Man vs. Mild

The worst thing that can happen to you when you are bored on a weekend is to get sucked into a stupid show on the Travel Channel or the Discovery Channel. Because on the weekends, they play them in blocks. One after the other. And if you are bored enough, and lazy enough...you just might wind up losing 3 or 4 hours of your life that might have been put to better use. Like taking a nap or trimming your nails.

That happened to me this past weekend with a show on TDC called Survivorman. If you haven't seen the show, the basic premise is that this dude is dropped off in some remote area with only some basic tools in his pack and he has to survive for one week in the wild on his own. No crew, no supplies. And he videotapes his ordeal himself. Sounds exciting, right?

Except that it really isn't. I saw three episodes in a row. He was dropped off in a Georgia swamp filled with gators, the canyon land in Utah patrolled by cougars and the African veldt ruled by lions and black mambas. That does sound pretty exciting!

Except he never saw a gator, or a cougar, or a lion or a black mamba. He spent each week making fire (a bit easier when he had flint), building shelters, searching for water and hunting small animals. The most exciting thing that happened in all three episodes was when he hiked all the way to the bottom of a canyon and found a dry stream bed. No water. He drank from puddles and melting snow all week. Yeah, I know...yawn.

Oh, he ate some gross stuff. Turtles, ants, snakes and squirrels. And he seemed to have only one really decent meal each episode. Yet I kept watching. I was hoping he would have to fight it out with a water buffalo using only his hands and a spoon or something. No such luck.

You know who the true Survivorman was? Me! For making it through three hours of that crap!