IDIOT BOX SAVANT "Who are you? Where are my crullers? How come I'm not wearing underwear? I demand some answers!" "Okay, today's challenge involves something called a 'mosh pit'..."

Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Idiot Box Savant: 'I'm rich! Bow to me!'

By Andrew Kiraly

Hey, I worship at the cash-spewing geyser that is the butthole of Mammon as much as the next guy, but, damn, recent evidence suggests that our fine nation's exaltation of the rich has gone a bit too far. Let's dust off the rectal seismograph and take the pulse of the nation: We got "Cribs," the show that mashes in our poor-ass faces how well the rich live. We got "The Simple Life," the show that mashes in our poor-ass faces how well hot Internet celebrisluts and their not-as-attractive, not-as-rich, coattail-chomping friends live. Hell, even Robin Leach has gotten back in the act again with "Life of Luxury." Seen it? As his bloated corpus is hustled around on a litter carried by a passel of Malaysian eunuchs, Leach regales us in odious detail with how our celebrity masters live, dine, sleep, shit, snort, fuck and manage their vast underground slave chambers by integrating business technologies into total office solutions.

Now, Donald Trump--looking as much as ever like an eraser monster dipped in Grecian Formula--has his own reality TV show. Like he needs it! I thought the whole point of reality shows was to give noncelebs (like you and, well, you) the opportunity to splash their faces on TV and maybe, I dunno, land a spot in a commercial hawking that new Gillette razor that has, like, 17 blades and a DVD player. You know, a little 15 minutes of lame for the masses. Then Trump comes along and reminds us who's at the helm of Planet Fucked: short, unattractive white men driven by a whorling dynamo of powerful insecurities.

Anyway, his show's called "The Apprentice." Created by Mark Burnett, the father of reality TV that Fox always manages to improve upon, the show gets at the heart of the American dream. No, not the dream with the jacuzzi and the twins, but the other one about working hard and using your wits to succeed. Yeah, I know: Right! Which explains the etymology of the word "dream," which is Sanskrit for "ha ha ha, after you bag those groceries, there's a wet cleanup on the baby food aisle."

At least that's what the show purports to do; the premiere of "The Apprentice" (Wednesdays, 8 p.m., NBC) was like "Survivor" staged in Manhattan: Two teams of would-be entrepreneurs--the all-girl Protege Corporation and all-dude Versacorp--vie for the respect of Trump and his two robot minions, high-level executives who apparently have years of experience at walking around with clipboards and looking menacing. Donald gives the two teams challenges that pit their rapacious capitalist instincts against one another. Last week's show was a sorta warm-up, a charming scrimmage that required the teams to sell lemonade on the street. The ladies turned their operation into a glorified kissing booth; the guys turned theirs into a glorified bug-eyed desperation booth as they came to the horrific realization that, when it comes right down to it, yeah, people only buy lemonade 'cause they wanna see some titties. Protege: 1, Versacorp: 0, Savant: craving lemonade but secretly titties, apparently.

The best part was when they had to meet in the board room, and each Versacorp guy had to explain in turn why he deserved not to hear those awful words from Trump: "I hunger for boy love" (actually, it's "You're fired!"). Some went for a good old-fashioned grovel; others went for the crazed, fast-talking maverick salesman/village idiot schtick, praying that somehow David Mamet would suddenly crash through the ceiling and kill Trump. But in the end the approach didn't matter; what mattered was their willingness to behave with such extreme naked freako desperation in front of a billionaire who drapes pneumatic Italian runway elves on his arm, but whose hair looks like it was chopped by the night-school dropout working at Supercuts.

And there's the comfort in all this: Money can't buy you taste. Yes, you may sit on on a toilet of gold, Mr. Trump, but like me, you idly flip through the Skymall catalog you stole from Southwest! Ha!
"Who are you? Where are my crullers? How come I'm not wearing underwear? I demand some answers!"

"Okay, today's challenge involves something called a 'mosh pit'..."