"Somebody taught me a long time ago, be true to who you are," Beers said by phone this week from Long Beach, Calif., where he and a crew filmed a bridge painter for NBC's "America's Toughest Jobs," another Beers production. "I grew up in a blue-collar world."

In his hometown of Batavia, N.Y., just east of Buffalo, his heroes were his uncles, Nick, a pizza maker, and Rocky, a mechanic, "salt-of-the-earth guys. Guys who told the truth, went to work every day and took care of their families. It's not that I saw an opening for a grand experiment. This is what I know."

UPDATE: Here's another story about Beers -- Life is never borig.