“Excuse me, this is an emergency high-tech consultation about the, um, flux capacitator.” BSC #60: Mary Anne’s Makeover (1993)

Ah, the BSC at its bitchy best.

Mary Anne sees a short haircut in a magazine that she thinks would look good on her. Her friends all pooh-pooh the idea of her changing her look, but Mary Anne decides to go for it anyway. The BSC members start being cold to her, so she distances herself from them and makes friends with a different crowd. They start a bunch of rumors that the BSC (and Logan) believe, making things worse. Mary Anne eventually makes up with the Dawn, from whom most of the BSC seemed to be taking their cues, and starts going to meetings again.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Arnold builds a ‘time machine’ that she seems to think is actually real. Marilyn teases her about it, but she takes money from various kids with promises of actual time travel until Mary Anne sets her straight.

Interesting Tidbits

Cover-time!: Mary Anne’s outfit should never come back into fashion. (Too bad it already pretty much has.) We’re also getting awesome bitch face from Dawn, Kristy and Claudia.

I think one day I’m going to go back through the BSC covers and see how many of the characters wear their watches on their right hand like Mary Anne does here. That’s typical of left handed people.

Ha! “[M]y kitten (who’s named Tigger and is furry and gray), my boyfriend (who’s named Logan Bruno and is not furry and gray)…”

Sharon-itis: gloves in the freezer, keys in the soap dish; salad tongs in the linen closet

Richard, on the other hand, actually brings a calculator to restaurants to make sure that his bill is correctly computed.

Mary Anne complains that she’s not allowed to have her ears pierced, yet several times she’s said she doesn’t want her ears pierced.

Carolyn’s spelling is tres Claudia: “Dangeris! Radiacotiv Plutonum Cristals”

Meeting fun: Kristy is teaching Jessi the proper ‘technique’ for catching Milk Duds in her mouth.

“That kid in Home Alone.” Gotta love dated McCauley Culkin references.

The jaw that launched a thousand ships. That’s how MA describes her jawline when she pulls her hair on top of her head while contemplating chopping it off. Oh, and Richard calls her haircut ‘spiffy.’

Given a choice of what she would do if she could travel back in time, Carolyn would babysit for her own parents. Marilyn would prevent Mozart from writing symphonies. Jessi would want to go back and see some ballet dancer.

More Carolyn spelling (she capitalized everything but I gave up after the title): Top Secret Chek List for Time Machin: flux capasitattor, warp consol, the hands from a brokened clock, unpluged telephone, old blankit, dish towl, some toylet paper, one curtain rod

I love when Richard and Mary Anne have one-on-one time. He’s not really a huggy-type dad, but he obviously does enjoy her company. He mentions during his and MA’s shopping spree that it’s hard to see her grow up, and calls himself an old grump.

Dawn says ‘ew’ to lobster in oyster sauce—yet she routinely eats fish and sometimes, even chicken.

The Schafer/Spier household eats Chinese food with chopsticks…everyone except Richard.

When Dawn hears about all the clothes Mary Anne got, she gets a hurt, tense look on her face. I’m trying to figure out if it’s jealousy that fuels her total bitch fest throughout the rest of the book.

Ha ha ha! Apparently, Sharon’s issues are catching. Dawn took the toothpaste into her bedroom with her when she went to bed at night.

Mary Anne messes with Logan’s head: He loves her new look, and she asks what was wrong with her old look, and suggests he thought she was ugly before. She lets him dangle and get all flustered for a while.

Ugh. Who needs enemies when you have friends like the BSC? I’m trying to figure them out. I get them not being shocked when they run into MA, because Dawn already told all of them she cut her hair off. But when everyone else is telling MA she looks great, why the hell are they telling her things like “We told you that look wasn’t for you” and “At least it will grow out” and sounding like she’s done something wrong and they’re pitying her.

Claudia spelling. She’s sitting for the twines again, btw. Lovly, Baithoven (that’s after she tried to spell Mozart three times), Sceintist (second try), loked, evning, confusd, buzness, brane, litle, livlier. She also uses whether for weather; principals for principles, lessen for lesson and pleas for please. Also, she spells Stacey wrong again.

Marilyn keeps teasing Carolyn. Carolyn’s time machine is in the basement, and she won’t let anyone come down to see it. Marilyn keeps suggesting that she and Claudia (and later, Stacey, Matt and Haley) go downstairs, which sets Carolyn off. At one point, this exchange happens:

            Carolyn: Don’t let them come downstairs!

            Marilyn: What? Let them come downstairs? Okay!

This is followed by Carolyn shrieking and Marilyn giggling. Later, she, Matt and Haley go spying on Carolyn through basement windows.

This is pretty good, too:

            Carolyn: Eureka!

            Claudia: Eureka?

            Haley: You need a vacuum cleaner?

Ah, Sabrina Bouvier. You know that someone, somewhere in the BSC-verse, knew and hated a girl with that name. Knowing that Cary Retlin and the Perkins girls are real people, it’s quite possible. I wonder how many of the other BSC characters are named after real people as well. (One of the early books is dedicated to the ‘real’ Margo and Claire, so I’ve always wondered if the rest of the Pikes were named after someone.)

A Separate Peace. I’ve always loved that book, but I never felt like I completely understood it.

The BSC may be being bitches, but Mary Anne isn’t handling things very well either. Instead of confronting her friends about stuff—which, admittedly is so not her style—she just starts skipping BSC meeting and avoiding activities by hanging out with Logan. This just fuels their idea that she thinks she’s too good for the BSC anymore.

Mary Anne muses about their ‘chicken Kiev’ lunch and where that name comes from. She figures that ‘unidentified leftover gristle with lumpy brown sauce’ is more accurate but means no one would eat it. See, we don’t need Kristy at a meal to be disgusted by the food, especially when she says it tastes like burnt flour and rubber bands.

The rumors about Mary Anne are so flippin’ stupid, but they’re so pervasive that everyone—including the BSC and Logan—believes them. Normally, Mary Anne’s clique would have her back and, with a crew standing tall against the stories, enough people would stop believing them and they’d go away.

Do you think it means something that Mary Anne dreamed that Kristy and Dawn were the evil king and queen? I don’t know enough dream theory to comment on that.

Logan wanted to go hang out at ‘the high school playground’ to check out Carlos, the guy Mary Anne was supposedly going to a dance with. What kind of high school has a playground?

Is it wrong that I love when Mary Anne and Dawn fight? I like it so much better than when they’re loving on each other and calling each other Sis. Mary Anne is one of those people who’s all meek until you push her buttons and then BAM! She’s ready to attack. MA tries to talk to Dawn, who is snide and surly. When Dawn mentions MA’s ‘boy haircut’ and ‘clown makeup,’ MA tells her to go choke on an alfalfa sprout.

Dawn says she wasn’t jealous of MA’s makeover, but just felt left out. I’ll buy that she’d have loved to come along, but you can’t tell me she’s not a little jealous. MA got a shopping spree and makeup…and she got to spend time with her dad, which is something that Dawn doesn’t get very often at this point.

It takes until chapter 13 for Mary Anne to point out that Mal and Jessi were just innocent bystanders in everything. Jessi had a sitting job for the Arnolds in chapter 4, and other than that, she’s only done the Milk Dud thing. And I’m not sure Mal has said a single word. I can’t find one.

Marilyn really is cracking me up here. When Carolyn finally unveils her time machine, she keeps giving away secrets like the sound effects are a tape Carolyn bought. Then she prepares to take the first time trip and makes Carolyn promise to get her home by dinner and asks if she needs anything special, like money or warm clothes.

I knew there was a book where Pete and Dawn went to a dance together! At various points through the series, he takes Claudia and Dawn to dances, dates Stacey and asks Mary Anne out.

Why the hell would Kristy wear heels?

MA, Dawn and Logan bring up the time machine at the January Jamboree. Pete wishes the time machine were real…so that he could go back and watch Super Bowl III. As Dawn says, bo-ring! Logan would go back to the day he first met Mary Anne (barf!) while Dawn wants to go back to when Sharon and Richard were in middle school and went to dances. It doesn’t say what MA would do, but I imagine she’d want to get to know her mother.

Outfits

Mary Anne: teal stirrup pants (NO, MARY ANNE, NO!), pink turtleneck, snowflake print ski sweater; red, off the shoulder crepe dress with shirred sleeves, fitted bodice and flared skirt (I have never been able to picture exactly what this looks like. Maybe if I googled all those terms separately…), indigo cable sweater; floral paisley Lycra leggings and French terry top

Dawn: black dress with a sheer bodice (I hope the whole bodice wasn’t sheer…that’s a little too risqué for these books)

Kristy: dress and heels

Claudia: “flashy colored” lamé outfit (NO CLAUDIA, NO!)

Stacey: slinky evening gown

“I think you may have been watching too much TV.” BSC Mystery #12: Dawn and the Surfer Ghost (1993)

I’m just going to come out and say it. Has anyone else noticed that the middle of the BSC series is subjectively lame? I mean, there is a certain ridiculous silliness to the early books, but that’s what made them appealing to preteens. The idea of five babysitters watching fourteen kids for a whole week, or being stalked by boys…those books were the reason that I wanted to BE a babysitter, or, more accurately, a member of the BSC.

By contrast, when you get to this part of the series, you’re starting to feel like an episode of the Simpsons. I loved that show in its early years; you never knew what was going to happen and the characters were fun. Then Homer just kept getting dumber, and so did the plots. I stopped watching around the time they started making fun of themselves (with an episode, among other things, called ‘Worst Episode Ever’ and another that literally stole plot points from about 10 other earlier episodes.) Simpsons/BSC fans could even argue that Abby = Poochie. The stories are still entertaining…sorta…just not up to the level you’ve come to expect . You open some of these books and go, ‘Oh, look, the BSC is organizing another event for 60 small kids. I wonder what angle they’ve got for it this time…zzzzz….” (That’s you falling asleep, obviously.)

Now, I loved the last ten or so books. I can’t exactly pinpoint when the series shifted back to being excellent. The last two books are very, very good, in my opinion. I even liked #129, when Kristy actually sucked at something (for the second Kristy book in a row!) and #127, when Abby was allowed to NOT want to date anyone—the way Dawn started out—and it was completely okay, with only the fans assuming that Abby = lesbian. (Abby is =ing a lot of things today, and she’s not even in this book!) I even loved the B plot in #126, and not just because of my near-obsession with the Pike triplets.

Now, the mysteries didn’t really get a chance to get better like the original series did, and for some reason, Dawn mysteries seem to be even sillier than the rest of the series; this one is especially Scooby-Doo tastic. (I know; I need to be familiar with some other mystery series. The only other ‘mystery’ show I ever really followed was The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog, where Alfred solves spooky goings-on by the use of logical scientific explanation. I’d actually love to see a BSC mystery that mimicked that!) The ‘ghost?’ I’m glad you asked. I mean, there’s no real ghost in this story, simply because the guy whose ghost is supposedly haunting the beach isn’t really dead. He just faked his own death.

I think I just summarized the whole plot in those last two sentences, so let me get back to my regularly scheduled snark.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: I think if I saw that ‘ghost,’ I’d have come to a logical conclusion: Someone was stupidly surfing after dark with no lifeguard on duty. And of course, that’s what is really going on. But this is Dawn, and logic isn’t her middle name. (Of course not. It’s Read.)

The book starts with a letter from Dawn to Mary Anne in which she mentions being sad because she’s missing a sleepover at Stacey’s. Is it just me, or are most of the sleepovers either at Kristy’s or at Dawn’s? I can only think of a few sleepovers that weren’t at the Brewer/Thomas or Spier/Schafer households. Mary Anne hosted one back in book #4 when Dawn joined the club and Mallory hosted one once—probably just that once because the triplets slimed everyone. I’m sure there are other examples, but all the other examples I can think of were at Dawn’s (#50) or Kristy’s (#17, #38, SS #11).

List of things Dawn is never allowed to say again, #1: Cowabunga.

Consistency: Sunny likes the surfer guys more than surfing. You don’t get too much Sunny until the California Diaries, but if any of you haven’t read those, Sunny is a little boy crazy and has no problem dumping one boy and dating his friend a couple days later. (Actually, my sister did that in high school too. Hmmm.)

I wonder how much the ghostwriter actually knew about surfing when she wrote this. Some of the stuff is such a silly stereotype. The ghosty-surfer is named Thrash, while Dawn’s surfing instructor is Buck. I sincerely doubt everyone who surfs goes by a silly nickname. (Or even worse: let’s hope they weren’t born with those names.)

Wait. Not everyone in California likes health food? All of my dreams are shattered. I can’t handle it. (*Sits down for a nice long cry*)

Sadly, even in a book that takes place in Cali, we have to have a chapter two introduction to the BSC…followed by an intro to the We Heart Kids Club.

Heh. Maggie’s not a punk…she just dresses like one.

Wait a minute. Why does any elementary school kid need to be taught how to play Duck Duck Goose?

Ooh, here’s a description of Thrash, whom Dawn finds cool: “Thrash was about twenty years old, and tall—maybe six feet two—with shoulder length white-blond hair. He was incredibly tan and his blue eyes were intense in his brown face.” He also has five earrings and a ring shaped like a snake. He’s a walking, talking surfer cliché, using words like ‘screamers’ and ‘gnarly.’ Dawn says he’s attractive but not her type. She also—like me—muses as to whether Thrash is his real name.

There are WAY too many letters to the BSC members in this book. When I was a kid, I never read the notebook entries, and reading all the boring letters from Dawn to whomever is worse.

I took a break after chapter four to do some laundry (now that there’s no longer 6 inches of water in my basement…long story) and when I came back, I turned on my ITunes on shuffle. The first song? Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home.” Appropriate. What’s funny is that this is the second time something like that has happened: Back during SS #4, I did the same thing and got Shinedown’s “Second Chance” which includes, among the lyrics, “I just saw Haley’s comet; she waved.”

So there is actually a B plot in this story too. Back in S-brook, the Arnold twins have started taking gymnastics. Carolyn hurts her ankle while Marilyn is supposed to be spotting her. Marilyn, feeling guilty, refuses to let Carolyn out of her sight after that. There are only two parts of this that are interesting: 1. The accident happens while Mary Anne is babysitting, and no one blames her (including Kristy…generally when little accidents like that happen when one of the BSC is sitting, she gets all worried that they’ll get blamed.) 2. My niece isn’t the only little girl who takes one set of gymnastics lessons and suddenly her parents turn her whole basement into a gymnast’s paradise. (She has uneven bars, a balance beam and several other things down there. Her dad is really more into the gymnastics than she is.)

One of the little DeWitt boys gives Dawn a seashell because it’s beautiful, and the guy in charge of her group says he has a crush on her. Dawn actually blushes. Dude, he’s eight! It’s just cute at that point, not blush worthy.

Even though Sunny loves ghost stories, she has the common sense not to believe in real ghosts. This puts her head and shoulders above Dawn.

Poor Dawnie has to solve this mystery by herself because they WHKC members just don’t care as much as the BSC would. Where’s Mallory and her mystery notebook when you need her? (This is probably the only time Dawn will think that.)

I’ve figured out Dawn’s ghost related problem: Like Mallory, she has yet to figure out the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Just because something happens in a ghost story doesn’t mean it could/would happen in real life!

I like Sunny more and more in this book: Sunny decides that Dawn won’t let Thrash’s death/haunting go because she has the hots for him. They did have a conversation in which Thrash called Dawn a surfer princess. I could totally see that starting a crush. (Had it been Stacey, Sunny would have been 100% right.)

Ha! The police aren’t interested in what happened to Thrash and Dawn thinks it’s because he’s a “surfer bum.” She’s partly right. It’s like when prostitutes turn up missing: they tend to be nomadic, so a missing/presumed dead hooker could turn up alive in another city. That’s why hundreds of women were able to go missing in Vancouver before the authorities caught on (and realized a farmer was feeding some of them to his pigs). In this case, though, I don’t blame them. The only proof that something bad happened to Thrash is a mangled surf board. For all anyone knows, he busted a few ribs and is recuperating in bed. Or, like the police seem to think, he could have just moved on.

Sunny finds a ‘clue’ on the beach: a can of Thrash’s one-of-a-kind board wax. She suggests that he either a) faked his death or b) got amnesia and is wandering around as alternatives to his ghost using the wax. Dawn’s response is the title quote.

Gozzie Kunka’s back! I like her almost as much as I like “Alan who lives under my stairs,” my neighbor’s imaginary friend.

Jill and Maggie join Dawn and Sunny at the beach, where they decide to just veg. Sunny decides to put some nail polish on, which seems like a bad idea. Hello, sand?

Oh, but they all spot a surfer at dusk making a move that only Thrash could make. Sunny points out that the ‘ghost’ has short hair but she’s certain it’s Thrash; she agrees to help Dawn investigate.

Thrash’s ghost sure has a weird sense of vengeance. He cuts a little girl’s foot at the beach, causes a grill flare-up that results in eyebrow loss, and even sends a seagull to dive bomb someone. Yet Dawn still believes that his ghost is the cause of everything. (To be fair, a few of the things could be Thrash’s fault, like flat tires and boards that may have been tampered with.)

Stacey finally solved the Marilyn/Carolyn problem by getting their own separate friends to call and invite them over. And it’s about as interesting as it sounds. The only part of it that got me was the name of the video game Carolyn leaves home to go play: Princess Power. Ha!

Dawn likes skipping stones. Insert your own snark about the stones polluting the water….

This is the third mystery in a row that unravels because the BSC is in the right place at the right time. I don’t read enough mysteries to know if that’s normal. They’re definitely no Sherlock Holmes, and I bet even Nancy Drew does more sleuthing than they do. Dawn goes for a smoothie and happens to recognize Thrash while he’s in disguise.

Oh, and then she goes and confronts him while he’s tampering with the board of the person he thinks is responsible for tampering with his board. Dawn manages to convince him to let the police set a trap instead. It’s a good idea, but if the guy’s willing to fake his death, do you really think some 13 year old he’s met once before can talk him out of finishing his revenge?

There’s something really funny about cops undercover as surfers, although I can’t explain it.

After the mystery is over, Dawn calls during a BSC meeting, pretending to be Mrs. Heidendorferman, needing a sitter for her triplets, Moe, Larry and Curly. Yet, that’s not the cheesy ending: the Arnold twins have now had a fight and aren’t speaking. Laaaaaaaaame.

So what did we learn in this book? Most surfers have stupid nicknames like Thrash, Gonzo or Spanky. The end.

Outfits:

Dawn: shorts, t-shirt, sweatpants and white sweater

I’d tell you what I’m reading next, but I’m literally putting this book away and picking up the next one. Just read the next post, okay? ;)

“Life is a cheeseburger.” BSC #70: Stacey and the Cheerleaders (1993)

So I’m interrupting my weekend to read this book. I remember being super-annoyed by it the first time around, though I cannot recall why. All I can tell you is it’s going to take a lot of cocoa—peppermint cocoa covered in peppermint whipped topping—to get through it again.

Stacey gets the attention of a basketball player named RJ. The team has been winning and the players—and cheerleaders—are getting a lot of undeserved perks like getting to cut class and getting passed despite not doing the work. Things don’t work out between Stacey and RJ, but she makes friends with some of the cheerleaders and winds up dating basketball player Robert. After Stacey doesn’t make the cheerleading squad because of some shenanigans, Robert quits the basketball team and brings all the perks to the attention of the administration.

Meanwhile, Shannon’s sister Tiffany has been being a holy terror. The BSC realizes that little sister Maria has suddenly turned into a super swimmer, while Shannon, of course, is a super student. They both have all these awards, while Tiffany’s a terrible student with no hobbies and no awards. They help her decide she needs a hobby that’s something she enjoys, rather than something she can use to ‘beat’ her sisters. She winds up happy again, planning a garden for the backyard.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: Stacey’s hair is not attractive here. And those shoes are very white. (Also, this doesn’t happen in the book. Stacey doesn’t babysit once in the book.)

Heh: the story starts with Stacey getting hit by a snowball while wearing new pants. The pants leave streaks all over the snow.

Did your middle school/junior high have one basketball team, or were the teams divided by grades? We always had separate teams for the grades. Much like the SMS team (for all three grades, although it mostly seems to be eighth graders), our seventh grade boys’ basketball team went undefeated. Our coach—and math teacher—had promised the boys that if they went undefeated, he’d shave his head. I think he regretted that.

Stacey says she’s not boy-crazy. Um, there’s even a book talking about how boy crazy she is. I think that by this point she’s dated or been obsessed with more boys than all the other BSC members put together. She mentions Sam, Pete, Austin, Wes (the sub), and there’s the Scott the lifeguard. I’m sure we could come up with others in the comments, too.

When Stacey tells everyone RJ asked her out, Kristy can’t believe someone in The Group* would date someone who wasn’t a member of The Group. Claudia suggests that maybe RJ’s dated all the girls already.

*The Group seems to be a common name for selective cliques in the media. I remember it was the name of the kids who smoked marijuana on an episode of The Facts of Life. (It was quite possibly the second cheesiest anti-drug episode in the history of television—after that Saved by the Bell one. “I’m so excited! I’m so…scared!”)

There’s this one sentence in the description of Kristy that so poorly written that I had to read it four times before I figured out that it wasn’t a mistake.

Dawn’s been gone for a couple months, but MA is talking about her like she’s dead: “Dawn loved blue chips.” She’s also depressed because she hasn’t heard from her for two days.

Stacey suggests that Claudia dresses hiply and funkily. Reminds me of how my sister and I used to make adverbs out of everything, to the point where if you were being a jerk, you were behaving assily or assholily.

Shannon is mentioned as being an associate member, despite the fact that she’s been the alternate officer for the past two books and is listed as the alternate officer on the back cover. It would be fair to assume that she wouldn’t be able to come to every meeting, though. (She actually is at that meeting, when the job they can’t find a sitter for…is at her house.)

Tiffany, who was introduced as age eleven, has, like many other characters behind her, traveled back in time. Shannon says she missed the terrible twos and is now having the terrible tens.

Did you know Logan is cute with a capital Q? I didn’t. That must be the new alphabet, like the new math.

Why would anyone wear a unitard? Especially a plaid one and especially on a date. It’s like a camel toe waiting to happen. Stacey calls it a ‘beautiful new outfit.’

The date with RJ is a movie and pizza. After the movie, Stacey rates it as a 3 out of 10, but then she gets over it because they run into RJ’s friends at Pizza Express. She clearly likes his friends more than she likes him.

And we’re introduced to Robert, who becomes Stacey’s boyfriend for the next almost thirty books.

Ahh. Middle school cheers. I mostly remember our KMS cheerleaders doing the old “You say Kaneland, we say Knights” and “What’s your battle cry? V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!” I’m trying to decide which of these cheers is better; feel free to vote:

            A tisket! A tasket! Put it in the basket! Who’s the best? SMS! Yeaaaaa, team! (SMS Chargers)

            The Lions can’t be beat! They’re lightning on their feet! They’re the best team on our street…or lots of other streets. (LHS Lions)

Reading this book this time around (now that I’ve had the privilege of reading #83, which will definitely be a OH HELL YEAH! moment) is way more interesting. You get all the little hints that Stacey finds the BSC embarrassing and childish. Love it!

I like Kristy, but you all know I find her to be a little much. (She’s the kind of person I would never have been friends with growing up.) After SMS wins the big game, she totally embarrasses Stacey (and probably everyone else in the club) by whistling loudly and shouting across the entire gym.

I love this: when the BSC arrives at Kristy’s for their sleepover, they find a giant spread of food and Watson wearing a chef’s hat and apron. They all get ready to thank him for all the effort…until Elizabeth points out he just called the deli and ordered it all. He laughs and runs away before Kristy can peg him with a strawberry.

The title quote is part of Stacey’s confusion after Sheila tells her that Robert likes her. She can’t comprehend the idea. I’m still having trouble understanding why myself. Don’t get me wrong, Stacey’s not my least favorite babysitter. She ranks somewhere in the lower middle of the group. (As much as I love numbers, I will NOT actually rank the BSC…right now.) I just don’t understand why so many guys are so into her. It must be because she’s so sophisticated, right?

Stacey said she’s never seen cheerleaders before she moved to Stoneybrook, because they didn’t have them in her school in NYC. Let’s ignore the fact that she’s apparently never watched a professional sports game; I’ll buy that. (I’ve never actually seen a sports game with cheerleaders outside of school games.) She says that girls preferred having their own teams to cheering the boys in her old school. Well, Title IX says that, in publicly funded institutions, schools cannot discriminate between boys and girls. Therefore, there must be an equal number of girls’ teams to boys’ teams and the funding must be the same. In high school we counted up the sports teams and sure enough, they were equal. (Well, sorta. You had to compare girls’ bowling to boys’ wrestling, but there you go.) Yet we still had cheerleaders anyway. And my junior year, boys even started joining the squad. We had three guy cheerleaders my senior year.

We finally get to the B plot in chapter six.

There is apparently a ‘Haitian cotton’ couch in the Kilbourne’s TV room. I don’t even know what that is, so how is Kristy (of the turtlenecks and jeans) supposed to recognize that?

Kristy’s sitting job for Tiffany and Maria reminds me of me and my sister growing up…except that I didn’t hit her with a yo-yo. I usually just hit her upside the head (and she usually antagonized me into doing it.) Tiffany’s taking out some aggression and hostility on Maria, who’s actually an innocent victim…at first. Later she’s totally egging Tiffany on by pointing out all her honors and trophies and saying Tiffany’s just jealous. (Probably true, but completely unnecessary…also completely realistic.)

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I like Shannon’s family because it’s sort of realistic. Her parents don’t really get along but also don’t fight constantly like Stacey’s before the divorce. In families with more than a couple kids, there’s always the one who feels like a screw-up in comparison to the sibs. There’s also the ongoing fighting and trying to outdo each other….you almost get the feeling Maria got so into swimming so that she could get some recognition instead of Shannon having all the awards.

Claudia math: 98.2% of girls under age 14 with a single hair kinks report that their dates fell madly in love with them. She read a study, you know. In the Connecticut Journal of Hair Disorders.

Ha! Mary Anne the Meek and Tiffany the Terrible. Awesome. What’s interesting is that Mary Anne figures out Tiffany’s problem…well, half of it. She suggests that Tiffany needs a hobby, but she doesn’t catch the significance of Tiffany’s last statement: “I know I’ll find a hobby I can beat Shannon and Maria with.” I really read into that when I was a kid. I guess I find this more significant than the average person because every activity I joined growing up, my sister followed me into. I did Girl Scouts and 4H; so did she. I played with the band and wrote for the school paper; so did she. The only thing we differed on was sports; she played tennis and I played soccer. And I always felt that she did that to try to one-up me. She wanted to beat me at being me.

Mallory’s too sick to babysit, but apparently she’s not too sick to watch Stacey try out for the cheerleading squad. (Don’t get me wrong; I realize this takes a lot less effort than sitting, but I feel like her parents wouldn’t approve of that.)

Hell, even Shannon came from her school to cheer Stacey on. I’m surprised Logan wasn’t there, too. (Too much estrogen for him, perhaps?)

Claudia spelling time: Tifany (twice), hobies, knoe, realise. She also uses hopping for hoping and says that mary ann opened a can of werms.

Claudia solves the second half of the Tiffany problem by pointing out that a hobby isn’t a weapon against others, but something you enjoy doing. She sets out to try to turn Tiffany into an artist but obviously that doesn’t work out. The two of them also commiserate over having older sisters they feel inferior to.

Because Tiffany is so happy when Mrs. Kilbourne comes home, she jokingly asks to adopt Claudia. But all Claudia really did was say, “What really interests you?” If her parents weren’t so busy and self-involved, they could have done the same thing.

Stacey is so charming in this book. She nearly barfs, she burps and she’s got hiccups. At least she’s realistic.

I never tried out for cheerleading because I knew I could never be a cheerleader. But my sister did once, and the girls who were already on the cheerleading squad had absolutely nothing to do with selecting the new crew. Only the coaches had a say in who got selected. It prevents the kind of pettiness that leads to Stacey—the best candidate—not getting the spot on the cheerleading squad. The other girls are afraid she’s too good and will show them up.

And of course Stacey’s the best. The BSC is only bad at things as a plot point. Claudia’s a terrible student, but that’s okay, because she’s the best artist ever. Stacey is a math genius. Jessi’s the world’s greatest dancer (and choreographer). Mallory gets straight As and wins awards for her writing.

I’m still not sure what annoyed me about this book as a kid.

Outfits:

Stacey: plum corduroy pants and white down coat; black and white plaid unitard, black sweater; jeans, white cardigan with floral embroidery (seems a little girly for someone who just wore a unitard), suede ankle boots

Claudia: baggy wool pants, black belt (or a black leather band, as the book calls it for some reason…), white tuxedo shirt, flats, one black sock and one white sock, glittery bow tie barrette; men’s white shirt, spandex bell bottoms, vest (put a hat on her and she’s Blossom)

New characters:

Basketball players: RJ Blaser, Robert Brewster, Marty Bukowski, Malik Joffrey, Wayne McConnell (party on, Wayne!)

Cheerleaders: Darcy Redmond, Sheila McGregor, Margie Greene, Penny

Weller, Corinne Baker

Next week: Ready for some extra-extra-stupidness? Mystery #12 Dawn and the Surfer Ghost

“The patient was a little cranky at first, but she took her medicine. Luckily, we didn’t have to operate.” BSC #69: Get Well Soon, Mallory (1993)

Is it terribly juvenile of me to point out that book about ‘the kissing disease’ is appropriately numbered? (I’ll answer my own question: Yes. But not enough to stop me from doing it!)

Before I begin the blog, it’s vlog time! I intend to vlog each Babysitter at some throughout the series. The next one after this will definitely be Claudia; you have to wait and see WHY I picked that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBQAdBeuSw

(I couldn’t get it to imbed, sorry.)

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: That’s Margo and Claire with Mallory and this is straight out of the book. I am amused by the ‘get well soon’ card and flowers in the background.

Did anyone ever actually wait until the day of Halloween to decide what they were going to dress up as? (I know, terrible sentence structure. Suck it. ;) My mom picked my costume out for me every year until I was seven and we moved to England. (In July or August, so that she had time to hand sew it.) When we moved back, we made our own costumes out of things lying around the house. I was a ‘fortune teller’ one year wearing a square dancing costume and a lot of scarves. (I told everyone I was a gypsy, but hell, I was 11. Forgive me. I would say I got the idea from this book, but it was 1992.) The only time I decided upon my costume the day of was my freshman year of high school, when I decided on a whim to be Alexander of Daventry. We went from door to door yelling “Zounds!” instead of trick or treat that year.

I’ve always remembered this! After Mrs. Pike tells everyone they’ll be going to NYC for Thanksgiving and will get to watch the Macy’s parade, Mallory catches Vanessa practicing her waves in the mirror. Who, when they read this book the first time, didn’t practice each of the three types of waves Vanessa mentioned?

I love when they can’t keep track of the ages of various characters, as I’m sure you, my loyal readers, know. In this one, Sam and Charlie are 14 and 16. Oh, and along the same lines, Tigger is mentioned as being black and white striped. He’s usually a gray tabby. He probably looks a lot like my Dobby.
This book was the first place I ever heard of mono. When Mallory’s diagnosed, there’s this whole science-y explanation about glands and the spleen. Mal’s mom says that 99% of the time it’s not serious, but it can damage your spleen. I went to this really weird little school district (oh, Kaney-land!), and seventh through twelfth grades used to be in one building. When I was in eighth grade, the sophomore class president died during surgery from a bizarre combination of spleen damage from mono and a bad reaction to the anesthesia. I remember thinking that mono was suddenly the scariest thing ever, between her death and Mal’s ridiculously long convalescence.

Before she has a diagnosis, Mal’s greatest fear is never catching up in her homework and failing sixth grade. After she finds out she has mono? Her fear shifts to everyone thinking she got mono by kissing Ben Hobart. Nice to know she has her priorities straight.

I love Mallory’s commentary on soap operas, which was obviously written by someone who’s never seen a soap (or hadn’t seen one in decades.) I actually started watching soaps in 1993, when a little girl on one show died in a school bus accident and her heart was given to her ailing cousin. I still (sometimes) watch that show on my day off, and when I don’t catch a week, I miss a lot. (I’m still mad that Sonny is Ava’s baby dad instead of Morgan…so freakin’ predictable.) I won’t say that there weren’t soaps out there that you could not watch for a month and come back and nothing would be different, but it’s definitely not really true these days when any one of the few soaps left could be cancelled at any moment.

I loved this bit: Mallory’s trying to convince “Nurse Tiffany” (aka Claire) to eat celery as part of her lunch by suggesting that all great nurses did: Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton and…Hot Lips Hoolihan. The title quote also comes from this “sitting job”, the one shown on the cover. It’s said by “Doctor Margolius.”

Logan’s suggestion after the Pikes say that Mal needs to temporarily quit the club: The BSC should picket their front door, shouting ‘Unfair!’ and ‘Free Mallory!’ Sometimes, I really like Logan. Sometimes.

Mallory suggests a car wash to raise money. In Connecticut. In November. They actually suggest that to the kids before they realize it’s a bad idea.

Jessi is spelled as Jessie at one point. Again.

“Acting like a jerk was hard work.” Just another reason why Mal’s plan was a stupid idea.

It’s established that Claire wears a watch even though she can’t tell time. Mal asks what time it is, and Claire answers by looking at her watch. (Her assessment? Thirty-o’clock.) Adam has to look over at her watch to figure out the correct time. I had always assumed that it was some Pike family thing that everyone wears watches and is on top of their own schedule.

There’s a quote on page 97 with only one quotation mark. There’s usually at least one typo in any book, but I hate when I actually find them.

Jessi takes Charlotte and Vanessa to pick out books for the oldsters. They decide to only get mysteries because Vanessa says her gramma likes mysteries, and then they decide to only get mysteries with ‘nice’ pictures on the front: cats, flowers, houses and horses. But they can’t find enough books that way, so they have to relax the rules to include candles and pretty women. Later, they develop a game for deciding which person gets which book…by rhyming the titles or cover photos with the person’s name.

Mrs. Pike actually lets the triplets polish the carving knives. That seems…not smart. I’m seeing an ER visit.

Claudia makes Mal earrings that are made of wooden bottles labeled ‘miracul cure.’ They’re supposed to magically cure her.

Kristy’s got magical talents, too: she points at the phone, and it rings. (And of course, because this is a BSC book and everyone’s parents agreed to let them visit the Pikes’, the phone call is Dawn from California.)

As I said a couple weeks ago, I only have two more Mallory books left to blog. I actually don’t have copies of either one of them, but I’ve got about another year before I have to worry about it.

Outfits:

Mallory: flowery pajamas; blue velvet skirt and matching bolero jacket, white silk blouse

Byron: maroon corduroy slacks, yellow shirt, blue and yellow sweater

Next week: #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders

“I haven’t heard any reports of ancient coins being used to buy gummi worms at the candy store.” BSC Mystery #11: Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum (1993)

A new museum has opened in Stoneybrook, and Claudia decides to take Corrie and the Arnold twins to see it. While they’re there, a theft takes place. Later, the BSC goes to try to figure out where the stolen coins have gone, since everyone was searched upon leaving the museum. They discover a couple of things: a man who is always there every time Claudia goes to the museum, and a sculpture that Claudia has seen before that seems ‘different’ to her somehow. It turns out that a custodian had stolen the coins and hidden them in a secret compartment in the sculpture. Claudia happens to be there when he retrieves them, thus solving another mystery just by being in the right place at the right time.

In the really-super-annoying B plot, Claire decides she needs to be a star, Karen style, and pisses everyone off in the process. She goes as far as to ask Rosie Wilder how to get an agent, then decides she doesn’t want to be famous after all.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: You all know how I hate leggings, but I actually kind of like Claudia’s outfit. If those were tights, I would crave a pair, the same way I want those shoes she’s wearing. I have a ‘thing’ for hot pink. Oh, and Corrie (on the left) is totally a mini-Claudia, since she’s wearing pink leggings, too.

The funniest part of the cover? It says ‘What kind of crook would steal art?’ Umm, no one stole any art. The theft involved ancient coins.

Claudia decides that she doesn’t need to apply herself at school because Van Gogh probably didn’t know how to solve for x. I’m amused by her attempt at logic.

Janine is in awe of Claudia’s art critic-y knowledge, when she discusses the influences of Don Newman’s sculptures.

We’re introduced to the BSC members by a discussion of what animals they would be. Kristy would be a dog, Claudia would be a parrot, Dawn, a dolphin, and both Mal and Jessi, horses. All of these seem appropriate for me. Meanwhile, Stacey wants to be a jungle cat, which I don’t really buy. I can’t picture MA saying she’d be a koala, even if it actually suits her. I’d believe she’d say a cat, which is what Shannon says. Shannon wanted to lie in front of a fire all day, but that doesn’t sound like her. She’s far too active.

The museum is interesting. There’s a science room, a music room, an art room, and my favorite part, the Discovery Room. It consists of activities designed to show what it’s like to have various disabilities. Most of the exhibits in the whole museum are interactive and designed to be touched. I’d love that museum.

Carolyn tries to explain one of those electricity machines to Claud, who cuts her off. She’s afraid Carolyn will pull a ‘Janine’ on her and give her too much information on the subject.

When the fire alarm goes off, Claudia sees the following: a group of scared Brownies, a janitor, and a guy with one blue and one green eye. (He’s a chimera! I forget how it happens, but chimeras have two different sets of DNA. It’s quite possible for a chimera to give DNA samples that don’t match their own children.) Claudia pays extra attention because Nancy Drew says to pay attention to potential suspects.

Claudia cleans her room the same way I did as a kid: by shoving everything in the closet or under the bed without actually cleaning.

When they learn there will be a black tie event honoring Don Newman at the museum on the last day of his exhibit, Mal suggests that only rich patrons will be invited. The girls all look at Kristy, because Watson is rich. Well, Shannon lives in Kristy’s wealthy neighborhood too, and she’s at the meeting. Shouldn’t they assume her parents are rich, too?

If you had as many kids as the Pikes do, would you really take all of them to the mall at the same time to shop for clothes? My friend Zee has four kids, and she doesn’t even take all of them shopping at once. She doesn’t even like to take them all to the grocery store.

When Nicky is grossing Claire out by playing ‘see food’, Mrs. Pike tells him to only play that with his brothers because the rest of the family members aren’t interested. I guess this is what happens when you get tired of fighting with that many boys; it’s easier to tell them to gross each other out than to not be gross at all.

There just are not enough things to mock in this book.

Claudia says Mallory collects words. Not only is this a good pastime, it’s good for making other people feel inferior, or being condescending (which is the word that makes Claud make that comment in the first place.)

Claudia totally steals the museum curator’s resume off his desk. Turns out just about every museum he’s ever worked at has been robbed while he was the curator. His name is Mr. Snipes and I’m totally picturing Wesley Snipes even though he’s described as being extremely pale.

Claire wants to be as famous as Michael Jackson, Roseanne, and the elementary school principal. I have no words.

Claudia helps Claire send off her video to an agent in her quest to become a star. The problems with this? A) It’s Claire’s only copy of the video. What if the agent doesn’t send it back? B) She doesn’t ask the Pikes for permission first.

Claudia decides to contact the artist whose work doesn’t ‘feel right’ to her at the museum. Conveniently, as happens so often in these books, he lives nearby. Also conveniently, he’s the only Don Newman living in the area. Normally you’d think they’d have given Claudia a bunch of numbers. So she calls him and he invites her to the gala event that’s being held for his exhibit.

The title quote is what Stacey says when the BSC is going over the suspects again. Mary Anne reminds the group that there was a Brownie troop at the scene of the crime as well as the other suspects.

When Claudia meets Don Newman, she tells him her suspicions about the Mr. Snipes and then drags him out of the party to tail the curator. She drags him all over the museum in her quest to find out what’s going on with his sculpture…and he’s not only okay with that, he enjoys it!

Even though Claudia babysits earlier in the story, we don’t get any of her spelling until all the Stoneybrook characters write Dawn a letter in chapter 15. Claudia goes last and delights us with the following; whish, mistery, ahsome (I actually love that one!) desserv, creddit, evryboddy, coolist, nigth, museem, partys, freinds. She also uses trusty for trustee, two for two and hole for whole and then signs the letter Claudia Nancy Drew Kishi.

So what’s the deal here? It turns out that Mr. Snipes was experienced in securing museums that were high-risk for theft…hence why so many of his former museums had actually been robbed. The chimera guy (one blue eye, one green eye, remember?) was actually a federal agent specializing in art theft. He tells Claudia she’d make a good federal agent herself. But trust me, she’d need to learn to spell first.

The BSC celebrates solving the case with a pizza toast, of course.

Finally, Claudia writes Don Newman a note, enclosing a sketch she did of his sculpture, complete with the following errors: thot, parntner, allways, famouse, robery, sinserly.

Outfits

Claudia: side braid, red and white striped shirt, red leggings, black high tops; red leggings, white man’s shirt, vest; pale green silk kimono

Claire: spangled tutu, feather boa, high heels; same high heels with a pink dress

Next week: I get to make terrible mono jokes at Mallory’s expense.

“I can see she’s in bad shape. Her hair has even fallen off.” BSC #68: Jessi and the Bad Babysitter (1993)

This was one of the rare books after #40 in the series that I just never read as a child. I think this one and mystery #11 both came out while I was sick or grounded or something, because my collection skipped from #67 to #69 and mystery #10 to #12 (which was the last mystery on my book shelf.) I’m not sure if I just decided to spend my money on something else when I bought the later books or that I’d figured out basically how this one ended because the ‘baby babysitter’ didn’t join the club.

Since Dawn just left and Mallory’s all mono-riffic (although no one knows that yet), the BSC is overbooked. Kristy decides they need a new club member, so Jessi recommends a new friend of hers named Wendy who babysits. Wendy seems like a good sitter, but she’s regularly late for meetings and jobs and routinely takes sitting jobs without offering them to the club. Eventually she quits, robbing us of the opportunity to see Kristy lay the smack down on her.

Meanwhile, the Barretts miss Dawn, so they come up with the idea to make a video to send her that winds up being a mashup of Snow White and Captain Planet, and it’s as ‘interesting’ as it sounds.

There’s also this funky little C plot about Margo being extra-secretive because she’s been shoplifting. I guess this is because they realized they’d never had a Margo-centric plot in something like 100 books by this point.

Interesting Tidbits

Love the Hershey Kiss painting on the wall on the cover. I know that there’s a whole plot about Claud and junk food artwork and I didn’t find it all that appealing then, but it actually kinda looks delicious here.

Oh, and you know Wendy is a ‘bad’ babysitter…because she chews gum! And this cover, of course, is the one that gave birth to Incredulous Kristy, one of my favorite BSC memes. (Interestingly, she’s looking at Jessi, not Wendy.)

By the way, you can make your own Incredulous Kristy at http://memegenerator.net/Incredulous-Kristy Here’s my attempt:

Jessi says Squirt is two, but he’s usually described as being ‘one and a half’ or even, sometimes, younger.

In the first four pages of this book, there’s a partial summary of book #16, #36, and #67. Oh, and they briefly mention #30.

Becca and Squirt are watching Flipper, and rather than whining about being forced to watch crap like that (like I did at her age), Becca is actually enjoying it. Sometimes I think AMM and the ghostwriters forgot that this series is set in the 80s/90s, not the 60s, since everyone loves Flipper, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver and the like.

Mallory calls out sick from a BSC meeting, and instead of worrying about her health, Kristy’s like, “This is a disaster! We can’t be two sitters down!” For once, I actually get it. The members just got three calls in a row for the same time…when they already all have jobs. Dawn calls a short time later, though, and Kristy refuses to hand the phone over to MA until Dawn promises to come ‘right back.’ Knowing Kristy, she means on the next flight.

I’m trying to figure out this logic: Mal stayed home from the BSC meeting on Wednesday and home from school on Thursday. Yet her parents still let her babysit (with Jessi) for her brothers and sisters. She falls asleep on the couch and Jessi does all the work. Wouldn’t Mrs. Pike either a) stay home, knowing Mal wasn’t feeling well or b) arrange an alternate sitter? My favorite moment from that sitting job is that, when the boys come back inside, they all toss their coats everywhere and Adam throws his right on top of Mallory. Yet she sleeps on.

How does pay work when Claudia takes the first two-thirds of a sitting job and Jessi takes the last bit? Mrs. Barrett would have to physically pay Jessi, and I’m sure Jessi would pass a fair share of the money along, but that could work out badly.

Speaking of the Barretts, I remember thinking when I was a kid that it was weird that they would call Marnie’s happy face the ‘ham face’ as they do in this book. Not because it’s a stupid nickname for the way the ‘ham face’ is described, but because Buddy’s real name is Hamilton, Jr., and his father goes by the name Ham.

It’s interesting that Dawn made a ‘no guns’ rule for the Barretts and it stuck. I mean, she’s not one of their parents, so she doesn’t really get to make decisions like that.

Suzi wants to put on a play of Snow White and the Seven Zorbs (sic). She comes up with six dwarves: Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, Sleepy, Doc and Sneezy. It took me a minute to figure out she was missing Happy, which is more than Mary Anne manages. (I always forget Bashful myself.)

The story the Barretts come up is extremely complicated and horribly dated, these days. Even though I can still sing the Captain Planet theme song, I bet most tweens these days* would have no idea who that is.

*I ran across a girl and her mom at my favorite Savers who are also gathering up the whole BSC collection. She and I had a nice talk about the books, and then her mom actually tried to convince me to hand over a copy of #116 that I found before they spotted it. (I left with the book.)

Mary Anne and Jessi take the Barretts and select Pikes to buy accessories for the video. Interestingly, Mal was supposed to go but since she doesn’t feel well, she convinces Vanessa to go in her place. MA and Jessi insist because it’s “a lot of kids to keep track of.” Um, it’s Buddy and Nicky and Margo and Suzi. Two sitters should be plenty.

I remember some time back I pointed out that, of the Pikes, they all have their “things”, except Margo. I guess Margo’s going to be the Pike who has ‘problems’ as she grows up. It starts with shoplifting, then suspensions from school, and then when she’s a teen, it’s getting high in the ‘party corner’ with a bunch of guys…. Heh.

Apparently, Suzi is a top-notch actress. She really gets into her part.

The play the kids put on reminds me of the one I was ‘props master’ for at Girl Scout Camp when I was a teen. It was Snow White and the Five Dwarves (we didn’t have enough actresses). The girls decided to put their names in a hat and draw roles, so one girl with absolutely no acting talent ended up as the Prince. No one minded, because none of the others wanted to play ‘a boy’ anyway.

The title quote is Buddy’s ad lib after a collapsing Carolyn’s Snow White wig falls off (thanks to an apple poisoned by pollution.) He also gets grossed out when Snow White (now Marilyn) kisses him: “Yuck! That’s gross. It’s cheek pollution!”

And then we have to listen to the details of a Dawn sitting job for characters we’ve never heard of before, where she and her charges…make a video. At the same time as the BSC video is being made. Riiiiiiight. (Also, why would you name two kids in the same family Jenny and Jeannette? Those names are just way too similar.)

Has Jeff always had a thing for the Grateful Dead, or is that just in this book? (Although it solves a fanfic problem for me! Hee hee!) (Answer: It's also mentioned here.)

Just before Kristy was going to suggest that things weren’t working out with Wendy (who hasn’t been mentioned since chapter 10, and this is chapter 14), Wendy quits the club. I like Stacey’s take on things: She wasn’t nearly as upset about the whole Wendy thing because she figures that Wendy and Kristy are just two of a kind: ‘headstrong and determined to do things their own way,’ as Jessi says. I love that Stacey has a really good read on Kristy; this isn’t the only time she’s been able to figure Kristy out. I can’t remember every incident, but she definitely figures out Kristy has a crush in SS#15 before Kristy does.

And of course, Shannon just happens to be free(r), starting days after Wendy quits, so she can take over the role of  alternate officer until Dawn comes back.

The BSC goes roller skating because they are all miraculously free one afternoon. Even Mal skates, despite being tired. Mal, Shannon and Jessi are on regular skates while Kristy, Claudia and Stacey are in roller blades. No mention is made of what Mary Anne is doing, so maybe she’s not skating at all (even though we knowshe does sometimes.)

I just realized that there are only two more Jessi books left for me to blog, one I don’t (yet) own, and another I’ve never read.

Outfits

Just for fun today, we are going to play a game with the outfits. I’m not going to tell you who wore them; you get to guess. I may or may not give the answers in the next post.

1. Oversized white shirt, black vest covered in beads, neon green leggings, black beaded ballet slippers, one bead earring and one green hoop earring

2. Faded lavender sweat outfit under a blue terrycloth robe

3. Hot pink stirrup pants, fuzzy pink sweater, neon green pads and helmet

4. Jeans, brown leather jacket, black and silver helmet

Costumes (I will not make you guess who is who here)

Suzi as the Wicked Queen: mom’s dress, bright red lipstick and a crown

Adam as the Magic Mirror: his dad’s bathrobe, even though he complained it looked like a dress

Vanessa as the Woodsman: green tights under gym shorts, a blouse, and a felt hat

Marilyn/Carolyn as Snow White: black wig, blue cape and apparently, nothing else (racy! I guess the BSC is making a porno.)

Buddy as Captain Planet: a Captain Planet Halloween costume

Haley as Swamp Thing: green crepe paper

Marnie as Dopey, Margo as Sneezy, Matt as Grumpy, Nicky as Bashful, Laurel as Doc, Norman as Happy and Sarah as Sleepy: ‘Zorb’ hats, pointy ears, and character appropriate accessories

New characters:

Sally, Jenny and Jeannette Clune (10, 8 and 6): 32, 30 and 28

Next week: Mystery #11: Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum