What can I say? Tammy Lynn Michaels and I met "cute." And just like in those old movies, we hated each other at first. We fought constantly. I even fought with friends of hers. Soon, though, we gave into our secret desires and learned that love can bloom under the strangest of circumstances.
What happened on the Popular boards the night of the series finale is now legend. A new poster named "BitchslaptheWB" appeared in the forums claiming to be Tammy Lynn Michaels. She thanked us for her support and spoke bitterly about the WB. Some of us dropped to our knees to worship her, but others (well...yours truly) didn't buy it and the thread was closed. "Tammy" started posting on another thread on the Popular boards and kept insisting she was legit, so I had her banned.
Now, you'd think that I'd be thrilled that Tammy Lynn Michaels was posting on our boards, but I'm one of those truly neurotic individuals who hates to be wrong more than anything. I hate being wrong so much that I wanted "BitchslaptheWB" be an imposter just so I wouldn't have to be wrong. So I ignored any evidence of Tammy's authenticity and stuck to my guns. I started to receive emails from a friend of Tammy's, who begged me to call her so they could straighten this out. Not only did I get into an email fight with her, but I also cc'ed my snappy retorts to Tammy's "friend" and sent them to my fellow MBTV writers so we could all have a good laugh. Who is this idiot who keeps trying to convince me they know Tammy Lynn Michaels, I'd wonder. Don't they realize what a true insider I am? I am Gustave! I am an omnipotent gay man who went to high school with Matt LeBlanc from Friends and reads Vanity Fair religiously. I know bullshit when I see it!
So you can only imagine the utter humiliation I felt when Leslie Grossman, in the middle of our interview, revealed to me that "Bitchslap" was in fact Tammy Lynn Michaels. It was like a truck had hit me. For hours after I hung up the phone with Leslie, I lay on my couch in a stupor, trying to figure out how to save my reputation. I hoped that maybe Tammy had been so pissed off with me that she'd never go near the Popular boards again and I'd never have to tell a soul what went down. But soon I realized that my plan wouldn't work, because Leslie had just spilled the beans in her interview. I was a dead man...unless I "accidentally" erased the Leslie Grossman tapes or pulled a Nixon on parts of them. And believe me, I considered doing just that for a few minutes.