So, I want to talk about the boys’ team first because they were much, much more interesting this week than the girls.

Holy crap!  There…that is my whole blog about the men’s team on this challenge.  Seriously. Holy crap!

Okay…so obviously we don’t get to see what is happening over on the KOTU side during the actual taping of the show so imagine our surprise when we got in the boardroom and found out Dennis Rodman hadn’t even shown up for the day of the selling and that Tom Green, as project manager, had gone out drinking the night before with Rodman and was late to his own challenge.  Watching it on TV, I felt really bad for Herschel Walker having to wander from bar to bar with Rodman when Herschel doesn’t even drink.  That looked nightmarish and I think there is going to more footage of that in the 2 hour version on Saturday.  I am definitely going to watch that longer episode with rapt interest.

So, Rodman doesn’t even show up the day of, claiming a dog allergy or a cat allergy or something (he kept changing the story) but I am pretty sure it was just a hangover or an allergy to vodka cranberry lol.  I am not even sure if Rodman raised any dough for the men.  It seemed like a logical firing to me (obviously since I bet Brande) but I was wrong because I didn’t know till right at the end that Tom had not even raised any money as PM.  I think it was a big mistake to be PM on a money raising challenge and not raise money yourself.  From last season I had seen that was an almost sure way to get fired.  I was so surprised Tom raised no money because he had raised a ton of money on the first challenge.  But he may have blown all his resources right away.  Tom said, as a defense in the boardroom, that he was taking a non-traditional approach to being project manager.  I guess by non-traditional he meant letting Rodman wander around the NYC bar scene, then joining him late into the night the day of his challenge and not raising any money on a money raising challenge.  Yes, non-traditional, but not the perfect recipe for sticking around in the game.

I think Trump had a tough choice between Rodman and Tom.  Do you fire the guy who doesn’t even show up?  Who should have been put in a wedding dress to promote the event and bring in business since that is what he is already famous for?  The guy who refuses to answer the door when his PM is trying to get him up in the morning?  Or do you fire the project manager who defends that guy?  Who enables the behavior by going out and drinking late into the night?  Who shows up late himself, hungover?  And who raises no money?  I think that whichever way Trump had gone on this one he would not have been wrong.  I mean who else on the men’s team would you fire?  Clint who brought in $35K? Herschel who not only raised a ton of money but was forced into the baby sitting role for Rodman?  Brian and Jesse who did nothing wrong and worked hard the whole challenge?  I mean, just the fact that they showed up should save them from being fired.  So Tom or Dennis.  Flip a coin.  Trump chose Tom.  Right choice.  But I would say the same thing about Rodman too.

So, Team Athena.

Okay.  So I am hardly in this show…yay!  After the last two shows I was really happy to be in the background.  That was actually part of my strategy.  I wanted to come out on the early challenges and get noticed by Trump which I felt was very important since I am definitely one of the least well-known people on the show.  Because of that I wanted to make a little noise, backed up with hard work and fundraising of course, right away.  But I also planned ahead of time to change gears after accomplishing that goal and lay back for a while.  I mean work hard, raise money but put my head down.  In poker changing gears is a very important concept.  If you establish a loose, crazy image you can leverage that to your advantage by changing gears for a bit and playing tighter. Or vice-versa.  Players at the table will still give you credit for being wild and will misplay you because of it since it takes them a while to see the gear change.  In most games changing gears is a very important strategic play and this was my first chance to execute that. I was planning to do that on the Zappos challenge but the chaos in the room really forced me to make the choice between risking losing the task or sticking my neck out to get Khloe to step up and divide up the room.  I chose the latter, pissed people off in the process (particularly Joan) but Athena won the challenge so I feel like I made the right choice there.  But now I had a chance to do what I meant to do in task 2 and lay back.

First, I was really happy Brande was project manager on this one because she and I had really bonded by this point and were good friends.  I might have even nudged her a little in the direction of PM (wink wink) but in doing so I promised her a would raise a ton of money for her.  Having Brande as PM was really going to help with with my no conflict strategy for the episode.  Plus, I just really wanted Brande to get the W because I was very much rooting for her by that point.

Natalie Gulbis (another player I was totally rooting for) and I spent most of this challenge together.  I had lunch with Natalie this weekend and she told me that Brande had asked her to go off with me to do the task of getting the fliers designed, printed up and handed out around NYC because, as Brande put it, Natalie was the only one who didn’t hate me!  Ha ha!  Very smart move, Brande, because that was true at that point.  I think Natalie and Brande WERE the only ones who thought I had some redeeming qualities! That I was just too direct and too tough and too head strong for my own good but that I also worked hard and really cared about keeping my team out of the boardroom and had no ill intentions or mean spiritedness to what I was doing.  I love those chicks and I love that Brande saw what was happening and sent me off with someone who I had a good relationship with.

Natalie and I went off as a team and took care of the fliers and the printing and what not (of course fundraising all the while by making phone calls).  When we first went off to go to the printer Natalie and I had a great chat where I was talking about how most of my team hated me.  I said at the time that my main goal right then was to figure out how to not piss everyone off (particularly because I actually liked the people on my team at that point in the game).  I wanted to be a TEAM.  It was hard (even if it was part of my strategy) to feel such animosity and I really worked this whole episode on just trying to repair relationships.  It was a good lesson for me to learn how to soften up my communication and learn to come at people a little more sideways rather than right directly in their faces and I think I really grew a lot in that way. Changing gears really worked out well for me here. Not only was it personally important to me but also strategically key.

Natalie and I also had some amazing personal conversations about being women sports figures.  I mean, obviously, she plays an actual sport and I play a “sport” but we have a lot in common in that way in terms of that and it was really nice to talk with someone who lived a similar life.  Natalie is a really sweet girl but she is also really together on her career and how she manages that and her business life.  She is so sharp about that.  Impressive, really. I also got to learn about how she started playing golf. Her family didn’t have money and her dad used to work nights.  He was an avid golfer so the only way that Natalie really got to spend quality time with him was to go out and play golf with him whenever she could.  It became clear pretty early that she was super talented and her family started focusing on nurturing her golf.  She played her first pro event as a teenager!  So crazy.

Anyway.

Phew! Because this week was just about fundraising, I knew I could lay back more this episode because I had no opinion about how to sell wedding dresses and I knew this episode was just about making phone calls to raise money.  That I knew I could do…quietly and with my head down.  So I immediately called my friend, Perry Friedman.  He is in a really serious relationship with his girlfriend, Robyn, and I thought now there is a guy who needs a wedding dress!  Perry lives on the west coast so I called him and he booked the red eye to get there in time to by a $10K dress for Robyn (who looked beautiful!).  Perry also tried a dress on because he was acting as proxy for my friends Rafe Furst and his fiancee, Laura (who just got married in March.  Congratulations!) so he needed to buy them a dress too.  Rafe was traveling around Europe but he agreed to buy a $5K wedding dress and Perry was nice enough to front him the dough (they are good friends).  Perry looked ravishing, by the way. I brought in another $20K on top of that for a total of $35K…Mission accomplished!  No arguments.  Raised lots of money.  Done.

Brande Raised a ton of money herself and did a great job as project manager.  Unlike the chaos of the beginning of the previous Zappos task, Brande assigned jobs right away (I was her secretary to start!) and that made the task so calm.  Joan missed the first day but she and Melissa got Preston Bailey to come and fix up our space to great effect.  The space was really pretty (particularly compared to the boys’ space which looked like a warehouse).  Everything was just super calm leading up to the actual sales day.

On the sales day, Melissa and Tionne were total superstars, working with all the girls who came in to try on the dresses.  They were in the dressing rooms, kneeling on the floor, as these brides to be tried on like 10 or 20 dresses each.  They were both exhausted from doing that all day and they were both superstars with that. Natalie got Judith Ripka (the jewelry company) to come donate a jewelry display so the brides could try on jewelry with their dresses.  She also got them to make a pretty nice donation as well.  Khloe brought in really good money, too, by getting her sister Kourtney to come down with a donation.  She obviously was also really good at wrangling the people to come in our store.

Joan and Melissa brought in a $25K check from QVC but I always had a bone of contention with that check.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, totally awesome that Athena got that huge donation.  Amazing for Brande’s charity and I am very grateful to QVC for the check. It was incredibly generous. My problem was that both Joan and Melissa took credit for it.  So Joan said she raised $25K AND Melissa said the same thing.  But that adds up to $50K.  They can’t both take credit for the whole thing, right?  Either Joan raised $25K or Melissa raised $25K or they both raised $12.5K a piece.  I never did figure out which it was because both kept taking credit for it.

One thing that was really interesting for me was to see how much the girls on my team loved this challenge.  I was actually kind of bored to tell you the truth.  Bored because I didn’t see this task as intellectually challenging at all.  I mean it really didn’t matter if we were selling wedding dresses or engine blocks or cupcakes or unicycles.  It was not about promoting the product.  It was about fundraising.  Calling people and getting them to come and donate to charity (which, luckily, my friends are all very eager to do because they are so committed to giving).  But it was irrelevant what the rest of the task was or what specifically we were selling.  That was just window dressing. Or wedding dressing I guess.  So when I was asked about whether or not I liked this challenge in my private interview I said no.  That I had not found it intellectually stimulating at all and was a bit bored (except for the great time I had Natalie).

Now…when we got in the boardroom Trump asked the women what they thought of the challenge and they all declared it was their very favorite one. I thought, “Shit I am in trouble.  I am so weird.” I mean I realized right then and there that I am not your normal kind of chick…but it takes a pretty weird lady to play poker for a living so no surprises there anyway.  I just thought it was so funny that I had spent my whole interview complaining about the challenge and it turned out everyone on my team loved loved loved it (I liked the Zappos challenge much better despite the chaos because it was so intellectually satisfying).

Anyway…made it through another week and repaired some relationships in the process!  I am looking forward to watching the longer version of this episode on Saturday to see more of the Rodman/Green show.  I’ll be back Sunday to give my two cents on the longer version.

As a closing note…yay Perry, Robyn, Rafe and Laura.  I love you guys! xoxo

Now let me just say that I found the boardrooms to be the most interesting and useful part of my experience on the show from a strategic standpoint.  It is in the boardroom that you really get to see the team dynamics, not just of the other team but of your team as well. At some point if you succeed in the game you will have the teams combined and be on a team with some people who are against you at the moment.  So, I watched and listened very carefully during the boardrooms, mainly to get Trump’s perspective on the boys, to see who Trump liked and didn’t like. I wanted to get a bead on who was competent, who was causing problems, who was well liked, etc. just in case I made it far enough in the game where it would matter.  What seemed clear by this point in the game was that Dennis Rodman was causing problems on the team, Herschel Walker was very competent, and Jesse James seemed to me to be the superstar of the team.  I think a bunch of people in the game kind of thought that Jesse was just laying back and trying to fly under the radar.  But I was noticing that he never seemed to have a bit of criticism slung his way and that the parts of the task he was responsible for always seemed to come out excellently…I mean that truck was kick ass and, let’s be honest, the design of the boys’ comic character and costume was much, much better than the girls’ and that was Jesse’s part of the task.

The other thing that seemed obvious at this point was that Tom Greene seemed to be causing some problems on his team in terms of having personality conflicts.  Scott obviously had a huge problem with Tom and Herschel seemed to have issues with him as well.  But, Tom also brought in a ton of money on the first episode and was the most vocal about using a Z in the name of the character for the Zappos challenge.  And he was right.  Clearly Scott did not want to hear it from him and Scott definitely needs to be faulted for that.  Whatever personality issues you have with a person, when they are right you have to be able to acknowledge that they are right and put aside your personal differences in favor of success in the business task.  I don’t think there is a place for personal issues in the workplace and that is where Scott really fell down.

Why did Scott Hamilton get fired?  Well, the one thing that seemed to be a no brainer is that if you are designing a comic character to market a site called Zappos.com it should have the letter Z in it somewhere.  As Tom Greene pointed out, EEE is a bra size not the name of a super hero.  Me?  I think it sounds like a well known drug and that, well, doesn’t seem like such a good idea for a super hero name.  The fact is that I think the boys’ comic looked slicker.  The design of the character was kick ass and, frankly, better than ours.  I never did see their marketing plan so I can’t compare those but on look and feel alone the boys would have won.  But that name.  That name killed them.  So whoever decided on that name had to be fired.  Tom, as disruptive as he might have been, was screaming from the mountaintops that the name should start with a Z.  Scott ignored him.  Scott named the character EEE.  Scott got fired.  Exactly the right decision for Donald Trump.

I want to say, though, that I loved Scott Hamilton.  During press week (the week before we started filming) and during the first two tasks I really enjoyed hanging with Scott. He is very funny and he is very, very nice.  In the mornings before the tasks I always gravitated towards him to chat before we started for the day.  So I was sad to see him go because I really enjoyed his company.  He is truly an awesome human being.

Anyway, on to an inside view of what was happening on the women’s team on this task.  Obviously, Team Athena won in the end but getting there definitely had its bumps.  When Khloe was appointed project manager, she did not immediately take the role on well.  For the first few hours of the task she did not take control of the room, mainly in the sense that she did not divide us up into smaller groups.  There were basically three parts to this task:  the first was to design the look and feel of the character, the second was to write the character’s life story and write the comic book itself, and the third was to develop a marketing plan for the character for Zappos.com.  Obviously, the first order of business should have been to divide us up into three groups and that was not happening so instead everyone was screaming over each other to try to get their idea to be heard. Ugh.  It was total chaos and we had deadlines to meet and time was slipping away bigtime.

One of the issues was that Tony Hseih from Zappos was really clear that the character was supposed to be about customer service and company culture.  Zappos is not about shoes just like Amazon.com is not about books even though it started off as a book seller.  Hseih could not have been clearer on this issue that he does not think of Zappos as a shoe company but a service company.  In fact, their slogan is “Powered by Service.”

Claudia really seemed to understand that and veered away from any story that had to do with magic shoes or anything like that.  She suggested a girl who had a drab and dreary life because of bad customer service who is transformed into Mizz Z who’s mission is to deliver great customer service to the world.  I felt like Claudia had the best ideas and asked Khloe if she could divide us into groups.  I also told her that I thought Claudia really wanted to be on the writing team and that I would love to be on that part of the team as well (since I am not artistic).  Khloe agreed that Claudia had the best ideas for the writing, divided us into groups, and everything started to go really smoothly after that, well everything except that Joan got her nose out of joint that she wasn’t doing the writing.  The way it ended up was that Joan, Tionne and Natalie did the design stuff.  Claudia, Melissa, me and Brande did the writing and then we all worked on the marketing stuff too (obviously, with Khloe contributing to and overseeing all of that).

The design team went off to the costume place in Brooklyn and me, Brande, Khloe, Melissa and Claudia stayed to do the marketing materials, write the story and the 4 panels and produce the take away materials.  Claudia got sick around 8 pm and, despite what they showed on the show, I was not upset with her going home.  In fact, I really felt like she should go home.  She was really sick! What I was upset with was that the design team went home at 8 pm.  They finished the costume stuff and did not come back.  And there were still 3 hours left till the end of the night.  Now Khloe told them they didn’t have to come back when they asked her.  But still, they asked to go home and I was really pissed about it because we worked right down to the last minute and needed the help.  The complaints from me that you see on the show are actually about that, not about Claudia who was deathly ill.

I think Claudia did a good job on creating the skeleton of the story.  Melissa wrote the actual panels and did an amazing job, adding some very funny details like when the girl wakes up after being sucked into the computer she has the Z key from the computer stuck in her hair. Melissa also came up with the new slogan, “It’s not just a Dream.  It’s Zappos.com.”  I think that slogan is awesome and Zappos should use it.

Brande was a total superstar on this challenge.  We had all these marketing materials to create and we were having trouble finding a printer who could produce them.  I had someone lined up but then they flaked and I felt like I had screwed that up. We wanted to provide a mousepad with the character on it, create poster boards of the panels, create a little take away comic book for the presentation and some other ancillary materials like word finds and an example of a blog and such for the Mizz Z blogosphere.  We couldn’t do that without a printer, I had screwed up finding one but then Brande managed to find a printer last minute through her connections who was willing to work through the night to get the job done.  Brande totally saved the day on that. That is why you see me and Brande running around the streets of New York to pick up all those materials and put the packets together.

I think after Khloe took control of the room, she ended up doing a fantastic job as project manager and really got the job done. Rough start but great ending.

One thing they didn’t show was how amazing Natalie Gulbis was on this challenge.  She did amazing research on the company before we went into the meeting with Tony Hseih and was really responsible for us knowing in advance that the shoes were not what he wanted to hear about.  She worked her ass off on the previous challenge as well and I am kind of sad that that is not coming through on the show yet.  She really was very committed and did an amazing job on both challenges and I wish that was showing through more. Instead, they just showed that she didn’t like wearing the outfit.  But she did so much more than that on this challenge.

Now, on a closing note, I guess I have to address the fact that Joan Rivers called me an idiot. I don’t really have  a response except to say that it was not my decision who did the writing in the room.  It was Khloe’s.  I asked Khloe if Claudia and I could write (mainly Claudia since she had the best story).  Khloe could have said no. Khloe made the decision based on the ideas that were being expressed in the room, not based on past writing credits or Emmy nominations or whatever.  I understand that Joan wanted to write.  I get that she thinks I am an idiot. But her ideas about the character were not as good as Claudia’s at the point that the decision had to be made.  Did I nudge Khloe to make a decision and get that room divided up?  Absolutely.  It was necessary to stop the chaos.  Did I in any way insist that Joan not be writing, as Joan claimed in the boardroom?  Of course not.

They really didn’t show the full force of the attack on me in the board room. Joan really jumped on me in that room and was clearly very upset that she did not get to write anything and blamed it firmly on me.  I was shocked by that since I did not know prior to that how upset she was.  When Khloe had divided people up Joan did not speak up then.  She saved it for the boardroom. The other thing they did not show was that Brande Roderick defended me in that boardroom.  She was upset that I was being attacked when Joan had gone home at 8 pm and we had stayed right up until that 11 pm deadline and Brande and I had been running around to get the printing finished earlier than the other people on the team in the morning.  It was nice to know that at least one woman on that team liked me because I was really feeling at that point that no one liked me on that team at all.  I felt like I had no idea how to talk to these women and it was not going to get better and that no one on that team was getting me, was getting that I just really wanted our team to win.

I remember that after that boardroom, when I got back to my hotel room, I called up Joe and was just practically in tears.  I told him that I didn’t care at that point if I got fired because the women all hated me and I didn’t know how to fix it.  I told him I thought I would do better on the boys’ team (remember I hadn’t seen any of the footage of what a mess they were!) because maybe I could talk to the men better and they might understand me better. To Joe’s credit, he calmed me down by the end of the talk, assured me I would figure it out and got me back into the mindset of wanting to win the game.  I had my brief meltdown and then Joe got me over it

So watch next week to see if I figure out how to get along with everyone better.  My biggest downfall is always the interpersonal stuff. Sunday will be a one hour episode but then the following Saturday they are going to show a two hour version of the episode which I hear is really funny so definitely try to check out the extended version!

I find it kind of shocking that there is more attention to the poker tournaments I participate in than in the tragedy ongoing in Darfur. Since 2003, nearly 2.5 million people have been forced out of their homes, living in makeshift huts in large, sprawling camps in this western region of Sudan. Up to 400,000 people have been killed according to some estimates.

A few years ago, Don Cheadle and I were having lunch in Los Angeles and started talking about the crisis in Darfur. He had just released his book “Not on Our Watch” and was actively campaigning for more attention and meaningful action on Darfur. I felt that what was happening in Darfur was so horrible, and just said, “Nobody knows what’s going on in this part of the world. We should do a poker event for them.” At the time I thought it would raise around $25,000 or $50,000. This small idea turned into Ante Up for Africa — a hugely successful celebrity-studded series of charity poker events that has raised $2.5 million since July 2007.

This year, I have added Refugees International as one of our partners. Why? Because organizations like Refugees International affect lasting change. Governments can do more to help refugees in Africa and around the world, but that’s not going to happen without pressure.

It makes me even more excited to be supporting Refugees International knowing that the organization is celebrating its 30^th Anniversary. For thirty years, the organization has demanded that policy makers save lives and respond to crises that the world is neglecting. Their work on Darfur is one powerful example.

In 2004, the fighting in Darfur had barely registered on anyone’s radar. However, Refugees International knew that hundreds of thousands of people had fled Darfur and crossed the border into neighboring Chad. They traveled to Chad where they discovered that some of these Darfur refugees were near starvation. Agencies had underestimated the number of people in need and were distributing too few supplies. “Tell the world what is happening to us,” one of the refugees said.

Refugees International did as they were told. They immediately called on the United Nations and aid agencies to address this problem. Within weeks, the number of refugees receiving assistance rose from 110,000 to 200,000.

Since then, through op-eds, media interviews, and meetings with elected officials and aid organizations, RI has continued to urge more action in Darfur. They’ve convinced agencies to increase reproductive health care services for Darfur’s women. They’ve successfully called on Congress to fund a stronger peacekeeping force that can protect people living in desolate camps from more attacks. And today, they’re working to make sure that the U.S. does not forget about the people of South Sudan with their fragile peace agreement – there will never be peace in Darfur if another region of Sudan returns to war.

This is why Refugees International calls itself “a powerful voice for lifesaving action.” And this is why I’m proud to help strengthen that voice.

I mean, here is the thing: I was put in charge of that kitchen because Joan Rivers was doing the decorating of the truck (which, apparently, Melissa Rivers was kind of in charge of as it turns out).  As the person in charge, I made sure we got 1,000 cupcakes baked and iced, cupcakes that tasted delicious and won the taste test (despite Melissa not consulting the bakers about which cupcakes tasted the best before running off to Crumbs bakery).  I raised the most money of anyone on either team.  And, yes, Brande Roderick and I got in a tiff but she didn’t tell me how much she was selling the whole flat of cupcakes for!  I mean, from a poker player’s standpoint, I knew the people wouldn’t actually walk away if they didn’t get the whole flat.  They were donors and they would have taken just one cupcake and given her the check.  I knew we were running really low on cupcakes.  I mean once she told me it was $9K for the cupcakes I gave her the flat but we did run out of cupcakes before the end of the task!  Just like I said!

And just so you know, Brande and I made up right after that fight.  I was really stressed out and tired and right after the spat I told her that clearly the stress was showing in me and I was really sorry I snapped at her.  We made up right away and were actually watching the episode together at the Spanish Kitchen in LA with other cast members and all the crew members and producers and editors.  It was a really fun party and I was totally getting on Brande’s case for being so mean to me! lol!  Brande is awesome, by the way.  She came off totally amazing on the show, clearly working really hard and raising a ton of money on the cupcake task.  She deserved to be called the superstar of the task for sure!  Picking the location outside the Playboy building was genius and thank god for that or we would have ended up in the exact location they sold hotdogs at the previous season and got totally criticized for it.  Brande is a rock star.

Anyway, back to the show…I feel like I was efficient, I ran the kitchen like clockwork and I raised a bunch of money.  I rubbed people the wrong way for sure but, well, I knew that was going to happen.  I have that kind of strong and direct personality that takes a while for people to get.  The flip side is that I didn’t trash talk anyone (in fact I thought everyone worked really, really hard on the task and did an amazing job), I totally gave kudos to the chefs who were helping us (they were completely awesome!  And stopped us from panicking about the fallen chocolate cupcakes), and I worked my freaking ass off non-stop and raised a crap load for charity.  My checklist was accomplished since for sure Trump took notice of me which I needed since he had no idea who I was going into that show.  I always say that one of the most common things my friends say about me, and these are really my best friends who I would lay down in front of a bus for, is that when they first met me they thought I was a bitch.  It takes a while to get my personality I think and I am not one of those people that anyone is lukewarm on.  It is either completely love me or completely hate me.  I figure that just means that I actually have a personality lol.

As for the boys…Oh…My…..God!  How about that Andrew Dice Clay?  I mean if you are going to go on a show like the Celebrity Apprentice then you might want to think about doing some work.  My opinion is that he didn’t really want to be there in the first place so was probably pretty happy he got fired and could go back to his life.  I mean, I don’t think anyone really realizes how tough that show is.  You wake up at like 5 am and work till 11 pm then start all over again day after day after day.  I actually don’t blame anyone for burning out.  I am just suprised someone would want off that quickly.  But I think he got what he wanted so good for him.

And how much do you love Jesse James and Herschel Walker?  How awesome are they?  I think Jesse hilarious.  He seems so laid back but did you see that truck he created?  That was amazing and completely kickass.  It made the girls’ truck look like ass. Jesse seems laid back but that guy can produce some work.  And he is the most honest of anyone I think. When he was asked about the cupcakes he didn’t lie or tried to sugar coat anything (literally since the boys actually tried to sugar coat their cupcakes).  He just said they tasted like ass and you gotta love that guy for that!

I really felt for Herschel in that episode because I can’t imagine what it was like trying to manage Dennis Rodman and Andrew Dice Clay. Those guys just wanted to do what they wanted to do and I don’t think there was any telling them otherwise, no matter what.  Herschel is a really smart guy and runs a really successful business.  He did everything he could, I think, to get that team working together and he brought in the most money on his team.  But if Dennis won’t even come out of the truck onto the street I mean no one can force Dennis to come out to be visible.  Herschel’s hands were tied and I was really glad he didn’t get fired.  I don’t think he in any way deserved to be fired.

One last thing…how do you like the boys’ team name?  KOTU!  OMG!  I couldn’t believe that was their name!  I kept referring to them as team Kotex, which I think they can’t show on the actual show because it is a product name.  but that is what it sounded like to me.  Joe has already starting referring to them as team TOFU!  lol!

Before I sign off, I guess I need to address the Mussolini comment from Joan.  Now, first off let me say that calling me Mussolini is offensive to everyone who was affected by him.  We are talking about Celebrity Apprentice here, a relatively insignificant and innocuous blip in the history of this country.  To compare anything on Celebrity Apprentice to the atrocities of World War II…well I guess I just think that is over the top to say the least.  On a personal note, Joan put me in charge of the kitchen while she went off to do the truck decorating.  I made sure, with the incredible hard work of my teammates, especially Natalie Gulbis, that we got those cupcakes done and that they tasted good.  I also raised a ton of money, more than anyone else.  Between me and Brande we raised enough together to beat the boys’ team just by ourselves.  I know that I was barking out orders (although I always said please!).  But we had 6 hours to bake those cupcakes and, as far as I am concerned, Joan should have been happy about how that kitchen went.  She was project manager.  It was her ass on the line.  She put me in charge of the kitchen.  The kitchen ran like a top.  We won the taste test.  We raised the most money.  Our team won the challenge and she didn’t have to go into the boardroom. I guess in Joan’s eyes that is a bad thing and warrants being compared to one of the most atrocious dictators in recent history.  I my eyes that is extremely over the top.  But, hey, I guess for the rest of my life I can tell the story of how Joan Rivers compared me to Mussolini.  So there is always the bright side!

Well..tune into the show next week.  More fun and hilarity will ensue.  I am sure I will want to kill myself even more after watching next weeks show because I don’t think the snarky crap said behind Annie’s back is going to get any better in episdoe 2!  I am just taking a deep breath, trying to be thick skinned, and reminding myself that this was my game strategy going in and I knew the consequences of that and now I need to live with it!

‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ and host Donald Trump are back with a dynamic cast of brilliant Celebrity business minds!

Last season saw Piers Morgan defeat Trace Adkins to become the first Celebrity Apprentice. But the real winners were the 14 charities associated with the entire cast. Millions were raised and Piers Morgan alone raised more than $750,000 for his charity, The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.

This season 16 new celebrities will be vying for the coveted title, using all their business savvy as they fight for causes close to their hearts.

Once again, it’s the men versus the women as all 16 celebrities compete in business-driven tasks around New York City. They will use their fame, their Rolodexes and their business acumen to win weekly tasks, while ultimately battling with each other to stay out of the boardroom and avoid hearing those dreaded words, “You’re Fired!”