Outwit, outplay, out-beard

MANILA, Philippines - Stop the presses. By the time this article is released, former MTV Philippines VJ and current host of the radio show, The KC Show, KC Montero will have settled into Las Vegas and his friend, American singer Jojo, will have shaved away all remnants of his “Angry beard.” “It’s going to be a milestone in her career,” KC said right before heading off to the airport after the Supreme shoot. “I can shave it now that this photo shoot is over. Tim (Yap) said ‘Don’t shave it,’ but I’m actually I’m going to the fight right now, and I’m going to have my friend Jojo shave it. I’m taking her to the Pacquiao fight, and we’re gonna videotape her shaving the Angry Beard.”

Though it’s longest he’s ever had his beard, he doesn’t really have any emotional attachments to it, what with all the names he lovingly uses to refer to it. “It really reminds me of an armpit growing off of my face. I’ve called it other things, but that’s the cleanest thing I can call it,” he says. “It’s pretty gnarly, I’m telling you. Sometimes I feel like Zach Galifianakis.” Well, heading to Vegas certainly wouldn’t help things.

The beard isn’t the only thing that’s new with KC. If you’ve been following him on Twitter (or if you’re famous, darling, and know him personally), you would have noticed the following things: he’s skinny, he’s dark (kutis na takaw tingin no more), and he has… hair. On his head. I’ve been watching KC since he won the MTV VJ hunt in 1999 when I was 12 (half the age I am now), and in the 12 years I’ve seen him in the public eye since, he’s never looked like this. I suppose I should have just expected it though, considering that he just finished taping for Survivor Philippines Celebrity Doubles Showdown last Oct. 27.

“I joined Survivor because I wanted to compete. Survivor is a difficult game. I believe it’s the most difficult reality game ever invented. It’s basically to test myself to see if I could do it — if I could live in the woods, if I could eat garbage. If I could have the satisfaction of being able to play the game, and say that I made it,” he says. The clincher for KC, however, was the fact that was paired with his ex-wife, Geneva Cruz, whom he married in Seattle, Washington in 2004. “It was something that GMA chose. I couldn’t pick my partner, but I was lucky to be with her,” KC says before pausing and giving me a knowing smile, prompting me to ask if it was difficult. “Survivor is hard for anybody,” he answers. “But in real life, we’ve been through much worse, so Survivor, she calls it cupcakes.”

Working towards the same goal certainly made it easier for the two of them, since they came to the agreement that they would be playing for the same goal: To win the P3 million prize money for the college fund of Geneva’s son, Heaven Arespacochaga. “Gen and I agreed we’d trust each other, never backstab each other, and we’d go to the top or as far as we could. That was the only pact we really had. There was going to come a time when we knew that either of us would sacrifice ourselves in order for the other to go further,” he shares.

Reality TV would be pretty boring, though, if that was the only thing that they threw at KC, especially since they were camping out in the beautiful islands of Palawan. Solenn Heussaff, who briefly dropped by the shoot — as KC’s friend, tsismosos — mentioned that in comparison to where she was stationed in Bangkok when she joined Survivor, their island was heaven. “Nice pristine waters, sandy beaches — we definitely had a very nice location, but each location had its ups and downs, it’s pros and cons. We had snakes, scorpions, centipedes, cobras, but those are just the cast-aways, we also have other animals out there (laughs).” Then KC gets a little serious. “Somebody was bit by a cobra, and they rushed her to the hospital in Manila.” Apparently not all reality TV is fake.

Without his trademark shaved head and pale skin, KC Montero admits that having his beard makes him feel like Zach Galifianakis. Looking at these photos, Zach wishes.

Aside from dying of snake venom, the show had other, less fatal, occupational hazards, like sleeping the rain during Pedring, and digging up someone’s hazardous wastes. “We had a designated area, and you’re supposed to cover it up and put a coconut or a stick to show that the area had been contaminated. But it turned into a landmine area, so you walked there, and you went to the bathroom on top of someone’s bathroom. Like, you dig a hole, and then you uncover someone’s… luckily I found a secret spot that no one used,” he says. “The other thing that we couldn’t figure out was how to clean our teeth. You can really feel on your teeth. It’s like they’re wearing jackets, it’s like you’re chewing butter. It’s really disgusting. I even tried to put sand in there. That was a stupid idea.” Eventually though, KC figured out how to use a safety pin (he was allowed to have one to help to hold up his loosening shorts) to pick his teeth, along with scraping them with his shirt and using string from his shirt to floss. “Then I stopped caring. They stunk just as much as I did.” 

We’ll have to watch the show to see how it all ends, but KC admits that he probably could have stayed out there for a year —“This would be a really badass beard. I could make clothes out of it!” — but now that he’s back, he’s still adjusting to civilization. “The first thing I did when I got back was take a shower, order a pizza, eat the whole thing, and go to Republiq! (laughs)” However, the experience wasn’t as fun as he expected it to be. “I have crazy eyes. When I was in Republiq, I was just kind of looking at people, like, ‘What’s this all about?’ But I drank heavily that night, so I was fine towards the end.”

We should all probably be a little more grateful then that KC was only stuck with the other Castaways for a month because otherwise, we’d probably see him in a place where his beard would look less out of place. “If there wasn’t all of the back stabbing and all of the B.S. and gaming involved, I could stay out there for a long time. But with all the drama, I might go crazy, and kill somebody. You can quote me on that.”