R.I.P. Dennis Haskins

It was reported last night that Dennis Haskins had passed away at 76.

For those that may not know who that is, Haskins played Principal Belding in every iteration of "Saved By The Bell". Dennis Haskins portrayal of Principal Belding held an important place in my life growing up. I adored "Saved By The Bell". It was, and still is for that matter, one of my favorite comfort shows. I used to get home from school as a kid and watch every episode when it was in syndication. I grew up with Zack, Kelly, Jesse, Lisa, AC, Screech and Mr Beliding. Hell, I remember watching it when Mrs Bliss taught at the school and the show took place in Indiana. I was all in. And an ever present character in the show was Mr Belding.

Mr Belding was your typical principal in any 90's tv show that took place inside a school. He was kind of a doofus who was way too involved with the main characters of the show. For so many different reasons, each more inexplicable as the last, Mr Belding would find himself caught up in the nonsense that the students had started. He was involved in so many wacky scenarios throughout the running of the series. Some that remember best are the white water rafting incident with his brother. Mr Belding wanted to do a hike, but his brother showed up to substitute, and he was cool and convinced the kids to go white water rafting. After the brother was found to be a lothario, and decided to bail on the kids, Mr Belding was there to still take the kids on the hike. I also recall when his wife had a baby in the elevator, with AC Slater present. There's the episode when the kids drive drunk and Mr Belding has a talk with them before and after they speak with their parents. One could never forget when he tried to wear a toupee, then Slater and Zack got in a massive fight, and the toupee fell off into the punch. He was almost too involved in these kids' lives. Hell, I cannot even remember any of my principals from school, but maybe that has to do with the fact that they didn't do anything nearly as memorable as Mr Belding. There was also his iconic laugh from the show. Anyone who watched knows exactly what I'm talking about. It was fast and loud and left an impression. I would do my version of it all the time growing up. I bet my parents grew to really dislike that laugh because I would do it all the time. I know that Dennis Haskins did some other work, most notably for me was his lone episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". But he is always going to be Mr Belding to me.

With Haskins and Dustin Diamond both passing away during the 2020's, my two favorite characters from the show are now gone. I know Dustin Diamond had his issues, and the way the writers wrote Mr Belding was more than problematic, but those two never failed to make me laugh when I was a kid watching the show. I knew whenever I would tune in that one, or usually both, would make some solid jokes that I would retell later that day, or the next at school.

Mr Belding was most likely the first adult character on a show that made me see that older people needed to be listened to. I have always listened to my folks, but teachers and principals felt like it was optional when I was a kid. But then I started to watch "Saved By the Bell", and seeing how the kids reacted to Mr Belding kind of shifted my thinking. Sure, they would make fun of him, but in the end the kids almost always did what was asked of them by Mr Belding. He was an authority figure, but he also listened to the kids and took their ideas to heart. Mr Belding was also one of the first characters I saw on a kids show that they portrayed as cool when he was younger. The episode with the radio station, where they flashed back to when Mr Belding was the DJ, he was playing dope music, had long hair and some sweet ass facial hair. I saw that and thought, oh man, older people used to be young and cool too. It may sound weird, but Mr Belding was the first tv adult that really showed me some things that I still hold true to this day.

Dennis Haskins is going to be missed. We are lucky that we have many episodes of "Saved By The Bell" to watch and remember his legacy. Rest In Peace Dennis Haskins, aka Mr Belding. I hope you are spinning records and teaching lessons wherever you may be right now. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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RIP Dustin Diamond

Earlier today I was outside with my daughter while she rode her wheel cart and RD texted me, "pour one out for Screech".

I was surprised, to say the least. I knew he was sick. I knew a few weeks back they had rushed him to the hospital and it was kind of a secret as to what was going on. Then it was released that he had stage 4 lung, or maybe throat, cancer. But by all accounts, as of less than two weeks ago, he seemed to be in recovery. Everyone around him said he was doing chemo, and they had hoped it was working.

Apparently it did not. I guess, from what I have read since receiving that text, was that the cancer was very dangerous and that it spread very quickly throughout his whole body. His reps said that the only good thing to come from this was that he died fast and wasn't in a "pool of pain". That sounds brutal to me.

Now that I have had a couple of hours to sit on this info, and I even talked to my wife about it, it feels pretty goddamn weird to be writing, basically, a "tribute" to Dustin Diamond. He was an actor, as a child, that I adored. I watched "Saved by the Bell" pretty religiously as a kid. I didn't get up to watch on Saturday's when it first aired, but syndication was my jam. I would watch it for two hours some days, if I was lucky enough to catch the TNT and TBS blocks. I devoured the show in my tweens, and even into my teens and early 20's. I know every episode from the four high school seasons, I can quote most of them, and Screech was probably my favorite character, at least as a kid. He made me laugh, he was goofy, he dressed wild and he was smart. I even thought he was kind of cool, and I loved his pursuit of Lisa. As I got older, and still watched the show, maybe even more so when RD and I lived together, I saw it with different eyes, but Screech was still the funniest. Only this time around I laughed at him, and then realized that I had been laughing at him even when I was a kid. He was the main character that got dumped on by everyone on the show. He was the butt of the jokes. Even when he would get the girl, or do something helpful, it was always backhanded, or made out as a joke. Screech wasn't this funny, smart kid I looked up to on the show as a child. He was the nerd, the doofus, the one everyone made fun of. I still stuck with him, even going so far as to wear Zubaz pants when RD and I had a day we dedicated to Screech. But as I look back on it now, Screech wasn't cool, he was the dork, point blank. I very sparingly watched the "College Years", and I think I only saw maybe a handful of "The New Class", but it was more of the same with Screech. He never really evolved on the show.

After “Saved By the Bell” his personal life became more of the thing, and he did not seem like the best person in the world. He released a sex tape, which he later said he used a "double" for the sex. Okay, whatever. Then he wrote a tell all book, which he then confessed was written by a ghost writer, and half, if not more, of the stories were false. That's kind of pathetic. Then he went the reality show route, and he was always cast, or trying to be, the villain. It didn't work, and he couldn't pull it off. Anytime he got into it with someone, I would always say, "Screech is about to get his ass kicked". This is partly him, for being an asshole, but me also, for typecasting him in my head as Screech. He never changed from the character I watched growing up, so that was who he always was to me, and a lot of other people. The nail in the coffin was when he was in a bar fight that involved a stabbing, and he was arrested and put in jail for, I believe, three years. That wiped any, of which there may have been none, respect that I had left for Dustin Diamond. It all went out the window, and it seemed that way with his former castmates, and even some friends he had made. I know he did a tell all thing with Oprah Winfrey in 2013 where he tried to clean things up, and did a similar thing with Mario Lopes three years later, but the damage had been done, and he was, quite frankly, a dirtbag in my opinion.

Yet it is a bummer when someone dies so young. He didn't get COVID or anything like that either. This wasn't because he was being careless. He unfortunately got a very serious form of cancer that cut his life way, way too short. I know I have been dumping on him this whole blog, but that is a crummy way for a person to go out. Yes he wasn't a good person, but he wasn't some kind of monster that did awful things to people. All of his harm was self inflicted. So while I do not feel about him like I did with Kobe Bryant, or someone I truly adore like MF Doom, it is still a shock and a bummer when someone I watched growing up dies so young. He was only six years older than me. That is crazy.

RIP Dustin Diamond. You lived a wild and crazy life, but Screech will live on forever, and I guess you made the most of your time here.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

Come and support Ty and the podcast on Patreon.

Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.

Watch Ty awesomely live tweet a going to be awful "The Unathorized Full House Story"

We have invented a device that can beam garbage directly into your television

Tomorrow night on the Lifetime Channel they will be showing the "Unauthorized Full House Story".

This comes on the heels of their Saved By the Bell unauthorized movie and their Britney Murphy unauthorized movie and their Aaliyah unauthorized movie. Do you notice a pattern with these movies? If you didn't, they're all unauthorized. That means that the real people involved, for the most part, have nothing to do with these movies. It's maybe one person or, a friend of a friend that's involved with these movies.

I don't know who did the Britney Murphy or Aaliyah movies, but I know, for a fact, that the Saved By the Bell movie was based on, world renowned douchebag, Dustin Diamond's book. The fact that he wrote a book is disturbing enough, but Lifetime made a movie out of it! How troubling is that?! The Saved By the Bell unauthorized movie was god awful. It wasn't bad in a good way, it was down right terrible. I mean, there's scenes of Screech getting stoned and drinking beers with an extra. That same extra black mails Screech to get on the show. They barely touched on Mark Paul Gosselar and Lark Voorhies relationship. The guy portraying Mr.Belding wasn't creepy at all, when in actuality, he was a HUGE creep. And the one scene I can never shake, Screech's dream sequence, when they super imposed a body builders body under his head and he's in a hot tub full of beautiful women. That scene still haunts me.

With how terrible the "Saved By the Bell Unauthorized Story"was, that will not stop me from watching the "Full House Unauthorized Story". Why you may ask, the answer is I need to watch this "movie" to see how truly awful it can be. It's like a train wreck, or a terrible accident, you don't want to watch, but something inside of you makes you watch. This movie is going to be terrible, I know this, but I have to see if it's better or worse than the Saved By the Bell one. I'm sure it will be worse. If the early pictures of the cast that were released months ago is any indication, this is going to be a flaming piece of garbage. I'm still going to watch it though. Morbid curiosity is the only reason I can think of as to why I'm going to watch it.

Another reason I will be watching it, I'm going to be taking over the SeedSing Twitter account(@seedsingrdk) and live tweet the movie as I'm watching it. I feel this needs to be done for all our readers and listeners out there. The movie is on at 7pm and 9pm central time, so you have two chances to watch. I'll probably start at around 8, I'm DVRing the movie, so I don't have to watch commercials. I want to get this thing over ASAP. So, tune into Lifetime at the two times I mentioned or follow @seedsingrdk for live tweeting and watch in terror with me at the utter horror and stupidity that the "Unauthorized Full House Story" is going to be.

It's going to be epically terrible. I assure you of this.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the co-host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He really cannot stand Kimmy Gibbler. It also seems like he watches a lot of Lifetime. Although he will be using the website account, make sure you go follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.