With its pretty cast of twentysomethings - all witty and self-absorbed - and its racy, scandalous storylines - sex, murder, and more sex -
The Spot feels like
Melrose Place and MTV's
The Real World had a head-on collision and ended up at
Twin Peaks. But Tara, Lon, Jeff, Carrie, Michelle, eM, Tomeiko and Audrey cannot be found on the tube. The Spotmates appear only on the World Wide Web, where prime time is real time, and the Spotmates' juicy postings spin a complex story of intrigue and cabal. Is Carrie a lesbian? Is Audrey really Gina? Who is the love of Michelle's Life? Why does Lon hit on every girl who finds her way to
The Spot? Hailed last year as InfiNet's "Cool Site of the Year," and attracting more than 100,000 page hits and 560,000 server requests a day,
The Spot: An Episodic Website is the place to be on the Web-a virtual beach house where fiction and reality come together in a engaging mix. Finally, here's a little Web culture for the rest of us. With
The Spot: The Book, Spotters and Spot Virgins alike with have at hand the ultimate companion to Spot lust and lore. Here's ever thing you need to know but were too cool to ask. Everything you want to know but can't get at because your 14.4 is just too slow. Everything true Spotters must know to make more of the time they spend on
The Spot is all here:
Spot-o-graphy: Dictionary of Spot terms
Timeline: Key events
The Spot Cheat Sheet: Who's Who on The Spot
Over 100 photographs
16 pages of gorgeous color photos
Spotmate trading cards (including butt shots) Plus: The Spot: The Book: The Quiz - a true test of your Spot savvy. This is your chance to post with a Spotmate as a Special Featured Guest on The Spot!
And: Free GNN! Unlimited Internet access for 30 days!
Tara
"No box is big enough to contain our imaginations."
I'm Tara Hartwick. I'm a 23-year-old graduate film student trying to make it as a director. I idolize Martin Scorsese. "Raging Bull" is my favorite movie; I know what it's like to be manipulated and then feel like I've been punched in the face for 15 rounds. I've got talent and a point of view, and I see no reason to hold back just because there are no funds to produce my celluloid dreams.
I also have no desire to shout to the empty pages of a journal only to be the sole member of the reading audience. I like collaborating and most of my housemates are into my scheme. The Spot on the Net is our opportunity to express ourselves in the most candid and provocative way -- with a potentially captive (if we don't disappoint them) audience of 20 million and counting. So this is our story of the continuing adventures of The Spot. Spot On!
there's no place like home
Picture this: I'm airborne, my Paris outing is behind me, nipping nastily at my heels, in fact. I'm jet-lagged, exhausted. My feet are puffy, I am completely dehydrated, and I've been sitting in front of an extremely "leg happy" 12-year-old named Benji for the past 11 hours. I don't know what possessed me to think I'd come home to peace and quiet.
I taxied to The Spot (still pretending I was Brett from A Sun Also Rises, but with a change of scenery) and was met by a grand welcoming committee: Wulf and his hairy, naked body IN MY BED! I told him he could stay over while I was gone ON THE COUCH -- God only knows what's crawling on my sheets now. In my absence, Wulf was not only sleeping in my bed, getting crumbs on my carpet, and probably wearing my underwear, but he was also posting on The Spot. I'm too tired to decide if I'm pissed. He's convinced me to let him post one last time tonight and to let him crash -- on the couch -- for a couple more days. A woman's got to set her boundaries.
"As I observe Tara's Internet project, I smell blood. These are people willing to put everything on the line for the purpose of expression. They say what they feel, regardless of what damage it may cause. These are my kind of people. A true carnivore living in the very next room and they don't even know it. It's feeding time at The Spot."
the wulf
dis-Spot
I am trapped in the ugly jaws of depression. At the moment, I hate all my housemates at The Spot, including Spotnik, who sheds all over my bed. Here are a few of my least favorite things about these people that I live with:
michelle
1. She is convinced that The Spot is haunted. I think she just wants attention.
2. She always acts like men are a pain-in-the-ass interruption to her life, yet she flirts and leads them on like they were dogs begging for Liversnaps.
3. She claims she was an abused child and deserves special treatment. Get off it. We were all abused in one way or another.
lon
4. Sharing a common bedroom wall with a guy who likes to keep score of how many times he climaxes is making me crazy.
5. He's so cavalier about women, yet he claims he's not sexist.
jeff
6. I catch him looking at me and then he looks away. Is he studying my beauty or an errant booger hanging from my nose? His level of assholishness seems to grow in geometric progression.
spotnik
7. As mentioned earlier, he has no consideration. He sheds wherever he wants to.
carrie
8. Oh yeah. She's so naive about her employer Hank's intentions at the book-store. He's going to get her right in the poetry section and she'll never know what hit her. Stupidity like that really gives women such a bad name.
my paris story
Here's what happens when you get yourself all whipped up inside your head and it has no basis in, well, anything real. I went straight from the airport to the cafe where Sacha was working. Soon we were on our way, by taxi, to Sacha's flat. (Do they call them fiats in Paris?) Home was a little two-room cottage near La Place de la Contrescarpe in the fifth Arrondissement -- Hemingway territory. The place was a mess. It was charming the way he seemed not the least bit embarassed about the shape of the place. Maybe it's a foreigner thing. Then again, it's probably just a guy thing.
"I've waited so long to see this face, in a place other than my memory," he said, walking me out onto his balcony where we could see the sun setting. I looked out for a long while, musing over the view (every clothesline in the neighborhood and the very tip of Notre Dame). Then I looked at him. He cupped my face in his hands while I tried to figure out how I was feeling. I closed my eyes as he kissed me and he said over and over, "Welcome back, mon cherie. I'm so glad you're here."
I warmed up to him more slowly than I expected. We truly were two strangers drawn to each other by a common experience -- a lovely one, to be sure. And now? I have to admit I was having a hard time relating. Like typical couples in Paris, we walked along the breezy Seine hand in hand. It was Tuesday, just before sunset, and all seemed perfect at that moment. Suddenly, as we climbed the steps near Notre Dame, we were immersed in a war zone. People were running through the streets and out of the subway station, screaming in terror. A bomb had ripped through a metro train that had just entered the Saint Michel station. Sacha ordered me back to the apartment and then ran off into the crowd.
I waited in his apartment alone until he returned just after 10 p.m., all shaken up. He turned off the lights and lay down next to me. We had been romantic since our first night, but just then I didn't want to be touched. "It's time to leave," I thought. "It's time to leave," said Sacha. Was he reading my mind?
He took me to Les Bains, a supposedly ultra-exclusive hip nightclub that used to be a bathhouse frequented by Marcel Proust. Drinks cost a fortune, but Sacha somehow got them for free. We got drunk quickly and danced for hours. Later, making out on the ledge of a luminous fountain, he stopped a kiss, looked into my eyes, and proceeded to spoil everything.
"I want you to marry me, Tara."
"Whaaaaaat?" I screamed inside my head. Out of context, out of bounds, out of this world, completely insane. Don't get me wrong. I was in love. In love with the idea of being in love, of being in Paris, in love with searching and not finding -- but not in love with Sacha. The walls were closing in on me. I had gotten myself into this, had led this situation, milked it along. I still didn't know him, and I wasn't even sure now how much I liked him. And now he wanted to marry me.
I sat down to write Sacha the letter I should have written before I even thought of getting on a plane to visit him. I poured my heart out, told him everything (certainly more than he wanted to know), got everything out of my system. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I sealed the envelope and lay it on his pillow. I opened the drawer to put the pen and paper away and, uh, discovered what I'm sure I wasn't meant to see: letters addressed to different women all over the United States, probably tourists he had met. Tourists to whom he had professed his love. Tourists that he was luring back to Paris with hopes of marrying. I packed quickly and headed for the door. Before I left, I grabbed the letter I wrote and stuffed it in my pocket.
Someone stop me -- use force if necessary -- if I ever talk of Paris again.
ouch
I wake up early this morning -- my body-clock is finally back to normal. I'm being productive again, answering e-mail, vacuuming my crumb-laden carpet, and generally feeling okay with life for the moment. Then I head downstairs to get some breakfast, and I find myself caught in the lion's den. Jeff obviously hasn't had his raw m
