Previously: There was a ghost at Dawn’s house. But it wasn’t really a ghost, it was a person. Lame.
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Lorraine: At the onset of this blog, five whole months ago, we knew that when we reached “Logan Likes Mary Anne” we would celebrate by all chipping in on the commentary.
Maybe one of you other ladies has a clue why this was decided? I have the memory skillz of that one chick in “The Notebook.”
Nugs: It’s because Sweeney and I cover the BSC series, and we’re totally lazy and don’t like doing shit ourselves.
Sweeney: In my hazy childhood memories of these books, I remember this being the epic ZOMGROMANCE of the series. Unfortunately, I have since rediscovered Stoneybrook for what it really was and I just want to go ahead and say: Lor, I am really sorry. Oh, but also, this is seriously the most interesting moment Mary Anne has in the entire series. Seriously, seriously. You don’t even know how easy you have it with zzzEnid. This bitch is the least interesting fictional character in the history of ever.
Lorraine: I accept your apology but only if you keep promising me French pastries. Otherwise? Friendship over.
Sweeney: That’s fair.
Lorraine: So, that was the plan. However, Lily is still a zombie and Sara is still getting married, so what you actually get is a Nugs, Sweeney, Lor sandwich on this, the day we’ve reached our first 10th book of one of our series!
AND WE HAVEN’T KICKED PUPPIES OR BROKEN OUR HEADS ON BRICK WALLS OR, YOU KNOW, KILLED ANYONE.
Sweeney: We have definitely proposed a great many spin-off variations that would involve horrific ends for some of these characters, so let’s not get too self-congratulatory here.
Lorraine: It is with this excitement that we attack a book that features the hands down most boring member of the BSC.
Sweeney: No. But seriously. I’m not sure I made this point clear enough for you. It’s one thing to hear me whine about how painfully dull she is, but it will be entirely another when you have to read an entire Mary Anne focused book.
Lorraine: PAR-TAY.
We open the book at the end of summer vacation before 8th grade. The girls are sad, and I think this is because they know that they will spend the next millionty books stuck in the 8th grade, after it took them 10 to get through 7th.
Nugs: Seriously, has it really only been 10 books? Because it feels like eleventy billion.
Lor: Dude. Imagine the next 100.
Sweeney: For real. But as Team Ghostwriting Contrivance tries to keep these girls in the 8th grade for about 130 books, the real fun and continuity error acknowledgement is going to start. Can we start keeping a running total of days accounted for in each subsequent book – just to demonstrate the fact that it will be mathematically impossible for them to still be in the 8th grade at the end of all of this without having been held back?
Lorraine: Mary Anne thinks she should tell us what the BSC is in case we didn’t know. Hey, guys, did you know that Kristy started it? No, seriously, did you know it was Kristy’s idea? And don’t even say you helped because Mary Anne doesn’t mention anyone helping.
Sweeney: That’s because she’s the Marcie to Kristy’s Peppermint Patty.
Lorraine: Mary Bland goes on to say that things even more exciting than a Snuggie Dance Party happened to each member of the BSC that summer:
KRISTY WORE A DRESS. I mean, her mom got married, but the point is that she wore a dress.
Claudia’s exciting event is that her grandma had a stroke. Um…
Dawn discovered a secret passage way in her house.
Which leaves Stacey, who Mary Anne informs us is super flashy and exciting and likes “doing things to her hair.” Uh, like combing it? Or is she doing dirty things to her hair? I don’t get what’s going on here.
Sweeney: Mary Anne has a serious girl crush on Stacey. Because she’s from New York. I wonder if Mary Anne knows that her New Yorker self would totally be a crazy cat lady on the outskirts of the city.
Lorraine: Stacey’s summer excitement was that she got her first #hosuspension by throwing herself at a lifeguard. Mary Bland’s summer excitement was that… she watched it happen? Cool.
Nugs: YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH. Mary Anne got to go on a date and wear a bikini. That’s second-level shit, yo.
Next up: Mary Anne Does Dallas: The Musical
Lorraine: Some of this crap needs to be quoted:
“I used to think, what do you say to a boy? Then I realized you can talk to a boy the same way you talk to a girl. You just have to choose your topics more carefully. Obviously, with a boy, you can’t talk about bras or cute guys you see on TV, but you can talk about school and movies and animals and sports (if you know anything about sports).”
Nugs: This book just SCREAMS Nugs. Or, that might be just Nugs screaming.
Sweeney: No, that’s just you screaming. With joy that we managed to pass this book off to someone else. High five, right?
Dawn stops by before the BSC meeting modeling a new shirt her dad in California sent her. “Don’t tell Kristy,” Mary Anne warns, because Kristy never hears from her real dad which means that no one, ever invented, can ever, ever say the word “dad” apparently. I hate Kristy.
Sweeney: Welcome to the club. Our “Kristy Is A Stupid Cunt” support group meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Nugs: I’ll have to start recording Sons of Anarchy. There’s no way in hell I’m missing those meetings.
Lor: As an aside, I got into a conversation this weekend about the word cunt and when it should be used. I obviously said that in relation to fictional characters that make you want to gouge out your own eyes, totally acceptable. Needless to say, no one knew what the heck I was talking about. Further needless to say, see you next Tuesday.
Onward:
“My dad is a lawyer and he works long hours, I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and my mother died when I was little. I barely remember her. Sometimes it’s lonely at my house. I wish I had a cat.”
HAHAHAHA. Oh Mary Anne.
They have a meeting. Do they recap EVERY person that calls in every book? Christ.How do you guys not go crazy just with the amount of useless details Anne M. Ghostwriter provides? Like the fact that kids at Stoneybrook Middle can’t tape things in their locker, so they chew gum and stick stuff up with their chewed gum.
What. The. Hell.
Nugs: And now you understand why we drink.
Sweeney: It’s true, we dedicate shots to each other via text message as we read. Or, you know, we should. We totally will now.
Lorraine: First day of school lunch, Mary Anne spots Logan and is in insta-love because he looks just like the Stoneybrook equivalent of Justin Bebier.
Kristy’s great idea of the book: hand out fliers during the PTA meeting and stop being a bitch and start advertising in her new neighborhood. She still calls them all snobs, but recognizes that they are snobs with money and children. Classy. (Sweeney: Klassy. Yo.)
Oh, even more classy? We get to talk about little puberty boobs now. This isn’t awkward AT ALL. See, Mary Anne finally bought a bra because she’d begun to grow boobs over the summer. This leaves Kristy as the only flat chested member. Aw. Hope your ideas keep you warm at night, Kristy. (Sweeney: This is why you’re my favorite person.)
Nugs: Wait, what? What the fuck? Sara, Lily and I are starting our own club. You guys can’t be in it.
Lor: WHATEVER. I heard you never even got your cootie shots. OOOOH. BURN.
Kristy’s ideas work, naturally, and get the sitters more business. Problem is that all of the girls have school 8 hours a day, so they aren’t sure where to fit in even more babysitting. They freak a little.
Logan: I have babysitting experience.
Mary Anne: I love when boys creepily interject into our conversations! Squeeeeeee!
So Logan is invited to the next BSC meeting.
The girls all freak out because they almost mention “bra straps” and Logan references peeing, which indirectly references a penis. See, they are mature enough to be watching multiple kids but think again if you think you’re talking about a bra strap in front of them. I know, I know. They’re 12.
Logan gets a job but Bitchy, sorry, Kristy wants someone to go with him to make sure he’s the type of 12 year old who can watch other kids. And surprise, surprise: Mary Anne is the only one available.
They joint babysit a little terror named Jackie. He manages to get in a few mini-bouts of trouble, which Logan handles well, and Mary Anne notes. What’s the middle school equivalent of “panties melting?” I don’t want to be creepy, or anything.
Sweeney: Too late.
Lorraine: Dammit.
The girls decide they all think Logan is a swell sitter, but having him around is too awkward. Mary Anne calls him to break the news, but Logan heads her off and says he’s decided not to join the club… BUT, he does want to know if she’d go to the Remember September dance. Oh, yay, a dance.
Sweeney: WE GET SO FEW OF THESE AROUND THESE PARTS, ALL RIGHT. YOU TAKE THAT SARCASTIC JUDGMENT DOWN A NOTCH.
Lorraine: Wait, my sarcastic judgment has notches?!? My life is changed.
Stacey is babysitting for some kid named Charlotte. They read a story about birthdays and Charlotte says she can’t wait to be 9. Stacey remembers age 9 fondly. Mostly because IT WAS FOUR FREAKING YEARS AGO. Jeez.
Anyways, Charlotte suggests that they give Mary Anne a surprise party but Stacey says that she probably wouldn’t like that. Well, Charlotte suggest maybe just a regular party with a surprise cake! Stacey is all over that and get this: she’s even thinking of inviting strippers to the party! I mean boys.
Nugs: I mean strippers.
Lor: It would be one of the first boy/girl parties of their class.
I know, I know. They’re 12.
Dawn sleeps over Kristy’s house while she’s babysitting for her step-siblings. And well…
“I wonder what Mary Anne and Logan are doing right now” said Kristy.
Dawn looked at her watch. “The movie’s probably just beginning.”
“Yeah. The theater’s all dark. . . .”
“Maybe they’re holding hands. . . .”
“Kristy!” shouted Karen. “David Michael cheated. He just peeked at one of the cards.”
And then:
“The game continued. “Where were we?” Kristy asked Dawn. “Oh, yeah. In the dark theater.”
“Holding hands — maybe,” said Dawn. “I wonder if they’ll, you know, kiss.”
Please tell me that that wasn’t a little creepy. “Where were we?” Oh, you know, in the middle of your shared daydream about your best friend? WTF.
Sweeney: Nugs and I have gone a little easy on these girls for the seriously co-dependent friendship they have going on, but it always becomes glaringly obvious at creeperific moments like this one.
Lorraine: So, here comes the party, and Logan and Mary Anne are kind of cute together as they talk and eat pretzels. Logan is honest and is all, “you know, if you weren’t so bland I MEAN SHY all the time, people would like you more. I almost didn’t ask you to the dance because you acted like an idiot anytime I was within rock-chucking distance.”
Mary Anne gives her whole spiel about being shy and bad around boys and getting better.
Logan has more though. “You’re also super sensitive though. Calm that down.”
Word.
Sweeney: Logan > Stoneybrook.
Lorraine: Here comes the surprise birthday cake and presents and everyone sings and it’s so nice of all of her friends to do that, so naturally she runs up the stairs, out of the house and runs all the way home “away from her nightmare.”
Oh, girlfriend. We should introduce you to RL Stine.
Sweeney: Nugs and I have been advocating on behalf of this meeting for AGES.
Lorraine: Mary Anne goes back and forth between thinking her friends suck balls for surprising her even though she’s like one of those fainting goats and thinking she sucks for being a fainting goat.
“My anger was no comfort, though. All I could think was that I’d lost my friends. Tomorrow might be a good time to ask my dad for a cat.”
LOL FOREVER.
A fainting goat cat?
Mary Anne calls Logan and is all, “HAAII, WANNA HELP ME GET A CAT?” and Logan is all, “…wow. Didn’t expect to talk to you ever again,” and Mary Anne remembers that she ran out on a party.
They discuss that each of them thought the other was mad and well, all is okay, because Mary Anne gets a cat, names him Tigger, Logan givers her a silver bracelet, and invites her to another dance.
Sweeney: I have always associated the millionty cats named Tigger (come on, cat ladies, there are lots of you who go this route) with Mary Anne. My friends, this is not a good thing.
Lorraine: The girls later come over to give Mary Anne her gifts and they kiss and make-up. Everything is back to normal by the BSC meeting the next day. When none of them can sit for a group of 4 boys, the topic of Logan joining the club again comes up.
Mary Anne comes up with the great idea of having Logan be a special member who doesn’t come to meetings, so that they can talk about bra straps freely, but that can take jobs in a bind.
Logan likes the idea, after Mary Anne calls and explains. Kristy takes the phone to make it official. “I hereby make you an associate member of the Baby-sitters Club.”
I hate Kristy.
Sweeney: So you’ll be bringing drinks to our meeting tomorrow, right?
Lorraine: This calls for the big guns: I’m bring along the zebra cakes too.
Mary Anne feels orgasmic right now because the club has a boy member and she has a date to the dance and now she has a cat.
Too much excitement, yo. Someone needs an adrenaline nap.
Sweeney: Aaaand Monday night shots for everyone! Remember, it’s six hours later on my side of the world, so it really is always 5 o’clock somewhere. Or some vague approximation of that.
Next time on the Baby-sitters Club: Kristy meets her neighbors and experiences a hardcore inferiority complex. If memory serves, they are actually more atrocious human beings than she is. Are they mean enough to warrant any pity for Kristy? (Probably not.) Find out in BSC #11 – Kristy and the Snobs.
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.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm Nugs, the resident In-House Snark Squad Organizational Psychotic, or as Lor, calls it, "Prodigy." I cover the BSC along with Sweeney, Goosebumps, and whatever else I occasionally sneak into. I'm a native New Yorker stuck in LA, so my first language is Brooklynese, with a smattering of colloquial English. I'm a total sci-fi and comic book geek, which the Ladies have fostered by adding to my "impressive" collection of robots and action figures, even though they claim to be afraid of me. Also, if Ryan Gosling ever happens to accidentally stumble upon my posts I will probably be arrested. Oh haaaai.
