The Apprentice: Martha Stewart Finale

Grade: F

Worst reality show finale ever.

Wow. Seriously, wow. This finale was so bad, it was almost unwatchable. By me anyway, and that’s saying a lot. This finale doesn’t fall into the Disappointing End category like Hell’s Kitchen did, this just out and out sucked. Not that we expected a big production given the show’s been cancelled so at least NBC let it die on TV as opposed to the shelf (like The Mole 2 almost did way back when). But they could have done so much better–nobody seemed to even care at the live finale.

First, the audience was laughable. All the commercials showed the big LIVE FINALE titles over an empty theater in Lincoln Center, the same place used for Donald’s finale last week. So to see the actual stage being used as Martha’s daytime talk show (which seats maybe 200 as opposed to 1500 or more at Lincoln Center) was a little surprising. Then to have half of the audience be the fired candidates was an odd choice–especially since they weren’t even introduced let alone interviewed.

But the worst part of this whole thing was, not surprisingly, Martha herself. She seemed to be reading her notes during the final interview with the candidates, and it felt really fake. Like she’d already made up her mind and was just going through the motions. Donald probably makes up his mind before the live show, but he still makes everyone think that he hasn’t, and it feels authentic. Martha feels as fake as her magazine.

Also, I have to say that although I like the games candidates play as tasks in the various Apprentice seasons, I’m getting a little sick of the format. 4 seasons of Donald, 1 season of Martha, and all 5 winners come out of corporate America. Really? Is there no room for other people out there? I find it very hard to believe, and a bit forced. If that’s all they’ll consider in the end, then make that a pre-req for getting on the show. You either need large corporate experience or a serious business school degree. Otherwise, you’re toast. You’re playing for second at best, so why play?

Donald and Mark Burnett have to be kicking themselves over going with Martha in the first place. They should have picked Donnie Deutsch or Richard Branson (if he doesn’t still have a deal with Fox). Not Martha. Never Martha.

Step by step…

Home theater update. The walls are painted. The screen was put up before my artificial Thanksgiving deadline. Put it together and installed the beast without assistance, which is an accomplishment for a seriously unhandy person like myself.

Then the problems began. First, I uncovered the conduit I’d ordered when we had the house built several years ago. The room has 5 conduit. All 5 terminate in the media closet. One has its other end in the floor, near the screen (for video game systems), two end in the wall at the screen (for when I had the big screen TV, and I thought of running another for maybe motorized curtains in the future), the last two terminate in the ceiling for the projector. I figured both would be used for video cabling–component and S-video, then figured I wouldn’t use S-video so I could use one for power. Yes, it would have been smarter to just install an outlet in the ceiling, but you try building a house 2000 miles away.

Anyway, I uncover the two plates for the ceiling conduit. One has twine, the other does not. So pulling cable through one is going to be a serious problem. Fine, whatever. I then go to the closet. For some reason, I’d never checked where the twine for the ceiling conduit terminated–turns out it’s a teeny, tiny hole that not even a phone wire would go through. Sigh. I get out my drywall saw (wait a minute–how the heck do I have a drywall saw?) and cut a 3 inch square hole around where the two twine stick out. That one sentence makes it sound simple and easy and fast. It was none of those three things. When the last piece of drywall makes its way to the floor and I let loose my latest string of expletives (which I believe involved a goat having illegal relations with several Home Depot employees) it did not take long to discover that I now had a 3 inch square that twine disappeared into–but no conduit ends. One seems to run to the right, one to the left, and there’s no telling where they actually exist.

Not wanting to cut more than I needed, I tied the two pieces of twine to the cords I wanted to run, figuring I could run at least the one that’s pulled through. I climb the ladder and pull–nothing. Pull harder, nothing. Pull really hard, the gray pipe that comprises the conduit starts to come through the box in the ceiling. Thinking this was a bad thing, I stop.

Now, I’d had serious issues with the two conduit that terminated in the screen wall about two years ago. Turns out the electrician had forgotten to pull the twine for one of them through the wall before drywalling was complete, so there was no telling where it was. And the second one wouldn’t budge at all. They had to come out and cut out most of the bottom part of the wall to find the hidden conduit. And they also discovered the one that was pulled through also had the twine itself wrapped around the pipe and tied into a knot, making it impossible to actually pull any cable through with the twine. Given these serious problems, I should have been doubtful when I asked them to check the ceiling conduit and they said both worked just fine. But I let it go, and then 2 years later I’m stuck with this.

To top it all off, when I call the electrician about these current problems, they first agree to come out. Then the morning of their appointment they call and say they’ll only come if we pay them. I’m not paying them one cent–I’ll pay someone else and sue them if I need to, so I refuse. We have a number of colorful telephone conversations which are too frustrating to recount, but at the end of the series they came out with a new tactic–deny they ever installed the conduit in the first place. So while I gather proof from the home builder to sue their butts, I have an electrician come out to take a look at the conduit.

The one that had the twine pulled through also had a large plug of plaster inside the conduit. That’s why it wouldn’t budge–but he removed it and it worked. Sweet! Then he used some contraption to hook the twine from the other conduit and got that one to pull cords through as well. Closer!

So now the only thing left to do is mount the projector to the ceiling. Simple, right? I mean, I bought a mount with the projector, so it should be at least as easy as the screen. Um, no. Reading the manual for the mount is an exercise in frustration. See, the main function of the mount, in my mind, is to attach the projector to the ceiling. This is the pivotal function. So it makes sense that the manual lists three different ways you can attach the mount to the ceiling. Problem is, they don’t tell you how to decide between the three. While this is probably a simple decision for someone who isn’t, say, surprised by the fact that he even owns a drywall saw, this is not a simple decision for me. Having my projector come crashing down during installation is not an experience I care to have.

Once I figure out this manual thing, then it’s the actual installation. Hopefully the next update will describe my successful efforts, as opposed to my mental breakdown over the scattered pieces of my projector.

Keep your fingers crossed. And if you happen to come to my theater, bring a helmet for now.

Love the Drafthouse!

So some readers may have noticed a lack of regular content these past few weeks. While work was certainly a factor (having 50+ one on one meetings in the past two weeks tends to grow difficult), the other area taking up a lot of time was the final details of Mrs Hose’s surprise birthday party. It was something I’ve been working on for at least 7 months, probably longer, but haven’t been able to say anything about because she sometimes hops onto this blog.

In any event, my original plan had to be scrapped given our travel restrictions, and I’m not going to mention what they were because I may be able to use that plan in a few years. Instead, I went with Plan B–rent out our favorite movie theater and fill with family and friends. And use that to show a fun little birthday video that I made without her knowing it.

The party was this past Saturday, and it went very well. The Drafthouse rocks, as anyone who’s ever been knows. There’s a reason why Entertainment Weekly declared Alamo Drafthouse to be the #1 movie theater in the country. And of the various locations, I think the South Lamar spot (the one we rented a theater in) is the best–stadium seating, fun events, fairly close to a lot of access points.

Mrs Hose isn’t exactly in the condition that you want to spring a massive surprise on her. So I planned on easing her into the party. I had previously told her something was in the works, just not what or when or anything else. So on Saturday morning when I asked what she wanted to get done, she listed a couple of errands and wasn’t too surprised when I said that none of those were going to get done. She knew something was going on, just not what or exactly when. A bit later I told her she needed to shower and get ready to leave, because we needed to leave the house–I said we were having a party at home so she needed to get ready before we left and when we came back there’d be people here.

Now, knowing that she would not want people coming to a messy house, I padded the fib with a story that cleaners were coming first. Of course, what I (stupidly) failed to anticipate is that Mrs Hose always cleans up before the cleaners come over. Why she wants to do this is unimportant–it’s universal and I should’ve anticipated. So when she asked me to clean some things up, I kicked myself for that part of the fib, but ultimately gave in (including rolling up a carpet to put on top of a couch–no, I’m not kidding).

We actually went out to run an errand, since I thought we had enough time. And we would have if there hadn’t been an ordering snafu and the slowest cashier in the world. So as we left the shopping center, I realized we were about 5-10 minutes later than I wanted to be, but not a big deal. I told her I was in a rush because the next part of our day was seeing a movie–since the party set-up at home wouldn’t be done until 2, we needed to kill some time. She asked what we were seeing and I responded Capote, since she wanted to see it.

Now, here was another mistake. A co-worker knew of my plan, so he had wisely suggested I check to see what was playing at the movie theater. Which I did. On Thursday. Forgetting that they’d change their line-up on Friday. Doh! So as we pull into the theater, she sees the boards and realizes Capote isn’t playing. Knowing I had to reveal a bit early, I replied, “Oh yeah–we aren’t seeing Capote. And the party isn’t at home.”

She was a bit stunned, not really knowing what to say as I parked and led her into the theater. She kept asking, “Then what are we seeing?”, not really realizing what I’d said. I remained silent, walked her into the lobby and asked the usher where the party was located. We walked to theater #4 (with a digital sign reading Saw II: 12:30–too funny!) and she was surprised to see 50 of her family and friends all seated in the theater.

After the hugging, the laughing, the shock of it all, we started the presentation at about 12:35. First up was a ten minute movie I made with footage of family and friends wishing her a happy birthday. There was a slight technical glitch in how I made it that made some of the captions appear off screen, but I’ll re-edit for a final version. Don’t know if it’s small enough to post on here–I’ll look into that later. But the movie went well–people seemed to like it and at one point I counted nine Drafthouse employees in the entranceway watching the movie, which was very cool.

After that we showed her second favorite movie–something I hadn’t told anyone about (I just said we’d show one of her favorites without telling them what). It was the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, a fun little movie and completely family friendly since it was Disney. Good for all the little kids running around. Her favorite movie, The American President, actually drops the f-bomb 3 times in it, so I switched for the kid-safe flick. People really liked it, I think.

We also had a giant pizza/salad/spanikopita bar. Lots of drinks and cookies and brownies and cake (which my mother-in-law and I cut and served about halfway through the movie because the movie is a little long and I was afraid if we waited until the end we wouldn’t get out in time–I only had the theater for 3 hours). When it was all over people hung around and chatted–I had to start getting people out because I didn’t want to go over our time–they had movies to show!

But all in all it was a great event. A lot of planning, but all for a great cause. And now, I suddenly have a lot of free time.

Aeon Flux

Grade: C-

No big shock that Charlize Theron is the new Halle Berry, but Frances McDormand becoming the new Judi Dench was a surprise.

So the way of the world now seems to be that the Oscar winner for Best Actress immediately signs up for a really awful action flick and cashes a huge paycheck. Halle Berry certainly wasn’t the first, but she was one of the most recent to do this when she sold out…er, cashed in on Catwoman. Nicole Kidman did it after The Hours with a twofer: The Interpreter and Bewitched. Well, The Interpreter at least pretended to be sincere, since it had Sean Penn in it and all. Hillary Swank has, so far, not signed on to Wonder Woman, but we expect the announcement any second now.

But Charlize takes this to a new low with Aeon Flux. It’s an overstyled mess of a movie, complete with a clunky approach to an otherwise fluid subject and a scrip that, sadly, has more holes in it than Charlize’s costumes. I’ve seen the original cartoon of this subject and Aeon was always two things: impossibly nimble and barely clothed. Charlize is neither in this flick. The movie attempts to drive some semblance of a plot onto the otherwise freeform cartoon, but that fails too. It’s a world where fantastic technology exists, but only in the form of weapons. Stone that turns transparent has apparently been invented, but apparently everyone has forgotten how to, you know, scan a prisoner of weapons before locking them in a cell.

The biggest surprise of the movie was Frances McDormand’s presence. Taking a cue from the Judi Dench playbook, she plays the Spiritual-Advisor-Clad-In-White role that Dench took on in Chronicles of Riddick. In fact, the only difference here is that McDormand sports a fiery red wig. Yeah, take that Dame Dench!

It’s a shame, really, since there are the cornerstones of an interesting film here given the environment. But if they had just paid for one less set-piece they could have, maybe, afforded a screenwriter. Instead, the producers settled for the brilliant creative team that brought us The Tuxedo.

We all know Charlize cashed in. I just hope McDormand got a big check for this one.