Stacey has never been so wrong in her life!

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The Baby-sitters Club #18: Stacey’s Mistake


Really, Stace? You’ve never been so wrong? Really? What about the time you thought you were going to run off to la-la-land with Scott Foley? What about the time you tried to set your mother up with appalling drama queen John Brooke? Let’s try to keep a bit of perspective here, ok?

I’m not going to lie, I LOVED re-reading this book. I believe that I have made clear in the past that Stacey’s life in NYC is pretty much the entire reason I chose to move from the Midwest to NYC when I was 23. And seriously, even though I am on the far side of my 20s these days, and Stace is 13, I totally identified with her SO MUCH in this book. Those parts will be made clear in the coming paragraphs through my squealing and digression into meaningless anecdotes from my own life. That is why you read, right?

So a bunch of the adults in Stacey’s (AWESOME, UPPER WEST SIDE, WHITE-GLOVE DOORMAN) building (seriously, what does Ed do for a living? I’ll marry him!) are planning to attend this big neighborhood meeting about homelessness (this is possibly the most bizarre premise ever, but I’m just going to run with it) and 5 different families ask Stacey to babysit. Rather than turn down 4 of them, Stace has the brilliant idea to invite the BSC (minus Jessi and Mallory, which right away shoots this book to the top of my LOVE list) to visit NYC and babysit all the kids.

Why can't everyone live like this?

The Baby-sitters Club #39: Poor Mallory!
Ah, yes, another ridiculous Mallory book about labor relations. Except this time, she deals with lay-offs and poor money management, instead of going on freaking strike because her parents expect her to help out around the house.

We open with Mallory giving like a 3 page discourse on use of the word “dibble” which is obviously the dumbest word ever. It’s like “Stop trying to make “fetch” happen, Karen” (tm Regina George). Dibble this, Mallory.

So Mr. Pike, the corporate lawyer, gets laid off. I’m just calling it like it is. This whole book they make a huge deal about him being “fired” so I’m just going to state here and now that he is NOT fired. He is laid off. He gets a pink-slip. It’s cutbacks. He’s let go. Fired would be if he f-ed up a big account then told his boss to f-off (which is something I personally dream about on a daily basis. I mean for me, not for Mr. P.) His company is downsizing. They let a ton of people go all in one day. THAT’S NOT FIRING. God, Ann M. Get it together. Given how many people I know these days who’ve been both fired and laid off, I think I know the difference.

Anyway, the Pikes, all 10 of them, pretty flip their shit at this development. I mean, it’s not great news or anything, but come on. It’s not the end of the world, unless the Pikes are as irresponsible with their money as they are with their parenting. They do seem to spend and awful lot of money on vacations and multiple baby-sitters. That first night, after Mr. P. makes the announcement, the Pike parents enumerate the austerity measures they will be implementing (unlike students in London, the Pike children do not riot) including no extras, no new clothes, no junk food, no allowances. One of the kids is like “Should we even be eating dinner?” Geez Oh freakin’ Pete, way to scare the shit out of your kids, Pike parents. How about take it down a few notches, okay geniuses?

The Pike kids form the “Pike Club” to discuss their family’s situation. The Pike Club is full of idiots.

There's trouble for everyone when a TV Star comes to town!

The Baby-sitters Club #27: Jessi and the Superbrat

Yes, it’s true. I’m alive and I continue to voraciously re-read the Baby-sitters Club. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have returned to voraciously re-reading the Baby-sitters Club. Why did I get sidetracked? Well, there’s my day job, which is lame. There’s grad school, which is also pretty lame. There’s also volunteer work, travel, friends, and valiant attempts to have some sort of romantic life, since I’m hitting the wrong side of my 20s to still be living the Sex and the City single life in New York (those women were just sad. If I’m still single when I’m that old, someone just put me out of my misery.)

But alas, I cannot let all of 2010 go by without a few nods to the BSC. I love this blog, I love my readers, and most importantly I love those crazy broads from the ‘Brook.

So we’re jumping back in with Jessi and the Superbrat, #27. I don’t recall reading this as a young’n, but the more I read the more familiar it became. So either I did actually read it and somehow forgot (it was pretty boring, so that’s not entirely unlikely) or every Jessi book is just so similar that they all run together.

So this kid called Derek Masters hails from Stoneybrook and is now the star of some TGIF style sitcom, after his making his mark in the (apparently large?) Stamford, CT kiddie-model market. Because of course one goes from starring Connecticut-based toilet paper commercials to L.A. based super stardom with nothing in between. Oh, BSC-world. I’ve forgotten how magical you are.

Mary Anne has a crush-- on a boy baby-sitter!

The Baby-sitters Club #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne!

Eh, Logan. You could do better.

Well, it's the first day of the BSC's interminable 8th grade year and guess who Mary Anne spies across the crowded cafeteria? None other than her new celebrity crush, Cam Geary. Except, wait!, Stacey tells her, that's not Cam Geary. That's Logan Bruno, recnet transplant from Louisville, Kentucky (that would be Loovull, as we are treated to some delightful stereotyping of Logan's accent.) MA's heart is all aflutter.

The BSC has a huge influx of business thanks to some recent adertising, and it's getting to be too much for them to handle. Logan eavesdrops on their convo at lunch one day, and announces that he used to do a lot of baby-sitting. Mostly, this seems like a ploy to be able to oome sit by the tongue-tied Mary Anne. The BSC invites him to come to one of their meetings.

This is going to be one long night!

The Baby-sitters Club #44: Dawn and the Big Sleepover

Oh, I used to love having pen pals. They were like the blogs of my youth. If I could go back and read all the tortured heartache I poured out to other girls in far off exotic places like, well, New Jersey... I'm sure I'd just be humiliated at what a loser I was back then. I must have run through at least 10 pen pals in my youth, acquired through school projects, summer camp bonding, and the back of this creepy Catholic kids magazine my grandma used to give us. None of them ever really stuck, but I still have most of their letters. I just wish I had mine too, because I have a feeling the back and forth would be pretty hysterical to read now.

Well, Stoneybrook Elementary has paired up with a school on a Zuni reservation in New Mexico, and I'm slightly embarassed to admit that I had to Google it, but yes, that is a real tribe. I wonder how they feel about being used as a fundraising object by a bunch of snotty East Coast kids? Anyway, SES and this Zuni elementary are sister schools, which mainly seems to involve having the kids write letters back and forth. All the SES kids love it, which, I totally understand because it is super-fun to get notes from other people, even when you are old and live far from all your friends and family and check your Facebook page 27 times a day for comments that never seem to come not that I know anyone who does that.

Ahem. Moving on...

Four friends and baby-sitting-- what could be more fun?

The Baby-sitters Club #1: Kristy's Great Idea

Ready, kids? This is the one that started it all. There's only one word for it: CLASSIC.

The original Fab Four are just beginning their seventh grade year. One evening, Kristy's mom brings home a pizza because she has to ask a favor of her older kids: David Michael's baby-sitter has canceled and she needs someone to watch him after school the next day. Charlie, Sam, and Kristy are all busy. Poor Mrs. Thomas has to let her pizza get cold while she calls everyone in the neighborhood looking for a sitter. It takes, what, five minutes to eat a slice of pizza? Why couldn't she eat and then call? I highly doubt that if she doesn't call RIGHT NOW she's going to miss out on the last available sitter in Stoneybrook. But let's overlook that, because it brings the world KRISTY'S GREAT IDEA.

Make one call, reach a whole bunch of sitters! Genius in its simplicity. So Kristy flashes her idea to Mary Anne through the window that night (MA is not allowed to talk on the phone at this point. I never really understood this. What is so bad about talking on the phone? I mean, especially if she's done her homework and everything? What does Mr. Spier think she should be doing with her time? It must have been awfully boring to be Mary Anne.) Anyway, MA loves the idea, so they bring it up with Claudia the next day as well. Claud also loves it, and suggests one more member, her new friend from New York, your favorite and mine, Stacey McGill. They decide to meet MWF from 5:30 to 6 in Claud's room, since she has her own phone number and they choose officer positions: KT is the prez, obvi, Claud is her Veep, MA gets to be secretary, and Stace, the alleged math whiz is the treasurer. Throw in some advertising and we're off and running!

The Arnold twins aren't just bad--they're double trouble!

The Baby-sitters Club #21: Mallory and the Trouble with Twins

Oh, I so wanted to be a twin when I was a kid. But now that I look back on it, I would have been a horrible twin. I don't share well. I'm kind of a self-centered bitch and I'm definitely an attention whore (but a lovable one!) To this day, I hate being given the same present as my sister, who's only three years younger than me (yes, I'm also an ungrateful bitch. I am infamous in my family for being unable to keep disgust and disappointment off my face on Christmas morning.) That said, while I understand and sympathize with the twins' desire for individuality, I pretty much hate everyone in this book. The twins are just annoying, their mother is a wanna-be Mrs. Prezzioso with none of Mrs. P's charm, and of course, there's my old nemesis, Mallory Pike. We all knew that sooner or later I'd have to write about Mal, but in the interest of not repeating myself, I'll try to keep my loathing mostly to myself.

Okay, so Mal gets a regular sitting job for the Arnold twins, Marilyn and Carolyn. Right away, I hate their parents. So the twins are nice enough at first, but then Mal has to go and be all "Oh, aren't you two just the cutest little things! You look exactly the same and it's so darling, blah, blah, blah" which of course the twins don't want to hear, because what 8-year-old does, twins or not? I mean, I went through a phase for about 4 years where I yelled at anyone who called me cute. I did not want to be cute, I wanted to be cool. DUH, Mal. So the twins take off their name bracelets (again, I hate their parents) and proceed to talk in their own language and completely disregard any and all instructions Mal attempts to impose. They are annoying, but since it's Mallory they are harassing, I am slightly more inclined to be on their side. If it were my beloved Stacey they were harassing, I'd kick their asses from here to next Thursday. But then, it wouldn't have taken Stacey the entire stupid book to figure out how to deal with them.

Can Mary Anne fix a feud between friends?

The Baby-sitters Club #125: Mary Anne in the Middle

Now here I am approaching uncharted waters. I never read much BSC above probably the 70s as a kid. If I recall correctly, by the time Dawn moved back to California, I was pretty much over it. The last book I vaguely remember reading as a kid was the one where the annoying new girl, Abby, was introduced (so just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but I think it was #90, Welcome to the BSC, Abby!) and even at that point, I remember feeling way too old for it and telling everyone I was reading it in an ironic fashion, because my friend Emily had read it and lent it to me because even though we were far too old for these books (we were like, 12 or something, but we had high opinions of ourselves), but Emily's Aunt Barbara kept sending them to her as gifts, and well, it would be rude of us not to at least read them, right?

So apparently, life at Stoneybrook Middle School has just become unbearable for Mallory Pike. People call her Spaz Girl (boy, SMS students are pretty hard-hitting with the insults, huh?) and write mean things on her locker and purposely bump into her in the hall. So Mal decides that perhaps she needs to go off to boarding school to "find herself" at the age of 11. The BSC is not so keen on that idea, but no one says anything. I think we're supposed to believe that they don't say anything because they don't want to influence her decision and want her to do what's right for her (a party line towed by her tutti-frutti parents as part of their "WOO! NO RULES!" child-raising philosophy) but I think secretly the BSC is just excited that if she goes, they won't have to listen to her whine anymore... Or am I projecting my own feelings on them? Oh well.