Author Topic: The Amazing Race's Stinky Secrets  (Read 2533 times)

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Offline puddin

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The Amazing Race's Stinky Secrets
« on: May 20, 2005, 05:15:31 PM »
The Amazing Race's Stinky Secrets
by Ethan Alter


The seventh season of The Amazing Race has come and gone, scoring a series-best 16 million viewers with its finale on May 10. While viewers saw a good portion of what happened on the monthlong dash around the world, there are always some things that CBS won't — or can't — show. As third-place finisher Ron Young told TVGuide.com, "They could really make a whole show out of the extra material."

Ron would know. In addition to his and teammate Kelly McCorkle's experiences in a Peruvian brothel — which he described in Tuesday's Insider — the former POW was caught in another... er, compromising position during his time in South America.

During the third leg of the race, which took teams on a spectacular drive through the Andes, Ron was suffering from a mean case of dysentery. "Being in Iraq, I know dysentery very well," he says, laughing. "I had my baby wipes with me and everything." Throughout the drive, he found himself having to leap out of the car at several intervals to, well, take care of business. At one point, he was forced to squat in a farmer's field, in full view of surrounding houses!
 
 
 
But the worst was yet to come. At one point, they reached a section of the mountain road where one lane had been shut down for road work. "We're in this line of cars about two miles long. To the left of us is this giant wall of rock, and to the right is this cliff with a 3000-foot drop. And then [the dysentery] hits me again. I grab my baby wipes and jump out of the car, but there's nowhere to go for miles!"

Fortunately for Ron, there was a wall off to the left that had been set up to prevent falling rocks from landing in the road. Unfortunately for Ron, the wall wasn't particularly high, so he wasn't able to hide his shame from the other drivers on the road. "The whole time I was thinking, 'They're probably filming this. I kept expecting to see a blurred shot of myself during that episode!" He shouldn't have been too worried — it's not as if TAR airs on Fox.

Meanwhile, whenever a challenge involves animals, you know the situation is ripe for good comedy ("My ox is broken!" anyone?). During the sixth leg of the race in Botswana, teams had to choose between balancing a variety of objects on their head or milking goats. Most chose the latter task, but the goats weren't necessarily cooperative. Brothers Brian and Greg Smith found themselves dealing with a particularly wily goat they nicknamed Houdini. "She kept getting loose," Greg remembers. "Brian had a stick and he kept waving it at her to round her up. All the kids in the village were laughing at us."


Eventually, they settled on a system where Brian would talk to the goat and Greg would come up from behind to tie her up. Since Brian is a stand-up comic — you can catch him and Greg in their Los Angeles-based improv troupe "Vladamir and the Exploding Pants" — at least this gave him the opportunity to try out his material on a captive audience.

Boyfriends Lynn Warren and Alex Ali also had an unfortunate run-in with the goats. "One of them pooped on me," Lynn says, shuddering at the memory. "I was like, 'Oh my god, it's chocolate milk! It was disgusting." Far funnier — and raunchier — were the duo's exchanges with host Phil Keoghan on the finish mat, some of which turned up online at CBS.com. "Phil is hilarious," says Lynn. "He's got a raunchy sense of humor that doesn't come across on camera."

Among the topics they discussed was Phil's fashion sense. "He would ask us if his clothes were gay," laughs Alex. "And he actually owned some of the clothes we had!" Speaking of clothes, according to race champs Uchenna and Joyce Agu, Lynn and Alex had an interesting way of washing their garments. At the pit stop in Argentina, the unambiguously gay duo attempted to do their laundry in the hotel pool. "They had washing machines, but we didn't know if we would have to pay," says Joyce. "So Lynn just decided, 'Hey, I'm going to use the pool!' The maids who worked there had a fit."

While Uchenna and Joyce were the only people who didn't do the goat challenge, they didn't leave Africa without having their own close encounter of the animal kind. During one of the pit stops, the couple was relaxing in their hotel room when some of the wild baboons that roamed the grounds decided to drop by for a visit!

"First [the baboons] were jumping around on Meredith and Gretchen Smith's balcony," remembers Joyce. "But then they started coming in my direction! I ran back inside to get Uchenna's attention." At first only one or two showed up, but more pushy simians soon followed. "Eventually there were 10 of them sitting on our balcony," laughs Joyce. "They were jumping up and down and climbing on the hammock! We kept thinking, where are the cameras?"

Perhaps the baboons just wanted to catch a glimpse of what future millionaires looked like.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/insider/050520c.asp