My Assault on Screech

So my junior year Screech came to my college, except it wasn’t Screech. It was “Dustin Diamond”. Outraged, I wrote an article for my school paper about it and got a plethora of hate because of it. I’ve posted that article below. Enjoy my anachronisms from 2002!

Screech’s Visit to My College = Garbage

To preface this harangue I acknowledge this article, like my dreams of spending a weekend at the Neverland Ranch, are belated. However, pertinent to the arrest of the crotch clutching pedophile who advised a young me to “Beat It”, the recent soiree on my campus with Samuel “Screech” Powers again served as a sacrilegious slap to us children of the 80s. While the speaker who appeared before a devout collegiate audience shared a semblance with the famed Screech, his demeanor and pontifications were a flagrant breach of character. So much so it led me to believe either the Screech that came to my college was actually a Screech robot or Screech has reached a despicable low.

First, for aficionados like me, Saved by the Bell was not a mere show but rather a set of adolescent dogmas quintessential for teenage survival. When I got word that luminary hobbledehoy Screech was to “holler” at MY college I found myself imbued with rapture.

The signs advertising Screech’s visit were the first foreboding shadows of impending ignominy. Signs proclaiming Screech under a false moniker of “Dustin Diamond”. The only other names I know Screech as are Samuel Powers (birth name) and Ant-Man (pseudonym used during Zack’s Teenline scam).

I remained optimistic though, remembering that old codger Mr. Richard Belding would be there to keep Screech in line. So I waited ardently, envisioning the superfluous College Hall lockers (sidenote: there was a hall in my college that still had lockers!) being put to use for shoving/stuffing Screech into to them as if I were a roid raged AC Slater. At the very least, I expected to give Screech a butt wrenching wedgie. When that Wednesday night rolled around I packed a bottle of caffeine pills and a “GOOOOOO BAYSIDE” cheer (complete with six way high five) and headed to the student union.

That’s when my life changed forever.

A goatee adorned Screech opened with an odious salutation which would have had his heiny thrown out of The Max in a nanosecond. The monologue that followed further dropped my jaw in disgust and disbelief Screech went as far as to propose the legalization of marijuana cigarettes! Now I know for a FACT after watching every episode of Saved by the Bell (including the crap-tastic College Years) that Screech NEVER did/would use an illegal drug.

At this point I was irate and ready to smash Screech’s skull in, similar to sentiments felt by Valley’s star wrestler Marvin Needick when Screech cited Needick as a “butt head” and referred to his mother, father, and dog as “ugly”. The finale though, which instilled me with an uncontrollable apoplectic rage, was when an audacious Screech charged five dollars for a picture of himself and his curly dumb afro. A voracious Screech DOES NOT need the money after the boat load of cash he made marketing such products as “Screech’s Spaghetti Sauce”, a 1-900 Date Line and the stylishly evanescent Friendship bands.

Flabbergasted, I reminisced to Bayside’s career day. On that day, for an ephemeral moment, Screech strived to become an astronaut rather than a sordid comedian. If I wanted appalling comedy, I would tune into my college radio station and wait for (fill in the name of your favorite college radio station DJ here)’s awful commentary between horrific pop songs. Rereading that last sentence, I suppose I’d still rather sit though Screech than set my radio to Satan’s number: 88 [point] 3 (Sidenote: the call numbers for my college’s radio station).

Regardless, I lament for the students who packed the student union room tighter than a pair of AC Slater’s plastic jeans expecting Screech only to get Dustin Diamond. The charade was a meretricious absurdity. I’m sure sometimes George W. doesn’t feel like being president, or Ruben Studdard doesn’t feel like being a fat mess, or Britney Spears doesn’t feel like being an embarrassment. But that’s what they’re paid for, that’s their job, so they suck it up (In Ruben Studdard’s case, also suck up a few Big Macs with a shake). Why should Dustin Diamond collect a paycheck as Screech when all he gave us was Dustin Diamond and a cacophony of humorless babble?

It was almost as if a rancorous Screech was belligerent with Siena, like we were somehow responsible for Zack tonguing down Lisa Turtle. Because of this, in my eyes, Screech has joined the ranks of washed up 80s legends like the great adventurer Pee Wee Herman who turned a movie theatre into his personal play house and Alf, a despicable alien doing television commercials to support a filthy coke addiction. Next time SEB should put together some loose change and book a pack of clowns like the Spin Doctors or some intoxicated bums off the street to head butt walls and/or play Twister(if there’s even a difference between the Spin Doctors and intoxicated bums off the street head butting walls and/or playing Twister).

Possibly I’m being a bit presumptuous. Maybe my aforementioned theory of Screech being a robot isn’t too far off the mark. He did build a Johnny-5 A.I. replica named Kevin who helped tutor Kelly in science and assisted Screech in winning the “Ms. Bayside pageant”. In all honestly though, if you believe that theory you obviously go to community college.