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As I predicted, Tom Westman became the Grand Champion.  Not too shocking.  He did deserve it for more than any of the other contestants. 

  Jennifer Lyon  did a good job at stirring things up by telling Tom that Ian Rosenberger was going to stab him in the back if he had the chance.  It didn’t do much good for her position, but it probably ended up sealing Tom’s fate.  Ian became such a wuss after Tom and   Katie Gallagher confronted him, that there was no way he had a chance to win.

So way to go, Tom!

The Shark Slayer Ends Up On Top!

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I think this is going to be my last Get Real Column.

Does anybody actually read this column?  I never hear any feedback on it like I do for the rest of my site…

If you really like my commentary on Survivor and would like me to continue, please drop me an email at shortarmguy@aol.com and see Keep Get Real!

If you see this column start up again in September, then you’ll know:

The Tribe Has Spoken!

Caryn Groedel goes home angry!!  She went out of the game trying to stir things up, but she lost all the same.

Good riddance!  Caryn didn’t seem like she should win.

So the final four for the million bucks is set.  This is the order I think they’ll end up winning…..or losing.

1.  Tom Westman — Grand Champion.  Hard to argue that he doesn’t deserve it.  He’s dominated most of the physical challenges as well as the mental ones.  He may have been heavy handed at times, but he’s a fricking hero fireman that killed a shark with his bare hands.  He deserves the money.

2.  Ian Rosenberger — If Tom didn’t win the challenge, Ian usually was next in line.  His dolphin training experience has come in handy with the water events and he seems to be a likable guy.  Since he won the car, though, I think the jury will prefer it if gets second place.

3.  Katie Gallagher — seems to have Ian’s soft-spot which will help her if a woman doesn’t win the next challenge.  One of the men might take her to the final 2 if they think they have a better chance of winning the vote against her…

4.  Jennifer Lyon — absolutely beautiful and appears to be one of the stronger women in the challenges.  I think she’ll be the first to go from the final four because her little coup with Gregg failed, so she’s a marked woman!

Since the finale is tonight, I’ll do a final Get Real column for this season’s Survivor next weekend.

Nice Twist This Week!

Gregg Carey bites the dust.  They totally blind-sided him.  This game must really suck to play, because the producers always push the contestants to totally stab each other in the back.  Then the back-stabbers have to face a jury of the people who still have scabbed-over blade wounds.  Must be tough to win a game like that.

I think Katie Gallagher will get the blame this week, because she’s going to be seen as the one who flipped from the Gregg and Jennifer Lyon alliance.  Although, she may be able to convince Jen that Ian Rosenberger and Tom Westman are the bad guys because they confronted her with a choice to flip on Gregg or face the dreaded rock choosing.

It looks like Katie is going to have some good battles with Caryn Groedel and Ian next week with the claws really starting to come out ready to slice each other open.

What a nice guy that Mark Burnett must be.  

He’s so good at making people learn to hate one another!

Plus, it was extremely cruel that Ian, the dolphin trainer, didn’t get the opportunity to participate in the reward of swimming with dolphins.  Or maybe that would have reminded him too much of work.

That did it!  I’m officially done with this season!!  

The dirty dogs voted off Stephenie LaGrossa.  

She was the best contestant on the show this time around.  

She made a valiant effort to recruit Jennifer Lyon, Katie Gallagher, and Caryn Groedel to form a woman’s alliance against the men.  But the silly girls didn’t listen…  

Now they will be demolished in the challenges by Ian Rosenberger, Tom Westman, and Gregg Carey.

Unfortunately, I don’t like any of them and really could care less who wins now.

All right, maybe I could root for Jennifer because she’s hot.  And Ian, because he’s a Dolphin Trainer. 

I love dolphins!

Also, I found a really cool Survivor resource this week.  Check out their page on Wikipedia for all sorts of cool Survivor trivia….Click Here!

Interesting twist this week!  You just have to feel for Stephenie LaGrossa….the young beauty has endured more hardship than the entire rest of the tribe put together.  

She fought like mad during every immunity challenge that Ulong fought against Koror, but never was able to find victory.  Then, the show’s producers decided to hold off on merging the tribes as their numbers dwindled, causing her to be the first Survivor ever to be on a tribe by herself.  

This girl has the heart of a Champion, yet the rest of the tribe was ready to kick her off this week because her “story” was becoming too good thus making her a big threat to the rest of them winning.  Luckily, Janu Tornell grew tired of the game and the people she was surrounded by so she volunteered to sacrifice herself so Stefenie could stay in the game.

This doesn’t mean things are going to get easier for her.  She’s going to have to start playing the game in a different way by lobbying others who might not envision themselves going far enough in the alliances they’ve established.  She’ll probably need to target Ian Rosenberger & Tom Westman first, because they’re very strong competitors in their own right.

The relationship between Gregg Carey and Jennifer Lyon will probably start to make a bigger play in the game meaning that Katie Gallagher and Caryn Groedel might want to start finding new partners who could potentially get them to a final 2 or 3 scenario.

I’m sure the other ladies don’t want to get stuck fighting against the men in immunity challenges, so Stefenie will have to rally the women to vote against any man who doesn’t wear the immunity necklace to Tribal Council.

If Stefenie can pull it off, this may be the biggest Fairy Tale ending Survivor has ever seen…

More likely, though, is the snakes will vote her off next week and some scumbag will win the whole game…..again! 

Finally, the merge happens!  I thought they were going to continue to torment Stephenie LaGrossa by keeping her on her own.  That had to be a tough night for her all alone!

I think the other team is lucky that they merged, because if they would have to go against her one on one in a competition to the death, she would have crushed them all!

Jennifer Lyon faced her more than anyone and tasted defeat each time.  No wonder she wanted to plot to get her eliminated early.

But Coby Archa‘s bitchiness won him a ticket off the island.  He dared to try to break up Ian Rosenberger & Tom Westman and it bit him in the butt.  Ian and Tom wanted to go on the boat fishing, Coby, not stay back and catch bait!

My hopes for the final 3 are Ian, Stefenie, and Tom because they seem to deserve it more than anyone.

I’d like to see Jennifer and Katie go home quickly…

I don’t know if it’s just me, though.  

I’m getting tired of Survivor.

It’s all been done before….

Poor Stephenie LaGrossa is a Survivor Pioneer!  Never before in the history of the show have they allowed one tribe to be whittled down to a single person.  They’ve always merged them when one team was greatly dominating the other.  But not this season.

Ulong just stunk.  They could never win an immunity challenge no matter which combination of people Koror sent to compete.

So it was down to just Hot Stephanie and stinky Bobby Jon Drinkard and of course, our girl prevailed again.  But now it really sucks for her….she has to spend time on the island, alone.

I get scared in my basement when I’m by myself, so I can’t imagine what it would be like spending the night alone in the dark jungle of a tropical island!!

Kind of creepy.

I really don’t know who to root for on the dominant team.  You have to respect Ian Rosenberger & Tom Westman for being such studs and leading their team to victory so many times…but you also gotta love Coby Archa.  Gay guys always come across as being so cool on Survivor and Coby is no exception.  He’s a very tough competitor, a hard worker, and very insightful when it comes to sizing up the other members of his tribe.  The only problem I have with Coby is:

Please get a regular swimsuit.  The Speedo just isn’t working for me!!

Ian Rosenberger and Tom Westman proved themselves to be Ultimate Studs again!  First, Ian goes into the ocean and pulls out the biggest clam I’ve ever seen!  Then Tom one ups him by catching a big shark with his bare hands and a machete!  I find it quite incredible that something like that is even possible…supposedly the predator swam near the shore and Tom whacked it with his big knife.    More likely is that the producers of the show caught the shark, held it down for Tom to whack it, and then taped the aftermath.  Either way, it made for very cool television!

Poor Ulong could use a couple of Ultimate Studs on their side.  They just keep losing! It’s unbelievable that Mark Burnett doesn’t give them a break and merge the tribes or mix them up like he’s always done in the past.  Maybe he just really hates Stephenie LaGrossa and loves to watch her suffer!

I’m sure Bobby Jon Drinkard and Ibrehem Rahman just like to watch her.  She sure is a pretty lady and quite the stud herself when it comes to the challenges.  

It would be nice to see her get a chance to win a few challenges so she can make it to the end of the game…it will have to happen this week since if they lose again the tribal council will have to be a tie since the two remaining members will have to vote for each other.

Or maybe Burnett will just send them both home to put them out of their misery!!

She has been unbelievable in the challenges up to this point, but the way she took charge in the shooting competition was phenomenal!  I would not want to get on the wrong side of this girl!  She’d crush you!!

Thanks to Stephenie’s 4 for 4 shooting, Ulong won the Reward Challenge, but what an odd reward!!  Pringles and Mai-Tais?  Let’s Party!!  Then after that awesome feast, they get to dive in a lake full of millions of Jellyfish!  Wow!!  What an honor!!

Now if only Ulong could win an Immunity Challenge, then they’d be rocking!  Not this week, though.  They’re losers again and sent home James Miller.  

As talented as Stephenie is in the challenges, she seems to be lacking in slyness department.  She screwed Bobby Jon Drinkard again by telling him she was voting off James, then wrote down Ibrehem Rahman‘s name.

I’m sure he’s going to be real trusting of her going forward.  

That Mark Burnett is one cruel son of a gun!!

So Ulong has been getting their butts beat really bad for weeks.  So now to spice up the show, he does a survivor first where both tribes go to tribal council to vote off a member.  The twist being that the winner of the preceding challenge gets to sit in on the other tribe’s vote while eating beef stew in front of the starving losers!  Actions like this might create compelling television conflicts, but I doubt Mr. Burnett gets a lot of Christmas Cards from these castaways!

Ibrehem Rahman blew the challenge for his tribe by not being able to retrieve a sunken bottle.  He was then saved when the other tribe voted immunity for him!  I just love games where the rules change mid-stream!

So skimpy-bikini wearing Survivor, Angie Jakusz, gets screwed and has to go home with the other’s tribe’s first loser, Willard Smith.  I’m guessing these two may have slept together the first night off the island.  It’s just a guess, though.

It looks like Gregg Carey and Jennifer Lyon might start sleeping together before they leave the island!  Unless Burnett really twists up the game and forces Ms. Lyon to sleep with Willard for the duration of her time on the island.

Now that would be a cruel twist.

Angie Jakusz might be freaky, but I still can’t get over that bikini she’s wearing!  Plus, the way CBS keeps blurring her boobs out of the picture, she’s been walking around naked most of the time.  You just have to root for a woman like that!!

Plus, she’s a tough mother!  Mark Burnett has made the challenges a heck of a lot more physical this time around.  Last week we had the Survivors swinging bags of sand at each other, this week they get to try to drown one another in order to get a life preserver to a raft!  Angie once again showed what a stud she is by dunking two members of the other tribe.

Among the men, I still have a tremendous amount of respect for Ian Rosenberger and Tom Westman.  This week, the dolphin trainer and the fireman battled deadly snakes, hunted sharks, and won the iron man ocean walk for their team.

We have the makings of a good chick fight happening between Katie Gallagher and Caryn Groedel.  Please remember, no tearing off each other’s clothing, ladies.  All right, maybe just a little…

 Kimberly Mullen and Jeff Wilson continued their snuggling ways, but things went sour for them when Jeff busted up his ankle and volunteered to be voted off by the group.  Some of them still tried to dump Lazy Kim, but Jeff’s wishes were served and he was voted out!!

Another boring episode!

Wonder boys, Ian Rosenberger and Tom Westman, built a great crapper and won the Reward Challenge!  My guess is that Angie Jakusz wasn’t the first one in line to take a shower!!

Mark Burnett continued this season’s tradition of having brutal immunity challenges by having the tribes square off in a King Of The Hill type contest.  Ulong’s Angie and Stephenie LaGrossa once again proved their value by kicking ass in their four fights.  But their men didn’t fare quite as well.  James Miller, the steel-worker, was soundly thrashed by Coby Archa, the homosexual hairstylist.  Then he was thrashed again in the re-match.  I’m guessing Mr. Miller’s friends at the steel mill have brought this up to him a couple of times since he’s been back to work. 

 Kimberly Mullen gets voted off as expected since she hasn’t been doing anything to help her team!  I really don’t think she was qualified to be in a contest like this.  Well, she was in the Miss USA pageant.  What a shock that she wouldn’t be good at building shelters and winning wrestling competitions after having an experience like that!!  

Now if CBS had any sense whatsoever, every immunity challenge would involve some kind of wet T-shirt event!!  

That would help even things up a bit on the island!!

We’re gearing up for another lame series of Survivor!  This game has quickly evolved into the same predictable predicaments as previous seasons!  And I just keep watching…

Angie Jakusz was afraid she was the next to go in her tribe because she received several votes at the previous tribal council.  But she proved herself to be a tough competitor in the challenges endearing herself to the group.  I like her around mainly because she wears the skimpiest bikini bottoms ever seen in Survivor History!

The Reward Challenge was incredibly intense with several participants getting bloodied up in the process.  First time I remember seeing a competition where the opposing team was swinging heavy bags of sand at them while they tried to walk a skinny plank!  Brutal!!

Looks like we have a couple different potential couples getting ready to do the Wild Thing as Kimberly Mullen was seen snuggling up with Jeff Wilson and Jennifer Lyon was sleeping with Gregg Carey.  Nothing like a little Survivor Sex to spice up the series!!

Ian Rosenberger showed himself to be a stud again this week when not only did he find the missing steel crate that held his tribe’s fire supplies, but also figured out a way to salvage it from the bottom of the ocean!  I guess all that work with dolphins is really paying off for the boy.  Tom Westman proved to a monster as well when he almost single-handedly pulled the foot locker across the ocean floor to win the immunity challenge.

Ashlee Ashby proved herself to be more sex symbol than strong Survivor candidate, when her whining and detachment from the rest of the tribe caused her to be this week’s victim.

The First Episode of Survivor Palau started with some good twists.  I liked putting the tribes together as one big team so some relationships could get started before splitting them into separate groups.  This helps get the Back Stabbing started early.

The next twist seemed a little sadistic.   I liked making each person pick the next person to be on their tribe, but to send home the two people who weren’t picked seemed a bit cruel.  It did force the players to reveal their early alliances, but sure must have sucked for the two people who ended up gone without even going to a Tribal Council!!

Poor Wanda Shirk.  She wrote all those clever Survivor songs and had to leave before getting to sing them all.

And poor Jonathan Libby!  This young stud had 57 year old Willard Smith picked before him!  That has to sting the ego a bit!!

Then we had the silly immunity challenge which sent Ulong to Tribal Council where they voted Jolanda “Jo” Jones off the island.  Jo looked like the kind of woman who could crack walnuts with her butt cheeks and seemed to be a bit bossy.  She won an earlier challenge to properly intimidate her fellow tribes-mates.  It was such a shocker a woman with these qualities would get voted off so early!

Early People I like:

Coby Archa — A hustler hairstylist who seems to be good at the art of subtle manipulation.

Ian Rosenberger — Not only did he win the first individual immunity challenge, but he’s a Dolphin Trainer in real life?  Come on!  How can you not love a fricking dolphin trainer??

It’s The New Season Of Survivor!! Time To Watch For Which Foxy Survivor Lady Will Have Naked Pictures Arrive On The Net First?

This is The Order I’d Like To See Them!

1. Stephenie LaGrossa — Calls herself the girl next door. Says she had four older brothers and she grew up playing with the boys. Sounds good to me!

2. Ashlee Ashby — She likes the idea of being a Sex Symbol. Also claims to be a Mormon who’s never had sex. Unfortunate mixed messages on whether she’ll appear in Nude Photos or not.

3. Jennifer Lyon — A Nanny who plans on flirting a lot to get ahead in the game. But will she strip for chocolate and peanut butter like Jenna Morasca?

4. Kimberly Mullen — Miss Ohio in the Miss USA Pageant in 2002.

5. Janu Tornell — Her career is as a Topless Vegas Showgirl. I’m guessing she may have already started negotiations with Playboy.

6. Katie Gallagher — Calls herself a bad girl, raunchy, and flexible. That’s one of my favorite combinations in a woman!!

7. Caryn Groedel — Civil Rights Lawyer. A little Butch, but kind of cute.

8.Jolanda “Jo” Jones — Scares the hell out of me! She’s a lawyer that could tear me in two!! Enough said

9. Angie Jakusz — Angie is a heavily tattooed bartender with the “Freak Factor” working for her. Doesn’t work for me.

10. Wanda Shirk — I’m pretty sure Wanda is a lady and needs to be included on this list., but her photo on the Survivor Website shows she may have been a man at one point.

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