DC ExtraTime: Nicky Showtime vs. The Peppers

DISCLAIMER: Videos embedded below contain stunts done

by trained professionals. Please do not try this at home.

A Follow-Up to
Welcome to Nicky Showtime

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

During Season 31 of Real World in 2016 - which introduced us to future Challenger Kailah Casillas, the eighth roommate to join the house was New Englander turned North Carolinan Dylan Moore. He got to kiss Kailah during his short stay in Las Vegas when he came in later than the OG's, and also locked lips on the season's most polarizing roommate, Jenna... only to reveal that he was playing her. With the kind of athleticism he got to show off as a field athlete at the University of North Carolina, Dylan is Challenge ready -- though he almost made his debut on Invasion when he was an alternate who flew with the rest of the underdogs to Thailand but never got to suit up.
   But the calling card of the man they call Nicky Showtime is being an internet star: during the series' third trip to Sin City, DCBLOG devoted an entire post to the prank videos he has been able to post for everyone on YouTube. The most notable of all of these was one that gave him national notoriety: before a science test in Chapel Hill and the last day to drop a class, he decided to crash the party by interrupting a biology class and stripping down to his underwear. He was booted off the Tar Heel track team and lost privileges like having his senior prom tickets being torn up, and even had to plea for his professors to compose letters for him to receive his diploma.
   One thing will be for sure if he gets that call to be a Challenge rookie is that he will be ready to make everyone laugh. But with the summer now officially in our rear view mirror, it's not the case quite yet in warm-weather regions like the Carolinas where he calls home: temps still top out in the 80s as the state continues to recover from Hurricane Florence. But it hasn't stopped Nicky from trying his biggest challenge yet, against not a wrestler or basketball player, but against a formidable opponent that's familiar to those who watch The Challenge: food.

Recently, Dylan got to meet the holder of the Guinness World Record for the hottest pepper on earth: Smokin' Ed Currie, founder & chef of his own pepper company, PepperButt, which came about when he and his wife saw the potential for this seasoning after raising 800 pepper plants of them in both his houses and around his Rock Hill, South Carolina neighborhood. Numerous jars of salsa, mustard, snacks and jellies created by Smokin' Ed brought about his business, whose PuckerButt name came from laughs aplenty when they talked about eating ultra-hot peppers and its after-effect.
   Dylan bought a few of them at the store located in the Charlotte metropolitan area and decided to film not one, but two videos of him eating both Ghost Peppers and Carolina Reapers. The former was Guinness-certified as the world's hottest chili pepper in 2007, which rates in 400 times hotter than the Tabasco sauce you likely have in your kitchen. But the ladder, Smokin Ed's signature, overtook it years later with a heat level rated at 1.57 million in the Scoville Heat Units index, the measurement of how hot a pepper is when someone who's game enough to put it in their mouth. It's so dangerous, in fact, that earlier this year a man was hospitalized with a report of "thunderclap headaches."
   How can Nicky Showtime handle eating two of the world's hottest peppers? See below how he handles it, along with the man behind the secret formula. A caution: do not try this at home if you don't know how to handle eating hot chili.

DC ExtraTime: The Wild World of Jungle Boy

From during Real World: Bad Blood Seattle

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

If you glance over at the Instagram bio of our first ExtraTime subject this week, four words seem to capture the mood of the visuals posted by him: "Living Vicariously Through Myself." That motto best sums up the lifestyle of the Real World alum his friends refer to as "Jungle Boy."

Last season on Go Big or Go Home, we met Dione, a free-spirited SoCal transplant who calls Cape Cod, MA his present home and one, as his own website's bio describes, "prides himself on living off the land." This man with the Tarzan hair prefers to live life the way he likes it: no 9-5 job, being open to all people and, as his MTV bio adds, "looking to savor the flavor of life to the fullest extent one day at a time with whomever he comes across."

In Las Vegas, we saw the guy they also call Dione Pepperoni make easy work of those missions the show gave him of bungee jumping out of a balloon, dressing in drag and everything else that came his way. He also hooked up with Kailah and then proceeded to get into, like Mike of this season, an in-season Twitter beef with her. And later, his ex-girlfriend from back home, Amanda, come in to stir the pot and get revenge on Kailah when she and his Carny friends came to town for a visit.

Whenever you have Dione and his friends together, it's certain you'll have nothing but a good time, and the number one rule is: anything goes. Look at his Instagram and the pics he posts there suggest that indeed, anything goes... even if it includes the occasional scene of nudity which we wouldn't dare to show you here on this site. Yes, the "anything goes" motto applies there so much there that one time, the Instagram police told him that one of his pics crossed the line in showing something that shouldn't be posted on that public site and had that naughty photo deleted.

Nonetheless, Dione loves to have that lifestyle which allows him to just enjoy being himself, and that's the spirit of being someone who loves to have fun. Back in late October was the annual Fantasy Fest, which we saw on RW Key West ten years ago and is the biggest party in the southernmost point in America. Each October as the rest of the country celebrates Halloween, it becomes Mardi Gras in South Florida as tens of thousands make their way down either by plane or that 3 hour drive down U.S. Highway 1 from Miami to the Florida Keys. He had sightings with a unicorn marching down main street during one of the parades that week, all of which while he and his friends were wearing drag (of course). Another night, Dione put a chicken hat on his head for another parade, and went to one of the parties with just no shirt on for a glow party. Embedded in the IG photo below is him and the guys dancing on top of a roof of one of Key West's downtown buildings.

That is only part of Dione's travelogue: his travels have seen him don a crab costume at the unique confines of Fenway Park, to most recently taking a trip overseas to Europe in Paris, London and Venice, Italy - one time wearing a dinosaur costume on his head. He even went to the same Hollywood Hills house that was once home to both Justin Bieber and a show we profiled here in our MTV Sampler a few years back, House of Food. It has also seen him hang out with Johnny Bananas and MTV's best during the spring press event earlier this year, the guys from Comedy Central's Workaholics at the MTV Movie Awards (for which we documented his cast's night at earlier this year while their season aired) and big names at both events. And he even appeared in a movie as an extra in the film Good Kids that was released in October and featured Zoey Deutch, Ashley Judd, Nicholas Braun, Tasie Lawrence and UFC star Randy Colture.

Real World wasn't the first time Dione set foot in Sin City with cameras in view... Every June, the music world's attention turns there for the Electric Daisy Carnival: electronic dance music's biggest annual festival - held after dark at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. This past summer's event attracted over 400,000 concert-goers over the three days as they saw Afrojack, Armin Van Buuren, DJ Snake, Kaskade, Paul Oakenfold, Zedd and the guys behind "Closer," The Chainsmokers, take center stage. Just three years earlier, Dione was part of a crew that filmed a documentary film on EDC, Under the Electric Sky, which captured the spectacle and sound of their genre's biggest annual party, which ultimately made its way to the Sundance festival and to the big screens.

It's just about certain that after what we saw on his original Real World there in Sin City, Dione will eventually take his talents into Challenge world and that new generation of challengers. But for now, his attention is on just enjoying living the life for being "Jungle Boy," and that's a good thing: you don't have to have a 9-5 job if you're someone who loves to have fun as much as he does.

Photos Courtesy of Instagram @MTVDione

DC ExtraTime: Tar Heel Madness with Nicky Showtime

From during The Challenge Invasion and after

UNC's 2017 National Championship victory

BY DC CUEVA                     

■ @DC408Dxtr  @ TW / IG / YT

The night before Bananas and Cara lost to Darrell and Laurel on Invasion, there was the end to one of the biggest events in American sports. This year might not have brought us as many of the thrills we expect from the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, aside from the upsets we saw the first two weeks.
   But this year did have a worthy champion in a national championship with #1 seeds facing off: North Carolina defeated Gonzaga in a matchup where the focus was on the officials and the fouls that plagued the 2nd half. But as they say, a win is a win and it gave head coach Roy Williams his 3rd national title, as the trophy once again returns to that part of the South known affectionately as Tobacco Road: home to powerhouses UNC, its archrival Duke, NC State and Wake Forest.

   There are four people with ties to the Triangle area of North Carolina -- which if you're not in the know of what that means, it's of the Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville area: Are You The One? Season 2 and AYTO Second Chances castmate Ellie, Real World Portland roommate Jessica, Real World Skeletons castmate and proud dad Jason, and our first ExtraTime subject of this weekend.

Credit: WTVD

For some added spice to this bit, we here like to bring you some scoop here you probably won't get anywhere else: as this Invasion season was filming last fall, those who love doing speculation of who was on this cast had two additional people they thought was on this cast: Dylan from Real World Go Big last year, and Emilee of RW Cancun, two Challenges and and the indie film Blight, which we profiled back in January and has since changed its name from Habit. They were replacements that were on the plane ride to Thailand and were never used, but Em did get that consolation prize to join fellow New Englanders Brittany, Sabrina and CT for that film coming this fall.
   As for the man they call Nicky Showtime, last year we showcased his hilarious YouTube videos and him being on the same Tar Heels track team as a Olympic medalist in the women's pole vault. Him being an alum of Chapel Hill, as evidenced by his graduation picture we've included above, gave Dylan reason to make the trek from where he calls home in Charlotte to Tobacco Road to join fellow UNC students and alumni -- 55,000 of them in all -- to watch the finale of March Madness on Monday night. And thanks to social media, he let everyone in on the madness in Chapel Hill, and the celebrations on Franklin Street the moment the final buzzer sounded. We've embedded the video below, and if you saw his SnapChat, you saw all the celebrations in the streets including bonfires.

View this post on Instagram

#UNC national champs!!!!! 💵💰💰💴🍻#NCAA #basketball

A post shared by Dylan Moore (Nicky Showtime) (@nickyshowtime) on Apr 4, 2017 at 12:11am PDT

- I AM DC

#DCBLOG

DC SocialPulse: Real World Go Big or Go Home - Finale Double Shot

*** Advisory: DC SocialPulse contains adult language, objectionable content 

and spoilers for some readers. Viewer Discretion is Advised. Due to its long 

length, take frequent eye breaks if you're reading this top to bottom. ***

BY DC CUEVA                     

> @DC408Dxtr / @DC408DxNow

On this Sunday night of Memorial Day Weekend, welcome back to DCBLOG and the second of our SocialPulse doubleheader covering an eventful week in the MTV Trifecta. Earlier tonight, we brought you the 'Pulse of the week on Rivals III where we saw two shows and two frenamies go to war, while another decided to call it quits. The next night, there would be drama over in Las Vegas as we came to an end of an eventful season of Real World: Go Big or Go Home.

   Last week, the love triangle between Kailah, Dylan and Jenna came to a head and saw Jenna decide to cut it off with Austin back home. The group once again went to the desert to have fun riding riding, while Sabrina did what she does best in her music. But all the pent up anger that took place all season and an epic meltdown lead to what seemed to be inevitable: Jenna getting into it with CeeJai. But that wouldn't be the end of that.
   This week, another Double Shot - the term I phrase for a doubleheader of episodes in the Trifecta, and probably the two most-eventful hours in this ecosystem since last year's 2-hour AYTO finale.
● First, the fallout from that physical fight looms over the house as the roommates deal with the escalating racial tension. When his chance to get close to Jenna goes by the wayside, Dylan begins to pursue a hookup with Kailah. And there's finally some happy news for the singer as Sabrina's big moment comes in finally meeting her biological mom to get answers to what she wants to know.
● Then in hour two, the tension that has brewed all season long finally boils over and then some when a racial slur by Jenna and her friend back home puts CeeJai and the roommate on the edge of an even bigger physical confrontation and threatens to send home, for good, both girls. And as the roommates prepare to say so long to Sin City, Dylan comes clean and makes a stunning revelation.

If you wanna catch up on all the action, reaction and interaction to this jaw-dropping double finale, then dig in below. Plus, we also have the lingering reaction from the previous night's episode of Rivals III where a competitor decided to quit. And after the diary, we'll have info on how you can get involved in our upcoming FORUM Reality Debrief to cover springtime reality TV and preview the upcoming summer slate of shows.

- As we begin, please note there is explicit language in many of the tweets below, but they are kept uncensored in order to retain the heat of the moment. So if you are mature enough, please read with discretion. :-)
- Plus, if you haven't watched the episode yet, then do not proceed with reading this post. But need not worry...DCBLOG will compile all of these tweets into these posts after every episode so you won't be in the dark of how your favorites saw this all unfold.

A cat fight over racism, two guys get into it for one quitting, and an emotional mom & daughter reunion. Join DCBLOG for the 'Pulse of the Double Shot Finale of Real World: Go Big or Go Home...straight ahead.

DC SocialPulse: Real World Go Big or Go Home - "The Hits Keep Coming"

*** Advisory: DC SocialPulse contains adult language, objectionable content 

and spoilers for some readers. Viewer Discretion is Advised. Due to its long 

length, take frequent eye breaks if you're reading this top to bottom. ***

BY DC CUEVA                     

> @DC408Dxtr / @DC408DxNow

As your Sunday night and this weekend comes to an end, and after another great night of music at the Billboard Music Awards, welcome back to DCBLOG for the second half of our 'Pulse doubleheader as we cover Real World Go Big or Go Home, also in Las Vegas.

   Last time in Downtown, we had a double shot of back to back episodes as Dione's ex Amanda and his friends, "The Carnies" as he calls them, arrived in town and she got to make out with him in front of Kailah and plotted her revenge. Jenna's stunning accusation saw CeeJai and Dean blow up, while she and Kailah found themselves in a love triangle when the newest roommate, Dylan, arrived in town to stir the pot. And it didn't take long for "Nicky Showtime" to do his thing as he joined Dean to strip tease the ladies in town.
   This week, the triangle continues as Dylan and Jenna must figure out the next step in their budding relationship, and she makes a decisive move in her estranged relationship with her man back home. The group once again goes out into the desert to go riding in off-terrain vehicles, while Sabrina and Jenna debut a new song. But the feelings of what has transpired all throughout the season and an epic meltdown by one of the roommates leads to what seems to be the inevitable: a physical fight with CeeJai.
   We have all the reaction and social interaction from this penultimate week in Las Vegas, including words from two sides who might be playing for a role to be on Rivals IV. And following the diary on DC ExtraTime, we'll have an update on the inspiring story of Nia and her newfound friend.

- As we begin, please note there is explicit language in many of the tweets below, but they are kept uncensored in order to retain the heat of the moment. So if you are mature enough, please read with discretion. :-)
- Plus, if you haven't watched the episode yet, then do not proceed with reading this post. But need not worry...DCBLOG will compile all of these tweets into these posts after every episode so you won't be in the dark of how your favorites saw this all unfold.

Join DCBLOG for the 'Pulse of Episode 10 of Real World Go Big or Go Home...next.

DC ExtraTime: Welcome to Nicky Showtime

BY DC CUEVA                     
> @DC408Dxtr / @DC408DxNow

As we go deep into this season of Real World, the Go Big or Go Home cast has a new roommate who has arrived in Sin City. And to be totally honest with you, this blogger thought that someone would not survive that 24-hour ordeal in the Vegas desert, someone would be sent home and a replacement would be thrown in. But the cast treated this thing in essence as a mere camping trip and a simple excursion, and instead we return to the scenario we had for season's 21-24 and Ex-Plosion of a house with 8 or more people living at the same time.

   But after everything that's transpired in the time we've had in Las Vegas since St. Patrick's Day, it's pretty much time to spice things up and bring a much-needed dose of fun to this drama-filled group. In walks to the Nevada desert a UNC student in Dylan, all the way from Charlotte by way of New England, and has already made an impact in creating a love triangle in the house with two of the female roommates. In his debut last week, just as Alec did last fall, he went out of the gate with bringing that kiss count up more than we can count. And with last week's mission it didn't take long for him to do what he does best in the club. But that's not all this party animal has in store for us. In fact, he is about to bring a bit of comic relief to this cast.

Dylan has something in common with a member of last year's Are You The One? cast, Zak...Both guys have a passion for making us laugh in the land of web videos, both on YouTube and Instagram. After that Hail Mary win last fall, and as we told you in an ExtraTime bit some time ago, the Italian-Canadian has garnered a large following for his hilarious videos, often featuring his own perfect match Hannah and, now, Season 4 newbie Sam.

   For the newbie nicknamed Nicky Showtime, Dylan has been entertaining the students and people on the Tar Heel campus in Chapel Hill, and now out west, with his own brand of humor and knack for making us laugh in pulling pranks and the like. And as you prepare for tonight's explosive episode, we'll be sharing you his web videos, as well as his own Real World audition tape that got him the 8th bed, on this dedicated edition of DC ExtraTime.

DC SocialPulse: Real World Go Big or Go Home - Double Shot EP's 8 & 9

*** Advisory: DC SocialPulse contains adult language, objectionable content 

and spoilers for some readers. Viewer Discretion is Advised. Due to its long 

length, take frequent eye breaks if you're reading this top to bottom. ***

BY DC CUEVA                     

> @DC408Dxtr / @DC408DxNow

Hi there and welcome back to DCBLOG as we continue our ride through the MTV Trifecta. Earlier this Sunday, we brought you the buzz from Rivals III as a major twist wrecked havoc on the Mexican South Coast. Now, as we bring to a close a weekend that's seen two great concerts last night in Los Angeles and a championship moment at last for the city of Cleveland as well, the back end of our social look with not one, but two episodes of Real World Go Big or Go Home
   Last week in Las Vegas, Dean emerged into the spotlight as he became a divorced man and celebrated it with a party in the Palms basketball suite, and with him getting into bed with Kailah. Jenna sparks more outrage in the house after a trip to the gun shop and playing lowball much to CeeJai's displeasure. And the one who's become in essence the classy and calm one of the house, Sabrina, got a chance to do what she does best: sing.

   This week, there's a Double Shot - which is the name I give when there's two episodes airing back to back of a particular MTV show. First up: a touch of Skeletons and Ex-Plosion all rolled into one, as Dione's ex and his carny friends make a surprise visit to Vegas, with the girl having aspirations on getting revenge on the girl he's been seeing here, Kailah. Plus, a stunning accusation by Jenna leads to an emotional and explosive night for Ceejai and Dean. And then in hour two, something we'll be seeing come Wednesday on Rivals III: a new addition arriving to the house that will shake things up, and he begins to pursue two girls for that infamous love triangle. Meanwhile, newly single Dean is given an instant test of his newfound post-divorce life by going on-stage at a strip club.
   We've got the social play-by-play of this week's RW Double Shot coming your way here. And after the diary, DC ExtraTime kicks off our countdown to Season 4 of Are You The One? when a single that's ready to fight for love and money makes all of us jealous when he gets to hang out with a member of reality TV's greatest family.

- As we begin, please note there is explicit language in many of the tweets below, but they are kept uncensored in order to retain the heat of the moment. So if you are mature enough, please read with discretion. :-)
- Plus, if you haven't watched the episode yet, then do not proceed with reading this post. But need not worry...DCBLOG will compile all of these tweets into these posts after every episode so you won't be in the dark of how your favorites saw this all unfold.

A new roommate, carny. an emotional night and more - join DCBLOG for the 'Pulse of a Double Shot of Real World Go Big or Go Home, coming up.