I have had enough of
Survivor the TV show. If I never, ever hear its
theme song again, I would be
the luckiest man on earth. Let me explain: Here in
Fairmont, MN, the annual
county fair is taking place. This in itself is not a bad thing, but for the past month, our local radio station has been preparing for a Survivor-like
contest to happen at the fair. First, they did a usual radio call in to be one of the 106 people to get the chance to be a contestant.
/me switches to an annoying radio announcer voice "When the horn beaps, be caller number 9 to get the chance to be on Survivor at the county fair!!!".
Once they got 106 people, they held a tryouts where everyone had to do army drills. The top 20 "lucky" ones were picked to be the contestants. Now, this week, the game has started with the start of the fair. Fairmont's relatively small population as well as the outlying rural area is completely and utterly enthralled in this Survivor game. The radio station repeats audio clips of the contestants at least once every other hour. At least six times every hour, the Survivor music plays in the backgound of a commercial advertising the fair and the contest. Every morning, the morning DJ goes over what happened the previous day at least twice and the Survivor music is playing in the background then, too. The contestants apparently get two challenges a day, but I have yet to hear of a half-decent, original challenge for them yet. One of yesterday's challenges was to start a fire. After two hours of trying and not being able to start anything, someone just gave them matches.
It is pretty sad, but it gets even worse. These two "tribes" of 10 people are actually locked up in a cage right on the fairgrounds. Imagine this in your head - a barn with all kinds of livestock on show and right next to it a fenced-in area with a large bull and right next to that is another larger fenced-in area with 20 people who haven't showered in a few days roaming around. Supposedly there have actually been people who didn't know about this contest going to the fair office to complain.
Now...It is not like I haven't tried to get away from this annoyance. The only radio station I can pick up in my car that plays half decent music is unfortunately the one putting this on, so I try to bear it on my way to and from work. Work is where it really gets bad, though, because the radio station is the same there. Then, while the Survivor theme music is playing in the background, I can hear coworkers walking by talking about how one of the contestants is going to get voted off soon. It is just too much... Sure, I watched quite a bit of Survivor 1 on TV as well as a little of 2. I loved the parody Survivor2 here on E2. It has gone way too far here in Fairmont, though...
Oh yeah, and the prize if are the last one out of those 20 contestants? A used 1995 Oldsmobile from a local dealership with over 80,000 miles on it. I looked up the Kelly Blue Book trade-in value and it came out to be less than $3,000.