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As you know, 36-year old metalhead Billy Garcia was the second Survivor to get torched in last weeks episode of Cook Islands.

He spent his time lying around and got played out of the game when he literally drove his Aitu tribe stupid and caused them to deliberately lose the Immunity Challenge so they could rid of him.

Of course Billy's also the person directly responsible for giving us the most classic Jeffsipoo expression in the history of the show when he gave love a bad name by proudly announcing it was love at first sight between him and Candice:



I caught up with Billy to see if he's still on the planet he was on in the show or if he's back here with us. You can either check out his interview or listen to it or do a combo of both.

Enjoy!


Tashi: Deliberately voting off a member from a tribe - it’s Survivor suicide - yet your tribe were fully prepared to take the risk. Clearly they couldn’t wait to get rid of you.
Billy: Uh yeah, personally I see it like you said - a suicide strategy where you’re risking taking yourself out in an attempt to take somebody else out that you feel is gonna hurt you for one reason or another down the line.

It would be smarter to take the “Get out of jail free” card – referring to game Monopoly, where you just have that person saved up in case you lose legitimately down the road and you can use that person as a way to get out of having to vote out somebody that you like.

Tashi: But then they were obviously like so desperate to get rid of you they didn’t go with that.
Billy: Yeah, yeah I mean a lot of it had to do - that I had mentioned out there how big of a fan of the show that I was. There were many times where I demonstrated it, where I knew things that were gonna happen before they happened.

Like I knew what day the challenge would fall on and when we read the clue I knew exactly how the challenge would unfold and the rest of my team - which were not fans of the show before being on there - saw that as a serious problems, especially the two males, the men - and so the whole schpiel of me not working - that was just to convince the women.

They convinced one of them - the other one, the cop, Christina, she didn’t fall for it at all. She saw it fr what it was but with only two of us against three there was nothing she could do.

Tashi: Are you lazy and untrustworthy as they said?
Billy: (Laughs) Well I am not lazy. Unfortunately that was the tag that they put on me because being a heavy guy it was very believable - at least to the person they were trying to convince of that - being Cecilia but the truth was that the men felt that being a fan, that I was gonna hurt them down the line.

If you listen to Ozzy at Tribal Council he actually says that he wants to get me while I’m caralled, before I’m out in the open and I can do damage.

Tashi: So you would say they were right about you being untrustworthy.
Billy: Well they put me in a position where I had no choice - three of them on one side and me on the other side. If they’d at least fooled me into thinking that I was part of the group I’d have fell for it, I’d have been all gung-ho you know ‘cos we’re out there representing our race. I woulda been for the race.

But because they made the mistake of being obvious of having me on the outside - what other choice did I have? What other move could I make besides try to save myself down the road and find someone else to align with?

Tashi: Did you identify yourself strongly according to race?
Billy: Well it was obvious, once we were divided up, that we were representing race and I personally would rather just represent myself and I understood the situation we were in and that whether I liked it or not that’s the way the perception would be to the audience watching the show.

So I took that into account and I wish that the rest of my tribe would have took that into account. Unfortunately only myself and Christina saw it that way.

Tashi: How did the others see it?
Billy: Their words were: “We have to represent our race, but their actions were: “I’m in it for a million dollars and nothing else gets in the way. The only colour I see is the colour of money.” That was their actions.

Tashi: Now what’s up with the whole “I love Candice more than the million,” nonsense?
Billy: (Laughs) Well you know, Tribal Council’s actually pretty long and for the majority of that Tribal Council I was being pummeled. The only person that remotely stood up for me was Christina and after a while she just stepped aside -there was only so much she could take - I just kept getting pummeled and so at one point, what could I say?

I just told everybody everything - who had an alliance with who and then I just kept going from there - from that to every conversation I had out there and it ended up on the Candice thing.

You know, everybody has their little crushes etc but they normally keep them to themselves - well under those circumstances I just let it out because I don’t even know what my tribe wanted from me. They had the numbers, they already threw the challenge - why did they have to pummel me? I don’t know.

Tashi: Have you seen Candice since the show’s finished?
Billy: Many times actually.

Tashi: Oh really? Has she returned the crush?
Billy: (laughs) You know, she and I see it as very comical - as a very funny situation - I don’t know if it’s just the nature of American comedy, defined like a pie in the face is funny but that’s the way we took it. She and I are friends - we’re not romantically inclined or anything but we’re friends and she’s sort of gotten used to my sense of humour. I’ve got a very absurd sense of humour - I find the most ridiculous things funny.

Tashi: So you’re trying to convince me you don’t have a crush on her anymore?
Billy: No I don’t, but we’re friends.

Tashi: Who out of everyone surprised you most?
Billy: It’s a tie between Cecilia and Ozzy - for two totally different reasons. Cecilia - what the episode didn’t show it but we got ran over by the ship that we looted - we got run over by that ship and she was getting sawed in half by the ship that was bobbing and weaving in the water.

I had saved her from that so it surprised me that she went from spending a lot of time with me in the beginning where we did all the work together to where all of a sudden she did an about phase and was insistent I was this lazy person and that I was gonna stab her in the back after we just had that moment where I had saved her.

Ozzy is very good at making himself out to be everybody’s best buddy but he’s very quick at putting a knife in your back. Another thing that most people didn’t see is that Ozzy and I had an agreement to go together to the end and we were just looking for that extra person.

I wanted Christina but he and Christina did not get along - he wanted JP but JP and me did not get along so we were in a quandary. He was so quick to betray that initial deal but again, money comes first to him over relationships from what I gather.

Tashi: What heavy metal song best describes your experience on the show?
Billy: (Laughs) You know I actually spent a lot of time contemplating going on Survivor before actually going on. My initial try was going to be all the way back on Pearl Islands and I just never got around to it so here it is what? Four Survivors, five Survivors later?

So Iron Maiden’s Wasted Years would be the song that describes me most ‘cos the way the chorus goes, it says: “Don’t look back on the wasted years ‘cos you’re living in the golden years.”

Even though I took forever to do it, I got to do it and it’s a golden moment no matter how it turned out.

Tashi: You say you are clearly a big fan of the show - what strategy did you have as you went in?
Billy: I learned the hard way that you cannot have a set strategy going onto Survivor. You have to have tactics but not a set strategy - you have to be more like water, that’s the sort of strategy you have to have but I didn’t have that going in.

Going in I was looking at the usual suspects, like you always have the older gentleman, the soccer moms, the military person and I already had a strategy in my head that I was gonna team up with these people and eliminate all the jocks and this way it would be a battle of Average Joes.

When we got divided up by race, my whole strategy was gone as soon as we were divided up.You’re dealt whatever hand you’re dealt with. I was more of a Poker player out there, I was gonna be my tactics. With my weak hand I was dealt with it was impossible for me to bluff which was gonna be one of my big tactics.

Tashi: Who’s your fave Survivor of all time?
Billy: Rob Cesternino - yea, Rob C., Rob C. - he’s the ultimate chess player. He was very slow, very weak, he didn’t have a particularly great work ethic around camp yet he was one of the greatest players ever.

Tashi: Season-wise - what would you say your fave season is?
Billy: I would say Season 2, the Australian Outbook ‘cos that season Mother Nature played as big a role as any player. Those poor players got their butts kicked for the entire Survivor – it was brutal. I kinda wish we had some bad weather when I was there, when I was on Survivor.

I’d hoped it would be worse. I was hoping for a few rain storms ‘cos when nature kicks your butt, all you wanna do is get back out there and kick some butt back which means nobody thinks of throwing challenges in that situation.

Ends with Iron Maiden song

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Related links:

Tribal Talk: Episode 2
Interview: Sekou Bunch

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