Editor’s Note: Noah Davis was unable to write his column this week due to severe depression over the great hubbub caused by the premiere of the third Survivor installment. His Aunt Gertrude, who has a lazy eye and collects orphaned African swallows, is writing this column.
“My life is real,” Noah mourned. “And nobody is gonna shell out $1 million for me to win.”
The real cause of the columnist’s, my nephew’s, depression is that he didn’t think of a show called Surviving Noah’s Life first.
“Geez-o-flip,” Noah added. “Who knew that you didn’t have to be a lesbian, a stand-up comedian or a former sitcom star to have your own reality show. Who knew all you had to do was survive 40 days in the wilds of Africa eating rice? None of you have had to deal with my mother-in-law’s cooking!”
Noah opens a Word document, clearly at least 2 years old.
“See this? This happened to me.”
Entitled Me Falling Down, it’s a (warning: technical Hollywood term) script treatment that features Noah trying to unload his 6-month-old son (and various sundry infant items) and 67 bags of very heavy groceries from his antiquated Honda, barely big enough to hold 66 bags. Noah repeatedly fell on his face, nearly passed out from exhaustion and had to be carried to his bed by his wife, who had recently feasted on some ripe, luscious fruit.
“Recognize that?” Noah exclaimed. “That’s the first episode of Survivor: Africa, just domesticated!”
Of course, Noah has also come up with the idea for the next installment of Survivor—Survivor: Palm Beach County.
In the last year Palm Beach county has screwed up the country’s presidential elections, trained terrorists how to fly airplanes, and has now become the staging ground for anthrax (the disease, not the band–though listening to the band can be just as deadly).
Talk about your challenges. How would you like to open a stack of mail going from a Palm Beach post office to Sen. Tom Daschle’s office?
Noah also issued the following release:
“I am considering a lawsuit against the producers of Survivor for plagiarism. I believe they copied my life for use as the basis of their program. They feed their contestants only rice for 40 days. My wife has made rice for dinner for the last 40 days. The contestants live in whatever shelter they can build. My roof leaks. The contestants vote each other off the competition. My relatives have voted me out of the Davis family (yet my Mom still calls me at least twice a day–there’s just no winning).
It’s the exact same thing! Except I’ve never fallen face first into my barbecue. At least not that I remember.”
Noah is also deeply distressed over the wide media coverage Survivor has received.
TV Guide, The New York Times and various TV programs have all fawned over Survivor: Africa. Cat Fancy even had a spread on “The Big Cats of Survivor.”
Jeff Probst’s mother must be kvelling. It’s a good thing Noah’s mother doesn’t watch TV, or she’d be all fahklempt.
Actually Survivor isn’t the worst thing on CBS. That would have to be Wolf Lake. (I would have said Danny, but that’s already been cancelled. After one week!)
“You think I can’t write crap for TV?” Noah asked. “I write crap all the time.”
Police Chief Jack: I found three cases in the county of people reported missing, one way or the other, in just this past year: Runaway kid, lost hunter and a tourist who stopped here and never made it home.
Male Officer: Normal stuff. Hunters get lost, kids run away.
Police Chief Jack: What if none of that’s true? What if–what if the wolves got all of them?
Female Officer: We would’ve the found bodies, Jack.
Police Chief Jack: Not if they were eaten. Question is: What kind of wolf would come all the way into town, and what are they after?
— Wolf Lake, pilot episode.
“See,” Noah vented. “I can do that. It’s really bad–a bad idea, a bad plot and bad dialogue. Bad, bad, bad. Just like everything I write.”
