to? If you’re on a basketball team that lives together 24/7 and is competing in a fierce nation-wide tournament for weeks on end, wouldn’t you want to try to get along with your team members? So after his rant, I went over and we had a beer and I told him I had put the whole thing behind me, and he gave me a big hug and said, “dis is how we do it in Italy!” I sighed, and thought, “This is your life, Tim.” (Of course, when I walked over to Frank, about 8 cameras ran over to catch the moment—I was still not at all used to this. What a weird fucking thing.)

So we all chat for a few hours about what we could do better the next task, and who would be PM. As I mentioned, I was not interested in the job so early, and neither was anyone else mostly. Nicole said she’d do it, and Aaron expressed mild interest, and that’s it. So eventually everyone went to bed. Nicole and I stayed up talking for a couple hours after everyone went to bed. She told me that she was planning on being PM the next day. Part of me knew I should go to bed since we’d be woken up early (I didn’t know when at the time) and I knew I should get as much sleep as possible. But it’s hard to have any one-on-one interactions with anyone with the whole team around, and as I mentioned I was pretty enamored with Nicole at the time and was not about to head off to bed. Every emotion is heightened in such a surreal and intense experience—camaraderie, fear, paranoia, jealousy, joy, etc.—and likewise, the fact that I pretty immediately had a serious thing for one of the team members was taking up about 70% of my brain at the time. Anyway, finally one of the producers stepped over and suggested that it might be a good idea to get some sleep. This kind of “advice” was rare—which highlights just how dumb staying up late was. It was about 2am. At 4:30am the phone would ring and we’d be on a 35 hour task on national TV (not to mention that she was planning on being PM)—not exactly the ideal time to chat till the wee hours. So we headed off to bed—on the floor of the tent crunched in next to 4 other people. (Incidentally, you’ll notice that none of the bitching about camping comments you’ve seen have come from me—except for one about the sun beating down—because I don’t really mind camping)

So the phone rings at 4:30am. You know that feeling when your body needs and expects a really solid night sleep and your alarm cuts that very short and it hurts and your body is craving more sleep and you’d do anything to not have to get up? This was like that. The thing that got me going was adrenaline (this would turn out to be a theme—adrenaline is everything in this). So we got up and took freezing cold showers and got in our suits and headed to meet Trump.

On the van ride we were on lockdown. There was music on and “We Will Rock You” came on, and the team all made eye contact with each other and gave each other looks like, “let’s fucking do this” and I suddenly felt wide awake—I was bursting with fierce competitive energy. Then the producer told us to stop fucking interacting. (I know this all sounds a bit cheesy, but it was immensely competitive—we can either win, and take the fucking mansion, and go on a reward, and have champagne, and send the fucking stuck up Kinetic girls outside to the backyard, or we can lose again, and watch them cheer again when they find out, and head back outside like losers to talk about what went wrong. And trust me, if you saw the Kinetic girls scream and cheer after winning the carwash task, you’d want nothing more than to beat them.)

So we get there and Trump announces the bathing suit task. Not exactly my wheelhouse. He asks who will be our new PM and Nicole says she will (this is the first time this was official). We break apart, read the long dossier and Nicole gives a feisty inspirational speech. She tells me that she wants me to be the accountant and in charge of all logistics. The rest is easy—Carey is gay, Aaron is impressively metrosexual, and there’s three girls. So those 5 would be in charge of designing the bathing suits, and James, Frank, and I, all equally clueless, would to the other stuff.

As for my job—accountant is, as I mentioned, a ton of completely thankless work (all the tedious aspects as well as managing the team’s budget and being responsible for carrying around thousands of dollars worth of cash)—and logistics for this task involved making a 35 hour timeline, scheduling meetings with Trina Turk, a fashion consultant, the manufacturing facility, coordinating with our four models and getting them directions and transportation, getting food for the team and models, etc. So I had my plate full.

The first thing we did was head to meet with Trina Turk at one of her stores. I might as well have been on Jupiter walking around that store. Put it this way—straight guys who dress conservatively don’t tend to hang around the Trina Turk store. We made a list of questions and Stef was designated the main “talker” in our meeting with Trina. So the meeting happens, Trina looks Asian, I say nothing, and she leaves. And this brings me to the topic that I’ve gotten about 487 questions about in the last 4 days—the pink pants.

Yes, folks, I was on national TV sitting around wearing neon pink pants. I suppose that warrants an explanation—we all decided to wear Trina Turk garb to the fashion show, and the store offered to deck us out for the occasion. The girls at the store dressed up each one of us, and decided that hell, I looked like the kind of guy who should wear neon pink pants. Not only that, but they gave me an extremely petit, frilly, fringy, flowery, entirely feminine black t-shirt to wear. So I shrugged—“okay”—when in Rome…

So we split into two groups—the 5 design people headed downtown to buy our fabrics, and James, Frank and I—the “under the radar” group—headed to the sweatshop to set things up and make phone calls and begin researching pricepoints.

We got there and James immediately assumed the role of sitting at the computer researching something so it looks like he’s doing something. I started making lists and timelines and studying the dossier (another role of mine on this task—to study and interpret the dense dossier). Frank was in charge of existing.

Looking back, the three of us were—barring a price point or logistics or budget disaster—sitting pretty during this task. Just be competent, and you’re safe. At the time, though, we were all a bit paranoid about “not contributing”—you tend to have one eye on the task and one eye on the boardroom (although I found myself having one and half eyes on the task more often than not). Frank started obsessing over his idea to build a big display stand for the contest and wanted to go to the Home Depot. This never ended up happening. James monopolized the computer and assigned himself the job of making our “line sheet” (the table of contents/brochure that everyone at the fashion show would be given)—at one point James went to the bathroom and I sat down at the computer and checked out the line sheet, and he returned and was insistent that I not work on it and that I get up from his computer.

Anyway, the rest of the team finally returned from the fashion district. Upon return, I immediately noticed Aaron roll his eyes, and the whole group looked pissed off. Aaron sat next to me and I quietly said, “What’s up?” and he gave me a look and motioned over to Michelle. I got the same look from Nicole later. Apparently Michelle had been a real nightmare to work with. In all honesty, this amused me.

So the night wore on—now, designing swimsuits is harder than it looks, and manufacturing them was even harder. We had one sweatshop worker only, and she would be up all night sewing our suits. The dossier imposed a strict deadline of 7am to stop working on suits and the group started to panic in the middle of the night. At one point, Frank decided he was going to sew one of the suits himself. He was tremendously excited about this idea and showed intense enthusiasm—for about 10 minutes until he realized that he didn’t know how to use a sewing machine or sew a bathing suit.

So the wee hours hit—the three girls are hovering around a table working on their women’s design, and Carey and Aaron are working hard on the men's. About 3 in the morning, our first suit was done. Carey’s female bikini bottom. As you saw, he tried it on. The camera captured the scene pretty well—I was mostly perplexed. However, poor Carey got a bad deal in the editing. There was not much second guessing at the time. In an interview I remember saying, “I would never ever wear that suit, but then again, I would never ever shop at a Trina Turk store either.” I think most of the team agreed. And that was our fatal error—imagining the Trina Turk store when designing the suits. In fact, external buyers would be our market—Bloomingdales, Nordstrom’s, and other stores that sell Trina Turk clothes—and those buyers probably buy the most mainstream stuff Trina Turk sells. At her store, she is completely off the wall (hence the neon pink pants), but unfortunately for us, Trina Turk herself was not a buyer. It was an error in strategy, and none of us caught it. So Carey’s suit actually made sense at the time, but they made it look like he “ramrodded it down all of our throats” to simplify the story and let Nicole off the hook.

Around 6am, the rest of the suits were finished and we laid them all out and Michelle and the girls started arguing about stuff. By this point, I was completely and utterly delirious with exhaustion and Frank and I were both slap-happy, and we decided to rile Michelle up—there was one suit that everyone agreed was good and was Michelle’s brainchild (the brown and white bikini)—so Frank and I called Michelle over and said that we think we should nix this one, that it just looked “tacky.” She took a deep breath and started explaining to us that everyone had already agreed upon it, and we said that we were actually taking a stand here and that we were vetoing the suit. She started getting worked up until we told her we were kidding. It was also at this point that Frank started calling Michelle “Johnny” behind her back. I know that sounds weird, but it was really fucking funny at the time.

So around 7am frank, James and I headed out to print out the line sheets, pick up food, and coordinate the meeting time with the models. The show would start at 1pm and the rehearsal would be at noon. This actually became very stressful—as I couldn’t reach two of the four models on their cell phones and we had planned to have all four head over to the sweatshop to try on the suits. So the first one I reached started driving out there and then called and said the traffic was bad and he was going to be very late. Suddenly I had a vision of the show starting, and one of the models is caught in traffic, one is at the show, and the other two are lost because I never reached them, and the whole thing being a disaster and it’s all my fault. Again, it may look overly-paranoid in retrospect, but these things were nerve-wracking at the time. Remember, it’s not like the show has everything covered for us and makes sure things happen like the models arriving—they’d just as soon have it be a disaster—that’s good TV. And the real world gets in the way a lot—bad cell-phone connections, traffic, unreliable people, etc.

We also went into Baja Fresh to buy food—this was weird because the cameras came in with us, so everyone in the restaurant was staring like we were walking in there naked—it’s times like these that you remember that you’re on a TV show. I’ll spare you the details, but Frank decided he wanted to buy the “Baja Fresh” ice crate to hold the drinks in, and started offering the lady over $100 to give it to him, even though she said she wasn’t allowed to. It’s times like these that you remember that you’re spending your summer with Frank Lombardi. Then we went to Kinko’s to print out the line sheets, and while we were driving, Nicole called and asked us our opinions on price point. James, who researched price point all day, couldn’t fathom the courage to give a solid answer. I gave my opinion (although I admittedly wavered as well), so did Frank, and we ended up compromising. It was a big moment—do you go high and go for the kill, or do you go low and go for volume—or will going low make your product seem cheap? What I kept saying was that our current prices were too low, so they talked and then told me they raised them. Then they called back and said they had lowered them a bit and it was all just a mess. They made Michelle look like the one who didn’t have the balls to put out her opinion, but like she said, that wasn’t her job—what didn’t make the edit was that this was James’ designated job.

So we get to the show (to avert the models disaster, I had cabs come to pick them up—except when I called a half hour later, the cabs had never come, and the models were all very confused—incidentally, they were not the sharpest blades on the razor. I was completely furious and increasingly panicked—I finally called high-priced town cars and sent them to wherever the four were to pick them up, and they ended up all getting there on time.)

So we got there and everyone changed into their Trina Turk outfits and we went to the runway for our scheduled rehearsal (each team was strictly forbidden from watching the other’s rehearsal). The rehearsal began and one of our two female models seemed extremely shy and nervous, and was showing absolutely no charisma. Nicole got on the runway and started coaching her, and showed her how to walk down the runway with some swagger. The rest of us were thoroughly amused and impressed by this, and someone said, “Nicole, why don’t you do it?”, and then everyone else agreed that she should do it, so she said okay and agreed to do it. This also allowed us to show all 6 of our suits in the finale, since now we had 6 people modeling.

So people began to arrive and of course, there was a complete panic when the beads on one of the suits broke 15 minutes before it began. Plus, we had forgotten to write the monologue that Trina Turk would read, describing our suits, during our walk off, so people were frantically writing that up. I, on the other hand, had my own personal crisis when I looked in the mirror for the first time, and realized that I was wearing a t-shirt that my sister would wear. It was the girliest thing I’ve ever seen. I was like, “Christ” and decided that I’m putting my foot down here—pink pants, fine, but I’m not going on national TV wearing a petit, frilly, fringy, girl’s t-shirt. So I sprinted full speed, pink pants and all, up to our trailer. Of course, a camera ran after me—if this ends up being an important fuck-up, they damn well want to capture it. I swapped the t-shirt for one of my normal black t-shirts, and made it back on time. Crisis averted (pink pants mini-crisis notwithstanding). Incidentally, after the task, one of the producers let us know that Trina Turk had decided to let us keep all of the clothes we had borrowed. This was unexpected and the team was elated. I, though, wasn't sure if being granted my very own pair of $275 neon pink pants was necessarily that exciting.

So we headed out into our seats next to the runway, and the show began. I was so unbelievably delirious and tired by that point, that I remember having a hard time moving my face muscles, and I’d find myself staring at people without thinking about it, in a complete daze. Remember when I woke up in the tent at 4:30am and couldn’t believe I had to get up? That was about 36 hours earlier, and I hadn’t slept since (and neither had anyone else). So anyway, the show finished—I felt pretty good about our chances.

Trina and her Asian haircut announced the winner.

Arrow- $19,600
Kinetic- $20,100

Excruciating.

Again, we had lost by the slimmest of margins. We had poured ourselves into this for the last 36 hours, and knew that if we won, not only would we be moving into the house and going on a reward and feeling like winners and not worrying about who fucked up and not sleeping outside, but there was the extra incentive that the winning team would not be participating in the next task (none of us really understood what that meant at the time, but we knew we wanted it). And worse than all of those incentives was the pure competitiveness—Kinetic beat us again, and again they were screaming and cheering, and all our work was for naught. I didn’t even want to make eye contact with them.

On lockdown, team Arrow took the hour and half van ride back to the mansion, through traffic. Everyone was completely dejected. There were some sad glances exchanged and some heads were shaking, but mainly, we were just looking out the window, miserably. I know this sounds incredibly over-dramatic, but it actually felt this bad at the time. You bond so much as a team during a task with a common goal, and when you fail collectively, the morale is so low and the whole team feels collectively bad about itself.

So we got back to the fucking tents and Carey gave his little speech about not wanted to talk about the boardroom, and we all plopped down and had a beer. Some people slept for awhile, and I ended up talking to Nicole about what had gone wrong. Michelle came over in the middle, and you saw this interaction. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. We were talking about issues we had as a team, and I mentioned that we were a mismatched group in a lot of ways, and that part of the challenge would be working well with people we would normally not be interacting with. Michelle asked for an example, and I said very plainly that she and I wouldn’t be natural friends in the real world, that we had very little in common. They made it look like she was offended, but I think she understood what I was saying. If anything, I was one of the few people on the team she was getting along with. They also made it look like I was using this as a reason that she should be fired, but in reality, I told Carey that day that I was going to say that he should be fired and not once did I suggest that Michelle should be fired. (At one point Nicole had some fun by telling me very seriously that she’d have to bring me into the boardroom final three, and fully had me going before she told me she was just fucking with me).

And of course, while we were sitting around, dejected, discussing what went wrong, the other team was at the Playboy mansion.

So I finally slept that night (although I was woken up a bunch of times by the sprinklers), and at the end of the next day (day 3 of the task, day 6 overall), we headed to the boardroom. The boardroom edit was pretty accurate, although Nicole had no chance of being fired—it was clear that Trump really liked her, and the whole team liked her. Only James attacked her, and yes, the ensuing scene was as funny as it looked. Nicole was hilariously irate. What didn’t come across was that she was so mad partially because he blindsided her and never mentioned to her earlier that he’d be attacking her. So she yelled at him and he was completely petrified of her and fully backed down, and Trump said, “James, it looks like you’re backtracking a little here, trying to cover your ass.” After the rest of us headed back to the campsite, James was asking me why Nicole got so mad—he was clearly shaken up by it. Stef was also shaken up because Trump had asked her why she didn’t offer to do the modeling, since she had “bragged so much about being a model” (apparently in her interviews during the application process she had continually brought it up).

Finally, Nicole and Michelle emerged from the boardroom, to no one’s surprise.

So, yeah—it sucks for Carey. Problem was, Nicole was too strong a player and liked too much by Trump to be fired, and when Trump determined that Michelle wasn’t to blame for the loss of the task, Carey was the only option.

So that’s where we are. See you next week.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 3

2009-03-08T18:50:00.001-07:00

For months I knew it was coming. The tour bus episode.

The day I’d relive the worst day of my life. Okay, maybe, possibly, not the worst day of my life, but definitely the worst hour and a half of my life.

As usual, the episode is up on Yahoo, here:
apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week3_videos.html#1643381

And if you enjoyed my complete and utter misery and would like to see more, this is a webisode further exploring the happenings of our horrible mini-team. It also touches on Frank and Michelle clashing, a completely hilarious dynamic which the episode didn’t have time to capture:

apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week3_videos.html#1643359

Alright, so backing up to the morning of day 1 of task 3 (day 7 overall)—

We were woken up at 4:30am and headed to the Loews hotel, where we saw the other team. None of us knew what the hell was going on—we all vaguely remembered Trump saying something about the winning team having a task off, but none of us was sure we heard him right, and when we saw Kinetic there we thought that maybe we had misunderstood. Then, Trump tells Kinetic to enjoy a day of luxury and pampering at the hotel and sends them off. Lovely.

So while we go the next 40 hours working our asses off without sleeping, and then endure a day of interviews and stress followed by a boardroom, they get a day of pampering and THREE full days to relax and catch up on their sleep. Why the producers decided to give a team a task off, I still don’t know.

So the other team leaves, and Trump asks us who wants to be project managers. Unlike the last task, I was tempted here, but I refrained. As I mentioned, my pre-show strategy was to step up as PM for the first time either task 4 or 5. By then I’d know my team well, and wanted a few tasks under my belt before I took the lead. But I didn’t want to wait until task 6 or later either.

Aaron volunteers, and Trump asks Michelle if she would like to step up—she agrees, although she expressed to me later that she was very upset about this—which is reasonable. She had a bad clash with the team on the last task, and could have used this task to be hard-working and pleasant and show the team she wasn’t a nightmare to work with after all—leadership wasn’t what she needed at this moment, at all. So Aaron and Michelle pick teams, and when Michelle chooses me with the first pick, and the camera shows me scowling.

This brings me to a side note. The producers have 72 hours of footage (times 2 teams) to work with each task, to create a 40 minute episode, and in those 40 minutes they have to create a clear-cut, black and white story. They don’t have time to make the people or the story multi-dimensional. The result for me is that sometimes I’ll be on the right side of that story (i.e. Episode 1), and sometimes I’ll be on the wrong side (Frank, for example, was really on the wrong side Episode 1—yeah, he was bad, but he wasn’t that bad). And in either case, they’ll twist your character a bit for the sake of the story. Hence, I’m apparently being a guy that hates Michelle and talks shit to her face, and hates her behind her back. When in reality, yes, Michelle weirded me out, and I wasn’t ecstatic to be led by her, but she and I got along fine, and at most I found her mildly annoying and oddly icy.

So I wasn’t surprised when I was her first pick, and I certainly wasn’t rolling my eyes and scowling, but the camera showed cuts of me doing that at the right times, for their story, “Tim, Nicole and Frank hate Michelle and they’re all on a team together with Michelle as the leader.” Hell, I don’t blame them—I’d watch that. (I’m not trying to exonerate myself here—this was not my best task—but things weren’t as bad as they looked.)

So I head over to Michelle’s side. Aaron picks James. At that point Michelle made the mistake of conferring with me before her next pick. I suggested that she pick Nicole, and so she did (if I hadn’t said that, she would have picked Stefani, who was one of her few friends on the team). Which, as we know, didn’t turn out too well for Michelle. Yikes.

Then Aaron picks Stef and we get Frank, accompanied by his large, fat head.

I’ll be honest—at that time, I thought we had the better team. [cut]

So we headed to our “war room” (the assigned place we have access to that day for brainstorming). One of the 3 things we’d be rated on by the tourists was “Theme Originality”, so we thought hard about our theme. This was a long brainstorming session, and Michelle adopted the “I will poo poo every idea any of you have, but I will also be petrified to put out any of my own ideas” leadership style—not ideal. I was all up on my “LA scavenger hunt” idea—in retrospect, it would have been stupid. The one positive would have been that we could make any route with any series of interesting stops and we could have made it work for a scavenger hunt. Everything’s so spread out in LA that fitting themed stops into a 90 minute driving route is difficult. But “A day in the life of the rich and famous”—in reality, Nicole’s idea, although they showed it being Michelle’s—seemed to all of us like a winner at the time.

I came up with the idea for “Red Light Trivia”—since there would be so many stoplights along the tour, this seemed like a good way to deal with that. We’d have prizes, and there is endless Hollywood trivia we could use. Michelle and I were in charge of the route (I’ve lived in LA for 2 years, and Michelle was born and raised there), and Nicole and Frank would get the trivia together. This would be fun and make the tourists laugh and get them involved. Everyone on the team agreed this was a good idea.

From there, we headed to the bus, which had “Topless Tour Bus” written across it (because it has no roof). Michelle insisted we cover up the word “Topless”—for this reason, Frank and Nicole spent the rest of the day making and manufacturing a huge sign to cover the bus. (They also got fruit, candy, and water for the tourists—but since the editors’ story was, “Michelle’s team does everything wrong and Aaron’s team does everything right”, this didn’t make the cut, so it would seem like the other team thought to get water and we didn’t—that said, we did not think to put one of our team members on an actual tour, and Aaron’s team did, and this was a good idea by them.)

While Nicole and Frank were on their mission to make a pointless banner, Michelle and I embarked on the worst 6 hours of my life (the tour itself would eclipse this as the new worst moment of my life the following day). We initially decided on Beverly Hills, since that’s where the rich and famous actually spend their day. And we thought it would be a different kind of tour—we’d stop on Rodeo Drive and let the tourists walk around, we’d let them check out a super-fancy salon, we’d take them by the huge mansions and point out stars’ homes—it seemed like a good idea. So we head there and after a 45 minute drive, the producer gets word on his little earpiece that we’re not allowed to stop the bus anywhere in Beverly Hills (which means we can’t start or stop the tour there, or let anyone walk around)—and without the planned 30-40 minutes of stops, it wouldn’t work. So we headed for 40 minutes through traffic to Hollywood and decided that even though the rich and famous don’t spend their day there, we’d make do (we decided we’d twist it by putting our tour into the second person, saying things like, “Around 6pm you’d head over to the Hollywood bowl, where you’d have a box seat” as we passed the Hollywood bowl, etc.).

So we got to Hollywood and drove around, charting out our stops and our route. This is when things went downhill. After an hour there, and me declaring that “Hollywood is kind of a dump,” Michelle decides that Beverly hills would be better after all—that we’d get crushed on the survey for our theme being irrelevant to our route. I argued. She insisted. So we headed back to Beverly hills. 40 minutes, through traffic. We got there, and made a route around and without being able to stop the bus, it looked pretty bleak—as we had already figured out, 3 hours earlier. But that’s where we were, and that’s where the tour would be. Then we find out from the producer that we’re not allowed to drive on Rodeo Drive, or any residential area with the bus. So basically, we’d be seeing—nothing. So we went back to Hollywood. 25 minutes (rush hour had passed). We finished charting out the route where we left off the last time we were there. The whole van ride took six hours.

Now, one thing I didn’t mention was that we also decided to have a comedian on the bus, to do a 10 minute standup routine during a drive between two widely-spaced stops. Frank had found a comedian and we all decided to meet at the bus in the parking lot at 11pm and have the comedian meet the four of us there, to test the waters with him and make sure he was both appropriate and funny.

But when we arrived at the lot, Nicole and Frank were still out doing their thing, and when the comedian arrived, it was just the two of us there to greet him.

So Michelle and I—who were in no mood to chat—explained the situation to the comedian (we had to tell him we were filming a documentary, and could never mention The Apprentice), and asked him to be funny for us, to test him out.

Now I want you to envision this scene: it’s 11pm, Michelle and I are incredibly tired and cranky from a hideous day, we’re standing in a parking lot with a random comic, and there are 4 cameras surrounding us (which are undoubtedly freaking the comic out). All you can hear are the crickets chirping. And we ask him to be funny.

So we all stand there in silence, staring at each other hideously, and finally, he says something along the lines of, “so I’m Irish, and you know what that means…it means I never drink.”

Silence.

The three of us stand there, staring into each other’s eyes, all simultaneously enduring the most awkward moment of our lives, as the crickets chirp in the distance.

After dismissing the comic, Michelle and I divide up the research. Frank and Nicole are both boisterous and funny, and we wanted them involved in the tour. So we allotted 4 or 5 stops to me and 4 or 5 to Michelle, and 2 or 3 stops to each Frank and Nicole. The plan was to head back to the campsite, and each research our respective stops and prepare to tell the tourists about them, and Frank and Nicole would collect the trivia together, since they had fewer stops to learn about.

So Nicole and Frank finally arrived, with the signs and the rest of their stuff. We left the bus and arrived at the campsite around 12:30pm. When we got there, Aaron’s team had just arrived as well.

This was terrible. Let me explain. After spending a full week, 24/7, with 7 people, you get pretty close. And after two losing tasks, you bond as a team with the “we hate the other team and we’re better than they are and we’re gonna win the next one” mentality. Every time a task’s winner is announced and you see the other team for the first time in a few days, it’s very intense—you’re looking for any signal whether they’re happy or not about how things went, and you don’t even want to make eye contact with them because it’s such a competitive environment. Suddenly, Aaron, James, and Steph were that other team, and it was just weird, and awkward.

So we decided to split the internet capabilities, 2 hours for each team. This is something we hadn’t thought about, and at the end of our two hours (we went first), we weren’t done with what we needed to do. We spent the time printing out the facts about our tour’s landmarks, planning a route, and printing out trivia, but we never finished. So around 3am we were sitting around the tent and that’s when the whole Nicole/Michelle sleeping fight happened (which amused me mightily at the time). No one ended up sleeping. At 5am when the other team’s time was up, we headed back in. We still needed to do all the trivia, so we decided to cut Nicole and Frank out of the tour guiding, and it would just be me and Michelle talking. A little later, Michelle, nervous about our theme being completely irrelevant to the tour, decided it made the most sense for her to introduce each stop by saying the whole “2nd person” thing about your life as a celebrity, and I’d give the typical tour-guide speech about the stop. So suddenly, I’m in charge of researching all the stops. So I print out as much info on all of them as possible, grab a highlighter, and start highlighting stuff. Around 6am we left for the bus (we still had to put the signs up and set everything up and take a dry run before the tourists arrived at 11am).

We got there, Frank and Michelle bickered about how to put the signs up, and then we went on a dry run (during which we did not test the microphone, may I mention).

Right away, we noticed a roadblock over much of our route for some reason. Michelle stood next to the driver and worked on making a new route, while I tried to both see where the hell these sights were along our new route (some I had never heard of), and frantically read through the printouts to learn about the sights.

We finished this dry run around 10:30am. 30 minutes until the tour began. We’re not remotely ready. Panic begins to set in.

Frank and Nicole set up strawberries and other food on the side of the bus, and roll out a “red carpet” down the aisle of the bus (since the tourists were “celebrities” for the day under our idiotic theme). They put on tuxes and hand one to me, and I put sunglasses on after seeing my eyes and seeing how tired I looked and realizing I would terrify the tourists. I’m sitting there with my stack of printouts, highlighting like a madman, trying to figure out where these stops would occur on the route and in which order. 10 minutes till 11. Don Jr. arrives. We have to go over and say hi (these moments are always stressful—as you saw week 1, Martin saying the wrong thing to Ivanka (“I’m exhausted”) got him fired).

Junior asks how it’s going. We smile and say great, and I die a little on the inside. He asks about the red carpet and explains that it looks more like a red tablecloth (which it was). Frank and I don’t skip a beat, whisk it up, and throw it away. I feel nauseous. Michelle keeps asking me questions. I keep thinking, I need to study these printouts or I’m not going to know what to say about anything. And then the producers pull me for an OTF (“on the fly” interview)—they always come at the worst possible times. I’m standing there in front of the camera, thinking, “I need to study these printouts, I can’t fucking believe I’m in an interview.” The producer asks me, “So, are you just going to wing it?” I answer, yes. He asks, “So, if you can’t wing this, you’ll probably lose this task, right?” They do this to a) get the stressed out quotes, and b) to stress us out further. Stress is good TV. It finishes, and I run back over to the bus.

11 hits-- the tourists start piling in. We all emerge from our panic, force on smiles and I go to get my notes, and I can’t find them. Complete panic. Someone had moved them while I was on the OTF. Inside, I’m freaking out. On the outside, I’m smiling and saying hi to everyone. Don Jr. is watching me, and there is a camera following me around. That’s the worst part—in a moment of true panic and dread, cameras are following you, capturing the whole thing, and reminding you that this is all happening on national TV.

Finally I look in a storage bin and find them—Frank’s massive head had put them there. At this point the bus is rolling—Michelle is doing an introduction. I tell frank that I’m going to hand him the microphone during down times and he has to just be ready with trivia. He gets his trivia out and looks at it, and says, “oh no.”

He had only printed out the trivia questions, not the answers.

Nightmare. So now I had to basically talk for the whole time, save the moments when Michelle was doing her “2nd person” bits.

Michelle announces that Tim will be the tour guide for the day, and hands me the mic. My plan is to say hi to the people upstairs and downstairs, and then move somewhere in the middle, on the stairs, out of site, so I can read from my notes.

And then, the microphone screeching begins. It was loud. People were covering their ears. I asked the driver if he knew what we could do—he said he didn’t know.

It calmed for a bit, and I announced our first stop, and told all the children about John Belushi’s overdose. I have one small defense here—in the dossier, it said the tour would consist of only people 18 and older (same reason we wanted a comedian), so I hadn’t struck this info from the notes in the first place. That said, it was completely idiotic. (I must say, watching this I was laughing uncontrollably, but at the time I found it extremely unfunny.) If you’d like to watch this hideous moment again, here it is:

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week3_videos.html#1643392

So we head to our second stop, and the mic begins to screech louder—it was unbearable. So I did the only thing I could do—I put the mic down and started yelling. Two problems with this—1) Now Michelle wouldn’t be able to do the second person thing because she wasn’t loud enough to scream to the whole bus, so I’d be doing all the talking, for 90 minutes straight, and 2) I couldn’t read from my notes, since I’d be standing up on the roof with all the people.

So there’s your scene: I haven’t slept in 31 hours, I’m standing on a tour bus wearing a tux and sunglasses, I’m screaming info out of my ass about stops I don’t really know anything about to 50 tourists, I have no idea where the bus is going or what stops are coming when, I’m doing all of this on national TV, and there are 86 out of 90 minutes left to go.

None of this is an exaggeration. It was the worst 90 minutes a human can endure.

I filled the 90 minutes with the info I remembered from my highlighting, lies when I didn’t remember the facts, and trivia I thought of off the top of my head.

A couple highlights:

-At one point I had gone about 20 minutes without showing them a relevant site, and knew that the famous Hollywood Sign was coming. I ran downstairs and asked Michelle where the sign was and she said you could see it when you drove up Vine off of Hollywood Blvd. So, I told the driver to take a left on Vine. I proudly announced to the tourists that they should get their cameras out, because in 3 blocks, we’d be peering upon the famous Hollywood Sign! They got their cameras out and poised. The bus turned left on Vine, and straight ahead, everyone saw…nothing! Michelle was wrong.

I was like, “aHAHAHA! Look at that, folks, no Hollywood sign! That’s the thing about Hollywood—you never know!!” It may have been the low moment of my life.

-One of the landmarks on our route was the Magic Castle. I’ve learned since that it’s an exclusive old fraternity where members come and see magic performed. At the time, however, I had no idea what it was, and wasn’t able to look at my notes for help. So I said something along the lines of, “And to your left is the magic castle! Yes, folks, it’s the magic castle! Ne’er will you find a more magic castle in all of this great land!!” True, complete misery.

Anyway, since the mic broke, only the top deck (about 35 of the 50 people) could hear me, so down below, Nikki and Frank desperately tried to entertain the tourists. Luckily, every week there are deleted scenes on Yahoo, and this is one of them. It’s funny:

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week3_videos.html#1643387

So about 75 minutes into the 90, we get to the one planned stop on the voyage—a stop where you could see the Kodak theatre, the Grauman’s Chinese theatre, and the Hollywood stars.

What we didn’t consider was that since it was close to the end and the tour was so horrible, people wouldn’t necessarily come back. This was a potential disqualification. We realized the error as soon as the people got out, and waited for 20 minutes outside the bus nervously. About 2/3 of the people came back, which didn’t end up disqualifying us, but it was a terrifying moment at the time. You can see this exact moment here:

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week3_videos.html#1643367

So that’s that. A complete and total debacle.

I remember standing outside the bus after it was over, thanking the people for coming, and seeing a camera about 10 feet away focused on my face. They were getting the “Tim is dejected as he realizes Trump is going to fire all four of them” face. I tried with all my heart to put on a smile and not give them the face they wanted, but I couldn’t muster it.

In the van ride back, the four of us sat there, all dejected (I really did think Trump was firing all of us—we are the losing half of the losing team, and our task was a complete embarrassment—it would make perfect sense), and Michelle wrote me a note (we couldn’t talk because we were on lockdown), saying, “Don’t be too hard on my in the boardroom, I’ll take care of that myself.” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but when she quit a few hours later, I wasn’t surprised.

We went into the boardroom, and the other team saw our faces and knew right away that they won. (One note: Trump asked Michelle how the team did. On TV, you heard her reply, “My team completely stepped up today. I have no words for how impressed I am”—in reality, she said, “Tim completely stepped up today. I have no words for how impressed I am” but the editors spliced in “My team”. Remember, this week’s story is, “Michelle’s team gets crushed”—there are no heroes on Michelle’s team in that story, and they edited it as such. Whatever. At least you know.)

Michelle quit, we went back to the campsite, I was angry because I thought I was getting fired now because scapegoating Michelle completely was the only chance the other three of us had, Stef yelled at Michelle for quitting, Michelle gave us all awkward hugs, and left.

We went to bed, and the next day (day 3 of the task, day 9 overall), we had interviews all day about the boardroom. All day, I dreaded this boardroom. I’d be going in with Nicole and Frank, both of whom I had become friends with, and to make things worse, Aaron, the other friend of mine on the team, would be sitting across from us, next to Trump. It couldn’t have sounded more horrible.

And so when that call came saying the boardroom was cancelled, this explains our absurd reaction. We were that happy.

And so, task 3 ends—it’s my 9th night in a tent, I’m one of the 3 out of 15 remaining contestants without a win, and the next morning, we’d begin another task. What an odd week.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 4

2009-03-08T18:49:00.003-07:00

I’m starting to notice a theme here. 3 days pass, 3 days worth of stuff happens, they show 7 minutes of it. Think about it. An episode is an hour. Subtract commercials, you have about 40 minutes. Boardroom is about 12 minutes. Task announcement and reward combine for about 6 minutes. Of the remaining 22 minutes, about 15 go to the losing team, since a good chunk of time is allotted to the losing team arguing post-task about what happened and conniving against each other. That leaves about 7 minutes for the winning team’s task, and a few more minutes for their reward. So let’s say they show 10 minutes total when you win. Which means they don’t show 71 hours and 50 minutes.

And that’s why I’m here—to tell the full story. Does the fact that many of you don’t want to hear the whole story play into this? Of course not.

So, with that said, let’s back up to the final night of task 3 (day 9 overall).

Trump calls, we jump around like idiots, and Arrow is a team once more. As you saw in their clever opening montage, we were having a little time of it out there in the campsite. We were a happy team. We had just been divided against each other for three days, and three of us had spent the last 24 hours in fear of being sent home. Suddenly, there would be no boardroom, and the six of us were damn happy to be there and to be a team again. I started telling Steph, Aaron and James about our disaster of a tour, and they were dying laughing. We brought out the alcohol, and sat around the fire, and it was one of the best team nights we had. That’s one thing about living outside—you bond. After nine days and three tasks, you know each other really well (anyone who’s ever done a camping/hiking trip with strangers for nine days knows what I’m talking about).

At that moment, my thoughts on my team members were:

Aaron: big fan of Aaron. Genuinely nice guy, and if you look at the rest of the team—a contractor from the Bronx who didn’t go college (Frank), an ultra-driven real estate hotshot who had basically never met a Jew before coming on the show (Nicole), a first generation immigrant, also ultra-driven, who was determined to be an internet billionaire (James), and a high-powered, 34-year-old lawyer who rides motorcycles (Steph)—Aaron (an MBA student from Virginia, a sports fan, trying to figure out what he wanted to do after getting his degree) was the person I could best relate to. This was not my typical group of friends, and Aaron was just a nice, smart, laid-back dude. He was also a quiet guy, which was appreciated on a team with three of the loudest people on the planet (James, Frank, and Nicole).

Frank: Frank was fun. He was very big on being the center of attention at all times, which would have been more annoying if he wasn’t pretty funny. And I could never decide if he was trying to be funny or if his whole way just happen really was just funny—like, just being himself, which coincidentally happens to be funny. I think probably the latter. But he and I—though the episodes have not shown it—had become friends. Did I think he’d be a good leader, or a creative thinker, ever? No. But he could get a job done if you asked him to, and a person like that is valuable on a team full of thinkers.

Nicole: Did we have anything in common? No. Had I ever been friends with someone like her before? No. Was I infatuated? Yes.

James: James had a lot of positive energy, but I remember thinking that he was probably unabashedly ripping his teammates in the interviews.

Stephanie: Stephanie was tough to figure out. She was definitely intelligent, and she and I had a pleasant relationship, but while the rest of the team really bonded and opened up to each other, Steph was more reserved, and seemed to hold back. I definitely felt like I knew her much less well than the others. The rest of the team was a collective open book, while it was hard to know what Steph was really thinking.

As for the dynamics within the team—after the previous task, it was clear that Steph, James, and Aaron had bonded with each other, and Nicole, Frank and I had as well, so there was a slight divide there, but nothing of real concern. Plus, Aaron was the person who best had the trust of each person individually. He was individually friends with everyone, other than maybe Nicole,. And we all appreciated his type-B personality in a team full of type-A+++’s. Further, because he was quiet, and laid-back, and so nice, none of us was very threatened by him in the long run. Put all that together, and he’s the perfect person to be leading this team.

So anyway, while we were drinking and being silly, they showed the other team having a stiff meeting to stress the contrast between the two teams. This is not clever editing work—the teams were actually that different. We were the fun, goofy team who loses and they were the serious, stiff team who wins. We drank, they didn’t. We stayed up late even though there’s a task the next day, they went to bed early. We made fun of each other, they were polite and formal. Etc.

There are probably a number of reasons it shaped out this way—(one of which was the campsite—sitting outside around a fire for 9 days will make you forget you’re on a business reality show)—but it was a stark contrast.

So we get the phone call—someone from Kinetic has to come over to Arrow. We had all watched previous seasons of the show—we figured this would happen. And we had talked about it. Our consensus had been that our first choice was Angela (the Olympian—and an extremely cool girl), and our second was Surya (he just seemed like a solid guy—we all liked him). We didn’t know anyone on the other team well due to the separation, but we knew them better than the episodes have shown. There were conversations through the hedge here and there.

When he called, we didn’t know if he was going to ask Kinetic who they want keep least or who we want the most (they’ve done it both ways in the past). He did some combination of both as it turned out. As I’ve since learned, Marisa and Aimee both wanted to switch because they weren’t feeling liked by their team, and Surya wanted to because he thought of it as an opportunity to step up when Trump asked someone to volunteer (and he’s no fool—switch to the losing team and they win, and you look like the winner of the world). So hearing our options, we took Surya.

The ensuing scene was pretty accurate. We were incredibly warm and welcoming and wanted him to have a beer with us, tell us about himself, say he’s happy to be there, and we’d all head off to bed, one happy team. But he was reluctant to hug anyone and certainly not taking a beer. He launched into his list of things he thought were important. I see what he was trying to do, but he just did it the wrong way. When you switch teams, whatever you do, you don’t patronize. You don’t immediately try to change things, and you don’t start laying down the new ground rules. As far as teams go, we were an easy one to come over to—we were very excited about having him and no one was even thinking about judging him. And he just botched it. Plus, we were all drunk, and he was sober times 100. Just an awkward scene. All that said, I liked Surya, and was happy to have him there (and the poor guy also had some good moments, none of which made the episode. You can see some of them in this week’s webisode: http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week4_videos.html#1643404). Plus, this facilitated a situation in which I’d have the pleasure of hearing Frank try to correctly pronounce “Surya” dozens of times.

So we wake up the next morning (day 1 of task 4, day 10 overall) and head to the Hollywood overlook to meet Trump. To our surprise, Sean (last season’s winner) is with him, along with a large, extremely bald man, and a little woman. Trump announces the task—after creating and leading a 90 minute bus tour, making a bowl of chicken and selling it seemed just fine to me.

We headed to our restaurant (in a task like this, each team is assigned their own restaurant, and the part of the crew that organizes this does a lot of research to find two restaurants that are comparable in every way and do almost identical business on a normal day, to ensure complete fairness). We met with the two CEO’s and learned about their brand (in general, the rule is: in a task where the executives judge you to determine the winner, this meeting is very important; in a task where you have to sell the most, this meeting is not especially important).

Aaron sent Surya, James, and Frank out to get all the balloons, banners, and other marketing materials. Aaron, Stephanie, Nicole and I stayed around to create the bowl and the price point. Price point is a crucial discussion—but only when it is an important factor in the outcome does an episode stress this issue. At the time, though, coming up with a price point is intense. I was always willing to be active in a price point discussion—looking back, this was dumb. If you come out with a good price point, no one will ever know or care. If you mess it up and lose because of it, you’ll be fired. Not much upside there.

In this case, Nicole and I came up with it. $4.99. The thinking was that people at fast food restaurants are cheap, and if our bowl costs a bit less than their cheapest bowl, it would be less difficult to convert buyers at the point of sale (I’ve been on this show too long—in English, that means that people come in planning to buy what they always buy, and our real challenge is to convince them to pass that up and buy our bowl. Which is not as easy as it sounds). I also had the idea to tell everyone it was normally a $5.99 bowl but since it was its first day, it was a dollar off.

Steph created the bowl, Nicole named it, and we were pleased. After Carey’s bikini bottom debacle, we decided to screw “out of the box,” and create a bowl right in the dead center of the box. The Chicken Tortilla Bowl (yes, Frank pronounces the “L’s” in tortilla. He also kept calling the restaurant “El Polo Loco”—I finally told him to not refer to the restaurant by its name under any circumstance, to anyone). We were very smart to stay in the box here—if people are going to switch their normal lunch, they don’t want to be risky.

So the marketing team gets back, and we hang all the signs up, and make up a “$1 Off New Bowl!” flyer, and plaster it on every car in the area. I headed out with Aaron and hired some high school girls to stand in front of the restaurant the next day handing out the flyer, and we gave one of the girls—yes—a chicken suit.

Yup, crazy old Marisa had a decent idea with that suit. It is the El Pollo Loco mascot, and why the hell not? You have access to it, you might as well pay someone to stand there and advertise your bowl with it. However, since this episode’s story is “Marisa is crazy and annoying with her weird chicken suit idea,” they don’t show the winning team using the same idea. If Aimee or Heidi had been fired instead, they would have shown it. (Fun Fact: In his younger years, then-struggling actor Brad Pitt had a job wearing the chicken suit for El Pollo Loco)

The late afternoon rolls around, and we all head into the restaurant for our five-hour training (the dossier states that only team members who have gone through the full training are allowed to work inside the restaurant. The deleted scenes show that Marisa and Derek came back too late to make the training, which is why they were in suits outside instead of inside wearing the restaurant uniforms).

So we go through training. We’ll be doing almost everything involved in running the restaurant the next day, from cutting up whole dead chickens to packaging meals to working the cash registers. Everything was pretty simple, except for the f’ing registers. The normal orders were fine—no problem. The tricky part is when someone asks for a Number 2, but with two thighs instead of one breast and one thigh, and a chicken sandwich with extra hot sauce but no mayonnaise, and an extra macaroni and cheese to go. Each of these specifics was somewhere inside one of the cash register’s computer menus, so we had to master the entire interface. The guy training us stressed that every second we were fumbling around searching for the right button, we’d be losing sales and the lines would get backed up. Now, Aaron had designated me and James his “best sales guys” and as such I’d be on one of the two front registers. So of course I suddenly was blessed with the hideous image of a line 12 people long, while I, sweating, frantically search for the “kids ice cream” button—everyone is furious at me, and then we lose, and I get fired brutally, and endure a life of “how many Harvard grads does it take to work a fast food cash register?” jokes.

So from 11pm when the training ended until about 3am we were all in the restaurant together, learning the registers, setting up marketing materials, researching local businesses who might want to buy in bulk, etc.

At 3am I went to the van to take a nap (this was the first time I slept during a task). Nicole decided to do the same.

Now—the producers had first caught on to the fact that something was going on with the two of us during episode two, when a producer pulled me out on an OTF and asked, “So, what’s going on with you and Nicole?” I replied, “Nothing. We’re buddies.” He said, “Bullshit—there’s clearly flirting going on, you might as well say it.” I refrained. Episode 3, I got more questions about it, and refrained continually. The producers smelled blood—this was good. They kept asking, and I kept not saying anything. And since there was always a camera around, nothing happened between us.

Then, the night Surya came over, after the whole first impression scene (during which cameras were swarming), it was just me, Nicole, and Surya, talking. Since there wasn’t much happening at this point and it was all contained to one conversation, there was only one camera guy there. Then Surya went to bed, and as he went into the tent, the camera followed him in, to capture the “Surya goes to bed in the tent for the first time” moment. In an extremely rare instance, there was no camera. So naturally, I went in for the kiss. She responded by pulling the sleeping bag she was in up over her head and saying “What are you doing?!”

Nice job, Tim.

The sound guy must have heard something, because the camera guy suddenly came vaulting head first out of the tent and quickly focused the camera on us. The brief window of privacy came and went.

[It’s moments like these that I have a flash of awareness that there are almost 200 hundred people on this list (up from an original 60), and I realize that I’m telling stories like these to all 200 of you. Then I sigh, deeply and self-loathingly, and continue typing.]

So, when on this night I head into the van for a nap, joined by Nicole, a camera is about two inches behind. We get into the van and each lie in one of the rows. I glance up at the window and see a camera there, aimed at my eyeball. What a weird existence I was living.

So I slept there for an hour or two, and woke up around when a couple of the other people came to take our spots. It was that “I’d pay $10,000 to be able to go back to sleep” feeling again. I tried to rouse myself, and headed back to the cash register, to continue learning its complex ways. Aaron asked Nicole to research potential bulk buyers.

It was about 6am. At 9am the restaurant would open to the public and our sales period would begin. The lunch rush, we learned, typically took place between 11:45am and 1:30pm. At 1:30, the restaurant would be turned over to its normal employees, and the task would be over.

So we continued preparing, and plastered more flyers around, and at 9am, the doors opened. And no one came in. We had 1 customer between 9 and 10 (and I sold them a bowl). Around 10am I started joining Nicole calling local businesses. Very few were interested. The dossier made bulk sales extremely difficult, by ruling that every bowl we sold had to be at the same price (so we couldn’t offer a bulk deal), and that every dollar that entered the cash register had to be handed to the cashier by the customer. So we couldn’t offer to deliver the bowls—someone would have to come to the restaurant and buy them.

Shortly after, both Nicole and I found a promising lead. Hers was at an office building, where a manager had agreed to purchase 50 bowls. Mine was at a Nissan dealership 30 minutes away, where a lady there, Melinda, had told us there were over 30 people there who would all probably want one. I started thinking about it, and realized that in a 2-hour lunch rush, neither team would be able to sell over 100 bowls, so either of these—50 or 30—would probably be enough to guarantee us a victory. At 10:15, with an hour and a half until the rush began, I told Aaron I wanted to give these a try. He was nervous, because the task purposely leaves both teams understaffed, so the rush gets busy and stressful, and missing 2 people during the rush would be a big problem. Plus, we only had 7 to Kinetic’s 8 to start off with. Aaron said to go, but that we had to be back by 11:45.

As I mentioned earlier, the team was allowed to split up into at most 2 groups, but each group had to have at least 2 people (this is because if someone goes off solo, they’ll think everything—if they’re with a partner, they’ll say everything, which is obviously much better TV). So Frank joined me.

We headed to the first place, the office building. When we got there, we asked the producers for clearance (this is a hideous part of the show—we’re never allowed to enter any location without official clearance, which allows the cameras to enter as well. Most places do not grant clearance, so half the battle during these tasks is just being able to go where you need to go for errands, meetings, or in this case, bulk sales). The producers sent the clearance team to do their thing, and reported to us 10 minutes later that we had not received clearance. Fuck. So we waited outside the office building, with our token camera and crew behind us, and when the first person walked out, we asked/begged them to go and find the manager Nicole had spoken on the phone with. This was a weird scene. We finally got someone with authority outside and I explained that we had a new bowl “specifically for local businesses,” and that we were selling it at “a special bulk rate of $2 off per bowl.” Apparently, she was intrigued by my lies, and said she’d go in and see who was interested. She told us that she could probably get at least 30 people to buy one.

This was extremely exciting. We waited for about 20 excruciatingly long minutes. Finally someone came outside and we asked them if they knew anything about the bowls or the lady or where the hell the lady was. They didn’t know, but went in to check. A few minutes later the lady came out and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, but my manager said no.” Rage boiled within me.

So we got back in our van—it was about 11:00, and we wouldn’t have time to go to the Nissan dealership. I called them anyway, and spoke with Melinda, and asked her if she could definitely get people interested. She said she thought she could. I called Aaron, and said it was a half hour drive each way and that we’d be a little late but that I thought it was worth the try. He said to go for it, but to make sure we got back as close to noon as possible. This was a pretty huge risk.

So we drove to the dealership. Of course, we couldn’t find it, which was heart attack-inducing, and didn’t get there until after 11:30. When we found it, we ran out of the van, and of course, the producer stops me for an OTF. Always the worst times. The producer is asking me every conceivable question, including gems like, “So, if you guys miss the lunch rush and come back empty-handed, a lot of blame will fall on you, since this was pretty much your personal mission, right?” To which I’d respond, “I’m going to miss the lunch rush because of this OTF.” To which she’d come back with, “I can wait here all night, you just tell me when you’re ready to answer the question.” DAMMIT!!

Finally, the interview finished (probably lasted for 10 disgusting minutes), and we bolted in to the dealership. We asked for Melinda, and found her. We asked her if she had gotten any orders. She hadn’t. We asked her if she wouldn’t mind asking for orders, since she had told us she would. She casually asked the four people in the office with us, and they all declined. We begged. She shrugged. This was crushing. We asked her if there was anything we could do. She replied that a lot of people already had things planned for lunch. I had to viciously restrain myself from assaulting her.

We walked out and into the main room (where you saw us). I told the guy at the desk about the chicken bowl, and asked if he wanted one. “Sure,” he said. I asked the guys next to him. “Sure,” they said. All was not lost. Both of us started getting our most charming, pitiful faces on, and started making a commotion and asked everyone to raise their hands if they wanted one. Three, four, five…eight, ten…fifteen. We got 22 orders. Thank you GOD. It was a joyous moment. We asked people for $5 each, and the hands went down. “Oh, I thought they were free,” said one guy. No one actually wanted one—they just thought they were free. Severe, utter disappointment.

We were desperate. I asked almost every person in the room individually for $5, and got a total of $20. I asked for the manager, and was pointed to his office. We walked in to find a short, stocky manager wearing bright orange. I explained the situation and asked if he might be able to help out, if he might have it in his heart to buy lunch for the dealership. And he agreed. He asked how much we needed, and I calculated $5.40 (for tax) times $22, and subtracted the $20 we already had. It was just under $100. He reached in his pocket and handed us a $100 bill. It was the first time I truly experienced real love. We thanked him profusely and left, beaming.

One more problem—we needed someone to come back with us. We asked everyone in the main room if anyone would come with us. “To the El Pollo Loco down the street?” someone asked. “No,” I replied. “The one in Winnetka.” People looked at me like I was crazy—“Winnetka?!” (remember, it was 30 minutes away).

Oh god—hope being drained again—misery coming back.

And then Jim walked in.

One of the guys pointed to Jim (a short car mechanic), and said, “Jim will do it.” Everyone laughed. I jumped on this, and started chanting, “Jim! Jim! Jim! Jim!” Frank joined in. Then everyone started doing it. And Jim was like, “What??? Noooo.” And we were giving him our biggest pleading faces possible. And Jim relented! He agreed to go!

[Note: I’m aware how dramatic this sounds—trust me, it actually was this intense]

So, we explained to Jim that we weren’t allowed to hold the money (not knowing what the cameras were there for, I’m sure this seemed bizarre to poor old Jim), and that he had to follow us in his car to Winnetka to get the bowls (most of this scene didn’t make the episode because it would have made no sense why we needed Jim to come back with us).

So we started driving, and Frank and I are trying not to get excited yet, and we’re panicked that we’re gonna lose Jim at a light, or that he’ll just say screw it and turn around.

By now, it’s almost 1pm—we missed most of the rush. We had a bunch of missed calls from Aaron. If we had come back empty-handed, it would have been horrible.

We walked in triumphantly with Jim (who must have been completely freaked out). In the end, that sale accounted for almost 30% of the total sales.

So Frank and I hopped into the sales mix for the final half hour, and the task ended. We went back to the boardroom, and Sean announced that we won. Obviously, this was a great moment (this was the end of day 11—that’s a long time coming). And moving into the house was one of the greatest feelings possible. Of course, they time it so the two teams cross paths as they switch, to maximize awkwardness.

We didn’t have much time to celebrate, as we were told we were leaving for the reward in 30 minutes (most of us didn’t have time to shower).

So we headed to the beach. A waiter handed us some kind of cocktail in a pineapple, and Andrea Bocelli sang for us. Two hours earlier, we had been selling bowls in a fast food restaurant, and now we were sitting on the beach, victorious, drinking out of a pineapple. Intensely satisfying. Bocelli was great, although we couldn’t hear his singing very well—you heard it on TV because there was a microphone. The “concert” was actually just one song. We shook his hand and he left. We were served a ridiculously good dinner, and as soon as the alcohol began to kick in, I headed for the piano. As I played, about four cameras rushed over and circled around me. It was fun. And apparently, I have the posture of a 97-year-old man.

I finished, and headed back over to the group. We all toasted to the team, and to PM Aaron, and talked about our win. Happy times.

Then Surya pointed at me and Nicole and said, “You two are really cute together.” And cue the floodgates to open.

This was the first mention of this by anyone. Then James says, “Yeah, I’ve been noticing that—what’s going on between you two?” And everyone started unleashing the comments. They were all beaming suddenly, and I sat there like an embarrassed 7th grader. What the hell am I supposed to say to this?

Then they all start telling us to dance on the beach barefoot, and I’m like, “I’m not fucking dancing on the beach barefoot.” And they’re like, “Come on!”

Hideous.

It was actually the scene I would have dreaded as a 7th grader.

Luckily, the fireworks changed the topic. They were not much cooler than any other fireworks, but I’m pretty obsessed with any other fireworks, so I was sufficiently in awe.

We all headed back to the house. Frank, Nicole and I started taking shots. The problem was, first Nicole was on the phone (there is a connected phone in the house, but not outside, so this was the first time we were able to contact anyone from the outside world. This was very exciting. I felt like I had been there for 6 months, and the sound of my parents’ and sisters’ voices when I called that night was bizarre and great to hear). Anyway, first Nicole was on the phone so I took shots with Frank. Then Frank was on the phone so I took shots with Nicole. I was getting drunk, fast. I knew what I was doing. Those cameras weren’t going anywhere, and I was in the process of getting liquored up on national TV. And I just didn’t really care. Aaron and Surya refrained, and James and Steph kept it to a minimum. But not the two Italians and I. We had finally won, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to celebrate.

Flash to two hours later. Aaron, Surya, James and Steph are in bed sleeping. Frank is passed out next to the pool. I’m sitting on the lawn next to Nicole looking out at the city, wrecked, and saying god knows what to her. I don’t remember much, although Nicole told me the next day that at one point I had said to the camera guy, who was 3 feet away filming, “Why won’t you go away?! I’m here with this girl and you’re all up in my grill.” She claims it was intensely funny at the time.

So I wake up the next morning. Now—you know those mornings when you were really drunk the night before, and you don’t really remember much, but you have faint memories of things you probably should not have done? And you’re just like, “oh, fuuuuck.”

Now, imagine that same feeling, except it was all on national TV. “oh, FUUUUUUCK!”

I got out of bed, and saw Nicole, who said, “heeyyy, you were funny last night” and shook her head laughing.

Nice job, Tim.

So the day rolls on, we all go out on our 3 hour interviews, we sit around the pool happily, and appreciate the fact that we weren’t going to the boardroom. At one point, I heard Aimee and Marisa fighting with each other on the other side of the hedge. This was, of course, intensely amusing. In the minutes before they headed to the boardroom, I popped my head through the hedge and said good luck to them. Marisa (who I was kind of buddies with) came over to me and whispered, “I’m about to get ambushed.” I told her I was rooting for her, although, from doing a bit of eavesdropping (and from talking to Surya, who told me that Marisa did not get along with the team), I was pretty sure she would not be returning.

And ambushed she got.

C’est la vie.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 5

2009-03-08T18:49:00.001-07:00

Alright, backing up three days--

So it’s day 3 of task 4 (day 12 overall), which means it’s interview day. I’m taken down to the beach for my formal interview (the ones that last 3-4 hours). A pleasant little break. And for the first time, I get to answer questions about things that went right, and how great we were, and how awesome my bulk sale was, and what a good leader Aaron was. Much more fun than the last 3 formal interviews, when I had the pleasure of reminiscing about how much we sucked. Granted, you have to talk about the good and bad in both cases, but after a win, the interview is much more positive.

And this time, I found myself being asked about Nicole a lot. The producer kept asking me questions like, “What are your favorite things about Nicole?” and “Tell me about Nicole’s eyes”—hoping to get that extra cheesy little quote they can use. “No fucking way,” I’d tell them. “No fucking way am I giving you that quote. Not a chance.”

This would become a theme of my interviews. Here and there, I’d give a little (as you’ll see), but for the most part I refused to gush. The main reason is this: Just say I hear, “Tell me about Nicole’s eyes” and I respond, “oh god…okay fine…Nicole has pretty eyes…haha…you happy?” What you’d see on TV is this: a shot of me gazing at Nicole with a dumb look on my face, behind which you’d hear my voiceover, cut from the interview, saying, “Nicole has pretty eyes” as if not only did I volunteer the statement on my own, but that that was the thought going through my head while I gazed in her direction.

So, knowing the hideous consequences of giving them a quote like that, I found myself entrenched in a stealthy battle against the producers in every interview. The problem is this: I can successfully dodge the bullet 99 times, and then slip up once—and they win the whole battle. All they need is one.

And so, as the season wears on, and the exploitation of this thing with Nicole gains momentum, I can only sit here, helpless, cowering in my living room as I watch these episodes, knowing that they have a lot of quotes of mine to work with.

And yes, I got involved with someone on national television. I’m as surprised as you are. Leave me the hell alone.

So interview day winds down, and we’re all sitting together next to the pool, still enjoying our first victory, still thrilled to be on the winning side of the hedge, and a producer tells Aaron he has to head up to the boardroom in 5 minutes. Which reminds us that there’s about to be a boardroom, and we’re not going. Cheers!

After about two hours, Aaron returns, and we all hound him for the gossip like a group of 8th grade girls after their friend returns from a date. Aaron tells us about the boardroom, and that Marisa talked herself into a firing, and about how Trump gave him shit for not saying more in his role. Aaron was noticeably shaken up about the whole thing, and I think he knew this would mean trouble for him down the road. I remember thinking at that moment that being on the right side of the boardroom was as much of a test as being on the wrong side.

So we went to bed, knowing we’d be woken up for a task at 4:30am the next morning, and that our little joyful 24-hour winning celebration was over.

And indeed, the phone rings at 4:30am sharp, and we get into our suits and head out to meet Trump. As I may have mentioned earlier, I only showed up with 2 suits (most people had 3 or 4—Frank had 10)—a navy one and a black pinstriped one—and my navy suit was somehow lost in the shuffle when I changed into my idiot pink pants at the bathing suit runway. We were told by production that we didn’t have time to grab our stuff at the end, and that they would retrieve it for us. Well it never made it back to me, so from week 2 on, the only suit I had was the black one. Which is why I was jacketless at the recent task announcement (my one suit was dirty). They do laundry for us every 3 days, so if I chose to wash the suit, I’d have a day or two without any suit at all. Quite a position I put myself in.

So we meet Trump, he says the word “honey” 14 times while announcing the honey task, and he’s gone. The dossier stated that 4 team members were needed at the bee/honey harvesting plant. Aaron, Surya, and James were all allergic to bees, so that left us with myself, Frank, Nicole, and Steph heading to harvest the honey. The other three would create our brand name and label.

We all went to our assigned war-room (an office we’re allowed to use during the task) and had a quick group discussion. I remember suggesting that we go with a cylindrical bottle over a bear-shape because the Sue Bee brand uses the cylinder for its high-quality honey and the bear for the ordinary honey.

After a half hour or so, the four bee people headed about 60 miles east to the bee farm, while James, Surya and Aaron remained in the war room.

Nicole and Stephanie were both terrified of bees. Two full-fledged phobias. The only reason they were forced to be on the bee team was that all three of the others were allergic. Stephanie was very vocal about her fear, and Nicole was not. As a result, Steph’s fear, and resulting bravery in overcoming it, made it into the episode, and Nicole’s fear and bravery did not. I wasn’t with her this past Sunday, but when everyone was gushing over how brave Stephanie was, I imagine Nicole threw the remote through the window (Nicole is so scared of bees that she refuses to eat honey for any reason). Frank was freaking out too, although he was doing it with more of a sense of humor—the two girls were very seriously upset about the situation.

I, on the other hand, was excited. I’m wretchedly terrified of spiders, but bees have never bothered me. Plus, I knew we’d be wearing suits, so what the hell? Sounded fun.

When we arrived, the guy gave us our astronaut suits, and told us to duct tape around the wrists and ankles—without this, bees would get in the suit, and that, we were told, would be mighty unpleasant. Frank and I helped the girls, both of whom insisted on 12 times as much tape as was actually needed. We were also told that bees sense adrenaline, and will attack us much more if we were afraid, and that they could sting us through our suits if a part of the suit was pressed against our skin. The girls were thrilled to hear this. (Incidentally, one of the normal bee farm workers who was walking by mentioned that we were wearing much higher-quality suits than the workers there normally wear.)

So the guy explained the process to us. There were a few dozen stacks of wooden crates, each crate containing a square-shaped beehive composed 10-15 vertical slats—if you picked up a slat it was dripping with honey. Cool.

We’d use a metal tool to pry off the top of a stack, under which we’d find hundreds of silly little bees, buzzing about and doing their thing. At that point we’d shoot a bunch of smoke into the crate, and then cover it back up with a scented board. The smoke would convince the idiot bees that there was a fire and they’d react by gorging their little bee bodies with honey (because they’d presumably be ditching their hive when the fire got to it and wanted to take as much of their delicious honey with them as possible). The smelly ceiling would disgust the poor bees, and they’d descend down into the bottom crate of the stack.

Then, after leaving the bees with the smoke and ceilings for a few minutes, we’d head back over and lift the ceiling up, and sure enough—no bees in sight. Frank or I would lift up the top crate—the heavier it was, the more honey it contained. We only had room in our truck for 30-40 crates, so we only picked the heavy ones.

It was something I’d watch on The Discovery Channel, but I was in the TV. Cool.

After about an hour, we were finished, and headed back west. There was hideous traffic. Stuck in gridlock, we picked up the phone to call the other three to coordinate, and realized our battery was dead. We had our wall charger, but no car charger. This wasn’t the end of the world, but it was inconvenient. So Frank decides he’s gonna cut up our wall charger and convert it to a car charger by exposing the wires and pressing them against the car port.

Of course, the idiot not only breaks the charger, but he breaks the phone, which short-circuits as soon as he tries this and never works again. There are two reasons Frank did not feel the heat from this stupid mistake:

1) The producers decided to let us stop and buy a new phone on the drive. They were not obligated to let us do this—if they had wanted to start a team controversy they could have said that we were without a second phone the rest of the task. These are the little ways the producers influence the show. They could have screwed Frank over here, and for some calculated reason, decided not to.

2) The stop to buy a new phone slowed us up 30 minutes. In other tasks, losing 30 minutes could have been a huge deal. Luckily for Frank, in this case, time was not a factor.

If either of these circumstances had gone the other way, Frank would have been a huge goat, brought into the boardroom, and probably fired—and he would have been remembered as the “phone charger guy” forever.

Instead, Frank lucked out, this was not a factor, and it didn’t even make the episode—hell, there’s a good chance that Frank’s fat, massive head doesn’t even remember this. And there are a ton of instances just like this. If the Kinetic had ganged up on Heidi week 4 instead of Marisa, no one would even remember that a chicken suit had ever been brought up during that task. The events that make it into the episode become immortalized, and often define a cast member’s character for everyone who watches; everything that doesn’t make the cut becomes a distant, fading and eventually forgotten memory.

Anyway. We rendezvous with the other team pretty late that night (11pm or so?). We are booked at the bottling plant shortly after (both teams had a pre-assigned time to do their bottling). Supposedly, we’d be bottling the exact honey that we harvested earlier that day, though I highly doubt it.

At the time, trying to bottle as many as possible seemed somewhat important. Looking back, both the honey harvesting and the bottling would be completely irrelevant to the outcome of the task. No matter what happened, both teams would automatically end up at their store with ample bottles of honey to sell the following day (the labels wouldn’t matter either, in retrospect—no customer cared about the labels. All that mattered was the price at which we set the bottles, and how well we could convince customers to buy them. And bulk sales. Fucking bulk sales. More on this in a bit).

So suddenly, I’m once again watching the Discovery Channel, this time a special about the bottling process at a honey factory, and once again, I’m in the TV. Very fun task.

It was really cool. Basically a bunch of blank, empty bottles are dumped into a funnel. The machine then stands them up, lines them up, labels them, fills them with honey, caps them, groups them into 3 by 4 rectangles, and boxes them. This left me with no choice but to be intensely fascinated. An efficiency orgasm.

We’re told that we each have to man a station. We wouldn’t be doing much—mainly just watching and stopping the machines when something went wrong.

I’m immediately drawn to the coolest station—the one where 8 pumps shoot honey into 8 bottles at a time. It was really really cool. The lady there told each of us what we had to do. My jobs would be to make sure the pumps were filling the bottles to the correct level (if not I could increase or decrease any of the 8), and to stop the machine immediately if a bottle fell, or if something wasn’t lined up.

How hard could that be?

The machine starts, and everything runs smoothly. Until, about 15 minutes in, a couple of the bottles collide in a weird way and suddenly the 8 bottles that are pushed under the pumps are a half a centimeter off. The result is that the honey pours out, misses the targets, and goes everywhere (imagine pouring 8 16-oz bottles—a gallon—of honey out all over the place. It makes a monstrous mess). So the whole process stops while I clean it up, Frank starts giving me shit, and we start screaming back and forth.

After 10-15 minutes of cleaning, we start it up again. Everything runs smoothly. Until, a few minutes later, a bottle falls over right as it goes under the pumps and knocks everything out of place.

There are few feelings in the world as dreadful as the one you get when you see that the bottles under the pump are off-line. You know that in less than one second, a half gallon of honey will crash down on top of everything, and there’s nothing you can do.

I saw this—in horror—and was like, “NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and lunged for the emergency stop button. But alas, it was too late. Yet again, honey was everywhere.

Frank’s head starts yelling and we start going at it again, and the factory ladies (who trained us, and are now on the side watching everything) are dying with laughter. Frank yells that I “can’t even put syrup in a bottle,” and I tell him I’m gonna pour honey all over his ugly, fat face.

You can see this scene once more here:
http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week5_videos.html#1643454

Anyway, looking back, it was fun, but at the time it was a bit stressful—only because there was a slim chance that quantity would actually prove a problem, and it could actually maybe kind of come back to me if we lost because we ran out of bottles. That said, I wasn’t really worried, since there wasn’t much I could have done in the factory, and it didn’t seem like a realistic thing to bring up in a boardroom. As it turned out, we sold 217 bottles out of over 1,000 we bottled.

One other note: the other team screwed up the same exact station. Like always, though, we were much more entertaining so our screw-up made the edit and Kinetic’s didn’t.

We finished around 2am and headed back to the mansion, which was almost an hour away. We got there and had about 2 hours to sleep, since we wanted to be at our assigned selling location (Ralph’s supermarket) at 6am to set up. The task would run from 9am to 2pm. Frank and I had built a huge yellow and black striped stand for the honey, and set that up right in the front of the store. We used other Ralph’s stands for more honey, and Steph and James set up stations with samples. We all kind of fell into roles. Frank and I would sell in the front, Steph and James would sell at their stations, Nicole would call businesses to try and make bulk sales, and Aaron would coordinate things. I don’t remember what Surya was going to do.

So the store opened and we started selling. It was going alright, but since honey never goes bad (literally never), most people have honey already and don’t need more. So I started with the whole, “Feel this bottle—it’s still warm! We harvested it less than 24 hours ago!” It was working alright, but about an hour in, I kept noticing that most people immediately said, “someone already tried to sell me honey—no thanks, no thanks.” We actually had too many people selling. 3 or 4 people could easily cover every customer in the store.

So Aaron decided to do another bulk sales mission. He had to send two people (remember, if the team splits into two groups, each group must have at least two people), so he sent Nicole, who had been doing the research, and me, because I had made the sale the last week. The ironic thing is that last week’s mission was not a good idea, even though it ended up working—we needed all the manpower we had at that restaurant, and it was a real long shot—and this week’s bulk run made perfect sense. We didn’t need everyone in the supermarket selling, and honey is a great thing to sell in bulk—a lot of businesses have honey in their inventory, and it never goes bad, so if you’re getting a good deal you might buy extra. If I were PM for both tasks, with the benefit of hindsight, I would probably kill the bulk sales idea for El Pollo Loco, and for this one I would have two people do nothing all task but focus on bulk sales.

Of course, since we didn’t end up making the sale, they made it look like a bad, hopeless idea. But it wasn’t.

We had two targets in mind. Bakeries, which makes sense, and gas stations, which doesn’t. Why the hell would you try to sell honey at a gas station, you ask? I was asking the same exact question. Nicole brokers large acquisitions of gas stations for a living—it’s her expertise. She noted that gas station owners don’t give a damn what they sell in their store, they only care about one thing—profit margin, the amount they profit when they sell an item as a percentage of what they bought it for (which she explained was actually the “markup” but that gas station owners typically incorrectly call it “profit margin” so she uses the incorrect term in her dealings).

We walked into the first station. Sure enough, he was selling flags, hats, kazoos, bread, magazines, Soy Sauce—there was no rhyme or reason whatsoever. So why not honey as well?

The dossier let us sell the bottles for as little as $1.98, so we priced a case of 12 at somewhere between $24 and $29. We walked in and Nicole (who had told me to let her “do her thing”) launched into her pitch, beginning with “hello” in some Indian dialect, which seemed to please Alex, the Indian gas station owner, greatly. She suggested to him that most of what he is selling produces a 25-50% profit margin. He nodded, and seemed even more intrigued. She explained that we were selling honey for $2 a bottle that’s normally sold for at least $3.99, and that he’d be generating a 100% profit margin off of them. She went on for a bit with some other selling points, including the fact that it doesn’t take up much shelf space, and never goes bad, so he’d never lose any bottles to expiration problems. And with that, he was sold. I was thoroughly impressed (and accordingly smitten). He agreed to buy 2 cases. We explained that he had to come with us to the store—that we weren’t able to deliver the cases to him (dossier), and he said he couldn’t come now but that he’d make his way over to the store (across the street) a bit later. We explained that the “sale” was only going on until 2, and he said he’d go over before then.

So we headed back to Ralph’s, and brought two cases out, and wrote a note on top—“FOR ‘ALEX’--$24/CASE” and we brought them to Aaron and explained that he had agreed reluctantly to buy 2 cases because we told him if he bought less it would be a worse rate. Aaron was thrilled and it was only 11:30am, so we headed back out.

We stopped at a nearby bakery, and gave our pitch, but they already had honey. A restaurant—same thing, no need for more honey. Then we stopped in a bakery right next door to Ralph’s, called “The Love Bakery.” As I noticed the name, I cringed, and for good reason—only minutes later, I’d find myself in an OTF (“On The Fly” interview), being asked, “So is it destiny that you and Nicole make a big sale at The Love Bakery?” This was my life.

We went in to the frickin Love Bakery and there was a young girl working the register, who seemed to be alone in the shop. I gave her the whole spiel, along with my charmingest smile. She said that actually, they had opened recently and didn’t have honey yet. I asked her if they wanted to buy top quality honey at a bulk rate, and she said she’d have to ask the owner. We explained that this was a one-day sale only, so she called the owner, an Israeli guy named Elly. He picked up, and she handed the phone to me. I made my whole pitch—well-known brand name honey at bulk rate, one-day sale only, he could fill the Sue Bee bottles with lesser-known brands after they emptied—and he thought about it…

And said he’d take 20 cases.

Halleluiah!

I tried to keep my cool, and said that we unfortunately could not bring the bottles over, but that if he would come with us to Ralph’s to purchase it, or send someone else over, we’d carry it back for him. He said he’d be in the store later and he’d come by Ralph’s then. I told him that the sale finished strictly at 2pm, and that he had to be there by then. He thought about it, and said he’d try to make it to the store by 1:30. We told him we’d be there to meet him.

We walked out and tried to contain our excitement—we didn’t want to jinx it. We were about to demolish Kinetic with one sale. We decided not to tell the rest of the team because we didn’t want them to sell less hard, in case our sale fell through. We had an hour to kill, so we went to couple more gas stations, but both of their owners were on a lunch break.

We went back to check on Alex. He told us he had already been over to Ralph’s, but that he had only bought one bottle, and that he’d buy more another day if this one sold.

What?

We called Aaron, and asked what the hell had happened, and he said that Alex only asked for one bottle so they only sold him one. This was incredibly frustrating—if either Nicole or I had been there and told him that he had to buy 2 cases to get the bulk deal, he would have. We gave Aaron strict instructions to tell him this was a one day only deal and that he had to buy 2 cases to get that deal, and to show Alex that they had his cases all ready at the register.

Luckily, it didn’t matter, because we had just sold 20 cases at The Love Bakery.

Around 1:15 we headed back there. Still just the girl there. We asked her to call Elly. She did, and he didn’t pick up. Highly stressful. We waited an excruciating 15 minutes and had her call him again at 1:30. I got the number from her and began to call him on my phone. I called him every minute and got nothing, until finally around 1:40 he picked up. I asked him what the deal was. He told us he would not be able to make it there until around 3pm, and that he’d come and pick them up then.

Deep breath.

I told him we had a strict deadline of 2pm, and he thought about it and said there was no way he’d make it there before then. We asked if the girl could come over, and he said no, since she was the only person in the shop. I offered to stand at the door for 10 minutes in case a customer came, and he said he couldn’t do that.

Nnnnnoooooooo.

Such a letdown. We had spent all afternoon thinking we had just made in incredibly successful bulk run, and had won our team the task. It suddenly hit us that Alex had fallen through, and that Elly had fucked us, and now we were heading back completely empty-handed. And we had been so close.

We went back—dejected—and joined the team in a final push, dropping the price of all the bottles to $2 and selling as many as possible before the deadline.

We finished, and it did seem as if we had sold a lot anyway. Maybe, just maybe, we’d win.

So we get to resolution. Trump’s at some weird cult convention in Minneapolis, and Sean announces the outcome:

Arrow: $775
Kinetic: $836

Misery.

If Alex had bought both his cases, he would have spent $43 more, and we still would have lost (thank god—this would have been unspeakably frustrating). However, if Elly had shown up, we would have won by $539. It would have been a landslide.

And no one but me, Nicole, the producers, and now you, will ever know how close we came to that.

I’ve since learned that the other team had a couple mini bulk sales in their store, selling 3 or so cases a few times by flirting with guys. This proved to be the difference. We sold 217 bottles and fell 12 bottles short. Like the car wash and the bathing suits, we lost by a tiny margin. I’d much rather get crushed (like the hideous tour bus task, which I don’t want to speak of ever again).

So whose fault was it? You can’t blame Stephanie, who apparently sold very well. You can’t blame Frank, who apparently did too (lucky dog that the broken cell phone was not a factor). It’s hard to really blame me or Nicole, since having us in the store would not have helped, and a bulk sale mission is by definition a long shot (however, at the time I was not really thinking along those lines, and immediately after finding out we lost, I was completely assuming it would be me and Nicole in the boardroom with Aaron). That leaves Aaron, Surya, and James. Aaron was a decent leader, but he should have sent the bulk mission out earlier, and he didn’t do much selling of his own. Surya apparently was not a convincing salesman, but I did not feel like he was the reason we lost. James did nothing specifically wrong on this task, but he did little specifically right, either, and I had heard through the grapevine that his station sold very little.

So we all went back to the house and moved our stuff back to the good old campsite, and I sat down on the grass and tried to think of ways to defend myself in the boardroom (my main argument was that bulk sales were a long shot and that in two tries I was 1 for 2, and it would be crazy to fire someone for failing to make a bulk sale when they had a 50% success rate).

Surya sat down next to me, and we talked about it. He didn’t realize how vulnerable I felt, and I had no idea how vulnerable he felt (he was mainly vulnerable because a lot of the team didn’t really like him—in fact, he only got along with me and Nicole, and neither of us witnessed the sales in the store—given that, he was indeed in trouble). When I explained my own fears, he said that that was ridiculous, and that there’s no way I should be fired on this task. He said he’d fully back me in the boardroom. I thought about it, and didn’t see a real reason he should be fired, and told him I’d back him as well.

Then I told Surya I wanted to be PM if I didn’t get fired. And I was ready—this was exactly the time I had planned on taking the role. He said he’d back me in that as well, but asked that if he almost got fired but survived that I’d let him take the role instead. The idea—and this is conventional Apprentice wisdom—is that when someone barely makes it out of a boardroom, they should step up as PM the next task as a statement to Trump (hence Aimee being PM after ending up in the final three in Marisa’s boardroom). I agreed—if he really had his back against the wall, I’d back him as PM. He told me that if he was ever PM, he wanted me to be his second in command. I said I would. Then we kissed.

A little later, Aaron brought me aside, and told me that he was definitely not bringing me into the final three. This was a huge relief. I had survived another week. Suddenly, my thoughts could move away from my own defense. I told Aaron that I thought he was a good, understated PM, and that I would say that in the boardroom.

And then I realized that I had told both Surya and Aaron—the two vulnerable people—that I’d back them in the boardroom. Uh oh.

This left me in a bad spot. So I thought about it, and decided that hell, I’d attack James.

The next day, we all went on our long interviews, and I felt much more relaxed—I was safe. I figured Aaron would bring Surya and Nicole, since he was too tight with James to bring him, and he could use the failed bulk sales reason on Nicole (Nicole and not me because she was the official person he had assigned to bulk sales from the beginning, and I had been tacked on at the end). I wasn’t worried—she was not going home.

I talked to her and she wasn’t worried either. She agreed with me that this wasn’t Surya’s fault and told me that it seemed like everyone was ganging up on him because he was an outsider and that she thought that was bullshit. I told her I was attacking James, and she said she agreed with my reasons, and that she would decide between Aaron and James before going in.

Later, I was lying next to the campfire, and James and I somehow got into a conversation about his job, and his wife—he was telling me all about his family.

Eek.

I thought about mentioning my plan to attack him (and as you’ve seen I’ve been confrontational with everyone else I’ve ultimately attacked so far), but decided against it, because I thought there was a good chance Trump wouldn’t ask me who I thought should be fired and then I wouldn’t have to attack him at all, and if I can avoid making an enemy, I’d like to.

Surya was incredibly stressed out all afternoon, while Aaron had a sense of humor about things. I remember Aaron telling me that he had the firing music (Duh-Duh! Duh-Duh! Duh-Duh! duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh Duh-Duh!) stuck in his head all day, and I joked that it played out loud every time he got up and walked, and then stopped the second he sat down, and then resumed when he got up. We were actually laughing really hard about this. Gotta love a good old laid back dude.

So we headed into the boardroom. Steph, James, Aaron, and Frank said Surya should be fired. Surya said Aaron. Then Trump asked me. First I defended Aaron, and then I said James should be fired. I explained that he tends to second-guess things once it’s too late to change them, and that I had heard that he did not sell well at all today. Eek.

Nicole agreed with me, though she noted that both of us were only going on word-of-mouth regarding James’ sales. (My defense of Aaron was completely cut out, and they actually made it look as if I said Aaron should be fired. You can see the truth in the uncut version: http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week5_videos.html#1643463)

And then, when I was talking about making a bulk sales run with Nicole, Frank said it.

“Ask him if he wants to marry Nicole.”

I was not expecting this. What the hell was Frank doing??

Trump, though, loved it. One thing that has not been shown is that Trump loves Nicole. Every boardroom so far he had made a comment about what a star she was. So it was no surprise when he started with the whole, “If you can land her, you’d be my hero.”

Well, I landed her. So I guess I’m Donald Trump’s hero. Who would have thought?

Anyway, this was further confirmation that whatever was going on between me and Nicole, it really, actually was going to be a part of the show.

Was this a good thing? I wasn’t sure (still not). Did I want to have a televised relationship? Who the hell has a televised relationship? In the back of my head, I knew that it could be something I’d regret later, and it could definitely end up getting me fired. But on the other hand, Trump didn’t seem to think of it as something to be criticized, the team seemed to love it, and most importantly, what was happening was real--

So what the hell.

I had really gone into, “fuck the cameras, I’m drinking when I want to drink, swearing when I want to swear, putting myself on the line when I have a good idea, etc.” mode, where I didn’t think about consequences at all—I think this was a self-protecting mode, since deep down I knew that if I worried about the consequences, the stress would be overwhelming. And part of being in this mode was not worrying about any consequences with anything involving Nicole.

And then, on Sunday, I saw the “Scenes from next week.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, the consequences!

On the negative side, I’ll be subjecting you and 10 million other people to a dose of PDA (with a capital P) three days from now. My advanced apologies.

However, on the positive side, my father called me after seeing the scenes from next week and said, “Are you crazy?” So whatever you find yourself watching during next week’s episode, just remember that he’s watching that same thing, and that may be a plus overall.

Also, here is a recent text message exchange I had with Nicole’s brother, Jimmy (who I’m very scared of):

Jimmy: I’ll be arriving in LA about an hour before the show on Sunday.

Me: [petrified, trying to play it cool] What show?

Jimmy: A show called The Apprentice. I heard about some kind of romance, and we need to have a word.

Me: [petrified, still trying to play it cool] I thought that show was about business.

Jimmy: So did I. So…did I.

So, my friends, these are the positives that we can extract from this absurd situation that’s occurring (though I may be dead by Sunday).

And it is absurd. I go through four fucking years of college and can’t find one girl I’m into, and then—in this situation—this happens.

Anyway, she’s here visiting me at the moment. She went to sleep a few hours ago, confused as to why I had to write this long recap to hundreds of angry demanding people. So I guess it was worth it.

And with that, I’ll bang my head into the table.

Until the next--

The Apprentice LA - Episode 6

2009-03-08T18:48:00.001-07:00

Well, this is a little awkward, isn’t it. I feel like all 200 of you just walked in on me naked. To be honest, I can’t really look you in the eye right now (luckily, I am a good enough typist to look away from the screen when I type).

Uh…

so…

It’s Thursday, huh? Thursday’s a nice day, huh? Yeah, I’m a fan of Thursday.

Oh god, this is unbearable.

How about I just start talking about the task, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

So we’re standing around waiting for the results of the boardroom. Either Aaron, or Surya, or both, would be fired. The main thing on my mind was that I wanted to be project manager. I had told this to both Nicole and Surya earlier that day, and was mentally prepared to step up as the leader. I felt completely comfortable with everyone on the team. Nicole, Frank, and Surya all considered me on of their best friends on the team, and I got along very well with James and Stef as well. I had gone through 5 tasks and 15 days with this group, and I had a good handle on each of their strengths and weaknesses. On top of that, my plan before starting this had been to take on the role week 4 or 5. Of course, I hadn’t anticipated the new “winning PM remains PM” rule—on one hand, in previous seasons it looked bad to not have been PM by week 6 or 7 and with the new rule it was not nearly as glaring when someone actively shies away from the role. On the other hand, I still was anxious to take the lead—it felt like the natural move. And with this rule in place, a chance to assume the PM role might not come along again for awhile. So it was the ideal time. Even better, neither Steph nor James wanted the role at the time, and Nicole and Frank had already been there, so they were out of the question.

The only circumstance under which I would not be the PM task 6 would be if Surya came close to getting fired but survived, in which case the “Surya needs to prove himself to Trump” conventional wisdom would go into effect. And, standing there waiting for them to return, it looked like this is exactly what would happen. And that was unfortunate for the team for two main reasons—1) I got along with everyone and knew how this team functioned while Surya had a lot of tension with Frank, James, and Stef, and 2) I felt very secure at the moment regarding Trump’s opinion of me and that of my teammates, and therefore would not have led the team in a state of boardroom fear, while Surya knew that he was already on thin ice, and that if we lost he would be attacked thoroughly, and most likely fired. The second point is important, because fear of the boardroom has a paralyzing effect on a leader, and often leads to micromanaging.

And then, round the corner come Nicole and Surya. I hug Nicole, and she whispers to me, “Surya has to be project manager.” And looking him, I realized that she was right. He was freaking out.

After Surya’s “Don’t!! Lie!!” tirade (in which he was referring to Aaron declaring that Surya was in charge of marketing on the honey task, and during which Surya accidentally flung his ring across the yard, and we all looked for it for awhile until we finally found it), we all sat around the campfire and Surya discussed the situation and his thoughts on the upcoming task. As he had told me earlier he would, he told the group that I would be his second in command, and that throughout the task, he would have one cell phone and I would have the other (he said some other things too, which I can’t recall). And with that, we went to bed.

Bright and early the next day (day 1 of task, day 16 overall), we head to LAX to meet the Trumpster, who tells us about the task. Basically, we had $10,000 to give away in the form of plane tickets, which would be the bait with which to convince people to register for Priceline.com (to enter the sweepstakes, people would have register on one of our four computers).

So we headed to our assigned mall. On the van ride there, we had a discussion about what to give away with our $10,000. Our time in the mall would be limited from 10am to 1pm, and every idea revolved around the idea that we’d give away $10,000 at 1pm, giving us 3 hours to sign up as many people as possible to potentially win the money at 1pm. The problem was, from 10am-12:30pm, it would be hard to sign people up, because the dossier stated that the winner had to be present at the drawing in order to collect the prize, and people would not want to wait around until 1.

Once we got to the war room, I came up with the idea to break up the prize into parts and give it away in pieces. Everyone liked this, and we decided to split it into 9 parts and give away $1,100 every 20 minutes. It made perfect sense—instead of telling passers-by that they could win $10,000 if they waited around until 1, we could say that they could win $1,100 in a few minutes by signing up. Plus, instead of showing them a raffle cage with hundreds of entrants inside (which would happen if we only had one drawing), we could show them that there were only a handful of entrants (since only so many can build up every 20 minutes), so that they could see that they actually had a good chance of winning. Further, our biggest challenge would be to convince shoppers that this was not some bullshit scam, and what better way to intrigue people and gain credibility than with a screaming winner every 20 minutes—not to mention that the crowd that would gather for each drawing would attract attention.

If I must say so myself, this was a very good idea (though I was well aware that if we were to lose, I would be in trouble).

Now that we had our giveaway strategy, we needed to figure out the best way to market it—we had this great bait at our disposal, but how would we get people to bite?

So we started brainstorming—and this is when Surya got himself into trouble. He was trying to fit the brainstorming session into a very rigid structure (this was the scene where he kept telling Frank to come up with his “strategy” before getting specific).

This was our first real taste of Surya’s micromanaging leadership style. He is a very smart guy, and extremely methodical and organized. In his ideal situation, our team would function like a well-oiled business machine. He’d be the CEO, I’d be the COO, someone else would be the CFO, another person on brand management, and so on. There would be an agenda, there would be strict time lines, there would be a set of goals, and we would identify the crucial levers that would require our time and energy. We’d have a specifically-scheduled brainstorming session, which would be well-organized—first, everyone would think silently for 5 minutes. Then, one by one, each person would say one idea they came up with in those 5 minutes. Then, for 10 minutes, we would discuss the 6 ideas, using an object—you only speak when holding the object. Then, if none of the ideas seemed good enough, we’d all come up with another idea, during another 5-minute silent period.

Now—these, I’m sure, are classic procedures that well-run PR companies, political campaigns, and ad agencies use on a daily basis. But there are several reasons that this leadership style could not work here:

First and foremost, this style is just too easy to mock. Especially in a situation in which much of the team is looking for any reason to mock you. Only someone with the complete and utter respect of the team could have potentially pulled off a style like that, and Surya wasn't that person. In short, he was micromanaging a group of people who did not like being micromanaged by anyone, let alone a leader they didn’t get along with.

Second, regardless of who the leader was, this was not how Arrow functioned. Our brainstorming sessions were loud and energetic, and we would feed off each other’s energy. It may not have been the ideal productive scenario, but that’s how we were. Surya needed to adapt his style to A) the group he was leading, and B) the fact that three of them were looking for a reason to say he sucked as a leader. And he didn’t.

The fact is, I’m not sure Surya could have done anything that would have worked, given the circumstances. This is a show where people A) smell even the faintest trace of blood, and B) quickly band together when blood is in the water. And Surya was bleeding heavily.

So Surya tries to micromanage, the team gets irritated, and Frank draws Surya on a napkin. The editing deception here is that it looked like we were all laughing at Surya while he was in the room—but in fact, Surya was gone on an OTF at the time.

In reality, here was the team dynamic: Nicole and I both felt a bit bad for Surya and tried not to give him a hard time, James and Stefanie both disliked him, but neither was rude to his face, and Frank would openly pick on Surya. Frank was never quite mean to him, but he showed him absolutely no respect, and made fun of him a lot. Surya hated Frank, but tried to remain professional about it. Frank and Surya: not a match made in heaven.

Anyway, realizing that our biggest challenge would be to convince passers-by that this was not a scam, I decided to create t-shirts for all of us to wear—on the back would be the nine giveaway times (10:20, 10:40, 11:00, etc.) in a circle around a picture of an airplane. We’d have big magic markers, and when a prize was given away, we’d ask a tourist to cross out that giveaway time on our back. This would accomplish two things: it would help to make the situation extremely clear—(THERE ARE NINE $1,100 TRIPS BEING GIVEN AWAY. WE’VE ALREADY GIVEN AWAY 3, AS YOU CAN SEE UNDER THE RED X’S. THE NEXT ONE, AS YOU CAN SEE, IS AT 11:20, WHICH IS IN 8 MINUTES!!!!!!). And it would attract attention—try to tell me that if you were in a mall and saw a guy drawing on the back of another guy’s shirt, you wouldn’t at least look over for a second.

The team liked the idea, so I head over with Frank to our designated graphic designer to get the shirts made. We get there, and Frank goes on a long OTF (presumably to be asked all about the “him and Surya situation”) while I tell the designer what to do with the shirt. We also design the video ad thing while we’re there, which has a red “EVERY 20 MINUTES” flashing in the middle. We add a voiceover which would loop constantly at the dozen video ad spots throughout the mall, advertising what was happening with the giveaways. Frank did the voiceover, and then we listened to it back and remembered that Frank didn’t speak English, so I did it (you may have recognized my voice when they showed the video ad screen during the episode).

We finished, and called the team. They were working on setting up the computer station and learning the ropes of the computers (where people will register).

So, with no real rush to get back, Frank and I stopped at Baja Fresh, a Mexican fast food chain, for dinner. Tasks so far had been intense whirlwinds of running around frantically, and this was a rare moment of relaxation during a task. After getting clearance from production (meaning the cameras were allowed to go in the restaurant), we ordered food and sat down at a table. A camera man sat down at the table next to us and filmed on the two of us.

And since people in Baja Fresh aren’t typically accompanied by a camera crew, we noticed that everyone in the restaurant was staring at us. We had become very used to the cameras and hardly noticed them anymore, but a moment like this was a big reminder that we were filming a reality TV show. Sitting there, it didn’t feel like a task, it felt like I was eating Baja Fresh with a friend of mine—and yet, a camera crew was there filming our conversation. A jolt of surreal. For awhile, the camera guy relaxed and put the camera on his knee—but when Frank said, “So, what’s really happening with you and Nicole?”—the camera man catapulted the camera on his shoulder with lightning speed. This was no ordinary dinner with a friend.

We finished, and met up with the group back at the mall. Upon walking in, I noticed that Nicole looked ticked off. When I had the chance, I asked her what was up. She said Stef had been cutting her off a lot and had been annoying to work with all day. This was new. And amusing. Talking with James a bit later, he mentioned that he hated working with Surya. Tension was a-brew.

We checked out the computer station—it looked good—and headed back to the campsite. I don’t remember the details of this time, but I believe we all actually got some sleep. Definitely the most sleep during a task yet.

The next morning (day 2 of the task, day 17 overall), we woke up around 5am, hopped in the van, and went back to the mall.

Since we had 5 hours till the beginning of the task and no more than 3 people were needed at the mall to set up, Surya, Nicole, and I went out and put flyers on hundreds of cars in the area, advertising the day’s giveaways. This took about an hour (I remember walking down the sidewalk holding my flyers and the camera guy was 5 feet in front of me walking backwards, filming me, and the producer next to him, also walking backwards, asked, “So, tell me about the experience of flyering with Nicole.” I think I gave her the finger). After an hour of this, the producer got word about something on her earpiece and asked to see one of our flyers. She took it and made a couple calls, and then came back to us and said we couldn’t use these flyers because it didn’t have a date or say “one day only” (the problem is that people might come and raise a fuss at the mall in future days). Not only did we have to stop putting the flyers on cars, we had to take away the flyers we had already put out. So we spent another hour backtracking and removing the flyers. These are the hideous things that never make an episode.

From there the three of us headed to a nearby flea market and started telling people there about the giveaways—some seemed interested, although this was a fairly hopeless mission. I also bought—and subsequently enjoyed—some fresh strawberries.

Around 8am, we were back at the mall. We picked up our t-shirts and our big signs (which had the same “times circling an airplane” image as the shirts), and finished getting things ready. When 10am rolled around, we could start signing people up. As suspected, people in the mall walked right by the stand with little more than a quick glance—we were going to have to actively sell people.

I don’t remember whether Surya delegated these assignments, or if we just fell into them, but James, Nicole, and Stephanie ended up manning the computers, helped people register, and kept the flow moving at the station. Frank, Surya and I were walking around telling people about what was happening and trying to get people to head over to the station.

I started out rusty, and then started to fall into a groove and began selling very well (like the car wash)—the key was surpassing people’s “scam-radar”. At the beginning, I’d walk up to passers-by and start telling them about the giveaways, and in one second, they’d say, “no thanks” and ignore me. So the challenge was to convince people that this was real and that there was no catch, within that crucial one second before they said, “No thanks.” I’d say things like, “If I came up to myself I would tell myself to get the hell away—I know this seems so much like a scam, but please believe me that this is real—there is absolutely no catch. You can punch me in the face as hard as you can if there is a catch—we are giving away nine $1,100 trips in a span of three hours.” Then I’d turn around, and show them the back of my shirt, and say, “look, we’ve given away 5 already, and the next one is in 12 minutes, at 11:00 on the dot. You don’t need to put down any money, and you won’t get any emails—just put your name into those computers and wait until 11:00 to see if you’ve won.” Then I’d point to the raffle box and say, “this isn’t even a long shot, there are about 10 or 20 entrants in each drawing.”

By this point, I usually had intrigued people. I’d bring them over and get James', Nicole’s or Stef's attention, and say, “This person will take care of you—good luck!” and I’d go get someone else. I began targeting families because if I could sell them on it, each member would sign up. My success rate at the beginning was about 20% and after a half hour, I had figured it out and it was up to 80% or higher. Frank (as you saw), was selling well too.

At one point during all of this, I looked up and saw a girl I had dated in college, who I hadn’t seen since college. We made eye contact. I’m standing there with an oversized shirt with big red X’s on the back, selling some random scam-like sweepstakes at a big mall in LA, and there are people filming me.

Her: “Tim??!”
Me: “Uh…hey.”
Her: “Um…what are you…doing?”
Me: “Um…I, uh…I can’t talk to you right now…”
Her: “What the hell is going on? You’re not even going to give me a hug?”
Me: “Uh…I can’t really explain, I kind of have to go.”

And she walked off, undoubtedly about to call her friends and tell them that that guy Tim from college had gone off the deep end, and that he was wearing a huge t-shirt and asking people to write on it and selling something energetically in a mall.

So the task ends, and by 1pm I was drained—turning on every ounce of charisma and charm you have in you for 3 straight hours without stopping for one second is exhausting. I call this part of the task “gametime”—the actual sales period (or fashion show, or bus tour, etc.) itself. 90% of a 35-hour task is spent brainstorming/preparation, and it all comes down to how well you execute the last 10%. In this case, gametime was 3 hours. And if gametime is like a huge sports event and the cameras are like the crowd, the result is that your adrenaline is pumping throughout the 3 hours—yet another source of exhaustion afterwards.

We head back for resolution. Trump asks us how Surya was as a leader. This is awkward—if we say the PM wasn't good it’s just horrible teamsmanship (this is my recap so I can use whatever words I want), but if we say he’s good, we run into a problem down the road. Because if we lose the next task and then people say he wasn't a good leader, Trump will remember that we all said he was good on the last task, and we’ll look fickle. Plus, with the new, stupid “winning PM remains PM” rule, there is a constant fear that your PM goes on a run and becomes immune to a firing (like Heidi), which puts the rest of in a lot of danger, so people were always reluctant to pump up a PM too much. The fact is, we told Trump he was good—no one said “great”—but we said he was good. The editors didn’t show this because it doesn’t fit with their black and white, “Surya is a horrible PM and everybody hates him” storyline.

It’s pretty clear from Kinetic’s reaction to Trump’s questions about their leader (and from their reaction last week when they won) that Aimee was in big trouble if they lost.

Junior announces the results.

Kinetic: 326
Arrow: 359

Yipdeedooda!

I was a gross 1-4 up to that moment, and hearing those numbers felt good. Plus, I had extra stake in this one, because the team had gone with my strategy.

Trump tells us that for our reward (which he described the previous day as a “phenomenal reward”) we would be waking up bright and early for surf lessons, followed by a nice brunch.

As far as rewards go, this was nothing to write home about.

While other rewards happen that same night, this was a daytime reward and would happen the next morning, before the long interviews, so we had a night to hang out. So we went back and moved into the house. Frank barbecued and we all sat down to eat. I walked up to the table, which had 4 chairs and a bench, and sat down in a chair. “No, no, no,” said James, “you have to sit on the bench with Nicole.”

It was exactly like 5th grade. On one hand, this type of thing (and the team—especially James, Surya and Frank—did this kind of thing a lot) was incredibly childish and annoying. On the other hand, I appreciated that they could be criticizing us for what was happening—after all, in a game where everyone can smell blood, this was something to potentially criticize—and they weren’t. In fact, they all seemed to be more into the whole thing than she and I were.

We had a great, happy, relaxing, satisfying meal, and following dinner, considering that we had just won, and that we didn’t have a task the next day—you better believe we brought out the alcohol. James, Frank, Nicole and I all got pretty drunk and we all got in the pool.

And like James’ 5th grade comment at dinner, as soon as I started talking to Nicole in the pool, the other four basically sprinted into the house. It was annoying, but as I said in an interview, I wasn’t exactly crushed about it either (in the Yahoo uncut version of this scene—which I trust none of you has any interest in—I say in an interview, “this team does a lot of annoying things, but of all the annoying things they do, all going inside at once was one of the better ones.”).

And since you’ve all had more than your fair share of the events that took place at this time, I’ll try keep this short.

The cameras are always there, two feet away. Sitting in the hot tub there, the camera guy had left. I’m no fool—drunk or not, I figured they were filming from somewhere, but because they were far away, I assumed they couldn’t get any kind of close-up shot.

I assumed wrong.

I also assumed, since we were in the water and our mic’s were off, that they couldn’t hear anything I was saying.

And yet, as the subtitles rolled out on the screen Sunday, I learned hideously that I had once again assumed wrong.

All that said, I knew they were filming from somewhere—and I didn’t care. It’s odd, I know. But like I mentioned in last week’s recap, I was not thinking about consequences to the point that I was almost actively ignoring consequences. For someone who’s typically a thinker and an analyzer, this was a state I never would have expected to fall into, but whether it was the adrenaline, or the surreal-ness of it all, or the lack of sleep, or the utter intensity, I reacted by being much more relaxed and much less neurotic than I am on a typical day in my life. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

In my interviews, I’d have no choice but to reflect on the situation and the potential consequences, since I was being asked about everything, and in those moments, I would tell the producers that every warning bell in my head was telling me that this was hardly the time or place for such antics, but at the time, my reaction to warning bells was basically to shrug and say, “eh.” It is this same mindset that allowed me to act bold during tasks and put my neck on the line without fear of the boardroom getting in the way. Depending on your thoughts on making out with your girlfriend in front of 10 million people, some might call this an ideal mindset in which to find yourself in such a stressful situation (others, I’m sure, would say that this is the last place you want to be disregarding consequences).

Anyway, it was what it was. You know when you’re starting out with someone new and you’re all excited about it? What a weird thing to happen while filming The Apprentice.

Moving on—the next morning (day 3 of the task, 18 overall), we woke up and headed to the beach for our surf lessons.

The episode presented the surf lessons and accompanying hospital visit as happening before the kiss, because it fit better romantically, but it actually happened after. We got in skin-tight wetsuits, and two absurdly active-looking, healthy-looking professional surfers instructed us on how to get up on the board and ride a wave. I was excited to try this—I had never done it before. The pros helped stabilize our board as we got up on it in the water, and I actually found myself able to stay up for 3-5 seconds a few times. I had a tiny jolt of that feeling in my stomach which said, “Oh my god I could get addicted to this.” After 10 minutes or so the producers motioned for me to come in and switch boards, and they gave me one with a camera mounted on the front of it. There was also a camera guy and a photographer in the water with waterproof equipment, and we were all wearing waterproof mic’s. It was a fun time.

They played a clip of Nicole screaming when she got hurt, but there was no scream. In fact, she said the pain crept up on her and got worse and worse so she finally got out of the water. None of us even noticed for awhile, and in my surfing glee, I was the last to notice that something was wrong. When I saw her getting bandaged up, I had immediate flashbacks to Rebecca from season 4 (who twisted her ankle on an ice-skating reward and was on crutches for the rest of the show). We all assumed that it was either a sprain or a break, but it was odd that she didn’t remember hurting it, and it didn’t look swollen. So she went off to the hospital, and I joined her (they made me look mad chivalrous, but there had to be someone with her since there had to be 2 people at least, and I was the obvious choice).

The doctor was confused as hell for awhile—acute pain with the slightest touch of the ankle, but it didn’t hurt when he bent or twisted the ankle. Then he realized—it was a jellyfish. He said it was a pretty severe jellyfish sting, and I knew how painful that must have been, but she’s from Chicago and knew nothing about a jellyfish sting. So she was suddenly embarrassed, thinking that she was a wuss for quitting with a jellyfish sting (as if it were a bee sting or something)—and hence her question, “would most people quit surfing for the day with a jellyfish sting?” Nicole is very tough when it comes to physical pain, so it was a sheer delight to see her panicked that she was being a wimp. He told her that it would get better every hour, and go away by itself within 24 hours. And she continued to ask him if people normally come to hospital for a jellyfish sting. I think at one point I told her that I get jellyfish stings “all the time” and that I “barely feel them.” Fun times.

So we head back to the mansion, I go on my long interview and answer 200 questions about what’s happening with Nicole, and that concludes task 6 for me.

Watching the episode, Aimee definitely seemed to have it coming. However, I wasn’t there, so I’m getting my info from the episode—an episode that was telling the story, “Aimee is a horrible PM and everyone hates her”—so I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I must say, I did enjoy the look of death that Aimee gave to Derek and Jen as she stepped into the “dead man’s Lexus.”

And that’s where I’ll leave you. See you next week.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 7

2009-03-08T18:47:00.001-07:00

I’ll begin by mentioning that yesterday I got an ant farm for my office. I spent the day overjoyed with wonder as I stared, fascinated, into the doings of my 14 ants. I told most everyone I know about how excited I was to be in posssession of such a wonderful ant farm. It was a great day. Then, last night, I had terrible recurring nightmares about ants.

And with that, we will begin our recap.

So it’s the last night of Task 6. While Surya’s in the boardroom firing Aimee, there was an actual discussion about potentially ousting Surya as PM of the next task. The talk of a coup came mostly from Frank, but it was incredibly drastic, and nothing came of it.

The next morning (day 1 of Task 7, day 19 overall) we met Trump bright and early on Rodeo Drive, and he announced the Lexus task. Each team had an assigned dealership, and we headed down to ours. This was a mammoth task. We’d be hosting a 2-hour event for 50 Lexus preferred customers, i.e. rich white people who had a passion for cars, especially the Lexus. These people lived and breathed Lexus (how many casual car people do you know who go to preferred guest car events?). We’d be giving them a sneak preview of the new Lexus, the LS 460. We had $50,000 to work with. We’d be graded on three things: luxury experience, product knowledge, and the driving experience. Stephanie and Frank would be in charge of the luxury experience (i.e. the event planning—the food, decorations, tent, etc.), Nicole and I were in charge of product knowledge, and James would plan the test drive.

Nicole and I were assigned to product knowledge because these would be the people who would be interacting with the customers the most (the car itself would be in the middle of the event and we’d be standing by it the whole time answering questions)—and smiling at older people and acting excited about a car seemed like a good job for us.

So we all met with the Lexus executives, and wrote down the key words they said, since these would likely be the things the preferred customers would be interested in. There were three new features that had never been in a Lexus before—the self-parallel park, the 8-speed automatic transmission, and the infrared sensors that measured the temperature of the occupants, not just the air (pretty cool car, I must say).

Then Stephanie and Frank headed out to the catering company to pick out food, and Nicole and I went down to the car and learned every possible detail about it for 2 hours. This is what they showed Heidi and Muna doing on the other team. I took about 15 pages of written notes as the expert told us about every aspect of the car. I know relatively little about cars, so I spent time learning how to talk intelligently about valves, suspension, transmission, etc. But we also learned all of the little details too—by the end of the day I knew about the special headlights, the unique shape of the body, the paint, the way the sunroof was powered, the material the shocks were cased in, the sonar used for the parallel park, the hubcaps, the tires, the length and width of the car, the available colors for the interior and exterior, the type of leather used on the steering wheel, the massage chair in the back, the acceleration statistics, the width of the duel exhaust pipes, the size of the LCD screen, the workings of the GPS system, the number and location of the airbags, the brand of the stereo system, the price of the car, the price of the bells and whistles, the date of the release, etc. etc. etc.

(And yes, I made that list so thorough because I’m bitter that all they showed was me flirting with Nicole while sucking down a packet of honey.)

After collecting all the info, I typed it up for the rest of the team and went over the important points with Nicole, Surya, and James throughout the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Frank and Stephanie continued to make plans and phone calls, and James called a test drive company and ordered the cones, potholes, etc.

As I said, this was a mammoth task. Everyone was working at full steam the entire afternoon and into the night. Around 10pm I remember going through the ridiculously long dossier, and realizing that our graphic designer was only available to us until midnight, but that we hadn’t made any signs yet. Frank and Stephanie thought someone else was in charge of that, and we thought they were doing it. So I quit the product knowledge for the time being and called the graphic designer and met with him and designed the signs. I frantically typed up museum-like captions on each one and very nearly missed the deadline—in fact, it was so late that the print-shop would charge us double. This didn’t turn out to be a problem, but it hit me that if this extra money ended up losing us the task I’d end up in a vicious boardroom battle where Surya argued that the late signs were my fault and I’d be yelling about how the only reason I was working on the signs is that he forgot to assign them to anyone and they slipped through the cracks, and that if anything I had almost saved his ass by taking over. If something goes a little different, that’s the story of this episode—instead, no one, including anyone else on the team, remembers this at all.

Late that night, we headed back to the house. You know that scene where someone says, “Where’s Nicole?” and they flash to me and her on the couch snuggling, as if we’re fucking around when the rest of the team is working? In reality, everyone else went to sleep back at the house, except she and I stayed up a couple of hours mastering the product even better, quizzing each other on it, etc. and that’s what you saw. Pretty frustrating.

The next morning, we went back to the dealership, and James and I spent 3 gross hours loading cones (cones are a lot heavier than they look) and fake streetlights and huge rubber potholes into a truck and laying them out on the roof to set up the test drive. James would stay up there as a guide when customers came up for the test drive. The signs I had designed finally arrived 15 minutes before the event started, and I remember paying the delivery guys extra money to hang them up, since we had so many other things to do. Stephanie and Frank made the final preparations with the food, tent, TV screens, banners, etc. Nicole and I crammed with our product knowledge packets. I also printed out a sign-up sheet for people to take the test drive—I’ve been too busy tooting my own horn to get into this, but it was a logistical nightmare to get all 50 people up for a test drive in the 90 minutes (the last 30 had to be a Q&A), and we decided the best way to do it was to send a few people up at a time and hope that enough people made it up there—and I handed Frank the signup sheet and told him to be in charge of this (he and Stephanie had been so busy getting the event ready, that Frank, who didn’t really have knowledge of the car, had little to do during the actual event).

And then, the people started coming in. Surya gave the introduction, I pounded a Starbucks Double Shot, and it started. For 90 minutes, I answered every question in the world, and used basically every piece of product knowledge I had memorized. I thought I may have been overdoing it with the memorization, but in fact, if I had known any less it would have been bad.

And just like Stephanie and Frank were the perfect people for what they did and James was great for his station, Nicole and I had been the right people for our role—we both do great with old people (who made up the majority of the customers). I had my little grandmama’s boy smile going, and Nicole had her shiny cheerful face on, and the they were loving us.

Which brings me to more bitterness.

The executives paid a visit in the middle of the task. They observed things for awhile, and before they left, they came over to me and Nicole, shook our hands, asked our names, and joked with us that it was a shame we couldn’t work for them full time.

Flash to post-task, and the scene where Trump is meeting with the exec’s to ask who the “stars” were—last week, the Priceline exec’s told Trump who the stars were on both teams. Curiously enough, though, this week, they said that Heidi and Muna were stars for Kinetic, and the rest of the scene was cut.

I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

The problem is, the previews had promised an exciting “double-firing,” so as the obvious red herring, Nicole and I were doomed to look useless in this episode. The other reason is that both teams did well on product knowledge—the teams differed in the “luxury event” criteria, on which we excelled and they stumbled, so the editors focused mainly on our success, and their failure, in that area (I’ll give credit where credit is due—Stephanie and Frank nailed their job).

The truth is, I’m not really too bitter about any of this—I’m kidding more than anything. I know full well that this show can give you a real reason to be bitter (just ask Surya), and this was all a bit frustrating but nothing serious. Not only that, but looking at the season as a whole, I’ve had a perfectly fair shake.

Frustrating episodes are part of the experience—every person on the show can list you a handful of instances in which they were unfairly edited.

Most importantly, being humble in the last two paragraphs gives me the moral free rein to continue to toot my own horn in these recaps.

Anyway, after 90 minutes, we held the Q&A, which ran smoothly, and the task ends. They clap for us, and we all collapse in the other room and eat the hors d’oeuvres from the event. Very satisfying moment. I sat with Frank and Steph and said, “That was great, we killed it.” And Frank said, “Yeah, everyone but fuckface,” referring to Surya, who was on an OTF. Steph rolled her eyes in agreement. James sat down and he and Frank began talking about their frustrations with Surya.

I didn’t see Surya much over the last two hours and hadn’t even thought about him either way, but apparently the three of them had thought about it plenty—and this was not going to end well.

So we went to the boardroom for resolution:

Arrow: 94/100
Kinetic: 84/100

We aced this one.

After going 0-3, Arrow had won 3 of the last 4. Which really sucked for Kinetic—it’s one thing to be the stiff boring winners, but if you’re the stiff, professional team and you keep losing to the drunk fuck-ups, then you just suck.

So Trump announces the reward—after going on a shitty surfing reward the week before, we are blessed with the coolest reward of the show: to hang out with Snoop for 3 hours in his studio.

So we went back to the house and did what our team always does—we pulled out the liquor. After 30 minutes we piled into the van, and headed for the studio. This was a happy team.

We pulled up to the studio (apparently a very famous one), and I noticed a 1,300 pound man standing outside the door. Gulp.

While we were waiting there, I remember Jay Bienstock, the show’s Executive Producer, popping his head into the van and congratulating us. Jay’s a cool dude. He talked to us about how after this experience, real-world deadlines will seem like a joke (Lexus would spend a month of preparation, he said, to put on an event like the one we just put together in 24 hours).

After a few minutes, we went into the studio, and there was Snoop, and about 4 other guys. I’m not quite sure how The Apprentice pulled this off—Snoop???

Of course, he was the coolest person in the world. He brought us all around in a circle, and asked if anyone was musically inclined. Everyone looked at me. He pointed to the piano, so I sat down and started improvising, trying to play the least cheesy thing I could muster. The whole thing is somewhat of a blur, but I played for at least 10 minutes, while his bassist started playing with me, and Snoop started singing. He was humming a melody along with my piano. At one point, he pointed to me, and said, “this guy can play.”

Then he sat down on the drums, and we started doing a back and forth “dialogue”—I played a diddy and he mirrored it, and we went back and forth for awhile.

Are you kidding?? I was just thinking “I cannot believe this is happening.”

Of course, in accordance with the theme of the episode (“Tim is useless”), they cut this out completely. They didn’t even put it in the deleted scenes. The one thing I have is this picture. You will click on this link and view this picture:

http://www.nbc.com/The_Apprentice_6/photos/general/13629.shtml#photo

So I started playing something resembling a hip-hop theme, and the team came up with lyrics—the chorus they came up with was:

It’s not where you start,
it’s just where you finish.
It’s not where you start
the race, it’s where you finish.

Kind of good, and cool because we started by losing a lot and were winning now.

Then the free-styling began. Thankfully, I did not attempt this.

Frank was hilariously bad, and James free-styling was like a carnival exhibit. Gotta give them credit for trying. Then Steph interviewed that “Surya, who claimed to be a huge Snoop fan, just sat there silently while James and Frank rapped.” For chrissake, can we give the kid a break??

Another funny moment was Steph and Nicole doing the “Ba-da-bum-bah, ba-da-bum-bah” lines back and forth. Steph was perfectly in tune. When Nicole did hers it was like someone was spraying a fire-extinguisher haphazardly around the room. It was so off-key that Snoop stood next to her (with his arm around her) and sang her part with her to help her out. Everything about that is awesome.

After we recorded, Snoop and his guys went into the sound studio to mix the song, while we hung out in the main room and drank champagne. Every 10 minutes I’d look up and remember that Snoop Dogg was sitting 20 feet away, and just shake my head in disbelief.

When they finished, we went in there and heard the final product—not great. But then he played us his new single, which was pretty great, while he sat there with his eyes closed and bopped his head up and down.

Then he hung out with us in there for another half hour, and gave us some life advice, which I kind of forget. At one point, he said, “I can’t hold it anymore, I’m getting the shakes—fuck the cameras.” And he pulled out a huge joint and lit it. Then he said, “I’m the only one who can fire Trump” and he looked at the camera and said, “Trump, you’re fired.”

If all future rewards are cleaning poop off Trump’s shoes with a stick, you won’t hear any complaints out of me.

And so, the task ends for Arrow. Watching Jen and Derek go down on Sunday, I had the following thoughts:

--Jen and Derek are both great—two of my favorite people in the cast.

--Trump’s reaction to the “white trash” comment is why it’s a good show—Trump is prone to do completely nonsensical things out of nowhere, especially when he’s in a pissy mood. And he was in a pissy mood in that boardroom. I could watch his fuse go off on Derek about 200 times and it wouldn’t get old. The reason this makes it a good show, is it proves that the producers only have so much say—Trump's unpredictability gives the show more credibility because he will always fire people he doesn’t like and keep people around who he does, even when the producers advise him otherwise. Which makes the happenings in the boardroom quite genuine and un-staged. I really believe that when many boardrooms start, Trump does not know who he’s going to fire.

--The go-carts was a stupid idea.

--I love the way Jen went down.

--I was highly entertained by Randall continually interrupting Trump. Really, nothing is better than Trump in a pissy mood.

And that’s that. See you next week.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 8

2009-03-08T18:46:00.002-07:00

If you asked me a year ago if I thought I’d ever run around in boxing gloves punching guys and hugging a big vitamin bottle in the middle of a soccer field in front of 13,000 people while being filmed by NBC, I probably would have said, “No.” I probably would have said, “No. I don’t think I’ll ever run around in boxing gloves punching guys and hugging a big vitamin bottle in the middle of a soccer field in front of 13,000 people while being filmed by NBC.”

But if I had said that, I would have been wrong.

Yes, this thing keeps getting weirder and weirder, doesn’t it. And now imagine going through it all in the time period we did. In a span of 24 days—just over 3 weeks—I had been a car-washer, bathing suit-designer, tour bus guide, fast food cashier, honey-bottler, honey salesman, mall salesman, Lexus showman, neon pink pants-wearer—I had been serenaded by Andrea Bocelli, I had played the piano on the beach and again with Snoop Dogg, I had taken surf lessons, camped for 15 days, endured 5 boardrooms and over 30 hours of interviews, made friends, started a relationship, lost my suit, dirtied my shoes, and shaved using the reflective house window as a mirror because I knew the Kinetic girls were in the house watching—so when it came time for me to throw on a shiny blue champion’s gown in the middle of the field during halftime, I thought little of it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary anymore.

Simply said, this was my new life. It didn’t even feel surreal anymore.

And with that, we’ll back up three days to the last night of task 7 (day 21 overall) and dive into the gem that is the GNC task.

The memory of what took place that night for us is not here with me at the moment. From watching the episode, I saw that we had had a family dinner, during which Surya told us how great we all were. I think this was actually a happier team moment than the editing showed. We had won two in a row, and while all the Surya trouble was in the air, I don’t think we were rolling our eyes and glaring at him the way it seemed. In general, the Surya/team dynamic was not as bad as it looked—at least it wasn’t that bad on the surface. On the surface, Frank was a dick and kind of picked on Surya, but the rest of us were always pretty nice to him. It seems from the episode like James and Steph were disrespectful towards Surya as well, but if you watch closely, the two of them trash him in their interviews, but that’s it. Only Frank says anything to Surya’s face, and even he is more prickish than mean. And Nikki and I didn’t hate Surya at all—he annoyed me at times for sure—but so did James and Frank and the others. Here and there I poked fun at Surya in an interview, but never in a disdainful way. It was always lighthearted.

And that’s what’s crazy. Until 9 months later when you’re watching it on TV—you don’t know how other people are in their interviews. Looking at it after 8 episodes, Surya never said anything bad about anyone in an interview, Nikki only said bad things about the one person she openly disliked (Michelle), I poked fun at people here and there, but was rarely venomous. Frank was like Nikki and trashed Michelle and Surya, which wouldn’t have surprised any of us at the time. James and Steph both had a knack for being friendly to your face, but ripping you in an interview. I was shocked to see James interview negatively about the me-Nikki thing during episode 7, since during episode 7, everyone on the team was extremely positive about all that to our face. And he was pretty nice to Surya, but in interviews would say things like, “Surya is like a 55 year old who wants to be one of the kids” or “It’s funny that Surya thinks he’s part of the reason we won that task”. And Steph took it a step further. No one was sweeter to everyone than Steph—if, during the Snoop reward, any of us knew that she went out back and interviewed that “Surya, who claims to be the biggest Snoop fan, is just standing there, like an idiot!” we would have been shocked. During Snoop she was probably smiling at Surya, saying things like, “how fun is this!!”

Now you’re thinking, “He’s on a fucking reality show, what does he expect?”

Good point. People are always duplicitous on reality shows. But still.

Anyway. Surya goes to the boardroom, and comes back and tells us about the double firing. This is great news. Nothing against Derek and Jen, but the high number of people left was discouraging. Even with the double-firing, things didn’t add up:

It was a “14-week job interview”—having watched previous seasons, I knew that the final two episodes were the finale, which meant that there were 13 total tasks. Since the finale would be the final 2 people, it meant that at the end of task 12, there would be 2 people left.

But what the hell?

After the double-firing, there were 10 people left, and 7 tasks done. So if my predictions were right, we’d have to go from 10 people to 2 people in 5 tasks. Uh oh. I remember thinking, “Something’s not right here—something weird’s gonna happen.”

I wasn’t the only one trying to figure this out—we’d all discuss it. Then the producer would snap and yell, “DON’T TALK ABOUT THE SHOW ON THE SHOW” since they obviously can’t use any of the footage of us talking about how many people have to get fired by when.

And so we just went on, with this ominous fact in our minds.

The next morning (day 1 of task 8, day 22 overall) we awoke at 4:30am and found ourselves heading up to echo park for the task announcement. I remember sitting in the van on lockdown at the announcement location for over an hour while we waited for Trump. Which would have been fine, except I had to piss. It was one of those situations where it was to the level that I was willing to make a fuss in order to do something about it. The producer finally consented to me going into the empty van and pissing in an empty water bottle (since there were no public bathrooms anywhere and apparently public urination wasn’t considered “okay” by the production staff). But the water bottle wasn’t big enough. So I pulled the hideous “break in the action” and found another bottle. At the end I put the two bottles in an empty cereal box, and presented it to the producer, who as upset to be holding that box as you are to be hearing about it. Why did I share that story with all of you? Because I can.

So Trump finally gets there, and he’s with Bill Rancic and a man who seems to be about 17 years old. Trump tells us that the 17-year-old is an executive from the company GNC, and that we’ll be putting on a halftime show at the LA Galaxy soccer game. We’ll be evaluated by the executive, on three criteria: entertainment, originality, and brand integration. Sounds fun, but also mammoth.

He finishes, and after heading to the GNC store for a brief meeting with the 17-year-old executive, we make our way to our war room. We start brainstorming, and I come up with the boxing idea. Everyone was into it. The episode showed a humorous scene of Surya instructing us all to brainstorm for 5 minutes and Frank completely making fun of him. On one hand, Surya’s intentions—to force us all to think through some more ideas since mine was the first one presented—were good. But on the other hand, you gotta have an eye for a natural flow of group energy and work with it, not against it.

Either way, we dissected the idea plenty later on, and when we got to the war room, we began to figure out what props we’d need. The prop guys started building our boxing ring, and we brainstormed further the details of our show (which we’d have exactly 6 minutes to put on, including set up and take down).

The basic idea was this: Average Joe has his head down and is moping around, low on energy and just feeling “down”—specifically, the script would read, he’s feeling “fatigue, lethargy, and 2 other things I forget”, and these 4 things would be represented by 4 guys in the ring pushing him around. Then the narrator would say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, do you know what Joe needs???” and he’d get the crowd to start chanting “JOE! NEEDS! GNC! JOE! NEEDS! GNC!” (with the help of team members on the sidelines with blow horns). Then the GNC bottle would triumphantly appear, and come over and slap Joe five, and give him a champion’s robe, and Joe would suddenly feel great and punch out his “problems.”

The idea was based on our meeting with the executive, who told us that GNC products help you fight 4 main things: “fatigue, lethargy…” and the other two that I forget now. And the end result, he said, was that GNC would help you feel stronger, happier, and more in charge of your life.

Say what you want about the outcome—but I think the boxing idea is a fine way to capture that message, and satisfy the three grading criteria.

Anyway, there a few points of debate within the group:

1) Should the four “goons” in the ring be holding up big signs that labeled them as “fatigue,” “lethargy,” etc.? Or is that too cumbersome and would people not be able to read them anyway? (we decided no labels)

2) Should the goons be wearing masks, or is that stupid? (we decided yes, and Surya sent me and James to get the costumes)

3) Who should narrate? (the original thought was that I would do it, and then Frank did an imitation of how he would do it and we all liked his energy and we decided he should do it. Incidentally, in the boardroom, Trump said Frank shouldn’t have done it because of his heavy accent. Oops.)

4) Is the message positive enough? (we were worried that Joe “knocking out” people—even if they represent life’s problems—was a bit harsh. So we had each of the goons wearing a GNC shirt underneath their goon shirt, and at the end they’d get up off the ground, reveal their GNC shirts, and celebrate with Joe.)

So, in light of #2, James and I left to get all the costumes. We got to the costume store, and bought Joe’s robe and boxing gloves, and for the goons we had a few options: we could go with simple, phantom of the opera-type masks, but they had a lot of other masks there. And then we noticed, on the top shelf, these huge, terrifying, Halloween masks. I glanced at James. James glanced at me. What if…? What if the goons wore these huge, goblin masks? It would pound the idea home! Joe’s battling his demons! GNC solves problems that are as horrible as those masks!!

We were thrilled. We purchased the costumes (each of the big masks cost us $100), and went back to the war room. Very excited, James and I proudly revealed the huge, terrifying monster masks to the team.

Upon seeing what we had bought, the team had the same face on that Frank and I had when we first saw Carey’s bathing suit. Some middle ground between shock and disgust. Looking back, I can’t really remember why James and I thosught that these huge, horrifying masks would be a good idea. But we had spent $400 on them. Like Frank with the phone charger, if we had run short on money on this task, these masks would have been a huge issue in the boardroom. Luckily for us, money didn’t prove to be a problem.

Anyway, we all spent the next few hours working on the props—gluing huge GNC posters onto boards, painting the four posts of the boxing ring, making the “ropes” of the ring, etc. This was a lot of work. Around that time I brought up the idea of getting music to go along with our show. The team liked this idea, but the problem was that the dossier prevented us from using any pre-written music. So I threw out the idea of me finding somewhere I could write and record a little GNC theme that would start playing right as the GNC bottle triumphantly appeared. It was a long shot, but I started calling music stores to find employees who might know a friend who could help (for obvious reasons, I was restricted from calling anyone I knew outside the show or using any resources I had ever used prior to the show). I ended up talking to a guy at Guitar Center. I told him that I needed to use a home studio that night and that I’d pay the person $200 to let me use it. He thought about it, and put me on the phone with a fellow employee, who said he finished work at 10pm and that I could do it at his house. I shrugged—it was worth a try.

I had to be accompanied by someone, so Stephanie, who has some singing ability, came along. We got to the house around 10:30pm, and walked into to one of the shadiest situations I’ve ever witnessed. It felt like a scene in Pulp Fiction. There was the guy I talked to, and his long-haired friend—combined, they had about 10 rings on their collective face. There was also a girl, who was one of the most cracked-out people I’ve ever seen. Luckily, I had recently gone into “nothing seems out of the ordinary anymore” mode, so I thought little of the scene.

I started messing around with his keyboard and his sounds—not exactly state-of-the-art equipment. It was going to be tough to make something decent-sounding. As I was tinkering around, I’d glance over to the couch, and see the two jewelry heads, the crack head, and Stephanie, all sitting there, saying nothing, all looking at me. In some deep, internal place, I chuckled.

The rest of the team called and said they were taking a break with the props to come meet us at the house. They arrived, and as they walked into the Pulp Fiction house, they all had the same face on that Frank and I had when we first saw Carey’s bathing suit (I’m pretty sure this was a fresh version of the face for most of them, but a couple of them may have just not moved their face since seeing the masks).

So I continued working, and I remember glancing over at one point, and seeing the two ring-masters, the crack head, and Stephanie, along with James, Nicole, Frank, Surya, the producer, the camera guys, and the sound guys—all 13 of them sitting there silently, all staring blankly at me.

This was an odd scene.

So I finally finished—the theme had a heavy drumbeat, and electric guitars, and sounded something like “Wild Thing” without the singer (of course, all you could hear in the episode when the bottle ran out was the show’s ominous “you’re watching the losing team” music. I’m glad we spent all that time and energy at the crackhouse).

After getting the hell out of there, we went back to the war room—we needed to paint a huge “GNC” on the carpet of the boxing ring and would have to lay down multiple coats throughout the night. We got there, and the whole team got their hands and knees and painted. When we finished we all slept on the ground for a half hour while it dried. Then we woke up and painted another coat, then slept on the ground for a half hour, and then woke up and painted again. I remember it being about 5am and kneeling there with my paintbrush, between naps, completely delirious. It was kind of fun.

We spent the morning finishing all the props, and then we headed to the stadium. Each team had a tennis court to store all the props, and we brought the boxing ring, the giant bottle, the signs, mats, etc. onto our court. While we were doing this, Kinetic showed up and started unloading their props. This is an intense moment—after spending 24 hours wondering what the other team is doing for their show, we get a glimpse. I saw those weird big bones they had made, and immediately assumed they were doing something with dogs. “Crap,” I remember thinking. “They got us—why the hell didn’t we think to get dogs.” As I explained earlier, I was on very little sleep.

Each team had a set rehearsal time—as far as Apprentice task rehearsals go, ours went fine. Then we went back to our stadium war room and threw together the final details. This whole scene was a bit chaotic, but since this week’s story is, “Arrow is a disaster and Kinetic is not,” they made this scene appear to be utter mayhem by literally splicing together a bunch of sentences of Arrow members in a 45 second montage that looked like real time.

And it’s gametime.

The episode showed Kinetic’s skit first, but in reality we went first. It went basically as planned. I moped around in my mesh shorts (not a flattering look as it turns out), got my GNC, and beat up the actors. I felt alright at the end of ours—not great, not terrible. This could go either way.

Then Kinetic did their show.

Now I’m going to try to remain objective here, but from where we were watching, Kinetic’s made no sense, and you couldn’t understand Angela on the microphone. We all looked at each other and smiled—we had ‘em.

Then, after they were done, the announcer had the fans hold up a card, with a different color on each side—one color to vote for us, the other to vote for them. About 1/3 of the fans voted, and it was in our favor. Now, we were sure we won, which is why you saw Surya in that interview, saying something like, “I stuck by our idea, and now I’m so happy I did—it feels so good to know that we did the right thing.” This makes him look like a jackass in light of the result, but I would have said the same exact thing at the time—never was I more sure of an outcome.

Since the outcome was what it was, they used Kristine’s interview to narrate what was happening during Kinetic’s show, to make it seem clear, but I was watching and I had no idea what was going on.

(And I’m not the only one—these are two accounts from people who were at the game:
http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/the_apprentice_6/2006_Jun_26_galaxy_halftime_show
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6350832.html?display=Breaking+News)

So we were understandably shocked to hear the outcome from the 17-year-old’s mouth (this is my 5th loss, and this is the first time I was surprised when we found out that we lost).

I’m not gonna complain too much about this—it was a subjective task, and he liked theirs more. End of story. But it’s easy for me to move on—I didn’t get fired because of it. Surya’s been dwelling over this outcome since it happened.

Anyway, we’re all pretty dejected, and we get in the van to head back to the house and move our stuff outside.

At the time, I’m thinking that I’m not in good shape boardroom-wise—it was solely my idea. Watching the episode, it seems obvious that since everyone was bad-mouthing Surya so much, he was going to get fired. But the Surya antagonism wasn’t as obvious at the time, and Trump’s always been big on firing the person whose idea it was that lost.

So I was working on my argument—mainly that even though my ideas lost this task, my ideas also were a huge part of our wins in tasks 4 and 6, and that at least I had the guts to put out big ideas task after task, and that if you do that you can’t expect to be right every time, etc. While I was thinking about this, Surya came up to me and brought me aside, and we talked about the boardroom. You can see this conversation here (it was one of the deleted scenes):

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week8_videos.html#1643653

Rather than me writing three paragraphs explaining my reasons for saying Surya should be fired in that boardroom, and why I was torn between him and James, and why even though I said Surya I also voiced my opinion on James, just watch the clip. Further, I say the word “pooing” in the clip. I have the whole English language at my disposal, and from tens of thousands of words I for some reason select “pooing” to articulate my point.

One other thing. One day I noticed Surya was wearing a rubber band around his wrist, and I asked him about it. He explained that he never took the rubber band off, and that it was a metaphor for his integrity– “you’re always wearing your integrity and if you bend your integrity (and he stretched the rubber band out when he said this, and then let it snap back onto his wrist) it will always snap back at you, and you’re left with the welt.” Say what you want about Surya, but he has integrity—which as we’ve seen should not be taken for granted on this show—and that comes forth well in this clip. The task was my idea, and attacking me would have been his best shot of surviving—and he knew that since the whole team had liked my idea and we had settled on it together, it would have been sneaky and disloyal to then attack me for it. Most people in that position would have gone after me.

At one point James came over to me and said that Surya had told him he was bringing him into the boardroom. James and I talked about it and I told him that I understood Surya’s reasoning for bringing him in, and that I might voice that opinion in the boardroom even though I was going to say that Surya should be fired (because regardless of who I liked or trusted the most, Surya’s relationship with the team was hurting the team as a whole). I had blindsided James in the task 5 boardroom, and I didn’t want to attack him again without him knowing it would happen.

Then, a little later, we were all sitting around the fire waiting for the boardroom—it was pretty tense—and James kept saying under his breath, smugly, “I’m just happy Bill’s gonna be there” as if he knew that Bill would know the real story and that he was protected for that reason (in light of that, it’s kind of funny that Bill was completely anti-James and pro-Surya the whole boardroom).

So we head in. What you didn’t see was that in the first few minutes of the boardroom, I had a serious attack mounted on me from Kristine, and Trump jumped on this, and actually had his firing voice on, before I successfully defended myself, and Trump never bothered me again in that one. If you’re bored at work and would like to watch me thwart Trump’s firing voice, check out this link:

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week8_videos.html#1643672

Anyway, because of a combination of the team all attacking Surya and not me, Surya deciding to attack James and not me, my thwarting of Trump’s initial attack, and Bill’s defense of me (“Tim was the only one who stepped up”), I was safe. But the fact that all four of these things had to happen to make me safe shows how hard it is to not get fired when you have the losing idea.

Part of the reason for this is that Trump has to focus almost entirely on the task at hand—if he considers previous tasks in his decision, then watching each show is boring because there’s a chance that the mistakes in that episode’s task that you’re watching won’t even come into play, since there are so many previous tasks to talk about as well. This is a little glitch in the system, and because of this, Trump is handcuffed to the current task in boardrooms.

So for that reason, a lot had to go right for me to be as safe as I was by the end of that boardroom. It was also nice for me to hear Frank and Nicole—my two best friends on the team, and two people I had been counting on to be loyal to me in a moment of truth—defend me in that boardroom.

And so, for me this boardroom was a lot like the first boardroom, with Frank and Martin (remember Martin?). I’m there, and I’m called back to be one of the final three—but by the time it was down to the final three, I’m not really in danger.

So I sat there with James and Surya, 90% sure that Surya was getting fired (there was a team consensus, which is almost never overcome), and I had a decision to make: do I side with James on everything and preserve my relationship with James? Or do I side with Surya the times I think he’s right? Tough one, and I ended up going with the latter, partially because the topic James was being attacked for—playing more for the boardroom than for the task—did make me angry. And partially because Surya had been so fair with me that I felt an obligation to be just as fair with him.

And this boardroom was long. If an average one goes on for 45 minutes, this one went on for 75. Surya fought his little tail off—his eyes spent most of the time 3 inches in front of his head—and Trump was torn, I could tell. He really liked Surya. And Bill and I were both siding with Surya in his attacks on James. But Trump’s final reasoning was that “there’s no one else I can realistically fire here” because he didn’t believe that the problems with James were bad enough to fire him over, and he couldn’t fire me for the reasons I listed above.

And so, he sent Surya packing. He said multiple times that he thought Surya would do extremely well in his future. Surya was real upset. It was tough to watch. Surya was one of the few people that actually treated the whole thing like a job interview and not like a reality TV show, so this one hurt.

So that concludes the Surya Era, and we’re on to Episode 9.

And old Timo’s still kickin’.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 9

2009-03-08T18:46:00.001-07:00

Let’s add acting in a soap opera and grabbing lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his massive head to my June, 2006 list. Some kind of month that was.

And as has become routine for us, let’s back up three days to the last day of task 8 (day 24 overall).

Surya’s fired, and James and I stand outside and watch him get into the Dead Man’s Lexus. Though we were supposed to go on lockdown (by the way, if you’re confused by terms I used like lockdown, formal interviews, OTF’s, dossiers, etc., scroll down to the episode 1 and 2 recaps where I explain all of this), James and I talked about what was going to happen now.

As I mentioned in my task 6 recap, I had wanted the role of project manager back then. So you can imagine, I really wanted it now. It was getting to the end, and with this season’s “Winning PM stays PM” rule, chances to take the leader role were very limited. Further, I knew the other four on my team extremely well by this point, got along very well with all four of them, and knew that with Surya gone, this team was very, very strong, and had the potential for another winning streak.

So I told James that I wanted to be PM. Not surprisingly, James said that he wanted to be PM too.

I suggested to James that we take a team vote. He said that we should flip a coin. This made sense, since we both assumed that Nicole and Frank would vote for me and Steph would vote for him.

And while we’re here, I’ll digress, and write a bit about each of my four teammates, what I thought of them at the time, and what the team dynamic was like at that moment—

Nicole and I were an obvious alliance. Stephanie and James were also an alliance, and had been ever since task 3 (when Arrow was divided in half). Task 3 had long-lasting effects. While the team was certainly one unit, and we all got along well with each other, Steph and James had a loyalty to each other ever since that task, and Nicole, Frank and I were a little subgroup as well, to the point that people referred to the three of us as “the three musketeers.”

There was a slight tension between Nicole and Steph as well, which added into this underlying division. Frank was the main X-factor. James and Frank had both had problems with Surya, and the two of them had bonded over that topic over the past 5 tasks, and Frank may have felt a bit on the outside of the “three musketeers” alliance, for obvious reasons. So for those reasons, it wasn’t entirely clear where Frank’s loyalty lay.

This stuff was all underlying—on the surface, everyone got along with everyone, and there was shockingly little tension in this group. It was a great team. But the underlying loyalty is incredibly important in this game, since as we’ve seen throughout the season, Trump bases most of his firings on what team members say in the boardroom, and that is the one place—when push comes to shove—where these loyalties would ever come out in the open (Heidi had played to both Muna and Kristine, but when it came down to it, her true loyalty was with Kristine, and Muna was fired for this reason).

And a bit about each team member:

Nicole: She was great on the Lexus task, but had completely flown under the radar on the GNC task, so I was happy to see her take the lead in Soft Scrub. She was looking strong in that Trump loved her and that she had me as an automatic ally, but also a bit vulnerable in that the two least strong relationships within the team both involved her: hers with Steph and hers with James. I was still sufficiently smitten, but increasingly wary that mixing a relationship into a process that involved words like “team” and “loyalty” and “job interview” and “smell blood” could end up exploding in both our faces.

Frank: Frank had found a niche—he built things, he went out and got things, and he decorated. He had been valuable on four tasks so far (and had done very little on the others): El Pollo Loco (he made all the banners and signs—his role here was not shown enough in the episode), Honey (he made a big stand for the honey that attracted attention in the supermarket, and sold the honey effectively), Lexus (he and Steph had gotten all the food, and had created the event’s décor), and GNC (he had worked with the props guys to design the boxing ring). Were these contributions valuable to the team? Yes. Could someone else have taken over this role just fine in his absence? Probably. But he was a good workhorse, and he got things done quickly—and there’s value in that. His most worthwhile contribution to the team was his silliness—he was a huge part of why Arrow was a fun team. And he and I were good friends by this point.

Stephanie: On tasks, Steph had a way of being very valuable without ever putting herself at risk. She was the accountant for almost every task (I was accountant once, and Nicole did it three times, Steph every other time), which is a hard and thankless job. She almost always did the introduction speech in front of the executives. Having lived in LA for 32 years, she knew the city better than anyone by a mile, she had a knack for sales because she had a mother-like quality that customers trusted, and was just very competent in general. If I did this process again, and I were a captain, she would be one of my first two picks. All that said, there are two major strikes against her in my book: 1) she rarely came up with ideas (which are largely what wins and loses tasks, and what can lead to a firing), and 2) with nine tasks completed, she had expressed zero interest in being the project manager and had stayed silent during all project manager discussions.

On a personal level, I got along well with her. She was stiff as a board, but immediately fell into the mother role. I’d constantly lose shoes and ties and such, and my immediate reaction would be to ask Steph where they were, and she usually knew. She had a very serious boyfriend, who she was on the phone with every chance she got (i.e. during interview days when we were in the house).

James: James was a bit like Steph in that he was always doing something during tasks but often not something he could really be held accountable for. Other than that, James was a nice guy, and pretty harmless.

As for me, I was probably the biggest risk-taker of the group. Maybe this is partially because a job with Trump was less of a life dream for me than some of the others, and maybe it’s because of my natural competitiveness—but my focus was almost usually on winning the task and outperforming Kinetic, and rarely on winning the show and outperforming my teammates for boardroom purposes. As a result, my ass was constantly on the line during tasks. On the carwash task I was the “sales PM” and I came up with the idea for the GNC task, and in both ended up in the final boardroom. I would have been in the final boardroom for the tour bus task if Michelle hadn’t quit. If we hadn’t made that bulk sale on the El Pollo Loco task, we would have lost and I would have been in the final boardroom. I was in charge of product knowledge on the Lexus task, our giveaway scheme on the Priceline task was my idea, and James would have taken me and Nikki to the boardroom on Soft Scrub, since we did almost everything. Only on the bathing suit and honey tasks was I safe. The way I saw it was that this way of doing things could certainly get me fired, but it could also lead to me winning the whole thing. And it was a lot more fun than laying low for strategic purposes.

So anyway. James and I both want to be the next PM. So we sit down with the group, and as a group we decide to take a vote, and that the vote would be based purely on who the team thought would be the better leader. Nicole votes for me and Steph votes for James, to no one’s surprise. Frank thinks about it for over 5 minutes, and then says that since James just had his back against the wall, he’d vote for him. This was unfortunate. I reminded him that we had just decided we would be voting for who we thought would be the better PM, not who had their back against the wall. So he took it back and told us to flip a coin.

Nice going, Frank. Thanks a bunch.

To this day, I have no idea what was really going on in Frank’s head. I could talk about all different kinds of potential motivation he might have had, but I’ll spare you.

So we flip a coin, and James wins.

They neglected to air any of this, just showing Frank saying that when someone had their back against the wall they typically stepped up as PM and James interviewing that this was his big moment.

So it is what it is—I accept it and move on, though it’s frustrating. James gives a speech about how he wants to maximize all of our strengths, we’re all excited for the next task, and we go to sleep.

The next morning (day 1 of task 9, day 25 overall) we head to meet Trump at the set of Passions, which as you saw, excited Nicole greatly. Yes, I’m dating a girl who loves soap operas.

We’re told that we’ll be creating, acting in, and editing a 45 second “webisode” for Dial’s product “SoftScrub” (I hate the term “webisode”).

Each team is given a model home to use as a set. We head over to ours and walk through it and start brainstorming. Nicole comes up with the idea of a guy and his brother having to clean the guy’s bathroom before his girlfriend arrives, because he’s going to “pop the question.” Everyone likes it, and we start sketching out the scenes. The team immediately decides on me for the guy, Frank for the brother, and Nicole for the girlfriend. There really wasn’t any other option here.

The camera crew arrived, and since the first scene involved only me and Frank, Nicole and Stephanie left to get props (rose petals, champagne, the ring, etc…sigh) and we began filming.

One note: the whole criticism of Kristine leaving during the filming of Kinetic’s disaster first scene was not fair. They needed to get props, just like we did, and the teams can only split into groups of two or more, and neither Heidi nor Muna could go since they were acting. But Kristine wasn’t able to defend herself, because we can’t bring shit like that up in the boardroom. Sucks.

So we start filming the first scene. Now I’m not going to suggest for a second that Nicole and I can act in the slightest.

But I will say this with conviction: Frank Lombardi is not a good actor.

I’ve done a lot of challenging things in my day, but rarely have I attempted something as difficult as watching Frank say his first line without bursting out laughing. Imagine standing there, while James yells, “Action!” and Frank walks in the room and says, “Brian! I can’t believe yah poppin da question!!” (In the original scene we were Brian and Patrick, since the two producers with us on that task were Brian and Patrick, but my line calling him Patrick got cut out, so now I was just Brian, which was just kind of weird). I had to use every ounce of strength I could muster not to laugh every time he said this line.

So after a few tries, we nail the first scene. One problem—it took 50 seconds, and the whole webisode was allowed to be no more than 45 seconds. So we cut it way down and got it to 30 seconds. Still not good enough—we needed to fit a cleaning scene and the proposal scene into this. So we cut almost everything out, and got it down to 18 seconds.

We needed the girls and their props to do anything further, and they took a long time to get back. We had a strict deadline of 9pm, and the wait was getting a bit stressful. In the meantime, the producers OTF’d me about how it “wasn’t good that the girls weren’t back yet,” just in case it ended up being an important part of the episode.

And Frank and I were both starving. So when the girls finally arrived with buckets of KFC, it was the happiest moment of my life. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be eating anything. In fact, Frank just called me this Monday just to talk about how good the chicken was.

So we filmed the cleaning scene, which took awhile, because we wanted to get a sufficient number of satisfying-looking cleaning swipes, and we had to manufacture shower wall grease out of syrup and coffee grinds.

Then we had to rush to film the proposal scene. I interviewed about how awkward it was to propose to a girl who I was kind of starting to kind of be dating. What the producers really wanted was for me to answer this question: “So is it great to finally bring what you and Nicole have into an actual task?” No fucking way are you getting that quote, I told them, and gave them the “massively awkward” quote instead. I’m telling you, if I had answered the producers’ questions like they wanted me to throughout the season, I wouldn’t be able to show my face in public right now.

Anyway, yet again, the thing that was especially hard for me was making the “devastated” face I made at the end of the webisode while looking at Nicole, without laughing. I’m telling you, keeping a straight face while watching Nicole and Frank act is a feat. And to make things harder, James kept yelling, “Quiet on the set!” and “Action!” and “Cut!”, trying to be a real director. You try not laughing.

Incidentally, if I ever put rose petals on the ground for anyone, run me over with a tractor immediately.

We went straight to the editing studio, and met with our editor. This was a really nice, competent, patient guy. Thank god. That can’t be taken for granted—more than once we had had bitchy people for this kind of thing, and you’re stuck with them the whole task, and you’re never allowed to complain about them to the cameras.

So we watched all the footage in real time, as it digitized from the camera to the computer. Fun times. A lot of really funny outtakes. I wish I had this tape now.

We only had one shot of the first scene with me and Frank, since Nicole was the only one who realized we had to take multiple shots of scenes to make it look professional, and she was gone at the time. She edited down the proposal scene like a pro, and then I took on the cleaning scene, since I was going to choreograph the shots of us cleaning to the music.

They showed this part out of order to make it seem more dramatic than it was—they showed me finishing and playing it for everyone and everyone yelling that they loved it, and then me insisting on perfecting it for hundreds of hours.

In reality, I perfected it for hundreds of hours first, and when I finally played it for everyone, I was completely finished.

And yes, they had the “This could get Tim fired” music on while I was being extra nit-picky, mainly because this team got along so well during this task that that was the best they could do for someone on Arrow being a potential firee. In fact, I knew that I could be as detailed as I wanted with it because A) we had no time pressure—we had the editing studio and editor until 5am, and it was about 1am at the time, and there was nothing left to do once we finished, and B) I knew how well it would come out with the music and how much the team would like it when I finished. And as you saw, when I did finish and finally played them the finished product, they were all very excited.

And if I may say so myself, that cleaning scene was kind of awesome. For those of you who couldn’t get enough SoftScrub, here it is once more:

http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week9_videos.html#1643822

After spending a ton of time cutting it down from 55 seconds to 45 seconds, we finished up and headed back to the campsite. I remember getting in the tent to go to sleep, and Nicole saying to me, “We got this one.” And I nodded. She and I had done this whole thing, and it was very satisfying.

The next morning, we realized that “gametime” for this task was already done—it was simply playing the video. It was the first time yet that day 2 of the task didn’t involve us having to “turn it on” and perform. Which made this the least painstaking task by far. And so we said “what the hell” and we went to brunch with our extra seed money. Looking back, this wasn’t the best idea, because if we had lost, regardless of whether there was nothing else we could have been doing, they would have made us look like over-confident buffoons.

Anyway, the brunch was delightful—James said something along the lines of not wanting to bring any of us to the boardroom because we all did such a good job, and I fully understand his sentiment. We were a really great team—between the five of us, we’d be good at any task that could come our way, and we were about to win our 4th task of the last 6. And we had a lot of fun together. As much as I try to defend Surya, he didn’t mesh with the group and this was a point of tension. But with him gone, there was little but good feelings among the five of us. Of course, we knew that this couldn’t go on forever, and that at some point, we’d lose and have to start attacking each other—but for the moment, we didn’t have to think about that.

Around 1pm, we headed over to the place where we’d show the judges our webisode. We were put in a small room by production, and the five of us sat around excruciatingly and waited for about an hour for all the cameras to get in their places, Trump to arrive, etc. This was painfully nerve-wracking. It was like being down by one in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, a full count, runners on second and third—and having to wait an hour for the final pitch.

Finally, it was our time to go. We walked out, sporting our SoftScrub-colored blue and green ties, and met the judges (there were something like 40 cameras lined up in a huge semi-circle in back of the judges—this makes everything scary and tense, but to the viewer it looks like it’s just us and the judges there). Steph did a good job on her intro, and we played them the video. They used the word “interesting” after watching ours, which is usually a word of death, so that was disheartening. We went back in our room, and sat there for another hour while Kinetic went and Trump got his hair all nice (so that final pitch was fouled off and it’s still a full count and we have to wait another hour before the next pitch).

They finally bring us out, and we lay eyes on the evil Kinetic girls for the first time since the task announcement on the set of Passions the day earlier. As always, we’re staring them down, trying to read them for any signs of happiness or disappointment. The judges announce the verdict. Usually, they announce things black and white—all positives about the winner and all negatives about the loser. But here they gave us some of each. So we had no idea if we won until they said it.

Happy times!

Trump acts shocked that we won. This was a theme. We had won 4 of the last 6 tasks, and Arrow was 4 and 4 vs. Kinetic overall—yet Trump still seemed to think that Kinetic was dominating us. My main theory is that out of the 8 rewards so far, Trump had gone on 3 of them—and all 3 of those had been with Kinetic. So he knew them much better than he knew us, and in spending all that time with them he had grown to really like them. Whatever, I’ll take Snoop.

So Trump announces that we’re flying in a private jet up to Sacramento to have lunch with the Schwarzenegger. Awesome.

We head back to camp and move into the house (moving into the house is a phenomenal feeling), and since this reward was the next morning, we spent the night grilling and drinking and having a grand old time together.

Before we went to bed, the producers sat us down and told us they had something very serious to talk to us about. This was weird. They explained that there were some unquestionably strict rules for the lunch with the Governor. Producers are always stressed out during rewards, since there are so many moving parts, and high-profile people like Phil Jackson, Snoop, and the Governor have tight schedules, and a logistical problem would be a huge disaster. But this was different. They were stressed about this.

They told us that we absolutely, positively, had to stand up the second the Governor walked in the room. And that under absolutely no circumstances were we to make any mention of movies when we were talking to him. They were dead serious. I obviously couldn’t help myself, and kept asking them, “So we can only ask about politics, and Kindergarten Cop, right? No other movies, right?” Needless to say, these comments did not tickle their fancy.

So we woke up bright and early the next morning (day 3 of task 9, day 27 overall), went to the airport and boarded a deliciously luxurious private jet. After sitting down, the pilot came in and introduced himself and said he’d need to see all of our ID’s before taking off. This would have been fine, except that mine and Frank’s were both back at the house.

Chaos.

The executive producer, another producer, and a bunch of crew members scrambled around, freaking out and trying to figure out what to do. Nice work, Tim. Luckily, Frank’s fat head forgot his as well, so it wasn’t just me.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of severe stress, they were able to find ours at the house and fax copies over to the airport.

So, crisis averted, we took off, and were served champagne and wine. Rewards are the best.

We did more collective patting ourselves on the back. Then the conversation turned to baseball, and Nikki started talking about what a huge Cubs fan she was. Great! Call me an asshole, but I’m not really interested in dating a girl who’s a huge baseball fan—it’s just one of those things I like to share with guys.

So when Nikki asks me jovially if I’m going to take her to a Red Sox game, I say, “As long as it’s not the playoffs”, and all hell breaks loose. This turns into an intensely annoying situation, as she gets uppity when she realizes I’m serious, and then I defend myself by digging further and saying that I just don’t like to share baseball with a girlfriend. She starts to get actually angry, and of course the whole team is on her side. Frank is all like, “You don’t deserve huh! You’s an asshole and you’s gonna fuck dis up and you’s nevah gonna find somefin like dis again!” (There was one person on my side-- I remember Brian, one of the producers and a huge Mets, mouthing to me from behind the camera, “I AGREE.”)

Awesomely enough, this topic is still a point of tension between us! [deep, long, melancholy sigh]

Anyway, we landed, and headed to the State House in a limo. We walked in and were escorted to the Governor’s quarters through a hallway lined with pictures of presidents. We sat down around the big table, and waited. Of course, after all the producers’ strict ground rules, we were all terrified to touch any of the food or move or do anything.

And then, the big guy himself walked in.

We all stood up. And shook hands. Then we all sat down.

Let me first mention that his head is one of the biggest objects I’ve ever seen. And his face is made of some unearthly material.

So he gave his little speech about never listening to “it can’t be done” and about how the pain is temporary but the result is permanent.

I’ve gotten several comments about my “fake interested look” while this was going on. But I gotta say, I’m pretty sure the look wasn’t fake—it was genuinely inspirational. It really was.

Then he asked each of us individually what our goals were. Nicole talked about hers, and A-Schwarz asked her about her experience being a woman in the business world, and she explained that it was both a disadvantage and an advantage and that she used it to her advantage all the time, which in turn left me with no choice but to be smitten. Stephanie talked about her goal to be one of Donald Trump’s top people and he rebuked her, saying that her end goal should not be to work for someone else—he said that she should want to build an even bigger building than Trump’s biggest, right next to his so that it cast a shadow on it. Now I was smitten by him too.

Then I said some dumb thing about having a few possible paths and still being undecided about my goals, and he rebuked me too, saying that I had to pick one and focus, and that if I didn’t I would never fully achieve any of them.

If you asked me a year ago if I thought I would ever get career advice from Arnold Schwarzenegger only hours after proposing to my girlfriend in a soap opera on national TV, I’d say, “No.” I’d say, “No. I don’t think I’ll ever get career advice from Arnold Schwarzenegger only hours after proposing to my girlfriend in a soap opera on national TV.” And yet, there I was.

After about 30 minutes, a woman came in and told Ahnold that he had another meeting to go to, and he and his head shook our hands and exited the premises. We were all given gubernatorial pens (almost as awesome as the new set of golf clubs the Kinetic girls got a week earlier), and we were whisked away to the airport, and back to LA.

We spent the afternoon in our long interviews, and that night, James left for the boardroom, while we hung around and waited. I didn’t know this at the time, but sitting there watching the sunset I was enjoying the last moment of the whole experience that anything would be simple.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 10

2009-03-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

Before I dive into the hideous drama you all witnessed on Sunday, I’ll rehash a scene from the airport last night. I was on my way back to LA from a brief trip to Chicago, and naturally I was late to the airport. I typically arrive at the airport 32 minutes prior to departure, which leaves me 2 crucial minutes to get my boarding pass from the kiosk before the system shuts down for that flight and refuses to issue a boarding pass. I’ve learned that arriving 29 minutes before departure is an infinitely more stressful and gross experience than arriving 32 minutes early. (Arriving 34 or more minutes early is bad too, since I end up getting my boarding pass with 2 or 3 minutes to spare, and so it doesn’t feel like a huge, dramatic victory when I get my ticket—plus, I could have done something fun or productive in those 2 or 3 minutes instead of standing there in the airport killing time. So 32 is really the only reasonable option.)

Anyway, this time I was there 31 minutes early, which is less than ideal. Worse still, it was late in the minute, so by the time I started working with the kiosk, I was in the 30th minute, and had about 45 seconds until the system would shut down access and deny me a boarding pass. As long as nothing went wrong, I’d be okay. But when I swiped my credit card, the machine explained that it couldn’t find my reservation. Fucking hell. So I got the ticket lady’s attention, and needed her to print my boarding pass immediately—and just as I was about to skillfully walk the fine line between being too rude and too casual, she said, “You’re on The Apprentice!”

Not a good time for this. The rest of the interaction went like this:

Me: Yeah (forcing a smile). Haha. The thing is, I really really need help getting my boarding pass before it cuts off the check-ins.
Her: So what’s it like being in those tents??!
Me: I didn’t mind the tents my flight leaves in exactly 30 minutes and I need my ticket and I really need your help.
Her: Okay, let me see your ID.

So I give her my ID, and instead of using it to print my ticket immediately, she held it in her hand, and asked me, “So are you still with Nicole?”

Me: Yes she’s great I really really need to get on this flight please help me with my ticket.
Her: Okay, so when does your flight leave? Can you tell me who wins?
Me: (most forced smile someone can make) No ha ha I’m not allowed to tell you ha ha my flight leaves in 29 minutes now this is a disaster.
Her: 29 minutes?! Oh, you won’t be able to check in. Should I book you on a later flight?
Me: (all face muscles simultaneously tight) Can you really not get me on the flight? Did this really just happen?
Her: No, sorry—you’re a business person you should know haha! You should get here earlier! Within 30 minutes of the flight you can’t check in! So what’s Trump like? Is he really such a jerk?!
Me: (sorrow)

I swear this is basically the exact interaction we had. Usually I would have made a scene, but I’ve been trying my utmost to avoid making scenes since this show started. So I had to contain my fury. Bad times.

Anyway—I’d like to keep procrastinating from getting into the monster that is episode 10, but I just have to make myself start. So I’ll back up to the last day of task 9, after Schwarzenegger and our interviews.

So James goes to the boardroom while Muna gets fired, and Nikki, Frank and I sit outside next to the pool, as you saw. Nikki refers to us as the 3 muskateers, and says how cool it would be if we were the final 3. The 3 of us had had that conversation multiple times before, but this time it made great TV, because of what would follow.

The way things happened in the episode in these first scenes was very accurate. While we were sitting out near the pool, the phone rang, and James summoned us inside. We all knew what the call was about.

And that scene was as tense as it looked. James narrowed it down to me and Nikki and chose Nikki.

Clearly there are a few things we need to get into here.

The first is James’ motives in choosing Nikki. Now I’m not going to pretend I know his true motives—I still don’t. But there are two possibilities: 1) James is being honest, and looking at everyone’s strengths, and making a decision based on keeping the team as strong as possible, and 2) James is being strategic as an individual trying to become the next Apprentice. It may have been one or the other or a combination—your guess is as good as mine. But here’s an explanation of each:

1) In the first case, James reasons would be that Frank and Stephanie had each carved out a very specific niche for themselves, and losing one of them would leave us needing to replace their role. Frank built stuff in a lot of episodes and often got banners and signs, and Stephanie was often the accountant, and kept timelines, and usually did the presentation when there was one to do. James then grouped me and Nikki together as “creative”. This isn’t exactly right. I was definitely under that umbrella—I was a prominent part of every brainstorming session. Nikki, though, was more difficult to classify. She was definitely valuable to the team, but her value was not as easy to pin down as some of the rest. I’d say her most consistent strength was her sales/people skills, which were a huge part of our El Pollo Loco and Lexus task wins, and came very near to winning us the Honey task. Her creativity was the main reason we won Softscrub, her constant positive energy lifted the team every task, and she was one of the few that didn’t think at all about the boardroom during tasks. Looking at all of that, she’d be one of my first picks if I were picking a team based on hindsight.

But her strengths weren’t as well-defined as Frank’s or Stephanie’s. I had found my own niche in the brainstorming sessions, and Nikki ended up being the odd man out (James was a lot like Nikki in that he had no niche and did something different in every task, but he wasn't about to send himself over).

2) In the second case (individual strategy), the picture looked like this—you had an obvious Tim-Nikki alliance, and a less obvious but strong James-Steph alliance (which still stemmed, I believe, from the Arrow “civil war” task 3). Frank, on one hand, was one of the “3 muskateers” and had very strong friendships with both me and Nikki, but on the other hand had become buddies with James through 5 tasks of mutual Surya-bashing.

As we’ve seen, try as Trump might to say that he doesn’t have to listen to a consensus in the boardroom, this show is a lot more like Survivor than he’d like to admit. So far, the majority was against Frank in episode 1, then Carey, then Michelle, then Marisa, then Surya, then Aimee, then Jen, then Surya, then Muna, and then Angela. Only Frank in episode 1 and Surya in episode 5 overcame a majority. And those were weak majorities (Frank was down 6-3, and Surya was down 3-2). 8 of 10 boardrooms had gone in the way of the majority, and every consensus attack had ended with Trump siding with the consensus.

So, allies being as crucial as they are, you better believe James was aware that Steph was a full ally, Frank was half an ally, and Nikki and I were no ally to him. In this light, it was an obvious strategic move for him to choose me or Nikki. (Further, Nikki and I had both attacked him in previous boardrooms.)

Again, I don’t know which of these two motives played a bigger factor, but both possible motives lead to Nikki going to Kinetic.

Now, from my point of view, this was terrible for two reasons—

1) For the same reasons it helped James, it was a huge blow to my position of strength within the team to lose Nikki. With her there, even if Frank went against me in a boardroom, it would never be a consensus, and Frank would be more likely to show loyalty if he’d be joining into a 3-2 majority.

2) We had been living this weird life for a month. A game of monopoly goes on for 3 hours, and that’s a long game. This game was in its 700th hour—that’s a long fucking game. And as I mentioned in episode 1, it felt more important than a game—it felt like it mattered a lot in real life. And after a month of being on Team Arrow, against Team Kinetic, all I knew in the world was that James, Steph, Frank, and Nikki were on my team, and those fucking girls were on the other team. It was so black and white in my mind, like Red Sox vs. Yankees. Losing anyone to the bad guys would have seemed earth-rattling.

Then, add into the equation that Nikki was by far my closest friend in this process. James and I and Steph and I were close by this point, but there was a limit to how close we could get, considering that deep down, we knew we’d probably have to be attacking each other at some point. But Nikki and I didn’t have that twisted element between us—we were 100% teammates, team-wise and individual-wise. It’s rare that anyone on this show can say that.

For most people, filming The Apprentice a lonely process—sure, you have a team and you make friends, but deep down, everyone is in it for themselves, and everyone on both teams is an enemy in the end. But with me and Nikki it wasn’t like that—I wouldn’t have attacked her in a boardroom under any circumstances, including a situation in which it would lead to my own firing. So I didn’t have to be lonely—I had someone I could actually, 100% trust. As a result, we’d tell each other when we felt vulnerable heading into a boardroom, and when we were exhausted with the process, etc. And there was nothing we bonded over more than our hatred of Kinetic—I always felt like she actually hated the other team more than anyone, since she was so ultra-competitive.

So—all that said—her leaving was not good news for me. I lost my secure power position within the team—only two tasks ago, I had had two people in Surya and Nicole who I knew had my back (Surya because he hated everyone else on the team so much, and treated me as his only friend), and suddenly, both he and Nikki are gone and I’m suddenly a typical vulnerable, solo Apprentice cast member. And, after a month going through every aspect of this alongside Nikki, I had lost my best friend in the process—and not to a firing. I lost her to the other team, which is far worse. Suddenly, she was the enemy.

Now—I know how ridiculously over-dramatic this must sound. But remember, I wasn’t living in the real world at the time. I was 4 weeks deep in a competition with the same people, to the point that I could hardly picture anyone from my “previous” life—this game was everything.

So, you ask—if it was so horrible to lose her, why, oh why, did you just stand there when James called her name out?

Unlike James’ motives, which are unknown in these circles—this one, I can answer.

To be honest, it didn’t even cross my mind to say something at that moment. I wasn’t standing there restraining from saying something, or trying to gather the courage to speak up and failing—it didn’t cross my mind at all.

This was how I saw it: after a month together, Nikki and I had drifted into somewhat of a relationship. But we were also both completely aware that if we were not very careful, our relationship would doom us as far as this process goes. In a game in which everyone has a keen sense of smell for blood—this was a wound ready to burst open. But we were both being very smart about it—we never put in anything less than 100% on a task, and never let our focus turn toward each other while a task was going on. We didn’t go off alone for hours on interview day and alienate the rest of the team. And though it seems like we made out liberally, we had only kissed that one time, and no one had seen that. Because of our efforts, the wound was not gushing hypothetical blood—it was always ready to burst open, but it hadn’t as of yet. And by golly, we might just make it to the end without the whole thing biting us in the ass.

Now, we had never had an actual “what if” discussion with each other, because the answers seemed obvious. The main “what if” would regard the boardroom—what if it came down to Trump saying, “one of you two will be fired?” This wasn’t discussed because it was obvious. We’d refuse to attack each other and let him decide. If I was feeling particularly chivalrous, maybe just maybe I’d sacrifice myself, but I didn’t think this was implied in our mutual understanding—the natural move would be to refuse to attack each other and let Trump do what his big yellow head felt like doing.

There was the other version of this “what if”—what if one of us was the obvious consensus firee? This one was easy too—if she made a ghastly error and everyone was attacking her, I’d defend her, period.

And there was that one other “what if”—what if we end up on separate teams? This one seemed just as simple to me—we take it in stride, and hope that we’re both the last two people standing in the finals. The thought of attempting to openly prevent this circumstance from occurring never crossed my mind. In fact, I would have equated that to taking a romantic walk with her while the rest of the team was brainstorming during a task—both, in my mind, would be double suicide. Jumping in and dissenting against James’ decision to transfer Nikki would have been, in my mind, tearing open that fragile wound, and giving the rest of the team the scent of blood, and the ability to say to Trump, “Tim and Nikki are more concerned with their relationship than a) the well being of the team, and b) their mission to get a job with you.” Call me crazy, but in this game, that strikes me as a death wish.

And so, when James kicked Nikki to the curb, it seemed like a no-brainer to do exactly what I did—refrain at all costs from allowing my emotions and personal feelings to spill out into the open and poison both of our chances to win.

Two other incentives to keep quiet: 1) being on separate teams, as frustrating as it might be, would prevent us from having to ever end up in a boardroom pitted against each other (which would realistically end with us both being fired for refusing to attack), and 2) speaking up would have done nothing to change the situation—Trump specifically told James to make the decision. My trying to change that process to a vote or a drawing of straws would have been no different than my suggesting that I should be PM for task 10 because James already his chance in task 9, regardless of the fact that Trump declared that the winning PM would stay PM. In this game, Trump’s word is the rulebook.

If the situation were switched (James picks me), and she had spoken up, I would have thought in my head, “What are you doing?” knowing that she just let go of the fragile defense we had crafted for ourselves—namely, the ability to say in the boardroom, with conviction, “We never let our relationship affect the team or interfere with a task.” And the second we can’t say that, we’re in big trouble.

And since her feelings regarding my reaction to this situation only came up for the first time 24 hours later, I didn’t have an ounce of doubt during or after the fact.

So Nikki packs up her stuff, gives me a hug, and gets really angry at James on her way out. On one hand, it’s hard to say James should be criticized for what he did—he had to pick someone, everyone was strong, and someone had to get hurt. On the other hand, it’s easy to understand Nikki’s reaction—he had kicked her off the team she had been on for a month. Trust me on this—that girl does not consider herself the weakest link in any situation. In her mind, James had personally insulted her, severed her ties with me and Frank, and left her in a suddenly vulnerable situation across the hedge, as the outsider.

But once she departed, she handled her new situation beautifully. Within 20 minutes of disappearing from the house, we could hear her forcing shots on her 3 new teammates, and when Frank and I went over to see how she was doing, she had her arm around Heidi and they seemed like they had been friends for weeks. She didn’t go crying in a corner—she said “fuck it—this is my new team,” and acted accordingly. And as frustrating as the situation was for me at the time, seeing her laughing and doing fine over there, it made me feel better too—maybe this wasn’t as upsetting as I was making it out to be. Maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal.

So, when I woke up the next morning, I tried to get into “Nikki and I are really competitive with each other—this is all a big game, and we’re just having fun, and we really want to beat each other” mode.

But to be honest, that was mostly a front. I hated knowing she was on the other team. In the van ride to the task announcement, I looked at James, Steph, and Frank, and felt what they had been feeling this whole time—I was in this solo. Suddenly I could trust no one fully. The one person I had been able to trust was now putting all her energy into beating me. It was hard to pretend everything was fine, and put on a smile, and say “let’s fucking win this one.” But I tried my darnedest. I remember thinking, multiple times, “Suck it up, for fuck’s sake! She’s not even upset about it—what the hell’s wrong with you! Get over it!”

So it was obviously hideous to arrive at task announcement and see her standing there with the evil Kinetic girls. It was the exact feeling I had when I first saw Adam Vinatieri in a Colts uniform, only more real and more personal.

So we sit there, and Trump says how surprised he is that we “let Nikki go”, and then told Nikki to “kick our asses.” He was openly rooting for them.

So we’re gonna sell special passes at Universal Studios. Not the regular $59 tickets—we’d only be selling annual passes ($69), “front of the line” passes ($35), and the regular ticket + a “front of the line” pass package ($94). We’d each be serving as a walking cash register, because we’d be wearing “Ad-Walker” suits, a new technology that would allow us to swipe a credit card on our suit.

Because of the time allotted to the Tim-Nikki saga in this episode, a lot of this actual task was neglected by the editors. But it was a) packed with strategy, b) the most intense battle all season, and c) by far the most difficult, grueling “gametime” (sales period) we’d be a part of.

We left Trump and headed to Universal. Frank and I took a walk outside to survey the area. We both determined that the only place to be the following day would be in the big open area in front of the grand entrance. These people were on their way to buy tickets already, we’d just have to get them to buy from us. We noticed where the most central spot was, and chose that as our location.

We finished our observations, and headed to the war room and met the other two and began brainstorming. I was big on the idea to have a physical station—a base where we could get people to aimlessly walk over, thinking it was an official Universal ticket counter. The idea was that everyone there was already sold on the park, so we’d just have to convince them of two things: that we were as legit as the Universal ticket booths, and that it was a good idea to spend extra money on either the annual pass or the front of the line pass. If we couldn’t convince someone to pay more than the typical $59 day pass, we’d be out of luck. Finally, we’d be on the same sales floor as the other team (assuming they chose the same obvious location in which to sell), so if both teams could successfully sell, it would come down to who worked harder. So, my thought was that a station could do two of these things—it could make us seem like a legit Universal booth that people would mindlessly walk over to, and it could give us a crucial edge over the other team, if they didn’t do the same thing.

We kept thinking—how else could we get an edge over Kinetic? Someone thought of the idea to spend some of our seed money on water, and hand out free waters to people who bought from us, since it was the middle of the summer and people would be hot and thirsty, and water fountains were hard to come by there.

We’d get a bull horn to advertise what we were selling and to tell people to come to our station for a free water. The problem with that idea was that it could help Kinetic almost as much as it could help us. So I suggested we all wear the same color shirts, so we could yell into the bull horn to “find someone in a green shirt to get a discount.”

We’d make big signs. We’d get a tent to cool the customers from the heat. We’d make banners.

I thought of the idea to hire people to work for us, who we could pay to walk around and bring customers to us, and also to try to mess up the other team’s sales.

So, with all these ideas, our next step was a scheduled meeting with two Universal Studios executives. This was one of those times when the executive meeting could be really important, because the limits on what we were allowed to do were hazy, so if we were smart we could gain advantages over the other team. We were pushing the limits, asking what we were allowed to do. We asked if we could hire people to work for us, and they said yes. We asked if we could give stuff away, like water, and they said yes. We asked if we could wear Universal uniforms (which would give us instant credibility)—they said no. We asked if we could have a physical kiosk and a tent—they said yes, as long as it was classy and didn’t have a “carnival” feel. Then, as a long shot, I asked if they’d let us sell the three tickets at a slight discount, since it was a special event. To my excitement, they paused, and actually discussed it! And then they said that we could sell each of our three passes at $5 off! This was huge. Talk about an edge—if Kinetic’s prices were higher, we’d publicize that fact to everyone through the bull horn all day, and we’d demolish them. We all looked at each other, giddy, realizing how huge that was—there was a chance Kinetic asked for the same thing, in which case we'd again be on equal footing—but either way it was huge. If we didn’t ask for it and they did, we’d get killed, and now we were safe against that. And on the other hand, if they didn’t ask for discount and we did, we’d win. We asked if we could make that privilege exclusive to our team, and they said no. So we’d have to hope that Kinetic didn’t think to ask for it.

And for the rest of the day, we had two game plans—1) how we’d proceed if only we had the discount to offer, and 2) how we’d proceed if they asked for that same discount and rendered that edge moot.

So we left the meeting, and started getting these things together. I went with someone (I forget who) to try to recruit our “help.” After trying a few people and failing, I went in a Universal Studios Gift Shop, and asked the manager if he’d let us recruit his employees, and he said he would. So we found 6 employees who were willing to do it for our offer of $75 each for the 5 hour period (later on, we’d run into budget problems, and have to call them to tell them only 4 people could come). The sales period would run from 9am to 2pm, so we told them to meet us at 8:30am the next day outside the grand entrance.

We went back to the war room, and James and I stayed there while Frank and Steph left to get the tent, banners, etc. (Ladies and Gentlemen, Frank’s niche!). James made the video that would play again and again on our chests (something we all decided not to dedicate too much time to since no one would have time to watch it), while I tried to make a bulk sale. I called tour companies, trying to get them to buy 50 or 100 tickets, using our discount as bait.

After a few calls, I reached the owner of a local tour company, who said he had worked with Universal before. I snapped to get James’ attention—this could be huge. I said we were selling packages of 50 for normal price and 100 at a discount. And he sounded interested! He asked us what the discount would be for the bulk sale, and I proudly declared that he’d get five dollars off each ticket. To which he got mad rude, and replied that Universal typically sells tickets to tour companies at 50% off. And that was the end of my bulk sales attempts.

James and I hung around there until about 10, kind of killing time, since the other two weren’t back yet. James perfected the video, while I typed up a list of potential sales pitches for the team to look over that night.

Writing that just now, I thought I’d go into my pile of Apprentice memorabilia, and see if I can find that printout. I didn’t find it, but I did find my notepad from this task, and I thought I’d type up everything I wrote in it during this task. I have no idea if this will be at all interesting to read. But I’m kind of interested in typing it, so I’m going to. I think it will give you an idea of how much work actually goes into a task vs. how little is shown. Obviously, feel free to skip over this if you’re not interested (incidentally, while searching through the bag, I found few other gems: the Softscrub wedding ring, a Sue Bee honey bottle, an “Arrow” sign, a pad from Lexus filled with pages of product knowledge notes, and a typed up “product knowledge summary sheet” that I had given my teammates which summed up and categorized 12 pages of notes into 2 typed pages—then I remembered that all they showed on that task was me snuggling on the couch with Nikki, and I cursed some anonymous, unknown editor. I also found a stack of computer printouts that would have served as my notes for the disgusting tour bus task had the microphone not broken. The first thing in the pages of notes? A little blurb about the Chateau Marmont, and how it gained its fame when John Belushi died there “as a result of overdosing on a speedball full of heroin and cocaine.” And sitting there, I died a little bit inside).

So anyway, here are the contents of this pad, verbatim (I don’t know what half of it means):

Page 1:

-bulk → tourbus company
-bull horn – colored outfits, same color for everyone
-2 people on mobile force, 2 people stationary in tent
-get help??
-location
-kiosk
-trolley
-Universal coach line

Page 2:

Meeting with Executives
-Larry Kurzweil, Pres + CEO
-Mark Mears, Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing

-when have you used AdWalker?
-details of four packages we can offer?
-when have you sold to tour companies?
----children

world’s largest movie studio/theme park
-"entertainment capital of LA"
-best of Universal Pic’s, NBC, largest cinemas, amphitheatre
-415 acre property

peak time?
Children?
AdWalker?
Tour companies?
Biggest sellers?

Studio tour + theme park

Single day ticket- $59

25,000 guests during peak time
-can buy multiple front-of-line add-ons

Page 3:

-# of sales channels
-pre-sold tickets?

3 major parking facilities
Lankershim-1/3 of cars
All converge at front gates

2 hotels: Sheraton, Hilton
--sales relationships
--people there are already sold

***$5 off annual
***$10 off front of lines

4 products:
-single day ticket –60%
-annual pass- 20%/20% - $69 --$64!
-front of the line + single day -$99.95= $89.85!
-deluxe annual pass upgrade (no black out dates)- $30 --$25!
-add-on - $40 - $30!

-more of a sales pitch than adwalker fine!
-tent is okay

25,000 people
40% local
25% international
35% for rest of US

peak sales period: 9-11:30, 10-11 sweet spot
sales flow at front gate
pre-ticketed = later

Page 4:

-12-2 on citywalk
--re-visitors
--employees
-lots of employees on hilltop
no product like that

within park, a couple of current facilities
--Hollywood ticket outlet, next to waterworld = one of our competitors

“state fair look” vs. “world class theme park”
→no carnival look (tents)

hats + shirts – bright?
-new rides—fast + furious – extensive revamp (first since 96)
---waterworld
---wetter than ever Jurassic Park—80 foot plunge—best water drop on planet

-#1 rated attraction- Revenge of Mummy rollercoaster ride - 0-60 in no time flat- exhilarating
#1 often visited attraction is Studio Tour—45 minutes—but not just a tour

waterworld feels like you’re in a movie

[end of executive meeting]

Page 5:

Tour buses
-tour buses
-2 hotels
-blowhorns
-4 mic’s
-canopy
-locations
→inside for tent, outsent for tent

-green shirts
→$5, $10 off
“discount tickets”
yellow banner

Sheraton 818 980 1212
Hilton 818 506 2500

1-day park

-Hard Rock
-Fountain Court
-Globe area of Universal

single 54
annual 64
deluxe add-on 25

Page 6:

989-5732
-fannypacks for cash

Concerns
-audibles: -move: Jurassic/Mummy lines – Hollywood ticket counter
-nix discount
-help stand in front of them
-if both have a constant flow, discount loses, less money overall
-can Kinetic change their price in the middle?

Tent, help, signage, giveaway(s), coupons, bullhorns

Galadesign888@hotmail
James 818 400 5649

Page 7:

-video
-phone calls

[diagram of grand entrance]

Page 8:

Bulk Sales Log
Hollywood Tours – 800-789 9575 – message
Los Angeles Sightseeing – 310-458-0257 – Angela—till 11
Starline Tours – 323-463-3333- Manager Gwen – in tom. @ 8am
VIP Tours
LA Tours – 323-460-6490- 9am-5pm- message
Dearly Departed Tours – 323-466-3690- manager Scott in tom. morn, left message
LA Tours + Sightseeing – 323-937-3361- guy said he’d call manager, manager in @ 9am
Bestway Sightseeing Tours – 323- 939-8315
A Ju Tours Inc- 213-388-7000 – Henry, manager
Take My Mother Please Tours – 323-733-0870 – message
Wonder Bus Sightseeing Tours – 323-469-9860
Di Amore – 213-624-2422
Redline Tours – 323-462-7400, 323-402-1074

Printer: 818 415 8255

Page 9:
Deluxe Pass: $25 –30
Annual: $64—69
Annual Pass w/ Deluxe: 89—99
Single Day + FOL: 89.95—99.95
FOL: 30-40
Annual + FOL 94-109
Deluxe Annual + FOL 119—139

So that’s my pad from Universal. I also found a small yellow flyer I had made up, which says:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Universal Studios
S P E C I A L D I S C O U N T
***TODAY ONLY (6/30/06)***

$20 OFF!! Annual Pass with Deluxe Upgrade + Front of the Line Pass
$15 OFF!! Annual Pass + Front of the Line Pass
$10 OFF!! Single Admission with Front of the Line Pass
$10 OFF!! Annual Pass with Deluxe Upgrade
$5 OFF!! Annual Pass OR Front of the Line Pass
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Typing all that just now was incredibly, incredibly tedious.

Anyway, since Steph and Frank are still out, we decide to meet them back at the house. On the ride back, James and I had a nice heart to heart, and I said I was envious that he was so happily married, and he was saying it’s the best thing that will ever happen to me, etc. etc. (I’m actually surprised that they didn’t air any of that). James and I have little in common and probably would never have been friends had we met in the real world, but after a month, we were actually buddies. And Steph was basically my mother, Frank was fully my brother, and Nikki was my girlfriend. What a weird month.

So we get back to the house, and have a “meeting on Frank’s bed” (a line of mine that made the episode that I could have done without). I gave them my type-up of sales strategies, and we talked about how this is the first time both teams would be on the same sales floor simultaneously, and how intense that would be, and I said I’d fight dirty as long as we won.

And under all this competitiveness, Nikki was definitely on my mind. I wanted to go out to the hedge and say hi to her, but again, remember that fragile wound. This was mid-task. I was thinking, whatever you do, don’t do that mid-task. So I didn’t, and I went to bed.

The next morning (day 2 of task 10, day 29 overall), we woke up around 5am and headed back to Universal. We set everything up, and around 8:30, Kinetic arrived. We were hoping that they would be dumb enough to deploy 2 of their people elsewhere, but alas, all 4 were there. And they were wearing rollerblades. This was surprising. And I thought they looked hot—which didn’t bode well for all the doofuses on our team. But the biggest piece of info was on their sign—did they get the discount? And we studied their sign intently, as they studied ours, and both teams were let down—both teams had the discount. Oh well. But they were noticeably shaken up when they saw our whole huge set-up.

At 8:45 our 4 helping hands that we had recruited the day before arrived. I brought them aside and told them they had two duties—1) sell people on what we were selling, and then bring them over to us so we could make the actual sale, and 2) annoy Kinetic and try to mess with their sales. I went so far as to assign each of the four of them to their own member of Kinetic. I told them to stay within 20 feet of their assigned Kinetic member, and try to convince potential Kinetic customers to buy from the normal entrance, or even better, to buy from us (if they broke up a Kinetic sale, it was equivalent to us making one sale—if they broke up a Kinetic sale and brought them to us for the sale, it was equivalent to two sales). I also told them that under absolutely no circumstances were they to physically touch a Kinetic member or say any profanities or say anything mean or inappropriate. (In the end, these four were awesome. They worked incredibly hard for us for 5 straight hours, and if you ask anyone of the 8 of us, that was one of the biggest factors that separated the two teams. Kinetic hated them. And after we won, we started talking about how great they were, and we almost all started crying thinking about how much effort they gave us. I may start crying right now just thinking about it).

We were then trained quickly on how to use the AdWalker suits. It was a bit overcomplicated, and it hit me that these things fucking up would be a huge factor in this task. Also, it was a very very hot sunny day, and huge, heavy, black vests were not ideal.

Then, at 8:58am, literally, one of the executives came over to us, and told us we had to take the tent down, since it wasn’t enough in the spirit of Universal.

This was infuriating.

First, we had been told we could do this, and it had no carnival feel whatsoever—just a simple white canopy. Two, they waited until now to tell us?? 2 minutes before the task starts?? So we frantically take the tent down, and end up getting a late start, while Kinetic was selling. Miserable. This, if you ask me, is the work of the producers, adding drama.

So around 9:10, we started selling. With James manning the kiosk, I quickly decided my time was better spent walking around. And so, in the blazing heat, the 8 of us sold, non-stop, for five hours. It was all about will power. If one team is selling just as hard and fast in the 4th hour as they were in the 1st, and the other team slows down a bit, the first team wins. So we had to keep up the adrenaline and smiles and clever sales pitches for 5 straight hours. Plus, we were all aware that the individual cash registers would allow Trump to bring out the individual sales totals in the boardroom, which added to the stress and offered even more incentive to sell as hard as possible.

Selling well for such a long time in such shitty conditions is so hard because not only do you have to spend the whole time standing and walking around fast and not taking any breaks, but you have to remain smiling, and friendly, and charming as well, even though your body is in severe misery. (I remember at one point feeling like I was about to collapse out of dehydration and exhaustion, and then I found out that we were 1.5 hours into the task, with 3.5 to go. Yikes.)

Anyway, I began to fine-tune my sales pitch, and realized quickly that by far our best sell was the front of the line pass, which I could get anyone to buy by saying that without one, you’ll be waiting in 45 minute lines all day, and with one, the lines will be 5 minutes, so you’ll do 4 times as many rides with one. No one could resist that sales pitch. Not even you.

And more than once, I messed up one of Heidi’s sales pitches, and I messed up Angela and Nicole as well (you saw this one). Not only do I not regret this tactic, but I find it completely hilarious. The funniest way I kept messing Heidi up is I’d walk over to her and pretend that she and I were working together, and I’d hear her selling a front of the line pass, and say to her in a voice the customers could hear, “Don’t sell those anymore, I heard that so many people inside have them that those lines are just as long as the normal ones.” And then she’d lose the sale. That’s funny. I’d also see the help standing 10 feet away from one of the Kinetic girls during a sale, yelling, “NO! NO! DON’T BUY FROM THEM, IT’S THE SAME PRICE FOR THE GUYS WITH THE GREEN SHIRTS BUT THEY’LL GIVE YOU A FREE WATER.” And the Kinetic girls wanted to kill those four people. Again, funny.

Quite simply, Arrow had a better game plan and was more competitive on this one. The editing focused on our dirty fighting approach, but there were a ton of reasons we won this task.

Anyway, as I mentioned, this was far and away the most grueling 5 hours of the month for all of us. Nikki has permanent scars around her angles from the rollerblades digging into her. I had blisters on my feet for weeks afterwards. And when we finally took off our adwalker vests, we were soaked in sweat (and they were very adamant about labeling whose vest was whose, which confirmed my belief that they were going to bring up the individual sales).

So we had a long lockdown after the task, during which Frank kept sleeping with his eyes half open. He does this a lot, but I remember that time being particularly disconcerting.

And eventually, we head back to the house for the boardroom. We go in and Trump gets into the whole “how did you let her go?” thing again about Nikki, but this time it’s directed at me, not the team. Since in that situation I can’t explain the whole weird fragile wound idea that I explained to you, I tell him that it was a PM decision and it was not in the spirit of the team to put my personal feelings in front of the team, and that I wouldn’t have wanted her to say anything if it had been the other way around, and that I wouldn’t have sent her if it were my decision, blah blah blah. And he seems to understand, saying, “I guess I just think it’s a nice-looking couple” and shrugging. Ivanka announces the results:

Kinetic: $24,XXX
Arrow: $31,XXX

HUGE. I was so immersed in my own world during the task I didn’t have much of a sense of how anyone else sold, so I had no idea if we won or not.

I also wasn’t worried for Nikki (though if I had known the rollerblade thing was her idea at the time I would have been) because it seemed to all of us that Kristine had sold horribly. Every time I saw her she was trying half-heartedly and customers were not responding to her. And Nikki and Heidi both seemed to be selling well.

Then Trump admits once again that he’s surprised we won: “What’s going on here??” he asks. We had talked about this as a team earlier in the day and decided it was frustrating that he still seems to think that Kinetic is 2-0 and Arrow is 0-2. In fact, we had won 4 of the last 5 and 5 of the last 7 tasks. We were dominating Kinetic. And so I voiced that, saying it was time to reevaluated who the real stars were. Kind of an awesome line, I have to say. This wasn’t really a shot at Nikki, since I referred to the 5 of the last 7 stat, which includes Nikki. It was mainly a shot at Heidi and Angela, who Trump praises constantly.

Then, Angela brings up the fact that we were slimy car salesmen all day.

A note about fighting dirty—I’ve seen this show enough times to know that Trump loves fighting dirty, and would not criticize this tactic. If it’s within the rules to hire people to annoy Kinetic and mess up their sales, why the hell not? Suggesting that there’s some moral code that we should have all been following is like suggesting that a good, moral baseball team should never steal bases, and those that do are embarrassing the league. If we hired people to physically assault the other team or something over the line, that would be a different story. But we never broke a rule—we simply took the competitive spirit all the way to the edge. Angela later commented that if it were a qualitative task, they would have won. A dumb thing to say—if it were a qualitative task, we would have approached it completely differently.

So I left that boardroom feeling strong as a team, strong within my team, on fine terms with Nikki, I was looking good in Trump’s eyes, and I believed that Nikki was safe boardroom-wise. Hell, this whole team switch wasn’t even that big a deal. I’d get to talk to her that night.

Now take every sentence in the above paragraph, and say the exact opposite, and that was the reality of the situation.

We went back to the house, and had a drink, and Frank was yelling to the girls how he wanted them to come over to our side and party, and then Nikki called me and Frank over to the hedge, and we talked about the task. They made it look like she called us over to confront us, but that didn’t start until a few minutes into the conversation. When she first started with the whole “I’m disappointed that you guys didn’t stand up for me when James kicked me off” thing, she was almost saying it in a joking manner, but as we talked about it, it became clear that she was actually upset about this and really confronting us about it. And she began to direct the comments more at me than at Frank, and it soon escalated into her fully calling me out for not sticking up for her, and how hurt she was, and the whole time, Kristine and Heidi were standing at her sides.

This caught me completely off-guard.

My first thought was, “I can’t believe she’s starting a fight right now, with one week left in the filming.” But then two far more infuriating thoughts came into my mind:

1) After spending 4 weeks with me, and a day and a half with Kinetic, she was calling me out in front of those girls. It was hideously disrespectful. To make things much worse, Heidi and Kristine were saying things like, “She just wanted you to stand up for her,” and “You sold her out.” Imagine, for a second, how enraging that would be.

2) She wasn’t mad at me at all when it first happened, and only now, after Trump got the idea in her head, and then she found out she lost, does she start in with this. It was like being a sore loser times 10—she had lost the task, so she’d defeat me in this way instead.

Now—after 9 months of dating Nikki and 40 cumulative hours of talking about this task with her, I a) understand her point of view in the whole thing better, and b) actually believe her when she says that she was mad at the time it happened, and that her bringing it up had nothing to do with Trump saying something. The only thing I still hold her to is the fact that she did it with her little gang of middle school girls behind her.

But at the time, I was really fucking angry. So I walked away and sat there next to the pool, and James and Frank sat there with me and said they agreed with me. Then they started getting drunk and wanted me to play some fucking game with them rolling a grapefruit around the house, and I was in no mood, and I went to sleep.

Not a pleasant night.

Early the next morning, we went on our helicopter ride. This was no fun because 1) I was 100% preoccupied with the fucking Nikki thing and didn’t want to be there, 2) it wasn’t an especially great reward, and 3) it was 120 degrees in the cabin (something went wrong with the air conditioner).

You know those times when you’re in a fight with your boy/girlfriend, and part of you is mad and wants them to know that, and part of you sees their side and feels bad and wants them to know that too, and all of you just wants to talk to them about it?

This was like that. Except we were on fucking national TV. And we were on different teams. And we were separated by a hedge. And it was impossible to talk without teammates around, let alone cameras.

And normally, you can give it some breathing room, and talk about it in a day or two. But here, I knew we’d be on another task the next day, and I was anxious to have a chat about things.

[Quick note to self: getting involved with someone on a reality show may have a downside]

So I got back from the helicopter ride, and went to the hedge to see if she was there. Of course, Kristine tells me happily that Nikki just left for her 3 hour formal interview. Then Kristine says, “I don’t know what you did—when she got here she liked you, but she hates you now.” If I could have wished for a huge fucking gorilla to charge in and maul Kristine, I would have.

So I hang around, and talk to Frank’s head, and when Nikki gets back I head out to talk to her. You saw the beginning of this interaction, where I’m saying that I was mad last night, but that I want to put this behind us.

What actually happened was, after talking for a bit, Nikki said she understood my point and realized why I hadn’t said something, and I acknowledged her side, and told her never to fucking do that again with those fucking girls standing there, and we ended up laughing about it, and that was that. Then we talked about the boardroom, and she said that she had thought of the rollerblades idea, and I started to think she may be in trouble after all.

What they showed, though, was the very beginning of this interaction, and then they cut to Nikki’s long interview, where she said how angry she was and that she didn’t want to talk to me, and then they showed me walking away with my hand on my head.

Editors 1, Tim 0.

This week’s webisode shows a more accurate version of the whole absurd drama:
http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/candidates/tim_videos.html#1643915

So I went in and we had dinner, and the conversation turned to what James would do in the boardroom. They didn’t really make this clear, but Stephanie and Frank were persuading James to completely go after Nikki, saying that she was the strongest on their team.

This was gross. Frank and Nikki were best buddies, and she would have been 10 times more hurt to hear this conversation than she was two days earlier. And my thought process was that all four of those Kinetic girls are strong players, and I don’t really understand why it really affects Arrow who goes home. Frank and Stephanie were treating Nikki like a stranger, and I said fuck it, and decided to give Nikki a little tip to help her in the boardroom.

They showed it as if I left in the middle of this conversation, and Frank was like, “what the fuck?” But actually, before this happened the conversation between me and Frank took place in which I said I was indeed not being rational and wanted James to defend Nikki. Frank said that was ridiculous, that she was on the other team now, etc. etc. Then I went out to talk to her, and Frank was like, “what the fuck?”

Now I understand that it’s difficult to find a defense of me here—plain and simple, that was stupid and unnecessary. After all of my “fragile wound” talk, I really should have just called it a night and gone to sleep. What can I say? It was a long fucking two days, and let my emotions get the best of me.

That said, Frank was criticizing me of being disloyal to the team. And he’s right. But I was showing actual human loyalty—we had spent 9 tasks with Nikki, and game show aside, a truly loyal person would have a hard time just suddenly rooting for her to get fired.

What a silly TV show.

Anyway, watching the boardroom, I knew I’d be seeing Trump slander me to no end (from people there who had told me), but it still made me angry. Trump had no idea what he was talking about.

As for Angela, she fell victim to a consensus attack—in hindsight she knows she should have attacked Kristine, because she’s since learned that when they were sent out of the room, both James and Ivanka said Kristine should be the one to go. Plus, they did bring out the individual sales totals for the 4 of them. Heidi was the top, and Kristine was the bottom, but not by a large enough margin to warrant an automatic firing. But Angela went after Nikki instead, and it didn’t work for her.

Then, at the very end, Nikki did that weird thing where she asked Trump to ask me if I wanted to go to Kinetic, to “see what my response will be.” This seems like she’s doing some odd test, but her explanation is that after talking to me earlier that day and hearing my point of view, she felt really bad hearing Trump trash me, realizing that I was suddenly out of Trump’s favor because of it, and wanted to show Trump that I was still loyal to her. A bit far-fetched, I must say.

So that’s how we end. I managed to wrap up these three days with Arrow accusing me of being loyal to Nikki over them, Kinetic accusing me of being loyal to Arrow over Nikki, and Trump accusing me of basically being Hitler.

Great job, Tim.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 11

2009-03-08T18:44:00.002-07:00

I’d like you to all close your eyes, while we all take a 30 second moment of silence, in memory of Tim, the Potential Apprentice.

[silence]

My friends, with the swoop of his wrinkly old hand, Donald Trump has kicked me off of the show. It was a good run, and a good fight, but my quest to be Donald Trump’s 6th helper was cut short on Sunday.

As you might imagine, my last 5 days have been crazy—I’ve done about 60 radio, TV, and newspaper interviews (which explains the extra tardiness of this recap), and there will be more next week. Below is one of these, a podcast:

Podcast Interview (Part 1): http://apprentice.tubecasts.com/digicasts/tcAPPR070404.mp3
Podcast Interview (Part 2): http://apprentice.tubecasts.com/digicasts/tcAPPR070405.mp3

Anyway, canned as I may have been, nothing will stop me from poring through the details of exactly how it happened—

Backing up to the last night of task 10 (day 30 overall):

I’m in the house, hanging back with Stephanie and Frank while James is in the boardroom. At this point, the real problems with the team hadn’t started yet—there was that little awkward moment where the I had told Nikki to watch out for James attacking the rollerblades idea, but in the episode that seemed a lot worse than it actually was at the time because they mixed Frank’s dark, ominous interview into the scene. The fact is, it wasn’t until James returned from the boardroom that night that the shit really hit the fan for the first time for me and Arrow.

So I was sitting around outside when I heard the girls return, and they got cute and pretended Nikki was fired. The three of them then came over and told me that I had gotten trashed in the boardroom by Trump, and that he had called me “disloyal.”

Not good.

I proceeded to call Trump a bastard (if I’m killed in the next few days, you’ll know why), and when James returned I went inside to hear what had happened from him. He said that he was disgusted after hearing Nikki advise Trump to ask me if I want to go to the other team, and “that she thinks I will say yes.”

James was being clever here—she never said she thought I’d say yes (which would imply that she and I had talked about it), but rather, “I’d be curious to hear his answer.” This was a weird thing for her to say, no doubt, but James reacted in the way he did because he wanted it to seem worse than it was. Steph and Frank jumped on board, and suddenly I was being accused of disloyalty to the team for the sake of Nicole, only minutes after being accused in the boardroom by Trump of being disloyal to Nicole for the sake of the team.

It’s actually pretty funny.

I kept arguing the same point to the three of them: “Yes, I wish she was on the team. Yes, I was rooting for her to survive that boardroom. No, I did not suggest to her that I wanted to switch to Kinetic. And no, I had never, and would never, give anything but 100% of my effort during a task—the only time I had ever or would ever talk to Nikki was between tasks.” And so, I argued, why should it matter? How was I hurting Arrow at all? And how did they, as friends of mine who had spent the last month with me and Nicole, not understand that I would never let my relationship with her affect my performance?

But it was too late. Because here’s the thing—how many times this season have you seen a consensus attack in the boardroom (a lot), and how many times has Trump not fired the person being consensus attacked (zero times). So if the goal in this game is to protect yourself and avoid being fired, there is a lot of incentive to form, and be a part of, a consensus.

When Surya was around, we were all basically safe—by week 8, he was the consensus firee. Suddenly, with Surya gone, a loss would leave us fighting with each other, and no one knew if they would be the one on the chopping block. Now, my loyalty to the team had come up, and you better believe a light bulb flickered in the heads of those three—“if we’re all mad at Tim, we’re all safe.” Further, there was incentive for them to make it as big a mess as possible—“if this becomes a huge blowup, we can point to what a distraction it has become on the team.” And I knew it at the time—just the fact that this team blowup took place was enough to condemn me, regardless of whether I had a strong argument as to why I was right, because it would be viewed as a “distraction” either way. The three of them formed an unspoken alliance during that argument. And I’m not saying all of this in hindsight—I knew all of this the second that blowup happened.

So they brought me outside for an interview. The producer’s first question: “So Tim—was she worth it?” I gave him the finger. Second question, “So what do you think your teammates will say in the boardroom if your team loses?” So I explained that this was suddenly a “do or die” task for me, and the first one of that kind for me (remember, none of this started until after the Universal task). I said that I would be on the hot seat if we lost, regardless of what transpired during the task, so that the only safety for me would be a win.

As hopeless as that sounds, it was late in the game. I had figured out that by the end of task 12 it would be down to the finals—and we were about to start task 11, so two wins was all I’d need. Moreover, if we won task 11 it would leave the teams at 4-2, which would warrant another shuffle, and I'd be out of this bad spot. So I really just needed to make sure we won this next task.

So, I returned from my interview, and despite telling Nikki I was coming back outside later, I went straight to bed. I was angry as hell that she had asked Trump that question—regardless of whether it was as bad as James said it was, or whether she had had good intentions, she had inadvertently thrown me under the bus by giving James the bait to cause that blowup. After calling me out the day before and starting this whole hideous mess, she had made things even worse now doing what she had just done. Thanks, babe.

So, the next morning, when we’re all brought to the LA Times building for the task announcement, and put on lockdown while we waited for Trump to put his hair on, I wouldn’t give her the slightest glance. She kept giving me a look like, “What the hell? Why didn’t you come back outside last night?” and I kept looking elsewhere.

We had overheard that Heidi was the new PM, and as a team we had discussed the night before that we thought Heidi and Nicole would both want to be PM for this one, and that we hoped that would cause tension between them. So though we were supposed to keep quiet during the lockdown, James asked the girls, “So Nicole, I assume you’re the new PM, right?” to stir the pot. Kind of awesome.

So Trump comes in and talks about the LA Times for 20 hours (I must say, the printing factory machines were damn cool), and announces the new task—we’d be creating a newspaper supplement for a mouthwash that would go into the LA Times.

We leave, and head to our photo/graphic design studio, where we’d be from 10am until we had to leave (as per the dossier) at 1am that night. The dossier added that we would be able to use a specified emergency copy center the next morning beginning at 5am, but that both teams could not use it simultaneously. Our presentation would be at 2pm the next day.

So, after picking up lunch from Baja Fresh, we arrive at the studio, and begin preparing for our meeting with the SmartMouth executives, which would take place at 11am. While we were having this discussion, Ivanka rolled in, straightening everyone’s spines. She asked how it was going, and Steph explained what we were doing. While she was talking, James started cleaning up the table, and throwing away the mess from lunch. Steph, who was not done yet, stopped mid-sentence while talking to Ivanka and said to James, “Don’t throw the guacamole away,” and then continued her sentence. In typical Ivanka form, she chuckled at the time, and then viciously attacked Steph for this in the boardroom two days later (same thing she did with Martin with his “I’m exhausted” comment).

Anyway, Ivanka bolts after about 10 minutes, and shortly after, the evil executives walk in. In our meeting, they stressed a few things:

-SmartMouth is the only mouthwash that leaves you waking up with no morning breath after taking it the night before, and lasts all day long afterward.
-The demographic of SmartMouth is “everyone.”
-SmartMouth is closer to a prescription drug than a mouthwash, by actually working at the molecular level, removing sulfuric acid from the food particles that attach to your mouth after eating.
-Like all mouthwash companies, SmartMouth is evil, creating an entire thriving business off instilling a fear of bad breath in the general public.

They left, and we began brainstorming. Here’s what the episode’s editing showed:

Frank comes up with an idea about a couple in bed, and then I cut him off and frantically explain my idea about people holding their hands to their faces in a white room. Then James interviews that I know I’m on the hot seat if we lose and I’m reacting by being frantic, which is overbearing for the rest of the team.

Here’s what happened:

I come up with the idea of a couple in bed. Frank comes up with a variation of that idea. I suggest that the whole couple in bed idea is bad because the audience is too narrow. More ideas get tossed around. I come up with the idea to have a group of all different shapes, colors, and ages of people to represent “everyone” and they’re all self-conscious about their bad breath and then at the end of the supplement they’re all “cured” and smiling. All three of them love the idea, and we decide to go with it. I’m as enthusiastic during this session as I’ve been during the last 5 tasks’ brainstorming sessions, no more and no less. Then, two days later, after we’ve learned that we lost and James is preparing his attack of me in the boardroom, he interviews that I was overbearing during the task.

I swear—I’m not bitter.

So the next step is to actually go and get the props (pajamas, etc.) and recruit 10 or so tourists for our photo shoot. We allot $2,500 of our seed money for the recruiting, figuring that if we offer $250/tourist to appear in a “real Hollywood photo shoot for the LA times!” it would be no problem to get people.

Two of us would stay back and plan out the details of the supplement and the accompanying text, and two of us would go get the props/people. Frank says, “James I’ll stay here with you,” and James replies, “No, I think Tim should stay back and work on the supplement with me—you and Stephanie should go.”

Quick fact check: James sends Frank to help Stephanie with her errand, and insists that I stay with him to create the actual supplement. Two days later in the boardroom, Frank is a crucial asset to the team, and I am mainly a distraction.

I swear—not bitter in the least.

So, I lay out the supplement’s contents—beginning picture of “everyone” with bad breath, middle pages with a classic delicious-looking “two yummy liquids mixing into one” picture, a scientific explanation, and an end picture of the same “everyone,” now smiling and without bad breath. James liked it, and I began working with the photographer on creating the “two liquids pouring together” photo.

This photo took about 6 total hours or work, because you can’t actually pour them together—you need to take 837 shots of each liquid pouring and splashing, and then work with the graphic designer to splice a ton of these photos together into the final picture. Plus, the actual mouthwash colors weren’t delicious-looking enough, so I used food coloring and water to create the perfect colors.

Now, say what you want about our supplement—but that pouring graphic was intensely delicious. I want a 12-foot blowup of it on my wall (with “Listerine” or another competitor labels pasted over the “SmartMouth” labels, of course). I may tattoo the graphic on my chest.

Anyway, Steph and Frank returned with the people and the pajamas. It was a hilarious crowd of boisterous tourists, thrilled to tell their friends that they had basically made it big in Hollywood. (It’s also funny to picture what occurred for them this past Sunday. They had no idea while it was happening in June that it was for The Apprentice—so I imagine their phones were ringing off the hook Sunday night with people they know asking them why they were in Arrow’s supplement on The Apprentice. Then they probably said, “I’m in what?” and then put the pieces together and realized what that weird photo shoot they did on their summer trip 9 months ago really was. Reality TV is weird.)

So we all got in our pajamas and got set up for the shoot. Frank, realizing he hadn’t contributed much so far, decided that he would direct the photo shoot. Which began with Frank trying to figure out what I had in mind, and ended with me directing the photo shoot. This took an upsettingly long time, as the tourists kept laughing and ruining the shots. And, as I stood there, in my pajamas, surrounded by tourists, holding my hand up to my mouth and yelling out directions to the tourists, I could only think to myself, “You’ve made a series of decisions in the past few months, and you’ve ended up here.”

So we finished, and our jolly group of friends exited the premises, and we all went upstairs to work with the graphic designer (who was a massive bitch). I continued work on the heavenly pouring shot, while Steph worked on the presentation, James sketched out the scientific insert, and Frank existed.

Anyway, we all plugged away, and it was around this time that Frank started second-guessing everything and panicking that our supplement wouldn’t be clear. Sure, this may have been a valid concern, but we all knew that our idea was a risk, and we had decided to take this risk, and it was way too late to realistically start another photo shoot—so the only end-result was that he made the team more nervous. Two days later in the boardroom, Frank would proudly explain that he had been against our idea. I may not have played this game perfectly, but I never once pulled shit like this.

So anyway, we continued working. I was exhausted, and after a couple hours working with the graphic designer, I got off my chair to lay on the ground, and continued to give directions from down there. Bad move. In the subsequent boardroom, Stephanie attacked me for this, saying it was unprofessional and disrespectful to do that. I was positive this would make the episode—pleasantly, the editors spared me this.

At 1am our deadline at that studio and with that graphic designer hit, so we packed up. We went from there to Kinkos, to have those big signs made up that we used during the presentation. This took awhile, and by the time we finished it was almost 3am. We would definitely be needing to use the “emergency” copy shop the next morning to finish the supplement and print out final copies. Since the dossier specified that we could not begin work at the copy shop until 5am, and that only one team could use it at a time, and because we knew that the other team would most likely need it as well, and that it would be first come first serve, we decided to go straight to the studio and sleep in the parking lot until 5am and get in there first.

I gotta say, heading to the copy studio to sleep for an hour in a van before waking up to finish working on a newspaper supplement, I believe I was a bit sick of these tasks. This type of gross situation had become incredibly commonplace—yet in the real world, it would be almost inconceivably nightmarish.

And of course, we woke up at 5:25am and the other team was already in the copy shop. Hideous. So we sat there, in the parking lot, waiting for 3 hours until the other team emerged (the producers gave them a time limit since otherwise they could have stayed there till the end and blocked us from getting in).

We went in, and saw the three enemy girls coming out (we tried to get a peek at their supplement, to no avail), and we got to work. James and I worked on the science insert, and created it from scratch, and worked on it until it looked as professional as one of those diagrams in Time Magazine.

Since our presentation was at 2pm, around 11am, Steph and Frank headed back to the house to shower and change and we planned to follow them as soon as we finished. But of course, we didn’t finish until 12:30, and had no choice but to go straight to the site of the presentation, since it would have been a monumental catastrophe to miss our presentation.

You saw the whole fiasco with my suit. The reason I didn’t have it was that we had completely intended on coming back to the house to sleep the night before, or if not, certainly in the morning before the presentation. We never considered that we might not ever make it back. This would have been fine, since Steph could bring my suit for me from the house—except we had no phones and had no way to communicate, and they didn’t know I didn’t have my suit.

So James and I went to the presentation site, James in his suit (which he still had on from the morning before), and me in my pajamas from the photo shoot. When we got there we saw the executives standing outside, and had to wait 20 minutes for them to finally go inside before we got out of the van, so that they wouldn’t see me in my idiot pajamas. We finally went in, and had no idea if Steph and Frank were still waiting at the house for us, or if they were on the way, or whether they had thought to bring a suit for me.

Stressful times.

I was preparing myself to give the presentation in pajamas, and pretend that we had done this intentionally, as if I was portraying the morning breath person—we were actually planning a ridiculous emergency skit as a backup plan.

And then they came in, with the suit. Exhale.

We had about thirty minutes to wait before our presentation. In the meantime, we sat around and collectively admired our supplement—we were sure we had won. It was beautiful, and effective. Frank was holding up the pouring liquids graphic and saying, “Dis is da best ting I evah saw! Yah brilliant!” and petting me on the head excitedly. We were talking about winning 3 in a row and 5 out of 6 and how awesome we were in general.

The episode made it appear that Team Arrow was at odds throughout the task, but we were not. Sitting in this room, we all loved each other, and were thrilled with our work. Sure, there were the underlying issues, but I wasn’t at all thinking about them.

So 2pm rolls around, and we present. Steph presents well, the exec’s seem pleased, and we went back into our little assigned room, and were even (more) happier than we had been before. We looked at our supplement—it was gorgeous.

After some time we were called back out. Both supplements were on the table. And then I saw their supplement. I had the same reaction you did when I saw that theirs was shaped like the actual bottles—“Uh oh.”

They had gone a whole further step outside the box.

Kinetic wins.

Looking back, this was a fair verdict. Ours looked beautiful, and polished, and it could have been done by a professional advertising company. Theirs looked cheap and low-budget—but they hit the mark better with the 24-hour thing (even if we captured the idea of “everyone” better). And theirs was shaped like those damn bottles—which is much more compelling for a random LA Times reader skimming through the paper.

The judges also didn’t like our scientific insert. Our thinking behind this was not that people would carefully study the diagram (although I, as a nerd, probably would have). Our thought was that the diagram would give the impression that this was much more than a minty mouthwash—it was a hardcore medicine, and a hardcore solution for bad breath.

So back to the room we go, and we’re put on lockdown, and we’re all dejected and looking down, and I’m thinking, “Fuck.”

We went back to the house and moved outside to the campsite, and Frank was sitting there chomping his chips (phenomenal comedic job by the editors on this scene), and it was just awkward. The last time we lost we had Surya—this time the four of us were all good friends.

And as we sat there, we heard a scream coming from the house. A few minutes later, 6 people came over to the hedge, and called me and Frank over.

Their family members were there. Completely shocking. And it took about 5 seconds for me to realize that of course, this meant that our family members had been there too, and that we could have seen them if we had won.

So upsetting. After a month in this surreal world, it would have been amazingly fun to see a family member. I introduced myself to the two moms and Kristine’s dreamy husband, and could not have been more unhappy to have to deal with this—I was exhausted, I had lost, I was about to get fired, and I have to smile and be pleasant and introduce myself to Nikki’s mom. Seriously, think about this. This is an awkward moment for a guy in any situation, but here it was utterly miserable.

We learn from the three family members that apparently, they had been altogether with the four of our family members in the LA airport, all waiting for the verdict, and after a few hours it was announced to them that Kinetic had won, and the four of our people had been sent right back on a plane home.

Painful.

I asked them who had been there for me. My mom, they told me. For those of you that know Robin Urban, well—that would have been fun for all of you (less fun for me, perhaps). Just a shame overall.

They told us it would have been Frank’s dad, James’ wife, and Stephanie’s mom as well. The four of us were incredibly unhappy about this news (Frank was the most upset).

A couple hours later, Nikki called me over to tell me that she was telling her mom the story about her leaving the team to see what she would say. The editing here was a bit off. They showed me coming back from that looking upset, and James interviewing, “Give me a break! Doesn’t Tim realize that this girl is killing him?!”

What happened was—this was a 30 second interaction between me and her mom, and it was mostly in jest, and I came back from that and Frank and I joked around about it, and James said something like, “Uh! Women!!” and that was that. They showed clips of James and Frank looking annoyed, and with James’ interview on top, it seemed like this was a lot more tense and awkward than it actually was.

That night I was still angry that I was gonna get fired mainly because of Nikki’s reaction to everything over the past few days, and I wanted her to know that, but I did not want to get into it in front of the cameras all over again, so I wrote it down and figured I’d hand it to her on paper. The camera kept trying to film what I was writing over my shoulder, so I held the paper in the dark so they couldn’t see it. Before I went to bed, I handed it to her, completing our cycle of acting like we’re in middle school, and I went to sleep.

The next morning I went on my long interview, while presumably, back at the campsite, the team solidified their plan to go after me. I came back and only Frank was there. Usually he and I would have talked and had a beer. Not today—we both knew what was coming, and it was awkward. A few hours later when the other two returned from their interviews, I brought up the boardroom, and suggested that we at least address the task so that there were no surprises in the boardroom. None of them wanted to talk about it.

So when we headed up to the boardroom, I was well aware of what was coming. And I was okay with it. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t the type that just had to have this job—I thought of it as a game, and accepted that I had made it far, and was probably toast, and to be honest I was excited to be in a “nothing to lose” boardroom where I would either survive or go down swinging.

Bring it the fuck on.

So I went in, and got stabbed from every possible angle (you only saw about a third of the attacks), while I tried to fight them off. But the problem was, it was such an ambush, that every time I started to respond to an attack, I’d be cut off with a different attack, either from my teammates, Ivanka (who was fully gunning for me in this one—I still don’t really know why), and Trump. I wanted to get all these arguments out, so I ended up with a queue in my head of things I needed to rebut, and felt like I wasn’t able to finish a coherent rebuttal. The frustration mounted, and led to me cutting off Ivanka.

Boardroom 101: Don’t do that.

So we continued—my initial plan of attack had been to go after James, with the argument that I had basically been the PM for the last 3 tasks as much as James had, and that I had come up with most of the winning ideas on the previous two.

But then Trump declared that “James had been a great leader,” and that he wasn’t going to fire James or Stephanie. So I did a U-turn and went after Frank.

You heard a lot of what happened from here forward. My arguments against Frank were strong (mainly that you could hire any competent person to do what Frank does), but there were two big problems:

1) My ideas had lost us this task: My main argument here was that yes, I had come up with almost this whole supplement, but that I had also come up with our central concepts on 4 of the previous 5 tasks, 3 of which we had won on the strength of my ideas. Unfortunately, Trump was completely uninterested in this, and kept going back to, “You were the reason you lost this task!” Sigh.

2) The Nicole fiasco: I was being attacked by Ivanka for showing loyalty to Nicole when she was on the other team (which she claimed couldn’t coexist with team loyalty—I disagreed, as long as it never affected the task). Simultaneously, I was attacked by Trump for “letting Nicole go” and being loyal to the team over standing up for her. And let’s also remember that Trump has been applauding this relationship since day one, saying things like, “I’m proud of you, Tim,” and “If you can land her, you’ll be my next Apprentice.”

So seriously—what the fuck?

And even when I had good arguments against both of these contradictory attacks, the team was able to pull the, “regardless, just the fact that we’re talking about all this shows that it was a distraction.” To which my response was that it was only a distraction because the team had made a huge deal of it so that it would be a distraction, and that these were just easy, cheap, bullshit attacks so they could get rid of the stronger player. Not to mention that it was only such a big deal in the first place because Trump had continually brought it up.

--Deep breath--

In the end, there were too many reasons on the table to fire me, and not nearly enough time for me to explain why most of them were bullshit.

And so, “Tim, you’re fired.”

I’ll say, that part was kind of fun. It was kind of fun actually being fired.

Surreal and fun.

So we all left, and in the episode it looked like they all stormed away without the slightest goodbye. What actually happened was that we said our goodbyes inside, where they didn’t have a camera. James hugged me and said, “Good man.” Frank hugged me and said, “We’ll see you in three days, buddy.” Stephanie hugged me and gave me a look that said, “I’m so sorry.”

I guess this is the name of the game. I guess. But these three suddenly being back in old form after putting on a different mask in the boardroom really rubbed me the wrong way. But since it’s a reality show, and not the real world, I’ll leave it at that.

And into the Dead Man’s Lexus I went.

We started driving, and stopped around the corner to pick up a camera guy and a lighting guy. They told me to talk for as long as I want. I went on for awhile, about being laid-off, kicked to the curb, and grayed out. I talked about how it was the 4th of July at the time. “Fired on the 4th of July—God bless America!” I explained. I talked about how I had had a good run, and how I went down swinging, and that I had had a lot of fun. As frustrating as that boardroom was, I had expected to be sitting in that Lexus, and I was more amused with my whole life in general than anything else at that moment. Donald Trump had just fired me—I found that just really amusing in general. And, it hit me that I didn’t have to do a task the next day. I can’t possibly express how amazing this fact was. I was free. So I was actually reasonably pleased with things.

Then, after I finished my soliloquy, the lighting guy pulled out a piece of paper that the producers had given him, with a list of questions they wanted me to answer—most of them were something along the lines of, “Was she worth it?”

And then they put the camera away, and I sat there and enjoyed the ride. “Tim, you’re fired.” Ha.

So anyway. Looking back in the following days and weeks, was it a frustrating ending? Yes. Was I taking it that seriously? No. After nine months, have I gotten over it? Definitely. There were moments watching these episodes, where I would see the situation for what it was, and I’d know that I really could have won this thing if things had gone a bit differently, and that was frustrating. But in the end, it’s a reality show—and after having a ton of fun, finding a girlfriend, and getting, for the most part, a fair edit—I look upon the whole thing fondly.

As for James, Steph, and Frank, I had two options as to how to proceed: I could hold a grudge and sever ties with them, or I could say fuck it and act civil and let it go and be friends. I chose the latter—it’s a fucking TV show. Of course, this doesn’t prevent me from making hilarious passive-aggressive bitter remarks here and there (I texted Frank on Sunday morning and told him to “cross your fingers and root for me tonight”—of course he didn’t get the irony and responded lovably with, “Good luck buddie love you it will be ok”. I can't fucking stay mad at that guy). I had the same two options in regards to Nicole—I could make a big deal about getting fired for all that, and probably end things between us, or I could say “fuck it I like this girl it’s a TV show let’s actually give this a try,” and again, I chose the latter.

While my lack of post-firing venom provides little amusement for all of you, sitting in that Lexus I was on my way to the place where all the firees were residing, and upon arriving I quickly learned that not everyone took the same “fuck it” attitude. There was quite some bitterness where I was headed.

And next week, there will be another recap—my experience upon joining the firees in loser-land.

Down, but not out—

Tim

My exit interview: http://apprentice.tv.yahoo.com/trump/06/episodes/week11_videos.html#1643977

The Apprentice LA - Episode 12

2009-03-08T18:44:00.001-07:00

I was driving today, on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Sitting at the stoplight in the car next to me: Bill Rancic. “Bill!” I said. He looked over. “Hey!” he said. “Rough night the other night, huh?” I replied, “Yeah, it sucked.” He agreed—“I was pulling for you.”

I wish he had been there instead of Ivanka.

“I wish you had been there instead of Ivanka,” I said.

Then we both noticed that he was driving a shiny Porsche convertible and I was driving a dirty 1996 Honda Accord…LX. “This is what happens when you get fired,” we were both thinking.

And with that, the light turned green, and we parted ways (him with more acceleration).

And that will prove to be the theme of this week’s recap—what happens when you get fired.

So, continuing where we left off last week: the Dead Man’s Lexus.

So I’m sitting there in the car, trying to get my head around the fact that Donald Trump had just pronounced, “Tim, you’re fiahed.” Talk about surreal.

I finished my little speech about being fired on the fourth of July, and my dismay at being grayed out (this made Entertainment Weekly’s “quotes of the week” this week), and we drove for another 10 minutes to a landing somewhere and parked. I emerged from the vehicle and was greeted with open arms by 2 of the casting people and Liza, the therapist. That’s right—Liza, the therapist.

Liza is Mark Burnett’s go-to therapist, and has been on site for all of the Survivors, Apprentices, Contenders, and others. I vaguely remembered when I saw her that she had been introduced in those few days prior to the filming, and we were told she’d be there waiting to talk to the firees about whatever they wanted to talk about. “Uh oh,” I had thought. “The firees need therapy?”

So we all hugged, and they were pleasantly surprised to see that I was in a chipper mood—as I mentioned, I knew I had had a good run and hadn’t gone down without a fight, and the main thing on my mind was that I didn’t have to wake up for a task the next day. I was an easy case for them. From stories I’ve heard, they are often greeted with anger, tears, and depression. And on these reality shows, there is always a slight fear of having to watch for suicide—remember, Liza greets people who haven’t slept in a month and are not thinking straight, and some of whom are deeply upset about what had just transpired and what it would mean for them in the future. Bad combination.

So we got in a van and headed to the “Ponderosa” (the first season of Survivor, people who were kicked off the show were sequestered in a hotel called the Ponderosa—the name stuck, and ever since, Burnett people have used the term to refer to wherever the cast will be brought to upon exiting—there’s even a nickname. The “Pondy”). This was the same place we all were in the five days prior to filming (when we couldn’t interact with each other). Everyone who is fired is held there until the filming is over, and then the whole cast heads home the same day—this is because the press and message boards could easily learn spoiler info about the show if they found out who was back in the real world and when they returned.

On the drive, they explained to me the situation there. The Pondy was a corporate housing complex. Kind of like a hotel without all the service. But the rooms were nice, and everyone had their own room. Everything was paid for by Mark Burnett Productions, and the same people who cast the show were now in charge of the goings on at the Pondy—basically serving as camp counselors, handling the budget, keeping people in line, making sure that no one exited the premises unaccompanied, and maintaining a fun and cheerful atmosphere as much as can be maintained when dealing with a bunch of reality TV failures.

There was a room there, they explained, that they were renting out to serve as a common room for the cast—it was a hangout room, a venue for parties, a meeting place, and the place where, they told me, the whole cast gathered every three days to welcome in the latest firee. This was called “the flop.”

So they asked me if I was up for seeing everyone, and I said that I most certainly was, and so upon arrival, we headed to the flop.

We opened the door, and what ensued was yet another completely surreal experience.

There was dead silence when the door cracked open, as everyone anxiously waited to see who was behind it. I entered, and—chaos. Everyone was yelling and hugging me and handing me drinks. Some of them were disappointed to see me—apparently, of the remaining 7 cast members, I was overall one of the least hated, and some had been rooting for me as the least of the 7 evils. A lot of the Kinetic girls hated Heidi, and they didn't seem to be too many Kristine fans either. Kinetic also seemed to dislike James, and I think Surya’s stories had made people root against the rest of Arrow.

They were also surprised to see me. A lot of them had predicted they’d be seeing Kristine, Frank, or James, but not me. Part of the reason for this is that the last person to arrive was Angela, and all of the problems between me and my team started after she had departed—and before all of that, I had been an unlikely firee.

From my side, I was very excited to see everyone, but it was weird. First, it was like seeing a bunch of ghosts. Back up at the house, we talked about fired people like they were dead, and there was always an unspoken atmosphere of mourning following the departure of a teammate. Second, it was weird seeing them all together, like a bunch of campers at summer camp. Third, they were all in bikinis and cut-off t-shirts, and flip-flops—and I had last seen all of them in business attire. Fourth, most of them were drunk, and despite myself, Frank, Nicole, and James spending most of the filming intoxicated, I had never seen any of these 11 people drunk. Fifth, the only times I had seen the Kinetic people in the past, it had been under tense conditions—they were the enemy, and most of my interactions with them had been glancing over at them before resolution to try to get a read on whether they seemed happy with the outcome of their task. Suddenly, Jen, and Muna, and Marisa are drunkenly running over and giving me hugs. Plus, Aaron (who I was most excited to see of the bunch—love that guy) had his arm around Aimee. There was no Arrow. There was no Kinetic. Just a bunch of drunken, tan yuppies at summer camp.

When all of the chaos and hugging calmed down, the conversation suddenly turned to, “Tim, tell us everything. Immediately.”

So they all gathered round—them well-slept and well-fed, in their bikinis, with their tans, and their music—and me, in my suit, looking like I had just emerged from a battle, about 15 pounds underweight, deeply exhausted, and slightly delirious. And I told them the story of the past 3 days (Angela had them all caught up to that point). Right away, one of the girls interrupted, and asked, “Who was the winning PM for Kinetic?” I explained that it was Heidi. This received a chorus of “Fuck!”s from the former Kinetic ladies.

Whoa.

They were not fond of Heidi. My theory is that everyone comes back to the Pondy with their own bitter tale, and their bitterness is usually spread out among a number of circumstances and people. And as time passes, it morphs into bitterness purely at a few select people, and these people are almost always people still on the show—people who had outlasted them. And, because girls are the way they are, they tend to be much more bitter and spiteful than the guys. So, considering that 6 of the 11 people at the Pondy were girls, and 5 of those girls had been on Kinetic, and since it’s much more fun for girls to hate the same person together—what I found is that most of the bitterness they felt, at all the unfortunate and unfair circumstances, and all of the people that had wronged them during this process—most of that had been channeled collectively together, and directed towards Heidi.

This makes sense of course—she’s the prettiest girl on the show, she was Trump’s favorite Kinetic member to the point that even when one of the other girls was the winning PM, he’d focus on Heidi. She was probably overrated by Trump, and had gotten a lot of credit for the other girls’ work behind the scenes, and she had outlasted them all. Plus, there was also some legitimate basis for hatred—she had been pretty sneaky and actually had wronged a couple of them.

So I finished my story, and it was late so some people went off to bed, and I stayed up chatting with a few others. Eventually everyone went to bed except me and Aaron. I told him we had all missed him on Arrow, and he told me about his 3 weeks at the Pondy. As he was leaving, he said, “Whenever you wake up, come down to the barbecue pit, we’ll all be grilling.” Whenever you wake up, come down to the barbecue pit, we’ll all be grilling.

After waking up at 4am in a tent for most of the past month and eating a granola bar and 3 Red Bulls for most lunches, I just looked at him in awe.

So Aaron went off, and I was sitting there alone. No cameras. No microphone. No producers. No tents. No hedge. No Arrow. No Kinetic. No Trump.

Just me and the flop.

I went to my room, dropped my bags on the floor, and got in bed. I turned on the TV.

Sportscenter. I had spent 5 weeks without the Red Sox, or sports of any kind. This was bizarre. I sat there in bed, watching baseball highlights. Hours earlier I had been screaming about god-knows-what in the boardroom. What a weird night. What a weird month.

* * *
(that’s right, I put three stars there for dramatic effect)

I slept about 14 hours.

Upon awakening, things were surreal once again. As trite as this may sound, at that moment the whole thing actually felt like a big hideous dream. After sleeping more than I had in the past 3 weeks combined, I felt incredibly refreshed, a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time. I felt my stomach—no mic. Aahh. And there was no task. Aaaaahhhhhh.

I checked my voice messages on the hotel phone. I had missed my scheduled 9am appointment with the therapist (it was 1pm). Oh yeah. I called them and rescheduled for that afternoon. I threw on my flip flops and shorts and moseyed out to the pool. I stumbled over to the barbecue pit, where a bunch of the cast was lounging around eating. They all clapped when they saw me. They asked how I was doing. They told me what to expect as time progressed for me at the Pondy, with the wisdom of a bunch of people who had all been told “You’re fiahed.” There were all these stages they were talking about—relief, regret, boredom, depression, acceptance, bitterness, etc. etc. I told them that I was feeling just fine, pleasant even.

I said something about “Trump” and everyone immediately looked at me and explained that we don’t say the word “Trump” or “boardroom” under any circumstances, since there were a lot of people everywhere, and no one was supposed to know who we were or that we had anything to do with a TV show. The code words were “DT” and “BR”.

After a bit, I headed to my appointment with Dr. Liza. Everyone has a “day after” appointment with Dr. Liza. I went in and sat in the chair across the room from her. We chatted about things.

She’s a wonderful woman, of course. Comforting to the highest degree. She knew everything about me, simply by looking at the data from the 7-hour multiple choice psych test I had taken during the “Final 50” week 2 months earlier. And I mean everything. She knew about my childhood, and my fears, and hopes, and vices, and what type of girls I liked, and what type of friends I had. It was scary. But she knew all of it in a wonderful, comforting, Dr. Liza way, so it was okay. Sitting there, I began to question whether I loved her.

So we talked about the whole experience, and the future, and everything else. As I mentioned, I was an easy case, because I felt pretty good about everything. I had gone into it thinking of it like a game with a “nothing to lose” mindset, and I had done pretty well. Sure, in the months that followed, especially as I watched some of the episodes and saw from the outside how much I really, actually, could have won this thing if things had gone just a bit differently, I’d get frustrated at times. But at this point, I felt nothing but satisfaction from the whole thing.

After my meeting, a couple of the casting guys took me in a van back to the house to collect my stuff. When we go to the boardroom, we all bring our bag with one night’s worth of stuff. The next day, when everyone is out on a task, the latest firee is brought back to collect the rest of their stuff.

Walking around the house and the campsite that day was the first time I felt a sad about things. First of all, I noticed that the campsite was empty—everyone had apparently moved into the house. This sucked, because it made it official that if I had just survived that one last task, there would have been some kind of shakeup that would have gotten me out of the vulnerable position I had been in. Plus, the quietness there reminded me that everyone was out on a task (in Vegas as it turns out), and suddenly, now well-rested, I kind of wanted to be back in there in the competition. Kind of.

So I gathered my stuff, the whole time resisting the intense urge to poop in James, Steph and Frank’s bags, and got ready to leave. It crossed my mind to write a note to my old teammates, saying something along the lines of, “Miss you guys—good luck.” But then I remembered that they all had ruthlessly stabbed me in the back only 20 hours earlier, and decided against it. This led me to return to the pooping in their bags idea once more, but I again decided against that. I guess I’ll just leave, I thought.

As I was heading out, Jay Bienstock, the Executive Producer of the show, a guy we almost never saw during the process (though he was always there, behind the scenes), came downstairs and shook my hand.

Him: How ya doing?
Me: I’m doing alright. Long boardroom last night, huh?
Him: Hell of a fight you put up. For awhile, I thought you might actually make it out of there.
Me: Me too. But just too many arguments against me. It was fun though.
Him: Well you were a pleasure to have on the show. Thanks for everything. [Translation: You don’t know how happy I am that you got involved with Nicole. Seriously, you don’t know how happy I am about that. We are going to squeeze every drop of exploitation out of that possible.]
Me: I had a great time. I look forward to watching. [Translation: Please don’t portray me as a douchebag.]

And with that, I headed back to the Pondy. Though the next 24 hours were relatively uneventful, I learned a lot about life at the Pondy. Including:

--The casting team/camp counselors did a good job at maintaining a happy atmosphere. On the wall of the flop was a big whiteboard with funny private jokes and messages. Next to that was a big bulletin board with Polaroids of the cast doing silly things. There was a big calendar that included events like, “Dodgers game,” and “sushi dinner,” and “tennis tournament” on it—these events were voluntary, but most people went on them, I learned. Every morning at 10am a bunch of people met in the flop to make a run to Coffee Bean. Etc.

--Underneath the happy-go-lucky atmosphere that covered the surface, there was a lot of hard feelings, bitterness, and anger. Almost every time I talked to someone one-on-one, the conversation would eventually turn to their specific frustrating story. In fact, the only people I can think of that didn’t convey their own angry tale to me were Martin and Michelle. And the whole summer camp, “we all love each other” thing was limited to the surface as well. More than once, I’d be sitting around with two people, and when one left the room, the other would whisper about how everyone was annoyed with that person, or how that person was pathetic, or something. This was pretty amusing. Here was my roundup (abridged here):

Martin: Martin was the King of the Pondy—the Guardian of its gates. I cannot imagine how terrible it must be to be the first one fired, and arrive there to an empty flop—just you and the whole casting team, smiling and dedicating the next three days to cheering you up so you don’t kill yourself. And you know you have six weeks to sit there and wait for it to end, while everyone talks about this crazy once-in-a-lifetime experience that you didn’t get to have. Plus, everyone you’ll be spending time with over that period did better than you. Some didn’t do well, but only you were the First Person Fired. Just a completely abominable situation.

And no one could have dealt with that better than Martin. He had nothing to prove—he’s married, with two kids, and serves as the Assistant District Attorney of Atlanta, as well as being a professor. He’s not fragile, and has a strong sense of humor about himself and the whole process. I’m sure he was still crushed by how it turned out, but less crushed than anyone else would have been. He was a universal favorite of everyone there. The guy is charming, witty as hell, and just fun to have around. He had made a point to connect with everyone else there. It’s really too back he didn’t stay on the show longer—he would have been supremely evil and diabolical and hilarious had he stuck around.

He wasn’t really bitter towards anyone—though still in complete disbelief that Frank had beaten him in that first boardroom. He told me that in his Dead Man’s Lexus ride, he had said, “I hope Tim wins” (since I was the first person to announce that the Emperor (Frank) had no clothes (was a terrible PM), and I had defended Martin vocally in that boardroom).

Carey: Carey and I were never really friends, but I had a chance to talk to him a bit. His main bitterness was towards Michelle, from episode 2. Of all the lasting bitterness, I find Carey-Michelle the funniest.

Michelle: Michelle sightings were few and far between for. She had had a real hard time over the past month, I was told. I saw her a couple times, and as I mentioned a long time ago, the Tim-Michelle animosity of the Tour Bus Episode was mainly editing—she and I got along fine. So our interactions were perfectly friendly.

Marisa: I like Marisa. She was having fun at the Pondy, but definitely had a bitter tale to tell. Talking with her, I heard a story about El Pollo Loco, and the chicken suit, and how Kinetic fell victim to GroupThink, and how she was the only one who would speak her mind, and how then the Evil Sorceress Heidi decided that GroupThink would go against Marisa, and how Heidi was actually a huge lizard wearing a girl costume, and that she had seen her eating children.

Aaron: Aaron is one of two Type-B personalities in the cast (Angela being the other), and he had no bitterness or regrets whatsoever. He just felt lucky to be on the show in the first place, and was thoroughly enjoying his days at the Pondy. He was another unanimous favorite there.

Aimee: She had apparently come back to the Pondy hating Jen and Derek (remember the look of death she gave them at the end?) in addition to Heidi, Kristine, the moon, and oxygen, but after Jen and Derek both returned the following week, she decided to say “fuck it” with them and became good friends, and simply gathered all of that hatred and all of the rest of it and compacted it into a ball of murderous rage towards Heidi. This girl haaated Heidi. Fun.

Jen: Jen is great. Just a supremely fun girl—very sarcastic and funny, and hilariously bitter about everything. She referred to herself as a puppet, who had fallen into the whole Apprentice “I’m on a job interview” thing for 7 tasks before being kicked to the curb, and told me she wished she had been more like us on Arrow—meaner, more honest, more fun, more herself. She would have been a great Arrow member—problem was, she was on Kinetic, and you just couldn’t be like that on Kinetic. A lot of her anger was directed at Heidi, who she claimed had wronged her and betrayed her in the boardroom and had lost Bruce Willis’s watch in Pulp Fiction.

Derek: Another one who fully jumped into the “I’m at the Pondy—free vacation!!” mode upon arrival. He was only bitter in a funny joking way, and was full of one-liners and hilarious comments, like telling Muna that NBC would need to use subtitles every time she spoke, or coming up with the nickname “Homo-rosa” for Carey.

Surya: Surya was pretty frustrated by everything. When I got there, I tried to comfort him, and told him it was in his head, and that he’d be fine. He told me that the editors were going to have to justify him being fired after a 5-2 record and 2 PM wins. I told him he was crazy. I was wrong. He was exactly right. Poor dude. Needless to say, he didn’t have many good things to say about Frank, James, and Stefanie—the three that had just been flat out terrible to him. He was rooting especially hard against James, since according to him if James makes the finals, they will have to make him look good all season, and since he and James fought it out in his final boardroom, that would in turn mean an even worse edit for him (as you’d imagine, he wasn’t overjoyed to learn who the finalists were).

Muna: Muna was not taking things well either. She was very upset about the way things ended for her, and was very nervous about the edit she’d get. She despised Heidi (who you’ll recall did betray her in her last boardroom), and also Kristine for accusing her of being weak and annoying. She was very very hurt and angry about what had happened. I, for one, like Muna a lot.

Angela: Angela is one of my favorites in the cast—just a really cool girl. Her personality didn’t really come across on the show, but she’s great. She was freshly arrived enough that she hadn’t really fallen into the bitter, depressing Pondy mold yet. She really just didn’t give a fuck about any of it.

All in all, it seemed pretty fun on the surface, with a somewhat depressing undertone, and an overarching obsession with what was happening back where all the cameras were.

So, the end of my second full day there, we were told to meet in the flop at 8pm, and that a boardroom had just happened. Usually, a cycle was three days, so this was a day early (because, as I know now, the firings happened on day 2, right after the presentations, with no interview day in between).

So we all gathered, and waited. And the door opened—

And Heidi and Kristine walked in.

Wow.

First of all, those were the last two Kinetic members. The final four was all Arrow!

I had intense mixed feelings. My initial reaction was one of extreme pride. I had spent a month wearing “Arrow” across my chest, and had said again and again and again when we were 0-3, and 1-4, that this was a great team that was about to go on a run. Plus these were—or at least had been until 2 days ago—my four buddies. I was genuinely proud. Fucking Arrow!

Obviously, at the same time I was sad/angry to hear this. Two tasks earlier, before Nikki had been switched, that was my exact team. During the Softscrub task, the team was: Frank, Nicole, James, Stefanie, me. The five of us had won together and lost together, and it was a bit hard to take the news that the rest of them would all prevail to the end, minus me. Especially since I knew (and still do know) that I was a crucial part of that team, and that I had had a leadership role among those five. So, quite plainly, that part sucked.

It must have been exactly how Nomar felt when the Sox won in 2004, or Bledsoe in 2001.

My third thought was that I was happy Nikki was still there. I know, you’re thinking, “For Christ sake, she got him fired, when will he stop rooting for her?!” But trust me, the editing made it look worse than it was. Sure, her hideous decision to be angry at me after being moved was a nightmare, but beyond that, it was James, Frank, and Stefanie cleverly pouncing on this that got me fired much more than it was her. Also, I heard that all three of them eat kids.

My fourth thought was, “Holy shit—Frank made the final four.” This thought was shared by most of the people at the Pondy. Seriously, what were the chances of that.

So—I was all over the place.

Anyway, this welcome was not nearly as chaotic as mine. It was more quiet, and kind of awkward. Aimee got up and stormed out of the room, Jessie Spano in Showgirls style. Others of us sat down to hear the story of the last task. Naturally, I was riveted by this.

Those two girls looked beat. Heidi looked completely and utterly resigned, like someone who had spent the last 35 days doing Apprentice Tasks. They explained what happened.

I’m inclined to believe the general story was pretty accurately portrayed in the editing, since that was more or less the story they told.

They also told me that Nikki had been ice cold to the other three the entire night after they merged together in the house, knowing that they had all gone after me in the boardroom. In her mind, they had seriously wronged me. At the same time, the episode showed James saying to Frank and Stefanie, prior to the merge, “If Nicole doesn’t feel bad tonight, she’s heartless.” In their mind, Nicole had seriously wronged me.

So that’s nice. After I’m somehow disloyal to both sides, and both sides get angry at me, and I get fired because I’m thrown under the bus by both sides—at least both sides can blame the other side for my firing to ease their own guilt. At least I have that.

Then, I returned to my room to find my laptop stolen. Seriously. And we will never speak of this again for any reason.

So I woke up the next day, and we were brought into the flop and told that there were four finalists this year, not two like every other year, and that the next day four of us would be called back by the finalists to help on the final task (usually there are six called back), and that we had to meet in the flop that night at 6pm for the announcement of who had been called back.

My immediate thought: Frank was in the finals?

My second thought was the realization that my time at the Pondy would be short-lived, and that I would undoubtedly be heading back into the gladiator pit the next morning.

The adventure continues.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 13

2009-03-08T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here in LA, it’s finale week. It’s been busy. It’s been chaotic. And at the moment, it’s terribly hungover in my bed here in my hotel room going back and forth between, “Oh god, what the hell happened last night” and “It doesn’t matter, nothing could ever be embarrassing again if under 4 million people witnessed it so who cares.”

And of course, we’ll get into the last few days in great detail shortly. First, though, we’ll dive back into the show, and back up 3 days to the last day of episode 12 (day 36 overall).

So, back at the Pondy, we’re all summoned to the Flop at 6pm, and told that there would be no more firings—there would be 4 finalists this year instead of 2. Then she told us that there would be 2 teams of 2 competing in the final task, and that each team had chosen 2 of us to bring back. This was odd—a 2 on 2 finale? What the hell? As had become customary, we were confused.

So she announces who the “helpers” will be. Nicole and Frank will be a team, and they are bringing back Tim [applause]…and Surya [applause]. James and Stefanie are a team, bringing back Aaron [applause]…and Angela [applause]. None of this was a surprise. Think about it—the finalists were all Arrow, and didn’t really know anyone on Kinetic. So the options from Arrow were Martin, Carey, Michelle, Aaron, Surya, and me. The first three were not happening, for various reasons. That left the last 3. For the final pick, James and Stef wanted someone with task experience, but Kristine and Heidi would be completely exhausted from the last task. Angela seemed pleasant enough, so they went with her. Seemed like a weird choice watching the episode, but given the options, it made sense.

I learned that at the Pondy, a lot of people had really wanted to be called back. I knew I was going to get a lot of air time throughout the season, so it didn’t even cross my mind to want to be called back, other than the fact that it would make you look like a strong player. In my case, it would have looked pretty bad if I hadn’t been called back, and if it weren’t for that, I would have preferred to lounge around at the Pondy for 3 more days. Remember how happy I had been two days earlier not to have a task the next day? Suddenly, I’m told I have to be in my suit at the van outside at 4:45am the next morning, to embark on a 40-hour task and undoubtedly work through the night—to try to win a task that I’m not really competing in. Not exactly something I was looking forward to.

Worse, I love to dive head first into a task, and get ultra-competitive and go all out to win. The problem is, Surya and I would have to be careful. On the way over the next morning, I remember saying to him, “This cannot be about me and you—we can’t come up with the central idea or have any kind of crucial role. We have to make sure Nikki and Frank shine here, not us, or the producers will make a big deal out of that to make them look bad.” And that’s just not fun.

Plus, I’d be fighting 40 hours to help the girl who had just read my note aloud and the guy who had just joined forces against me in the boardroom become The Next Apprentice. Yay!

One upside was the hilarious dynamic between Surya/me and Angela/Aaron throughout the task. On the way over, we kept saying things like, “you’re going DOWN” to each other, none of us really caring that much about the outcome, and when the two teams would run into each other mid-task, instead of the usual awkward, tense glances, the four us would give each other the finger, etc.

So anyway, we arrive at the house, and we’re held outside on lockdown for 20 minutes while they get the cameras in position to capture the moment when we walk in the house. Finally, we head in, and I give extremely awkward hugs to Frank, James, and Stef, while Surya and Frank endured the fact that Surya and Frank were on the same team (this sub-plot amused me). Nicole was nowhere to be found (they showed me stomping around the background looking for her like a madman). She finally emerged, and we hugged, and talked about how we know they’re gonna try to do the whole “Nicole and Tim seem more focused on each other than winning the task” thing to add drama, so let’s not give that to them—let’s stay away from each other during the task. This seemed obvious to both of us.

So the teams get in their vans and head to Universal Studios to meet the big guy. He arrives with Ivanka, Don Jr., and Don Jr.’s head.

The first thing he does is check out the four who were picked to come back—“Four great choices,” he says. He gave Surya a little extra nod—he really liked that guy.

We’re told that our task would be to create a 60-second video for Renuzit, an air freshener, that would be played in a movie theater in front of a live audience. This was weird for a few reasons:

1) We just did that exact task week 9, except it was for Softscrub instead of Renuzit.

2) It was the final task. For the past 5 seasons, the finale has always been based on each finalist running a huge event, like a concert, or a celebrity charity event. There were always 840 moving parts, and a huge crowd, and celebrities, and it was always this massive 1-on-1 showdown. And we were doing a one-minute air freshener video?? That was the final task? Pretty fucking lame.

3) It was 2-on-2, which was weird, and it was a creative task, which is stupid because the 2 helpers could come up with the idea, and then what the hell do you do? In the past, the final task has been all about management, and delegation, and logistics nightmares—tasks which call for real leadership. Throughout the season, the creative tasks required one good idea and good execution, more than delegation and leadership.

Then again, I had spent much of the past month showering in an outhouse, so I shouldn’t have expected anything reasonable anyway.

So we head to our set, which consisted of a bunch of different rooms and settings—the dossier insisted that we were not allowed to use any of the sets depicting a home (I’m not sure why). So we were limited to the rest—which included a courtroom, a hospital, and an office.

In our meeting with the executives, they had stressed two keys to their product:

1) Their demographic, which was the “Super-Mom”—the attractive, working mother who is “always prepared.”

2) The fact that the product gets rid of odors in the air, on the floor, and on fabric, by caging odors and basically dismantling them.

So, once on the set decided to go with the office and hospital room. The basic story would be that super-mom, who states at the beginning that she’s “always prepared,” gets called to the hospital where her son is injured. She makes him feel better by setting up the area around his bed just like his room at home. He replies that something is still missing, so she sprays the Renuzit (in the air, on the floor, and on the bed fabric), and he says, “now it feels like home.”

In theory, a good idea.

But a couple things went wrong.

1) This was a lot to do in 60 seconds, and we never quite got the whole “mom is turning the hospital room into home, capped off by the smell of Renuzit” thing across. It just seemed like she was making a smelly hospital room smell better (which is dumb, because it implies that hospital rooms smell bad, which wasn’t our original point at all).

2) After we settled on the story, Surya and Nicole stayed around to write the script, and Frank and I headed to the prop house. In the prop house, Frank started freaking out about the fact that we hadn’t added humor in at all, and we came up with the idea to have a smelly guy in the bed next to the kid. This, as it turns out, was a bad idea for two reasons: It distracted from our whole point that she’s making an ordinary-smelling hospital room smell like home, and somewhere along the line, smelly dude ended up looking like a homeless guy, which was not at all our intent (this was helped by Frank yelling, “Where’s da bum?! Bring him in!”, which of course made the edit and extinguished any doubt that he was just a smelly patient).

So, if our original idea was an A-, our finished product was a C+.

Anyway, some other notes from the day:

--When Frank and I arrived at the prop house, we were horrified to see that it was an antique prop house. Luckily, we didn’t need that many props for this, and we could make do with the clothing they had (we picked out a ragged old outfit for the smelly guy—which of course makes him look like a fucking homeless guy. I’m not sure why neither of us realized this at the time). I remember when Frank was freaking out suddenly about the idea in that prop house, it was exactly the way he freaked out in the SmartMouth task. Basically, he throws a ton of doubt into the air, and asks the people around him to either reassure him, or fix it somehow, but has no ideas of his own. However, I don’t think he did this strategically—I just think that he would genuinely get worried.

--We got back and Surya and Frank directed, and Nicole, who had written the script and would be doing the editing, stayed on the side to watch the shot on a monitor and give them input. I sat there with her watching, and took notes on timing, etc.

In reality, Nicole and I sat there doing what we were supposed to be doing, but they showed a couple clips of us laughing to make it look like we were sitting there flirting. This was frustrating to watch, because I had even said at the beginning that the editors would jump on any opportunity to do this. And we had stayed apart the whole time, except for this. So, as much as I’m bitching about them pulling that whole thing, I knew they were going to do that, and should have stuck by the original idea not to give them anything to do it with.

They also showed Nicole jumping up when the executives showed up, suddenly pretending like she was leading. This, hilariously, was not editing—that’s exactly what happened. And it was my idea. I blatantly said to her, when I saw them walk in, “the executives just arrived, head over there and direct with Frank,” not considering that they might expose this in the episode. Kind of funny. In an awkward way.

--After filming everything, we went to the editing studio, where Nicole did her thing with the editing. Frank was nervous about not participating, and annoyed her a little, but they played that up in the episode. After they finished, I added the music in.

So anyway, the next day, we headed to the movie theater, and played our commercial to a live crowd, before the movie. They seemed to like it enough, and there was loud laughter during the smelly guy part, and we left feeling pretty good.

We went back to the house, and talked with the other team, and waited around, until finally we were all called into the boardroom.

The assigned seats had me sitting apart from Nicole, and when we went in, one of the first things Trump said was, “Tim, I see you’re not sitting next to Nicole—what’s going on??” I was pretty sick of this bullshit, especially considering that he had just fired me for getting together with her, and now he was acting all disappointed in me that we weren’t sitting next to each other. Pretty fucking infuriating. So I said, “No, these are just assigned seats.” You never bring up anything to do with production in the boardroom, and as soon as I said this, both Trump and Ivanka immediately turned their heads away and started talking to one of the other cast members. HA FUCKING HA. What’s he gonna do, fire me again?

So they play both videos in the boardroom (the first time we had seen the other team’s video), and we all criticize each other’s videos for awhile. The bad thing was that both Ivanka and Don Jr. came out firing at us—this seemed like a predetermined response by both of them, and it told me that we had “lost” the task (maybe production decided they wanted us to be the losers, maybe Ivanka and Don actually liked the other’s more—there’s no way of telling). So the only question was whether these videos would play into the final decision at the finale. We had no idea whether they were going to fire people based on these videos or not.

However, Surya and I ended up with a definite edge over Aaron and Angela in the “helpers critiques of each other’s movies” battle. And almost every attack that came from Ivanka and Don was batted down pretty well by our team. At one point, Don Jr. attacked, “the mother has a Renuzit bottle in her purse, that’s not realistic!” To which I responded, “their video has a guy on trial for sanitary reasons—neither of us was going for reality, both were a metaphor.” To which Trump said, “Good point.” And this happened multiple times.

The scary thing was that these attacks weren’t even that good, as if production had already made a bigger decision than anything in this boardroom could sway…

He also asked the four helpers which of our two “leaders” we liked more. Both Surya and I said Nicole, and both Aaron and Angela waffled and said they liked both. I squeezed into my answer that Nicole and Surya are both people with exceptional integrity, while James and Stef seemed to consistently do whatever it takes to get ahead, honest or not (I left Frank out, as a little passive jab). A little vengeful observation by Tim! Cheers!

Anyway, after awhile, Trump dismissed the four helpers. We said good luck to everyone, and headed out. They took our mics off for the last time, and we got in the van back to the Pondy, having no idea whether he’d be firing people that night or not.

This was a funny van ride. Just moments earlier, we had been adamantly arguing in favor of our respective finalists and videos, and suddenly, we were all like, “Uh, I don’t really care—you?”

So we got back to the flop, where everyone was waiting anxiously to hear what had happened, and a few hours later, the four finalists returned, none fired.

And for the first time, ever, I could talk to Nicole, camera-free. After 6 weeks, this was the first time we had ever spoken without someone listening. How weird is that?

The next day, the 8 people who participated in the final task all went on long interviews, and then the whole cast went back to the house for a photo shoot. No mics, no cameras, no hedge (it had been taken down), no producers. Just the 18 of us hanging around the pool. Bizarre.

That night we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and got trashed together. Fun times.

The next day we did a bit more filming (those promo shots of us all walking together in teams in slow motion), and in the afternoon, 45 days after we had first arrived, vans were there to take us all to the airport.

It was over.

* * *

We had a long time to wait until the premiere. Normally, shows that air in January film in the fall. But because NBC had originally intended for the show to air in the fall, we had filmed in the summer (the air date changed just prior to filming). In the long months that followed, I stayed in decent touch with much of the task.

Nicole and I, naturally, have discussed and analyzed the thing to no end (we end up in a fight every time we talk about episode 10). After the filming, she and I both thought that she and James were the favorites, Frank a very distant third, and Stefanie with no shot at all. And it wasn’t just us, other cast members agreed that it seemed to be between Nicole and James. However, now, after watching 13 episodes, Nicole has not gotten a great edit, especially in the last two episodes, while Stefanie has looked great, if fairly invisible. Now, it seems, James and Stefanie are the favorites. Who the hell knows, though. Anything can happen. He might even hire two.

And now, with the finale looming in 40 hours, I’m here in bed, hungover, and I can’t believe this whole thing is over tomorrow. What a fun ride it’s been.

And so, I’ll now return to the present time, with a recap of the past few days—

Nikki arrived here on Wednesday, and on Thursday she, as a finalist, was told to be in NBC studios in the afternoon for a quick interview. I accompanied her, and we arrived to find James, Stefanie, and Frank sitting in the lobby.

Whoa.

So many things to say about this.

On the surface, it was cordial and secretly tense—a surreal combination of genuine excitement to see each other, and awkwardness because of the 394 different reasons that things were awkward. Underneath, it was bizarre—we spent the entire summer together and hadn’t seen each other since, except we had seen each other every week, except now it was in person again. It had all started 10 months ago, with the 5 of us sitting around together with a bunch of cameras around. Then we went back to our individual worlds as we became a TV show and we talked to everyone we knew about these exact people. And suddenly, there the 5 of us were again, sitting around together. Team Arrow reunited! Except not really at all! Now add in the extreme awkwardness of the fact that the four of them, currently hugging and smiling, will be tearing each other apart on national TV—live from the Hollywood Bowl!—in 3 days. Then, add a dash of “we all just watched James, Frank, and Stef triple-stab Tim in the boardroom,” and a pinch of “Oh yeah, Tim and Nikki are actually dating in real life.”

And then there was this—James, Stef, Nicole and Frank were ready for their interviews, looking shiny, in business attire. Me—sneakers, jeans, and a white t-shirt. I wouldn’t be partaking in an interview.

Because I had been fired.

The end result of all of this was a big vat of awkward cocktail. Luckily, the 9 distinct elephants in the room quickly drank it, since you know how long those thirsty elephants trek through the desert every year to get to that delicious water hole.

Anyway, Frank grabbed lunch with me and Nikki afterwards, the highlight for me occurring when we were all standing outside waiting for a table and someone came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re on The Apprentice, right?” with no acknowledgment of the other two. Good times. Of course, 3 seconds into lunch the three of us are right back in the exact same dynamic we were 10 month ago. It was a good time—I had kind of forgotten that Frank and I were pretty good friends. And yes, he’s just as animated and loud and absurd in reality as he appears to be on the show—maybe more so. He’s kind of like someone doing an impression of Frank.

So that was Thursday.

Friday night would bring new adventures.

Since most of us will be somewhat light on the drinking Saturday night to avoid being hungover during the live show, Friday night was the night. A bunch of us went to dinner, drinking heavily throughout, and then to a bar near our hotel (we’re all staying in the same hotel, even people from LA—production insists). The crowd consisted of: Me, Nikki, Jen, Aimee, Marisa, Frank, James, Aaron, Martin, Carey, and Surya. Naturally, there are stories.

First of all, it’s funny how all the guys look completely identical to how they looked on the show, and the girls are all almost unrecognizable. We have hair doing all kinds of fancy, weird things, and being all kinds of different colors, and with all their makeup and their clothes—they just all looked different at first. The one exception on the guys front—Surya cut his hair! You’ll have to see it to believe it.

Carey brought his boyfriend, Marisa brought her boyfriend, who was 8’3”, and James was there with his wife, who is kind of shy and adorable. We had a nice conversation, during which two of the elephants from yesterday morphed out of the wall to join us—the “we both just watched James trash Tim in his interviews and in the boardroom” elephant, and the “Tim is clearly rooting for Nikki on Sunday” elephant. I gotta say, I’m growing accustomed to these elephants, attached even. They’ve become like pets. And they’re relatively low-maintenance—all they need is grass, and their delicious water hole, and they’re happy.

Other amusing interactions included every Aaron-Aimee interaction, drunk Nikki interacting with anyone, and me, Frank, and James talking after we were all liquored up. First James imitated Frank’s racist interview in episode 13 (where he called James, who’s Korean, something along the lines of “that chinee with the spiky hair”). Frank laughed awkwardly while wishing he was 6,000 miles away. Then we reminisced about me being “wet behind the ears” and Frank being an “errand boy.” Then, I did an imitation of Frank trashing me in an interview about getting involved with Nikki. Yes, we all had a good, hearty laugh—we had all ripped each other apart just days ago in front of 10 million people! All for one and one for all!

The climax of the night occurred shortly after. The bar was a piano bar, where the music is purely provided by a singing piano player. Two of Nikki’s friends, Frank, and Aaron decide that it’s a good idea to get the guy on the piano to announce that “Tim, from the Apprentice, will be playing a song for everyone.” This was unbeknownst to me. About 13 drinks deep, I apparently agreed that this was a good idea, because 2 minutes later, I found myself stumbling up onto the stage, demanding that Frank holds the harmonica in front of my mouth so I can play it while playing the piano.

And suddenly, there I was, belting out Piano Man in front of the whole bar. One problem:

I was 13 drinks deep.

Here’s how it generally works—when I’m sober my piano-playing is a 9/10, my singing is a 5/10, and my confidence level is an 8/10. When I’m drunk, my piano playing is a 5/10, my singing is a 2/10, and my confidence level is a perfect 10/10. As I lay here in bed in my hotel room this morning, I have vague memories of skipping verses, messing up words, screaming into the mic “Frank, I need the harmonica again” at least 4 times, and undoubtedly doing a hideously sloppy rendition of the fancy piano solo (which sober I’m quite good at).

And it gets worse—Nikki, who was a scene of her own, came over to me while I was playing and started telling me this story about her friend’s sister pouring beer from the tap and getting her in trouble, etc. It didn’t seem to register with her that I was currently playing and singing for 200 people. So I’d be like, “And the waitress is practicing politics this isn’t a good time while the businessmen slowly get stoned seriously let’s talk about this in 2 minutes I’m really busy at the yes they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness okay yeah that sucks just give me a seco but it’s better than drinking alone [sloppy piano solo].”

All in all, a solid night.

And so now it’s Saturday. Tonight, Stefanie’s hosting another cast party following a rehearsal, tomorrow is a dress rehearsal, followed by the live show, which is then followed by a huge after-party. Which will leave me with one last Apprentice Blog recap to write.

Until tomorrow. Live from the Hollywood Bowl.

The Apprentice LA - Episode 14

2009-03-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well look at us. Here in our final recap. It’s been a long road, and a subsequently long cumulative recap (about 80,000 words!). But we’ve had fun, haven’t we. Now it’s time for one of you to go on a reality show. I’ve enjoyed this experience thoroughly, but now I just want to sit back and watch someone else on one. So get on that.

Anyway, let’s continue where we left off in Episode 13 recap, Saturday morning before the finale.

So Nikki and I spent the majority of the day Saturday recovering from the night before, and around 6pm we met the cast in the lobby and headed in vans to the Hollywood Bowl for a meeting and rehearsal. The highlight of this meeting was the Mark Burnett assistant lady coming in and telling us that even though all previous casts had been paid (about $1,500 per episode they appear in), because of the additional costs of filming in LA, etc., we would not be compensated for the time we spent filming.

Chaos.

18 furious type-AAA personalities, all viciously attacking the messenger at once. Secretly, I found this scene highly entertaining, but there was no smiling in that room.

It was pretty ridiculous—every other cast had been paid, and we had been misled the whole time to think we would be as well, and this was a big surprise. So the conversation predictably evolved into the cast passive-aggressively threatening to not show up at the finale, and Derek even warned that Mark Burnett may expect to see “shenanigans” from those who did show up. Good times.

The next morning, we all received a personal phone call with the news that Mark Burnett had “rectified the situation,” and that we would all be paid in full. Yay threats!

Anyway, that night, Stefanie threw a cocktail party for the cast in her uncle’s screening facility in Beverly Hills.

I showed up with Nikki, my friend Lunin, my dad and his wife Jane, and my two sisters.

We walked in to see most of the cast, and a bunch of cast members’ friends and family, all milling about, chatting it up. There were screens everywhere, playing clips from the show.

Before I could even get my bearings, Lunin and my father had launched into a vicious, neck-and-neck competition regarding who could be more awkward at the party. Though my dad, a seasoned awkward pro, had begun as the 3-1 favorite, Lunin came flying out of the gates, and took the early lead. At one point, I noticed him standing about 15 feet away, by himself, sweating, expressionless, standing perfectly still amidst movement all around him, staring straight ahead. He was like the Michael Jordan of awkwardness.

Anyway, this battle lost intensity when my father took off after about 30 minutes, and Lunin became liquored up, which seemed to solve most of his problems.

On the other side of the coin, my sisters were chatting it up like they owned the place, especially my 17-year-old sister Jordan, who took about 11 seconds to become the life of the party. I looked over at one point to see her spoon-feeding spaghetti into James’ mouth, with James looking horrified and trying to find some way out. Not a shy girl.

The only cast members not to show were Michelle, and Surya (who is not fond of Stefanie). A highlight was meeting Frank’s family, who are exactly how you picture Frank’s family. It was also fun meeting Frank’s girlfriend—I asked the obvious question: “What’s it like dating Frank?” She responded, hilariously, in a comically thick New York accent, “It’s exhausting.” HA.

I also found myself talking with James and his wife when the clip of my final boardroom came on the TV. “That sucked,” I said. They nodded awkwardly. Fun!

Another highlight was the news that Kristine will be on the cover of the June issue of Playboy. Wowsers. (This has been all over the news, and the second headline of CNN.com for much of last week, instantly making her more famous than the rest of the cast combined.)

All in all, fun event.

Sunday, the whole cast met in the lobby at 2pm and vans took us to the Hollywood Bowl. This ridiculous buffer of time was mainly for the girls to get all haired and make upped, so I found myself sitting around with Martin, Derek, Carey, Surya, and Aaron for 4 hours in the “men’s dressing room.” Finalists were in their own rooms elsewhere, since technically, finalists aren’t supposed to interact with anyone else the whole weekend. This was idiotic, since we had all just spent the whole weekend together. It’s like when a college freshman comes home for Thanksgiving break, and the parents impose a curfew—even though they’ve been living on their own and doing whatever they want on weekend nights for the past 3 months.

So anyway, we all sat around the dressing room lazily, which was relaxing and pleasant and boring. Until 5:15pm, when I realized that my shoes were back in the hotel.

Why am I like this?

It’s like forgetting to bring my ID to two subsequent aircraft rewards, or forgetting my ties when I showed up at the final week of the audition process. Tim Urban: smart guy + idiot.

So I bolted out of the room, and told one of the production ladies that I had no shoes. She was like, “FUCKING FUCK,” and ran off to see if she could find someone who could zip back to the hotel to get my shoes. She came back and told me that someone went, but it was unclear as to whether they’d be able to make it back in time.

I looked down at my dirty New Balance sneakers. This would be interesting.

A few minutes later, we were all brought up to the stage and told where we’d be sitting, etc. They told us that any of us could be called on at any time, and that whatever you do, don’t swear. But they also encouraged us not to be too tame, and to interrupt or argue if we felt the desire to.

Back down in the room, they brought the male cast members into the makeup room, and unglared us (this was the first time production had put makeup on any of us during the whole experience). I went back in the dressing room, to find—MY SHOES.

YES.

Now, no one could stop me. I got in my suit, and thought through in my head how I wanted to answer the various questions that could be thrown at me:

“Are you still with Nicole?”
“Are you going to marry Nicole?”
“Are you in love with Nicole?”
“Who should win?”
“What do you think of Frank?”
“What do you think of James?”
“What do you think of Stefanie?”
“Defend your video.”
“Attack the other video.”

I ended up only being asked the 4th question (in typical Tim last-minute form, I first thought about how I would answer this question about 10 minutes before going on stage).
Apparently, they had a whole “Tim, are you gonna marry Nicole?” segment planned, and cut it at the last minute—too bad, I had some funny answers up my sleeve.

So finally, it’s 7pm, showtime, and we’re brought upstairs. Backstage, where we waited, there was a TV, tuned into NBC. A minute before 7, suddenly backstage with us, there was Trump, Ivanka, and Don Jr. They cordially said hi to us, and then were ushered onto the stage. Suddenly they appeared on the TV we were all watching. Weird.

We all stood there together, and watched that season recap montage that led off the finale. It was fun. Every time someone was fired, we’d boo, and laugh every time anything awkward happened. It was also bizarre, because we were watching an hour of TV that we were all about to be in. We were all about to go inside the TV (sorry, but this shit weirds me out).

So they bring us to our places, and then the door opens, and we all walk out into our seats, to applause. Really fun times.

I looked out at the crowd and tried to spot people I knew, but I couldn’t. Between trying to spot people in the audience, and realizing that I was finding myself feeling entertained by the show as if I was a spectator, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t simply watching the show like everyone in the audience, I was in the show and could be called on at any time. I had to keep reminding myself to focus, in case I got a “Tim, what do you think about this?” and had to know what was just said.

So after all the introductory stuff, Trump says, "We’re gonna watch the two commercials now. They were both good—one was better than the other—but we’ll talk about that. " And sitting there at that moment, I thought, “Frank and Nicole are done.” The hope had been that the commercials were deemed a wash, and everyone was on equal footing. Even though it hadn’t made the edit in episode 13, I knew that Ivanka and Don Jr. would be gunning for Nicole and Frank, since I had seen them do it 10 months earlier in the final boardroom. The big question had been: Will he fire people based on the videos? As it turns out, the answer was yes.

So he shows the videos, and they talk about them for a bit. Then, Trump says, “Tim, of these four, who should win?”

Nothing will jolt you out of “Am I watching TV or am I in the TV?” limbo like having Trump suddenly address you. Freaky.

So I kind of smile, because every person in the Hollywood Bowl knew I was going to say Nicole. Everyone laughed, and finally, I started in with my answer, and as soon as I said, “Nicole,” everyone laughed again. Sigh. So I admit that I have no credibility on the topic, and Trump agrees.

I explain that I’m going to mention a couple objective facts that have nothing to do with my personal bias.

1) With her own corporation, she transacts tens of millions of dollars of real estate on a daily basis without blinking an eye (exactly what a job with Trump would require).

2) She was the only one of the four to step up as project manager early (week 2), something that takes guts and should be noted (Frank never stepped up voluntarily, Stefanie actively shied away from the role the entire time, and James only stepped up week 9 after he had been attacked in a boardroom).

Trump agrees that “That’s true. She’s very capable. And so are you.” I’m thinking that last part was his way of saying, “Now that I watched the episodes, I think you did well.”

He asks Aaron the same question, and Aaron, also predictably, says James.

They play the two videos. This was unpleasant. Ten months ago, three people and I, on no sleep, had constructed a mediocre 60 second commercial. Now, it was playing in front of a massive live audience. “Why is this weird dumb video still a part of my life?” I kept thinking. Plus, even though millions of people watched it in the episode the week before (which is a staggering number—even on the nights when the ratings sucked, the audience would fill 200 Fenway Parks), it somehow felt bigger to have 2,000 people sitting there with me in the Hollywood Bowl watching it. If I’m presenting a video to 2,000 fucking people, I want it to be top quality. Instead, I was presenting mediocrity to them—it felt like writing a terrible, last minute paper in college and reading it aloud to 2,000 people.

As for the other team’s video, I wouldn’t say it was phenomenal by any means, but they did a better job of writing a 60 second commercial for 60 seconds. We wrote a 90 second commercial and squished it into 60 seconds. I think our original idea to capture the “Super-Mom”—the demographic that makes up 90% of Renuzit’s consumers—was a better concept than a fat smelly man they used as their lead character. But a good concept not pulled off well is inferior to a decent concept executed better.

Then, Trump announces the two potential jobs, and the four finalists have to declare their choice (this is the first time they learn what the locations are). The one thing of note here was the end of Frank’s description of why he wants the job in Atlanta—something along the lines of, “I want to build buildings, and those ah two buildings that I can help you....[2 full seconds of silence]….erect.” To which the crowd burst out laughing. Ha.

So we go to commercial, and upon returning, we hear the ominous boardroom music. Uh oh. He takes about 30 seconds to fire Frank and Nicole, which was no surprise, but it was still sad. I didn’t like watching either one happen.

Of course, his official reasons for firing Nikki were ludicrous—1) She brought me back for the final task. Absurd because she and Frank decided this together, I was the completely obvious choice for them, I was a good asset to them on the task, the other options would have been Martin, Carey, Michelle, or someone on Kinetic who they hadn’t worked with, and finally, the first thing Trump did was compliment both team’s choices of people. And 2) Trump doesn’t believe in interoffice romance, and he wants her to “only love him.” Absurd because A) last year’s winner was the guy with the interoffice romance, B) Trump is the one who kept bringing this up, no one else, and C) when he’d bring it up, he’d say things like, “what a great couple—good job, Tim. I may have to hire you if you land her.” Basically, Trump and production decided that James and Stef made a better final 2 than Frank and Nicole (for whatever reasons), and they threw out some evidence to justify it.

So it’s down to the final two, and Trump plays their videos. James at his job and with his cute kids, and Stefanie wearing a hardhat (all lawyers spend time on construction sites with hardhats on, right?) and doing karate. They had filmed these same videos for Frank and Nicole as well, and they had flown me to Chicago a few months earlier to be in Nikki’s video (after finding out that she and I were still together). It took one day to film—there was a camera crew and one of the show’s producers, and they filmed her in her office, at a gas station talking to a client, in her house, and at dinner with me. Then we took the crew out and all got drunk together—it was a good time.

Anyway, up to the very last segment of the show, I thought James was the winner. Can you really anoint Stef the winner when she never showed interest in leading the group, and only played a front and center part of one task (Lexus)? Up to the very end, friends of mine would talk about James, Nikki, Surya, Frank, and the other girl on your team. It just didn’t seem possible for her to win.

But man, that girl can argue in a boardroom. She definitely blew James away at the finale, and I suppose she is a strong, smart, extremely capable woman, so I guess I can see the reasoning. I guess.

Anyway, later that night, I told James that until after the last commercial, I thought he had it. “I did too,” he said. And the way he got fired was weird. Trump’s last words to James included something like, “there was some dialogue throughout the course of this that really bothered me, and you know what I’m talking about.” No one, including James, does seem to know what he’s talking about. My guess is that he’s referring to week 8 (when Surya accused him of playing the eleventh-hour naysayer to cover his own ass, and thinking more about the pending boardroom than the task at hand). But no one really knows.

So he hires Stef, everyone claps, she hugs everyone, and the finale ends.

The next 20 minutes were pure mayhem. Suddenly there’s a ton of press on stage interviewing cast members, people are talking to Trump and the kids, some former cast members are milling around, and a bunch of fans are off the stage looking on. I walked over and said hi to some of them, and suddenly, a whole crowd came over, and people were firing questions, and I took a bunch of pictures and signed autographs. It was fun. Of course, there were a contingent of completely insane, delusional people as well—one guy told me he just arrived in LA for the finale and asked politely if it was okay if he crashed at my house. Another guy starting telling me a business pitch he wanted to give Trump, and asked me if I’d relay the information to him.

Anyway, after it all died down, Nikki went and changed, and we headed out to catch a cab to the after-party. On the cab there, I asked her how she was doing. She was just fine—not one to dwell.

Just as we were catching our breath, we arrived at the after-party. Complete chaos.

There was a red carpet outside, and immediately upon walking in, we both suddenly had a camera and press person in our face and a crowd of people around.

Like standing on the edge of the stage earlier, it was like, for one night, we were legit celebrities (but for full effect you have to forget that everyone at that party is a huge Apprentice fan). The whole cast was there, and everyone had their friends and family there, and every cast member was being celebrated by all their own people and all the fans there, so it was like 18 people’s birthdays at once. Quite fun, I must say.

Trump and the kids were there for awhile, but we got there too late and missed him (apparently my mom had talked to him, and told him that it was silly to fire me for the romance, since “he learned it from you.” God bless her soul, but she can be very stressful to have around in a situation like this). Also, apparently Trump had gone up to Surya, who had been one of his favorites, and, referring to his “Sanjaya should win comment,” said, “That was stupid, and embarrassing, and it wasn’t even funny.” Yikes.

Another weird element at the party was the dozens of former Apprentice cast members that were there. This presented the incredibly bizarre phenomenon of mutual recognition between two strangers. And not just facial or name recognition—you know each other. I’d turn around and see someone from another season, and immediately recognize them, and then they’d look at me and immediately recognize me, and we’d be like, “Hey! Great to see you, how’ve you been?” Except we had never met before. Even when actors recognize each other, they don’t know each other. In this case, I’d know what they did for a living, I’d know about their background, their sense of humor, and their general personality. And vice versa. Just incredibly surreal. Probably even weirder for me than them, because when I had watched them, I had no association with the show at all. I’d just sit there with my roommate, and discuss these people, and like them, and hate them, and suddenly, they were right there, being like, “Tim! Hey!”

Anyway, for anyone who watched season 4—I hung out with Markus. The Markus. I can’t possibly express how happy this made me.

The night evolved into a blur, and let’s just say that Monday was not a pleasant day. But what a crazy night. What a crazy weekend.

The next morning, everyone checked out of the hotel, and I said goodbye to some people in the lobby. It was sad. Sure, a lot of us will keep in touch, but it would most likely be the last time the cast will be all together. And it really felt like the end of an era. Yeah, there will be more interviews, and the thing will drag on for quite some more time, but the show itself was done. Finally, 14 months after I went to that open casting call, it really was over.

All in all, the whole thing was a phenomenal experience. As for the, “would you do it again?” question, I’d compare it to a hard, beautiful hike. Was it a wonderful experience? Yes. If I could go back, would I do it again? Absolutely. Will I ever forget it? No. If I could do another one right now, would I? Not a chance in hell.

As I said, now it’s your turn.

Celebrity Apprentice - Episode 2

2009-03-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

I can’t possibly stress enough how happy I am to be recapping this episode instead of participating in it. Not that staying up for 36 straight hours to complete some inane project with a bunch of Type-AAA personalities who are smiling at you to your face and trashing you in the private interviews isn’t fun. It’s just that I’d prefer to sit on my couch in my underwear and watch other d-bags do it instead.

And speaking of other d-bags, as much as I like the “celebrity” aspect of this season—let’s be honest, it’s a pretty good idea by NBC—after going through this hell for 12 tasks myself, all I really want in the world is to watch other “normal” people go through the intense misery, knowing it’s not me. The celebrity thing isn’t as entertaining for me to watch, for two main reasons:

1) It’s not nearly as rigorous as a normal season—we all pulled an all-nighter almost every single task and would work for 36 hours straight, while the celebrities are protected by SAG rules and are only allowed to work 12-hour days. We also slept the same room and were together a hideous 24/7, and the celebrities all lived in their own hotel rooms. Bullshit.

2) Trump just isn’t completely comfortable being mean to celebrities. He’s just not in full form this season. He’s a perpetually entertaining man—don’t get me wrong—but he loses some of his bite around this new crowd.

But I’ll take what I can get. They didn’t cancel it, so I won’t complain. Anyway, let’s recap Episode Two.

Opening scene: Carol Alt and Omarosa walk out of the boardroom, agreeing to “leave it in the boardroom.” Not bloody likely.

“Hellooooooo! I’m backkkk!” shrieks Omarosa. The other contestants are horrified—not that she’s back (they knew she wouldn’t be fired)—but simply horrified by Omarosa in general. Carol explains to the group that Tiffany was fired because she “held out with some of her contacts.” Not true—she was fired because she was meek and intimidated, and because there was no chance he was firing Omarosa in the first episode when she’s one of the show’s main draws. Incidentally, after interviewing Tiffany last week, I’m tragically in love with her, and hate all the other women for getting her kicked off.

Omarosa reiterates she and Carol have “left it in the boardroom,” to which Piers replies, correctly, “I don’t think so.” I’m pretty sure he’s really awesome. She comes back with, “Oh, Piers. Keep drinking, tuck your shirt in.” Piers takes the high road and asks her not to get personal. Unfortunately for the Big O, she’s no match for Piers—he’s way too witty, and she won’t win this battle. “We hammered you today—we beat you into the ground,” Piers continues, and gives just a hint of a smile, which mocks Omarosa, the show, and himself for being on the show, all at once. He interviews that Omarosa is “gobby,” whatever that means, and refers to her as both a “creature” and a “mutant” in one sentence. Back to the action, she continues calling him an alcoholic, the one comeback she has on him at this time, and he tells her to “shut up.” You almost feel bad for her. Almost.

Next is a touching scene when Stephen Baldwin presents the $69,000 from the hot dog task to his mother’s breast cancer research fund. This is about the only circumstance in which the editors will portray Stephen Baldwin in a positive light this season.

Trump meets the candidates in Trump Tower and introduces them to “the head of Macy’s,” a hilariously handsome man who looks like Pierce Brosnan. Trump asks the candidates which of them likes animals, and expresses shock when the tough guys, Tito Ortiz and Lennox Lewis, raise their hands. “Pitbulls?” Trump asks. Everyone laughs. Except Lennox Lewis. “Cats,” he says. Cats. Lennox Lewis enjoys cats. I’m happy I know that.

Trump tells us that February is “Pet Adoption Month.” Duh. Tell us something we don’t know.

Trump then introduces a small, Jewish man named Rob Lebowitz. Rob tells them about the “Pedigree Adoption Drive,” which aims to find owners for abandoned dogs. He explains that their task will be to create a 30-second commercial, which will be judged on “message, originality, and creativity.” During my season, we always paid an idiotic amount of attention to these criteria, writing them up on the big board, repeating them over and over, branding and tattooing them on our chests—but I’m realizing now as a viewer that no one cares about the criteria. You just need to create the better commercial.

Trump says, “Rob is going to make the choice, but Terry, Ivanka and I will be looking over his shoulder.” Translation: “This needledick is the judge, but not really.”

The Donald then asks both teams to pick their project managers on the spot. The girls choose Nely Galan. She annoys me. The guys pick Gene Simmons. “Very logical choice,” says Trump.

Which brings up a phenomenal aspect of this season: Trump is intimidated by—perhaps even terrified of—Gene Simmons. Watching Trump struggle to maintain Alpha Dog status on his own show is better than sex. “He’s a real character, this one, I’ll tell ya—he likes the women though, don’t you Gene. Are you hitting on your opponents, Gene?” says Trump. Simmons humors him: “Of course, that’s my job.” Trump says, “That’s your life, forget about your job.” Trump desperately wants to be friends with Gene Simmons.

Simmons interviews that “I’ll fire anybody. I’ll fire Donald Trump.” This will be an enjoyable season, SAG rules or no SAG rules.

In the Empresario “war room,” Nely has everyone hold hands. Everyone complies except Omarosa, who’s not into Nely’s “existential bullshit.” Next, the girls meet with the small Pedigree judge for 45 minutes. I’ll tell you, these meetings are worthless, except for one thing—if you don’t go, you’ll lose the task because that’s an Apprentice cardinal sin. What I learned is that these meetings are mainly another chance for the sponsor to talk their product up to a national audience.

In the guy’s war room, Simmons is taking charge—he actually seems intelligent. He decides to ditch the needle-judge and go straight to the studio. Frankly, if I were Gene Simmons, I would too.

“We need to understand what the commercial is, before we know how to move forward,” says Baldwin. I gotta say, Baldwin is a f***ing creepy dude. Like, a creepy dude.

A bunch of guys throw out a bunch of rejected ideas, including the intensely awesome Trace Adkins, who is shot down by Simmons, who says that he doesn’t “buy that visual.” This makes Adkins way too angry, as he shouts, murderously: “YOU DON’T BUY THAT VISUAL.” Somehow—somehow—these people actually seem crazier than the people on my season. Can’t be, can it?

Baldwin jumps in: “Guys, I’ve worked in film for 20 years.” Piers drops, “Have you?” What a wonderfully hilarious man. Baldwin’s idea is to have Lennox Lewis holding a dog. “Heartstrings,” he proclaims. The group concurs. Baldwin is nominated the director.

Enter Ivanka. The ensuing scene is my favorite scene in the history of television. Real life, too—it’s my favorite scene in the history of television and real life.

Ivanka shakes Simmons’ hand—he holds on way too long and asks, “Are we hiring you to be our spokesman for…” at which time she tears her hand away, and actually shakes off the sleaziness. She then recoils into a defensive, arms-crossed pose, completely horrified by Simmons. Ivanka then asks to hear the concept, and Simmons interrupts with, “Let me finish the thought—she’ll wait.” Ivanka gives him a look of death. Piers starts explaining their commercial to Ivanka, and Simmons again interrupts, telling Ivanka, patronizingly, “Listen, we think it’s terrific you’re here, but we’ve got work to do.” Ivanka interviews: “What wasn’t smart, was Gene Simmons saying ‘I’ll wait’ when I asked a question.” And just when I though it couldn’t possibly get better, Simmons says to Ivanka, “Being the female of the species yourself, does not mean that you are gonna be talking to your sisters about what we talked about?” Ivanka, now livid, says, “To the women, because I’m a woman? No, I have no interest in doing that.” Simmons gazes at her both patronizingly and lustily. He’s a vile man. I’m obsessed with him. Ivanka interviews, ominously: “That was not so smart—I think that was not a strategically intelligent thing to do, as I found it rather rude.”

Now. There are so many phenomenal things about this scene I can barely contain myself. First, I spent the entire summer of ’06 (while we filmed) being scared of Ivanka. We all did. A) She’s incredibly scary, and B) She has this immense power on the show, as Daddy’s precious little girl, and “the person with the most influence over him.” She completely prides herself on being “the real decision maker on the show.” As such, everyone has always completely kissed her wonderfully-shaped ass in these little entrances, and she has grown very accustomed to being The Ice Queen of Terror and Omnipotence. Second, Ivanka is absurdly hot, and every straight guy on the show inevitably becomes thoroughly attracted to her. Third, there was always a sense of, “Wait, I’m actually more accomplished than Ivanka in the real world—why the hell does she have all of this power over me?” So my emotion toward her is some combination of attraction and resentment with a dash of intense fear.

So to see a guy as amazingly filthy as Gene Simmons both slobber all over her while simultaneously disrespecting and patronizing her mercilessly—well, it doesn’t get much better than that. And yet, it does. Because this season’s also different. In any other season, disrespecting Ivanka is an automatic firing offense. But Trump loves Simmons and fears him. So to watch Ivanka’s livid interviews, knowing that her ominous tone and threats don’t actually carry their usual weight—well, it quite simply leaves me quivering with glee.

Anyway, let’s continue. Baldwin and Simmons work on the movie. An incredibly lovable bulldog goes skittering across the slick wooden floor over to an equally lovable Lennox Lewis, who’s laying playfully on the ground. I’m somehow jealous of both of them. Piers has an idea, which is shot down by Creepy Baldwin—Piers interviews that Baldwin and Simmons are taking this one on themselves and are cutting the others out.

They head outside, but have to abort and move back in because the public starts crowding around. I can’t imagine what explanation I would have come up with after seeing Stephen Baldwin, Gene Simmons, Lennox Lewis, and Vincent Pastore on the street filming something together. Though they show some fabricated tension (via selective interview questions) between Baldwin and Simmons, my hunch is that they got along fine throughout the task.

Cut to the girls. Nely is being annoying. Omarosa interviews that it was “very strategic” on her part not to get involved in the creative. Not rocket science. But true.

Nely is having fun as director, and comes over to Nadia, asking her for cages. Nadia explains that she’s been working on getting the music. Nely interviews that “Nadia was not used to working for anybody. Whatever I would tell her do she did, but she did not execute any of the things I told her to do very well.” Maybe it’s editing, but they spend about three minutes showing Nadia being incompetent at everything.

Marilu works with terrible actors, trying to make them into unterrible actors, but seems to want to plunge her head into the wall.

Back to the guys. They pick Trace to do the voiceover. He is absolutely spectacular. He’s also by far the coolest person on the show. Simmons calls Adkins’ voice “the voice of God.” He’s not far off.

Simmons tells the whole team that not only are they not allowed to help, but that they can’t even see the commercial until the judge sees it. Gotta love Celebrity Apprentice. Something like this would never happen on the normal Apprentice. Piers tries again to help. He really wants to be needed. He’s pretty noticeably hurt that they’re not including him—it’s like he wants to say to Simmons, “Obviously we don’t want them to help, but you want my help, right?” No one argues with Simmons because they’re all scared of him.

In the girls’ studio, Nely is trying to “push her brain to do something fabulous.” She should have pushed it harder. Omarosa hilariously refers to the dog’s drool as “foam,” and calls it unappealing. High comedy. I love dogs.

There’s some issue with the voiceover and they come up with some solution. Kind of boring.

Back to the guys. Tito gets fed up, and decides that he’s not scared of anyone…even scary Simmons. He leads the other five guys into the room. They’re taking a stand. Then Simmons and Baldwin kick them out and they all run away. Also high comedy. Simmons tells Baldwin that he would normally tell them to “get the f*** out of here.” He looks extremely angry, but somehow is also smiling. What a frightening man. Baldwin seems to be thinking, “How the hell did I end up alone with Simmons?” and says, “They left…they left.” I may be secretly starting to like Stephen Baldwin. Please don’t tell anyone.

Back in the war room, Tito is irate, storming around and yelling, “I run a multi billion-dollar company.” Odd. I thought he was a UFC fighter. Piers still can’t believe he’s somehow part of the dumb loser group and not in the editing room.

Onto the presentations. Girls first. Nely introduces their video for 74 hours and Trump tells her to shut her face. Omarosa is inexplicably holding a hilarious little white dog. Jennie Finch looks unbelievable. Marilu predicts that they’ll be better than the guys, because they “went after heart, and women are usually better at that than men.” Apparently she hasn’t met the ultra-cuddly Lennox Lewis.

Men’s turn. Simmons says in a terrifying voice, “Good to see you.” The needledick judge explains how upset and hurt he was that they didn’t come to talk to him. Simmons tells him that he doesn’t give a shit, and proceeds to disrespect the needlejudge in every way possible. The judge is petrified of Simmons. Trump is too. This is too f’ing good.

They play the commercial. Tito interviews that when he saw the commercial, he was surprised. He explains, profoundly, that he “went from being kind of a frowned face, to a smile.” I swear, that was verbatim.

In the girls’ room, Nadia thinks that they did a “great, unbelievable job,” and that if they lose, it’s because they “didn’t put six celebrities in a 30-second spot.” I’m not really sure what this meant, but it seems to frighten Nely.

In the guys’ room, Simmons commands the group that “If we lose…it was the right decision to forego [the meeting with the judge].” He’s basically threatening them, should they end up in the boardroom.

And we’re in the boardroom. Trump makes his usual dramatic entrance…except it’s not so scary on this season.

Trump explains that the needlejudge was hurt that the guys didn’t want to talk to him. Ivanka jumps in, while displaying the evil eye, that the needlejudge “also thought that Gene was a little bit abrasive,” adding that she thought Gene had been as well. She says, as scarily as she can muster, “I came to observe you. I asked about the content of the commercial, to which you said to Stephen, ‘she’ll wait.’ You asked me also when I was leaving if I was going to go and tell the females—because of some sisterhood bond—what you had been doing.”

Now here’s where we hit gold.

Ivanka earlier was all like, “Well that was not smart. No, that was not smart at all. You wait till my Daddy hears about this.” And now in the boardroom, she’s like, “Daddy, listen to what he did.”

And Trump responds, “Gene, did you insult my daughter? Nobody insults my daughter.” Except he’s smiling—basically winking and elbowing Simmons—and fully mocking Ivanka. In order to get in with Simmons. Because he wants to be best friends with him. Ivanka is completely irate now, and incredulous that her father is much more interested in being friends with Simmons than defending her. Simmons says, as patronizing as ever, “You’re absolutely right. And I sincerely apologize for any shortsightedness I might have had.” He didn’t even apologize for the disrespect. For the shortsightedness. Just precious.

They show the videos again. The girls’ video is atrocious. So much so that Simmons gives Baldwin a quiet high five in the middle of it. They play the guys’ video. I may or may not have teared up watching it. Omarosa laughs in the middle of it, and afterwards explains that Lewis is “such a big tough guy, and to see him cuddling with this little dog...” Lewis responds that the reaction Omarosa just had is exactly what they were going for. Game, set, match. Omarosa calls Lewis hot.

Yet again, Trump scolds the girls for not using their star power. Nely is hopelessly sticking by their product. Pierce Brosnan scolds the guys for not captioning in “Heavyweight Champion” to let viewers know who Lewis was. Piers Morgan counters that everyone knows who Lewis is, to which Brosnan fires back, “You’re wrong about that,” in a way only an amazing Pierce Brosnan guy can. Piers looks meek. He’s having a bad, bad day.

Trump announces the winner. The guys. No surprise whatsoever.

They head back to the war room and pop champagne. Celebs or no celebs, trust me, the happiness is genuine. You put your heart into a task, and winning feels extraordinary.

In the boardroom, Trump yells at Marilu about her bad voiceovers, at Nely about her lengthy introduction at the presentation, and then asks Jenny Finch what she did. “I was in charge of research, the client, and taking care of the client.” He asks her who she would fire. She pauses, looking positively exquisite, and picks Nadia and Carol. Carol says she’d fire Nadia. Carol’s a tough cookie. Nely says she’s bringing back Nadia and Carol.

The three of them return to the boardroom. Trump yells at Nely for awhile, and she probably would have been fired if Nadia had had even a halfway decent performance. But Nadia doesn’t even give an effort. She’s not remotely in her element in a situation like this, and doesn’t seem to really give a crap either way.

Trump doesn’t see her “being able to lead the team.” He compliments her profusely and then fires her. Afterwards, Trump comments, “That was tough.” Ivanka agrees: “That was as tough as it gets, but I think you made the right decision.” She always thinks he made the right decision.

Cue the firing music. I love the firing music.

Next week, Gene Simmons is on the women’s team, Stephen Baldwin falls off a table, Alec Baldwin makes an appearance, and we’ll apparently be treated to “one of the most surprising boardrooms in Apprentice history.” Of course we will. I love this show.

Celebrity Apprentice - Episode 3

2009-03-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

“No go on interview. Gene’s schedule is full.”

That’s the text message I received from Murtz Jaffer on Friday after the episode. No go on interview.

Gene’s schedule is full.

Of course it is. Frankly, I would have been shocked if Gene Simmons had been available for the scheduled interview. I doubt he follows the laws of gravity, let alone his NBC post-firing interview schedule.

My feelings were, of course, quite mixed. On one hand, I could have had an opportunity to talk to one of the most utterly evil and insane people alive-- something you just don’t do every day. On the other hand, I was completely terrified. Needless to say, it would have been enjoyable for you to read.

Instead, we’ll undertake the far less frightening task of recapping this completely wonderful and shocking episode. Not the fake “scenes from next week” shocking-- like, really, actually shocking. Here we go--

We begin in the suite, where Piers Morgan teases Jennie Finch about her being forced to say she’d fire Nadia. It’s funny because most Apprentice candidates (contestants? cast members?) dread the “Who would you fire?” questions, and certain ones hate it. Jennie Finch hates that question.

After Nadia is sent packing, we see Nelly bawling in Carol’s arms. Nelly’s time on this show is severely limited. Carol, on the other hand, might win the whole thing. She’s pretty awesome. Nelly calls the boardroom, “brutal, brutal, brutal, traumatic.” She’s going a bit silly here, but boardroom’s can be pretty miserable experiences. You come out feeling a combination of drained from arguing and debating for two hours straight, guilty because you just trashed your friends, angry/hurt because your friends just trashed you, and over-analytic/worried because you’re not sure if you did something that you’ll regret in four months when everyone you know is watching it on TV.

Anyway, Omarosa is talking to Nelly and she’s being comforting and thoughtful and sympathetic. And quite frankly, I think it’s all a complete act. She strikes me as remarkably disingenuous, and her attempt to be a likable character this season seems awfully transparent. She says, “All we need is one win and that little house of cards will come tumbling down,” referring to the guys’ team. This part I understand. When my team, Arrow, lost the first 26 tasks, I remember thinking that all those cute girls on Kinetic would start clawing each other’s faces the second they finally lost. Which is what happened.

After the commercial, we see some b roll shots of New York. I must say, I feel a bit cheated that our season was in LA. It was fun, but the Apprentice should just be in New York. Speaking of which, if the Giants somehow beat my sweet, beautiful Patriots, none of you will ever hear from me again.

Trump jokes with Vinnie about how many bodies are in the river. Vinnie comes back with, “I ratted on one show, I’m not rattin’ on this show too.” Well played. Trump introduces Jim Cramer from Mad Money. I’ve never heard of him.

Trump sends Gene Simmons over to the girls’ team. It’s funny, they never choose someone like that. Usually Trump asks either who wants to go, who the project manager wants to send, or who the other team wants to bring over. In this case, the producers decided it was just too damn good to put a lecherous, woman-hating narcissist in close quarters with a group of beautiful, narcissistic women. I tend to agree.

This also puts the women in a hilarious lose-lose situation: either they lose and they’re a hopeless 0-3, or they win, and Simmons gets all the credit for “saving” them. Ha.

Simmons, unprovoked, and without cracking a smile, tells Trump he’s the devil. Trump is frightened and immediately changes the subject. I could watch those two interact for days on end.

The task: to create “a Kodak mobile printing experience.” Riveting.

Next scene. Girls’ team (Empresario) in the van. Simmons declares himself a benevolent dictator, which is both patronizing (benevolent) and dickish (dictator). Omarosa will hear none of it. She says she’s the only one who reacted-- yet we don’t see her react. Even she’s intimidated by Simmons.

Simmons decides that only two people should go meet with the executives, because “two people do better talking than six.” He’s 100% right-- these silly executive meetings should never have more than two people in them. After referring to himself in the third person, Simmons utters what will be their tagline, with the tone that can only come from someone who is truly, deeply, and lustily in love with himself. “It’s a Kodak world, we all just live in it.” He emphasizes that the tagline brands the Earth as “Planet Kodak.” Personally, I like it. But the “we all just live in it” leaves a lot to be desired.

Over at the guys’ team (Hydra), Tito Ortiz is project manager. They all head to meet the executives. They learn that “affordable, premium ink” is what the execs want the focus to be on.

Empresario sends Nelly and Carol to meet the execs. As soon as the meeting starts, the goofy, “Someone is f***ing up right now” music comes on. Uh oh. In this case, the music is for Nelly, who is talking way too much. Or at least that’s the story.

See, sometimes, a task will produce a legitimate winner and loser, and a legitimate couple f***ups on the losing team. Other times, either no real mistakes happen, or the producers want to keep the person who makes them on the show-- in those cases, they create drama where there really isn’t any. This seems like one of those cases to me. I was in a bunch of exec meetings during tasks, after which, had they interviewed me with the question, “So wasn’t [name] talking way too much in there?” I probably would have agreed that yeah, they were talking a lot. If they wanted to screw that person, they’d use a combination of that interview, a bunch of out-of-context annoyed glances from the execs and the other teammates, and that goofy music, to make it seem legitimate that talking too much in that interview was indeed a fireable offense.

In this case, they make Nelly look like a huge jackass. She comes back to the war room, saying all the wrong things about what the executives wanted. Simmons interrupts her with, “They’re wrong,” referring to the executives. The music gets scary, and they show a bunch of nervous glances among the women. “The executives themselves might not understand what Kodak means,” he says, wearing sunglasses indoors. At this point, he’s become a full-fledged caricature of himself. He has a legitimate God-complex. It’s great TV.

“If I were sitting on the sidelines, I’d say ‘Gene Simmons, you’re a powerful and attractive man.’”

It was at this quote that it kind of hit me-- Simmons’ entire persona in this show is tongue-in-cheek. Sure, you have to have a legitimate God complex just to humorously act like that big a narcissist, but more than anything, he’s toying around with the entire show. Interesting.

Back in Hydra’s war room, Steven Baldwin is taking over the brainstorming session. I would have been incredibly irritated to be on a team with him. If you’re gonna take over a session like that, you better have some really good ideas coming out (like, say, me). Piers calls him a “rhino with a spear in his back” and takes the floor for awhile, suggesting that they use Tito and Lennox’s fame in their tagline. Baldwin puts it all together: “Kodak presents the ink revolution that’s gonna knock you out.” Baldwin’s either really dumb, or reasonably intelligent with a really dumb demeanor-- can’t quite tell yet.

Back to Empresario. Nelly interviews that Gene doesn’t get his hands dirty and criticizes him for making the girls do all of the work. Then we see him tickling her and she squeals happily. Like 3% of her wants to stand up to him, and 97% has completely succumbed to his power over her. She brags that Simmons has taken her as his “CEO.” The benevolent dictator has shone favor upon Nelly, and she’ll be damned if she’s not the luckiest gal around.

Omarosa interviews that “Gene Simmons let us do all the work, and he’ll take all the credit.” [Eye shift, thinking hard, suddenly remembering her quest to be likable] “But, um, I don’t care as long as we get a win.”

Meanwhile, the guys are working on decorating their Kodak trailer. They then head back to the war room. Piers works with the graphic designer while Baldwin directs a “photo shoot” of the two tough guys. Piers and Baldwin get into a spat about whether the muscle-heads should have their shirts on or not.

It’s funny-- now that Lord Simmons is gone, Baldwin and Piers are slapping each other around for alpha dog status within the team. This is funny because they’re the two weenies on a team of incredibly manly men. I love Celebrity Apprentice.

Vinny Pastore interviews that Baldwin and Piers are d-bags.

Then Tito and Lennox move to the edge of the table at the same time, prompting the table to rock, which in turn prompts coffee to spill on the important laptop with all of the artwork, which in turn prompts Piers to lament that “Steven Baldwin managed to pluck total disaster from the jaws of obvious victory,” even though it wasn’t really Baldwin’s fault. I hope I never spill coffee on my laptop.

Everyone freaks out and Trace tells them all to have a smoke. He probably wouldn’t have liked me.

In the girls’ van, Omarosa explains to us that Simmons has no idea what the product is. And I’m sure he doesn’t.

Simmons explains to us that he’s doing “God’s work” by displaying the hot girls on his team along with the product. Legitimate God complex. How awesome is that?

Jim Cramer comes by and Simmons leads him around. They splice together Simmons interviewing about how blown away Cramer was with shots of Cramer looking unimpressed. They’re good, those editors. At the end, Simmons tells Cramer that he’s a “powerful and attractive man.” Any chance of me turning on Simmons and deciding I hate him was shot to hell here. I’m gonna start saying that to people on a regular basis. “It was great meeting you. You’re a powerful and attractive man.”

At Hydra’s trailer, the goofy music comes on, telling us that their artwork sucks. Tito reinforces the music, calling their artwork, “sloppy.” We see the guys squabbling, and then Tito retells the coffee/computer story. Cramer visits them, and suddenly flamboyant and animated, explains: Ink concept, good. Sloppiness, bad. And that’s how you simplify a 40-hour task into one or two concrete facts.

Back to Empresario’s trailer, the execs visit and are taken on a tour by Simmons, as he stresses his “Kodak world” concept. Omarosa hopes they can tap into the “Simmons magic.”

At Hydra, the snazzy music comes on, as Alec Baldwin makes an appearance. Steven pitches the team’s ideas to Alec, who mocks him mercilessly. I’m sure he mocks Steven in most cases, but here it’s even worse, because Steven has spent 40 hours obsessing over this task with the other guys and after that much time, it seems really important (trust me). From an outside perspective, it must all seem pretty silly. Alec explains that Steven is “full of shit.” Ha.

Piers takes an obvious and unnecessary shot at Steven: “Very good to have Alec Baldwin there, because it showed everyone what a real Baldwin is. Because obviously, choice: Alec Baldwin? Massive TV star. Steven Baldwin? [condescending mouth gesture].” I do think Piers is intelligent, and he’s definitely witty, but he seems like a genuinely mean-spirited guy. He’s like a smaller, pettier Simon Cowell (who I can’t ever imagine getting into an ongoing bitch-fight with Steven Baldwin).

The execs show up. Piers sells their product to him, saying he was giving them “a smattering of English bullshit,” and that eventually he “began to believe [his] own bullshit.”

Next scene is Trump meeting with the execs. They rehash the toddler-level plotline: guys sloppier than girls; guys ink concept good. The big secret question they’re keeping from us is this: “Is Lord Simmons brilliant or a buffoon?” And as such, we are yet to hear a qualitative statement either way about his “Kodak World” theme.

Boardroom time. Trump asks Simmons about something that “disturbed” him-- that he hear that Simmons hadn’t shown up to the executive meeting. Trump does his best “Trump on a normal Apprentice” impression and says this in a “grilling” tone. Simmons explains that he “didn’t want to divert [his] mind with a corporate executive who has a point of view that’s pretty well defined.” He explains his them, and then continues: “If I were the CEO of Kodak, I’d say, ‘I give up. You’re the cream of the crop.’”

Trump breaks character after the brief lapse into the alpha dog act. Simmons owns Trump. Everyone in the room knows it. Trump’s not even upset about it-- he’s just happy that Gene Simmons is hanging out with him.

Trump turns to Tito, a much less terrifying target. “I heard your presentation was very, very sloppy,” scolds Trump. Shocked that that came up in the boardroom. We hadn’t heard anything about that until now. Tito tells the coffee story and defends his team, all things considered.

Trump asks Cramer who the winner is. Cramer (who seems to think he’s in an normal TV show with actors, not a reality show) explains that Empresario’s presentation was much better than Hydra’s, but that Hydra’s ink concept as better than Simmons’, so they win. Verdict: Simmons concept bad, Simmons buffoon.

Tito’s charity will receive the donation. He interviews that “Being a celebrity is only paper deep, but being a real person is skin deep, and blood deep.” Someone needs to explain to Tito that “skin” generally comes up in the superficial part of the analogy.

The guys walk out of the boardroom triumphantly. Lennox Lewis is last. He looks like he’s not sure what TV show he’s on, and that he’s still trying to figure out why he had to sell cameras all day. I’d estimate the ratio of words spoken by Steven Baldwin to words spoken by Lennox Lewis in a single day is 54,881 : 1.

In the boardroom, Simmons declares to Trump, “We couldn’t have done a single thing better. If Kodak were to come in, I would say in front of you and everybody else, ‘You’re a terrific company, I respect your brand, and in this instance, you’re wrong.”

Simmons seems to be saying this: “I’ll buy into this show, I’ll play the game during the task-- but when I lose with what I know is a better concept, I won’t play along with the storyline, ‘The other team beat us fair and square’ like everyone else always does on this show.” I felt the same exact “incorrect verdict” thoughts after the GNC task of our season, for the seven of you who care.

Omarosa says, “We did not completely get a big vision from our leader. The reason is that he never met with the executives. He never got what we were supposed to deliver.”

What she seems to be saying is this: “I will play along with every part of this game. I’ve obsessed over this game for the last four years, I know exactly how it works, and I’m going to try to say all the right things at the right times.”

She continues, “I think it was a combination of Gene’s fault, and lack of a good plan.” Translation: “I think it was a combination of Gene’s fault, and the project manager, Gene’s, fault.”

In fact, there’s so much “translation” needed in this boardroom, I’m going to adopt the great Jacob Clifton’s technique, and transcribe the remainder of the boardroom as I heard it.

Ivanka: Ink. The executives said it was about the ink.

Trump: Simmons wasn’t in the executive meeting to hear that.

Simmons: I am smarter than the executives.

Trump: I love you.

Ivanka: You’re successful because you stick to your beliefs. In this case, those beliefs were wrong.

Simmons: No they weren’t. They were right and Kodak wasn’t smart enough to recognize it. (Translation of the translation: “Everyone is playing along, but I won’t. You want to craft a story where the guys win? You can deal with the consequences-- I will destroy this show’s integrity while defending what was in reality a better concept than the guys’.”)

Ivanka: But you’ll never get credit for that, not here. This is a game and you’re breaking the rules.

Trump: Nelly, I’m going to turn this on you now, since ultimately, we’re obviously not actually kicking Gene Simmons off this early.

Nelly: Carol! Help me!

Trump: Carol, you will not help her.

Carol: Nelly and I both sucked in the meeting. But especially Nelly. Only Nelly sucked.

Simmons: Nelly and the meeting are irrelevant. The end product was correct.

Trump: [trying to channel normal Apprentice Trump] Gene, there’s a winner and a loser, and you guys lost.

Simmons: We won mightily.

Omarosa: Ask Gene the name of the printer.

Trump: What is the name of the printer, Gene?

Gene: Some dumb shit.

Trump: Carol, who would you fire?

Carol: Me or Nelly. Whichever one of us was the one who messed up. Nelly was that one.

Trump: That’s very brave. I love that!

Simmons: She’s wrong.

Trump: Please stop, Gene. Let’s just fire Nelly here, please. Please, don’t do this.

Simmons: I’d hire both of them. Nelly is great.

Trump: F***ing hell, please. Jennie, who would you fire.

Simmons: Gene.

Trump: Omarosa?

Omarosa: It would have to be Gene. I made a spreadsheet, and the likable characters on the past six seasons say “It would have to be…” before saying the name.

Trump: Marilu?

Marilu: Gene, because he wouldn’t let us go to the meeting.

Trump: Nelly?

Nelly: Jennie.

Trump: Good. N-- wait, what? What the hell is going on? You’re not playing this f***ing game either?

Nelly: No. I’m playing, I’m just not great at playing it. Jennie’s not a leader.

Jennie: F***ing what?

Trump: Nelly, the plan is to fire you. Gene, pick two people.

Gene: Can I bring back one?

Trump: Please, Gene. Don’t do what you’re about to do. I’m old. Don’t do this to an old man.

Gene: I’ll bring back Omarosa.

Trump: Goddamit Gene! She’s a c*** but I can’t f***ing fire her and you know it. And I can’t fire you either. You’re hurting an old man. I’m dying. Is that what you want? You’re killing an elderly man. Okay, I’ll let you change your mind. You can bring back Nelly. The executives didn’t like her.

Gene: The executives can eat my ***.

Trump: I’m asserting my fake authority and making you bring back another person.

Gene: You’re kind of a d-bag.

Trump: Killing, Gene. An old man.

Gene: Alright, Christ. I’ll bring back Jennie too.

Jennie: I look unbelievable right now. I’m crushing Tim’s soul at this exact moment.

[candidates walk out of room]

Trump: What the hell.

Ivanka: You have to fire Gene here. That will maintain a 4% integrity level of the show. Otherwise it drops to 2%. It was 65% for six straight years. Now it’s at 4%.

Trump: Cramer?

Cramer: I’m on a different planet.

[Outside:]

Omarosa: “It just pisses me off being the cop out for everybody, being the scapegoat.” I saw a likable person say that on a previous season.

Gene: Oh you are some kind of c***.

[candidates walk back in, Omarosa and Gene arm in arm]

Trump: Look at you two!

Gene: Shut your mouth.

Trump: I’ll pay you anything to stop being mean to me.

[candidates sit back down]

Trump: Omarosa, what the hell.

Omarosa: I don’t know, T. He’s insane.

Trump: But, like, really. Right?

Omarosa: Yeah, he’s not playing along.

Trump: Jennie, what the hell.

Jennie: I’m not a great candidate. I’ll probably falter as a leader. Or maybe they’re lowering expectations so it will be a heartwarming surprise when I’m a great leader. Tim’s not sure.

Trump, verbatim: “Gene, what the hell do I do?!”

Gene: You are a pathetic little man.

Trump: You’re so independent. You’re so tough. You’re so much man in one body. You’re the only person who understands me. Can we go on a 7-hour car ride together? Just the two of us?

Gene: No I’m not.

Trump: This show is destroyed. I told you how not to get fired and you won’t play the f***ing game. My game. And you won’t play. In front of everyone.

Ivanka: Daddy, this is not how this is supposed to go! Fire him. Why do you love him so much? Incidentally, I am also crushing Tim’s soul right now.

Trump: I can’t tell him anything. He’s the most independent thinker there is. He never does anything I say. He always leaves the toilet seat up. Do you think I’m smart, Gene?

Gene: You’re mad smart.

Trump: Then why aren’t you playing my game?! I’m not supposed to fire you right now. Gene, you’re fired.

Gene: Sorry, pal.

Trump: This f***ing sucks.

And so, let’s all pause for a 10 second moment of silence, as we mourn the the Apprentice’s integrity, now that we’ve watched Gene Simmons murder it.

[pause]

So the boardroom ends, and Gene Simmons’ final exit includes him calling the elevator guy “Jeeves,” popping his collar, and declaring himself to be in the “people business.” I’m going to miss him.

Next week, Steven Baldwin and Piers Morgan continue the battle of the weenie Alpha Dogs.