Yak Exclusive: Big Brother’s Adam Poch Speaks Up Against Bullying

In accordance with our initiative this week, Big Brother 13’s Adam Poch took some time to send us his thoughts, exclusively to the Yak, regarding bullying and the Anti-Bullying movement. Adam really doesn’t need an introduction. Fans remember him as the heavy metal teddy bear who took control of our TVs and computer screens on Big Brother this past summer.

We would like to personally thank Adam for stepping up and saying a few words about this important movement. In an effort to join forces and increase awareness, we encourage you to share these stories with your friends and family and encourage continuous efforts to make a difference! We all are capable and we just hope that this motivates and encourages each and every one of us to take a stand and put a stop to bullying once and for all. YakkityYaks, don’t talk smack!

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Adam Poch, 39, Hoboken, NJI think the reason I got cast on Big Brother this past summer was because I am truly a unique individual. Not too many 40 year old heavy metal fans would admit to loving Beverly Hills 90210 and Appletinis. Being unique is not something that is new to me. Growing up I was always a little different and I grew up in a family where being yourself was encouraged. There were kids that used to tease me because of the way I dressed or acted – but luckily for me, I was confident in myself and would not let them get under my skin.

Sadly – there are a lot of kids that are not as confident in themselves and are easy targets for bullies. They are afraid to speak out against these bullies, for fear of what would happen to them. Even worse – they are afraid to be themselves and spread their wings and embrace their uniqueness. By allowing this to continue – we may be holding back the next great musician, the next great artist, or even the next Reality TV show winner.

By raising awareness – I know we will not be able to stop people from bullying others, but hopefully we can help those being bullied stand up to these bullies and show them they are just wasting their time and energy. Don’t let them bring you down to their level. Keep your head raised high – and be yourself. Parents should be talking to their children and let them know it is ok for them to be themselves & encourage your children to tell you if someone is bullying them.

Together we can make a difference!

– Big Brother 13’s Adam Poch

Big Brother 13 Adam Poch: ‘Creepiest Stripper at a Bachelorette Party’

The Yak had the pleasure of chatting with Adam Poch, 3rd place finisher of Big Brother 13! He gives us the low down on what it’s like to be a fan playing the Big Brother game!

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The Yak: Hello Adam! How are you doing this morning?

Adam: I am doing amazing! It would have been better waking up with a half a million dollars, but instead I woke up with something even better, I woke up with my girlfriend and I am out of that house.

The Yak: That is so awesome… I mean final 3, I know it isn’t exactly what you had your eyes on, but you know, final three, Tori Spelling, the Summer of Big Brother and now freedom! How does it feel to be Adam about right now?

Adam: You know, it feels pretty damn good to be Adam right now I gotta admit. It was a Summer that I never expected to happen, even though I was trying for a few years to get on the show, I never expected to get on. Then to actually get on the show and compete, and win competitions and get to the final three, who would ever think that? And Tori Spelling showing up? Phenomenal. I mean David Hasselhoff, that was cool, but if I never met David Hasselhoff, I could have continued living my life, but being able to meet Tori Spelling? And more importantly Tori Spelling knows who Adam is! If I had just gone to one of her book signings and asked her to sign my book and I would have said I love you and I host trivia night on Beverly Hills 90210, you’re the greatest, she would have thought I was just some weirdo. Now she thinks I am still a weirdo, but Adam the weirdo from Big Brother. She invited me to come over to her house for Christmas, I love my girlfriend dearly, we have a future together… Tori has a reality show where she plans weddings, who knows.

The Yak: Maybe she can plan your wedding!

Adam: Maybe with my little bit of quirkiness and loving Tori Spelling and loving 90210 I could get her to plan our wedding. Rachel won’t be the only one getting a dream wedding this season.

The Yak: Well, Rachel had her wedding this season.

Adam: Yes with the cutest ring bearer ever, as well as probably the creepiest stripper ever at a Bachelorette party.

The Yak: Yeah, we can get on board with that statement.

Adam: Well you gotta work with what ya got honey!

The Yak: We know you like fan sites, specifically Hamsterwatch

Adam: How did you know that? [laugh]

The Yak: I think I may just be psychic…

Adam: Well, now that I have been on the show, I will be for sure checking out every site now. I am a bit of an egomaniac, and if there is something written about me, whether it’s good or bad, I will read it. Even if it’s bad about me, I know who I am, and if your talking bad about me and you never lived in that house, you have no idea what you have to go through on a day to day basis.

The Yak: That was exactly what we wanted to ask you. Being a fan just like we are, watching the show and feeds, hanging out at the websites criticizing the game play and players, what can you tell us now that you have experienced it first hand?

Adam: You know, before I walked into that house, I had so many ideas of how I wanted to play the game. I watched how other people played it, and I knew I would have to play my own game, obviously not realizing the type of people I would be playing with, especially strong competitors that knew the game inside and out because they played the game before. That was definitely the toughest thing to get used to. The first couple of weeks, still trying to learn about people… learning who you can trust and who you can’t and in the meantime, there are 5 to 6 people who knew exactly what they were doing, so that was the toughest part of the competition. You know as a fan when you are watching on TV, it’s so easy to criticize… you have to sleep with both eyes open in that house. You can’t even sleep sometimes! I’m sitting there running scenarios through my head, and that person that’s laying next to you pretending to be sleeping and you wonder what scenarios are running through their heads. You know the first couple weeks trying to figure out who to trust is the hardest part… and once I started working with Jeff and Jordan, and I knew I could trust them, I think that’s when my game got some focus. People wanted to call me a floater and I call it covering my ass. I call it making sure I was not a target. I was making sure I was loveable and people wouldn’t look at me like I was a big threat, but meanwhile I was totally dedicated to Jeff and Jordan, and to some degree Rachel. I was definitely working with them when the newbies I was trying to align with either jumped ship or got in over their head, so I just had to make sure I did whatever I had to do to get by in the game. And say what you want about my game, I got to final three and gave myself a chance to win this game. Floater, drifter, fence sitter… you know there is no handbook that says how to play this game, and ya know what, in previous seasons, if I tried to play the game the exact way I played it, it may not have worked. So when you look at how anybody played this game, you cannot criticize how they did it, especially to get far in this game. You look back at every big move that was made this season and it blew up in their face, and not making a big move, was a big move, and not falling prey to help someone else out while not helping my game, that was a big move. So say what you want about me, but the moves that I made may not have looked big, but they got me to where I was.

The Yak: Did you experience paranoia in the game?

Adam: Paranoia sets in two seconds after you walk in that door. When you look at someone and you realize they aren’t here to just hand you a half million dollars, they’re here to take a half million dollars away from you. Then finding out people were throwing competitions early in the game because they didn’t like their partner, I mean come on… that’s why when the vets first asked me to come aboard and asked me to throw competitions, I did not want to roll like that. That’s not why I worked hard to get onto that show. That’s not why I tried 3 out of the last 4 years to get on that show. I did not go in there just to be someone else’s puppet, I went in there to win a half a million dollars. When I realized what I had to do, and maybe I was better off not winning competitions, that never stopped me from trying to win them. I said it to people in the house, and I will say it to anyone outside the house, I never threw a competition. If I lost a competition, it was because I sucked at it. When I got the Before and After wrong, the Fast Forward did startle me a little bit, the HoH Daniele won, it was the same one as the veto and we played it at night… I just got confused for a second and when you lose your head in this game, it screws you up. Hey, it worked out to my advantage… I wanted to get Jeff out, but I didn’t want to get Jeff out then. I wanted to get Jeff out in the final four and go head to head, but it worked out to help me a little bit. I was really upset I was not able to win the HoH and the Veto on the Fast Forward and keep Jeff safe because he had kept me safe and I wanted to return the favor. It really bummed me out. Then when Jeff looked at me after the vote came in 2-2 and thought I voted against him it really hurt me. But hey ya know what, any ripple in the whole scheme of things, I may not have been in the final three so…

The Yak: Do you think if Rachel had taken you to the final two you could have won and why did you ultimately end up voting for Porsche to win?

Adam: I’d like to think I could have convinced the jury to vote for me. Chances are with the people who were on that jury, they were pretty set on who they would vote for. Rachel did earn her spot there, Rachel was the fiercest competitor of the season. Honestly I threw my vote to Porsche, and people are giving me slack for that, but I did throw my vote to Porsche because I really did not want to see a veteran win the game. When it came down to it, I tried to help Rachel get further in the game so she could help me get further in the game, and I really wish she had taken me and showed me the same courtesy that I showed her by working with her and sticking with her, and keeping her safe when I did, and it did hurt me, so that’s why I did vote for Porsch to win. I know as a new player what I had to go through this time around and the fact that a veteren had a second chance to play the game, I felt like the new people definitely deserved it.

The Yak: Did the vets coming into the game change the way you had originally planned to play the game?

Adam: The only thing it changed was the fact the I knew there were some big targets in the house, and I can hide behind them a little bit. I knew coming into the game I’m a 40 yr. old quirky guy and I wanted to make sure people fell in love with me early because sometimes people don’t get me right away. Knowing that there were big targets in the house did let me take a back seat and blend in a little bit, which I know is hard to imagine from a guy who is throwing metal horns in the air and screamin’, but you had some other people that were playing the game too fast, too strong, too quickly. I let people like Keith dig his own ditch. I let Dominic dig his own ditch. That sucked because I really wanted to work with Dominic but with the veterans there, they knew what they were doing… but with the newbies there that didn’t know what they were doing that were getting in over their heads so I just took a back seat and let them dig their ditches and fall in it. When it was time for me to start steppin’ up, I thought I could put it into overdrive and step it up. I did for a little bit, but in this game there are so many up and downs week to week.

The Yak: Why didn’t you tell Jeff and Jordan about Shelly’s betrayel sooner?

Adam: Ya know, I didn’t want to believe it! I did not want to believe that Shelly was not on board. I thought Shelly was being true and honest with me because we would talk things through. We were both up early in the morning and we would talk about decisions that were going on, it always seemed like her and I were on the same page. When we did not agree on stuff we would talk about it. The fact that she was just actually just taking the information I was giving her and twisting it, going back to Jeff and Jordan telling them that they shouldn’t be trusting me… we didn’t figure that out until it was too late. I think Shelly did do an amazing job with that, trying to be a “Dr. Will”, trying to manipulate other people. But again, too much, too fast, too strong, and when people finally started comparing notes, we realized Shelly was the one that was betraying us.

The Yak: That’s what we saw as well. It seemed that Shelly was very manipulative, but at some point, it seemed she got a little too big for her britches so-to-speak, that she was doing it so well, she got a little cocky about it.

Adam: Exactly and in this game as you have seen before, once you think you got it wrapped up, that’s when you go down. When she was going upstairs when Kalia was HoH and telling Jeff, Jordan and myself that she was telling Kalia that she was voting to keep Rachel, but going up there to get information for us, we thought it was a little suspicious, but she had not done anything to that point to show her suspicion, so we didn’t want to believe it. Looking back if we had we realized it, when Shelly and Brendon were up, we could have sent Shelly home. But like I said so many times, any one change in the ripple, I might have not made final three, so it worked out the way it was supposed to work out. Except for the fact that I could not win one of the first two parts of the final HoH, because I got four questions right in part 3 sitting in the kitchen by myself, and could not believe how they weren’t getting these questions right, and that’s where I would have excelled because I did get to know all the jury members, as well as everybody in the house on a personal level, so I knew what they would have been thinking in those final questions. It was my own fault.

The Yak: Since we are running out of time, I would like a more personal question if I could. We know you lost a lot of weight before going into the Big Brother house, and just wondered if you did it using the Atkins or similar low carb program, and if that’s how you got hooked on bacon?

Adam: [laugh] No, I have always been hooked on bacon! I have been hooked on bacon since I was a little boy, and my father would cook bacon in the morning on the weekends, and I would wake up to the sweet smell of bacon… as a Jew it’s like the forbidden fruit. But I have been able to keep bacon in my diet and lose the weight by finding healthier alternatives still using bacon. Bacon is good for you, moderation is the key. Like anything in life, it’s all about moderation. You do not have to cut bacon out of your diet, you can still stay healthy, and look as good as I do… the sexiest man to play Big Brother!

The Yak: Well thank you so much Adam. You have a great day and some wonderful wrap parties!

Adam: Thank you so much I appreciate it.

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The Storybook Wedding in the Big Brother House

It was a wedding to rival that of Luke and Laura (for those old enough to remember). A Page out of Prince William and Kate, complete with a designer dress and specialty made rings. Love was in the air tonight, and we Big Brother aficionados got a chance to indulge and completely immerse in it. The bride blushing, the groom like a Prince awaiting his Princess, gushing with pride. Yes, a fairytale to be treasured for Big Brother seasons to come. Surely it tops Mike “Uncle Jerry” Malin proposing to the love of his life season 2, and all love birds to come in future season. It was a site to behold, and behold we all did.

[singlepic id=586 w=200 h=140 float=left]We all held our breath as the bride readied herself in the Parlor on this August night, with onlookers adoring her every ruby red hair and lips. The Bridesmaids shined in their chosen gowns, but paled in comparison to the bride to be. We rushed in excitement to the live feeds, 10:30pm Pacific we were told to converge. The storybook wedding did get off to a bit of a late start, but we minded naught.

[singlepic id=599 w=200 h=140 float=right]Amidst a beautiful ambient bubble wand goddess, adorned in all white, she emerged. Rachel Reilly was a site to behold. The dress made of a shimmering pliant, yet resilient sheath, was crafted by hand by none other than the world renowned fashion designer Hefty, beating out top designers Glad and Ziploc. Putting the final touches on the gown was none other than the derrière bonded Shelly Moore, who also happens to be the world’s premier matriarch and knowledge of all circumstance. The Grooms attire, fit for a King, was also designed with great effort by Hefty to adhere to the gowns conception.

[singlepic id=591 w=200 h=140 float=left]The ring bearer, clad in Elf wear reminiscent of our childhood October celebrations, carefully and steadfast balanced the ring on the luxurious Ikea pillow made of a beautiful faux chenille. Those Swedes sure know how to rest their heads!

[singlepic id=600 w=200 h=140 float=right]Out of the house came the beautiful bridesmaids, all stunning in their own right. Posche Briggs, Jordan Lloyd and Kalia Booker, with naught a bite to be had, led the precession amidst thundering applause resembling music, making way for the bride to gracefully float to the groom. The bouquet was adorned with fresh plastic flowers, and a peacocks tail feather borrowed from the mystical fortune teller of the Parlor. Awaiting the elegant bride was the swelling groom, Brendon Villegas and his Best Man, Jeff Schroeder, all dressed up in his mid century blue blazer and top hat.

[singlepic id=596 w=200 h=140 float=left]The preacher, Rev. Lawon Exum, gleefully yet calmly awaited to give the last rights to the delighted couple. His presentation of the vows rang like a melody, enchanting the crowd gathered. Even the happy couple was heard singing his praise. Nothing like it has ever been heard, and could only be challenged by the great Rev. Jesse Jackson.

[singlepic id=601 w=200 h=140 float=right]The two wrote their own vows, the bride’s in limerick, ending with a beautiful rendition of her reality television trademark “No one comes between me and my man” as the goddess in white waved her bubble want magically in the air. The couple said their “I do’s” and marched their way down the aisle to a sea of gatherers awaiting their congratulations.

[singlepic id=606 w=200 h=140 float=left]The night that followed was simply fairy tail. The Bride’s bouquet was caught by Jordan, the garter by her soul mate Jeff, young lovers on a path to happiness. Nothing could have ended this magical evening better. [singlepic id=608 w=200 h=140 float=right]

Big Brother behind the walls of the castle were also cast under the bewitching spell of the evening, prompting them to provide the entire party with Dom Ralph’s Champaigne. All toasted to a wonderful evening of elegance and romance. We hope you didn’t miss this exquisite and once in a lifetime experience. If you have, the night was surely recorded, and can be found as a marvelous flashback to August 2, 2011 at approximately 10:30pm. We hope you don’t become one who cheats ones soul of this glorious event.[singlepic id=604 w=200 h=140 float=left]

[singlepic id=603 w=200 h=140 float=right]To the couple, the Yak would like to extend his cup and make a toast; May you both be happy with one another always, love one another always, respect one another always, and keep your parcels off the Twitter.

To see more pictures of this stunning evening, take a look at the slideshow below. To read more about it, and to see the Yaks reactions, come join us in the forum HERE.

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