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Sorry I missed the original post. I don't check Sucks much anymore.

First thing, I am old. I have never denied that. I'm an old crotchety Survivor fan who thinks the show should be canceled and thinks that online Survivor fans have grown more and more ridiculous and annoying over the years ("Only 16 players this season? I hate 16 characters in a season! All seasons should have 20 or more!"). So there's that. The reason the Funny 115 only goes up through Guatemala was because that was my silent protest that those were the only "true" seasons of the show. In my mind, I feel that those are the only seasons anyone should care about, and there's about zero percent chance I will ever go back and update it because I really don't watch the show anymore.

That being said, yes I am very proud of the Funny 115. It took me about a year to put together from start to finish (the video screen caps took forever) and it has been phenomenally popular. It was originally written (2006) as a 25 part feature for my MySpace blog, and it was by far the most popular blog stuff I have ever written. By the end I was getting 700-900 readers per day, which was astounding considering the fact I had no publicity or no website affiliation or anything. That was just all from word of mouth.

After I finished The Funny 115 in my blog (early 2007), I actually got approached with the idea of turning it into a book. A publisher told me that it would probably make a fun coffee table style book, and he asked if I would be interested. I said I would be, but there were three problems with the idea.

A) It would be impossible to get the legal rights to all the pictures on the website, which is a problem since the pictures are sort of the focal point of a lot of the entries (like Colby's hat, for one). It's one thing to post them for free on a website, but it's quite another to put them in a book and start making money off of it. Once you started making money off CBS, their lawyers would become interested and then there would be problems.

B) The Funny 115 is so big that if you turned it into a book, it would probably be 200-300 pages long. That would hardly be a coffee table book anymore.

C) And finally (and most importantly), the market for Survivor tie in media products was dead by 2007. As in gone, see ya, bye bye. Maybe if this had been 2001, we could have made some money off of it, but in 2007? Good luck. The only people that watch the show these days are the zealots. As proof of this, I pointed out another Survivor book I had worked on earlier that year ("The Psychology of Survivor"). I knew it was a lame idea to try to write a mass market paperback about the show so long after it had passed its prime, but I contributed two chapters to the book anyway, and it turned out exactly like I knew it would turn out. The book sold waaaaaaaay less than the publisher's expectations. Nobody in the real world gives a rat's ass about Survivor anymore. In the public's eyes, the show died a long a time ago.

So anyway, if the Funny 115 does ever get turned into a book, it won't be for a while. I figure maybe 5-10 years after the show bites the dust I could turn it into a nostalgia book, although sadly probably minus the pictures. But at this time it would be pointless.

Do I think there are too many Chris entries on the list? Yeah, probably. My defense for that is that since I wrote the Funny 115 in 25 or 30 parts (over the course of a year), I sort of forgot how it would read when you put it all together and read them in a row. It was very much just something I put together in my spare time while slacking off at work. So there are probably 2 or 3 too many Chris entries. I stand by the Twila and Chris in the hammock moment though. That one earned its spot on the list.

There is one moment that is NOT on the Funny 115 that has haunted me for years. It kills me every time I see it. It is a great moment in All-Stars during the blindfolded block challenge. Colby (who is blindfolded) is carrying a block and he totally knocks the shit out of Tom (who is also wearing a blindfold). Now most people remember this moment because of Cesternino's response (@@%@$) but what they miss about the moment, and what is great about it, is Colby's response. Tom goes down like a shot, Cesternino starts whining, and off in the corner all you see is Colby's giant pearly white smile from underneath his blindfold. He knows that he took down Tom, and you get the best shot ever of Colby's teeth. He just walks away, still blindfolded, smiling from ear to ear. I wish I had included that on the Funny 115. The screen cap would have been hilarious.

Other than that, I really don't have any problems with the entries I chose. I took a long time and I selected them very carefully, and I would probably pick just about every entry again. Although the second time around, I would probably pick at least one more slot to write about Rudy. He deserved his very own entry (like Clay and Judd). Otherwise I stand by just about every single entry on there.

The Dead Grandma lie is still my #1. Fairplay is right, he deserves to be on a Survivor Mount Rushmore for that one. And I'm not really even much of a Fairplay fan. I just don't think any other Survivor moment has ever come close. Which is easy, since I don't believe that Survivor existed after Guatemala. :-P

The Funny 115 went live as a standalone website sometime in the late summer of 2007. That was my compromise to turning it into a book. I figured a website was the closest it would get. Since then, the webpage has received more than 120,000 hits, which again is pretty amazing when you take into account the fact that A) I am not affiliated with any website, B) I don't have any publicity for it anywhere, and C) The Survivor market is dead. Oh yeah and D) Most of the original Survivor fans (seasons 1-8) don't even watch the show anymore. It's amazing that so many people read it, and that I still get emails about it just about every single day of the week.

I wrote about Survivor on pretty much a full time basis for four years of my life (2001-2004). And I always said that when I retired, I wanted a giant project that would live forever that would be my legacy to go out on. That project wound up being the Funny 115. It's not perfect, but it took forever to make, and I am very proud of it. And I am glad that so many people (including a lot of Survivors themselves) have enjoyed it over the last 3 years.

-Mario






P.S. One of the benefits to all the Chris entries on the Funny 115 is that it actually led me to meet Chris and Lorie Daugherty a couple of years ago. Lorie read the Funny 115 one day at work, and she loved it so much that she went home and told Chris that he needed to talk to me. They don't actually have a computer at home, so whenever she reads something about Chris, she just prints it out and brings it home to him. So anyway that was one of the benefits to me writing the Funny 115. In general I usually make a specific point NOT to meet Survivors. I feel that you can't objectively write about the show if you know the players as people. If you do know them, you tend to just write editing defenses and spin control (which is one reason the message boards have gotten so ridiculous the past few years -- CBS allows the public way too much contact with the players now.) And that's why most of the time I go out of my way to have no contact with Survivors. But with Chris (my favorite player ever), I made an exception. He even gave me an interview, which he hardly ever does with anyone, and which I posted here on the board. That was pretty cool.


P.P.S. I also heard through the grapevine that Judd's wife is a big fan of the Funny 115. So who knows... maybe Judd will one day get in contact with me as well. Wives seem to be the way that works with this stuff. You make the wife laugh, and you're in good with the husband.


P.P.P.S. Was there any Survivor who didn't like their entry on the Funny 115? So far I have only heard of one. Rory. I feel bad about that (I really tried not to slam anyone too hard, if I could), but at the same time since the point of his entry was "Rory doesn't have a sense of humor", perhaps I should be secretly tickled by that. Maybe he wasn't supposed to like it. I don't know.

I love this moment as well! The episode where that happens (Wipe Out!) is my most watched episode. I mean it's not a great episode, but it sort of became a tradition to watch it with one of my friends. I've definitely seen Tom get smashed in slow motion more than once.

But it's more than Tom just getting smashed. Watch for Colby's smile. It's the best Colby-smile ever caught on film, and it's funny because it's the only part of his face you see because of the blindfold. He looks like the fucking Cheshire Cat. It's hilarious.