So... drama revisited... This is going to be a LONGGGGGGGG post...
Anyway, I wasn't even aware of this until a fan named MSMusic emailed this along to me. It just strikes me as WEIRD. Plain and simple. Not Melissa... But Julie. So a couple of days ago, Coldplay, the band was in Los Angeles. Apparently, both Julie and Melissa (New Orleans/BOTS) visited the concert. It's about the Julie/Melissa drama. If you don't want to read this, skip down to the next post which is about Road Rules. Here's Melissa's entry about the show:
"Sunday afternoon, I was screening calls. You know, sometimes you just can’t take calls. It’s Sunday. I’m waiting for that Jerry’s Famous Deli to hurry up and deliver and I want my Six Feet Under finale. Tangent: Doesn’t that girlfriend of Jayson Blair, the fabricating ass reporter at The New York Times look just like Lili Taylor? That’s where Lisa went! So, I get a message from an old friend, a blast from the past. In it, he says cryptically, “Give me a call back. I’ve got a question…” You see, he has mastered the art of getting me to call back. You can’t say, “I have a question.” And you especially can’t say that after I haven’t spoken to you in 19 years. So, I tried to hold off, wait a couple hours, so as to seem like when he called I actually was busy. I so wasn’t and I’m such a perpetrator. I said “tried to hold off” meaning, I called him back in 20 minutes.
After a weird segue into the actual invitation, he said, “I bought these Coldplay tickets six months ago, and totally forgot about them. Would you like to go? It’s tomorrow…” What a great day, man! Free tickets to Coldplay and I don’t have to drive or park! Why, yes, I’d love to go. During the course of the concert, I felt like I was in an episode of A Dating Story, even though I didn’t think or even know this was, in fact, a date. Was it a date? It couldn’t be! I said, “What’s up homie…” when he came to get me and I don’t think that’s proper date etiquette. Plus, he was 40 minutes late picking me up. Perhaps he didn’t think it was a date either with such reckless abandonment of the time. Time the f*** out! Before we carry on with this story, know that I know how dumb it is to speculate about whether or not a planned event with a dude, that is a friend, is a date. I know it's a hang out thing, I'm just saying. I’m a grown ass lady, I know. And yes, I’m about to tell a story like I am not the person telling the story thus using my own name in third person, a practice I hate in real life.
So, I present The Dating Story featuring Gary* and Melissa.
Gary is a working actor in Los Angeles. In his spare time, he enjoys photography and staining his mantle. He is both genuine and nice – two strikes against him already, as we all know girls love assholes for some reason. Will he finish last? His turnoffs: Tall, mean girls. His turn-ons: Short, nice ones. Melissa is a geek off the streets that isn’t really keen on this whole dating situation, as you will see. Her turn-offs: Dudes that use hair products excessively, lisps (sorry), improper use of homophones and anybody that says “for all intents and purposes”. Her turn-ons: I don’t know that she uses that terminology. (Gary doesn't have a lisp, and he doesn't use lots of gel and he knows the difference between peace and piece.) On this date, we’ll see the band Coldplay, and more importantly we hope to see a Miss Gwyneth Paltrow swaying side to side with her eyes closed, perhaps a lighter in hand, “feeling” her boyfriend’s love through his music.
Before the alleged date, Gary calls Melissa. She is in the waiting room at a doctor’s office with her friend Coral. She steps outside to take the call. Gary asks, “What kind of food do you like? At The Hollywood Bowl, everyone usually picnics.” Melissa responds with, “Oh wow. Okay. Um. I don’t really like food that is supposed to be hot but just can’t be because you know, it’s been in a basket all day. I like fruit. May I have some seedless grapes, a mango or two, some sliced watermelon? I also like candy. No blue candy or sour candy though.” Now that Melissa has given the impression that she eats candy for breakfast and is the most negative person alive, she ends the call with, “So, is 6 still good for the swoop-me-up?” He now says she must be ready by 5:45 p.m. but says “a quarter to” which is another small, not devastating, peeve of Melissa’s. Why can’t it just be 5:45? This is not good, but she happily agrees. She goes back into the doctor’s office, recounts the story to Coral who says, “Well, shit what are we going to do to your hair? Did you ask for some chicken? I like chicken.” At this point, the two nix the flat-ironing session, and Melissa says, “Nobody cares about your predilection for chicken, man” as she points to her messy bun of knotty hair.
It’s now 6:17 p.m. and Gary calls Melissa. “Hey, I’m late” he says. We all know this. He says it will be another 10 minutes. Blind Date is on the TV and so it’s hard to actually care that he’s late.
Oh wait, I’m forgetting the outfit decision part of A Dating Story. Coral says, “Oh God, I need to see his outfit…” I say, “Yeah, I hope he’s not wearing bowling shoes or a Coldplay t-shirt…” Melissa opts for a precious long red skirt that she’s worn on television more than a few times (ewww) and a nude colored camisole tank top. She would normally wear heels, but there’s climbing and walking involved, and since this isn’t a date, she wears her nice flip-flops. She packs a pashmina, a pack of Starburst and some lip gloss. Gary shows up, late as can be, with an acceptable t-shirt and some acceptable jeans on. When Melissa looks in the back seat, she sees a jean jacket draped across the seat. She asks about the weather and whether or not she’ll be okay with just a pashmina and he says, “If you get cold, I’ve got that jacket.” She says, “You weren’t planning on wearing that jean jacket yourself, were you? You know denim on denim is punishable by like, death right?” He says, “I totally know that. I’m wearing this” and he points to a brown leather coat. Okay. They’re in business.
They park 768 miles from the destination. They walk through Hollywood & Highland, only the biggest tourist attraction this side of the Mississippi. Melissa is clearly embarrassed that people are shouting, “Ruthie!” and “Real World. Fuck yeahhhhhhhhhh!” as she passes through. Gary acts as if this is okay, and he understands. After all, he is in every deodorant and hardware store commercial on TV. Did you catch him on 24? You may have seen him on The Parkers or 8 Simple Rules. If you didn’t see him there, you probably saw him in a movie about college kids doing outrageous things. He’s been the wacky innkeeper and the haphazardly goofy detective. You’ve seen him. Hey, they even see Marcellas from Big Brother going down the escalator as they are going up. “Hi Marcellas! Did you see our pictures from Norm’s party?” she asks. Marcellas smiles and waves and they agree to call each other. Gary wonders aloud whether or not these reality TV people are in a cult.
They have trouble finding their seats. Aisle U Row 3 Seats 13 and 15. What happened to seat 14? They find the seats, make jokes about the opening band, and Gary pulls out that said picnic basket. Not too shabby. He’s got cherries, strawberries, grapes, wine, cheese, chocolate, crackers and even some napkins. He admits there’s a part of him that is “gay.” Melissa doesn’t know how to respond, so she just says, “Yeah, so um, have you ever seen The Ring, man?”
Coldplay begins. He yells, “Yeah!” She sits Indian style waiting for the songs she knows. She sings along, sips her wine, collects their garbage (it’s so terrible to litter in an outdoor establishment) and they have fun.
Gary’s Post Interview: I think Melissa is, for all intents and purposes, a nice girl. She’s a little negativo, if you know what I mean. She’s okay, I guess. I kept telling her she was super tiny. I don't know if that went over well. I like her earrings. She’s not normally my type. I like bubbly blondes, but she’s cool I think? She told me to say nice stuff about her. Can we start this over?
Melissa’s Post Interview: Yeah, man, Gary is good people. He is a picnic basket-packing fiend. I appreciated those fresh cherries. Coldplay was cool. Somebody was smoking some weed in our section. Did you smell that? I’d hang out with Gary again. I mean, when he’s not too busy acting his ass off. He’s been in hella shit, man. He’s got a resume for days. That’s really cool for him. A working actor. Ain’t that some shit? Hey, are you going to edit out that part where I nearly fell on the way to the bathroom? That Merlot had some kick, huh? I can’t really come strong with footage like that floating around. You know, you look out for me, I look out for you…
The screen at the end of this Dating Story reads: Gary called Melissa the next day. Will he be left in the Cold? Or will he get some Play? They’ve yet to set another date…
*Names have been changed so that I can write with true poetic license and so that my friend “Gary” won’t actually hate me after he reads this. Hi Gary. I truly did have a most wonderful time at Coldplay. Coldplay! Yeah! I must say the offering of the jean jacket was super duper nice."
So that's hers. She seemed to get every detail in. (Even some Real World fans recognizing her.) Now, here's Julie's entry:
"The other day, Gabe took me to see Coldplay in Hollywood. It was such a good show! We had a great time. While we were there, I saw Melissa from my real world behind us. It was at a distance but I was pretty sure it was her. I decided I wanted to go say hi because I feel bad that things got all messed up between us. While we were in Jamaica, I think she tried to apologize off camera by one of the vans, but I just walked away. Then Jamie told me she felt bad, and I felt like a total jerk. I know it was a big messy misunderstanding, but I should have been more open to talk about it at the time, even if it had to be off camera. I guess at the time I resented that she said a bunch of bad stuff about me on camera, but then wanted to make it right off camera. I guess I shouldn't have been thinking like that. After all, it doesn't matter what happens on the silly show. What matters is leaving things un-discussed.
Anyway, so I figured that by now it would be cool for me to say hi and see how she's doing. Since we are both probably over it, I figured maybe I could get her # or something and call her, so I got up and started walking over there. She was talking to the boy she was with. Suddenly these two punk kids snuck up behind her. One of them spit in her hair, and then they ran off laughing. I didn't know what to do. I thought about saying something, but instead I just went back to my seat. I felt pretty bad about it. It sucks that some people are so rude. Luckily, I don't think she noticed, but still.
I wish I'd still said hi at least, but after the whole hair spitting thing, I felt weird. It made me realize how powerful the media can be. These two kids don’t even know her, but they think that it’s okay to spit on her just because of something they saw on TV. It’s sad every time people come up to me and tell me that so-and-so from the show sucked. I just wish people could understand that just because someone does something on the show, it doesn’t necessarily reflect who they are. It was dumb. I should have said something. Oh well, I figure I'll probably run into her again, I hope. It's probably okay though. Just in case she is still all worked up about hating me, I didn't want to put a damper on the concert for her. Coldplay was really good. I've never really been to a show like that before. It was mellow, but still really full of energy. I don't usually go to really big concerts, but I was really glad Gabe took me to Coldplay. It was a good time."
OK, a couple of things wrong with Julie's entry. We know from the show (Melissa's line about how the only way she can have fun was to send the bi*$( home.) and other things (Melissa's messages on her site, more than six months later after leaving Jamaica, still blasting Julie about her lecture appearances, that Melissa did not feel bad about the way she treated Julie. Melissa never had second thoughts about singling Julie out. Julie even makes it seem that she was the instigator back in Jamaica in this article. Now here's the thing:
The person who emailed me about this saw Melissa at the concert. They were right behind her. This person had Melissa in eyesight the whole time and they can verify that no one ever spit in Melissa's hair. This isn't the first time there's been a spat between these two. Everyone's familiar with Julie and the college circuit issue from the show. What people don't know is that there has been an online spat since the Battle ended. Julie has posted things about Melissa that Melissa didn't like. Coral (Back to New York) even got into the mix when Julie wrote something about her review of BOTS castmembers at MTV.com. Julie even told us in an interview that Melissa was going to pose in Playboy. Then she referred to people who pose in Playboy as "jack-off objects".
Interesting. Check out both of their sites: Julie and Melissa.
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