Speaking of beards, the shows Survivorman and Man vs. Wild are quite manly as well. I love watching these shows. Well, they’re not really shows that I mark on my calendar (9:00 Thursdays, Man vs. Wild!). I just made up that time, because I honestly have no idea. I can look up the time right now, as I am on the Internet and I am an Internet researcher extraordinaire, but that would lessen the potency of my point. I don’t know when these shows are on…does anyone really know? I mean, if there’s nothing on TV, I’ll flip to the ol reliable Discovery Channel and see if anything is on, and voila: Man vs. Wild! Hours upon hours of near death experiences, public defecation, and mountain goat attacks are all at my fingertips.
Don’t let what I said above indicate that I dislike these shows. I love them because they teach you how to survive! (note: the findingDulcinea NYC Survival Guide will teach you how to survive in the harshest of terrains). So if one day I went into the wild I will know exactly what to do. But no. In actuality, I watch it to see if they get mauled by that menacing mountain goat. I just saw the movie Untraceable today…you know the one where the murderer kills people on the Internet, and the more people who tune in, the quicker the kill. The movie made a good point: people will watch anything that involves awful things happening to people. That was essentially the point of my earlier post about reality TV, my sadistic girlfriend, and that happy-go-lucky show Celebrity Rehab. By the way, as for my expert review of Untraceable: I would say entertaining, not awful dialogue, and main characters not a pain to the point where you hope they will just get killed by the murderer already. Plus, it’ll make you fear the Internet. I shouldn’t even be posting on my blog right now. I could be an accomplice…to something. You could be an accomplice…(confession: the proceeds of this blog–oh yeah, there are massive proceeds–are going to support Fidel and brother Raul Castro, and their cigar and dictatorial hat-making enterprises).
Oh right…Survivorman, etc. The main thing I have to say about these two shows is how awesome the guy is on Survivorman (Les Stroud), and how slightly less awesome the guy is from Man vs. Wild (”Bear” Grylls). The Canadian wonder Les Stroud is the epitome of a survivorman. He does everything himself, including the filming…of himself. He’s all alone, and he doesn’t care…he’s too awesome to care. In fact, during one episode when he was dropped in the northern snow-covered Canadian wilderness, in subzero temperatures, he actually pretended to break one of his arms! To make the task more difficult! You see, the show was based on a plane crash in the wilderness. Chances are something’s going to be broken in such a situation…so, Mr. Stroud put his arm in a sling, and chops wood, makes a fire, and wrestles bears with one working arm. When Stroud walks around, he even has to place his camera down, walk somewhere to demonstrate what is going on, and then go back and pick up the camera. If I were in trouble and in need of Superman or Wes Stroud, I would clearly take Wes Stroud.
The show is certainly not perfect. Because it is quite “real,” not much happens. He doesn’t get mauled by anything I think. That’s where Bear Grylls and Man vs. Wild steps in. He’s not as cool as Wes because he’s not all alone. He’s got a camera crew with him, and for all we know, he might stay in a Marriott every night. In fact, I feel worse for his camera men then I do for him. They have to do everything that he does, but while holding a camera. In one episode in the Sahara, Grylls sprinted down a sandhill, and the camera man had to go tumbling down after him, with the camera. And he was able to keep superb camera stability. But they get no credit, they don’t get names like “Bear,” or “Mongoose the cameraman.”
Man vs. Wild is enjoyable to watch because it fills the gap of the other show. Man vs. Wild essentially puts Bear in unfortunate situations so he can teach us how to “survive” them. And the show’s pretty funny. In that same Sahara episode, the second he got there he said, “Ok, now I’m going to pee all over my shirt!” How awesome is that! I mean, it’s like he enjoys peeing all over his shirt. He also seems to enjoy eating all the gross bugs. He was demonstrating how a little desert creature burrows under the sand, and then he picked it up and showed us how adorable is was. And then he bit its head off!
So, like I said earlier, we watch these shows thinking that something bad is going to happen…the “Untraceable” effect. Yet, with both of these shows we are always left wanting more, because, well, they always seem to survive. They’re just so pesky like that. That is why for the sake of TV I’m going to put my name out there as a survivor show host. I barely survived college. When I was leaving the island of Curacao for spring break, I left my country exit pass in the hotel suggestion box. When I went to a Giants game, I accidentally left my car running with the keys in the ignition for the entire game. These are just two such colorful examples, which you can learn more about from a column I wrote for The Cornell Daily Sun.
The point is, I would get so many viewers on a survivor reality show. They would have to call the show, “Not Surviving Man,” because clearly I wouldn’t. I’d be so dead–whether it were from Rattlesnake bite, lion thrashing, heat stroke, hypothermia, or slipping and falling out of the helicopter when the TV crew dropped me off. It would be tough to do more than one show, because, well, I’d be dead. But if I somehow escaped by the skin of my teeth after spending many months in an intensive hospital care, that would be the most highly rated second show ever.
there was an actual scandal last season with man vs wild where he and the camera crew were found to be staying at a hotel. not to ruin your article’s speculation or anything but heres at least one source:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2116195.ece
since then my co-workers and i have been calling the show man vs room-service. i like to compare myself favorably to that version of bear grylls. except i get to type at a computer and he gets to eat bugs. lucky sob
also you owe me $100.
Oh by the way, I wrote for some small school newspaper, maybe you’ve heard of it, I don’t know? OH YA, THE CORNELL DAILY SUN!
…don’t forget the time you left your car’s sunroof open during a rain storm. or the time you ate frozen crisco instead of ice cream… or the time you lost that old man…. classic.
[...] apparent reason? Well, I wrote a blog about him in JANUARY (when I started the blog), called “Not Really Surviving Man,” about Bear, and Les Stroud of Survivorman, and who would win in a fight and what not; I [...]
Castnet throwing to catch fish for survival has been around since biblical times. Visit http://www.Theartofcastnetthrowing.com
to learn more.This may save your life if your are a castaway some day (or make you a star on a reality show)