Lex van den Berghe
santacruzsentinel.com

Strap yourselves in kiddies, and block off your Thursday nights,because reality television’s kingpin Mark Burnett will be rolling out the seventh season of his adventure game show juggernaut this Thursday night when "Survivor Pearl Islands" premieres.

Can you believe that in the past two years, CBS has actually aired five seasons of "Survivor"? It’s nice to know somebody out there is lighting up fine Cuban cigars with Ben Franklins.

After a four-month recess since "Survivor Amazon," we’re off to Panama and we’ll once again have something we can all talk about around the ol’ water cooler or at our favorite local eatery.

We’ll be able to cheer on a fresh group of competitors and jeer a new crop of chuckleheads, all while living island life vicariously through the characters we relate to.

The theme this season is pirates! Aaarrgghh! It’s going to take every ounce of my self-control not to go off on a swashbuckling spree of piratey jokes and puns. But just between you and me, I’d give my right arm to see Jeff Probst, "Survivor’s" no-nonsense host, preside overtribal council wearing an eye-patch and sporting a hook. They could even train his little parrot sidekick to snuff out the landlubbers torches.

The rumor mill is already buzzing like mad about the twists and tricks "Survivor" puppetmaster Burnett will be unleashing on these 16 unsuspecting victims. And in recent interviews, both Burnett and Probst made it crystal clear that this season will be all about surprises.

I can almost hear the two of them now ... sadistically guffawing and wringing their hands together, like mustachioed villains from an old-time movie.

Already we know that episode one will find our castaways flung overboard with nothing but the clothes on their backs, providing a shipwreck-style scenario straight out of "Poseidon Adventure," where evening-gowned sophisticates consorted with common riff raff to stay alive.

It seems these poor suckers in Panama won’t even get to bring a luxury item along for the ride.

But to be frank, having gotten a few sneak peeks into "Survivor Pearl Islands," it doesn’t look like this crew will be wanting for very much. Each tribe (named Morgan and Drake, after — you guessed it — pirates) will have their own islands — a "Survivor" first. And from what I’ve seen, these isles look like little slices of paradise you’d deliberately choose to be marooned on.

The vegetation is lush and colorful, the water is a beautiful aqua-marine, straight out of "Blue Lagoon," and the previews for the season premiere already showed images of "Survivors" chowing down on huge fish and oysters.

But as I know too well, the environment is only one of many challenges that must be endured and beaten to go far in the game.

Surviving and outlasting your fellow cast mates is the real challenge, and by the looks of this misfit crew, there’ll never be a shortage of drama in the Pearl Islands.

A few standouts on the cast so far are:

RUPERT BONEHAM, a 39 year-old troubled teen mentor (and mountain of a man) from Indianapolis. This guy is going to entertain us; he looks like a cartoon character and has whoop ass written all over him. I give him good odds in the game too — he seems genuine, tough and likeable. And rumor has it that a Yeti-like creature has been repeatedly spotted by locals in Panama, indicating that Rupert went far in the game.

JON DALTON, a 29-year-old art consultant from Danville, Va. Already Jon is shaping up to be the guy we’ll love to hate. This egomaniacal, self-professed ladies man is 100 percent pure jackass. In one of his CBS pre-show interviews he said, "I want to be the first "Survivor" to have sex on the island. I’m looking for a ménage a trois, or cuatro, or cinco. Well, I don’t speak French — I just kiss it." What a moron.

DARRAH JOHNSON, a hot 22-year-old mortician from Mississippi. Need Isay more? OK, I will add that her audition video featured footage of Darrah popping out of a coffin wearing a leopard print bikini, as well as scenes of her hunting deer with a rifle in full camo. She professes not only to be "a certified mortician, but also a certified ass-kicker." Wow.

Other notable characters include Ryan Shoulders, a goofy punk-rock produce clerk from Tennessee; Trish Dunn, a married sales executive from Maryland and mother of 9-year-old twins; and Christa Hastie, a terminally chatty computer programmer from Los Angeles who says she "sees the world in code, and dreams about infinite loops."

And with the Bay Area’s Ryan Opray, an electrician from Los Gatos, and Burton Roberts, a marketing exec from San Francisco, we may even have some quasi-locals to root for.

If you just can’t wait for Thursday to meet the new cast, just clickety-click your way to www.cbs.com and select the "Survivor" link.

Not only can you get a glimpse at the new folks’ mug shots, but the Web site also features biographies, short interview video clips for each cast member and their individual audition tapes that got them on theshow.

If you’ve got a few minutes and you want a good laugh, check them out.

By the way, I wanted to thank all you readers who responded to my informal survey last column. Based on your feedback I’ll be taking a temporary break from the Skinny to give you the blow-by-blow on "Survivor Pearl Islands."

One thing you should know is that in writing this Survivor column, I’ll basically be taking a bullet for you guys. Truth is, at the end of each season, I get to meet all of the cast members (since we all make up one big dysfunctional family) and the first thing out of their mouths is often, "Hey, about your weekly ‘Survivor’ column..." Yes, they read. You can just imagine the damage control I need to do after a season of my brand of heavy clowning.

So to all 16 of you cats out there in Panama playing the ultimate game, best of luck.

Lex van den Berghe was a "Survivor Africa" contestant. Contact him at lex@santa-cruz.com.