Last night on Survivor: Samoa, John Fincher, the 25 year old rocket scientist from Los Angeles, California, got a nasty surprise when his platinum Russell Alliance card was declined.  Before the season, Jeff Probst speculated that John was a poser, just talking a big game. Indeed, David entered Survivor: Samoa relatively unfamiliar with the series but armed with plenty of self-confidence, a stylish shirt and a keen knowledge of physics.

As it turned out, John won an individual immunity challenge and many team immunities, and seemed to play an instrumental role in ousting several power players. Yet, after watching the episodes I wonder how many readers still have an idea of what Jeff was getting at. Or perhaps he truly has shaken the label.

I enjoyed interviewing John this morning, when I asked him about his work as a rocket scientist, his past playing semi-pro soccer, his home run in the tee ball challenge and how he managed to spend quite so much of the first challenge on his bac.


Q. Great plaid shirt. Where'd you get it?
That was a gift from my clearly very stylish roommate Geoff. It's from a Danish company called Matinique - fits my body type very well.

Q. Why were you so knocked out after the first challenge? Weren't you worried about making the wrong impression on your new teammates when you laid on the ground for most of the challenge?
Went completely into the redzone for that challenge and was just trying not to pass out. Jaison is a swimming machine; I probably could have beaten anybody else, even wearing jeans. It certainly reduced the amount of people approaching me for an alliance upfront. Clearly I should have gone naked. I did successfully work to change the perception back at camp though and built one of my strongest alliances with Erik, someone who was initially quite annoyed with my performance.

Q. You hit a great shot in the tee ball challenge. Was it luck or experience?
Both. Baseball is admittedly not my sport, but I am a very good golfer. I told myself that it was a golf shot and focused on making good contact. I wanted to hit a shot with high loft so it would stick when it landed as opposed to rolling/bouncing off the target area into a zone with fewer points.

Q. Why did you pick the day of the Survivor auction to kill the chickens? Isn't that the one day almost all of you would have been full?
Not sure when we killed the chicken actually....

Q. What kind of work do you do on rockets? Did you work on the recent Atlantis space shuttle?
I don't work directly with rockets and I did not work on Atlantis. I work for the Space Systems Division of a large Aerospace and Defense company that specializes in high-frequency communication satellites for the Department of Defense and high accuracy Earth sensing instruments for NASA. My degree is inMechanical Engineering and Management. Rockets aren't that exciting; they just serve to get our payloads into orbit.

Q. Who did you play semi-pro soccer for? What position did you play? Were you good?
I played for a team called Emelec with a bunch of former professionals from Rosario and Buenos Aires in Argentina as well as some Peruvian professionals. I'm an attacking midfielder and most people you talk to would say that I was, to use your terminology, "good." I can confirm that with confidence.



-Interview conducted by Henry Jenkins
(Image courtesy of CBS)