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“I’ve got a baaad feeling about this…”

Last season, my two Survivor office pool candidates were eliminated in the first two weeks of competition. Tough break. I’d hoped my players were a little more adept this time around.

Quite frankly, I’m not feeling too confident right about now.

First there’s Aras, a yoga instructor. Young, athletic, strong - sounds good, right? Problem is, he’s also crazy. I’m not sure what was more painful to watch - three-packs-a-day Shane going through nicotine withdrawal, or Aras gathering his new tribemates around and performing some weird sort of chi ceremony designed to channel mysterious energies into their camp-building activities. Way to blend in with total strangers, dude.

Then there’s Courtney, the performance artist. That should say enough in itself. A little quirky, she seemed to be doing ok at first. Then came the dead turtle incident. Finding a rotting sea turtle carcass on the beach, Courtney launched her own little ritual to honor a dead freakin’ turtle. She drew a heart around the turtle, placed a rock at the top of it, then went into some awkward speech about mother earth and turtles and nature and some other wacky nonsense. Her teammates kept a nervous distance, and one of them confessed later that she was having a hard time playing along with the absurdity of the moment. Again, way to bond with strangers, girlio.

I was lucky in that neither of my candidates’ teams lost the immunity challenge this week. There’s four teams to start off the season this time around, and I think I dodged a bullet here. A word of advice to Aras and Courtney - try to keep the crazy to a minimum! My wallet is depending on it!

***Update***
Apparently, the wife of one of my bloggin’ buds, Frank, knows one of this year’s Survivor contestants. Frank was kind enough to provide a link over here to The Ems Dispatch, so I figured I’d do the same for him. You can read his story here.