Wednesday, June 14, 2000

11:32 a.m. No time for a nap today, so I will have to wing it on a shred here. But I can do it because -- I am a survivor. I really am. And now I have finally watched the show on TV, and I can already say I am going to be hooked on the thing. Goodby Wednesday outings.

I was hoping against hope not to like it and I've conveniently missed the first couple of episodes, but now that I've seen it, I'm wanting to wail: Show the first ones again, please. These people are my friends! I care about these people ... I want to see how it all began, please.

It's so incredibly gripping, and the most incredible thing, to me, is the filming. The cutting, the angles, the selections. The pacing. It's the best I've seen of this sort of docu-drama. It is so insincerely effortless, and I mean that as the highest compliment. It's semi-staged the way Blair Witch was -- set up a few sticky situations, release the hounds, roll cameras, and collect the moolah.

I even liked the conceit, once I got into it -- there's plenty of Shirley Jackson's Lottery-type drama and all the Banana Republic you could ever want. They're smearing their young lithe bodies with mud! Can you dig it? Applying the mud just like Indian war paint and whooping it up, those scamps.

And just like in real life, they're getting rid of the old folks just as fast as they can. Lucky for me I don't live on a desert island, where my meager wit and complete lack of upper body strength would make me a goner for sure. I don't know enough physics, biology, or geography to make myself useful, let alone valuable.

I can turn a phrase -- how far would that get me?

I don't know too much about what's already happened in the last two weeks, but I read somewhere that they quickly got rid of the complaining old lady, and last week it looked like they killed off a complaining old man. This week, quel surprise, they got rid of the complaining, rationalizing lawyer instead of the ancient grizzled old Navy seal. Nobody likes a complainer. I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm wrung out and writing at 4 a.m.

When I say "they" of course, I'm referring to the desired TV demographic, as represented by the One Each principle: one black man, one black woman, one gay guy, on Christian fundamentalist; one lesbian (maybe), and the rest: cute tousled fetchingly sunburnt bathing suit models. You can never, ever have enough youth or good looks or clever hair.

Because there's lots of corpus Crissy shots: up between the legs as they perform their underwater stunts, straining buttock shots as they pull heavy things ashore, bubba-bubba breasts-to-breasts as the girls hug and give each other high-fives. Plus, they eat rats. You've got to love a show that lets you watch people catching, eating, and actually enjoying little bitty rat joints.

It's enough to make Regis wear a patterned tie.

1:08 a.m. I just went wandering off. I'm back, and I don't even have a coconut. And you know the weirdest thing about the survivor show? It has to be the clean, well-fed looking guy who shows up periodically from the camera group to goad the participants into their next exercise in summer-camp competition. The clues are written on pseudo-parchment. The pieces of paper they use to cast their votes in the evening are pseudo-parchment and they put their paper into a sort of earthen kettle.

So? There's no outside stimulation on the island, I guess, except the camera crew and I guess the boat or helicopter that comes back and forth with all the supplies for the crew catering table. I assume it's a union job, and there are rules for catering services that must be followed even when they're filming people eating rats.

And I suppose there's no sex allowed, and if someone gets hurt I'm sure there is a MediVac unit on pontoons nearby. And then, what about re-takes and camera set-ups and all that electricity that's needed for such an operation? And the constant faxes and money transfers and the Avid machines and what about the native wildlife the group is destroying in its quest to survive?

And make no mistake about it -- it's life and death. Each week each survivor splinters a little deeper into the national psyche. By the end of the ordeal (and I'm not going to ache my head and fuss on the logical impossibility of how the last guy gets "chosen" -- and make no mistake about it: the Last One will be a guy and he will not be the black guy or the gay guy or the old guy.

The cool thing is that the last guy standing will be a millionaire and *then* we'll see how good his survival skills are when he gets back to civilization. Scary ghost writers! Oozing out of your fax machine. Darva! Single again.