Surviving Survivor:
Bill Vaughn's Loose Lips
Notes on Episode Seven: Two tribes bad. One tribe good.

By Bill Vaughn

Pathfinder Video

Say what? Rattana? You mean, the cast members named themselves after furniture? Three weeks on an actual preserve of equatorial wildness and the only nom de sport these turnips could come up with is no more exotic than the wickerwork chairs you can find in any import market?

Actually surprising, however, is the ejection of the alpha female, Gretchen Cordy, the 38-year-old homemaker and survivalist trainer. Gretchen, of course, was a major threat to my man Rudy Boesch, the squared-away 72-year-old former Navy Seal whom I have predicted will triumph as America's most famous new millionaire on Survivor's last episode in August. And so I was not sorry to see her get the boot, to see her tiki torch extinguished.

So what is Rattana's future? Since Ramona and Joel have been voted off—whose names I pilfered from eavesdropped conversations while in Borneo—I no longer have any inside info about who'll get the sack. Now I am forced, like everyone else, to speculate. One possibility is that Rattana will begin the delicious business of turning on the weak, those chronic under-achievers such as Gervase. Or Colleen, who makes the other creatures on Pulau Tiga that suck and bite for a living look like wannabees. Meanwhile, Rudy continues to slide through his days on the island without giving quarter, nor asking for it, although he has entered into an evil alliance with Richard, Kelly, and Susan. "I was 180 degrees out," Rudy said, explaining his sudden political effervescence. "But then I seen the light. If you want to win the money you gotta get dirty."

And what about Rudy's opinion of the merger of the two tribes? "It's a pain in the ass."

So what does he think about the new folks in camp? "Some of the stuff they talk about don't interest me," he groused. "They talk a lot about sex."

And Rudy has already cultivated an attitude about Jenna. "She ain't shut up since she's been here."

Another possibility is that in a dialectical manner an opposing alliance will be formed to challenge Rudy's powerful cadre, which accounted for the four votes against Gretchen. This alliance would probably be composed of Gervase, Colleen, Greg (Colleen's squeeze), and Jenna. If the tribe continues to eat the strong, refuting all theories about the survival of the fittest, its next meal will be likely be Sean Kenniff, the 30-year-old neurologist who wasted hours building a bowling alley on Tagi Beach in an earlier episode. He might avoid this fate, however, if he finds asylum in an alliance.

On the home front, not to be outdone by Richard, I have been giving radio interviews from my office completely nekkers. It was during one such interview, with a Phoenix station, that I heard the voice of my nemesis for the first time. Mark Burnett, Survivor's executive producer, said he considers me "irresponsible" for trying to get the contestants drunk the day I stormed the island.

"Can you imagine what would happen if starving people were given alcohol?" he fussed. Well, viewers of the July 12 episode found out. Sean and Jenna, acting as ambassadors from each tribe, were brought to the sand spit for a high-level conference and sleepover. Burnett's minions laid on four bottles of wine for the hungry negotiators. And what happened next? They drank the wine and got drunk and the next day, oh my God, they had hangovers!

But let's go back to Borneo and my wild cab ride from the Sutera Magellan Hotel in the Sabah state capital of Kota Kinabalu to the fishing village of Kuala Penyu so I could find a boat and sabotage the show. Raj, a hotel doorman, had found me a cab owner willing to drive me 70 miles south through the jungle for 250 ringgits, about $70. This guy was Mr. Suardi, and he had an almost new Suburu with actual seatbelts. The only problem with Mr. Suardi, an Indonesian, was that he didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Bahasa. Our silence as we left the environs of KK was alright with me, because I was busy taking in the scenery. The canopied jungle, the mangrove swamps, the houses on stilts, the children playing a chicken game in which they ran across the two-lane blacktop in front of 60-mile-an-hour traffic, veiled Muslim women wrapped in canary-yellow-and-blue sarongs walking inches from the pavement, the narrow shoulder where it seems that all of Malaysia wanted to be, the dogs, the goats, the chickens, vendors selling melons, old men on bicycles. And then Mr. Suardi got profoundly lost and the pavement turned into rutted yellow clay spiked with rocks, and water buffalo bearing white egrets on their backs refused to get out of the way until we stopped the cab and shooed them off the path. Time passed. The cab began rattling. The jungle began humming. It rained briefly. Then it rained again. I assumed we would be attacked by road bandits and slaughtered. But as you know from reading my article, Mr. Suardi finally found Kuala Penyu and the next leg of Bill's Excellent Adventure would begin.

Next week, more fun things to do in Borneo that don't involve liquor.