#38 - "Behind The Bell" by Dustin Diamond

Turd In The Rough.

(1.7/10)

By HRVA

(Reddit Open Review Contest)

Editor's Note: We held an open review contest on our subreddit, challenging all those willing to read and review this Piece Of Shit™. We only had one submission, but luckily it was pretty great. 

I was 15 or 16 when Saved by the Bell first aired on TV, but I can’t wax nostalgic about it like many people do because I never made it through a single episode. I thought the show was mega lame, since I used to get my kicks doing hardcore stuff like mountain climbing and skydiving. All right, fine, I used to get them playing Champions of Krynn and doing the five knuckle shuffle to Hustler centrefolds in my bedroom.

This is beyond hardcore anyway.

Although I wasn't exactly a fan of SBTB, I was aware that some guy named Dustin Diamond played the character Screetch on the show. I also knew that Diamond published a gossipy memoir years later about the lurid off-screen shenanigans all his colleagues got up to, but it backfired somehow and made everyone hate him. That gossipy memoir is, of course, the subject of this review.

Before I sink my teeth into the meat of Behind the Bell, such as it is, I’d first like to draw your attention to its terrible cover. Seriously, look at it:

What the hell? Diamond looks like a second rate magician whose pièce de résistance is levitating a cardboard cut-out of some kids with his crotch. It’s a cautionary tale for aspiring cover designers, a warning that Photoshop can do a lot of things, but concealing a lack of imagination isn't one of them. Or are things not what they seem? What’s interesting is that the man responsible for this cover is François Turgeon, and if you go to his website (and scroll quite a way down) you’ll see that it’s a steaming heap in a collection of otherwise great designs. Does this mean its awfulness is deliberate? I really can’t say for sure, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

Anyway, Diamond begins Behind the Bell with the non-revelations that Hollywood has a seedy side, that a lot of people there who find fame as kids are pretty messed up (including himself), and how the actors on SBTB weren't like their characters in real life. He also tells us how he constantly felt like an outcast on the set of the show, how much he thinks fame sucks, and how he craves being surrounded by good people in his lifelong quest for truth and personal growth. Oh yeah, and he also wants us to know right off the bat that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is a total slut.

It’s obvious she’s just a dick dock, amirite?

We’re not even halfway through the introduction and Diamond’s prose already oozes animosity. He has a hate-boner for many, many people, but he seems to harbour the granddaddy of all throbbing hate-boners for Thiessen. He can barely mention her name without inferring that she must have opened her legs for every guy alive during the 1990s. Obviously, he has some sort of moral objection to that or something, right? Not likely, because he devotes a great deal of space later in the book to bragging about how he’s nailed at least 2000 women. That makes him the male equivalent of a cum dumpster (cum dispenser? Cum dumpster-filler-upper? Fuck it, I don’t know) so he really can’t talk. So why the hate? Well, Thiessen had an air of queenly superiority about her, apparently. Also, she didn't like Diamond and told him at least once to go fuck himself. How this makes her an epic whore is a question I suspect only elementary school playground logic can answer.

Maybe it was decided by a game of rock, scissors, trollop.

The non-Thiessen girls on the show aren't treated anywhere near as roughly. Diamond seems to give Elizabeth Berkley a break at least partly because he thinks she was impressed by a photo he took of his dick. He says Lark Voorhies was a bit weird and distant, but then she would be because she was probably abused by men, huh? And although she wasn't a cast member, NBC vice-president Linda Mancuso was totes cool because she let him throw a fuck into her, allegedly. We’ll never know if she really did or not because she eventually died of breast cancer. (In case you’re wondering, I too had a moment where I pondered if it might be possible to get cancer as a result of letting Screetch into one’s cooter. We’re horrible human beings).

Diamond definitely didn't get on with the boys from SBTB. For instance, he derisively refers to Mark-Paul Gosselaar as the ‘Golden Child’, denouncing him as a marginally talented, leg-shaving, steroid-doing bottle blonde who probably only got the job because of the strength he lent the guy when they auditioned for their roles together. Ouch. Mario Lopez was a man-whore, a bully and likely would have become a convicted rapist if NBC’s lawyers hadn't paid one of his victims $50K to keep her mouth shut. Double ouch. (Diamond offers zero evidence for any of these claims, in case you were curious). He also refers to many of his professional colleagues in the wider world of show business including Neil Patrick Harris, Jeremy Jackson and those guys from Kriss Kross, as assholes and ‘douchenozzles’.

To be fair, these two did look like douchenozzles.

One of the strangest claims Diamond makes is the one that he has grown and matured. It’s puzzling not just because of his book’s hateful content, but also because when he reflects on the misfortune that has befallen him over the years, he places the blame squarely on everyone except himself. He wasn't one of the cool kids on set of SBTB because they failed to see how cool he was. Co-workers and network people sabotaged him out of spite. His parents blew all the money he made as an actor. He got the ball rolling on a Scooby Doo movie adaptation but then terrible showbiz people took over and screwed him out of everything. It’s always the same – bad stuff was always someone else’s fault, or happened because people were out to get him. There are times in Behind the Bell when it looks like Diamond might actually man up and take responsibility for something, but ultimately he doesn't follow through. A great example of this is in Appendix B, where Diamond includes a bizarre open letter to former lovers. It’s headed by the delightfully poetic phrase “to all the chicks I banged before” and although one line does appear to offer a heartfelt apology for having crushed anyone’s feelings, he concludes it with a backhander of a postscript: “Call me.”

Seriously, call me. My immature days are way behind me.

Behind the Bell is a rather short read, and would be even shorter if it consisted only of Diamond’s overwhelming rancor and negativity. Fortunately (or unfortunately), he throws in plenty of random crap to pad it out. There’s the thrilling tale, for example, of how he inadvertently adopted a bunch of cats. There’s another one about the time he got into a heated dispute with a neighbor over a crust of pizza. There are lengthy sections devoted to his pleasuring of hundreds of girls at Disneyland with his humongous dick, bro, and all his wacky, far out, weed-smoking escapades, man. If you wanted to read about what a week on the set of SBTB was like, it’s in there too for some reason. Or how about a selection of his favorite SBTB episodes, because why not? If that’s not entertaining enough, there’s also the story about the time he heroically prevented a cat from messing with his own pets by shooting it with a bb gun. And, God help us, there’s even a SBTB drinking game. The list goes on, but the stuff I've already mentioned is as depressing as it is dumb.

This picture cheers me up a bit, though.

In summary, despite repeated claims that he’s changed for the better and moved on from the unpleasant events of his past, nearly everything Diamond writes suggests otherwise. The truth – something the guy will probably never acknowledge – is that he was a moderately famous child actor who let petty jealousy and deep resentment over his outsider status on the set of SBTB fester until it completely destroyed him. And unfortunately, Diamond remains just as broken as he was at the age of 15. Perhaps that’s why he thought publishing a Piece Of Shit™ like Behind the Bell would garner him the acceptance and adoration he so desperately craves. As we know, it brought the opposite which is why it should come as no surprise to anyone that nowadays he cowers behind the assertion that a ghostwriter made most of it up.

#22. "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama" by Ann Coulter

Why Can't Black People Be More Korean?

(2/10)

By Admiral Fartmore

(book chosen by PearTree)

Editor's Note: The more books we delve into in the Piece Of Shit Book Club™, the more I worry for the world. 

Ann Coulter is a cartoon character created, written and voiced by the real-life Ann Coulter. The Coulter character was first featured in syndicated columns that appeared in conservative magazines and newspapers in the late 1990s. Part satirist, part pundit, part skeletal-beast, Coulter is described by her creator (Ann Coulter) as a polemicist – a character intended to “stir the pot.” In the surreal media circus that surrounds American politics, she is the bigoted fire-breather. After her inception at the turn of the century, her popularity grew dramatically in the 2000s, when Coulter began performing the character on American political talk shows as well as starring in a popular book series, The Adventures of Ann Coulter.

 Featuring titles such as Godless: The Church of Liberalism, and Treason: Liberal Treachery, The Adventures of Ann Coulter is reminiscent of early Adventures of Tintin comics, for its familiar blend of political intrigue and racial stereotypes.

Coulter is best known for her controversial statements, including comparing US immigration to genocide against White Americans, advocating for a carpet bombing of the Middle East, and suggesting that America’s Jewish community should be perfected through conversion to Christianity. Her character is cleverly designed to satisfy both poles of the US political spectrum; right-wingers enjoy her ability to annoy the left, and left-wingers in turn enjoy watching YouTube videos of her losing arguments. In essence, she embodies a brilliant – albeit simple – reflection of everything that is fucking wrong with American political dialogue.

However, Coulter has received criticism from various artists for her occasional low-grade animation, particularly for her unrealistic lip movement, her disproportionate features, and her emotionless, dead, dead eyes. I personally feel that this critique is unfair. I would argue instead that the entire point of her character design is to straddle the uncanny valley, through a balance of human features with that of the undead. I came across this difficulty myself when attempting to draw Coulter, as you may see below:

 I still couldn't quite catch the unapologetic hatred, but whatever.

I was both excited and nervous when I received Coulter's latest adventure, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery in America from the 70s to Obama as my assignment. In it, Coulter tells the story of “the left’s agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else,” through her own lie-filled and patronizing arguments. Make no mistake – this book is a Piece Of Shit™ – but how exactly am I to critique a character designed to be belligerent and ignorant? When Coulter says that “the three-fifths clause had nothing to do with the moral worth of black people,” of course she’s wrong, but she’s deliberately wrong. You’d have to be a real idiot to try to whitewash the systematic racial discrimination that marked the 19^th century. But that’s the point. There’s nothing insightful or funny about pointing out the fact that Homer Simpson is a buffoon, and Ann Coulter needs to be treated with the same level of seriousness. This book is endlessly quotable, but Coulter has made her name by being quotable. As such, I want to refrain from simply quoting her through this entire review, because I hate her.

There is room, however, to critique the fictional world that the Coulter character inhabits. It is a dystopian (her words) version of the United States where Democrats and liberals (the author employs the two terms interchangeably) have engineered a mythical history of racial oppression in America in order to pander to and control the black community. The myth of racism in America is “a malicious lie told to black people to make them fear imaginary oppressors, so they will turn to the big, strong Democrats to protect them.” In Coulter’s world, everything was perfectly rosy following the abolition of slavery, but “from Jim Crow to ‘hope and change,’ liberals wrote the book on how to destroy a people.” In this world, Coulter is tasked with unearthing the liberal conspiracy and spreading the good word of the Republican Party, who are here to save the black community from its liberal oppressors.

The messiah Ann, pictured here in mid-revelation. 

I had several issues with this world. Firstly, I had difficulty finding the sodomite-academic-liberal-democrat antagonist very believable either in make-up or intent. For one, there’s no real explanation for how this monolithic demon operates. We are just expected to believe that the Democrat in Mississippi, the university professor in Seattle, and the news anchor in New York are all fastened together magically like the Megazord from Power Rangers. I got a Megazord for Christmas once, and while it’s an impressive adversary, I would have appreciated a clearer explanation of how this conspiracy actually operates. Secondly, Coulter stresses that slavery, affirmative action, childcare benefits for single mothers, etc., are all part of the same 300-year-old master plan to subjugate the black community. Flat, single-purpose villains just aren’t interesting, and so I found this to be a little stale. Lastly, Coulter’s allergies to nuance and character development left the whole conflict feeling a bit too black and white. (HEYOOO)

But to be fair, I haven’t read any of Ann Coulter’s previous adventures, and starting a fantasy series halfway through is always confusing. I do have to recognize that this book is written for people who already have an idea who the liberal demon is. Or maybe it’s deliberately ambiguous, so you can fill in the blanks with whatever you like. I’m not sure. Either way, it wasn’t written for me; it was written for black people. Wait, no it wasn’t. It was written for white people - well, maybe. I guess it was written for anyone who agrees with Coulter’s weird concluding statement: “If all black people woke up tomorrow with the cultural predilections of Korean Americans, all sociological disparities would vanish within ten years.” Soooo, Koreans? Ah, fuck it: she just wants money, and she wrote this book for anyone that would buy it.

Otherwise, most of the bigotry and ignorance that Ann is celebrated for just felt dull and contrived. And if you’re over the shock value of her work, there’s really very little substance left. She’s a perfect example of how no press is bad press, and how very rich you can get by pandering to people’s frustrations with our imperfect world. But there’s no point attacking her, because she revels in infamy. So I’ve treated Ann Coulter like a cartoon, because that’s what she is. And this book was just another boring afternoon re-run.

-Admiral Fartmore