7.29.2002

 

A few weeks ago, my home samovar was telling me things he wanted me to write about in this here blog. One of his proposals was the always puzzling "If you were marooned on a deserted island with only one person, who would you want that one person to be?" question. I had never really thought about that, so I started mulling over the possibilities.

Being a normal guy, my first thought was "okay, so which beautiful woman am I going to take with me?" Elizabeth Hurley was the first to come to mind, but I've heard she's quite bitchy, and if I'm going to be stuck on a desert island with someone, I'd prefer them to be nice. So I went through a list of other women in whose lives I wouldn't mind being the only guy like Gillian Anderson and Heidi Klum. But ultimately I didn't think it would work out with either of them. Gillian's pretty pale, and I'd be worried about her getting skin cancer all the time. She's also somewhat short, and not being a giant myself, we'd have no one to reach the coconuts. And of course, Heidi is married, so she might not succumb to my wily charms at all, though I find that somewhat hard to believe, as I know you do too. Plus both beautiful ladies are more mature than I am, and who knows if they would want to take advantage of all the fun a deserted island has to offer? (Watch The Blue Lagoon if you're curious about this.) So I initially settled on Britney Spears. She's smoking hot, young enough to want to have fun, and has admitted that "it's hard to wait." (Not that many believe she has, or anything. But I'm cool with that.) Plus, on our island paradise, Britney would have no television toward which she could direct her energy and sluttiness, so I would have to oblige her. Rats.

But then I started thinking about why I wanted these particular ladies to be present with me on my island. Yeah, I'm not very deep, so it pretty much came down to lust and being horny. But how would they do at helping me survive? I cannot say that I have as much confidence in their abilities to build a raft out of coconuts and palm fronds as I do in their abilities to make me want to do other thinigs besides building rafts out of coconuts and palm fronds. (This is not to say that they wouldn't be great survival mates, but I'd like a little more insurance than a luck of the draw type scenario.) And since we'd be on a deserted island, after a while all the birth control I packed would run out, and pretty soon we run the danger of having little Britneys and Chrises around. And then my responsibilities would grow even greater because I'd have to come home from work and keep an eye on the children. How could I ever have enough time to sit back, enjoy a nice mai-tai and figure out how the hell we'd get off the island when I was ready?

So having a really gorgeous lady on my island for sexual purposes started to seem like less and less of a good idea. Besides, when I finally return to civilization after surviving being marooned for a number of years, I would become an instant celebrity anyway. And since hot celebrities only date other hot celebrities, and since I'm already beyond hot, I'd get my beautiful famous lady in due time.

So back to the drawing board.

I briefly thought about taking some of my buddies with me because a lot of them are quite resourceful and I generally get along with them pretty well. But computers and emergency science and a knowledge of slavic languages will only get me so far on an island paradise. Plus, since these people are already my very good friends, the first month wouldn't be spent hating each other before we realized our necessity for each other. Then I couldn't play the sensitive guy who discovers that his island mate is a person too with feelings and hopes and dreams. And if I don't get this opportuinity, my own character will not develop enough to the point that the audience becomes sympathetic to my plight. So that option didn't work either.

I thought about recruting my dad, but if I am marooned on a deserted island, I may never grow up to be as successful as my father. I could live with that if I didn't have to know that he was watching me not be as good as he is every day. Nonetheless, I bet he'd build a kickass raft but forget something really important that wouldn't become apparent until we were four days at sea. Then he'd figure out a way to solve his oversight with a beautifully strung-together set of expletives.

So as much as it pains me to say so, taking a hottie lady with me is not a great idea. Nor is taking a buddy or my dad. What to do? I almost decided to go it alone, but then nobody would read my blog at all, so that idea got nixed as well.

Admittedly, I was pretty stumped until I rather fortuitously stumbled upon the answer while reading Jam Sandwhich.







MacGyver.

Seriously, who could be better? Unlike that piece of shit professor on Gilligan's Island who could create a transistor radio from some seaweed and install modern conveniences in the castaways' huts but couldn't for the life of him make a functional raft, MacGyver would be the problem solver to take with me, the uber castaway with which to share an island.

We'd be eating like kings on lobster caught in nets made from finely tied kelp and blowing things up using fermenting banana peels as explosives until we got bored with our island and decided to build a hovercraft out of some old crab claws and pineapple. Plus, he's fairly dark skinned, so we wouldn't have skin cancer concerns, and while he would be on equal celebrity footing with me upon our return, making him also eligible to date hot woman, he's a little "past his prime," meaning that the coolest girls of all would come to me first.

Sometimes I'm astounded by my own genius.

MacGyver, wherever you are: It would be my privilege to share a deserted island with you. Just leave that guy Pete back at the Phoenix Foundation. He always screws everything up.