As I have completely given up on trying to make my own category tags, I have decided I will only write things that can be related to the existing tags. Thus I have started this entry which is related to trees. And urine.
I had been a huge fan of the TV show “Man vs. Wild” on Discover, a reality-type survival TV show which featured one man, Bear Grylls, dropped into the middle of nowhere with only a knife, flint, and water bottle. His goal in each episode was to (a) not die and (b) make it back to civilization. It was a show during which a man could scratch his balls, sniff the pungent yet slightly arousing ball sweat off of his fingernails, drink a beer, and imagine that he, too, was drinking his own urine in a rare hypermasculine scenario when drinking one’s own urine was somehow acceptable.
One day I had some spare time and tried to find any upcoming episodes of the program when my TiVo told me “There are no episodes currently scheduled”. Fearing something had happened to the fearless host, thus knocking his hit show out of syndication, I turned to the premiere source for up-to-date information – Wikipedia.
Like a ton of bricks, I read the first damning statement: “After a series of exposés by the Daily Mail, the show was put on hiatus while Discovery reviewed claims that it deceived viewers.”
My heart fell, in the gut-wrenching, tear-jerking fashion it did when Santa Claus turned out to be an impostor.
“One of the allegations is that while Grylls claimed to be sleeping outdoors, he was allegedly sleeping in hotels….British television’s Channel 4 has acknowledged that in at least two instances Bear has stayed in hotels during filming.”
Hotels? WHAT A FUCKING PUSSY. True, it’s gotta be rough out there, but hotels? I might somehow understand having a tent brought in on a really tough night – but fucking come ON. Your name is BEAR for Christsake!
And the embarrassments keep on comin’. Flotation devices. A prefabricated raft dropped off along his route. Domesticated horses brought in and passed off as wild. Smoke machines brought in to simulate poisonous sulfur dioxide smoke over lava. Being hoisted into a tree wearing a parachute to imitate landing in the tree. Even HIRING A MAN IN A FUCKING BEAR SUIT TO “TERRORIZE” HIS CAMP.
At this point it’s beyond the Santa Claus comparison. It’s more akin to walking in on Daddy in the shower to find he’s only packing roast beef between his thighs. Not only does it ruin one’s image of him from that point on, it taints every memory. So, that time I crunched potato chips along with you crunching into a raw wild bird’s egg, Bear? Ruined. That time in my living room I took my shirt off, peed on it, and wrapped it on my head like you did to keep yourself cool in the desert, just to try to be as cool as you? Ruined. That time I brought home a bag of scorpions and cobras, let them loose in the house, and slept on a bed of pine needles to simulate the risk I thought you put yourself in just for the sake of my entertainment? Not worth the $15 cab ride to the ER, dick. Thanks for nothing, you weak-ass pile of shit. So what if you were in the British Special Forces and almost died from a broken back while serving. So what if you were the youngest Brit to summit Everest. So what if you took a paraglider over that same peak, beating the previous altitude record by nearly 10,000 feet? How can I respect you as a man’s man when you bunk up in a Ritz-Carlton overnight while I’m lying on my couch watching, fully convinced you’re shivering your ass off in a hand-dug snow cave? Thanks for the good times, Bear, but fuck you for ruining them. Fuck you for ruining US.
