BY: JENNIFER SCHRINEL
“You go to all different countries and see that all people are the same. I can’t understand people not getting along. I really do not understand it.” — Micky Dolenz at a press conference, 1966
I think the above thought by Micky Dolenz is so telling and I wonder the same thing because and I do not understand it anymore then he does. As I run a Monkees Facebook Group and talk with my fellow fans from all over the world. I have no idea, why other people seem to want to wreak havoc and pain on other people. They seem to get off on it. I expected after all the torment I went through in school that once I graduated it would be over. Then the internet came along and boy was I wrong. I was in the dark most of my life till being diagnosed at the age of 34 with Asperger Syndrome a neurodevelopmental disorder that gives great difficulty in social interaction and communication. On top this I have Dysgraphia which is also neurological disorder that causes difficulty with spelling and trouble getting your thoughts straight on paper and Dyscalculia which it basically mixing up of numbers and math concepts. So imagine having all these your whole life and not knowing it. My mother never treated me like I was any different. I never thought of myself as different, but there were times when I felt someone else’s writing was better, their art was better, or their clothes were more in style then mine. I spent a lot of my child hood alone. At time’s I walked the playground at school alone and at home I had my make believe class to keep me company. Once in a while there were playmates. There are days it seems to me that everything I do is wrong and everyone else is right. Up till I was diagnosed I thought I just have a little dyslexia so what is the deal? When I discovered the internet I thought finally I’m dealing with adults, nope my mistake.
The accusing post on Nez time line!
I have had to put up with some of the most insulting, slanderous and hate full treatment of anyone. At one time I even had to use a code name to have an e-mail account because people kept sending in false complaints on any account I would start and getting them canceled. Most recently I was set up for the second time. I got invited to a Monkees group on Facebook. As I get invited to different groups a lot I do not mind checking out a new one. Saying hello. Asking questions. They next thing I knew I’m getting all these personal messages about my name on a post on Michael Nesmith’s Facebook timeline claiming I with several other ladies had a welfare check done on him and police came to his house. I was confused, bewildered, and at the most shocked. Took me completely by surprise. I never met the man, do not know him personally and do not know where he lives and really do not care to do such a thing. He is not my favorite Monkee by far and I do not have an issue with him. So I’m being slandered, insulted and out and out accused of doing something because I joined a group a couple of women who work for The Monkees did not like. Amazing! Not to mention have the gall to pick names out of this group to blame the situation on with no proof. The mass hysteria this caused on social media was nuts. People gossiping about me calling me names, fights in chats, groups and on peoples Facebook time lines. The fact of the matter is the post was not written by Nesmith, but by his personal assistant in the middle of whatever she was going through at that time. Nesmith was on live video specifying it was his assistant who wrote the message and he was washing his hands of the whole thing. What? No apology? On top of that it was known with in Nez inner circle and inocent people got blamed anyway! I had to go file a request for information document with the police in Monterey County to find out if I had my name in any report having to do with Nesmith. The answer I got back was NO! Read it for yourself folks!
This is not the first time I have been set up or called retarded, stupid, lazy, slow, mentally handicapped, illiterate, dumb, and idiot, weird, odd, Braindead. You name it I have been called that by adults. Not smart ass kids or teenager’s, grown ass adults who had children, and grandchildren and jobs. Including people who work for celebrities and yes for The Monkees. Back in 2004 I decided I wanted to write a Peter bio. I had met him at a concert near me that I had advertised and helped him get the booking! I left him with some of my writing and was able to procure an agent in New York. Who said in e-mail: This is a worth wild subject, I would like to work with you on. Find Peter talk to him.” So, through a friend who worked with The Monkees I was able to e-mail him about it. Peter’s response was that he had a lot of authors and ghost writers approach him and he even tried to write the bio himself and he decided if he could not wright the book it should not be done.” I told him I would not do it and shared his response without e-mail address with the agent and with the fans. I made no secret that he was not interested. Things went quiet, until a friend of mine was showing me how to do a web page. It was one of these off the wall free tiny web page maker sites. Not a highly paid professional deal that you pay a lot of money for that everyone can see. I was training with a friend. I had something different on the page every day. I posted the link in my group “The Freedom Monkees Spot” asking for ideas. Then suddenly I get this e-mail from Peter Tork. The only thing missing from it was , Jennifer — How dare you say we are doing a book together and the signing off of his name at the end. But this is bulk of the e-mail :
“On top of that you had the effrontery (look it up!) to put
your name above mine in the billing. Perhaps you can see now why I
refused to work with you. You have no particular sense, as far as I
can see.”
“I expect the page to come down right away, I expect there to be no
further indication that I am working with you, and I then expect you to
stop communicating with me.”
“Many of your websisters start spewing my
email address all over cyberspace when I get angry at them. They never
believe that they did nothing wrong, and they believe that I had no
cause to be upset at them, and that they are within their rights to
wreak vengeance upon me.”
“ I hope this is not the case with you. Please understand that you violated
common
sense rules of behavior, and if you don’t think so, ask a dozen other
people.”
So you know that was Peter’s e-mail and it was a set up checkout this post on a Monkees news group from one of his groupies who used the code name The. Who describes Peter’s e-mail as nicer than it really was and assures everyone it was him. This queen bee made it her life’s goal to make my life a living hell. Repeatedly contacting Peter , phone calls, e-mails and telling him whatever gossip she could come up with on me and them making posts like this on the news group.
The:
Dec 20, 2004, 4:08:14 PM
I asked PT about the
Jenifuror. Here’s the scooby: Someone sent him the link to the bio page
and he read it. He took it to mean that she was working on a bio of
him. The proposed cover included a picture of the two of them as
authors, which was not even close to being true. He asked her to take
the page down and expressed his displeasure over the liberties she had
taken. He didn’t like the fact that she inferred a collaboration
between the two of them that in no way, shape or form was actual, true,
promised or ever even going to happen. He did write the e-mail to her
telling her to take down the page and stressing his boundaries, the
e-mail that Jennifer and co. are trying to say he didn’t write. He’s
heard that they’ve said he “couldn’t have written that” and he’s
confused by the fact that they seem to think he shouldn’t be using
words like “effrontry” when in fact he uses words like that all the
time ( trust me on this. I have a large vocabulary and he’s sent me to
the dictionary twice or thrice since I’ve known him). He asked Jennifer
not to e-mail him anymore. He never shoved her mother and would never
do so. He’d like that rumor to stop immediately.
And that’s it. Jennifer overstepped ( way overstepped) good sense and
polite boundaries with a man she doesn’t know and he asked her to stop.
It’s pretty simple, really. I can’t say I blame him for wanting her to
take down the site.
Let’s get this straight I never ever advertised on my web page that I was training on that I was doing a book with Peter Tork, Never! I was thinking of sharing some of the writing I did on the biography. Writing that was completely mine that I could do whatever I wanted with. I was in no contract with Peter or anyone else. There was a pretend picture on the top left side that looked like a book cover. I did not know how to share it through my e-mail account at that time so I posted it on the page to show my friend who was training me and who had access to the webpage. You know Ha, Ha look what a pretend book cover would look like if I had published book on Peter. I fully intended to take it down as soon as I could the following day, as it became late two in the morning and I was very tired and as I told my friend I did want anyone to mistake the picture for a real book. The problem was I had some of the Queen bee’s want to bee’s hiding in my group. One in particular who pretended to be my friend and e-mailed me endlessly begging me to share the work I had done on the Peter bio even when I did not want to. She finally convinced me to share some writing and come to find out was the one who e-mailed Peter with her own narrative of what was going on. All a set up completely.
Peter then as you can see came barreling at me in his e-mail. I was very hurt and burst into tears. I felt and still do that he was making fun of me, insulting me, calling me dumb and throwing his weight around as a celebrity at me. Like I was dirt under his feet and someone he could just stomp on. I put up with the ridicule and the insults from the Queen bee and her want a bee’s and was just devastated. These people not only hurt me. This effected everyone around me my family, my friends to the people in my group who tried to protect me were hurt. I was so upset I misspelled a post in my group on my mom’s experience in meeting Peter. I immediately sent in an apology and a corrected post. Did it do any good ? Nope’ the want to bee spy’s struck again and e-mailed the post I messed up to guess who? Peter e-mailed me again after he demanded I stop contacting him in his previous e-mail. He apologized but insisted I fixed the post as the want a bee’s had taken to gossiping and spreading their own take all over the net. So I sent him the corrected post that showed it was put in right after the one I messed up. I apologized for the mistakes my learning disability may have caused and that was that. I never heard from him again. I was glad in a way to get him off my back. Very tired of all the pain this was causing.
I can not totally make Peter the enemy as he thought I was one of them. That they were my cyber sisters as he called them in his e-mail. They were not and were preying on him as much as me. These women gossiped and passed his personal info around and hurt him as much. I’m glad to hear Peter had change after getting the cancer and seeing the stories and pictures shared by fans who had a great time meeting him and got hugs and smiles, because that is how it should be not all this garbage I went through. If he had just come at me in a decent way I could have fixed it and the whole thing would have been fixed quickly and the pain I suffered and others would never have happened. At the time, I thought I was just dyslexic and I knew I jumbled my thoughts. I was surprised as anyone to be diagnosed with the conditions I have. I would love very much for people to understand the disabilities I do have to treat me with some dignity. Not toss me aside like trash or something they can stomp on under their foot. As another celebrity has done recently after he shared with me he has my condition in his family and acted like he understood it. We can have whoever we want on our social media, but people should not be used to increase ones ego then toss them aside because they do not tell you how wonderful and great you are ever day of the week or agree with what your posts all the time. People get busy it is just a fact of life. After all this stuff with Peter I was scared to death of him I never contact him again and never went to another appearance again. I cried myself to sleep and had nightmares about him for years. I do not know how well I trust celebrities in general now. I get nervous and think if I say something wrong , look at them in a wrong way they will come at me, sue me or something, and chew me out Even the other Monkees even though Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones had the opportunity to visit my group made me nervous. I cannot help the way I feel. These people have all the money and power and prestige right? I’m just the average person with disabilities struggling with little income that can be stomped out at their whim.
I still think Mr. Baio is cuter then this doll any day. HAH!
So how does Scott Baio come into all this? I see every day how he is treated on social media, the relentless antagonsim he recieves by perfect strangers who do not even know him. The set up by his former co-star’s was just so wrong. Scott has a ton of proof he puts out every day on his social media telling the truth. Why only social media ? He is using the platforms he has available to him, and when has any talk show host ever given him the chance to tell his side of the story like they did his former costar? The constant torment and ridicule he is being put through is atrocious and despicable. I know, no matter how much strength he shows in calling them out , it must just hurt Scott very much. I may have never have acted or starred in any hit T.V. shows., but as I have shared I know the pain of being ridiculed and made fun of on social media and e-mail every day and the constant drain and toll it takes on a person. Words hurt, and hurt even more seeing them being made also about the people you love. Scott has a wife and child who does not deserve this anymore than he does. Of course Scott will go into his tough Italian New Yorker defensive mode to protect his family and himself. When I offered to look for an interview of one of his former cast members to help tell the truth about one of the allegations leveled against him. Scott’s greatfulness in the words he choose to express it in his tweets I could feel how much this hurt his heart. As I know mine was broken into pieces in my own experience. I would imagine he has had his share of tears over it, perhaps not as many as I did during my torment. I just wanted to give him a hug and say it will be ok and it will eventually pass. The Scott Baio that tweeted me did not make fun of my spelling was polite and sweet. Which I believe is in his heart rather than the defensive side he puts out because of the cruelness put out to him every day on social media by others. Even though we just began tweeting on twitter occasionally and I may never become a friend to him, this is just the way Scott seems to me and what my heart tells me about him.
What I do not understand is how people can bring this kind of hurt and pain to others. How they see it right to inflict chaos and disruption into other people’s lives. Whatever issues you have this is not the way to go about it. Take advantage of the help that is out there. If you are having money troubles hire a money counselor, if you have psychological problems go to a shrink, if it’s a medical issue go to a doctor, if you need a job go to a job counselor. Stop going after people thinking it will make your life better and fix your problems the right way. It just needs to stop as there is no room for this kind of insanity in anyone’s life. The damage done is not worth it. Know one deserves this kind of treatment once and especialy over and over again. I just do not get it. People are not raised to behave this way. You know the saying idle hands are the devils workshop. More true then ever with people being out of work becasue of Covid. I just got one question to ask these kinds of cruel people. How do you sleep at night?