I was sitting in my intern “office” one day at DC-101, “the only station that really rocks,” when my eyes met a most repulsive sight. Through the window, I spotted an oversized Don John’s Porta Potty. According to DC-101 Promotions Director Josh McPhail, this colossal commode was part of “the craziest and most disturbing radio promotion [he’s] ever been involved with.” He called it the “Sewervivor,” DC-101’s answer to the hit reality T.V. show Survivor. The goons that I work with decided it would be funny to put six contestants in a trailer size porta-potty for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and see who could last the longest. The winner, the one who could best tolerate the monotony, the stench and the utter disgust, would win a $10,000 trip to the Australian Outback, including a visit to the site where Survivor II is currently being filmed.
Curious about what exactly this promotional “game” involved, I looked into it a little further and this is what I found: The porta potty was a real bathroom, with communal urinals, sinks, mirrors, commodes and vinyl floors Accordingly, there was no place to sit (except for the toilets) and no windows, meaning that there were no diversions of any kind aside from the single luxury item each contestant was allowed to bring. Their choices ranged from a harmonica to Vick’s vapor rub to a pillow; for the miserable days they were trapped in that outhouse, said item was to be their only entertainment and single link to the outside world. But these few “luxuries” could hardly have been enough to escape from the reality these contestants lived.
DC-101 was kind enough to provide the smokes, toilet paper and nourishment, which consisted of buffalo wings and beer. And the trailer was mic’d 24 hours a day, so listeners could chart the increasingly delusional nature of their conversations over the web. But most notable was the unbearable stench that came pouring out from the crack of the porta potty door. It was a mix of feces and body odor, with a faint waft of those blue things that go in the bottom of urinals. And on the outside, DC-101’s front yard was littered with signs that the contestants’ friends and family had made. They said things like “Go Brent: Outshit??>Outback.”
And the contestants? They were a motley crew, ranging in age from 20 to 50. A carpenter, construction worker, case worker, retired cop, building engineer and OBGYN office worker, these dare-devils were all from the Maryland area. They came eager to participate in this CBS inspired adventure, complete with Survivor-esque contests. In one, the contestant who could consume two bowls of chili, one bowl of cream corn, and one jug of prune juice the fastest was awarded a night’s sleep in a bed set up in the DC-101 board room and whatever food they wanted.
But now, two-weeks later, I am sad to report that the contest is finally over. At 11:00 a.m. on Monday, the second to last contestant left. The winner, Brent, who chose a sleeping bag as his luxury item, had to remain in the trailer by himself another 24 hours before claiming his prize. When it was all over, followers agreed that he had been a tenacious competitor. McPhail compared Brent “to the winner of the first Survivor series. He came out to win the thing, played his own game, and won.” McPhail also noted that he “tried to pull some fake moves, like locking himself in the closets.”
But the ploys didn’t stop there. Not allowed to touch the other contestants, he once decided to piss off his opponent by vomiting on him. On another morning, after hearing Brent explain some kind of plan to fool the DC-101 overseers, one of the radio hosts came into the trailer just as Brent was rousing from his long night’s sleep on top of the porcelain sinks (yeah, he slept on top of the sinks). Brent had been scheming to go in the stall, lock it, produce a large bowel movement, and then not come out, making the other contestants think that he had locked himself in there and then disappeared. All the while he would be somewhere else??don’t ask how. Confused by what he had heard, the radio host burst in, eventually demanding that Brent unzip his sleeping bag, in which he found a hoard of pens??but not whole pens, just the inside parts that contain the ink. God could only know what he was doing with a stash of pen parts. But Brent clearly knew what he was doing; he had a goal and was determined to accomplish it.
And why was he so determined? Well, on the morning that he was proclaimed champion, this future outback-vacationer revealed that his fianc?’s birth-father lives in Australia. Brent proceeded to explain that he wanted to go there in order to ask permission to marry his daughter. How romantic …
