The Apprentice

Thanks to the recommendation on Rich's Xanga, I checked out some of "The Apprentice" after watching last night's Friends. From first impressions, I thought the show was pretty stupid, but I kept finding myself switching back to NBC throughout the night to see what was happening. (This could also be due to the lack of any other good programming on at the time).

One thing that pissed me off, for the first "competition" they broke up between the guys and the girls and had them see which team could make more money selling lemonade on the street. Even as Donald Trump was first announcing this to everyone, all the girls started celebrating before the competition even started, while all the guys basically looked at each other and said "sheeeeee....." As well they should have, it doesn't take a business genius to know that people on the street will always buy more and pay more for anything when there's chicks involved, than from a bunch of guys in suits.

So they show the competition, and the stupid thing is, the girls are horribly organized, and in typical female fashion, they waste a whole lot of time bickering and arguing about stuff in the beginning rather than taking action. Don't get mad at me girls, you know I'm right. The guys actually had much better business skills from the beginning, getting local stores to sponsor them and stuff, only they made the mistake of picking a bad location. But I don't think it would have mattered, considering they were selling cups for $1 each while the girls were getting people to pay $5 (about $1 for the lemonade, $4 for a kiss on the cheek or their phone number). Needless to say, the guys lost pretty handily by the end of the day, in a 3 to 1 margin.

But in my opinion, much of the show's entertainment value for me was recouped in the last half hour. I think once I remember writing in this blog about the guilty pleasure of listening to someone get chewed out by a manager/VP at work. You kind of feel sorry for them, but there's just something fun about hearing someone get ripped a new one. Well, it's even more fun when Donald Trump and his 2 steel-faced assistants are doing the ripping, and the guys being ripped are the ones who pissed you off in the show. It's also interesting to see how quick they turn on each other when they're being grilled.

Anyways, I think I liked the show enough overall to plan on watching it again next week. Well, chances are, I'll forget to watch it and then I'm screwed for the rest of the series, like what happens whenver I try to follow any other reality show that's not on MTV. Someone please remind me to tune in again next Wednesday.

*****

For Anuj

Alright focker.... I'm gonna go through this one more time to show you that I was right and you guys were wrong.

Path #1: From Darien, taking 355 N to 290W to 53N to Palatine E gets you to Dave's house in about 45-50 mins (let's say average 47.5 mins).

Path #2: From Darien, taking 294 N to Willow gets you to Dave's house in about 40-45 mins (let's say average 42.5 mins). From Dave's to and from Vernon Hills Hooters is about 10-15 mins each way (let's say average 12.5 mins). Since the Hooters is located pretty much due north of Dave's house, it basically means you're driving that distance twice. So for the total travel time, you have to take 42.5 + 2*12.5 = 67.5 minutes.

As the math shows, Path #2 (your choice) is 20 minutes more, pretty much exactly the same difference I showed you guys using Yahoo Map numbers that day. 20 minutes is a pretty big number, considering it's almost 1/3 of your total travel time in Path #2.

Local vs. highway is already factored into these numbers, in fact, Path #2 has just as much local driving if not more. You shouldn't really even count Palatine Rd. as local, it has 3 or 4 lanes each direction and has speed limits of 45-55 mph for most of the way. I'll admit, your so-called "Woodfield Christmas season traffic" in that quarter mile stretch (generous estimate) between 53 and the mall loop might add a little bit of time to Path #1. A liiiiitle bit of time. But it's still not gonna come close to making up 20 minutes worth of discrepancy in the simple math I explained above.

By the way, Chras can attest to the fact that I took him through Path #1 from Dave's house to his house in about 40 mins flat last week. I'll even give you guys the extra 7.5 minutes for the sake of calculation, because I drive pretty fast and there was light traffic that night.