MONDO EXTRAS

Melissa: That shit is like watered-down Boyz 2 Men. It's good!

Kim: I love *NSYNC. Believe me. I'm no snob about that. People say they don't listen to "Bye Bye Bye." Whatever! You love it. It's a good song.

Melissa: I missed the whole *NSYNC revolution because I was filming the show and I couldn't watch. Don't you know, when I got home, I watched everything I could watch.

We talked for a while about my recaps, but this interview isn't about me, so I'm editing it out. I thought this part of the exchange was interesting though.

Melissa: Oh, you can still tear me up.

Kim: It's so hard, though! Last season, I was the only one recapping a reality-based show. Everybody else was just doing Felicity or whatever. And so, they'd get to make fun of the characters, but they could say, "I don't know why the writers are doing this. This is stupid." But I was making fun of actual people. And I always had such a moral conflict with that. Obviously, not enough to stop. I hope that people understand that I'm trying to be funny, and part of being funny, sometimes, is being ridiculous.

Melissa: No, I totally get it. We have the same sense of humor, and that's why I get it. When you're like, "Melissa, shut up," I am like, "Melissa, shut up." When I watch the show, I'm like, "Oh, God."

Kim: And especially this season, with so many of you being on the web, I just think, "Oh my God, one of them is going to read it, and I'm going to feel like an asshole."

Melissa: Girl, you can still tear me up! That is your job.

Kim: Well, I'm glad that you have a sense of humor about it.

Melissa: You have to have a sense of humor. If I didn't have a sense of humor, I'd be fucking dead in a gutter right now. The reason why it's survivable is that I get fan mail from so many biracial kids, from so many young white people living in really sheltered environments. They thank me for teaching them about X, Y, and Z. I had no idea the impact the show had. When I watched it, it was just one of those shows where I was like, "Ooh, look at these mother fuckers." It was never a learning thing. These kids e-mail me, and they send me pictures of themselves like, "This is what I look like and this is what people call me. I just wanted your advice on how to handle this." But it's just sad that people are learning about hardcore shit like that from this stupid, edited TV show.