Book behind the bell, This weekend, I read Dustin "Screech" Diamond's entire autobiography, "Behind the Bell". And I might be the only person who's ever done that. Literally, the only person. I'm fairly sure no editor actually read it cover-to-cover; on page four we get the sentence "Fuck fame. Allow me to tear down your allusions"... and that sets off a book just riddled with spelling errors, punctuation errors, repeated references to craft services as Kraft services and weird line breaks. On two separate occasions, entire paragraphs are actually repeated.
But you're not reading this for me to call out Dustin Diamond's copy editor. Nor was I reading his book to look for such errors. (I just notice them because I'm a precocious-in-a-bad-way son of an English teacher.) No... we all want to know the unbelievable "Saved by the Bell" sex scandals that he witnessed first hand. (Or, as he disclaims in the prologue, some of them are "things [he] heard from reliable sources.")
And I've got 'em for you.
Here are the 11 most ridiculous, salacious and lurid "Saved by the Bell" sex (and drug) scandals revealed by Dustin Diamond in "Behind the Bell" -- in no particular order.
Dustin Diamond has a large penis and has used it to have sex with more than 2,000 women, most of whom he picked up at Disneyland. Diamond's sales pitch for this book, it seems, is: "As wholesome as 'Saved by the Bell' appeared on screen, the exact opposite was happening behind the scenes, and I'm broke and desperate enough to sell everyone out and tell you about it." But his unspoken mission statement is: "I'm not Screech. I'm 100 percent, in every single way, not Screech. I'm cool, I follow no man, and women find me irresistible."
Diamond tells of many of his exploits; even starting one chapter about halfway through the book with the sentence, "Is it bragging to say I've banged over two thousand chicks in my life?" (And as my fellow journalism brethren will note, yes, that line contains yet another misused word.)
And while it seems he met many of these anonymous "chicks" when they were extras on the show or during the cast's mall tours and cross-country appearances... he says he actually seduced a large number of them at Disneyland.
"People don't realize that Disneyland in the early '90s was the perfect place to meet and hook up with chicks," he writes. He then goes on to describe the best rides on which to carry this out ("The Haunted Mansion -- a totally dark, nine-minute ride.") And finally, he explains, his method was simple. He and a friend would walk around, wait until two (often international) tourist girls would recognize him as Screech, and take it from there.
The saddest part of all this? As I read that, I said to myself, "Yep. That probably did work."
Mario Lopez raped a girl, and NBC paid her hush money. Definitely the most damning accusation in the book... but one that Diamond doesn't hedge (like many of the upcoming points). He flat-out says that Mario Lopez "lured [a girl] back to his pad... and was forced to have sex against her will."
NBC's lawyers stepped in to maintain the image of its clean teen stars, though, and paid the girl to be quiet. "And my understanding," Diamond writes, "is that it wasn't a boatload of cash, either, somewhere around fifty grand."
I found this "Variety" article about Lopez being accused of date rape, so there is other corroboration on this. It's amazing -- back in 1993, before the Internet turned the American celebrity gossip press into the British celebrity gossip press, a huge "SBTB" fan like me never heard a word of this. If this date rape accusation had happened 15 years later, within moments of the story breaking a photo of A.C. Slater would've been on Perez Hilton, complete with a MS Paint mouth semen.
But you're not reading this for me to call out Dustin Diamond's copy editor. Nor was I reading his book to look for such errors. (I just notice them because I'm a precocious-in-a-bad-way son of an English teacher.) No... we all want to know the unbelievable "Saved by the Bell" sex scandals that he witnessed first hand. (Or, as he disclaims in the prologue, some of them are "things [he] heard from reliable sources.")
And I've got 'em for you.
Here are the 11 most ridiculous, salacious and lurid "Saved by the Bell" sex (and drug) scandals revealed by Dustin Diamond in "Behind the Bell" -- in no particular order.Dustin Diamond has a large penis and has used it to have sex with more than 2,000 women, most of whom he picked up at Disneyland. Diamond's sales pitch for this book, it seems, is: "As wholesome as 'Saved by the Bell' appeared on screen, the exact opposite was happening behind the scenes, and I'm broke and desperate enough to sell everyone out and tell you about it." But his unspoken mission statement is: "I'm not Screech. I'm 100 percent, in every single way, not Screech. I'm cool, I follow no man, and women find me irresistible."
Diamond tells of many of his exploits; even starting one chapter about halfway through the book with the sentence, "Is it bragging to say I've banged over two thousand chicks in my life?" (And as my fellow journalism brethren will note, yes, that line contains yet another misused word.)
And while it seems he met many of these anonymous "chicks" when they were extras on the show or during the cast's mall tours and cross-country appearances... he says he actually seduced a large number of them at Disneyland.
"People don't realize that Disneyland in the early '90s was the perfect place to meet and hook up with chicks," he writes. He then goes on to describe the best rides on which to carry this out ("The Haunted Mansion -- a totally dark, nine-minute ride.") And finally, he explains, his method was simple. He and a friend would walk around, wait until two (often international) tourist girls would recognize him as Screech, and take it from there.
The saddest part of all this? As I read that, I said to myself, "Yep. That probably did work."
Mario Lopez raped a girl, and NBC paid her hush money. Definitely the most damning accusation in the book... but one that Diamond doesn't hedge (like many of the upcoming points). He flat-out says that Mario Lopez "lured [a girl] back to his pad... and was forced to have sex against her will."
NBC's lawyers stepped in to maintain the image of its clean teen stars, though, and paid the girl to be quiet. "And my understanding," Diamond writes, "is that it wasn't a boatload of cash, either, somewhere around fifty grand."
I found this "Variety" article about Lopez being accused of date rape, so there is other corroboration on this. It's amazing -- back in 1993, before the Internet turned the American celebrity gossip press into the British celebrity gossip press, a huge "SBTB" fan like me never heard a word of this. If this date rape accusation had happened 15 years later, within moments of the story breaking a photo of A.C. Slater would've been on Perez Hilton, complete with a MS Paint mouth semen.
