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Archive through September 18, 2002 25   09/18 02:00pm

Fruitbat

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:01 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I am discussing a wardrobe problem in Advens folder if you care to join me.

Car54

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:09 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I saw that. Doncha hate it when you are really committed to a style and they change it without asking you?

Fruitbat

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:13 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I am in a full out twit about it. They were perfect!

Grooch

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:19 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Ken is going to win!

That's my speculation for the day. :)

Fruitbat

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:24 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I may hold you to that until the end. It all depends on how fast I can find another style of jeans to love. My mood is dependant on that right now.

Car54

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:27 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Which one is Ken? Is he the cop? I like him...he will probably open his mouth and p*ss me off, tho...that is what always happens...I get an impression of them and they turn out to be totally different.

Fruitbat

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:34 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Yep. Cops can be tricky ones.

Grooch

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:37 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
But Steve from the mole was good. :)

Car54

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 02:41 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
But I was CONVINCED for that entire show that HE was the Mole. Damn him.

Fruitbat

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 04:00 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Seeeeee? He did that to you because he was a cop.

Tess

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 04:29 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Am I completely stupid? How do we find out which tribe these people are on? I went to the CBS site and read about them, have my picks ready but I have no idea which people are on which tribe.

Cathie

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 06:44 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I've found tribe members listed on three different sites, Tess, but they all have different lists! Obviously someone doesn't want us to know...so frustrating!!!

Tess

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 07:25 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
See, that's what I'm finding out also. So the first week is just a guess. Well, phooey diddle!

Twiggyish

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 08:19 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I went out on a limb and picked John at surviivor for the boot and Clay here.

Meme9

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 11:00 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
OMG, I don't even know the names or the faces yet!

Thats on my list of things to do in the morning. Why can't they give us a week between BB and Survivor. Ok the was just a little vent...I'm really glad it's survivor time. hehe

Weinermr

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 11:10 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I picked Ghandia. Don't ask me why. I might change tomorrow if someone comes up with something better.

Tess

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 - 11:21 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I picked Ghandia out also. I have no clue why. I think I read somewhere here she was grumpy at some point. Heck of a dective, huh? :)

Car54

Friday, September 20, 2002 - 01:10 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
From the Philadelphia Inquirerer:

The crew that strives to keep 'Survivor' thriving

KO TARUTAO, Thailand - Eight little boats, many carrying tens of thousands of dollars worth of audiovisual gear, bob in the building waves next to a large, rusty scow and two brightly painted long Thai boats bedecked with banners. They look like giant canoes.

Everybody - camera and sound people in the little boats, more than 50 passengers in the rust-bucket, 16 fresh-faced contestants in orange and purple scarves eager to defend the honor of their new tribes - stares at a man trying to fix a bracket in one of the canoes so that the very last pole for the very last banner will fit in it, and the first race to see who will be the ultimate Survivor in Thailand can start.



"Problem-solving is what it's about," says unit manager Dick Beckett, the man in charge of all the logistics - transportation, housing, sewerage, power - back at base camp. "If necessary, we will get a square peg into a round hole."

Beckett is but one of the key roustabouts in the globe-trotting circus that is Survivor, a TV sensation that goes to the rugged ends of the earth to delight an audience of more than 20 million who sit, snug and comfy, chomping Chee-tos and sipping soda, in front of TV sets across America every Thursday night. The fifth installment, Survivor: Thailand, begins at 8 tonight - if that guy can get the flagpole in the hole.

He's part of a crew numbering between 325 and 350 (a quarter Aussie, a quarter Yank, three-eighths Thai, and one-eighth other nationalities) that has been assembled on this 180-square-mile, mountainous, jungle-choked tropic isle, whose name means "old, mysterious and primitive" in Malay. It's 15 miles off the coast of Thailand and five miles north of the Malaysian resort island of Langkawi.

There are 20 people behind every Survivor contestant: artists, carpenters and set designers; all manner of technical wizards from cameramen to editors; producers; office workers; cooks, cleaners, bartenders and mechanics; medical personnel; crack rescue teams from Australia's National Underwater Marine Agency; security guards; helicopter pilots; even a psychologist to counsel contestants when their teammates boot them out of the game.

Getting them here and maintaining them is a tremendous effort, carried out by men and women who do it partly for money, but mostly for the challenge. For many of them, it's the fifth time they have set up a modern TV production shop in some remote location.

Every end of the earth is different, presenting its unique problems. A big one in Thailand is the weather. April is the hottest month, with 90 percent humidity and average daytime temperatures pushing 100 degrees. In mid-June, just when the 39-day competition begins, the monsoon hits and the temperature dips a bit, but everything gets soaked. It's hard to keep anything working. Simply having done Survivor in one place does not make it easier to do it somewhere else another time.

"It doesn't get any easier, but it doesn't get any harder," executive producer Mark Burnett says as he rides in a van along the treacherous one-lane road that stretches about eight miles from the base camp to the long pier, at the end of which 80 people have worked to build the glitzy, gilded, gold-leafed Tribal Council pavilion that resembles a Thai temple. When the tribe speaks in this Survivor, the victim will be leaving in style.

The island is large, and the camps of the two tribes more than 45 minutes apart by water, inaccessible to each other by land. One tribe will go to the dreaded council vote-off venue by boat. The other will abandon the wilderness, load into a white minivan with blacked-out windows, and be driven half an hour to hear its fate.

Two days before the first Tribal Council, it's hard to park. As the production's helicopter circles, seven vans, five pickups, three Jeeps, one dump truck, and one Polaris all-terrain vehicle with six bulbous tires choke the little road. To the side sit a portable tent with scores of paint cans, two large generators, and a 20-foot shipping container filled with lighting equipment. A lighting scaffold rises more than 100 feet against a cliff. Its beams will light up the green, orange, red, blue and gold council site.

Survivor owns 32 of the 20-foot steel containers, which have a capacity of 1,177 cubic feet and a maximum payload of 47,881 pounds. It fills them with all sorts of stuff and ships them around the world.

Two containers - one refrigerated, one a freezer - bring fruits, vegetables, meat and other things to eat to Tarutao from the mainland every two days, unless the barge gets grounded and has to wait for the tide to come back while the ice cream goes soft (which happened early on), or unless the monsoon brings seas that are impossible to navigate (which happened later on).

Loretta Watson, the caterer, isn't sure how many pounds of food come in each shipment, but the crew works hard, and there are mounds to eat at every meal. She has 30 people, "mostly locals," working, and the Thai food is delicious. But Watson knows her customers.

"Not everybody likes spicy Thai food," she says. Perhaps the best french fries in Asia were served on Tarutao from the middle of April until the end of July, when the crew was there, and it may have been the only place in the world where you could get ginger-spiced Thai duck and hamburgers at the same meal.

"I get the minced meat from Hat Yai," says Watson, a native of New Zealand, speaking of south Thailand's commercial center, one or two days away depending on tides. "I make the hamburgers myself."

Willie Nelson and Tom Waits play over the dining area's music system at lunch.

The music is a little more raucous at night at the bar. A drinking establishment, with pool, Ping-Pong and foosball, has sprung up out in the woods, about 500 yards from the nearest camping area, with colored lights strung from the trees and Christmas lights hanging over the bar. You can get a cold glass of Carlsberg and with it a shot of insect repellent/sunscreen/moisturizer from the one-gallon squirt jug that sits on the bar. Repellent is a requirement 24-7 to keep the billions of bugs at bay.

Watson doesn't make it out to the bar often. "I usually get up at 3:30 a.m. and go to bed around 8 p.m.," she says. "I've got to have my sleep."

Like almost everyone else, Watson sleeps in a tent. (A few of the big shots have air-conditioned cabins.) And everybody uses the toilets that were already on the island as part of Tarutao National Marine Park's primitive facilities.

That's a bit of a problem.

Survivor normally brings along two Enviroflow units, self-contained sewerage systems in 20-foot containers. "They're very, very sophisticated, very, very impressive, a dream," sighs unit manager Beckett, an impish-looking man with stringy shoulder-length curls, a slightly graying beard, Mephistophelian eyebrows over oval glasses with red frames, and an earring. "Our two units cope with up to 500 people."

But this time, Survivor left the sewerage plants at home. The Thais assured the production that the park facilities were adequate.

They weren't. A large septic-tank-cleaning truck had to be ferried out and driven over the mountainous track from the pier to base camp.

Locations manager Robin Hollister, a Kenyan, tells the story: "It runs down the road, sucks up everything, but can't get back up the hill.

"Because it's full.

"And so you've got many liters of [waste] perched on a hill, rolling backwards at 2 o'clock in the morning because you're trying to do it all in between normal working time. Unit department is up at 2 in the morning, hauling the truck up the hill with a bulldozer."

Beckett, the unit manager, an Englishman who set up shop in Australia years ago, grins when the incident is raised.

Hollister calls him "the grand architect. He manages to make all of this just sort of happen out of nothing. He's a genius."

Beckett explains, "There's an illusion about our show that there's a kind of routine, and there is, structurally. But in fact everybody goes out on every single day and winds up in a slightly different situation. You don't know what the sea's going to do. You don't know what the weather's going to do. I don't know if we're going to get a typhoon tonight and lose 40 tents."

And he smiles again.

"There's a question of survival for every department in this show. Keep your morale up. Keep your momentum up. It's not just about dollars and cents. We do it because it's challenging. It's as challenging for me as for the people who are going to win the million bucks."



The banner pole is finally secured. Host Jeff Probst explains the challenge, the first of 24 that viewers will see in the next 13 weeks, to the Survivors, the last one of whom will win $1 million, as the seagoing cameras, and the waves, roll. Beneath them, a scuba diver secures the two race boats in starting position. A huge black cloud approaches. The wind picks up drastically, blowing the scow to a different position. Cameramen and sound people scramble to move equipment, avoiding deck areas that are so rusted that the workers would fall right through. The heaviest rain that the crew has encountered since arriving two months before in April begins to pour. The Survivors start paddling madly as the first challenge starts.

"Only 23 more to go," Burnett cracks.

Car54

Friday, September 20, 2002 - 01:28 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
From TV Guide.com

Sex and Fisticuffs on Survivor: Thailand!
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Enjoy Thai cooking? Here's a spicy recipe for trashy telly-viewing: Toss 16 wannabe reality-TV stars on Thailand's isle of Koh Tarutao, a former penal colony. Set the temperature on "monsoon season," of course, with lotsa grueling heat and humidity. Strip down these sexy golddiggers — whose number includes Brian Heidik, a soft-core porn actor. Now, we grill exec producer Mark Burnett — who figures all that ought to satisfy you — for the sizzlin' lowdown on this season, and future Survivor installments. So strap on a bib and read on... — Daniel R. Coleridge

Producers knew about Brian's X-rated past: "Oh, totally," says Burnett. "We knew and the appropriate people at CBS knew. The guy had been in other respectable acting roles — and like many actors, he chooses to leave certain things off his resume. He became a used-car salesman, so I don't know if that's an up move or a down move! We told him, 'You know what, dude? Everything comes out on this show, so you better be prepared.' He said, 'Okay, I'll deal with it when the time comes.' As we predicted, it came out." The other Thailand players didn't find out until after the game, though, so Brian's skin flicks don't affect his chances.

The tribes will be formed in a new style: "As you can see from the promos, it looks like it could be split down gender lines... No. In fact, the tribes are not split down gender lines." Still, Burnett adds, the premiere's first five to eight minutes will contain a surprise season-starter you've never seen before.

Tension turns to violence between tribemates!: In episode three, things "get a little physical. For the first time, we allowed physical contact in a challenge and it got a little out of hand — you'll see. [Host] Jeff Probst started feeling like he was refereeing some combination of [the NFL and WWE]! Tensions run really high when big rewards or immunity are at stake, and you've got a bunch of guys with too much testosterone running around. Trust me, it makes good TV!"

In the future, Survivor may get a frostier setting: Since half the fun of Survivor is ogling the cast of cuties clad in next to nada, can this show survive sans tropical heat? "Regarding cold weather, don't write that off so easily," says Burnett. "I joke around about bathing suits, but I'm truly considering Tierra del Fuego, which is at the southern tip of Patagonia — the ends of the earth. Or the Himalayas, but there's some problems with Nepal right now. There's no question we could do something not on an island and not necessarily in a warm climate... Iceland would be a beautiful location."

An all-star Survivor still is in the works: Burnett says he plans to bring back previous players, but they won't all be past winners. Like who? "I haven't chosen but, I don't know... Rudy, Sue Hawk, Colby, Jerri, Cathy, Sean, Boston Rob. I want to wait a little longer, so there wouldn't be unbalanced voting-block majorities from any one season. You don't want everyone from one season to band together and [the outcome] becomes too obvious.

Blame Canada!: If certain legalities could be ironed out, might Canadian citizens be eligible as future Survivors? "I will ask [CBS president Leslie Moonves]. There isn't any reason going forward that we couldn't include a Canadian or two, because it's so closely aligned to the U.S. They do say 'aye,' but it's not a jarring thing, like putting on a Chinese person from China who doesn't speak English. I'm kind of embarrassed I haven't attempted it before!"

Cc1976

Friday, September 20, 2002 - 03:56 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Do they do personal rewards so early, the third episode? Isn't it still team rewards?

If so, then it was team vs team challenge, so the "fight" doesn't happen because Robb annoys his tribe members.

My guess Ted vs Ken during a challenge.

Grooch

Friday, September 20, 2002 - 05:42 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I say everyone vs Robb.

Pamy

Friday, September 20, 2002 - 08:57 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Did anyone notice the opening credits? Some had water slide across their face, some had fire, a couple had nothing, but John's had water SPLASH his pic!!! LOL