Goosebumps #030 “It Came From Beneath the Sink!” – Haha. “Came.”

Nugs: The scariest thing about these Goosebumps posts aren’t the actual books, but the way we’re choosing which ones to review. It’s like we’re all sharing each others’ brains, or something. Um, none of you have PMS right now, right? Right???

Lor: I love that the next step from sharing brains is sharing vaginas. Or… uh, vaginal activity. Uh. This is awkward.

Sara: Uh, Nugs? I believe our vaginas might be on a schedule. 

Nugs: When I was choosing my classes my senior year I NEVER had that option.

Anyway, Nips mailed this week’s installment to me with a text message that she chose it especially because the title contains the word “came,” and she knew that it would make me laugh. Which it totally did.

Lor: So, Sara saw a book that said “came” and thought of you. Meanwhile, I get “My Hariest Adventure?” What. the. hell. I want a friendship refund.

Nugs: What can I say, Lor? I am just THAT sexy.

Sara: Ahem. Cough cough. Awkward.

Nugs: For my next trick, which is not to be revealed until a later review, it turns out that Lor and I bought the EXACT SAME BOOK without consulting each other first. Joint post haaaai.

For my first foray into the Goosebumps assessments, I get to tear apart It Came From Beneath the Sink! Haha. Came.

Normally, I don’t get annoyed with the Snark Squad book picks until the tenth page or so, but this one had me at the cover:

Lor: I seriously want an invite to the Scholastic Christmas party. Someone make this happen.

Nugs: Seriously, though, check out the gross grammatical indiscretions in the front tagline. I can’t even deal with that atrocity. Look at it! Look! Any functioning fifth grader knows that you don’t start a sentence with “and.” My head hurts. Let’s move on.

The protagonist of this particular literary classic is a girl named Kat, which we find out immediately in a writing style that can be described as “junior-high lite.” I mean, good Christ, I wrote better shit than this in my sixth-grade essays. The best part is when R.L. Stine (or Ghostwriter) actually makes barking dog sound effects. You heard it here first, although you probably wish you hadn’t. BTW, the dog’s name is Killer. Whoa, step back with the creativity, Stine! You’re on a roller coaster today!

Sara: Ahhh, ghostwriters. Their inconsistencies and 5th grade writing styles make me swoon.

Nugs: To my incredible dismay, Nips tricked me and sent me a book that was not actually erotic fiction, but instead was about a killer sponge. I actually love doing housework so this made me very sad in the pants.

Lor: I dunno, man. I think I’d be sadder about having to have sex while underneath a sink. Just me?

Nugs: Sink sex is pretty hot, until the water accidentally turns on and you have to deal with it spraying  EVERYWHERE. Not cool, NYC plumbing. Not cool.

HAHA. “Spraying.”

There were a lot of idiotic parts in this book, where the biggest “reveal” is that the all the characters are morons, but let’s go down the list of the most hilarious:

-The little brother manages to convince Kat that their dog is a giant rat (seriously). She then responds by tickling him. Does no one else find this kind of sibling touching wildly inappropriate?

Sara: You know, the Wakefields twins tend to get tickled by their brother Steven an awful lot, too. AND THEY’RE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. Fucking creepy, yo.

Nugs: “Tickling” seems to be Scholastic’s metaphor for incestual relations. That’s just fucking weird.

– The parents never seem to realize that the sponge first appears to be breathing, then (exsqueeze me?) grows a pair of EYES.

Lor: Nugs, you have one too many cat/masturbating graphic for me to feel comfortable about.

Sara: But the punny! The punny is so amazing!

Nugs: I will have you guys know that I looked these up. I LOOKED THEM UP!

That doesn’t exactly help my argument, does it?

-Kat’s brother Daniel has an annoying friend named Carlo that follows him everywhere, including in the opening scene, when the family moves into their new house. Why the hell he would accompany them on their move when he’s not actually part of the family is beyond me, but maybe that’s where the “came” part fits in, considering Daniel’s parents tell him that his bedroom is big enough for the both of them. Interesting…

I do, however, love that the kids look through an encyclopedia in order to find out exactly whether or not this creature is actually a sponge. I also remember being in middle school or whatever the hell grade she’s in and making a hand-written list as to who to invite to parties. Damn you, awkward technology. Kat’s birthday this year is to be celebrated at WonderPark, which better be along the same vein as Hedo Farm Resort or I am checking out right now.

Lor: I had a friend who had an entire encyclopedia collection at her house. We would tell her mom we were going to go read the encyclopedias, and then we’d always check out the ones with the nudey anatomy pics.

Sara: ZOMG I DID THAT TOO. And I would totes look up the dirty words in the dictionary and giggle. 5th grade Sara was a Pervy McPerverson.

Nugs: Moving on:

– Kat decides to show the sponge to her teacher, but of course it won’t do any stupid pet tricks and gets dismissed. Apparently this pisses off the sponge, because Kat’s teacher then slams her fingers in a desk.

Right on the heels of this, Daniel shows her a picture of a Grool, a mythical creature that causes and feeds off of bad luck. If the Grool’s owner tries to get rid of it, they will die within a day. Shit, even the people that watched the tape from The Ring had more warning than that. BTW, I Googled this and nothing came up, so instead of being bitter that the word “Grool” was completely made up for the sake of this book, I’ll just pretend that this is a marginally entertaining moment in pop culture instead:

Lor: Four for you, Glenn Coco! You go, Glenn Coco.

Nugs: Anyway, apparently the Grool or whatever also has the all-encompassing power to make the dog run away, but it’s cool, because the cops are looking for it. 911 is a joke in your town. Kat angrily tries to bury the Grool in the backyard, and I get super sexcited because I remember the prophecy from the encyclopedia. Could it happen? I mean, these kids are pretty stupid.

Sadly, no. However, all the kids are sufficiently injured at this point, so I’ll take what I can get. If we can throw in Kristy from BSC, that would just be the trifecta.

Lor: Can we CC Jessica Wakefield on Grool maiming?

Sara: What about Elizabitch? 

Nugs: All valid choices. I feel like maybe we should do a joint storytime featuring the untimely deaths of all our favorite characters from each of the book series. OHMIGOD! I am a genius!

– Carlo’s debilitating leg injury mysteriously disappears while the kids run around thinking of ways to kill the Grool, once again bringing R.L. Stine’s continuity skills into question. However, the fact that Carlo can’t recognize the sponge after having seen it multiple times leads me to believe that his leg injury may very well have been replaced with mental retardation.

Anyway, eventually Kat stops being a dumbass long enough to realize that in order for the Grool to be killed, it needs to feel loved. Kat begins to pet it and kiss it, and when she declares her love, it freaks and explodes into a millionty little pieces, much like every guy I “dated” in college.

Lor: AHAHAHAHA. For me, I tended to date the opposite of the Grool, then? Like I treat it bad and then it loves me back and wants to marry me.

Also, Heart from Captain Planet is somewhere screaming, “FINALLY! LOVING AS POWER WINS.”

Nugs: Lor, where do you find these guys? Give them my address. Or mail them to me, duct-taped. You know, for safe-keeping and all that.

Anyway, If there are any readers left at this point, raise your hand. No, seriously. I really want to know.

Lor: *raises hand* I probably don’t count though.

Sara: *raises hand* I can never resist a good killer sponge story, Nugs. You know that.