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Must-see morning clip: Gary Busey’s commencement speech

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:34:00 +0000

Jimmy Kimmel called on actor Gary Busey to deliver a catch-all commencement speech for any college student whose own was lackluster.

Surely, college students facing a bleak job market will find inspiration in Busey's advice: "How do you find your passion? With your left hand."

Classy.

Gary Busey auditions for reality show on Mars

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:13:00 +0000

On Jimmy Kimmel last night, Gary Busey showed his audition reel for Mars One, a reality show that it being planned by a non-profit organization in order to create a settlement on Mars (for real). It’s basically a one-way trip to Mars, where apparently viewers at home can watch the participant expire. In space.

Good times.

Anyway, Busey’s audition reel is hilarious and kooky and everything you’d expect from a Gary Busey audition reel for a one-way trip to Mars. “I don’t let anything get me down,” he says, “because I am positive. If you’re not positive, don’t go to Mars, because you’ll get trapped in your own eating habits. When you find yourself eating part of your calf muscle, you should not be on Mars.”

Wise. Insane. Busey.

Inside the “Celebrity Apprentice” charities: The good, the bad and the defunct

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:10:00 +0000

“The Celebrity Apprentice,” viewers are constantly reminded, is about charity.

The celebrities competing for the approval of Donald Trump can get big cash payouts for their favorite charity. Each episode sees corporations, celebrity guests, or private citizens putting up money that ultimately goes to whichever competitor managed the winning team.

There’s no way for General Motors, or for the celebrities and civilians hit up for donations, to know exactly where the money will go: that’s decided toward the end of the episode. Indeed, last season’s premiere saw model Patricia Velásquez deeply upset; she’d worked with fundraising contacts to raise money for a charity with which she was deeply associated, but because her team lost, the money all went elsewhere.

And some of the charities, according to an audit of selected charities performed by independent evaluator Charity Navigator at Salon’s request, may be less-than-ideal custodians of charitable donations. While many of the charities are unimpeachable, future donors might still pause before throwing money at “Apprentice” before knowing where it’ll end up. (We reached out to Donald Trump's camp to ask about how they vet charities for "Apprentice" and have not heard back.) Here's a look at some "Apprentice" charities that we flagged for Charity Navigator's review -- and that fell short of the evaluators' best practices.

Trump, rejoice! “Celebrity Apprentice” ratings slightly up

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:20:00 +0000

After Donald Trump's "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" got off to a weaker-than-usual start this season, we speculated that his political advocacy might have damaged the series (on which he doesn't appear, much, but for the very beginning and the end of each two-hour episode).

Instead, after Trump's speech at CPAC at the end of last week, in which the real-estate magnate took Mitt Romney to task for not talking enough about his success, "Celebrity Apprentice" improved from the previous week both overall and in the prized 18-49 demographic. Indeed, the series won the 10 p.m. hour among that demographic by the largest margin of the season against "The Mentalist."

With just about everything else at NBC flatlining, Donald Trump -- and competitors including Dennis Rodman and Gary Busey -- shall stay employed for weeks to come.