August 23, 2001
By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
Boo hoo. There's already
been a casualty on "The Real World" front.
One of the female cast members
was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital last week. The hospital
won't say what was wrong with her, but her ailment wasn't serious enough
to warrant an overnight stay.
Thank goodness for that.
"I didn't get a good look
at her, but she didn't seem to be hurting real bad," says a man who wished
only to be identified as Matt. "I felt kind of bad for her that she had
to do this with a camera following her around."
Sympathetic Matt gets bonus
points for his angst. But surely the savvy cast members realized before
signing on the dotted line that their almost every move would be filmed,
edited and aired to run ad nauseum on MTV next season. And a trip to a
hospital is always a ratings booster.
On a less perilous note,
it seems the cast has discovered nightlife outside of their cranky Wicker
Park surroundings.
"I saw one of the blond
girls at O'Neils [on East Ontario] talking with a med student, who was
in his scrubs/lab coat with the prerequisite stethoscope around his neck,"
says Nick Hawkins, who has spotted the cast members at various haunts around
the city. "What they were talking about was a complete mystery, because
the O'Neils staff didn't care, nor did the patrons. The bartender at O'Neils
referred to him as a 'f------ tool.' "
"The blond must have not
been real bright, because she had to ask the name and address of the bar.
Um, how can you walk into a bar sober and not know the name?"
After announcing to the
press last week that a couple of cast members were working at Piece--the
pizza joint located directly across the street from the "Real World" house
on North Avenue--the proprietors have become strangely silent.
Owner Bill Jacobs says,
"They're not on the schedule right now, but I promised them that I wouldn't
say anything else about them."
Protective Jacobs wouldn't
confirm whether "right now" meant for the day or forever.
However, one correspondent
e-mailed us this report about the service: "My girlfriend and I went there
last evening, waited 15 minutes before anyone took our order and left 10
minutes later after we were still not served our beer."
MTV isn't releasing any
photos of the Chicago cast. Web sites www.liquidgeneration.com and www.realityworldtv.com
insist the photos they have posted on their sites are of the real cast
members.
Go take a peek. Perhaps
you've been served by them.
Got a scoop about "The Real World" in Wicker Park? E-mail me at realworld@suntimes.com
Read more Real World Confidential
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