Here’s to another upcoming season of Survivor

Dude, I’m tellin ya…….

Yes, I admit it. 

Sometimes I listen to Neil Diamond or Mariah Carey music. Sometimes I watch reruns of Friends. I almost——ALMOST—teared up watching Million Dollar Baby when the girl boxer got paralyzed. And when Edith Bunker died on All in the Family.

And I admit that I am a big-time, rabid fan of the reality show Survivor. It is the grand-daddy of all reality shows. I think this is like the 18th version of the game coming up later this month. Now I know that MTV’s Real World has had more seasons than that. But The Real World has sucked since they booted Puck off of there like 15 years ago. And MTV really, really sucks in general. So to me, Survivor is the king of reality shows.

I like it mostly for the pathetic people and their pathetic arguments and all of the ensuing drama. In one recent season, a guy got his panties all scrunched up over a cookie snack. He implored another contestant to give away the cookie meant for him, so she did just that. And it became a multi-day issue with heated arguments. I’ve seen buddies wrestle on the floor for the final beer. And I’ve seen children throw major tantrums when they couldn’t have a cookie right before dinner. But to see grown adults getting in each others faces and screaming about a cookie cracks my ass up. I don’t know about you.

That one reminded me of a season some years ago where a contestant seemingly smuggled some small candy bars or something on to the game. And their team stumbled on to a wrapper. If I recall, the major issue wasn’t that someone was in essence cheating everybody else who was participating…….the issue was they didn’t share the candy, daggum it! The culprit was getting more substinance than the rest of them! One person got accused and denies it to this day. But they became ostracized and ousted from the game. Their Survivor experience was over because they (or very likely someone else) ate a damn Mars bar. Or maybe it was a Million Dollar bar. I don’t remember. But it may have cost that person a million dollars. The candy bar lived up to its name!

Or how about the season where an overweight, loudmouth, unattractive woman thought that a male in her tribe was doing a little too much “spooning” at night when they were sleeping. Both people acknowledged that they were cuddling for warmth and companionship while enduring such trying conditions. But the woman got it into her head that the man was trying to “get some” and she threw a fit. The truth is, both of those people are lucky that anyone back home wants to snuggle up with either of them. We’re not talking about Brad and Angelina here. It was more like Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince and Weezie on The Jeffersons.

My all-time favorite is when Boston Rob got all doe-eyed and whispered a plea to his ally Lex (one of my all-time favorite competitors) to please help him save his girlfriend Amber. He promised to take care of Lex and protect him if he made the save. Lex complied and very quickly found himself voted off. The smirk that Boston Rob walked around with was priceless. He was one of those younger smart-asses that can stab a friend in the back and shrug it off instantly. People from Boston are tough enough to do that. People from my hometown of Chicago can get away with that shit too. {I also always loved Boston Rob because he would occasionally refer to the smarmy host of Survivor, Jeff Probst, as “Pretty Boy Probst”}.

There’e the season where this ridiculous woman dressed in a Boy Scout uniform the whole time somehow, inexplicably made it to the finals. And instead of selecting the most hated man on the show to accompany her to the million-dollar vote…….she chose an extremely popular and well-liked contestant. She claimed she just didn’t want the jerky guy to win 1st or even 2nd place money. The well-liked contestant that she chose won the million dollars. But she got her wish. The jerk only took 3rd place and won slightly less than she did. But she handed away a guaranteed million dollars because no one would have voted for the jerk to win it all. Those (female) Boy Scouts…….crazy bastards.

My friend and I even sent in applications and video segments toward getting cast on the show. In my video, I told the producers that being a kingpin from Chicago, I would take over the entire island after just a few days like Hitler invading Czechoslovakia. I would elevate myself to warlord and make these people my serfs. And I promised that I wouldn’t take any crap from Probst either. We didn’t get the call.

If they want to send people to a dangerous location with predators lurking around every corner and a real question on whether you will safely make it out or not, send them to Comiskey Park (now US Cellular Field) on the South Side of Chicago for a night game of baseball. Or if they want the contestants to perform a hellacious, almost-impossible challenge……have them try and find parking in the Wrigleyville neighborhood for a Cubs-Cardinals game. You have to be a really conniving, devious, mean SOB to accomplish that most days.

So my sources tell me that another season is about to start soon. Another 14-16 weeks of injuries, inspirational performances, arguments among teammates, and big prize money at the end. Jeez, you’d almost think I’m talking about the NFL kicking off this week.

But this is tougher and rougher than the NFL. This is living in squalid conditions with people you hate and a pompous, well-coiffed TV host stirring the pot all the time.

This is Survivor! Coming soon to a television near you on CBS.