Gabon Cast Revealed

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This is an article that Ken wrote several years ago on a strategy forum analyzing Survivor Borneo.

Sirlin.net — Your source of shocking insights on game design Blog Archive Playing to Win Example: Survivor

Survivor was a 13 part television series on CBS in which 16 people were voluntarily marooned a desert island. Every 3 days they'd vote someone off the island until there was only one left...who would win $1 million. I'm sure you've heard of this.

I only half-heartedly watched the series during its first run, but I watched it very closely when it was replayed during the Olympics. (I find the Olympics and physical sports not strategically interesting.) I found Survivor to be a huge, blazing advertisement for "playing to win." The community on that island so closely mirrored my Street Fighter community that I was shocked. There was one expert player and 15 "scrubs." Richard Hatch, the winner of Survivor, was the only participant who really even played the game at all. He put it best when he said towards the end, "I arrived on this island at the same time as everyone else. We all saw the sign that said ‘Survivor---outwit---outplay---outlast.' That's what I've been trying to do since before I even got here, and the other 15 people seemed to think they were on vacation."

The Game

Let's take a strategic look at Survivor before we talk about Richard. There is only one reasonable, logical way to hope to win such a game. There are not two ways. There are not three ways. There is ONE way: to form a voting alliance. At first, the 16 players are divided into 2 teams of 8. Every 3 days, the teams face each other in competitions called "immunity challenges." The losing team must vote a member off. After 6 players were voted off, the teams merged, forming a single 10 person team. At this point, the immunity challenges were individual competitions, not team efforts. The individual who won such a challenge would be immune from being voted off during the next voting period.

Again, the obvious way to win this game is to form a voting alliance. If you have teammates with whom you coordinate your vote, then you have both the guarantee that their votes won't go towards you, and the power to concentrate your votes on a single opponent. The whims of other players' votes are sometimes hard to predict, but the more people you have in your alliance, the better you can control who to vote off. By doing this, you control the game. Now, you don't want too many people (too difficult to manage, and not self serving enough anyway). Yet you don't want too few (not enough voting power). An optimal number for a game of 16 people might be 4. Once those 4 become the final 4, they should amicably dissolve the alliance and each try to win. This was Rich's plan.

The Players

A four person voting alliance was not something Rich stumbled into, it was his plan all along, starting before he ever set foot on the island. Not a single other player had even considered such a thing. The other players reacted in classic scrub fashion to Rich's plan, calling it "no fun." I was just waiting for someone to call it "cheap." The other players were bound up by their own made-up rules of honor---rules the game has no knowledge of. The game knows nothing but winning and losing. One player said, "It's no fun to sit around and get picked off one by one by an alliance. If that's the way the game is going to be, then I don't want to play." Good. Get off. Why did you show up in the first place if not to win?


Jenna's kids will be real proud that her mother lost.
One player, Jenna, said that she didn't want to be part of an alliance because she wanted her young daughters to watch the show and be proud of her mother when they got older. The supposition here is that she is somehow ethically bound to play in a sloppy, non-strategic way. Rich's response was, "Jenna should make her kids proud by showing that she can WIN. She should be concerned with showing them ‘look kids, mommy has the will to win and this is how you do it.'"

Rudy was an interesting player. He initially found Rich's alliance
You gotta love Rudy.
to be somehow dishonorable, but he joined anyway and he gave his word. Above all else, Rudy keeps his word. Three episodes later, he told the camera that he had "turned 180 degrees," saying that he now believes that the alliance is absolutely necessary and that he'll stick with it until the end. When Rudy was eventually voted off, his parting words to future Survivor players were, "Forming an alliance is the only way to win this game." Yet I believe that Rudy was incredibly lucky that his nature (being true to his word) was exactly in line with what happened to be an important quality to have in the game. After all, if one is to be in an alliance, one must be trustworthy. Rudy had no superior grasp of playing competitive games, but at least he was able to see reason when Rich explained the alliance.

Another notable player was Colleen. She saw her own defeat
If only Colleen acted earlier.
coming. She saw the alliance. She saw she wasn't in it. She saw that the alliance had the power to vote her and every other non-aligned member off. Her conclusion? To form her own alliance. This was exactly the right response, but a case of too little, too late. Rich said, "I find it amusing that people are so naïve as to think they can start playing strategically at this very late stage of the game. It's far too late to start now." In fact, Colleen banded the 3 votes together, and might have gotten Kelly's crucial 4th swing vote, but failed.

Gervase was another true scrub. He initially renounced alliances
Gervase thought alliances were cheap...at first.
saying that he'd never play that way. It's cheap, you know. Once his fate was sealed and he would clearly lose to the alliance, only then did Colleen change Gervase's tune. He said, "Well, we got a new strategy, going to try a something new." He was all excited. He was talking about Colleen's alliance. He was a scrub. Scrubs often delight in feeling innovative and original when they latch on to better player's superior tactics when it's far too late to matter.

[pawpaw]

Brilliant Strategy

It was the last episode of Survivor, though, that really showed what competitive games were all about. Rich's forfeit of the last immunity challenge was the most brilliant move played during the 39 day game. With 3 players left, the final immunity challenge was simply to stand up and keep touching a wooden idol. It would go on for hours and hours until two gave up and one was left. The winner would cast the single vote to remove one of the two losing players. The final two players would then stand before a jury of 9 of their previous colleagues. The jury would decide the winner.

Rich was in a tough spot here, with remaining players Rudy and Kelly. He had a deal with Rudy that they would stick together until the very end. They agreed that if either of them won the challenge, they'd vote Kelly off the island and go to the finals together. The problem is that Rich was well aware that he'd lose the grand prize if he went to the panel of 9 judges against Rudy. Rich was seen as slimy and Rudy, though a bigot, was well liked. If Rudy won the immunity challenge, he'd take Rich to the final 2, but Rich would still lose. That's no good.

If Rich wins the immunity challenge, he's stuck. He can't take Rudy with him to the final 2 (since Rudy would win the final popularity vote), but has to take him (they had an agreement). Rich would be forced to break the agreement and vote Rudy off.

Unfortunately, that means he'd lose Rudy's vote (in retaliation) in the finals. In fact, he might even lose more votes since breaking an agreement is a slimy thing to do.That leaves only one possibility: Kelly must win. If she wins, her gut instinct will be to vote off Rich (she hates him) and go to the finals with Rudy. Unfortunately for her, she'd lose the finals by a landslide to Rudy. Rich's gamble is that Kelly, scrubby as she is, is not dumb enough to go to the finals against Rudy. And if she votes off Rudy and goes to the finals with Rich (her smartest option) then she's done Rich's dirty work for him. Rich is in the final 2 with Kelly (just like he wanted) and he never had to break his agreement with Rudy, so he'll still have Rudy's vote in the end. Kelly had already proven her ability to win such immunity challenges, so it was fairly certain she'd beat Rudy if Rich just conceded.

Even if by fluke Rudy won the immunity challenge, he'd still take Rich to the final 2. So Rich took the gamble and took his hand off the idol on purpose, hoping Kelly would win---and she did. It all worked out exactly like he planned.

Kelly: Star Athlete, Star Scrub

Kelly, scrub to the very end, remarked that Rich claimed he had some reason for removing his hand, but that she knew his arm was just tired.
But Kelly would have her final moment being the queen scrub.
Kelly, Queen Scrub.
In the finals between Rich and Kelly, they were each allowed to give opening statements of why the jury of previously voted-off players should vote for them. Kelly was a pillar of inspiration to scrubs everywhere when she explained that people should vote for the best person, "not based on how they played the game." As a scrub, she had her own made-up rules of the game that the game itself knew nothing about. She was "more honorable" and "a better friend" or other rubbish.
Rich responded by taking the exactly opposite stance, as he well should. He said that entire purpose of coming to this island was to play this game. Kelly asked for votes based on friendship, but that's not what the votes should be based on. Friendship is great and worthwhile, but it's not purpose of the game called Survivor. The purpose of the game is to win. The best player of the game maximizes his chances of winning at all times. In this case, that meant forming an alliance, which Rich did. Rich was basically asking the jury to leg go their mental construct of made-up rules and see the game for what it really was. He asked them to choose the player who played to win. And they did.

More Games

If the players of Survivor 2 actually learned the lessons of Survivor 1 and of competitive games in general, then things will get very messy, indeed. They'll all try to form 4 person voting alliances. If at least two such alliances emerge, then the optimal move is to align two of the alliances to get rid everyone else. Then the 8 will compete as 4 vs 4. Then the remaining 4 would do well to have already planned partners of 2 or 3. This strategy of the shrinking alliance, though (I believe) optimal, is an incredibly tricky thing to manage in actual practice. As I said...it will be messy.

Anyway, Rich may be many things, but he is, at least, an excellent player of competitive games. It's so telling that he was able to beat Gervase in a variety of card games Rich had never even played. If you're out there Rich, I'd be honored to introduce you to Starcraft. (heh.)

[pawpaw]

Survivor Cast Dumb New competitors

Survivor casts "dumb" new competitors
US network CBS has revealed the identities of the 18 Americans who will outwit, outplay and outlast in the next season of Survivor, and there are two very different kinds of champions among the castaways.

Crystal Cox, 29, is an Olympic gold medallist who competed at the 2004 Athens Games, while Ken Hoang, 22, is the current international champion of the Nintendo game Super Smash Bros Melee.

The electric mix of castaways also includes a pin-up girl named nicknamed Sugar, a fashion photographer, a physics teacher, and the usual mix of personal trainers, lawyers and pretty young things.

The new season - Survivor's 17th - is set in Gabon, the first time the long-running reality series has been set in Africa since season two. Host Jeff Probst revealed there will be changes to keep the castaways and viewers on their toes.

"When you go to Exile this time you can either get a clue that will help you find the hidden immunity idol, or you can get 'instant comfort'," Probst told Entertainment Weekly. "The idea was to see if anybody would be dumb enough to choose comfort over the only thing that guarantees you to stick in the game, which is immunity."

Probst hinted that there are some very dumb competitors this season.

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reality blurred + Danny/GC: "Any way I can get in there to get that million, I'm trying to do it"

Danny “GC” Brown was the first Survivor Gabon contestant I talked to, and I was the first reporter he talked to (there were a total of six media outlets there, including CBS’ official publicity crew). Danny is apparently going by “GC” on the show, although in our conversation he referred to himself as “DB” at least once. In some ways, that seems to reflect his search for identity, both in the game and otherwise. He does maintenance for an apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, but he told me that his true passion is music. “I produce beats, I rap, write raps, I record other people. But, that’s really my main passion. I would like to get in the music industry one day,” he said.
As to the game, he didn’t seem to have a clear strategy at all, which is arguably the best strategy for Survivor, but he also doesn’t really seem to have a day-one strategy, which could be problematic. “I’m going to try every angle I can, man. I’m not limiting myself to just one thing. Any way I can get in there to get that million, I’m trying to do it,” he said.
He laughed throughout our conversation, perhaps nervously, but also coming across as if he’s just thrilled to be there and isn’t bothering to hide it because he’s so excited. He’s 26, but came off as a lot younger because he didn’t seem beaten down by the world, even though he has plenty of reasons to be, like being homeless as a child. That’s why Danny ranks in the top tier of my list, because he was hard not to like and came across as completely genuine.
That said, he wasn’t exactly open, mentioning his difficult childhood only in vague terms, and saying he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d share his story with his tribemates. While he wouldn’t give me specifics about the “choices that weren’t the best,” he did discuss how being in boot camp prepared him for the game—and how he prepared himself by doing everything from practicing building fires to not eating breakfast. Listen to him talk about his childhood, game preparation, and name

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She is a survivor |* Woodbury Bulletin

Competitive. That’s Jacquie Berg’s answer when asked to describe her personality in one word. That’s also a character trait she believes helped her land a role on one of the most-watched network television reality shows in the history of the genre: Survivor.

That’s right. The 25-year old Woodbury native, who currently resides in Santa Barbara, Calif., was chosen as one of the 18 cast members who will make up the latest edition of Survivor, which will take place in Gabon, a country on the western coast of Africa.

Filming for the show wrapped up earlier this summer and Berg, 25, who makes a living as a medical device sales representative, said she’s still adjusting to being back in civilization after spending 60 days “surviving” in one of the most remote areas of the world.

Woodbury native Jacquie Berg is one of the people competing in “Survivor: Gabon,” the 17th installment of the CBS series.

“I’m not adjusting to real life as quickly as I thought I would,” Jacquie said last week while at her home in Santa Barbara. “Life in the jungle is actually really slow and when we’re camping out there, besides the challenges, there’s not much to do.”

The 2001 Woodbury High School graduate will have plenty to do as she prepares for the Sept. 25 season premiere of “Survivor: Gabon” the 17th installment of the CBS series. Berg said she’s even planning to make a trip back to her hometown to watch the show with her parents Dan and Sharon.

“She’s talked about coming back to watch a few of the episodes with us,” said Dan Berg. “The whole family is pretty excited, but we haven’t planned anything yet.”

Berg, who applied for the show on whim and a dare from her friend, said she had no expectations when she sent in the self-made videotape audition to the show’s producers.

“I was on the road constantly, and my friend, who had applied for the show before reminded me that if I wanted to apply, I needed to get the tape in soon,” Berg recalled. “So I literally made a video in my car; it was like three minutes. I’m not even sure exactly what I said.”

It wasn’t long after that Berg received a call from CBS producers and was in Los Angeles for a week of interviews.

“I’m not sure what they saw in me exactly, because about 50,000 people applied,” Berg said. “It’s probably because I’m so competitive. I know the show wants to see people doing whatever it takes to win, and I’ll pretty much work my butt off to win.”

Giving props to the home life

Berg said her competitive nature derives from having two older siblings and from her athletic and professional backgrounds.

During high school, Berg was the captain of her track and gymnastics teams and was also on the varsity swim team. She was also on student council.

“I remember I always had something extracurricular going on,” she said. “I was usually at the high school by 6 a.m. for practice and I wouldn’t leave until 6 p.m. because of council or some other obligation.”

Recently, Berg has carried over that will to succeed into her professional life.

After she graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a degree in business administration, she took a position as a medical device sales representative with Medtronic.

The job led her to the West coast and she had received four promotions in three years before she decided to take a break for Survivor.

“The biggest thing that actually sparked me to apply for Survivor was when I was working 80-hour weeks trying for another promotion and my boss was telling me to settle down and not try to do so many things at once,” Berg said. “When the opportunity for Survivor came along I decided to take that chance, so I quit.”

When Berg told her parents, she said they weren’t that surprised.

“They know me by now,” she laughed. “I’ve studied abroad in Australia and always talk about wanting to move to Bali. So competing on a show in Africa, ‘They were like, ‘We’re happy for you. Good luck.’”

Her father said that was just about right.

“We knew she’d be all right,” Dan Berg said. “She’s pretty determined.”

Mum’s the word on outcome

Although her contract with the show won’t allow her to spill the beans on whether she won the $1 million prize, Berg could admit that the trip was the experience of a lifetime.

“Just to be in this beautiful setting, surrounded by pristine wildlife, it’s pretty relaxing,” Berg said. “You get a chance to reflect on everything that’s going on around you, that’s when you’re not competing in the challenges or making and breaking alliances with the other competitors.”

As one of 18 cast members on the show, Berg said she tried to tone down her natural tendency to lead and compete, so as not to become a target for elimination.

“I’m not sure how they’re going to portray me on the show, but I can tell you that they said my character is this sweet, innocent girl next door type, which is good, because that’s not how I am normally,” she said, laughing. “I really tried to play a shy, reserved person because I felt I could win people’s trust easier. In real life I’m pretty outspoken.”

One of the toughest parts of the show, she said, was not the physical aspect of the challenges, but the mental rigors of surviving in the wilderness.

“When you’re in the middle of the competition it’s almost like the twilight zone,” Berg said. “You’ve got cameras around, but the people behind them, they don’t interact with you. You feel like you’re really out there all alone in the jungle.”

“Physically the challenges for me were easy, but mentally it plays on your clarity. When you’re dehydrated and that malnourished, you really struggle sometimes to keep your edge.”

Beyond the African jungle

Berg said despite the clashes that are inevitable between competitors, she and her cast mates formed bonds they will take with them far beyond the length of series.

“The cast members, you couldn’t have picked out a more diverse and unique group of people. There were definitely some conflicts, but once the show ended you get to see everyone’s true personalities. It was an experience that I think will make us lifelong friends.”

And what about the fame that comes, at least temporarily, with being broadcast to four million-plus viewers?

“I’m actually pretty camera shy, so I’m not into the television aspect of the experience. The wildlife, competition and friendships, that was the best part for me,” Berg said. “But of course, it will be fun to watch to see how it turns out.”

[pawpaw]

Survivor Gabon buffs

[pawpaw]

reality blurred + Bob Crowley: "I'm not playing the game, I'm here to have a good time"

Bow-tie wearing high school teacher Robert Crowley was a likable guy, but like a few too many other Survivor Gabon contestants, I couldn’t decide whether or not he’d be a good player—especially when he said he’s not really interested in the money.
“I’m not playing the game, I’m here to have a good time, I’m here to experience—Christ, I’ve already won the game. I’ve got a free trip to Africa, I have got two free trips to L.A. And a million dollars only buys you friends you don’t need and tempts you with sins you shouldn’t be committing anyway. So, I’ve already won,” he told me.
If it’s not already obvious, Bob Crowley told me he was recruited for the show, and has only seen the show “a couple of times.” He said he was concerned most about the wildlife, building a shelter, and then the other contestants, in that order. “I’m in it for the adventure, so it doesn’t really matter which challenge I’m up against, since they’re all going to be fun to deal with,” he said, and that, never mind placing the social game last, makes him sound like a player who’s going home sooner than later.
Despite his apparent lack of interest in the social game, he also had a good understanding of some fundamental parts of it. “I am clever; I’m good at figuring stuff out. I think I do well at entertaining people at being pleasant. And I’ve noticed in the show, you don’t want to stand out, you don’t be somebody that’s a threat. And I’m pretty non-threatening,” Bob said. “I have a habit of talking, I have a habit of being honest.” That is true: he does love to talk, telling long and detailed stories to answer simple questions.
Bob also revealed to me that he “took copious notes” about the other players when they were in L.A. during final interviews, and during pre-Ponderosa. While we talked, he flipped through his notebook to find the nicknames and identities he assigned to the other players, which impressed me until he basically revealed it was just a sort of game for him. “It’s going to be fun to sort of try to figure out—it’s going to be fun to compare what I think somebody’s like compared to what they really are,” he said.
Some of those nicknames, incidentally, were offensive and, as he acknowledged, “politically incorrect”; he nicknamed Olympian Crystal “Amazon” because she’s a “real tall black girl,” and called Susie, the “sweet, nice” Latina woman, “Mexico.” Saying things like that to a member of the media, he sort of then seemed like one of those older people (he’s 58; not that old) who aren’t quite oblivious or clueless, but kind of don’t care, which could help or hurt him in the game.
Bob did bond with a few of the cast members even despite not knowing their real names or being able to talk to them, and he revealed something that up until that point I never really considered or knew: Survivor contestants spend so much time with each other before the game starts that, really, the game has already started long before the cameras start rolling.
They’re forbidden from talking to each other or interacting, but they do, mostly non-verbally. For example, Bob said he bonded with one of them—someone I eventually decided was Ace, based upon his description of the person’s accent and his tattoo—on the plane, as they were sitting next to each other and had multiple drinks; they were also rooming together at pre-Ponderosa. He even said something to me about not telling the producers about one of their shared non-talking moments.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of trivia about Bob is that he taught Survivor Vanuatu cast member Julie Berry, who’s also Jeff Probst’s former girlfriend. Bob called that a “strange coincidence” and said that he’s “sort of kept this quiet” but “haven’t seen her since she graduated from high school.” An amusing anecdote about that connection and Jeff Probst is in the clip below, as his his discussion of nicknames; the clip starts with an amusing story that he’d clearly been dying to tell. It’s about Survivor school, when the contestants are taught about how to live in the jungle but still can’t talk, so he’d been saving this quip for a while:

[pawpaw]

reality blurred + Susie Smith: "I certainly don't plan on apologizing every time I screw up"

Survivor Gabon has a fantastic character and perhaps a very strong player in Susie Smith, who won me over instantly. She was the first cast member to use my name and engage me in her answers, rather than sounding like she was saying the same things to yet another stranger; a strategy, perhaps, but it didn’t seem at all artificial. (And I certainly can’t blame many of the others for giving rote answers considering how many interviews they’d been through by the time they talked with me, sitting in a plastic chair overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.)
Susie has a high school age son, and said family is “everything,” she said. “This is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I have never been away from my family for seven weeks.” She’s also committed to trying things for herself, and convincing the world that everyone else needs to literally just try things. “I cannot believe people do not know what the word ‘try’ means—T R Y,” she said.
Susie’s likability—and warmth and clear devotion to her family—is matched, as you can see, by clear conviction and confidence, which would come off as arrogant in someone who wasn’t as thoroughly nice as she is. She’s also fiercely competitive, and said she couldn’t really understand people who lack competitiveness even in everyday games. I really think she has the combination of skills to win the game without anyone noticing that she’s won.
She loves to talk, although unlike Bob Crowley, she didn’t tell long, lingering stories, but jumped from idea to idea to idea. It makes sense, then, that’s she’s a teacher—she teaches students for whom English is a second language, and English is her second language, even though she grew up in Iowa. Susie is also a hairdresser, the profession CBS is using to identify her. And she also worked for a nonprofit organization where she worked with the elderly.
Clearly, she’s a social person who cares about others, and what better qualities are there for Survivor? However, there’s a part of Susie that has the potential to rub others the wrong way, or to just get annoying. It’s not that she has a self-described “potty mouth. But I think a lot of people do, they just hide it,” she said. Of course, the first time she said “****in’,” I loved her even more.
While that could rub a tight-ass contestant the wrong way (and I really don’t think there is one person like that this season), it’s really her unflinchingly honesty and conviction might not play well with people. For example, she talked about her mother, who has dementia, and said, “it’s like the mother I’ve always wanted,” she said, and wasn’t entirely joking (“I know that sounds crazy, but…”).
And she’s pretty convinced that she’s right, although in a non-obnoxious way. Susie told me that she couldn’t understand why, when “somebody ****ed up” in a challenge on past seasons, they apologized to their fellow tribe members. “I certainly don’t plan on apologizing every time I screw up,” she said. Earlier, she told me that she would be “the first to apologize” if she offended someone, but later said that sometimes, she says, “screw you, I really don’t care or not if I offended you or not. I don’t care.” That sort of inconsistency but conviction-in-the-moment could help her in the game.
Listen to Susie talk about why she did the show, how she wants people to perceive her (where I had to fade out because her answer just kept going), and how she doesn’t understand why people are offended when she swears.

[pawpaw]

Jessica "sugar" Kiper got married lastweek

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I got hitched!
Current mood: blissful

This is not a joke....
His name is John Lands.
I came to Louisiana to do a movie and I met and married the director on the 11th day of knowing him. I **** you not.
This may be disturbing and shocking to some. Especially a few people that haven't been told (or would rather not know),but it's awesome to me and my loved ones that are in on it...
It wasn't planned. I thought I'd NEVER want to get married again no matter what!
They'll be a party Sept. 6th in Louisiana and on the 25th in Los Angeles (this will be a double premier/wedding party).
We flew to Vegas and got married last weekend in the middle of filming. Dennis Haskins (Mr. Belding/Saved by the bell) is my co-star in the film and hooked John and I up with a fabulous suite @ Treasure Island and a ton of clubs (thanks Mr. B!) I wore black and Elvis walked me down the isle while singing "Fools Rush In".
We are NOT insane! When you know something is right-you do it. I've always followed my heart (even if it means I'm living in Louisiana again for a while-until Pilot Season).
So there you go. It's not a joke. I married an eccentric genius who adores me and encourages me to be myself and doesn't mind sharing me with the public. This is what I needed.
I can only tell you that time will prove to everyone that we know what we're doing...you'll see!
Oh yeah- we signed a prenup so F-off if you think it was anything else other than love!

BridalStars Celebrity Weddings: 90608: "Survivor: Gabon" Contestant Jessica Kiper's Wedding

Reality star Jessica Kiper, who battles both the elements and fellow castaways on the 17th edition of the CBS reality series Survivor Gabon: Earth's Last Eden, has found her own personal paradise with movie director John Lands, who became her husband on August 23, 2008. Confiding to her fans on her MySpace page, the pin-up model/actress (TV buffs may remember her stints on Gilmore Girls and For Your Love) confessed that the couple's 11-day courtship led to Las Vegas vows and a honeymoon stay in a Treasure Island Resort suite.

A retro romantic, the bride was a vintage-style vision on her wedding day, walking down the aisle in a pair of black stilettos on the arm of an Elvis impersonator who serenaded the lovebirds with "Fools Rush In." A photo taken later outside of the Christian Audigier nightclub shows the newly-pronounced Mrs. in a short, strapless black dress accented with a white sash at the waist, while an elbow-length veil provided a nostalgic nod to tradition.

The newlyweds are planning to celebrate their union with family and friends in Louisiana on September 6th, and drink toasts to their happiness at a Survivor premiere party in Los Angeles on September 25th.

[pawpaw]

reality blurred + Kelly Czarnecki: "I need to be manipulative; I need to be different personalities"

Kelly Czarnecki, the 22-year-old jean salesperson and student from Chicago, was recruited for Survivor Gabon via her MySpace page, and even more unsurprisingly but still shockingly, revealed that “my page was private so they only saw my picture.” Yes, casting producers contacted her based upon a single photograph, which may explain why it was so difficult to have a conversation with her.
Kelly ranks at the bottom of my likability list because she was so extremely inaccessible and difficult to talk to—especially after my three pleasant, interesting conversations with Danny/GC Brown, Bob Crowley, and Susie Smith. Kelly never took off her oversized, Paris Hilton sunglasses, and I became increasingly convinced that she was utterly bored and staring at the ground. I laughed nervously throughout the whole interview after she’d make some kind of outrageous or nonsensical declarative statement that I had no response to. There was a lot of dead air as she’d just be done with a question even though she hadn’t even started to really answer it; sometimes she’d just say single words as answers.
Kelly sells jeans and says she’s “one of the top salespeople at my work,” E Street Denim in Chicago, and said she is “consistently exceeding sales; I manipulate people instead of buying the $40 jean to like the $400 jean.” That skill didn’t exactly come across in our interview, but maybe it’ll work for her in the game.
She seemed very impressed with herself and over-confident, but ultimately came across more like a Big Brother contestant, especially considering the way she’d say things that made no actual sense, like “I’m not going to be an act,” “my nature to compete,” “I’ve always been into jeans … and my middle name is jean so that may have something to do with it,” and “I need to be different personalities.” And can’t you just hear a houseguest saying this? “Some of the guys, I think, are really cute. This one guy looks like Nick Lachey. Yeah. The guys are cute. And I like the girl—the Spanish girl, the Mexican older lady. She’s cool. The other woman looks mean,” Kelly told me.
Kelly’s role model in the game is “Poverty” (Parvati, the winner of Survivor Micronesia) and plans to “get all the guys on my side,” and told me she couldn’t think of a single thing that would challenge her in the game.
That said, she did have sympathetic moments, and I kind of felt sorry for her. Talking about her three brothers, she said they “raised me” because “I’ve always looked up to them. It was hard being the girl in the family because, like, oh, hey, I didn’t win any awards, I’m just like this blonde, pretty girl. They made me toughen up and go for something that I want. … No crying, no nothing.”
Listen to Kelly talk about her strategy, confidence, and game play—and hear a lot of the birds and sounds of Gabon during those long pauses: