Regular viewers of The Celebrity Apprentice know that last week Penn Jillette was fired for choosing a perfume slogan nobody liked. The fact that he also did all the rest of the work on his team, work that everyone did like, didn’t seem to figure into the decision as project manager Clay Aiken successfully argued to keep his job and got Penn fired by Donald Trump instead. Penn, who doesn’t actually watch the show, responded this week by unleashing a music video.
It’s called “Clay Aiken by Penn Jillette” and it features Penn singing about how ridiculous the whole Trump experience is, juxtaposed with comparisons to real people who do actual, hard work… mostly working in sweat factories making iPods apparently. The video features, in addition to Jillette, many of his also fired but generally competent Celebrity Apprentice co-stars. Watch…
Since the song was written by Penn, and given the tension between Clay Aiken and Penn Jillette on the show, you might assume the song's title is meant to take shots at Clay. But "Clay Aiken by Penn Jillette" is not really written that way; the tune and the video seem geared more towards making fun of the entire experience and taking equal opportunity jabs at both Penn and Clay for their part in the silly feud they became involved in on the show. Penn recently revealed on his podcast that he even asked Clay to sing the song with him as a duet, and while Clay initially said he’d do it, the American Idol runner-up and current Celeb Apprentice frontrunner changed his mind shortly before Penn recorded.
So instead of Clay dueting with Penn (which would have been epic) we got cameos from Apprenticers Tia Carrere, Adam Carolla, Debbie Gibson, and Dee Snider. If you’re wondering why some of the iPhone screens were blank at the end, it’s because the video isn’t actually finished yet. They plan to add in more cameos from Penn’s fellow fired Celebrity Apprentice co-stars. Expect, for instance, to see Paul Teutul Senior in the final version.
While Penn isn’t the best singer, he makes up for what he lacks in actual vocal ability with enthusiasm. It’s just a shame Clay wasn’t willing, in the end, to jump in and join in the fun of poking fun... and since it's fun, here's Penn singing along to his own song in his podcast studio...
