Interesting interview with UK Maxim Editor Greg Gutfield in The Black Table.

Not for the faint of heart. Loved this passage from a response about celebrities. (And here I thought there was nothing interesting left to say about that subject):

There are many pleasant, down to earth stars, but in general, it's good to steer clear. There was a study that just came out on the top 10 desires of children. Number one: to be famous. Others on the list: to get free stuff like ice cream and presents, pets that would live forever, no war. This is exactly the same list you'd get from a Hollywood celebrity.

Stars are exactly like children, in that they play all day and never buy stuff like light bulbs. And that makes them susceptible to destructive stuff like new age religions and Michael Moore movies. It's why stars give their kids such funny names. Those are EXACTLY the names you'd give your kid, if you were, say, a kid! Naming a kid, to them, is like naming a turtle. A box turtle.

Hmmmmmm.

Still having trouble seeing Tana working in the Trump org, and I think they all shake their heads at the possibility, too.

But what are the alternatives?

Alex had no business acumen whatsoever, and is luckily cleared away, finally.

Craig is a hollow blowhard who can't communicate and is one of those people who thinks leading the team is superfluous. He may have had a good idea and won that Home Depot challenge single-handedly, but that's not evidence of leadership, that's just evidence he should maybe go to work for Home Depot. Or maybe work in marketing--turned out to have great instincts. But he's not going to get far as a leader if is leadership style is merely to lead himself. Different job description.

He's a joke. Only reason he's around is the luck of a good team. The other team has lost every week for ages, so he never has to go to the boardroom.

So that leaves Kendra.

She was a wallflower for 3/4 of the series. By her own admission, her own design. On something like the twelth week, she announced (to the camera) that she had been holding back in the shadows and now she was ready to step up to the plate and shine.

What? Too late, girl.

Aside from showing absolutely none of the balls and determination Trump is looking for--or that she'll need in that organization--she completely lost the respect of her team. They had written her off weeks ago. Why does she think Craig disdains her so? (Aside from being a big asshole?) No one around there seemed to respect her--why would they? If she's going to lead, she has to earn respect, and she wrote that off from the get go.

But weeks later, the Pontiac competition is still haunting me. How on earth could Craig and Tana just go to bed?

It's especially troubling for Tana, because with Craig I'm not really sure if it was more about undermining Kendra--I have already factored in the fact that he can't lead; or follow, really. He's got talents and he needs to find a good individual-performer kind of role where he can perform them.

With Tana it's more damaging. I can forgive anyone any mistake, but she made it clear to the camera that this wasn't a one-shot event, this was a way of life. I would have lasted about two weeks at Arthur Andersen or EDS if I announced at the first death march that I didnt' do all-nighters. Or even late-nighters.

There are plenty of companies in the world where you can get away with that. And plenty of others where you can live that way it up to a certain level. And then there are the places where you're expected to do whatever it takes. When it's crunch time, you give it all you've got, the rest of your life takes a backseat for a day, week, month or year.

I guess Mary Kay is the kind of place where you can work your butt off all day, outsell most of your competition and then nestle in for a good night sleep no matter what.

Which kind of organization do you think Trump's is? How could she not have known that? Why would she apply for a job she has no apparent interest in really tackling?

So who on earth is going to win this thing?

An embarassment. No other options remain. Really bad casting. If the ratings have been rough this season, wait until next time, after the sour taste this has left with the viewers.

Good thing they've got Martha on board. Can't wait to see whether she'll revive the series, or sail it straight over the shark.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Just watched The Apprentice. Really looked like Alex was going to weasel his way out of another one, just by outsmarting everyone and outshouting everyone in the boardroom.

He does have a great talent at that, I'll give him that. He should, he's obviously a great attorney. He's got a very sharp mind. Just all the wrong instincts for business.

If this show were called The Lawyer, he would have been hired in a heartbeat. But he's on a business show and he's been bad at just about every task and it finally caught up with him. (Where Trump got this idea that he was a star over at the other team, I'll never know.)

The fact is, Tana's team has whipped his week after week after week, and she's usually been a lead part of that, while he's played a leading role in his teams and their losses.

His "I'm a natural born leader" sounds convincing because he can really light up a boardroom, but ultimately it rings hollow.

He's one of those people that thinks "natural leader" is the same as "natural recruiter." His skills are limited to getting people excited about following him day one. He seems pretty good at that, but most competitions in life last more than one day. He showed consistently that he had no idea where to lead them once he recruited him.

He's the classic Bad Leader. Gathers people around him, then leads them straight into the wrong direction.

Or in his case, runs in the wrong direction himself, tries to master it all himself, and doesn't really lead them anywhere at all.

Sad, really. He's got some wonderful talents, but he's so stuck on how great he is in spite of his results, that he can't see it.

The biggest hurdle that knocks down most people in life is that treacherous one in the starting blocks: figuring out what your role is on the planet. He's one of the rare lucky ones. He seems to have nailed it when he chose to be an attorney. But for some reason he wasn't satisfied with that, and he's chasing after a bunch of shadows.

I feel good for Bryn. This show was full of exciting opportunity, but it taught him he was looking in the wrong direction. He found his calling years ago, and he went home a contented man with his major life choices validated.

Alex . . . Alex could be in for a rough patch.

No, not talking about some ratings war. Not even talking about that Elvis. The good one, not the dead one.

Heeheehee. I actually like both elvi, but I never fail to snicker at the expression, and since Mr. Costello is so clearly the good-er of them, it sort of fits anyway.

Hennyway.

Elvis. Alison, specifically. (Thanks to several readers for the spelling correction.) One of his first songs and still one of his finest. Just belting out of my lungs out of nowhere over breakfast this morning. (Man, what's with me and breakfast today?) Must have been trigged by the Loving somebody title of my last post, but my memory really gets strong a couple lines later, with the tragic chorus:

Allison
I know this world is killing you,
Oh, Allison
My aim is true
My aim is true
My aim is true.**

That's a chorus that really demands to be belted, but then I had to quiet down with one of the verses:

Well I see you've got a husband now
Did he leave your pretty fingers lying in the wedding cake
You used to hold him right in your hands
Ah, but he took, all that he could take*

God, how I loved that part. Careful girl--or guy--he's only going to take so much.

But is he/she? Twenty-odd years now I have lived with that truism in my head, but I'm not sure I've seen it. So many old married couples together one or both of them still taking it on the chin. My parents for example. (I'll decline to comment here on who's taking, who's given. Luckily they never read anything I write, unless published in a reputable journal.)

Immediately, the reality shows sprung to mind. A little of Survivor, but particularly the Amazing Race. We have seen the most gruesome couplings, many of whom are not yet locked into the commitment, and who not only have the experience to warn them away, but a tape of the experience.

Who the hell gets that lucky? To see it documented in cold, hard videotape. He/she treats me like total crap. And/or he brings out the absolute worst in me. We're horrible together. We'd like to announce our engagement.

That's how these bitter mismatches all seem to end up.

Is it a perverse demographic? Perhaps the egomania inherent in so many people drawn to engage in reality shows and even more prevalent in those actually cast, carries with it the related gene of blindness to ones own strengths and weaknesses.

Plausible.

But the main value in reality shows has never been in proving phenomena, but illustrating it. The sample size is far to small, and the subject pool too distorted to prove anything. But the power to illustrate--I have found that to be quite extraordinary.

The data on couples taking it on the chin is all around us. But we quickly grow oblivious to the pervasive, like the oxygen we're sucking in this very moment. Elvis Costello wrote a song so powerful he convinced me to shut my eyes to the obvious for 20 years.

No. Most people don't reach their breaking point. Alison has been married to that poor sap my entire adult life.

Thanks, Amazing Race. I never would have seen it without you.

---

* There seems to be some disagreement on that last lyric line. The two sites I checked out had it differently, and both different than my ear tells me. So I went with mine. Alternates:

- But did you give more than he could take

- I bet he took all that he could take

The latter sounds a lot more likely--contestant #1 alleges three times the number of syllables actually pronounced by Elvis prior to the first 'he'--and #2's site came up first on google.)

---

**My Aim Is True.

Oh, to ever write a line that good, a title that great. Can't really ever hear that song without a long wistful reflection on the title. His very first, his very best.

(Which has always struck me more than slightly sad, too. Still my favorite Elvis album, far and away his best title, the opening line of the whole thing is one of my all-time favorites by anybody . . . Peaked a little freaking soon.)

(The line is, "I used to be disgusted /now I try to be amused." Save me, that one. Plus I get to snicker over the followup: "But since their wings have got rusted / You know the angels want to wear my red shoes." -- Thanks to Catastrophile for the heads-up on my lyric screw-up.) 

Allison gets the song title, but that line captures the album title. Will I ever hear a line so sweet and so viscious at the same time? I could swear there was a third meaning, but at the moment, I can only find two: how earnest his intentions are, and how precise the aim of his gun. Man. Kind of gives me the shivers.

(Hey, sort of the theme of the bible, too, isn't it? Man, I've got God on the brain this morning. But isn't that the big tension of that book: the angry, spiteful God always threatening to smite you at any moment, and the kind, loving earnest God, whose intentions are always true?)

I know this world is killing you.

Ever have doubts? Big, horrible, momentary flashes of doubt about the entire direction of your life?

Like, say, God actually not being cool with you loving guys, smiting you down the minute you die for it?

Perhaps I should keep these to myself, but . . .

I don't have them often. I'm pretty comfy that He'd be pissed as hell at me if I contorted myself into some abomination completely alien to how He made me.

But those little moments.

At the strangest times.

I was merrily making my breakfast just now, kind of all giddy cause my writing is finally kicking into high gear on this magazine story, plus I woke up and spilled out three pages in bed for the memoir that I'm still years away from reworking, but there it was, the answer to so much of the ending.

And I was doing a little happy dance, so I gazed up for a second and thanked God for all the great gifts I had been given, feeling slightly guilty again that I haven't done that in awhile, seem to have lost my way on how to pray again, but grateful that the feeling just struck me for a mini conversation and I went with it, and for some reason I was struck with an unexpected thought, and of course it popped right out my mouth, cause I was born without an editor: "God, I hope you exist." (No pun intended on the first word.) "I think so. Hopefully." He usually does, for me. Sometimes He slips away for awhile, but usually.

Then right on its heals, "Hope it's OK, me loving men." Man, where the hell did that come from? That's when the smite feeling zipped up my spine, though it failed to translate into words and hence steered clear of my mouth.

Very calm feeling immediately after, though. "At least I'm loving somebody."

Yup. Pretty damn sure that's what He wants. (Pun intended that time.)

I'm sure the doubts have been lingering in my air because of the story I've been working on off and on for months now. Evangelical Christians are the subject. Hard not to feel a little of it rub off on you after while. (Quite a bright lot, actually, and sincere, good-willed  people I've been dealing with.) At least needle some of your assumptions. Which is a good thing, really. I need more of that. But that particular one can get a little unsettling.

Never have I felt more right about it, though, than the moment right after. If there is a god up there somewhere who made me, He and I are both pretty damn clear on how he made me, after all the decades I spent fighting it. And I'm pretty sure He put me down here to love somebody, along with all the exploring and writing He expects out of me. To help me with it, in fact, to share in it. And we both know He didn't make me capable of loving a woman that way. What a pathetic buffoon I would be to curl up in some corner and let my heart wither up and my life with it just because some jerks down here insist they've got the whole freaking thing figured out for us: me, Him, The Plan--they know everything, including what's in my heart, including how He speaks to me as well as them. Right.

So happy to be past all those silly years chasing after the mirage of love with all those women. (And sorry, ladies, for leading you on with something that could never work out anyway.) I feel better than ever this morning, actually. Nice to have the shudder of doubt bubble up to the surface and get answered.

This was a good one. Sometimes I'm not so lucky.