Arts & Entertainment

Is Mill Valley's Piombo a Survivor Bad Boy?

Strawberry resident Marty Piombo is a contestant in CBS' Survivor: Nicaragua, which premieres tonight, and says he might be the man you love to hate.

In most reality shows, editing is the kingmaker, and Strawberry resident Marty Piombo, a contestant in the new Survivor: Nicaragua, is unsure if he'll be portrayed as hero or villain.

The show premieres tonight on CBS, and having finished filming the show six weeks ago, Piombo hasn't seen any of the final product.

"I could be edited as a super nice hero guy or I could easily be edited as the devil," he said Wednesday. "We'll see. From the clips and ads I've seen, I could be kind of a villain-esque wise guy. Hopefully I'm funny at least."

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Piombo, 48, said although he is a diehard Survivor fan who has never missed an episode, nothing could have prepared him for the sleep deprivation and overall conditions of the experience. He called it the most difficult thing he's ever done, far harder than his winter mountaineering adventures in the Sierra Nevadas or the weight loss of his college wrestling days.

"Those don't hold a candle to this," he said.

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For obvious reasons, Piombo is prohibited from discussing how he performed on the show or talking to Patch anytime between today and the day he is either eliminated from the show or wins the $1 million grand prize.

"I think I played a great game," he said. "In retrospect, there's nothing I would change. I'm happy with how I performed."

Like the show's previous two seasons, Survivor: Nicaragua features 20 castaways. The show's contestants will be divided into two tribes: Espada (wearing blue), which consists of 10 castaways over the age of 40, and La Flor, which consists of 10 castaways aged 30 and under. The show's youngest contestant is 20 years old, while the oldest is 67.

The show's most well known contestant is Jimmy Johnson, the former National Football League coach of the Dallas Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins and a longtime TV studio analyst with Fox Sports.

Piombo, an Internet technology executive with a data analytics startup called SkyTide, said he had hoped to bring "a calculating ruthlessness to the game without being someone who was going to alienate everybody right away and be kicked out in the first episode. I had to balance my natural instincts. Anybody who is kind of a corporate leader type of guy, people are going to hate you from the get-go. That's just the way it goes."

Piombo was born in Argentina and spent his early years there. Most of his family remains in Argentina, and Piombo owns property in the Sierra Madre mountain and goes down every December for the holidays.

Piombo has spent most of his career in the Internet technology business, working for five years at Yahoo, managing partnerships with mobile providers like AT&T and mobile phone makers.

He and wife Kathy have three kids, two of whom attend Strawberry Point Elementary. Their eldest, Sebastian, went to Tam Valley Elementary and Mill Valley Middle and is now a senior at University High School in San Francisco. Sebastian is the only person Piombo told when he reached the final round of the casting process with CBS.

"He is the only one who could keep a secret," Piombo said. "My wife was so over the top excited with this thing that she was a complete confidentiality liability. She was kept in the dark until two weeks before I was to go to Nicaragua and there was no way I could keep it from her. If the lady serving yogurt at Woody's would listen, she'd be telling her everything."

Piombo is an avid road cyclist, climbing Mount Tam most Saturday mornings, and is set to compete with Sebastian in the elite category of the RCP Tiburon Mile on Oct. 17.

"No wetsuits, so it should be a nice, chilly swim," he said.

Despite being a huge fan of the Survivor, Piombo applied on a whim through a promotion CBS held seeking applicants via video submissions.

"I always fantasized about it and knew it would be the pinnacle of life experiences," he said. "But I felt like I would never have a fair shot at it. I guess they saw a certain type of character with the complexity they were looking for this season."

Piombo said his fanaticism about the show helped him as a competitor.

"When you don't miss a single episode and you're a fairly intelligent guy, you pick up on what works and what doesn't work," he said. "I'm a hardcore competitor."

Piombo said he modeled himself after two well-known former Survivor contestants, hoping to be a combination of sorts between Boston Rob ("ingenious, smart, good guy") and Russell Hantz ("smart, aggressive, clever and he never quit").

Piombo was struck at how much harder it is than the show reveals in each episode.

"You're sleeping on freaking bamboo and nothing else and there is no roof that can be built for you and you only have the clothes on your back and it's cold and there's bugs and not much sleeping at all sometimes for days on end," he said. "It is truly Survivor and I don't think a lot of people get that. They think oh they're feeding you in the background and you're sleeping on air mattresses. No way."

Regardless of how he faired and how is is portrayed, Piombo said he has it all in perspective.

"It's for one million dollars and it's serious and the experience of a lifetime," he said. "But at the end of the day. It's just a game."


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