· Did you miss last night's premiere of Semi-celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump and NBC's attempt to breathe new life into a moribund reality franchise by asking Gene Simmons, Big Pussy, a professional naked person, and a lesser Baldwin (there are other cast members, probably, but we can't think of them off the top of our head—oh, Omarosa's on it too!) to sell hot dogs? We did. But after watching this three-minute recap, we feel like we're all caught up and ready for next week's episode. (Spoilers ahead if you click the thumbnail to watch the vdieo.)
· Clearly, changing the title of Welcome to Valkenvania to Nothing But Trouble doomed the Chase/Aykroyd/Candy/Moore classic to failure.
· "I always wanted to be No. 1 at something, but I didn't think it would be something like this."
· Depending on the type of person you are, what you see at this site is either going to make or ruin your weekend.

· New NBC golden boy Ben Silverman is already hard at work, talking disgruntled Donald Trump down from a Trump Tower ledge by reopening talks about possibly bringing back The Apprentice. "I can see this guy is gonna be a star," says Trump, appreciating the business savvy of a player who might not be afraid to throw away untold millions to return his low-rated show to primetime. [Variety]
· Dania "The One Who Drove AJ Soprano To Suicide" Ramirez will join Heroes as a series regular. (Hey, she's got mutant experience from X-Men 3.) While her "powers are being kept under wraps," producers are rumored to still be deciding between superhuman Rollerblading skills and the ability to make the world's most delicious sandwiches. [THR]
· The Canadian government quickly surrenders to visiting California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, helpless against his onslaught of tired movie catchphrases meant to communicate the importance of introducing tougher anti-piracy legislation. [Variety]
· Not that you might possibly care, but USA won the cable rights to Pirates 3, completing its acquisition of all three installments of the franchise. [THR]
· Pirate Master (which we actually watched, God help us, confirming our suspicion that it's nothing more than Survivor with an eyepatch and a big boat) is off to a weak start for CBS. None of us are going to make it through the summer TV season alive, we can feel it already. [Variety]

Refusing to languish in the humiliating limbo in which NBC had placed declining franchise The Apprentice as it tried to finalize its new schedule, dignified billionaire Donald Trump has seized control of his television destiny by releasing a statement declaring that he's "moving on...to a major new TV venture." (Though we wouldn't be surprised to see a full-page Variety ad appear tomorrow featuring Trump strangling a peacock once he's had another day to marinate in his rage over the network's affront.) While the nature of this "new TV venture" remains undisclosed, we suspect it will somehow tie in to his latest attempt at brand extension, revolving around the mogul's recent foray into the high-end meats business; a teaser poster for Trump Steaks: The Series (catchphrase: "You're underdone.") follows after the jump:

When Donald Trump decided to try and revive his flagging Apprentice franchise by relocating it to Los Angeles, it guaranteed that he'd have access to local talent pre-degraded by jobs in the entertainment industry, for whom a potential Trump Organization imprisonment in a supply closet on an unfinished golf course would seem an appealing career option. But since employers here might not be so eager to lend their personnel to a weeks-long, televised job interview, contestants like entertainment lawyers Derek Arteta (of New Line) and Kristine Lefebvre (fret not, "The Lawyer in Me" section of her personal site is just a professional bio, not work in some legal-themed pornography) had to sneak off under the cover of "personal time" to do the show. THR, Esq. reports that their "vacationing" co-workers learned of their reality TV activities only after the cast was announced, but were nonetheless supportive of their dreams of Trump-branded subjugation:

Having defeated a raft of lawsuits aimed at removing scenes that various "victims" of Kazakhstan's leading documentarian found to portray their racism/misogyny/dinner parties in an unflattering light, the Borat DVD is scheduled to be released on DVD March 6th without any changes to the original theatrical version. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, 'Sex and the City'-related Pilot Pick-up Edition: ABC picks up Cashmere Mafia ("the next generation of Sex and the City. ") and Brett Ratner's Women's Murder Club ("CSI meets Sex and the City"), while NBC goes straight to the source, greenlighting SATC author Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle. [THR]
It's been approximately five minutes since we've mentioned Donald Trump, so: The Donald and producer Mark Burnett are being sued for age discrimination by a rejected Apprentice applicant, who claims the show favors the young and hot over the old and litigious. [Variety]
Fox wiped out all Monday night competition with its BCS championship game between Florida and Ohio State, but NBC's Deal or No Deal and CBS comedy block still perform respectably. Once again, Studio 60 continued its hiatus and thus had no momentum-killing effect on NBC's Nielsen fortunes. [THR]
· Scooby Doo creator Iwao Takamoto dies at 81. The cause of death is officially "heart failure," but we suspect foul play by a disgruntled local farmer wearing a rubber mask. [Variety]

· We don't want to ruin it for you, so just press play above without our words getting in the way of the greatest YouTube experience you'll have all month. [via Gawker]
· Seeing Paris Hilton in handcuffs is pretty good, but would it be too greedy to wish that she would accessorize them with a dank communal cell in the worst prison in Rangoon?
· Jack Bauer: patriot, poet.
· Yes, PBS-loving alcoholics, Huell Howser has a drinking game.
· Page Six breaks our heart by siding with The Donald over our beloved Carolyn. We suppose we'll be OK just as long as Trump continues to employ Robin, the world's greatest fake receptionist.

The world of reality television shows that the public occasionally watches because of lingering memories of long-exhausted entertainment value was rocked to its deceptively edited core today, as the NY Post reports that Donald Trump has parted ways—we can't quote bring ourselves to use his trademarked "F" word"—with Apprentice co-executioner Carolyn Kepcher. Among the fireable offenses committed by Kepcher, whose outwardly icy onscreen demeanor obscured the fiery sexpot waiting to doff her blonde helmet wig and sensibly restrictive businesswear the moment the cameras stopped rolling, were the excessive enjoyment of her newfound fame, unacceptable recall of the suggested retail price of the five-irons at her pro shop, and her tragic lack of Trump DNA. Reports the Post:

In a sound-bite that will gleefully be stripped of context and run up the blog-pole for ridicule thousands of times over, Donald Trump told the cackling hens of The View that if he hadn't donated 50 percent of his DNA to daughter Ivanka and thus risked violating the most sacrosanct of all taboos, yeah, he'd hit that:

Who hasn't, at one time or another, regretted leaving an irate voicemail, firing off an angry e-mail, or issuing an open letter to the media viciously lambasting a longtime friend for ruining a golden reality show spin-off opportunity? Not Donald Trump, however, in whose universe cooler heads never prevail. The Donald follows up his blisteringly personal attack on Martha Stewart not with a reparative olive branch, but with an interview with Newsweek.com today that quickly turns into yet another ad hominem Martha attack, even more vitriolic than the first:

Like Godzilla taking sucker swats at Mothra high above the New York skyline as innocent pedestrians run screaming for their lives, Manhattan's two towering media titans, Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, are embroiled in a gigantic public battle over the blame for the failure of her version of The Apprentice. Martha arguably threw down the gardening gloves first, with comments in the current Newsweek stating that she thought Donald was supposed to be fired at the start of her season: "Having two Apprentices was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me. But Donald really wanted to stay on." But it was Trump's open letter response an unleashed torrent of seething resentment that even makes reference to her crimes that elevated it from a good-natured, competitive spat between friends and into the realm of disturbing personal attack. People reprints it in its entirety, but here are some highlights:

We are still scratching our heads as to what went wrong with The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. For starters, the boardroom showdowns -on The Donald's version, they're a three-ring Circus Maximus of campy, vicious (and sometimes sex-educational) entertainment -were about as compelling as watching dough rise. Part of the blame must fall to Martha's daughter Alexis, whose advisor role was a bland and sedated phone-in affair. As it turns out, however, this chick's got pluck! She was just saving all the good stuff for her own Sirius radio show:

No sooner had we adjusted to the thought of a brave, new nightlife landscape where the words "Open Bar 10-11 p.m. sponsored by Trump Vodka" flowed as freely as barrel-bottom potato-vinegar from a goat-legged bottle, comes yet more Donald Trump news: the Apprentice is heading to LA.

· Former movie star and current monied, vigilante freedom fighter Bruce Willis is offering a million-dollar bounty for the head of Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants. This selfless act of patriotism should bring no attention to his current acting projects whatsoever.
· We don't like to get into our personal lives too much here, but one longtime hobby of ours had been spelunking in prickly caves of danger. But after reading this dispatch from our beloved ladies of Fug, we're abandoning all danger-cave adventures immediately. Sure, you might make it past the saw blade booby trap at the entrance to Omarosa Cavern, but then you've got to deal with the three-ton boulder bearing down on you, all the bleached skeletons of your predecessors, and the chance that you'll lose your hat and whip.
· We don't know what's got the TV Gasm guys so bent out of shape. That hot dog looks pretty good to us.
· Someone has given the Worth 1000 crew unfettered access to our nightmare tapes from the sleep clinic.
· This Harry Potter countdown clock is not at all creepy because Daniel Radcliffe is a teenage boy and it was set up by a woman.

Defamer is committed to providing a forum in which reality television contestants can air their grievances against Donald Trump, Mark Burnett, and the editors who conspire to make the public believe that they are yo-yo-obsessed incompetents. After pleading his case to NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove yesterday, fired Apprentice contestant Mark "Markus" Garrison proves once again that he will defend himself to anyone who will listen by e-mailing us. (Desperate times, desperate measures, etc etc.) Writes Garrison:

One might argue that anyone not smart enough to realize that signing up for a reality show is tantamount to waiving one's Constitutional right not to look like an asshole on television is barely competent enough to wrangle wayward shopping carts in the Ralphs parking lot, much less serve under Donald Trump in the ceremonial capacity awarded to Apprentice winners. Staring down the manicure on The Donald's Downsizing Pinky of Death stirs something in a dismissed candidate's soul, however, and compels boardroom chaff to whine about their depiction:

· Our pals at TVGasm have collected some predictably horrifying (but still magical) clips from last night's debut of But Can They Sing? For a sneak preview of the last noise you'll hear when your soul slips out of your body for good, listen to Bai Ling's rendition of "Like a Virgin."
· Maddox Jolie is also an excellent last-minute costume idea, as long as you're willing to live with a mohawk for a couple of weeks.
· So Martha's all, "Fuck the Donald, I'm taking over the whole franchise," but Trump goes, "Hey, low-rated cookie-baking beeyotch, you can bite my doily, I ain't going nowhere." You know, to paraphrase.
· Baldwin, Basinger wage heated battle for control of Ireland.
· Geraldo Rivera owns a DVD of Soul Plane. More shocking: He actually paid for it.

The Apprentice executive producer Mark Burnett found himself in a quite a pinch. Yes, he'd promised a bored Donald Trump that he'd finally let him experiment with a nontraditional method of dismissing inadequate candidates, but Martha Stewart's struggling series really needed something fresh and daring to make a last-ditch grab for new viewers. Burnett knew in his gut (he'd always followed his gut—always) that Stewart's lackluster catchphrase, "You just don't fit in," would acquire a heightened poignancy if delivered after the homemaker diva vigorously tossed a downsized Apprentice's salad, an exciting, filthy version of Michael Corleone's kiss of doomed Fredo. The Donald would have to settle for a special two-hour "rusty trombone" edition of his show during sweeps. He'd understand; Burnett and Trump, savvy businessmen both, know that the keys to success are compromise and teamwork.

According to Broadcasting & Cable, Tyra Banks has grabbed a fistful of Martha Stewart's blonde hair and told the ex-con lifestyle empress to get her gang of ass-kissing honkies off her Wednesday night turf. (Well, not in so many words.) Says B&C: