Word: outbacker
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...interested in learning how to survive your next trip to the Australian bush, don't look to "Survivor: The Australian Outback" for advice. Yes, in theory you should be able to learn quite a bit from the predicament of 16 would-be millionaires abandoned, as CBS says, "in the heart of one of the most unforgiving places anywhere on earth, the Australian outback." But this is what we've learned so far: Boil river water before you drink it; don't let an Army guy do your fishing; keep your hair in braids...
...stash of beef jerky; pondering whether Elizabeth has the power to protect Roger; wondering how many pounds of water I could balance on my shoulders. Still, as an Australian and a pedant, I am heartily disappointed with the "reality" of the setting. What Jeff and his producers call the Outback is a lush, watery place in the rainy season, not the dry, red desert we associate with the word. And survive? The good people of Ogakor and Kucha are getting a whole lot of help. They may be on the peckish side, but as long as they're complaining about...
...wasn't the only disappointment of Week Two of "Survivor: Back to the Outback." The contestants are really starting to sound like they'd watched all the tapes of "Survivor 1" before they got on the plane, and the cattiness we're supposed to eat up like pasty rice really sounds forced. Frankly, gross-out Wheel of Gastronomical Misfortune or not, at about the halfway point the director's-cut 40-minute "Friends" with George Costanza was awfully appetizing, clicker-wise...
...game. In the game, you get to select one of the survivors as your fisher, and sit on the bank and catch enough fish to feed the tribe before your time runs out and you all starve (for some reason, there's a lot of time pressure in the Outback). For those of you out there scoring at home, a tip: Rodger isn't much of a fisherman, but Jerri clearly knows how to hook the big ones. Is this a clue...
Australian Peter Carey, 57, has built a distinguished career out of offbeat, risk-taking novels. His Oscar and Lucinda (1988), which won Britain's Booker Prize, portrayed two improbable 19th century Aussie dreamers obsessed with the notion of hauling a glass church across the outback. In Jack Maggs (1998), Carey produced an engaging variation on Dickens' Great Expectations. And he is up to new tricks in True History of the Kelly Gang (Knopf; 352 pages; $25), which purports to be a first-person narrative written by Ned Kelly, the outlaw who terrorized and enchanted Australians during the 1870s...