Dustin Diamond

by Timothy Niedermann

  For my part, I suffered two major injuries while I was on SBTB—one of which forced me to wear an eye patch for an episode of The New Class.

  The first incident occurred at my home away from home, the Diz—Disneyland. It was in the evening, and I was hanging with my buddy Brian. I just want to say this: Disneyland wasn’t always just about poontang hunting. Sometimes my pals and I would also go there simply to get super-high, laugh at people, and do stupid shit. We’d bring a pipe with us and sneak little tokes here and there throughout the day until we were good and stoned. For some reason, in our baked torpor, Brian and I decided it would be an excellent idea to hurdle the waist-high chain-link fences that cordoned off the line to Pirates of the Caribbean. Fantasmic had just opened, which was a fireworks and water show that played at the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater inside the park. Thousands of people crowded towards the display like vertical sardines. Bombs were bursting in the air; there were dragons and all sorts of shit rising out of Tom Sawyer’s Island; there was a Peter Pan battle; and Mickey Mouse and Mark Twain floated past on Colombia, Disney’s full-scale replica of the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. It was pure bedlam.

  In the midst of all that, Brian and I were stoned and running full speed, bounding over those fences like Edwin Moses (the American Olympic gold medalist in the 400-meter hurdles in 1976 and 1984. Truly a god on wheels). Like him, we were just floating to the roar of the crowd.

  My dad was there with us, hanging back, allowing us to act like maniacs. That was his way. If we met chicks or hatched a plan to do something juvenile, he’d chill and catch up with us later. Because of the spectacle of Fantasmic, the line to Pirates was uncharacteristically short. I leapt a few barriers, full speed, with ease until my back foot caught the crossbar on something and sent my face rotating towards the pavement with the full weight of my body behind it. SPLAT! My arms splayed off to my sides as I absorbed the full force of the impact with the center of my face.

  As I struggled to push myself away from the ground I heard whimpering. A voice, somewhere nearby, was in tremendous pain. I realized it was my voice. I pushed against the ground with all my might, only to realize that the ground wasn’t there. I opened my eyes to find my head resting on Brian’s lap as he knelt beside me. My father hovered over us as a crowd gathered. I heard someone whisper, “Is he dead?” Regaining consciousness, I became aware that I’d been out for more than a minute. My face was bleeding profusely, and Brian told me that my head had twisted violently to the side in the fall.

  Brian and my dad assisted me through the melee that was Fantasmic. Throngs of people stopped cold and gawked at my mangled face. “Look away,” I mumbled. “Look away. I am not a monster!” The only first-aid station was located on Main Street. We had to walk from New Orleans Square, through Adventure-land, to the center of Disneyland near the castle on the main strip while the giant Main Street Electrical Parade was going on to the delight of thousands. The parade had to come to a full halt while we crossed Main Street, I with my bloody, famous face and my feet scraping on the pavement, towards the aid station. I heard the chatter as we passed, “Is that Screech? Holy shit, he’s fucked up! Quick! Take a picture!”

  When we finally reached the nurse, she called an ambulance, and I was rushed to the hospital. Fortunately, my bone structure remained intact. But back on set, I had to have layer after layer of pancake makeup slathered onto my scabbing face to get through that week’s taping.

  The second incident occurred while I was playing bass for Captain Douchebag’s band. We were opening for the L.A.-based punk band NOFX in front of a crowd of ten thousand at a concert I booked for us at UC–Santa Barbara. While we performed on stage, a mosh pit formed below us. This fat dude down front stripped off his shirt, exposing his milky man-tits, and started helicoptering his T-shirt over his head, moshing against the circular flow of the pit. He made it a point to ram head-first into everybody he passed. I noticed this nonsense developing, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I was struck in the left eye with an unopened, glass beer bottle. KACHUNK! It was a perfect fucking hit.

  The only way I can describe the next moments is to say that, from my perspective, the world around me melted into an orange dreamsicle. All I could see, in the middle of the afternoon, were fluid, pulsing forms shifting in a thickening ooze of orange and white. Despite the shock and creeping insanity of the pain, I had the full awareness that I was in deep, deep doo-doo. I didn’t know if I was blind or crossing over to the afterlife. I staggered backward as my head drooped. I raised my left hand toward my eye, terrified of what I would discover. Halfway to my face, my hand was bathed in so much blood I almost passed out. I touched what felt like my eyeball on the outside of my head. My right eye, frozen open in terror, scanned the stunned faces of the crowd—many of whom appeared poised to hurl. Douchebag and the band, of course, kept on playing. After all, this was a big gig that could further their careers—fuck the dying band member.

  In the emergency room, their first order of business was to administer a monstrous hypodermic needle into my eye. That didn’t suck or anything. All of this happened on a Thursday during the season, which meant the next day I had to be on set to tape before a live audience. When I rolled into the studio, I could hear the collective gasp of, “Ohhh, fuck.” There was no getting around it: my face was a ten-car pile-up. No amount of makeup could fully cover the damage that had been done. But here’s the ingenuity of network television for you—because, after all, the show must always go on: In no time fat, they slapped an eye patch on me and wrote a couple lines of throwaway dialogue into the script to cover for it. It was Belding saying something like, “Screech … Explain.” Then I said something stupid like, “The marching band has a new trombone player. All I can say is, look left and right before crossing the grass.” Boing! So, when you catch that episode where I’m wearing an eye patch, it’s because I was assaulted by a half-naked blob from the mosh pit while I opened for NOFX.

  I heard later that after I was beaned and spirited off to the hospital, NOFX drummer Erik Sandin stood up and hollered at the crowd, “Whoever did that to my buddy Dustin is a fucking asshole, and you better not let me find you.” Ultimately, Erik’s indignation didn’t accomplish anything. But my swashbuckling eye patch and I did appreciate the sentiment.

  * * * *

  After the original SBTB, Mark-Paul grew up in more ways than one. When we started filming SBTB: The College Years, he suddenly exploded with manliness, loading twenty-five pounds of muscle onto his once-scrawny frame in, oh, about a month.

  Everyone was like, Whoa! What the fuck is up with you, dude? Acne had spread all over his face and body, he suddenly had a short fuse and was completely into weight lifting, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and slick, glossy mags packed with oiled-up muscley dudes. It was clear he was on the juice. I asked him to level with me but he denied it emphatically. It was his phony blonde hair secret all over again. Watch The College Years and you can plainly see how massive he became. It reached a point where he had so noticeably gotten so freakishly humungous that St. Peter finally said, “You have to stop this.” In the end, Mark-Paul admitted to everyone on set that he had made a mistake by taking steroids. He said he’d gotten carried away with his fitness obsession and had made a bad choice. He apologized to everyone for intimidating them for so long with his meaty, rippling buffitude.

  Tiffani wasn’t even supposed to be around for The College Years. She and Elizabeth had refused to sign new contracts after the network ordered more shows. The College Years was supposed to be the three guys—Zack, Slater, and Screech—go off to party at Cal U. All of a sudden, Tiffani is locked again in those troubling closed-door meetings in St. Paul’s office and, voilà, she’s off to college with the guys. From then on the show’s writing became all about Zack and Kelly. I was like, “We’ve played this shit out to death already.” We had made the big move to prime time, and viewers who had stuck with us had outgrown that pap; they were hungry for new story lines. But no
.

  Soon we were off to film the TV movie SBTB: Wedding in Las Vegas, and it was all about Zack and Kelly, Zack and Kelly, blah, blah, blah. I was seventeen years old when we shot Wedding in Las Vegas at the Stardust on the Vegas strip. The shoot was only a few weeks, but the pace of making a film is dramatically slower than taping a weekly TV show. One big difference was that we only had to memorize the script a few scenes at a time instead of in its entirety because each set-up and shot took so long.

  While in Vegas, I had a fabulous relationship with a twenty-eight-year-old dancer in the Stardust’s review at the time, Enter the Night. In the movie, when the guys come out on stage dressed as showgirls, that stage, all the wardrobe and all the girls are from the Enter The Night show at the Stardust. The girl’s name was Melissa, and she was a stunner—she taught at a dance studio and was super flexible. I have a photo of us together under a low-roofed archway where my arm is around her waist and she has one foot flat on the floor and the other fat against the ceiling.

  I invited dad and my friend Mark to join me for one of Melissa’s performances. This may amaze you for my apparent naiveté, but before the show began, I had no clue it was performed topless. It took a little while to settle into the sight of a sea of tits (including my girl’s) passing before my father’s eyes. Melissa was sure to offer us a wink, a smile, and a shake of the ass for good measure. Dad, this is Melissa. Melissa, dad. I did discern a sense of “That’s my boy” from Dad’s expression. He turned to me and said, “I approve.”

  We all went out to eat together at the Peppermill on Las Vegas Boulevard. That’s a nice, quiet restaurant where you can get away from all the clang-clang-clang and flashing lights of the casinos. There’s a very classy step-down area, like a big, circular living room, with a fireplace. It’s a great place to have a low-key meal and some drinks. The trick to spending any amount of time at the Peppermill, however, is to remain aware that there are no clocks or windows to the outside world—it’s always nighttime. You easily lose track of the hours that pass; it can be like stepping into a wormhole and reemerging into the blinding sunshine of a bright, new day.

  Melissa didn’t think dad would like her because she was so much older than me.

  An absurd notion, considering her phenomenal rack. I used to have a little game I’d play with older women I was interested in when it came to revealing my age. I refused to blatantly lie to them, so I would use misdirection to sidestep the issue. Usually when I would ask a girl her age, she would respond, “How old do I look?” I was like a carnival barker when it came to this question. I had an uncanny knack for guessing ages to within a year (always, wisely, trying to come in younger than her actual age). With Melissa, she didn’t make me guess. She said, “I’m twenty-eight. How old are you?” In her case, I just reversed the game. I said, “How old do I look?”

  I don’t know why, but chicks always guessed high for my age. Very high. Maybe it was wishful thinking on their parts. Melissa said, “I think you’re twenty-six.” To which I responded, “Aw. You’ve been talking to people. Cheater.” Then I quickly changed the topic. I didn’t lie; I just never answered the question. It all goes back to my interview-grooming regimen for NBC affiliate days: Make a statement of fact (“You’ve been talking to people.” Everybody “talks” to people) then discuss your opinion surrounding that fact (“Cheater.” Fake incredulity directed at the statement of an irrelevant fact). Sounds stupid, but this technique consistently worked like a charm. Later, I came clean and told Melissa my real age. At that point she didn’t really give a shit because she’d already been seduced by my writhing trouser snake.

  As a cast, we didn’t hang out much together in Vegas. The Mark-Paul contingent partook of strolling the strip, smoking cigars, and waxing philosophic on the rigors of the Hollywood life. Meanwhile, I was busy banging a topless, contortionist showgirl. I would never have traded my experiences with theirs.

  As much fun as I had in Vegas (and I did have a lot of fun), my underage status did make trying to party there a real pain in the ass, especially at the casinos. Even though I was filming a movie and banging one of their showgirls, I was constantly being approached by security to show ID and getting booted off the gambling floor because I was a minor. After getting kicked off the floor of the Luxor, my buddy Mark and I decided to launch a covert reconnaissance mission to steal every single plastic cup in the casino that all the blue-hairs used to cart around their coins for the slot machines. Mark and I made trip after trip for hours, each time snatching a stack of a dozen or two cups before making our way out the exit. On each pass, we would deposit the cups in my father’s green minivan until we had completely picked the Luxor clean of every single plastic cup. In total, we stuffed close to three thousand plastic slot-coin cups into that vehicle. We had so much fun that we decided to take our show on the road and did the same thing at Excalibur. We dropped the Luxor cups at the hotel and proceeded to make three packed minivan trips back from Excalibur for a haul of close to ten thousand cups. When we returned home, Mark and I split our take and stacked the towers of cups high in our garages. For years afterward, no matter the situation, I always had a cup for the job.

  At the Bellagio, I met a pit boss and “cheat-spot” named Sal Piasanti. Sal had the most remarkable memory I have ever witnessed first hand. Sal could recall tens of thousands of faces and names, most of them people he’d met only once. He would have me create a list of fifty items, take one look at the page and be able to remember everything on the list, in order, hours—even days—later. He could probably still remember everything on that list this many years later. He could stare at a page of a magazine for five seconds then read me back, word-for-word, the entire page from memory. Sal could read The Catcher in the The Catcher in the Rye in three minutes with total comprehension. He was a student of all those Howard Berg (The World’s Fastest Reader) and Kevin Trudeau (Mega Memory, Mega Math, etc.) courses and a firm believer in the word/picture association technique. He said numbers were easy to remember: the number one looks like a melting candle, two looks like a skier hunched over, three looks like a nice pair of tits, four looks like an upside-down chair, five looks like a wheelchair, six is a pregnant woman, and so on. “It sounds stupid,” Sal said, “but if you do it, it works. What do you think of when you hear my name?”

  “Well,” I said, “Sal makes me picture a salad. Piasanti makes me think of peeing in the sand.”

  “There you go,” encouraged Sal. “From now on, whenever you think of me, you’ll see a salad peeing the letter T in the sand. Sal Piasanti.”

  He was right. Here it is, fifteen years later, and I never forgot.

  Like I mentioned, at some point towards the end of The College Years and the filming of the Wedding in Las Vegas, Mark-Paul did stop being such a dick. He was maturing, settling into his true skin, his authentic personality, and a lot of his douchebag ways had fallen away. I think he just got tired of being the focus of everyone’s adulation. He’d grown weary of it.

  * * * *

  Those old studios at Sunset-Gower didn’t only have trap doors dropping down into labyrinthine tunnels; they also had ladders that climbed to the roof. I used to go up there and look down over Gower Gulch, an area adjacent to the studio complex. In the Gulch there was a store that sold bottles of Yoo-Hoo and Bosco, an old-school chocolate drink. The Yoo-Hoo came in flavors like coconut and strawberry, but Mark-Paul, ever the trend-setter, went on a fierce kick of drinking—exclusively—a Mexican cinnamon-rice milk drink called Horchata. It was sweet-tasting and came in original flavor, chocolate, cherry, and vanilla. The consistency of Horchata was like drinking a bottle of tapioca pudding. It was all right, but certainly nothing to go nuts over. Mark-Paul went through a phase where he drank that shit by the metric ton. There was always a bottle of Horchata at the end of his arm. I would see him wandering around, sucking down the last gulp of a bottle of Horchata, then moments later emerge from his dressing room—fresh bottle of Horchata in hand! I don’t even want
to imagine what rumblings he experienced in his large intestine on a steady diet of a Mexican rice drink. Of course, Mark-Paul’s obsession-du-jour led everybody backstage to also start drinking Horchata.

  The Gulch store also sold good, hand-rolled cigars. For a time, Mark-Paul had become a bit of a connoisseur, so we bought a couple of fine cigars together and climbed up to the studio rooftop to watch the sun set over the Hollywood Hills, gazing at the iconic Hollywood sign and twinkling bulbs of the Sunset Strip. Standing there, chatting and not chatting, our faces were obscured by a swirling cloud of blue smoke. Me drinking Bosco, Mark-Paul guzzling an ice-cold bottle of thick Horchata, we pondered the random physics that led us to that spot. In that moment, it was almost like we were buddies. But in truth, he had come up to the roof to be alone. And so had I.

  * * * *

  In 1992, Mark-Paul, Tiffani, Elizabeth, Mario, and Lark were looking beyond the beyond the end of SBTB to what projects might be next. It seemed that at every year’s wrap party the tears flowed as everyone stood convinced we wouldn’t be back for another season. Tiffani and Elizabeth refused to sign on for the final half-season of the original SBTB. They both probably tried to hold St. Peter over a barrel for a bunch more cash, and he said, “No dice.” Eh, who could blame them? One thing you could say about St. Peter, he was plenty tight with the purse strings. I’m surprised he didn’t commence each workday by kicking dirt in Bob Cratch it’s eyes, mumbling, “Bah. Humbug.” Without going into any forensic accounting details, let’s leave it at this: nobody on SBTB was making what they should have. Nobody. Except maybe Peter Engel.