Sourced Transcript for BSFC #2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls
Brooke Suchomel : 0:19
Welcome to The Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is: you don't talk about Fight Club. You talk about The Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel.
Kaykay Brady : 0:28
That's right, and I'm Kaykay Brady.
Brooke Suchomel : 0:31
And look, I think we all know that 2020 is a hot damn mess. So let's indulge our need for escapism and go back to October 1986 for a little bit, shall we?
Kaykay Brady : 0:41
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 0:42
Huey Lewis, Janet Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper topped the charts. Crocodile Dundee was in the middle of its nine week reign as the number one movie in America. The Mets beat the Red Sox in seven in the World Series. And on October 6, 1986, we saw the premiere of Double Dare, every 80s child's favorite game show.
Kaykay Brady : 1:10
Are you going to talk about the fact that your husband was on Double Dare?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:13
Oh, man. So here's the thing: He likes to say that he was on Double Dare, but I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.
Kaykay Brady : 1:19
Oh shit, family secrets dropping now, family secrets, right?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:23
And it's like, I don't want to bring this up. But I also want to be straight with you, my good friend.
Kaykay Brady : 1:27
You need to keep your Double Dare integrity intact.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:31
I do, I pride myself on that above all else. So he likes to say that he was on Double Dare. But what he actually did is he went to a touring show --
Kaykay Brady : 1:42
Ah.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:43
-- of Double Dare and was called up to do a physical challenge.
Kaykay Brady : 1:48
I see.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:49
So he wasn't actually one of the kids, you know, that was on the --
Kaykay Brady : 1:53
Nationally syndicated Double Dare.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:55
Yeah, that wasn't a thing that actually -- and if it did happen, you best believe that I would be playing that clip. Like, when I introduced to my husband to people, I would have this clip, like, on my phone. I would be like, "Hi, this is my husband. He was on Double Dare in the 1980s. Let me show you."
Kaykay Brady : 2:11
"Oh, hello, this is Brooke Suchomel. I am married to..."
Brooke Suchomel : 2:15
"Mr. Double Dare. You remember." No, that didn't happen, unfortunately. But it was a foundational part of his experience. And the TV show itself, I think, was foundational to all of us in the 80s.
Kaykay Brady : 2:26
Yes, it was.
Brooke Suchomel : 2:27
And a special thing in my heart: The Late Show with Joan Rivers premiered on October 9, with guests Elton John, Cher, and Pee Wee Herman.
Kaykay Brady : 2:38
That's the straightest thing I've ever heard.
Brooke Suchomel : 2:40
Yeah, right.
Kaykay Brady : 2:41
That is a heterosexual show. The Joan Rivers Heterosexual Show is what that was called.
Brooke Suchomel : 2:48
Right. Maybe if they would have called it The Joan Rivers Heterosexual Show it would have lasted for longer than, like, a half a season.
Kaykay Brady : 2:56
I've never even heard of it.
Brooke Suchomel : 2:57
Yeah, well, get this. So it was the first show broadcast on Fox when Fox was a new network. This was its first show. And less than a year later, Joan was replaced with Arsenio Hall.
Kaykay Brady : 3:11
Shut your mouth
Brooke Suchomel : 3:13
Swear to God. So The Arsenio Hall Show actually started October 9 --
Kaykay Brady : 3:17
As The Joan Rivers Heterosexual Revue.
Brooke Suchomel : 3:22
Exactly. I need to go back and look to see when the Pee Wee Herman Christmas Special came out, because there's a real overlap there.
Kaykay Brady : 3:31
Yes, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 3:32
Yeah, I mean, it's just missing a little k.d. lang in a Canadian tuxedo, the men's chorus, Dinah Shore.
Kaykay Brady : 3:40
Sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 3:41
So much goodness. Little Richard. But yeah, so the genesis of the Pee Wee Herman Christmas Special, which is, I think, the greatest thing that's ever aired on television, may have been rooted in that first episode. So much happening in October 1986. But also, the second Baby-sitters Club book, Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, was released. So it's time for some back cover copy. And I quote:
Kaykay Brady : 4:05
My favorite.
Brooke Suchomel : 4:06
"Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey have had some strange adventures since they started the Baby-sitters Club, but nothing's been as spooky as what's going on right now. The baby-sitters have been getting mysterious phone calls when they're out on their jobs. When a phone rings and they pick up, there's no one on the other end of the line. Claudia is sure it's the Phantom Caller, a jewel thief who's been operating in the area." Jewel thieves.
Kaykay Brady : 4:31
Am I right? Jewel thieves, am I right? Can't live with 'em...
Brooke Suchomel : 4:37
"Claudia has always liked reading mysteries, but she doesn't like it when they happen to her. So she and the baby-sitters decide to take action, with some very mixed results." End quote.
Kaykay Brady : 4:48
That's, like, a real journey. I don't know. I felt like the last one was a bit more of a summary.
Brooke Suchomel : 4:53
And this one is a bit more atmospheric, perhaps?
Kaykay Brady : 4:57
Or like -- and like a little more detailed, but yeah, interesting.
Brooke Suchomel : 5:00
I mean, and I think that every back cover should have "spooky" written in there at some time. I think "spooky" is an underused adjective.
Kaykay Brady : 5:07
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 5:07
It's pretty great. This book is in my Top 10 favorite Baby-sitters Club books, for sure. And I'm so freaking excited to dive into the multitude that it contains with you, Kaykay.
Kaykay Brady : 5:19
I know.
Brooke Suchomel : 5:19
But first, I have a question for you.
Kaykay Brady : 5:21
Oh, please!
Brooke Suchomel : 5:22
“Have you found my red ribbon?”
Kaykay Brady : 5:26
Uh, “Is this your red ribbon?” I can't remember what the rules are. So I'm modeling exactly what the baby-sitters did.
Brooke Suchomel : 5:34
Yeah, you're such a Claudia. She couldn't remember either.
Kaykay Brady : 5:38
But neither could Kristy!
Brooke Suchomel : 5:40
Well, they really complicated it by saying that you had to respond with, "No, the blue one." Like, why...?
Kaykay Brady : 5:48
Let's even bring this up a notch, okay: why don't you want the thief to know you're calling the police?
Brooke Suchomel : 5:53
Yeah, that's a good question.
Kaykay Brady : 5:55
That was my main question. Like, because actually, it'd be a deterrent.
Brooke Suchomel : 5:58
There's a lot of things that I couldn't really figure out, that I, that I questioned. I mean, namely: if I call you, how are you going to know where I am? Which, again, very 80s, right? Like, you didn't know who was calling.
Kaykay Brady : 6:13
Yeah, there's no caller ID. It's like the big old rotary phone on the wall.
Brooke Suchomel : 6:17
Right. But I didn't understand why the solution to that was simply to have Kristy carry this giant, like, scheduling book around to school, and they had to check in on it every single day.
Kaykay Brady : 6:31
So I guess maybe the theory is they memorize it?
Brooke Suchomel : 6:33
Or they could have just made a copy. But even beyond that, you could have simply said, "Hey, Kristy, I can't talk very long because I'm babysitting Jamie Newton right now, but have you found my red ribbon?" Yeah. But, who am I to break down the nuances of how to deal with the stalker that these girls were dealing with? Jesus Christ.
Kaykay Brady : 6:54
Oh my God, the stalker.
Brooke Suchomel : 6:56
There's so much to unpack with this one. What struck you the most from Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls?
Kaykay Brady : 7:01
Well, I don't even know where to start with this whole Alan bullshit. Oh my God.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:08
Are we, are just gonna -- are we gonna get right to it?
Kaykay Brady : 7:10
We're gonna get right to it.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:13
Let's get right to it.
Kaykay Brady : 7:14
'Cause that's the plot. You know. Basically, what this plot tells you is that abusive men, they get rewarded in the end.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:22
Right. And it's an honor and a privilege.
Kaykay Brady : 7:25
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:25
To be abused and traumatized. Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady : 7:29
And then, you know, of course, it's the oldest trope in the book, which is, the clearly lesbian character is really just a tomboy, sort of, like, looking for the right guy.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:40
Right.
Kaykay Brady : 7:40
And you know, and so she winds up going on a date with the douchebag instead of her nice friend Mary Anne, who she should be dating.
Brooke Suchomel : 7:46
Oh God, the saddest character in perhaps all of children's literature.
Kaykay Brady : 7:50
Who is, Mary Anne?
Brooke Suchomel : 7:51
Yeah, the line about how she stayed home but she was probably happy about it, from Claudia.
Kaykay Brady : 7:59
The Halloween Hop. She stayed home from the Halloween Hop.
Brooke Suchomel : 8:02
Right, she didn't get to go to the Halloween Hop wearing-- I love how Stacey and Claudia were really focused on their outfits and had to go back and forth and they wanted to quote-unquote “look nice,” right? And looking nice was bulky sweaters and baggy jeans.
Kaykay Brady : 8:19
Yes, that's gonna bring us to our next topic soon, on favorite 80s moments.
Brooke Suchomel : 8:25
Right? That's quote-unquote “nice.”
Kaykay Brady : 8:27
But okay. I don't want to be spoiled or anything, but do Kristy and Mary Anne get together? That last book, is that Kristy and Mary Anne's Great Idea?
Brooke Suchomel : 8:36
Mary Anne's Great Idea: "Kristy, let's do this. Let's give this a shot."
Kaykay Brady : 8:43
"Kristy, let's give this a shot. I'm just a girl who doesn't want to go to the Halloween Hop asking another girl to like her."
Brooke Suchomel : 8:53
Not in any of the books that I read. You know, the series kept on going after I had aged out of it. And so we're gonna hit a point where this is new to me.
Kaykay Brady : 9:02
Yeah, it went on for a long time, right?
Brooke Suchomel : 9:04
It went on forever.
Kaykay Brady : 9:05
I mean, it's still going on, like, with the Netflix reboot and...
Brooke Suchomel : 9:09
Right, but I think the last new book that they published, because they had all of these different series and spin offs and everything, came out around like '99.
Kaykay Brady : 9:18
Okay.
Brooke Suchomel : 9:19
I believe, so we're talking, you know, a solid 13, 14 years --
Kaykay Brady : 9:23
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 9:24
-- of monthly publications, and then you had multiple different franchises going at the same time. So yeah, maybe, maybe in there somewhere. Keep hope alive.
Kaykay Brady : 9:33
Yeah, someday. I mean, that would be amazing. But you know, when you think about the Kristy character, it totally makes sense. And it follows a very traditional trend for the tomboy character. It's sort of like, Ann Martin kind of gets it out of the way right in the beginning, like, "Hey, yeah, she's not actually gay."
Brooke Suchomel : 9:51
Right.
Kaykay Brady : 9:52
You know, and Little Women, in Little Women, you got to wait like a million books and a million pages to be like, okay, Jo's just a tomboy right? Who is also a late life lesbian.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:02
But I think it was really interesting that, going to the point of perspectives, right, so like, in the first book, Kristy makes it clear a couple of times that she is not interested in boys at all.
Kaykay Brady : 10:13
Right, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:14
Like, I'm not into this. I have nothing to do with it.
Kaykay Brady : 10:17
Yeah, she can't even understand what's traditionally attractive. She's really struggling.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:22
Can't fathom. And in this book, too, there are a couple of times when Claudia mentions, "Oh, Kristy is not into that."
Kaykay Brady : 10:29
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:29
She gets angry assuming that Kristy is the one who told Alan about Claudia's crush on Trevor.
Kaykay Brady : 10:38
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:38
And she thinks to herself, but this isn't the kind of thing-- the only thing she can imagine is that Kristy would have been the one to tell her friend, but she thinks to herself, this is not Kristy's thing at all. She literally says, "This is not the kind of thing that Kristy cares about."
Kaykay Brady : 10:57
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 10:58
And so you can see that Claudia knows that, like, you know, she's very boy obsessed.
Kaykay Brady : 11:03
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 11:04
We get the introduction of Trevor Sandbourne --
Kaykay Brady : 11:06
Oh my god, we're gonna talk more about this for sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 11:08
-- the brooding poet.
Kaykay Brady : 11:10
Ah, I mean, what do you think he looks like? There's, there's no description of what he looks like.
Brooke Suchomel : 11:14
Oh, but there is.
Kaykay Brady : 11:15
Is there?
Brooke Suchomel : 11:16
Yeah, I bookmarked it. Maybe it just didn't resonate for you.
Kaykay Brady : 11:20
Well, clearly. I'm on the Kristy Bus, what do I care about Sandbourne?
Brooke Suchomel : 11:26
Right? Okay, here we go: "Trevor Sandbourne is the most gorgeous boy in the entire seventh grade at Stonybrooke Middle School, and he happens to have the most romantic name in the whole world."
Kaykay Brady : 11:37
Well you can't argue with that.
Brooke Suchomel : 11:38
It's true. "Trevor has jet black hair and dark brooding eyes and freckles on his nose. He walks through the halls looking serious and deep in thought, and he writes poetry for The Literary Voice, our school's creative journal. I never dreamed I would fall in love with a poet."
Kaykay Brady : 11:57
I'm so glad we brought that to the floor.
Brooke Suchomel : 12:00
I think that he probably listens to The Cure.
Kaykay Brady : 12:03
Sure, or he will in like two years, three years.
Brooke Suchomel : 12:06
Right. So that's Trevor. The boys that are described in the first book too, like Sam, like, they are all described as having, like, she's very focused on dark hair.
Kaykay Brady : 12:14
Yeah, that's true.
Brooke Suchomel : 12:15
Dark haired boys are described so far. Besides Alan, who's just atrocious.
Kaykay Brady : 12:23
Thank you.
Brooke Suchomel : 12:24
Just an atrocious character. And I thought that the book actually had a lot of really interesting -- well, and I guess it does still have interesting and loaded things to say about gender norms, for sure. But it gets super problematized in the last two chapters. Just shreds everything.
Kaykay Brady : 12:49
Exactly. I don't want to jump to the end, but in terms of who won: rape culture. Rape culture won.
Brooke Suchomel : 12:53
Doesn't it always? God damn it. God damn it.
Kaykay Brady : 12:59
Yeah. And I think it really tells you how, you know, normalized this culture was at the time, which, we know, we remember it. Where like, you know, this is like the air you breathe. Like, it was impossible to notice. But it would be very interesting to, like, see some like younger people reading this book. Now, you know, people in their 20s, like what the fuck would they say?
Brooke Suchomel : 13:19
I hope they would say, "What the fuck is this?"
Kaykay Brady : 13:21
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:22
As opposed to when I read it, because I guarantee you, when I read it, I thought that was so romantic.
Kaykay Brady : 13:29
Oh, God.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:30
You know?
Kaykay Brady : 13:31
Yeah, I know.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:32
Because that was -- that was the message.
Kaykay Brady : 13:34
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:35
And there's just so many, so like, we know that Kristy hates Alan. And I think she genuinely...
Kaykay Brady : 13:44
Can't stand him.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:45
Yeah, hates his guts.
Kaykay Brady : 13:46
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:47
Right? Like, describes him as the most disgusting boy in the whole solar system. Like, that's how he's introduced.
Kaykay Brady : 13:56
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 13:57
And he just tortures her. He's her tormentor.
Kaykay Brady : 14:00
Although she does get him back in a fantastic lunchbox salvo.
Brooke Suchomel : 14:04
So she did, in fifth grade.
Kaykay Brady : 14:07
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 14:07
And they're in seventh grade now. And he's just continued to make her life...
Kaykay Brady : 14:12
Right. He actually got worse after that.
Brooke Suchomel : 14:15
Totally. But then when it comes out that he is the Phantom Caller, right, that he and Trevor Sandbourne are Phantom Callers. Claudia has a private phone line. It's in the goddamned newspaper. Call her at home, creep. Anyway, no matter where you look, whether you're into the guy or not, you know, Claudia's all about Trevor, Kristy can't stand Alan.
Kaykay Brady : 14:44
Doesn't matter.
Brooke Suchomel : 14:45
It's there. Right. You live in rape culture, kids. God damn it.
Kaykay Brady : 14:50
All I'm saying is this kind of rape culture would not fly on Joan Rivers' Heterosexual Revue.
Brooke Suchomel : 14:57
Never. Never.
Kaykay Brady : 14:58
Nor Pee Wee's Christmas Special.
Brooke Suchomel : 15:01
So Claudia asks, like, are you out of your mind?
Kaykay Brady : 15:05
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 15:05
You hate Alan, what are you doing? And Kristy says, "Well, it's that Alan proved something my mom's been telling me for years, which is the boys tease you because they like you." And the follow up to that, the proper follow up, Claudia gives her with like, "Well now you see how Stacey and I feel" -- that is not the proper follow up.
Kaykay Brady : 15:29
What's the follow up? Lay it on us.
Brooke Suchomel : 15:30
The proper follow up is, like, "And?" Like, what does that have to do with anything? They treat you like shit because they like you? And so you're like, "Oh, okay, I'll go to the dance with you. Like, you like me. It doesn't matter whether I like you. I think you're the most disgusting creature on the planet. But you like me, ergo, I'm obligated to go to this dance with you."
Kaykay Brady : 15:59
Yeah, it's it's unreal. I mean, I think this is the spot where if we ever get Ann Martin on the horn, we just got to be like, "Oh, come on." Like, that's why I'm like, this has got to be like, she's working through her own issues in this because it's so blatant, you know.
Brooke Suchomel : 16:14
For sure. And that's why I think it's really interesting that we don't actually get Kristy's perspective, we're not in her head. Like this is being told --
Kaykay Brady : 16:22
We get it from Claudia. Yeah. Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 16:24
Claudia is the narrator of this, instead of Kristy. Because she immediately, when Alan asks her to the dance, under duress, with --
Kaykay Brady : 16:36
With law enforcement.
Brooke Suchomel : 16:38
-- law enforcement flanking him. But also, why the fuck are you bringing this stalker into a home --
Kaykay Brady : 16:47
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 16:48
-- with all of these small children? Like, what are you doing? But you know, two men, law enforcement, bring in the boy, sit down with him...
Kaykay Brady : 16:57
And she got a lot of "settle down, young ladies" --
Brooke Suchomel : 17:00
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 17:01
-- from the police officer, I noticed, as well.
Brooke Suchomel : 17:03
God, so much.
Kaykay Brady : 17:04
Well, look, and I know there was not much of a concept of this in the 80s, but Peeping Tom behavior is basically, I mean, we'll -- we'll get into this later. But, you know what I mean, it's the stepping stone towards, like, theft...
Brooke Suchomel : 17:17
Oh, I really hope Alan doesn't have any pets. You know? That is not a good sign.
Kaykay Brady : 17:22
Exactly. Is there a fire in the next book?
Brooke Suchomel : 17:25
Did Alan hit his head as a baby? Was he dropped on his head as a baby? Did Alan wet the bed?
Kaykay Brady : 17:31
Yeah, like, is he currently wetting the bed?
Brooke Suchomel : 17:33
Right, there's a lot of checkmarks right there --
Kaykay Brady : 17:35
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Brooke Suchomel : 17:36
-- to look for a future serial killer.
Kaykay Brady : 17:37
But it's like, "Oh, come on in, son. I'm gonna drive you home and talk about privacy."
Brooke Suchomel : 17:42
Right, right! "I'm gonna give you a lift home and we're gonna talk about girls."
Kaykay Brady : 17:46
Brooke Suchomel : 17:47
It's not okay. And it makes no sense. So it is: I'm going to call you. I'm going to figure out when you are alone --
Kaykay Brady : 17:58
Oh, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 17:58
-- with small children that you're responsible for caring for. As opposed to, especially with Trevor, okay, so you're in league with Alan to surreptitiously steal information about where these girls are gonna be, how to reach them, et cetera.
Kaykay Brady : 18:17
I mean, if he calls these homes he's just as likely to get like a parent. Isn't that weirder than just like taking her aside at school?
Brooke Suchomel : 18:23
Well he does get a parent at one point.
Kaykay Brady : 18:25
Ah, shit, right.
Brooke Suchomel : 18:26
Yeah. So they get a hang up at the Marshalls.
Kaykay Brady : 18:30
Yeah, right.
Brooke Suchomel : 18:30
At the end, when Claudia is leaving, she picks up the phone and just hangs up and says, "That was strange," and Claudia shivers and says, "It was strange, all right." So like, these girls are being mentally tormented.
Kaykay Brady : 18:46
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 18:46
Like, they're in so much fear.
Kaykay Brady : 18:49
"Har har har. Boys will be boys!"
Brooke Suchomel : 18:51
Right? "Oh, it's flattering!" No! Goddamn it! Goddamnit, Ann M! What are you doing?
Kaykay Brady : 18:58
See, like, people tried to pull this shit with me when I was little too, and I ignored them and I kicked all the boys asses. And that's, you know, what I recommend. Don't go to the Halloween Hop, just beat them up.
Brooke Suchomel : 19:09
Right? And that is normally Kristy's response, right? Like, this is --
Kaykay Brady : 19:13
Yeah!
Brooke Suchomel : 19:14
Can we just talk about the fact that this is the book --
Kaykay Brady : 19:16
She is stepping out of character, no doubt.
Brooke Suchomel : 19:18
-- that in this book, Kristy threatens to punch a toddler.
Kaykay Brady : 19:21
I have this down. I have this down as like, you know, one of my, you know, where I just relate to Kristy so hard. Here, should I read it?
Brooke Suchomel : 19:32
Please.
Kaykay Brady : 19:32
I say, "Oh, Kristy, you are so me at that age I can barely stand it. Number one, your love of the Slime Kings." I mean, you know, basically I was remembering having my own tape deck and my first tape which was "18 and Life."
Brooke Suchomel : 19:47
Oh, Skid Row. Skid Row.
Kaykay Brady : 19:50
So, you know, I was thinking, the Slime Kings -- sorry, go ahead.
Brooke Suchomel : 19:53
I just want to, just quick shout out to Skid Row. Sebastian Bach --
Kaykay Brady : 19:57
Yeah?
Brooke Suchomel : 19:57
-- is, like, in the resistance.
Kaykay Brady : 19:59
Oh my god. Really?
Brooke Suchomel : 20:00
Yes, Sebastian Bach and Axl Rose are two of the leaders of the resistance. It's quite amazing. A good follow on Twitter. It's just my little -- that's my plug.
Kaykay Brady : 20:11
Oh, thank you. You've made my life so much richer.
Brooke Suchomel : 20:13
Unexpected, yeah, so, so it validates your purchase.
Kaykay Brady : 20:16
Yeah, so, "18 and Life," but for her, it's the Slime Kings. I'm sure they couldn't use any actual songs because they didn't want to pay for it. Uh, "Your threatening to punch children's lights out." Yes, I relate to that. Absolutely. You know, handle everything with violence, why not? "And your hot whistling ability." She obviously can do that double finger whistle, right? Just like her eyelids.
Brooke Suchomel : 20:35
Kristy's character is definitely, like, you're sort of doubling down in this book throughout about what you think about Kristy and then --
Kaykay Brady : 20:43
180.
Brooke Suchomel : 20:43
-- and then it's like, "Boom."
Kaykay Brady : 20:45
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 20:45
And I was thinking that it would be so interesting to actually have that moment when Kristy is just like, "Oh, sure." Like, she goes from just a couple hours before threatening to punch a toddler.
Kaykay Brady : 21:03
Twice. She does it and repeats it. She's serious.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:07
To, "Oh, hey, Person That I Hate, who it turns out has been tormenting me this whole time, oh, sure, I'll go to the dance with you."
Kaykay Brady : 21:16
Well, that's why I think it's, you know, homosexual panic.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:19
100%
Kaykay Brady : 21:20
Because it's like, you're gonna date whoever is willing to walk in the door because you need a beard.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:25
Like, "This could solve my problem."
Kaykay Brady : 21:26
Yeah, correct.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:26
And I actually wrote that down too, that, like, if you're going to have a beard, like, I get the role, like, beards are very important --
Kaykay Brady : 21:35
They sure are.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:36
-- on many journeys --
Kaykay Brady : 21:38
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:38
-- and there, but for the fact that I met my husband when I was 16, were it not for that? I am convinced I would have been a beard.
Kaykay Brady : 21:50
Oh, sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:50
Many times over.
Kaykay Brady : 21:51
I mean, you would be like the best beard in the world.
Brooke Suchomel : 21:54
I would be a great...I'm really kind of sad about the fact that I never got to be, like, I'm just, just to be real. I would have been --
Kaykay Brady : 22:03
I understand, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:03
-- a fantastic eard. Theater kid. Show choir slash glee club. I took French. Like, ain't no way I'm not gonna be a beard. But if you're going --
Kaykay Brady : 22:15
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:15
-- to get a beard, if you must have a beard, if that is where your journey is taking you.
Kaykay Brady : 22:21
Sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:21
Do not go with a psychopath.
Kaykay Brady : 22:24
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:24
Like, don't... no, no, no, no. So, this is, I think that this is our advice to any young baby gays listening.
Kaykay Brady : 22:32
I see a children's book in your future: If You Need a Beard, by Brooke.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:41
Oh, my god. She must be thinking, this solves my problem for me.
Kaykay Brady : 22:45
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Brooke Suchomel : 22:47
There's lots of hints about that, in that she, you know, she says at one point how everything makes her think about Alan. That he bothers her all the time, every single second of every single day. He bothers her just by living. He's so horrible whenever he's around her that he's all that she can think about. So if that is not a metaphor for homosexual panic, yeah, I don't think this metaphor exists.
Kaykay Brady : 23:21
Just, this book's -- this is this book's more Morbidda Destiny.
Brooke Suchomel : 23:25
Who makes an appearance, right, again, and comes bearing a fat cat and a dead mouse carcass in a paper sack.
Kaykay Brady : 23:33
Oh my god, this is -- we're doing some real Freudian analysis on Ann M. Martin right now.
Brooke Suchomel : 23:40
Do you think her friends call her Ann M.?
Kaykay Brady : 23:42
Oh, I hope so.
Brooke Suchomel : 23:43
I do too.
Kaykay Brady : 23:44
I don't know.
Brooke Suchomel : 23:45
I do too.
Kaykay Brady : 23:46
Well, I really enjoyed that deep dive. Can we talk a little bit about Claudia and Trevor Sandbourne? And, specifically I really want to talk about the fantasy of the -- okay, I know it's like some historic mansion.
Brooke Suchomel : 24:00
The Lord of the Rings fantasy. Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 24:02
But it's like a super thinly veiled reference to Old Sturbridge Village. I know it.
Brooke Suchomel : 24:07
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady : 24:08
Which is just so exciting to me for so many reasons. You know, if you grew up on the East Coast, you have some sort of history with Old Sturbridge Village. You know, it's one of these like, old timey like his-, you know, living museums, and like, you get to go and churn butter. You get to make a Jacob's ladder. It is the tits. You get to like, tour with the town gossip. There's like all these people that are actors. And yeah, it made me so so much like warmth for my East Coast childhood because like every school and every camp are going to Sturbridge Village or like Mystic Seaport or whatever. Oh my god. So I'll just tell a story. If it's boring, we'll cut it.
Brooke Suchomel : 24:47
It's not. I can tell you right now.
Kaykay Brady : 24:50
One of my most favorite business dinners I ever had when I used to be in business was, I was talking to people from Massachusetts, and we were talking about Old Sturbridge Village. And one of them was like, "Oh my god, I worked at Old Sturbridge Village!" and the other one was like, "I worked in Old Sturbridge Village!" and then she was like, "I was the blacksmith's daughter!" and he was like, "I was the potter's apprentice!" It was fucking amazing.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:15
It was like finding out that you have like a second cousin --
Kaykay Brady : 25:18
Exactly.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:19
-- at the table with you?
Kaykay Brady : 25:19
And I was just witnessing. And I had made it happen. I mean, I was just like glorying in this.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:24
You brought Old Sturbridge Village family together. That's beautiful.
Kaykay Brady : 25:28
Yeah, it just reminded me of some warm times.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:31
But on the topic of all of this homosexual panic and sort of figuring out the gender roles...
Kaykay Brady : 25:39
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:40
God, the symbolism in this book is thick.
Kaykay Brady : 25:44
Thick.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:45
Thick, thick. So, there is a whole theme, I don't know if you noticed this, of closing windows.
Kaykay Brady : 25:52
Ah, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 25:53
It comes up over and over again, specifically, with a female warning another female to close windows. So, it starts off right at beginning, Claudia to Janine, they're like getting in a tiff because Claudia tells her to go close a window and Janine responds with like, it would be more efficient to regulate a human body temperature.
Kaykay Brady : 26:19
"It's interesting how in our society, we regulate the temperature."
Brooke Suchomel : 26:24
Right. And then Mary Anne tells Kristy to close windows, and that one was really loaded, because Kristy's at Watson's house and there's so many windows for her to check in the huge silent house and some of the locks are too hard to reach. And she's perched precariously on top of a stepladder in the library trying to reach a lock for a window that she can't reach, when psycho Allen calls her. And then Charlotte tells Stacey to close the windows. Even in the Spook Theater movie that Charlotte and Stacey are watching, the Lenora character is going to close these French doors that are causing her gown to billow. I mean, Freud -- Freud would have like a god damn field day.
Kaykay Brady : 27:10
I am not a Freudian analyst, but we need to know what they think about windows.
Brooke Suchomel : 27:14
It seems to me like the theme of this is this anxiety about the fact that they're stepping into puberty, and anxiety about emerging sexuality and what that means for their place in the world.
Kaykay Brady : 27:31
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 27:31
You've got, throughout, it's like, is Mrs. Newton going to go into labor? Like, this sort of looming position of motherhood is pretty heavy in this book, along with, okay, we've got a dance, and just this fear of violation.
Kaykay Brady : 27:51
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 27:52
It's, you know, lock it down and talk to other females about "lock it down, keep it closed." In a way, to me, it read, like, not ready to grow up, don't go there yet. So I thought that that was really interesting. And then that was really hit home by the fact that when Claudia goes to approach Trevor, in some way, too -- she's in love with him, but he doesn't know who she is, according to her.
Kaykay Brady : 28:20
According to her.
Brooke Suchomel : 28:20
'Cause like, it's the fact that she knows nothing about him that makes him idealized, and therefore a worthy object of affection. And, you know, God forbid when it's suggested, I think it's Stacey who suggests, "Oh, why don't you just ask him to go to the dance?" And she's like, "No, this isn't the Sadie Hawkins dance. There's only one time of the year where I am socially allowed to exert my interest."
Kaykay Brady : 28:47
"We don't want your highfalutin' bullshit from New York City."
Brooke Suchomel : 28:50
Right, in any way. Like, "No, no, that's not how it works in Stoneybrook. In Stoneybrook, the girls sit around and wait for anyone who is interested in them to approach them, and then clearly they say yes to the very first person who comes along." Like, that's the way things work in Stoneybrook, which is problematic. But when Claudia tries to make any sort of move to make herself known to Trevor, she dumps her jello in his lap.
Kaykay Brady : 29:20
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 29:20
So, and again, this is the famous red jello that came up in the first book. She drops the jello in his lap, and says, "Very slowly, he looked at it, then at me, while red stuff oozed to the floor."
Kaykay Brady : 29:36
Oh, wow.
Brooke Suchomel : 29:38
So if that isn't a menstruation fear right there, again, I don't know what is.
Kaykay Brady : 29:46
About as subtle as a kick to the face right there.
Brooke Suchomel : 29:49
It's not subtle at all. And even Karen Brewer -- so Karen is really concerned when she first appears because she's convinced that Morbidda Destiny has put a spell on her because of her freckles, right? So, like, her body is changing and she's very down about that, and she literally thinks that it is a curse from a witch. So, curses, witches, oozing thi- red oozing things on the floor. I mean, puberty --
Kaykay Brady : 30:27
That's puberty, man. There you go.
Brooke Suchomel : 30:28
-- looms large, looms super large in this book. And there's a lot of references to, just sort of side references to gender roles. There's a moment where Claudia interjects that, well, they shouldn't assume that the phantom caller is a man because a burglar can be a woman too. Like, that's the girl power moment.
Kaykay Brady : 30:51
That's just feminism!
Brooke Suchomel : 30:53
Right, very much like that, like that riddle with the doctor operating on the son, but it wasn't the father, how could it be? Because, because it was the mother --
Kaykay Brady : 31:19
That was an 80s stumper.
Brooke Suchomel : 31:06
-- and that that mother is Mrs. Johanssen. Right, that mother is Charlotte --
Kaykay Brady : 31:12
I was just gonna say, Charlotte Johanssen...
Brooke Suchomel : 31:14
Right, Dr. Johanssen to you. But even with that, it's like, they mentioned that she doesn't have her mom around a lot because her mom's a doctor. And so she's not home very often. And they make a point of showing that Charlotte gets really excited when she hears that her mom isn't going to work that weekend.
Kaykay Brady : 31:32
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 31:33
And Charlotte says at one point when she's scared, she wishes her mommy was there, or her daddy too. So there are these gestures that are made in the book throughout to, sort of, subversion of gender roles and gender norms and just trying to grapple with them.
Kaykay Brady : 31:54
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 31:55
But then they are just kneecapped in the last two chapters.
Kaykay Brady : 32:00
Yes, exactly.
Brooke Suchomel : 32:05
Does Ann M. Martin feel like perhaps she's gone too far?
Kaykay Brady : 32:09
I dunno.
Brooke Suchomel : 32:09
Like, I don't know. I don't know. But...
Kaykay Brady : 32:13
Yeah, I mean, it also kind of just felt like, maybe she was like on deadline for those last three chapters. And she just kinda like shat it out, because, I just feel like, you know, it's just, like, it did -- it's so out of character for Kristy that you're just like, yeah, maybe this just wasn't her day, you know?
Brooke Suchomel : 32:33
Yeah, like, that editor has been harassing her for two weeks. Like, you are two weeks past deadline...
Kaykay Brady : 32:38
Like, you have three quarters of this book -- look, just give me two chapters. Just wrap it up. And she's like, "All right. Wait, wait till she gets a hold of this shit. It's gonna blow her away."
Brooke Suchomel : 32:51
I've been on the other side of that. So, uh, yeah, I get it.
Kaykay Brady : 32:54
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think you're right. It's like, little 80s baby steps, right, which is like two steps forward, and then like a Mack truck driving a mile backwards.
Brooke Suchomel : 33:05
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady : 33:05
That's pretty much the 80s. It's like, oh, you're like equal people. Now you can wear, like, shoulder pads. And we're gonna like make you wear heels and skirts.
Brooke Suchomel : 33:15
That's the trade off.
Kaykay Brady : 33:16
That's what I was saying. This is again, this is like the books version of like, here's your shoulder pads. Oh, and then here's your heels and a skirt.
Brooke Suchomel : 33:23
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady : 33:24
Oh, and you get paid like half what this douchebag does. Oh, and your kids are gonna hate you anyway.
Brooke Suchomel : 33:29
Right. One of the things that I thought was really interesting about this book, particularly when it comes to gender norms -- you know, 'cause I thought that ultimately, to me, that's what they were fighting. Right? They were fighting puberty, oncoming puberty, what that means about them as females in the world as they age.
Kaykay Brady : 33:47
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 33:48
What sort of role that puts them in. They're in this sort of liminal gender space in that they are babysitters. They're literally taking care of the children.
Kaykay Brady : 34:00
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 34:01
Fitting smack in that gender norm.
Kaykay Brady : 34:03
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 34:03
But they've also formed a business and are advocating for that business.
Kaykay Brady : 34:09
You know, it's also interesting because they're also fighting each other on this topic. Right? So like, you have Stacey and Claudia that are, and Claudia especially, they seem like angry at the younger girls or the girls that like present younger. There's real, like, disdain and almost like a sense of betrayal that they feel, you know, that they're little kids, they really disdain them. And then from Mary Anne and Kristy, you get the same towards them, right? Where they're just like, I eyeroll this like, clothes, boys nonsense. Kristy's like, "Fuck that. Let's start a business." But you know what I mean?
Brooke Suchomel : 34:43
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 34:43
So they're also fighting each other.
Brooke Suchomel : 34:45
And I think that that rings pretty true.
Kaykay Brady : 34:47
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 34:47
I mean, what I remember about junior high, which is, can we just say, hell on earth. Like, there is no worse time, I think, particularly in a woman's life. You know, if you are a preteen girl in America, you are going through some shit.
Kaykay Brady : 35:12
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 35:12
No matter what. And a big part of that is hormones.
Kaykay Brady : 35:16
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 35:16
And when they start affecting you, when you and your friends are not, nobody is, is on cycle together yet.
Kaykay Brady : 35:25
Yeah, right.
Brooke Suchomel : 35:25
Right? Like, literally. Like, you're in very different spaces, and we learn in this book that basically Kristy and Mary Anne and Claudia were brought together to try to give Mary Anne maternal figures. Because it mentions at the end, when we hear Mary Anne has no idea what she was like as a baby, her dad talks to her about precisely nothing.
Kaykay Brady : 35:53
Yeah. Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 35:54
And Kristy mentions, "Well, you should talk to my mom and Claudia's mom and Claudia's grandma, because when we were babies, they would get us all together all the time for support." And so they've literally, in a way, there's an expansion of the nuclear family to try to support Mary Anne and her father, who is clearly not handling life well, and hasn't really figured things out for the past 12 years. One of the things that stuck out to me though is that even though they are in very different places, and they're in conflict, like where they are in life, but the thing that stood out to me is that the tool that they're using to fight this anxiety, to fight these gender norms, to fight the oncoming puberty, with one exception, there is this sort of constant and open communication with one another. They tell each other everything.
Kaykay Brady : 36:57
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 36:57
They are constantly talking to one another. The women and girls in this book, with the exception of Claudia and her sister, are constantly communicating.
Kaykay Brady : 37:09
Right, who even make some progress on that at the end.
Brooke Suchomel : 37:11
They totally do. And that's a theme and it's actually bookended because when Claudia is with Mimi, at the beginning, she's talking about her sister, like what it was like growing up in Japan, Mimi is. And Claudia asks, "Did you and your sister get along?" And Mimi says, "Oh yes, my sister was my friend, my dear friend. We studied together and played together. I followed her everywhere and tried to do all the things she did. She was very patient with me." And Claudia asks, "Why aren't Janine and I friends?" And Mimi responds, "Being friends takes work. To be a good friend, you must spend time with someone. You must talk with her and try to understand her." And that happens at the end. So that's in the very first chapter, and then at the end, Janine comes into Claudia's room, and they talk and Janine is, is reaching out to her. Like, you see she does consistently reach out to her. I think it's pretty clear that Janine is on the spectrum.
Kaykay Brady : 38:14
Sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:15
So she is trying to communicate with her about things that she finds interesting.
Kaykay Brady : 38:20
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:21
She knows that Claudia likes to read, she likes spooky things. Like, she likes mysteries and all of that. So Janine talks with her about the fear process.
Kaykay Brady : 38:28
Right, and how psychologically interesting it is.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:31
Yeah. Like, so she's interested in it at sort of the intellectual way, whereas Claudia is interested in it in the sort of emotional, experiential way.
Kaykay Brady : 38:42
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:42
But Janine is still trying to reach her with something that she finds interesting that Claudia also finds interesting. But Claudia just does not, like, she's, she doesn't see that.
Kaykay Brady : 38:50
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:51
But at the end, she comes in and talks again, and they talk about how they don't communicate.
Kaykay Brady : 38:57
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 38:58
Claudia asked Janine, "How come you don't come to my room and talk to me like this more often?" And Janine says, "Because usually tell me to shut up or go away or mind my own business," and they break down their struggles with communication.
Kaykay Brady : 39:10
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 39:11
And Claudia finds out that, like her, Janine is also a candy hoarder.
Kaykay Brady : 39:16
I was just gonna say that.
Brooke Suchomel : 39:17
So we've got, they have a little bond over that and it seems like they make progress. So I just found it to be really interesting that the women are constantly communicating. When Mary Anne talks about how she knows nothing, her father tells her nothing, a female friend says, "Talk to these three other women, who might be able to help you get you what you need." Obviously, Mimi and Claudia is, like, Claudia is completely open with Mimi. So she's got that person that she can connect with. But the men can't communicate for shit.
Kaykay Brady : 39:50
Ah, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 39:51
They can't communicate with each other. Even with the Mr. Newton and Jamie Newton scene where Mr. Newton calls all panicked because he thinks that his wife is going into labor because his son called him, but his son just wants to see his dad. And his dad hears that wrong. And so there's no communication between men, there's certainly no communication, no healthy communication, between men and women.
Kaykay Brady : 40:18
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 40:18
Like, at all. Even the communication between like, the sitters and the boys that they're sitting is a little problematic, too. I mean, given that Kristy, again --
Kaykay Brady : 40:31
Oh, like, just telling him you're gonna punch him in the face.
Brooke Suchomel : 40:32
-- threatens to punch one in the face. Um, but there is a lot of open dialogue between the women and I thought that that was, I thought that that was good. Until again, kneecapped.
Kaykay Brady : 40:43
It's also really interesting, too, that you don't see a lot of communication between the generations. Like, so this is a very 80s trope as well. And I was thinking about that in the terms of like, you don't tell your parents anything. Like, so you're not gonna tell your parents that you're getting, like, hang up phone calls while you're working in people's babysitting jobs, knowing that there's like a jewel thief in the neighborhood?
Brooke Suchomel : 41:09
Right.
Kaykay Brady : 41:10
I mean, there's just nothing more 80s than that.
Brooke Suchomel : 41:13
Yeah, they literally say, they make like a pact --
Kaykay Brady : 41:16
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 41:17
-- not to tell their parents anything. Kristy says, "Maybe we should keep all this a secret from all our parents. You know how parents are."
Kaykay Brady : 41:27
Like, I was like, wow, this is the most 80s thing I've ever seen. Like, every, every age, like, it's you and your friends and, like, you can only communicate with your friends and, like, they understand you and, like, your parents are fucked up and divorced. And, you know, it's your friends that teach you how to be a good person. This is like the stuff of 80s dreams right here.
Brooke Suchomel : 41:46
Yeah. It makes me think about Me Too, right? The focus on the whisper networks between women?
Kaykay Brady : 41:52
Right, totally.
Brooke Suchomel : 41:53
And how women oftentimes feel like the power structure does not have room for women to address real problems within that power structure.
Kaykay Brady : 42:05
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 42:05
And so you can't go to authority figures with your problems. Instead, what you have to do is find a way to communicate with your peers and give your peers a heads up and figure out, "How do we navigate these not just ineffective, but often dangerous power structures that you're living within?" And I think that, man, that is this book. Like, this is a dark book. Literally dark.
Kaykay Brady : 42:33
It is a very dark book, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 42:35
Even the opening line, which I thought was so atmospheric, it takes me there. It says, "The evening was gloomy and windy, with rain streaming down from heavy clouds that blocked the moon." I think we all can feel what that feeling is, that sort of looming threat outside, but you're inside, so it makes you cozy, like, it makes you appreciate inside all the more. And I think that that is how, in a way, it's like appreciating the fact that they are 12 years old, right, all the more, because adulthood, and all the bullshit that comes with it, is tapping out the window.
Kaykay Brady : 43:15
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:16
And you're just gonna keep on locking those windows, but the phones are ringing and you can't escape it, and god damn it, Alan Gray is gonna ask you to go to the Halloween Hop and you feel like you're not going to have a choice.
Kaykay Brady : 43:29
Because patriarchy.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:30
You're gonna have to go.
Kaykay Brady : 43:31
I just realized Alan Gray is the Slime King, obviously, and…
Brooke Suchomel : 43:37
Tell me more.
Kaykay Brady : 43:39
Well, so, it's the Slime Kings "Pounding Down the Walls," which is like more on your theme.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:44
Yeah!
Kaykay Brady : 43:45
The Slime King's trying to come get you.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:47
Yes.
Kaykay Brady : 43:48
And then you gotta date the Slime King.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:49
Fuckin' Slime King.
Kaykay Brady : 43:50
Slime King.
Brooke Suchomel : 43:52
Speaking of the Slime Kings, I did love the fact that Mary Anne reveals herself to be this combination of MacGyver, Kevin McCallister from Home Alone, Ferris Bueller. She is just rigging up Rube Goldberg machines left and right to try to thwart criminals.
Kaykay Brady : 44:13
I know. Yeah. And she says something like, you know, she may be shy, but like she has a really good sense of humor. And, I don't know, she's smart at x, y and z. And I was like, "You go, Mary Anne. You go, Glen Coco."
Brooke Suchomel : 44:26
She may be shy, but she's also all about rigging torture devices.
Kaykay Brady : 44:32
Yeah!
Brooke Suchomel : 44:32
So, much like you might want to watch out for Alan Gray, Mary Anne's got a dark side.
Kaykay Brady : 44:37
Watch out for Mary Anne.
Brooke Suchomel : 44:37
Right. Right. Mary Anne has been neglected for 12 years, so, poor thing. She's been plotting, she's been plotting all this time. Trapped in a room, has to communicate via flashlight.
Kaykay Brady : 44:51
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 44:52
This is what you get. Watch out Mr. Speer, Spire, however you pronounce your name.
Kaykay Brady : 44:58
Oh my god, I can't wait.
Brooke Suchomel : 44:59
One thing that I just want to make sure that we all sort of clocked is that Claudia has ADD, undiagnosed ADD. Comes up right at the beginning.
Kaykay Brady : 45:10
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:10
Obviously not acknowledged to be ADD but that's actually...
Kaykay Brady : 45:16
Yeah, they weren't really diagnosing that in the 80s.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:18
No, god -- and especially not for girls.
Kaykay Brady : 45:20
Sure, right.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:21
Even now, today, that is considered to be a quote unquote “boy thing,” right? So it gets really overlooked. But I think the obsession with IQs felt 80s to me.
Kaykay Brady : 45:33
Yeah, totally.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:34
You know, like the fact that Janine has a 196 IQ.
Kaykay Brady : 45:39
Right, and they give you all the benchmarks, like, "120 is like average, and then blah, blah, blah is like genius. So she's even over that!"
Brooke Suchomel : 45:46
The Baby-sitters Club definitely gave me a fixation on IQs.
Kaykay Brady : 45:49
Oh, interesting.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:49
Do you have an IQ? Did you ever take an IQ test? Who takes IQ tests?
Kaykay Brady : 45:53
I mean, my sister did. I don't remember why. And my dad did, but I never did.
Brooke Suchomel : 45:57
Maybe it was like a late 60s, early to mid 70s thing? I don't, I don't know.
Kaykay Brady : 46:04
It definitely wasn't like happening in schools all the time or anything like that.
Brooke Suchomel : 46:08
No, it was strange. But it reminded me of Marilyn vos Savant. The "Ask Marilyn" column in the Parade magazine every Sunday? I thought she was the shit. Because it said that she had the highest IQ in the Guinness Book of World Records and an IQ of like 230 or something like that. And she was this glamorous woman with like, long dark hair, and her name was Marilyn fucking Vos Savant. I mean!
Kaykay Brady : 46:41
All right, well that's --
Brooke Suchomel : 46:42
That's her real goddamn name. I was like, that's a pen name. That's a pen name! But it's not. I think Marilyn vos Savant is the most glamorous woman to ever exist. So for that, I would like to thank the Baby-sitters Club for bringing that back into my life.
Kaykay Brady : 46:56
So that makes, that brings me to another point, which is "Welcome to My Home." It's reminding me of Brenda Dickson, because I sort of feel like Claudia has like a Brenda Dickson vibe going on. Anybody that doesn't know Brenda Dickson, go look for a video called "Welcome to My Home." You will never be the same. But just listen to this. I want you to listen to this and think "Brenda Dickson."
Brooke Suchomel : 47:19
Just for the record, "Welcome to My Home" is canon in our friendship, and we have the whole thing memorized, basically.
Kaykay Brady : 47:28
Right. So this is not a challenge for us.
Brooke Suchomel : 47:30
Again, I would have been a great beard. All right, we'll continue.
Kaykay Brady : 47:34
"Traditional clothes look boring and are boring to put on, so I never wear them. I like bright colors and big patterns and funny touches, such as earrings made from feathers. Maybe this is because I'm an artist. I don't know. Today, for instance, I'm wearing purple pants that stop just below my knees and are held up with suspenders, white tights with clocks on them, a purple plaid shirt with a matching hat, my high top sneakers and lobster earrings. Clothes like these are my trademark." Tell me that's not Brenda Dickson.
Brooke Suchomel : 48:05
That is.
Kaykay Brady : 48:07
Boom, slap, slam dunk, Brenda Dickson.
Brooke Suchomel : 48:09
Can I throw a wrench into this theory? "Sugar causes wrinkles."
Kaykay Brady : 48:14
"Fruit is predigested."
Brooke Suchomel : 48:14
According to Brenda.
Kaykay Brady : 48:16
Oh right, well, maybe this is like young Brenda Dickson and she learns that later. She's like, "All this sugar's fucking me up."
Brooke Suchomel : 48:22
Right, so this is a prequel for "Welcome to My Home"?
Kaykay Brady : 48:25
Right, she becomes a soap opera star. And she's like, "Look at all these fucking wrinkles."
Brooke Suchomel : 48:30
Yeah, don't, don't hide salt water taffy in your pencil jar. Take it from me, kids. Otherwise, you're gonna be stuck having to pick up one pound weights that you --
Kaykay Brady : 48:44
Right, you're gonna have to be doing one pound weight kickbacks that do absolutely nothing to build muscle for the rest of your life.
Brooke Suchomel : 48:52
As your dog, your tiny fluffy dog judges you from the bed.
Kaykay Brady : 48:55
Did you see that amazing, do you remember that amazing SNL skit of the 80s workout video?
Brooke Suchomel : 49:00
No, which one?
Kaykay Brady : 49:01
With Drew Barrymore? Oh, you gotta go watch again. It's so fucking funny. It's like they do like the fucked up 80s tracking on the VCR video even when they like create it. And Drew Barrymore is like, "If you need something heavier when doing this exercise, try pencils." It's my favorite.
Brooke Suchomel : 49:18
Sounds about right.
Kaykay Brady : 49:19
Yeah, ridiculous.
Brooke Suchomel : 49:20
I remember doing, like, some of my mom's workout videos from the 80s, like, along with her, and it was a lot of lunges.
Kaykay Brady : 49:27
Exactly.
Brooke Suchomel : 49:28
I mean, just, it was 45 minutes of lunges.
Kaykay Brady : 49:33
Yeah, I mean, we were like 10, 12 years from Tae Bo, you know, when like, everything gets turned on its head. All right, so here's something I loved was terrible 80s candy.
Brooke Suchomel : 49:44
Hmm.
Kaykay Brady : 49:45
Licorice whips and root beer barrels? Vomit. I mean, throw some circus peanuts in there while you're at it, and just --
Brooke Suchomel : 49:53
That's a dig on circus peanuts, right?
Kaykay Brady : 49:55
It is!
Brooke Suchomel : 49:56
Okay, good, I just wanted to make sure.
Kaykay Brady : 49:57
I mean, is there anything else to do to circus peanuts?
Brooke Suchomel : 49:59
I was like, if it comes out in this conversation that you like circus peanuts --
Kaykay Brady : 50:03
This is over. This is over.
Brooke Suchomel : 50:03
I don't know you and we need to...
Kaykay Brady : 50:06
I don't know, I just thought was funny to me. Like, there was good candy in the 80s but there was some real trash. And like, you know, when Halloween rolled around, like, you did not know what you were gonna get.
Brooke Suchomel : 50:15
Right?
Kaykay Brady : 50:16
You know, it's like these days, you know not gonna to be like, "Oh, these days!," but these days, people are throwing out Snickers, fucking Reese's Cups, Kit Kats. Uh-uh. Back in, back in our day, you could get Dots. Just --
Brooke Suchomel : 50:29
Brach's Pick-a-Mix. You know what I mean? Like you're getting --
Kaykay Brady : 50:30
Werther's Originals. Bam! Right up in there.
Brooke Suchomel : 50:30
-- you're getting butterscotch. You're getting those jank, like, cinnamon things, like they're not even hot, they just suck.
Kaykay Brady : 50:44
I remember these, they were like hideous fruit candies, like outside was like a gross fruit flavor, and then inside was like even grosser soft squishy --
Brooke Suchomel : 50:52
Oh, like the strawberries?
Kaykay Brady : 50:53
Yes, yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 50:54
But I have to admit I did kind of like those.
Kaykay Brady : 50:56
You did like those.
Brooke Suchomel : 50:56
But it was the, it was the packaging. The packaging was very cute. And I was a sucker for that. Yeah, I remember when Halloween would come I would dump all my candy out on a cookie sheet.
Kaykay Brady : 51:06
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel : 51:06
And I would sort it, like the garbage from the actual good stuff. And there was a fair amount of gar- yeah, Dots. Nobody --
Kaykay Brady : 51:14
Nobody wants Dots.
Brooke Suchomel : 51:15
Nobody wants Dots. Nobody wants your goddamn Jujubees.
Kaykay Brady : 51:18
Get that shit outta here.
Brooke Suchomel : 51:19
Like, you clearly hate children. Just turn your light off. Chick-o-Sticks are a crime against humanity. Why does that candy exist? It is horrible.
Kaykay Brady : 51:20
All right, I'm gonna open up a possible hard topic. What's your thoughts on candy corns?
Brooke Suchomel : 51:36
I do not like --
Kaykay Brady : 51:36
I want you to be honest with me -- yes!
Brooke Suchomel : 51:38
I don't, well, I don't like candy corn, but I don't, like, candy corn will never be my choice, but if it's like --
Kaykay Brady : 51:45
I feel like you're being diplomatic and you know, just lay it on me 'cause I think they're from the devil.
Brooke Suchomel : 51:50
Yeah, no, they're not -- candy corn are not good. But they are a sugar delivery mechanism, which has its place.
Kaykay Brady : 51:59
That taste like ear wax!
Brooke Suchomel : 52:00
Sure. But, have there been times when I have been working late in the office, and it's around Halloween, and somebody brought their kid -- again, their kid did the same thing that I did, which is sort the good candy from the garbage --
Kaykay Brady : 52:16
And they brought in the garbage.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:17
-- and they're bringing in the garbage for everybody, and it's six o'clock and I need something to keep me going.
Kaykay Brady : 52:24
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:24
All that's left is candy corn? I will eat that candy corn. Am I proud of it? No.
Kaykay Brady : 52:31
I think that's totally reasonable. I just, you know, some people, like, they're like ride or die candy corn.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:37
Isn't your sister ride or die candy corn?
Kaykay Brady : 52:39
Yeah, my sister is ride or die candy corn. I mean, we fight about this every Halloween, in a loving manner.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:43
This is your Janine and Claudia moment?
Kaykay Brady : 52:45
This is totally our Janine and Claudia. I mean, my sister does have a very high IQ as well, but she talks like a normal person, luckily.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:53
Right, 196. So I'm gonna throw down an unpopular opinion --
Kaykay Brady : 52:57
Yeah, please.
Brooke Suchomel : 52:58
-- for you, which is that, like, when you brought up circus peanuts, there was a time in my life, namely, when I was small wee thing...
Kaykay Brady : 53:06
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:07
When I did love, like, I loved circus peanuts. So that would be like my first choice.
Kaykay Brady : 53:13
So how old?
Brooke Suchomel : 53:13
Probably like 6.
Kaykay Brady : 53:14
Yeah, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:15
Like really young, where it is really, I need glucose.
Kaykay Brady : 53:19
I was just gonna to say, yeah, that's like a brain drive thing.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:23
My cells are developing and dividing. Please give me as much sugar as possible to keep me alive. Circus peanuts.
Kaykay Brady : 53:31
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:31
Now? No, no, absolutely not. The texture alone, it's making my teeth hurt, like, my molars. It's making me salivate in a very unpleasant way that normally precedes vomiting.
Kaykay Brady : 53:45
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:45
So...yeah, but there was a time in my life when I would embrace the circus peanut.
Kaykay Brady : 53:48
All right.
Brooke Suchomel : 53:49
But I have a feeling that you were never there.
Kaykay Brady : 53:50
Eh, you know, I was kind of like you where, like, if I was desperate enough I would probably take any sugar, but you know I just wasn't, like, that into sugar for sugar's sake. You know, I was like, please give me like pasta with butter on it and give me five servings. But you know, I could take, I could take or leave sugar, so...
Brooke Suchomel : 54:07
Yeah, I'm the op- I mean, I would survive...
Kaykay Brady : 54:10
On sugar?
Brooke Suchomel : 54:10
Still, to this day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Kaykay Brady : 54:13
Well I'm so glad I brought up this topic because, you know...
Brooke Suchomel : 54:15
Oh my god, I could talk about candy forever, are you kidding?
Kaykay Brady : 54:17
Oh, that's so good. Well, and then, on the positive side of the 80s food was Kristy's fantastic fictitious lunch which I would like to remind everyone included Fritos, a cupcake, and ham and cheese.
Brooke Suchomel : 54:33
You are down for that lunch.
Kaykay Brady : 54:34
That is literally -- my sister and I talk about this constantly, like, "Ah man, remember those lunches when like you'd get a ham and cheese? And Mom would give you Fritos, and like, real Fritos, not like fucking Bravos or whatever, like the --
Brooke Suchomel : 54:49
Off brand Fritos.
Kaykay Brady : 54:49
I can't remember what the off -- I remember the off brand Doritos were Bravos but I can't remmber what the off brand Fritos were, but there were some. But that was a great day, man, when you got a cupcake and Fritos and a ham and cheese. You know, the ham and cheese would have some nice warm mayo squishing out of it. It's good stuff.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:06
Midwest didn't do mayo.
Kaykay Brady : 55:07
What?
Brooke Suchomel : 55:08
Midwest did Miracle Whip, which is worse. Talk about sugar.
Kaykay Brady : 55:12
Now that is a crime against humanity.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:14
I agree.
Kaykay Brady : 55:14
It should be like thrown in like a ditch and like lit on fire.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:20
I thought I hated mayo until I moved, I swear.
Kaykay Brady : 55:23
I can't believe it. You poor, poor thing.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:25
I thought I hated mayo until I moved out to the west coast. And you do not get Mir- like, Miracle Whip is not a thing out here, thank god.
Kaykay Brady : 55:31
No.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:31
Like, one of the many pluses that California has going for it.
Kaykay Brady : 55:34
Real mayonnaise.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:35
No Miracle Whip to be found.
Kaykay Brady : 55:37
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:37
It is mayo, and it's real, and it's actually quite delicious.
Kaykay Brady : 55:41
Yes, it's very good.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:42
Miracle Whip, on the other hand? No, unacceptable.
Kaykay Brady : 55:44
I mean, that's, you poor, poor thing.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:46
I appreciate it.
Kaykay Brady : 55:46
That is bordering on abuse, basically, is what I'm getting at.
Brooke Suchomel : 55:50
My most 80s moment was the beginning of chapter two. So my most 80s moment was boredom.
Kaykay Brady : 55:59
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 56:00
There is the existence of boredom in this book, which is very much a thing that I feel needs to come back.
Kaykay Brady : 56:10
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 56:11
You know, you've got Stacey, Kristy, Mary Ann, Claudia, all together on a Saturday. Says they can't think of anything for the four of them to do together because Mary Anne can't ride her bike to the mall, Stacey can't eat s'mores because of the diabetes, there's only one movie playing in town, Kristy and Claudia had already seen it. So they just sit around in Kristy's yard, and Mary Anne has the physical copy of the newspaper open in front of her, and they're just sitting there, just like staring at it and they talk about, maybe we could rent a movie for Stacey's VCR and Stacey's VCR is broken. Nobody else has a VCR like, this is all very true, right?
Kaykay Brady : 56:53
Totally.
Brooke Suchomel : 56:53
There is no, you had to make your own fun.
Kaykay Brady : 56:57
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 56:58
In a way that is not a thing at all anymore. We are overwhelmed with possibilities.
Kaykay Brady : 57:05
And like, do you think like your parents were like, making crafts with you and shit? Absolutely not. It was like, go start a business.
Brooke Suchomel : 57:13
Right, which they did.
Kaykay Brady : 57:14
"Go make yourself useful!" I'll just channel my mom. "Get outta my face!"
Brooke Suchomel : 57:20
Literally, like, everybody go sit outside. If what you have to do is just sit there and twirl leaves between your fingers, then I guess that's your Saturday.
Kaykay Brady : 57:28
And there was no complaining to your parents about it, you know what I mean? Like they were not gonna, like, "Please, I'm working like two jobs in shoulder pads." Get outta my face.
Brooke Suchomel : 57:36
Right, nobody cares that you're bored. Of course you're bored. Like, boredom is a state of being for all humans in this time. And I'm really grateful that actually we got to grow up in a time of boredom, too, as of all of the studies that have been done recently that show that boredom leads to creativity. That, like, our brains need to be bored in order to restore and to generate new ideas.
Kaykay Brady : 57:36
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 57:36
And with Stacey and Charlotte Johanssen, and you know, "Do you have -- where's your cable box?" "We don't have one. Maybe we can get one this summer."
Kaykay Brady : 58:11
I know. I love that. No, I love that moment. Because, you know, we had cable in New York City like super fast. We were like the first people in the United States to have cable.
Brooke Suchomel : 58:21
Oh, of course. That's why Stacey was like, "Where's your cable?"
Kaykay Brady : 58:25
That's exactly right. I was laughing so hard because I was like, we did get cable first. And like we had HBO like the year that it dropped. The year that it dropped we had HBO. I'm telling you, once HBO hit? It's all that I did. I mean, I had an HBO childhood. I was basically raised by HBO and MTV.
Brooke Suchomel : 58:43
I had one friend who had HBO, who I was like, "You're my fanciest person I know." Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 58:51
"Be my best friend."
Brooke Suchomel : 58:52
A friend who had HBO and a Nintendo.
Kaykay Brady : 58:55
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 58:56
You know, it was just like, you hold on to that friend.
Kaykay Brady : 58:58
Sure.
Brooke Suchomel : 58:59
I got HBO when we moved out to California for the first time and I felt --
Kaykay Brady : 59:02
Wow, like "I've arrived!"
Brooke Suchomel : 59:05
Yes, the adjective that is used to describe Stacey in this book -- I felt very sophisticated.
Kaykay Brady : 59:10
Yes. It's like you had a Manhattan apartment. The amazing thing about when you, if you've had an HBO childhood, is like, you can meet someone who also had an HBO childhood and you will be like fast friends in like point five seconds.
Brooke Suchomel : 59:25
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 59:26
Like, you will figure it out within the first five minutes. And then you'll just be like, "Oh my god, Popeye. Oh my god, Terminator 2. Like, oh my god, like, and you all watch these movies like thousands and thousands of times, at like a very impressionable age. So you're just like, you see the world the same way. I mean, it's kind of disturbing. Howard the Duck, man.
Brooke Suchomel : 59:45
Right.
Kaykay Brady : 59:46
I watched that like a thousand times, which is really disturbing.
Brooke Suchomel : 59:48
So Howard the Duck plus Popeye plus Terminator equals Kaykay Brady.
Kaykay Brady : 59:53
Equals Kaykay Brady. I mean, that's all I am. That's all I am. My sister and I literally --
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:00
That actually really works.
Kaykay Brady : 1:00:01
That tracks!
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:02
Holy shit. It really works.
Kaykay Brady : 1:00:03
It tracks. My sister and I, literally -- my sister, like, started dating her husband in college. And so she was like 18. And I was like 13 or 14. And he would literally call her every day and he'd be like, "Oh, what are you doing?" She'd go, "Oh, I'm watching Terminator with Kaykay." Everyday. I dunno, they still love that, it's like their favorite joke.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:24
Freakin' Groundhog Day.
Kaykay Brady : 1:00:26
You know, we were not at summer camps. It was like latchkey kids, you know?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:30
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 1:00:30
Eating ham and cheese and watching Howard the Duck.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:33
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 1:00:34
And we felt lucky.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:00:36
We only had like, the basic cable package when that came out. So we had like, I don't know, it was like 15 channels, or something like that. Nothing that you actually really wanted to watch so it was a lot of Price Is Right, and like, Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek, shit like that. Like there was nothing, there wasn't a whole lot of, like, fun things to watch on TV? Yeah, so books. So Baby-sitters Club was my entertainment. So I also wanted to point out how Mimi addresses the empathy of books.
Kaykay Brady : 1:01:10
Yeah, I had that too.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:01:11
How we talked about with the last episode.
Kaykay Brady : 1:01:13
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:01:14
Right on page five, where Claudia mentions that Mimi thinks that books are the eyes into the hearts and lives of other people.
Kaykay Brady : 1:01:23
Parentheses "peoples"?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:01:26
Question mark.
Kaykay Brady : 1:01:27
Question mark?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:01:23
Because Claudia doesn't know there was such word. But I thought that that was really beautiful. One of the things that hit me so much as I've read both of these books again, books are such a theme. Everyone loves to read, no matter who. Claudia hates school, but she loves to read. All she wants to do is read her Nancy Drews. I don't know why her parents would tell her that she would need to read something else, but you know, everyone is reading all the time, to a point where I actually, I've like made a catalog of all of the books that are referenced, because I know that this series was the idea of Scholastic. And so I had a theory that this was all just advertising for Scholastic's backlist. And I was like, holy shit, I have cracked the code. But it's not true. It's all over the place. So I think this is just all just books that Ann M. Martin just loved. And I just think that it's really lovely that she makes it very clear that reading is for everyone, and that she hits on the impact that reading has on people right at the beginning of chapter two. So I just wanted to make a note of that, because I thought it called back to our last conversation.
Kaykay Brady : 1:01:47
I had that too, as as life lesson.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:02:47
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 1:02:47
It's beautiful.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:02:48
Read a fuckin' book, y'all, but just not the record book. God damn creep. Alan Gray.
Kaykay Brady : 1:02:54
So speaking of, I gotta say, "Who are they fighting?" I think they're fighting the Golden State Killer.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:03:00
Do you think Alan Gray is...?
Kaykay Brady : 1:03:02
I think Alan Gray will go on to be, you know, I don't know, some kind of something. But I think the phantom phone caller, like, think about it. Because like, there's just like a lot of interplay.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:03:13
There is a lot of overlap with that case in a disturbing way.
Kaykay Brady : 1:03:17
In a disturbing way. And like, I think that there's certainly like, I agree with you completely, that there's this kind of like impending sense of like, doom, right? And like, it's a chi- it's a kids book, so it's not going to be in here. But I don't know. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if like she had read about the Original Night Stalker slash what was going on in California.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:03:37
Yeah, they did reprints of this in the 90s and added some additional content. And it's a different letter from Ann M. Martin at the end of each book, so it's not the same one.
Kaykay Brady : 1:03:48
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:03:49
And she says that she and her best friend would both babysit a lot. And they would both get scared when they were babysitting at night and so they actually developed a telephone code to use in case they were scared. So this was something that, you know, was actually a real occurrence in her life.
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:09
And God forbid you call your parents.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:12
Yeah, no, no, call your, call the other 12 year old, she'll know what to do. Um, so one other disturbing thing that stood out to me was just the treatment of dogs in this book made me very sad.
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:28
I'm with you.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:31
Made me so sad. So, first of all, Carrot.
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:36
The Schnauzer.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:37
What the fuck. So this --
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:39
They don't even know he's in the fucking house? They don't even know...
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:42
No! They're like, "Oh, who's Carrot?” So, this is not the first time that Stacey has sat for Charlotte Johanssen, they made that clear, right? This is a recurring thing. She's never even heard the dog's name before.
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:52
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:52
Nobody mentioned the dog to her. Everybody knew it was storming, it's been storming this entire book.
Kaykay Brady : 1:04:58
Right?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:04:58
The dog is just out and it makes its way back in the house through a broken basement window. And apparently this is not the first time it's used it, it does this repeatedly --
Kaykay Brady : 1:05:12
Oh, and it learns how open the door or something? Right?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:05:17
It's learned how to climb through literally broken glass, that this family is just not repairing. The mom is a doctor at the hospital. They can afford to fix this window. What are they doing?
Kaykay Brady : 1:05:34
But it tracks, it tracks.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:05:36
I was very, very sad for Carrot and it was played as like a humorous anecdote. It was not funny. That's not funny! And then, Mary Anne, while Mary Anne is like, you know, rigging her torture devices, she just puts Louie outside --
Kaykay Brady : 1:05:55
Right.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:05:55
-- and then just locks all the doors again.
Kaykay Brady : 1:05:57
Yeah, right. Oh, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:05:58
Like, what are you doing?
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:00
Yeah, Louie's the one who the little brother --
Brooke Suchomel : 1:06:03
It's Kristy's --
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:04
Yeah, the little brother taught him how to open the door or something?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:06:07
-- or he like figures out how to --
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:08
-- how to lean into the doors or something like that?
Brooke Suchomel : 1:06:10
Right. So like, the kids are neglected. The dogs are neglected. Everybody's so neglected in this book. But they band together.
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:19
You know, it's so funny because I for a time was a professional dog walker. And I realized that the way that people treat their dogs in 2020 is how they treated their children in the 80s. So basically, the benign neglect of children in the 80s is now how people parent their dogs. They're like, "Bring them home safe and get them tired." That was basically what you said to a camp counselor in 1986. Like, nobody gave a shit if you were teaching that kid French or Spanish or teaching them anything. Just get them out of here, don't let them die --
Brooke Suchomel : 1:06:50
Get them out of my face for a while, please. Right.
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:52
Don't let them die and make sure they're tired.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:06:56
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady : 1:06:57
So kids have come a long way. And so have dogs.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:07:00
It's true. Clearly, there was a lot for us to unpack in Book Two, Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls. And in Book Three, which we'll talk about in our next episode in two weeks, we dive into Stacey, the sophisticated Stacey's perspective.
Kaykay Brady : 1:07:21
Oh, the sophisticated New Yorker.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:07:23
Yes, exactly, in The Truth About Stacey --
Kaykay Brady : 1:07:28
Ah, right.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:07:28
-- where the 1990s book cover that I'm looking at right now, which I'm showing Kaykay --
Kaykay Brady : 1:07:37
Oh, that is glorious.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:07:38
-- says, "Stacey's different and it's harder on her than anyone knows." And she is looking longingly at candy. She's so sad. There's this beautiful display of candy and she has a smiling child pointing at the candy and she just has her hands on the shoulders of this happy soon-to-eat-candy child and looking so forlorn.
Kaykay Brady : 1:08:03
So we're going to learn all about the pain of diabeetus.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:08:06
We're going to learn about the pain of diabeetus in two weeks, but until then --
Kaykay Brady : 1:08:11
Keep sittin'.
Brooke Suchomel : 1:08:12
Just keep sittin'.
Kaykay Brady : 1:08:13
Just keep sittin'. Just keep clubbin'. [theme song] Come on in son. I'm gonna drive you home and talk about privacy.
