Sara: Greg and his friends are all standing around talking about how bored they are living with their boring parents in a boring town and yes, they seriously use the word boring so many times that it loses all meaning.
“This is boring,” Shari complained, watching a robin hop across the sidewalk. “It’s boring standing around talking about how bored we are.”
I have a feeling that with the name Shari, girl is going to be wearing that bored, vacant expression a lot in the future, probably while she’s twirling around a pole.
The kids decide to go to an abandoned house because they’re… wait, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh. Right. Bored. They believe that an old homeless man by the name of Spidey lives in the house, so it’s extra spoooooky. Except not.
Also, if a homeless man lives in a house, doesn’t that make him not homeless?
Lorraine: It also makes the house a lot less abandoned, right? “That abandoned house with someone living in it” makes a lot less sense if you ask me.
Sara: While the kids are all going through NotHomeless Homeless Guy’s shit like a bunch of little assholes, Greg finds a secret trapdoor that leads to a secret cabinet with a secret camera in it. And he’s been wanting a new camera, on account of his always taking blurry pictures or giving people red eye. Uh, Greg? That’s just cameras from the 1990s, bro.
Lorraine: Also, to clarify, yes this is STEALING. Which came after the BREAKING AND ENTERING. It’s okay, though, guys because they were zomg so bored.
Sara: The other three little assholes are still prancing around NotHomeless Homeless Guy’s house, wearing his clothes. (Lor: Uh, EW.) Greg goes all paparazzi on Michael and takes a picture of him (wearing a feathered boa….) standing on top of the landing to the basement. Three seconds later, Karma (the religion, not Shari’s future pole-dancing coworker) bitch slaps Michael and makes him fall off the landing to the basement below.
Lorraine: Meanwhile, all I can think about is why a NotHomeless Homeless man would possibly have a feather boa.
Sara: When they hear footsteps above, the kids grab Michael and his stupid broken ankle and haul him out of there. They’re all apparently terrified that they were almost murdered by a NotHomeless Homeless Guy, but somehow the first thing that comes to mind when they stop running is the picture Greg took of Michael on the stairs.
When Greg pulls the picture of Michael out of his pocket, the kids are freaked out to discover that the photo shows Michael falling off the stairs, when Greg obviously took the picture right before that happened.
What’s weirder? I borrowed that camera from Greg and took a picture of myself just now.
Sara: Greg tells the gang bye and heads home to find a brand new shiny station wagon in his driveway. It’s pretty hilarious how excited he is about a station! wagon!
He takes a picture of the new car and is SHOCKED to see the picture develop with a shot of the station! wagon! completely destroyed.
Huh. I just took a picture of myself with Greg’s camera again and got this….
Sara: Greg’s dad convinces the whole family to go for a ride after dinner in the brand new station! wagon! Greg tries to tell his dad that he has to shave his hands for the next forever, but Papa Greg insists.
When they get out on the road, Papa Greg starts driving like he ridin’ dirty. His wife begs him to slow down, y’know, for the safety of their family and all, but Daddy Greg is like, “LOL FREEDOM.” If Nancy Drew was in this book, she’d say Daddy Greg did it.
Lorraine: If Nancy Drew were in this book, it would be really… really… dammit what’s that word that means sucked dry of any amusment? OH I KNOW IT’S STILL BORING.
Sara: Greg’s dad looks down to find the headlights for one second, and the next thing you know, the entire Greg family is about to be demolished by an 18-wheeler. Replace ‘headlights’ with ‘iPod’ and ‘be demolished by an 18-wheeler’ with ‘rear end a very nice Hispanic girl who doesn’t have a license and gets taken to jail’ and you’ve got a story about me.
The car doesn’t crash, and Greg goes to sleep pretending he doesn’t have a psychic scary Polaroid.
The next day, Greg and Stripper Shari go to Bird’s Little League game. Shari snatches the camera away from Greg and takes a picture of Bird in his baseball uniform. When the picture develops, it shows Bird laying on the ground unconscious, with his neck bent at a terrifying angle. But because this is a Goosebumps book, we know the angle can’t be all that terrifying.
When Bird sees the picture, he says, “It’s out of focus or something.”
……………………………..
WTF? IT’S A PICTURE OF YOU LYING DEAD ON THE GROUND, KID.
What a fucking whacko.
The next twenty pages describe a Little League game, which is when I let my cat, Po, take over the reading for a minute. Goddamn, this shit is boring, y’all. I used Greg’s camera to take a picture of Po as an unofficial Snark Squad member.
After Po woke up from her Goosebumps/Tequila induced coma, she informed me that the boring baseball stuff only led up to Bird getting hit in the side of the head with a baseball, and he is now sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. If we’re lucky, it’s a coma!
Right after Bird gets beat up by a baseball, Greg’s brother comes running to tell him that Papa Greg has been in a horrible accident in the brand new station! wagon!
Everyone put your party glasses down, Bird is not in a coma. Apparently he’s just suffering from a medical condition called embarrassment.
Lorraine: Quick. Pass him the tequila. WebMD says that’s a treatment for “embarrassment.” Or maybe it said “causes of.” I clicked out really quick before I diagnosed myself with tropical fish poisoning. Again.
Sara: It’s Stripper Shari’s birthday weekend, and she insists that Greg bring the stupid camera to her birthday party so they can take lots of pictures and make horrible shit happen and WHAT IN THE FUCK? Wasn’t Stripper Shari fucking THERE when these bad things were happening? Jesus, this girl is dumb.
Greg takes two pictures of Shari, but she is completely invisible in both photographs. Shari declares the camera broken and takes off to play Truth or Dare with the other kids in the woods. When Mama Shari invites everyone inside for birthday cake, Stripper Shari is nowhere to be seen.
Wait, this camera can make shit disappear, too??
After Shari disappears and the police finish their investigation….. WAIT. Police? In Traumaland?? Oh shit. Should we have cleaned up the place? Offered coffee and donuts?
Lorraine: Some tequila? Sorry. I’m offering up all your booze.
Sara: Anyways, Greg heads back home and finds that his room has been torn apart. Obviously the NotHomeless Homeless Guy has been digging around for his camera. Greg wants to return the camera immediately but no one will go with him. Frustrated as all shit, Greg finally just tears the pictures of invisible Shari into pieces. Two hours later, Shari calls him from her house.
Apparently she just showed up at her house when the pictures were destroyed. Stripper Shari has no recollection of where she’s been, but she does remember the creepy camera of doom.
Stripper Shari and Greg decide to return the camera the next day. They put it back in the super secret compartment Greg found it in, but before they can leave, NotHomeless Homeless Guy shows up! He tells them that he helped invent the camera, because he is an evil scientist! Because you can never get through an entire Goosebumps book without an evil scientist involved, right?
NotHomeless Homeless Guy’s name is actually Dr. Fritz Fredericks. And really. Could you be anything else besides an evil scientist with that kind of name?
Lorraine: My far away second place would be “cracker maker” but probably only because it reminds me of “Ritz.”
Sara: Dr. NotHomeless Homeless Scientist tells the kids that the camera is very dangerous and needs to be hidden away. The kids are like, “WHEW. Okay, awesome, we’re just gonna go ahead and leave now….”
But Dr. NotHomeless Homeless Scientist tells the kids that they know too much and must now live in his basement forever. Um, ew?
Lorraine: He’s gonna tie them up with his boa, huh?
Sara: He tries to grab the kids, but Stripper Shari thinks quick on her lucite heels and snaps a picture of the evil scientist before both kids run up the stairs to freedom.
Once they realize Dr. Evil isn’t following them, they stop and glance at the photo. The picture shows Dr. NotHomeless Homeless Scientist dead at the bottom of the basement. When the kids look down the stairs, they realize that this has already come true.
WAIT, WHAT? A DEATH, LIKE FOR REAL? A DEATH WE CAN ALL CELEBRATE?
I think it’s time for a motherfucking light show, y’all.
Sara: The following day, the kids are all LOL’ing about how they nearly died and stuff, while two bullies are leaving the NotHomeless Homeless Guy’s house with a fancy new camera. RUH ROH!
Also, the bullies let me borrow their camera so I could see more of the future.
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
