DC ExtraTime: The Life We Live Takes Texas

*** CAUTION: Videos Embedded Below Contain Adult Language and Content Intended for a Mature Audience. Viewer Discretion is Advised. ***

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

All Photos Courtesy IG @Dre.Media

Since this DCBLOG site began covering MTV Reality eight years ago, aside from weekly episode coverage we also cover the world at large through its prism, and we've often branched out of the world that TV's most-talked about reality shows to cover other things related in one way or another to this community. That includes the amazing content created by someone who had the pleasure of meeting his favorites from The Challenge when it launched its first $1 million season back in the summer of 2017, and who's also made a name for himself as we have followed his entire odyssey on this site.

There, Secaucus, NJ native Andres Rodriguez got to meet his favorite player, several-times Challenger, Real World alum and Lohan Beach Club queen Kailah Casillas, among others at a workout event before the premiere of The Challenge XXX. Some of his good friends also came along for the trip across the Hudson River to New York City, most of whom took part in competing on The Caucus Challenge -- a homemade version of the show they love which has translated into ten seasons of them competing in Dre's backyard, plus a special spinoff last year during a family summer camping trip.

The pandemic that wrecked last year's best laid plans caused things to take a turn for something different for what the star of this show likes to call his company Dre.Media, as Andres turned his focus to a spinoff of Caucus: a Real World-inspired spinoff that brought together him, friends and strangers for a weekend retreat from real life back home for what is simply more than just your ordinary vacation. The Life We Live has brought him and his fellow travel mates to Florida, the Poconos, Upstate New York, New England and during winter break this past year to the Rocky Mountains.

And in each of those five instances, TLWL has seen plenty of drama go down, as it often does when the cameras are on and where things that happen back home also make the flight from the Tri-State Area (and now, beyond). And this Spring Break, they've once again made their way out west... this time to the state where everything is big: Texas.

DC ExtraTime: The Life We Live - Rocky Mountain Style

*** CAUTION: Videos Embedded Below Contain Adult Language and Content Intended for a Mature Audience. Viewer Discretion is Advised. ***

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

All Photos Courtesy IG @Dre.Media

Winter --- it's perhaps the most magical of the four seasons when the first dusting of snow begins just as we ring in the Christmas holiday season. But as evidenced by what happened down in Texas recently, it can also be just as excruciating as a sweltering 100° summer heatwave when temperatures fall well below average into the freezing range when things get out of control. But you just can't help but stare in awe of whenever that mixture of ice and rain fall out of the sky, and for a time we all become kids again putting together snowmen, do snow angels and take advantage of the slopes to go skiing and snowboarding.

It is in this backdrop that offers the compelling setting for the biggest season yet of a YouTube show put on by someone who I first discovered here four years ago. There that summer of 2017, he got to meet his favorite member of MTV's The Challenge, Kailah Casillas, and the rest of her Season 30 cast... so did some of those who he collaborated on for his homemade Caucus Challenge series in his Secaucus, New Jersey backyard. And ever since we first featured him then, Andres Rodriguez has continued to bring an increasing local and national fanbase some guilty pleasure television that is created, produced and edited all by himself... and one which has also increased by one show to a Real World-like spinoff.

And while we were all getting snowed during this winter of 2021 as well as what we hope will be the last weeks & months of this seemingly endless but now almost about to end COVID lockdown, over the holidays Dre decided to go big once again during the midst of this pandemic. This time, he invited along some of his friends and asked a bunch of newbies to join him for the biggest season yet of his more chill but equally as dramatic sister series of Caucus. And if the first four seasons of it brought its fair share of drama and fun in New York State and Miami, then The Life We Live has no doubt saved its juiciest stuff for the group's first-ever trip outside of the Eastern Time Zone and into the Rocky Mountains.

DC ExtraTime: The Caucus Challenge Goes to Camp and to Beantown

*** CAUTION: Certain Videos Embedded Below Contain Adult Language & Situations Not Intended for a Younger Audience. Parental Guidance is Suggested. ***

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

IG @TheAndresRodriguez

As we are finally into the final 48 hours of 2020 and anxious to ring in 2021 tomorrow night, those who we've been thinking about right now and a lot during the holidays are our family and friends. For many of us, we have not spent much time in person with either or both of them this year because of the pandemic and whose only contact have been through virtual parties on Zoom or digitally. But for those of you who have been healthy and being extremely aware of this reality we are in now, then you have gotten to cherish that quality time... that includes the subjects of this year's last ExtraTime.

Ever since we first introduced them three years ago, Andres Rodriguez and his tight-knit group of friends from Secaucus, NJ have been regulars of this DCBLOG site. It's for that we have chronicled the entirety of his signature series for his YouTube channel, The Caucus Challenge, and its Real World-inspired spinoff The Life We Live. Yes, it's likely that you have been obsessed with watching those new MTV Challenge and Are You The One seasons that they have on Netflix and CBS All Access all this month, but this clique has also forged their own identity for great television in creating ten Caucus Challenges and three prior seasons of TLWL before this year.

In a perfect world, we would be enjoying watching the eleventh & twelfth seasons of Caucus by now... but of course there were other plans. So instead, what the franchise's creator & host had in mind earlier this summer was something different and something familiar. And on a night where Double Agents is taking this rare Challenge Wednesday off for the New Year's holiday, we'd thought we'd give you a suggestion for what to watch, and share you how Dre & Friends spent their Lost Summer of 2020.

DC ExtraTime - The Caucus Challenge Presents: The Life We Live

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

Instagram @Dre.Media

Back in 2017 while the first $1 million season of MTV's The Challenge was going on, the keen eye of ours caught hold of a made-for-internet competition in the backyard of the house of its creator, who also happened to be a Challenge superfan. Secaucus, NJ native Andres Rodriguez got a chance to meet the cast of XXX: Dirty 30 during premiere week three years ago as part of the fandom that joined them for special workout sessions to help train the next generation of challengers who also double as some of its biggest fans (that includes our latest Someone You Should Know subject, "Big Dave" Olmann).

The reason why we were drawn to Andres in the first place was that he was the creator of The Caucus Challenge, a series of homemade Challenges created for his YouTube channel featuring his high school friends turned competitors as they looked for something to do during spring and summer breaks when not busy with their studies. It was our original story on Caucus back in 2017 that had a huge impact on its creator, and inspired him to do several more installments of the series even after his big moment of walking the graduation stage of accept his diploma. And we would've been featuring a new season of the big show, had it not been for the panic of a global pandemic dominating this twisted 2020.

Last year, Dre decided to broaden his horizons beyond the ten-or-so seasons that he's produced of The Caucus Challenge and create a spinoff series along the lines of what you enjoy about the show that began reality TV as we all know it. Instead of players competing in his backyard, it's venturing out of his house and to places outside of a town better known as a major hub in sports circles and being mentioned occasionally on Jersey Shore, starring some of those who he's known his life and who competed on Caucus, and just living their lives. So began, The Life We Live.