Patti B. Won’t Last a Minute in the Jungle

Took an early-morning power walk today with my friend Shari in which we walk really fast unless, a) Shari is waving to a passing car driven by someone she doesn’t know; or b) we forget to walk really fast because c) we’re talking about something important like how long Shari would last living in a jungle.
 

This was not idle chit-chat. This was a current events topic initiated by the news story broken exclusively on the Today Show this morning that Patti Blagojevich, wife of disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, was taking her husband’s place on the NBC reality show, “I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here,” set in a Costa Rican jungle.
 

Rod had been barred by a judge from appearing on the show – which I’m not entirely convinced isn’t filmed on a backlot in Burbank – because it would take him out of the country when he might need to be proclaiming his innocence on more talk shows.
 

Patti said she hoped that being on the show would put to rest her profanity-spewing image caught on federal wiretaps.
 

This would not be my first concern as I would surely begin swearing like a sailor the minute I stepped off the plane and discovered we were filming during the rainy season and that I would have nowhere to plug in a blow dryer, which, come to think of it, may have been Rod’s reason for backing out.
 

Patti said she was doing this to support her family during these tough economic times, made tougher, no doubt, when your husband is no longer able to ply his trade trying to sell the President’s vacated Senate seat or shake down companies with state business for campaign contributions. Allegedly.
 

And so I posed the question to Shari: What would she be willing to do to support her family?
 

“Anything,” she said. “For my family? Oh my God, absolutely anything.”
 

“So, you’d go to the jungle?” I asked
 

“Oh, definitely,” she said, adding for effect, “I’d even eat worms.”
 

“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, remembering that she was once grossed out by the prospect of using a shared yoga mat at the ‘Y.’
 

“Oh no,” she said proudly. “For my family? I’d eat bugs, worms. I’d climb mountains.”
 

“Would you eat a squirrel?” I asked and instantly knew I got her.
 

“Well, no, because, you know, I don’t eat meat,” she said thoughtfully.
 

“Shari, the bugs and worms wouldn’t go that far,” I pointed out. “And, incidentally, the bugs and worms are technically meat too, I think.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t eat worms,” she said, forgetting her earlier proclamation. “But I’d do anything else.”
 

“Would you kill a squirrel or a rabbit or some animal they have in Costa Rica?” I asked.
 

“Sure, I could do that,” she said.
 

“Not with a specially equipped dart blower that would put the bunny to sleep,” I pointed out, watching as her expression turned markedly less tough. “With a real knife.”
 

“A knife?”
 

I could tell I had her.
 

“Yes, Shari,” I said, going in for the proverbial kill. “A knife. With real blood.”
 

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, weakening.
 

“You wouldn’t last five minutes in the jungle,” I said. “They’d bounce you out of there in the first episode.”
 

“But I’d form alliances,” she said.
 

She had me there. She would be great forming alliances. In a day, she’d have the women a tight, united pack. Sanjaya and John Salley would be begging for mercy. Of course, on Day 2, it’s quite possible her women’s group would be arguing over who would have to kill the squirrel and Shari would have squared off with the super model who is supposedly meaner than Patti.
 

No matter. By now, Shari was bored with our conversation, so I had to quickly segue to the movie with Robert Redford and Demi Moore called “Indecent Proposal,” the one where Redford’s character offers a million bucks to Moore’s character and her husband, played by Woody Harrelson, to have Demi spend one night with Redford.
 

“A night with Robert Redford?” Shari said, when I reminded her of the movie.
 

We weren’t talking worms anymore.
 

And she didn’t have to answer.

One Response to “Patti B. Won’t Last a Minute in the Jungle”

  1. Dan

    Very funny piece. The concept of the show — taking people we mostly don’t care about and calling them celebrities (and what the hell is it with “celebrities” and this country?) — is appalling bad. But the column is very funny.

    As for killing rabbits, when I was a boy we — my parents — raised rabbits and chickens to help spread the working man’s paycheck. They both were raised on farms. Dad killed the chickens in the usual way, a hatchet to the neck placed on a big chunk of wood. The rabbits he held by their back feet, hanging them downward, and hit hard at the back of the head and neck with a metal pipe; always two blows to make sure, but the first did the job immediately. Not fun to see. A knife came into play only when dressing it. Today, and not because of those experiences, I don’t eat meat.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)