Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

We live in a world where front page news about the underwear-free antics of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears assault our senses every day. We build up an immunity to these things, a kind of cultural antibody. Every so often, though, something penetrates the armor and sickens me to the core. Something that lowers my regard for the human race just a little bit. The latest salvo against my concept of a just universe? Dustin Diamond is a liar and quite possibly a despicable human being. Remember that whole “Dustin Diamond is going to lose his house if we don’t buy his t-shirts” thing I wrote about a few months ago? Of course you do.

As the months drag on and nobody receives a t-shirt, it looks increasingly as though his plight was nothing but a pack of lies designed to garner him some easy cash. I can’t believe that I lobbied in support of this shyster. It’s one thing to be a washed up failure, but quite another to actively deceive and take advantage of people. Luckily, I stopped short of actually paying for an item of clothing I would obviously never wear (there are far better causes than financing some wretched child actor’s revolting lifestyle, anyway).

I will never look upon Screech the same way ever again. Never, ever, ever. His past antics will be forever darkened by the future shadow of Dustin Diamond, like some kind of moral Terminator sent into the early 90s to destroy the dorkiest Sarah Connor. Wow, that metaphor just kind of got away from me there. Sorry.

Never again will I be able to take pleasure in Screech’s awkward but sweet attempts to date a variety of girls, including on one memorable occasion, Kelly Kapowski. Or the time he won the Miss Bayside High competition by exploiting the pity vote (oh, how prescient that one seems now). Or the time Screech and the gang nearly made a fortune off of his “Grandma’s” tomato sauce recipe (lies again!). I could go on and on. He played the character for thirteen years, after all.

As a final note, I’d like to point out that Dustin Diamond’s life is rife with the strange horrors that seem to spontaneously generate from the warped psyches of former TV stars. There are a number of things about Dustin Diamond’s recent life that I want, so badly, to comment on, but just can’t. Jon22.net is a family friendly site. Luckily, Wikipedia can be the Lenny Bruce to my Bob Newhart. Was that enough entertainment references in one post for you? Good.