Dancing with the Stars tenth season returns on Monday, March 22^nd.

The list of guy stars include Aiden Turner, soap opera star, Buzz Aldrin, former astronaut, Chad Ochocinco, Cincinnatti Bengals wide-receiver, Jake Pavelka, from the Bachelor series, and Evan Lysacek, Olympic Gold Medal Figure Skater.

The gal stars are Erin Andrews, ESPN sports reporter, Kate Gosselin, reality show, Nicole Scherzinger, one of the Pussycat Dolls, Niecy Nash, host and producer of home makeover show, Shannon Doherty, actress from Beverly Hills 90210, and Pamela Anderson, who doesn’t know her?

Did you notice that the total amount of stars is eleven – five guys and six gals? Do you think the show is stacking the stars for a woman to win this season’s Mirror Ball Trophy? Hmmm?

Brook Burke will be the new co-host replacing Samantha. Wonder if Brook will continue wearing ballroom gowns.  Samantha wore some pretty knock out gowns. Will Brook live up to that standard?

Until later,

Linda

The cast of the upcoming 10^th season of Dancing with the Stars has been announced.

Kate Gosselin, Pamela Anderson – this should be interesting, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco, Shannen Doherty, recent gold medal ice skater Evan Lysacek – I think he’s a cutey, ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews, Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, “All My Children” soap opera star Aiden Turner and comedian Niecy Nash, astronaut Buzz Aldrin who is 80 years old and “Bachelor” star Jake Pavelka.

I’ll be tuning in and hope this season will be a fun one to watch.

 Until later,

Linda

Last night’s Undercover Boss was about the President of White Castle, David Rife. This is a family owned chain of restaurants that has been in business for over 80 years. Once again, you see the boss drive away from his lavish house in an expensive car so he can “check out” what the “little people” are doing. This theme is getting very boring.

What I didn’t like about this episode was that some of Mr. Rife’s decisions were not very good. Take for instance the supervisor in their hamburger-making factory. She didn’t seem engaged with her people. She was acting like a prima donna and not encouraging or helping her people. So what did he do? He asked her to work as a team player more. Excuse me, why didn’t he send her to some classes to teach her leadership, supervision or management. I would have put her on another shift after she completed some classes. I would have promoted the gal, who complained about her, to a supervisor, because that gal seemed to understand what it means to supervisor people.

Then he encountered a manager at one of his stores that was afraid of losing her job because of not following policy and procedures correctly. What a big disconnect between corporate and stores. He really didn’t do anything about it, just said that his grandfather wouldn’t want to hear about this because it’s the people who make this company great. Big deal.

With the usual donation of scholarship money for other employees, this episode was very boring – just like the President of White Castle. He showed no enthusiasm or passion, but seemed to me he was more concerned with the bottom line – making money.

The next episode will be about the owner of Churchill Downs. I hope this one won’t be smelly!

Until later,

Linda

Last night’s Undercover Boss was with the Joe DePinto, CEO and President of 7-11. 7-Eleven is a convenience retail store. Its headquarters are based in Dallas, Texas. The company operates franchises and licenses more than 6,970 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Of the more than 5,900 stores the company operates and franchises in the United States, some 4,550 are franchised.

As a result, Mr. DePinto decided to go out among his franchised stores to see how the employees are doing, what motivates them and how he can make working condition better for 7-Eleven employees. In this episode, we saw some nice people working for his company. His first visit was with a store that sold more coffee than any other store. The reason wasn’t the coffee, it was the employee in charge of making the coffee. This lovely lady was friendly and knew all of her customers by name. Now that is great service! Most of the employees at the stores really did enjoy their jobs and working for the company. Igor who is the delivery person, was the bright spot of this episode. As an immigrant to the U.S. he told Mr. DePinto that he has a great job and living the American Dream. He chose to do this work and is very happy.

This episode seemed to me too rosy. With all the jokes made of 7-Eleven workers, this episode showed normal average working people. All of their stores seemed to work like a well-oiled machine and at the end everyone was happy, happy, happy. This seemed to be staged to me, but it did leave me feeling good about Mr. DePinto. He seemed to care about what was going on and willing to take care of problems, whenever he found one, right away. I guess with over 6,000 stores, he’s making good money. Did you see his house at the beginning of the episode? It’s a multi-million dollar house. I guess I would be happy, happy, happy too.

Next week the owner of White Castle will be featured.

Until later,

Linda

The other night “Undercover Boss” highlighted the President and CEO, Coby Brooks, of the Hooters Restaurant chain.  He went to several restaurant locations and tried his hand at entry-level jobs. He seemed to understand that working in a restaurant is very fast paced but he didn’t realize how demanding the jobs were. A manager of one of the restaurant wasn’t going to hire him because he was too slow – that’s too funny!

The most memorable moment happened when he was an Assistant Manager working with the manager Jimbo. Jimbo is your typical misogynist. He is a disgrace as a manager working with women. He didn’t fire Jimbo. He gave him one more chance to straighten up and be respectful of his employees. I wouldn’t have done that – he would have been gone in a New York minute!

He then worked as part of a marketing team to find out what us regular folks thought about Hooters. He was surprised that most women felt that being a Hooters’ girl was demeaning. He said that he would allow his two daughters to work for Hooters and couldn’t understand this. As a result, he promoted the two girls he worked with to do a positive marketing of the restaurant chain. We’ll see how far this goes.

The bright spot was the lady Manager. All the employees in her restaurant loved working with her. She was encouraging and understanding. Mr. Brooks learned a lot from her and gave her long vacation to anywhere she wanted to go with her family. He also put her in charge of policy making for managers in the company.

Mr. Brooks visited the plant where all the sauces where made. He was boo-hooing about how much his father was loved by all the workers there. However, when his father died and he became President and CEO, the morale of the workers in the plant was low. They didn’t know who he was and what type of boss he would be. Mr. Brooks said that he would make a better effort to frequently visit the plant and talk with the employees there. This part of the program seemed unbelievable to me.

You see I knew beforehand that the Hooter’s chain is reportedly up for sale. The chain is desperate for cash, as business has fizzled. Sales have dropped because of the economy. Hooters tied itself to the business-travel market in some ways, placing some of its 450 restaurants near convention centers and other business meeting sites. Businesses have curtailed business trips and Hooters took a hit.

No matter how much Mr. Brooks showed how concerned he was with employees and plant workers of Hooters, it seems as though he was just enjoying the privileges of being a CEO and President of Hooters. I don’t know why he was surprised about the perception of his Hooters’ girls, it has been there for a long time.

Maybe he will turn the company around or maybe he’ll just sell if off and walk away richer than before.

Until later,

Linda

For those of you who have watched “Deadliest Catch” throughout the past five years, you know who Captain Phil is. He was the salty crab-fishing captain of the Cornelia Marie. He and his two sons Jake and Josh trolled the Bering Sea off the Alaskan coast catching opilio crab.

Captain Phil started working on fishing boats at age 7. He started work 10 years later on a crab boat. When he turned 21, he ran a fishing vessel out of Seattle, making him one of the youngest to captain a vessel in the Bering Sea.

A year ago, he suffered with a blood clot in his lungs and missed the rest of the crab season fishing. This year it seemed he was healthy enough to go back to sea. However, on January 29^th he suffered a massive stroke while in port at St. Paul Island, Alaska. He was flown to Anchorage for surgery.

Unfortunately, today he passed away. The Discovery channel has paid tribute to Captain Phil by saying, “We will miss his straightforward honesty, wicked sense of humor and enormous heart. We share our tremendous sadness over this loss with the millions of viewers who followed Phil’s every move.”  We too will miss him, the series “Deadliest Catch” won’t be the same without him.

He was only 53 years old.

Until later,

Linda

Did you see the episode of “Undercover Boss” on Sunday night right after the Super Bowl? At first, I thought it would be a lame show – BUT it wasn’t! It was very interesting and inspirational.

Waste Management is a huge company throughout North America. The company serves nearly 20 million municipal, commercial, industrial, and residential customers through a network of 367 collection operations, 355 transfer stations, 273 active landfill disposal sites, 16 waste-to-energy plants, 134 recycling plants, and 111 beneficial-use landfill gas projects

The President and COO of Waste Management went undercover to see what it was like out in the “trenches”. He visited several plants throughout the U.S. working as a port-a-potty- cleaner, picking up garbage, sorting garbage and working in a very busy office. What he found was that the people who work for the company are hard working people. He also found that some of the company’s policies and procedures were stifling his people.

Take for example, the administrative assistant who was overworked and underpaid. She spent hours multi-tasking and not seeing any benefits from the company. He changed that around by promoting her to a supervisory position and hiring two more people to do the same job she was doing. Now that’s creating jobs!

He also found that women in the company driving garbage trucks have to use a “pee” can because they are monitored during their routes. Now for a man that’s no problem, but for women – a different story. As a result, he put the woman he rode with in charge of finding solutions to women working with Waste Management.

Finally, and I like this one, he had an operations manager at one of his plants that docked employees two minutes for every minute they punched in late. There wasn’t a company policy on this one so the operations manager was “gently” reprimanded and his policy was abandoned.

The next episode on February 14^th will feature the CEO of Hooters. This should be interesting. Wonder if they will cover the guy who wants to be a Hooters girl?

 Until later,

Linda

DONNY OSMOND!

Congratulations to Donny and Kym for their outstanding performances and gaining the love of the fans. I wonder if all of Utah voted for Donny?! No matter, he was the only one that showed great performances, showmanship and truly progressed as a great dancer.

A hint to all the women stars who want to win: quit your whining and just perform. We don’t care if performing on Dancing with the Stars took your personal life away, heck you are paid for this don’t you? We care that you are doing the best you can, improving every week and having lots of fun that shows in your dance routine. As most improved I would agree that Kelly Osbourne should win a prize for that. Hope she keeps up the positive attitude and starts enjoying life.

Last night’s show was two hours long. At least they broke it up with some nice entertainment. Whitney Houston performed. I wish she would cut her hair so we can see her eyes, she looked like a sheep dog! Then there was the Loser’s Club that was a fun parody.  Tom Delay’s Texas Two Step was okay but it was nice to see that he could dance again. I didn’t care for the dance segment with Joanna Krupa and Cloris Leachman, Jerry Springer and Steve Wozniak. I thought it was dumb. I would have rather see Joanna and Derek dance the Waltz again.

The most fun segment was the battle of the football stars. Michael Irvin and Jerry Rice danced the Paso Doble with their partners. I totally agreed with the judges that Michael Irvin won the dance. But the judges were politically correct and felt like no one goes home a loser so they awarded the “Mirror Ball Ring” to both stars. Michael for his dance and Jerry for his body. What can I say?

Once again, congrats to Donny, this time I know that the fans got it right – you and Kym deserved the Dancing with the Stars Mirror Ball Trophy.

Until later,

Linda

After ten weeks of entertainment from our stars, the Final was fantastic. The stars did a Latin dance, free style and mega mix. Here’s how they did:

Mya’s first dance was the Paso Dobla. I thought it was okay but the judges loved it and gave her 30 points. She also came in first in the Mega Mix where all the stars danced together three dances, a Waltz, Jive and Samba. Her Free Style dance wasn’t all that terrific and finally the judges agreed with me, she didn’t shine in this dance at all. At the end, her total points were 87 and she is first in the leader board.

Kelly Osbourne danced the Argentine Tango and I thought it was fantastic. Her lines were great and she seemed to have gotten into the dance, but the judges gave her no love with a measly 26 point. She came in third in the Mega Mix and her Free Style wasn’t very good. It seems she got lost in embarrassment by her many missteps and didn’t perform very well. The judges gave her 24 points. Her total points were 76 and she is third on the leader board.

Donny Osmond is a true entertainer and a professional. I loved his Cha Cha Cha that included a Disco flavor. The judges gave him 27 points. In the Mega Mix he looked just as good as the professionals dancing but came in second place. His Free Style brought down the house. Showmanship, flair and lots of fun. Carrie Anne said that his Free Style is in the Hall of Fame of Free Style dancing. I totally agree. His final points were 85.

It seemed that the judges were favoring Mya throughout the night. But when Donny danced the Free Style, this convinced me that he should win the Mirror Ball Trophy. What changed my mind? Mya said something tonight that I didn’t like. She said that she worked very hard and gave a lot of personal time for this show. Well boo hoo, so did all the other dancers. Donny is a true professional and a star and his attitude – he never complained about the time and effort he had to endure – should win the trophy.

We’ll see tonight.

Until later,

Linda

Tonight’s Dancing with the Stars results show was shocking! Joanna Krupa was eliminated. Come on people, she has more class in her little pinky than Kelly Osbourne. Joanna was a much better dancer and should have competed in the Finals.

This Result Show was terrible. It started off with a dance group dancing to a tune – “Be Italian” – it was aweful! Sleazy, dancing and definitely not PG. If my granddaughter would be watching, I would have turned the channel. What’s up with 6 women all dressed looking like hookers and one man throwing them around like rag dolls. That’s not dancing, that was pathetic and should not have been shown on TV.

Then Alicia Keyes performed – what was up with those thigh high blue boots?? And those dancers should have gotten a room! Another aweful performance.

The only fun performance were the Bee Gees. They rocked and it was fun watching Melissa Rycroft dance with Tony even if it was for only a minute and a half.

The finalist for next week are Mya, Donny Osmond and Kelly Osbourne. I can’t believe it. This show has definitely gone down hill in a short time.

Until later,

Linda