I Will Survive... Another TV Offer

A dear friend of mine who works in the TV industry contacted me last year to say that she wanted to pitch me to CBS for their reality show “Survivor”. At first, I was like, “Nah, that would be too much.” But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

Mainly for this reason – I could travel to someplace exotic and have someone foot the bill, get eliminated in the first round and come home. Even though I live off the grid with two wives, I don’t think I could handle the rigorous requirements of “Survivor”. I can eat some pretty strange stuff. But I am overweight and out-of-shape in a “big” way, if you know what I mean.

Still, I agreed to let her try to pitch me to the producers.

“You need to start preparing now,” she said. “Start getting in shape.”

So, in the mornings, I started hiking to the top of Cinder Mountain – the highest geological feature in Concho, AZ. I got to the top, panting and sweating a couple of times and then stopped. I don’t know why… Oh yeah, I went to the hospital for diabetes.

Which was another topic I brought up to her. I am a diabetic and insulin-dependent.

“Um, that might be a problem,” she said. “But let’s try anyway. This is the best chance that you will ever have to win a million dollars.”

Which is next to impossible. I know the odds. I play Powerball almost every week.

“And obviously, we will be pitching you based on the fact that you are a polygamist,” she added.

“What? You’re not doing it on the merit of my good looks?” I asked, crestfallen.

I never heard back from her in months, so I figured that it didn’t work out. But then I got a text message from my friend a few nights ago. She told me that she had just pitched me to the producers. The only thing to do was sit back and wait.

Yestderday, I got the results. I am officially… (drum roll)… NOT a candidate for “Survivor”. Apparently, CBS had a problem with the fact that I am a polygamist. They are a “family network”. So… having a flabby, gay man run around on a beach, naked, in the first season was okay. But they have a problem with a polygamist.

Temple asked, “What did they think you would be doing on the camera?”

One can only imagine. But this lifestyle, which one writer termed as “sacred loneliness”, apparently is too much for CBS.

Oh well.

I knew that there would be other opportunities. I only need to have the wisdom to know which is the right one. In response to this, my friend said, “You should have been much farther along by now.”

I told her that I understood that. But my reluctance had to do with people close to me disapproving of what I did. It took the wind out of my sails. It was disheartening that no one saw any value in what I was trying to do.

“Well, maybe you need to work out those issues before you go on,” she suggested.

“The only way I will be able to resolve that issue is to do another one,” I answered. “The maverick in me has to do another one to show them that I am my own person.”

One other thing that we discussed…

She said that she was surprised at how the Dawn Porter show turned out. It was much different than what she thought.

“We gave them enough to make a much more interesting, well-rounded show,” I told her. “It’s just that the other family was much more in line of what people think of as a polygamist family. In fact, I think the only reason that they included any of the interviews with my family was that the man in Centennial Park refused to go in front of the cameras. So they resorted to showing my interview.”

“The producers were looking for a standard family – white, J-Crew, well-adjusted, polygamist family,” she said. “They didn’t want anything too alternative. And let’s face it – you are alternative. You have a history of drug use in your past. The kind of music you listen to. You are waaaaay too alternative.”

So the fact that we are different is – at once – our greatest strength and our greatest detriment. That is funny.

We will see what is at the end of this path….

Next time, photos of the new baby…