Old post from elsewhere

Originally posted in Feb 2007--


Currently I am rereading the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin in order. Yeah. I don't own the entire series, but I'm getting closer. I used to have this little wallet size printout of which ones I still needed to carry with me to the thrift stores. This was to keep me from ending up with 3 copies of #47, Mallory On Strike. It didn't really work. So, random BSC thoughts:

I hate Dawn and everything that comes out of her mouth. She's a self-righteous, self-centered brat. Also her portrait collection really annoyed me because she kept eating chicken through the whole damn thing and I was just waiting for the chapter where she explained that she decided to become a vegetarian but it never came, even though she was a militant non-meat eater in other books. I did enjoy #88, Farewell, Dawn, or as I prefer to call it "Good Riddance, Dawn." The only other one I liked was #57, Dawn Saves the Planet, because she was so over-the-top obnoxious that everyone else hated her too. Also it featured this totally classic bit:

"We just sold ten bird houses," Buddy cried with glee.
"What's wrong with that?" I asked.
"Nothing," Bill replied, looked slightly confused. "We thought it was great news."
"Yeah," Buddy added. "Do you know how much money we've made?"
Stacey, the math whiz, came up beside me and answered, "Twenty dollars. Great work, guys!"

Yup. That's right. Stacey the math whiz just totally multiplied two times ten. IN HER HEAD. And she's only in the eighth grade. That part cracks me up every time I come across it.

Speaking of smart, Janine Kishi was so not holed up in her room just doing homework. Seriously, she probably had all kinds of nerdy cool projects going on. Even when I read the early books in like fourth grade and realized that Janine had the family computer in her room, I knew she was totally playing games. She's a freaking genius, she doesn't need five hours to do her physics homework. I always hated how they wrote Janine, because she was so bright and they seemed to make fun of her. She was a caricature long before the rest of the characters in the series began to be caricatures of themselves. Why is it okay to make fun of Janine for being smart, but not to make fun of Claudia for being dumb?

Claudia's outfits were the highlights of the books in the 40-70 range. And they all ended with something like, "anyone else would have looked like a clown, but Claud looked like a model!" It's as though the ghostwriters were trying to outdo the outrageousness of each previous getup. Here's an example from #59, Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym):

Today was a good example. Claudia was wearing a pair of soft, balloony, purple pants; a neon green long-sleeve leotard top; a wide, red braided belt; and a pair of soft, red ballet shoes. Her hair was swept into a French braid with wispy tendrils hanging loose. From one ear dangled a long earring made up of small papier-mache tropical fruit. In the other ear, where she had two holes, Claudia wore two small papier-mache hoops. (This earring set is her own creation.) If I wore an outfit like that, I'd look like a lunatic. But not Claudia. She looked like a fashion model.

Bullshit. All she needs is a squeaky damn red nose and a flower that squirts water when someone tries to sniff it.

Gah. It's way late. More thoughts on this another time.