What Jessie Spano Did On Her Summer Vacation

  
It's every teen idol's worst nightmare, being stereotyped and forced to play the same tired role for all eternity. All a male actor has to do is take a serious role as a drug dealer or cop and all is forgiven. A female actress unfortunately has to go slutty to get that same respect. Alyssa did it, Drew did it, but Elizabeth Berkeley took it one step forward. After Showgirls, people not only forgot Saved By The Bell, they forgot about Elizabeth as well.


Elizabeth plays Nomi Malone (No Me I'm Alone) a dancer with a dream. The movie opens up with her hitchhiking to Vegas. She is promptly picked up a guy who is already mentally preparing his Dear Penthouse letter. Nomi dashes those hopes with a switchblade and even insults his choice of music in the same breath.


Nomi's so-called street smarts evaporate when he claims that his uncle is a big muckedty muck at casino who can get her her dream job. She leaves her suitcase in his truck and goes off to gamble while he makes her dreams come true. She realizes soon enough that she has been scammed.


Nomi must have the most awesome suitcase ever. A guy gave her ten dollars in order to distract her in order to steal it. Nomi becomes unhinged and starts beating up the car next to her. The car's owner, Arlene, tries to stop her. Nomi promptly gets sick and then tries to throw herself in traffic. Seriously, what is in that suitcase.


Arlene sees this emotionally unstable drifter and thinks only one thing, perfect roommate material. Within weeks, they are super best friends. Nomi's a dancer at a sleazy strip club and Arlene works for a casino as a costume designer. Nomi attends one of the shows and meets Cristal (Gina Gershon) who insults Nomi's work. She promptly runs out and whales on Arlene's car again. That poor abused car.




She blows off work to go dancing in a club. When I say dancing, I mean something that's a cross between the Robot and the Macarena with some jazz hands for flair. Some dude named James tries to pick her up earning him a kick in the danger zone. Despite that, he still bails her out after she gets arrested.




Cristal shows up at the club with her agent/manager (Kyle MacLachlan) Zack in tow. She forces Nomi to give Zack a private dance with a happy ending. This scene is disturbing for me because essentially I am watching Jessie Spano give a lap dance to Orson Hodge. Cristal gives her the money implying, yet again, that's she's a whore. Well if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck.....




So the movie goes into a long boring 45 minutes consisting of Nomi slowly slutting her way to the top, James telling Nomi not to sell out before he then sells out, an epileptic love scene in a swimming pool and finally Cristal and Nomi's creepy love/hate relationship.




Nomi finally shoves Cristal down a flight of stairs and takes her place as the headliner of the show. Arlene is disgusted on how low her friend has stooped. She begs Arlene to forgive her and attend her premiere party. Arlene hooks up with her favorite rock star who like everyone else in this film (including the script writer and director) turns out to be a sadistic pervert. He puts Arlene in the hospital.




Of course, since the rock star is also a headliner, he is being protected by Zack. Zack plans to pay off Arlene and then tells Nomi that he knows that she used to be a hooker. There were about a half dozen scenes in this film where someone implies that she's a hooker and she gets offended. What was the point? Were they trying to make Nomi look less trashy in the film? If so, they failed.




Nomi won't allow that and exerts her own brand of slut justice on the rock star. She heads to the hospital to bid goodbye to Cristal and Arlen before hitchhiking off into the sunset. And you'll never guess who picks her up, yes the same sleazebag from the start of the films.




His trucks ricochets off to Hollywood as a knife happy Nomi demands to know where her special suitcase is.










Sorry for the month of blog silence. The boyfriend and I have decided to sell our house and move from Cali to Washington. No one told me that the act of selling a house can be so time consuming. But I'm back and there will be more entries to follow.

Before They Were Famous: The Theme Song Edition

In the world of television, your theme song is your calling card. It's a 30 sec attempt to keep new viewers from changing the channel. However some shows struggled before finding their memorable openings

A popular way of turning a so so theme song into a hit, remove the lyrics shows such as Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, and M*A*S*H. While Bewitched's and Jeannie's were only mild improvements, M*A*S*H was literally saved by lyric removal.



The song is flat out depressing and not something you would welcome into your home every week. Especially since M*A*S*H is primarily a comedy. You can see the Bewitched theme and Jeannie's here.

Sometimes the theme songs need only a slight overhaul. Such as Michael Damian's version of the Saved By The Bell soundtrack or the orignal theme song to South Park sung by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. And sometimes a simple verse of the song is cut from the opening with no one the wiser. Such as the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.



I don't know why they cut this verse out perhaps to shorten the opening.

Then there were the original themes that thankfully never aired such as the Calypso influenced Gilligan's Island theme.



I know they were trying for a tropical vibe but this awful. The theme they ultimately chose had a more sea shanty feel and fit the vibe of the show better.

Before Party Of Five settled on Closer to Free, they experimented with other theme songs. Hold My Hand by Hootie and The Blowfish and this one by Shawn Colvin



I have to admit I like Shawn Colvin's opening better. Closer To Free sounded way too upbeat for a show that was primarily a drama. While this didn't get chosen as the official theme, it did make it onto the official track.

Can you imagine Friends without it's infamous theme song? Well, imagine no longer. Originally titled Friends Like Us, the show used REM's Shiny Happy People as their opening.



I like the song but not as a television show theme. The editing was awful especially at the 8 sec mark. These opening credits have an out of place Bohemian vibe that didn't jibe with the rest of the show.

Like I said, opening credits are a calling card and luckily for these show's creators they made some good choices.

Dustin Diamond: Behind The Bell

To describe this cover, I'm going to borrow a word that Dustin Diamond seems to love, douchenozzle. It looks like the cast of Saved By The Bell is desperately trying to escape the book and I don't blame them. This book is less expose and more the rantings of an actor that never quite fit in.

Dustin Diamond hasn't been relevant in years. He's broke. He's one of the only people to have a sex tape and have it not boost his career. Despite this, he is still egotistical and believes that he is a God. According to him, he's got a big penis and all the ladies want him. Even though he's cashing in on being Screech, he wants you to know that he isn't Screech. Hence from now on I will refer to him as such.

Behind the scenes at Saved By The Bell, sex was in the air. According to Screech, everybody did everybody, except for him. At one point, Tiffani Amber Thiessen is alleged to have been banging both Mario Lopez and Mark Gosslear under her boyfriend's nose. Mario Lopez is alleged to have raped some gal but NBC allegedly paid her off.

Did anyone see the E! True Hollywood Story on the show? It was boring even the sleaziest of shows couldn't dredge up anything negative about the cast. In this day and age, we supposed to believe that none of this ever came to light until Screech's sob story, I mean, err tell all.

And with sex comes drugs, Screech insists that he smelled crack coming out of Tiffani's dressing room. And that Mark did steroids. He demands that you watch Saved By The Bell: The College Years for proof. Apparently teen actors in the '80s also smoked joints and drank. Shocking I know. He's judgmental of his cast mates but is quick to tell you that he smokes pot too.

While Screech is quick to expose the sex life of his cast mates, he is strangely mute about his. The only name he named was Linda Mancuso, an NBC executive. Linda Mancuso died a few years ago so she can not speak for herself. Other shocking revelations Fred Savage was snobby when he was 8 and Neil Patrick Harris is gay. I for one am stunned.

For all I know, this book could be true. Or it could be all delusions from the bitter mind of a failed television star. All I know is that it is poorly written, contradictory, and boring. There are many inaccuracies and at one point a paragraph was repeated twice. It's called an editor, Dustin, they are pretty useful. So are therapists.

All this book really exposes is that Dustin Diamond has nothing to really call his own, so he has to use other people's "secrets" to make him fell worthwhile. That is what turns this tell all into a tragedy.