Transcript - BSFC #22: Jessi Ramsey, Pet-sitter
Brooke Suchomel: 0:18
Welcome to the Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, you don't talk about Fight Club. Instead, you talk about the battles fought and lessons learned in the Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel, an editor who's revisiting these books after 30 years.
Kaykay Brady: 0:35
And I'm Kaykay Brady, I'm a therapist and I...am...a newbie...and for some reason, I'm also Suze Orman. "Listen to me, chickadees..."
Brooke Suchomel: 0:45
It's the fierce jacket that you're wearing. You've just channeled the spirit-
Kaykay Brady: 0:50
Oh, it's just a hoodie.
Brooke Suchomel: 0:51
No, no, for the purpose of the listeners, imagine that Kaykay is wearing just the most spectacular bright blazer that you've ever seen.
Kaykay Brady: 0:59
It's the metaphorical jacket that I'm always wearing. Anyway, I'm a therapist. I'm new to the books.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:05
And this week, we are taking you back to March 1989, which was the dawning of the internet age. Because this month was the month that the English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for what would become the World Wide Web.
Kaykay Brady: 1:20
Heyyyyy!
Brooke Suchomel: 1:22
So as we've been discussing in previous episodes, how we're talking about a time that predates the internet, that predates social media and all that good stuff. That innocence is going to be coming to an end fairly soon because we have now stepped into the nascent information age. But the music that we had that month, "Lost in Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson was number one for three weeks.
Kaykay Brady: 1:56
Was that, "I get lost in your eyes." That one?
Brooke Suchomel: 2:00
Yeah, that one. This is one that, when I think about the dances that my friends and I would make up at sleepovers or whatever, the one that we did to "Lost in Your Eyes," I still remember it. I could probably reenact it because we just went super literal with the lyrics.
Kaykay Brady: 2:16
Like you would dance with each other? Or you were line dancing?
Brooke Suchomel: 2:19
No, we were just doing, like, you never made up dances? You never like choreographed dances like you were performing?
Kaykay Brady: 2:26
My sister and I did. I can recall a jammin' dance to "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," so we used to do it to Christmas songs when were very little. We would force our parents to watch and they could barely hide their eye rolls. That's how it was to be a child in the 80s. They were not blowing smoke up your ass.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:47
Right, you totally forced your parents to watch. I mean, we absolutely were performing to parents who just politely sat on the couch and you could tell they were like, "Oh my God, when is this fucking song over?" But we were like, "We're gonna give you a show."
Kaykay Brady: 3:00
They just immediately reached for a cigarette.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:02
Right. They're just smoking in a La-Z-Boy, reading the Reader's Digest, eyes still on America's Funniest Home Videos in the background.
Kaykay Brady: 3:11
Correct.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:11
You're just doing your thing with your boombox, just like, look at this amazing performance. The show that I'm giving you of "Lost in Your Eyes," where at the line, "I just fell," we fall onto the ground, and then the next line, "Don't know why," we just put our palms up and shrug our shoulders, like, who knows? Who knows why I fell? So that was this month, March 1989, and it was also a big month for some other super fun songs that are going to be on our playlist on Spotify and YouTube with the music videos for this month. It includes "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" by New Kids on the Block, which was the "Oh oh, oh oh oh." That one. And "Paradise City" is on this one.
Kaykay Brady: 3:54
Oh yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:55
And "Walk the Dinosaur." Do you remember "Walk the Dinosaur"?
Kaykay Brady: 3:58
I remember every word of that song. "Open the door, get on the floor. Everybody walk the dinosaur."
Brooke Suchomel: 4:04
"Boom boom, shaka laka laka boom."
Kaykay Brady: 4:07
Painful.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:07
It's so good. We have two completely separate reactions. I'm like, "It's so good." You're like, "Painful," at the same time.
Kaykay Brady: 4:15
It's painfully good. Yes and! Both and. It contains multitudes.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:19
This is the kind of diversity of perspectives that you get on this podcast. Two very different takes on "Walk the Dinosaur."
Kaykay Brady: 4:25
"Yes! No." This is hard hitting shit. I want to go back to "Paradise City" and say that I had a fuckin bus driver who had like a huge GNR tat on her bicep-
Brooke Suchomel: 4:38
"Her!"
Kaykay Brady: 4:39
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:39
Nice.
Kaykay Brady: 4:40
And you know, she always like, scared me, and I thought maybe she was like trashy or something. And now I think back on it and I'm like, she was so fucking cool, and I just didn't know it.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:50
You were in awe. It wasn't fear, it was awe.
Kaykay Brady: 4:53
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:54
But you didn't know how to interpret it.
Kaykay Brady: 4:55
That's how I felt about gay people. You know, until I came out, I was like afraid of them.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:59
Yeah, cuz it's like, Oh, there's something that I recognize there. And that's what was scary.
Kaykay Brady: 5:04
Yeah, "What does that mean?" Not frightening. Yeah, exactly.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:08
The movies that month, the number ones at the box office, Lean on Me and Fletch Lives. But also released that month, Dream a Little Dream, so the two Coreys.
Kaykay Brady: 5:18
We talked about this one, right?
Brooke Suchomel: 5:19
We didn't talk about this one, we talked about License to Drive.
Kaykay Brady: 5:21
Oh, because I was thinking of this one. That's why we talked about it.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:24
Right. The body swap one, that came out this month. And then Heathers.
Kaykay Brady: 5:29
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Me and my friend used to entertain ourselves endlessly by just filming ourselves doing scenes.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:38
What ones, like what did you do?
Kaykay Brady: 5:39
All of the Martha Dumptruck scenes. Also the scenes with the dad, where he's like, "I would never patronize bunny rabbits!" That one. So pretty much all of them.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:50
So here's my confession. I've never seen Heathers.
Kaykay Brady: 5:53
Ah, so this isn't meaning much to you at all.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:56
Well, I know that Heathers is legendary as like a black comedy satirical take.
Kaykay Brady: 6:03
I mean, it basically created a genre.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:05
Well, it was basically in response to the teen comedies of John Hughes, etc, right? Where it was kind of two middle fingers up to that and flipping the script on it, but I know that there's a lot in it that's problematic as fuck as well.
Kaykay Brady: 6:19
Oh, sure.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:20
So yeah, I was wondering if Heathers was foundational to you.
Kaykay Brady: 6:23
Oh, that was a staple. Yeah, me and one of my friends, that was our love language. Exclusively Heathers.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:23
And then a movie that was a staple for me, and I think it was a staple for you too, Troop Beverly Hills.
Kaykay Brady: 6:39
Oh, yeah, of course. Shelley Long!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:42
Yeah. AKA, Don't Doubt Rich People. Rich people can do everything. High five, rich people. You're fabulous.
Kaykay Brady: 6:51
Aspire to be one. That's all.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:53
My friends and I would do the Freddie. "Do the Freddie..."
Kaykay Brady: 6:56
Yeah, of course!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:57
The dance. And "Cookie Time"? "Cookie Time" is a banger.
Kaykay Brady: 7:00
Every time I take a Zumba class, I feel like I'm doing the Freddie. Basically, Zumba classes are like 80% Freddie.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:07
Nice. Oh, man. So yeah, that's what came out at the movie theater in March 1989. And then on TV, you had the Oscars. Rain Man won all of the big awards. This is the Oscars that Rob Lowe and Snow White sang a Proud Mary parody.
Kaykay Brady: 7:28
What?
Brooke Suchomel: 7:29
Uh huh.
Kaykay Brady: 7:31
This is not living in my conscious memory.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:33
You've blocked it out.
Kaykay Brady: 7:35
I've definitely blocked that out. What the fuck?
Brooke Suchomel: 7:37
Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of what the fuck on TV this month. Do you remember Webster? With Emmanuel Lewis?
Kaykay Brady: 7:43
Sure. Of course, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:45
This is how Webster ends. Webster goes on to the Starship Enterprise from-
Kaykay Brady: 7:50
Shut your mouth. What?! He goes into space? We like switch to the space time continuum?
Brooke Suchomel: 8:01
It's like a daydream scenario, because he's playing a video game. So they just put Webster on the Star Trek: The Next Generation set, and that's how it ends.
Kaykay Brady: 8:11
Holy shit.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:13
It was a weird fucking time, people.
Kaykay Brady: 8:17
Was there something in the water? Was this like a rye ergot situation?
Brooke Suchomel: 8:22
I don't know. Like, how far out are we at this point from lead paint and lead gasoline? You know, I think that we're dealing with the ramifications of an adult population coming into power that was raised on lead.
Kaykay Brady: 8:37
That's unreal. That's unreal.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:40
It's a trip. But the thing that I am so freaking excited to talk to you about, because I remember this so well, this was the month of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video.
Kaykay Brady: 8:50
Oh yeah!
Brooke Suchomel: 8:51
You remember this?
Kaykay Brady: 8:52
Oh, yeah. This was like a huge scandal. Didn't Pepsi pull out and not sponsor her anymore? I remember this.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:00
Yes. Pepsi did a $5 million endorsement of Madonna, which was huge at the time, and part of it was that the song premiered in this Pepsi commercial that aired during the Grammys, and then it also aired during an episode of The Cosby Show in primetime. And so you hear the song, you hear a couple of minutes of the song, but the commercial that you see, it's a very 1960s vibe. And it's presented as like, this is Madonna living her childhood birthday wish. She's looking at old footage of her making a wish at her birthday, and she's envisioning the life that she has, and she's dancing in the street and it's kind of like West Side Story. Very New York streets celebrating, etc. Black and white, kind of playing on the nostalgia vibe of the culture at the time. So that's what people thought that they were going to get with the music video, which was not what they got at all. So Kaykay, what did they get when they watched the "Like a Prayer" music video?
Kaykay Brady: 9:08
They basically got like a romance scene between Madonna and Black Jesus. That's what I remember.
Brooke Suchomel: 10:10
It's almost like the hubbub -- "hubbub," me being old as hell with saying "hubbub" -- about Lil Nas X's "Call Me By Your Name" video, you know? Where it's like, Okay, I'm going to show you a different interpretation of these Bible stories. Like, we're going to critically look at how religion and the stories that we tell ourselves, how that actually plays out on people. It's very similar in "Like a Prayer." Madonna had decided that she wanted to make a video that was deliberately provocative. And it's funny how in America, "provocative," the word has these negative connotations. In this situation, it just means "make you think." And so she said, she wanted to deliberately make people think with this. Her whole thing was that she wanted to focus on bigotry, interracial harmony, and then she had this female director who said, Well, let's also work in the concept of ecstasy. You can take that in a religious sense, you can take it in a sexual sense, but ecstasy, I mean, the combination between the two is it doesn't really matter what context that you put it in, it's the same sort of concept. The plot is that Madonna witnesses an attack on a woman by a gang of white men.
Kaykay Brady: 11:24
Okay, coming back to me now.
Brooke Suchomel: 11:26
But a Black Good Samaritan that comes to try to come to the aid of this woman is arrested for the crime. So she goes and takes refuge in a church. She's the only one in there. She sees the statue of a black saint, who looks like the man that she saw arrested, and she has a vision that the saint statue is crying. So she goes and kisses his feet, and then he kind of comes to life and kisses her head and her cheeks and walks out. Then she lays down and has this vision, and she's like, inspired by this grace that she feels to do the right thing. So she goes to the authorities and says what she saw, and he's freed. And they end it by placing it in a theater. At the very end, you see they were actors the whole time. Everybody that was in it, they all come, they take a bow, so it's double emphasizing, "Hey everybody, this is a metaphor," right? People lost their shit. The Vatican denounced her. U.S. religious groups called for a boycott of Pepsi properties, including KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut. Pepsi canceled their contract with her. It was this huge scandal. But this controversy worked. Super influential video. This is considered one of the best videos of all time, one of the most influential videos of all time, widely considered to be one of her best songs. Go back, listen to that song, watch, this is a good fucking video. And I have to say, what she does with the whole like, she kisses the saint's feet, the saint kisses her on the head and the cheeks, if those were white men in robes? That's just Sunday at church. But it's because you've got a woman and a black man, there's no white men to be found in this church, it's this huge scandal. And I mean, we could go on, like I could literally do an entire episode about this particular video and the reaction to it, but suffice it to say that March 1989 was a very exciting time to be a Catholic girl. So it stuck with me, especially because it premiered on MTV, but it also simultaneously premiered on Entertainment Tonight. And what they did is they didn't release it until the show was already airing, so that nobody behind the scenes at Entertainment Tonight could see it ahead of time and censor it and decide what to do. So they just went on the air with it.
Kaykay Brady: 13:58
So fresh.
Brooke Suchomel: 13:59
That's how I was able to see it, because we didn't have MTV. I was like, "Oh this music video is gonna be coming out," so I am like, little kid waiting Entertainment Tonight to see this music video cuz I never get to see music videos. And it's that one! It was amazing.
Kaykay Brady: 14:12
Oh, that is so fly. That's so cool that you got to see it even though you didn't have MTV, and it sounds like the depth of it even hit you then.
Brooke Suchomel: 14:21
Oh definitely. I knew. I was like, "Oh, this is scandalous. I'm supposed to think that this is bad." But it was also like, "This is really interesting to me. What's going on here?" I'm leaving a lot out in terms of the interpretation of the video, but it was really powerful.
Kaykay Brady: 14:38
Fuckin' "Like a Prayer"! Boom, bang, coming atcha culture.
Brooke Suchomel: 14:42
Seriously. So amidst all of that, the 22nd Baby-sitters Club book, Jessi Ramsey, Pet-sitter, was released. It's time for some back cover copy, and I quote, "The Mancusis don't have any kids, but they sure have a lot of pets! So when they're desperate for a sitter, whom do you they call? The Baby-sitters Club! Kristy's insulted. The Baby-sitters don't pet-sit. But Jessi's always liked animals, and she talks Kristy into letting her have the job. With snakes on the loose and sick hamsters, Jessi's got plenty of pet-sitting troubles. And the Baby-sitters aren't making life any easier for her when they get into a big fight. Will Jessi be able to handle her pet-sitting job when things are going wrong with the baby-sitters too?" End quote. So Kaykay, in your opinion, is this actually a book about petsitting?
Kaykay Brady: 15:31
No, this is a book about who you are and who you want to be. And also a book about what happens when you don't express feelings.
Brooke Suchomel: 15:42
Hmm. Tell me more about that.
Kaykay Brady: 15:44
Well, to me, it was interesting, it was hard for me to integrate the pet sitting into the other plots, because there's multiple plots going. There's a lot of fighting happening at the Baby-sitters Club, because Kristy is being bossy, and everyone's basically fed up with their duties. They're having a lot of feelings about the challenges that they're experiencing in whatever role they play in the Baby-sitters Club. And so the Baby-sitters decide they're actually going to hold elections, and possibly re-elect people into different roles. So there's that going on, and then Jackie Rodowsky wants to be elected at school to like, take care of a pet, I think. And then you also have this plot of Jessi pet sitting for like an entire menagerie of animals.
Brooke Suchomel: 16:32
It's a hoarding situation.
Kaykay Brady: 16:34
Definitely a hoarding situation. Anyway, so two of those plots, the first two that I mentioned, are really dealing with those themes that I pulled out. The third plot, it was harder for me to attach those themes to it. In fact, it was harder for me to attach themes across all three of the plots. I don't know, how about you? I know we're getting right to themes, but were you able to pull out any themes across all three plots?
Brooke Suchomel: 16:58
Well, so here's what I think they're fighting. And here's why I think it feels off and jarring. I'm gonna get speculative again. I have that, really, this is a book about power imbalance. That's what they were fighting. And the tool that they use is like, elections as a tool to address power imbalance. But here's the thing, it doesn't work.
Kaykay Brady: 17:21
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:22
You know? So this book, to me, felt very off in that way, in that it wasn't a cohesive thing. It's like, you have this pet sitting happening, and it's just a thing that occupies Jessi's time. So she has to go over there every day, to care for all of these pets, and all of these people keep coming over. Literally, every day, a babysitter comes over and does what I would strongly advise not to do, which is bring strange screaming toddlers over to a hoarding situation.
Kaykay Brady: 17:54
To meet a million animals that you're not familiar with.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:58
Including like, snakes that get loose a lot, etc.
Kaykay Brady: 18:01
Yeah, this is the book where I was personally cringing the most, just in terms of the potential liability and harm.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:10
Unbelievable liability.
Kaykay Brady: 18:11
That could come to like, any of these people. I don't know. I was a pet sitter during grad school, and I was just like, Oof, there's just so much that can go wrong here.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:21
I mean, that's why I was actually on Kristy's side at the beginning, where she's like, "Oh, no, like we should not do this."
Kaykay Brady: 18:28
"We're not petsitters."
Brooke Suchomel: 18:28
Because they're not experienced. Jessi doesn't even have a pet. And so you're like, Okay, here's this 11 year old-
Kaykay Brady: 18:35
Three dogs.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:35
Three dogs of varying sizes, including a Great Dane named Cheryl. Oh my God, the names of the animals in this book were just delightful.
Kaykay Brady: 18:45
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:46
On top of my notes, the very top thing I have is "Cheryl," underline underline underline.
Kaykay Brady: 18:50
Cheryl the Great Dane.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:51
It said so many times how these dogs basically take Jessi for a walk. She can't keep up with them. Yeah, it's very risky, this job, and it takes up all of her time.
Kaykay Brady: 19:02
And by the way, she didn't even want to be working this week. I just want to say, there's multiple points in the book where she's like, "Oh, I would love to just read and enjoy myself. But instead, I have to do this." They can't take a vacation?
Brooke Suchomel: 19:16
Well, she's the one, Kristy is like, "No, I don't want somebody tied up all week." And Jessi's like, "I want to do this."
Kaykay Brady: 19:23
Right, but then Jessi also says she doesn't want to do it.
Brooke Suchomel: 19:26
Does she?
Kaykay Brady: 19:28
Yeah, she's like, "Oh, so much for my vacation." There's a few times where there's language that's implying that she feels obligated to do it, but would probably prefer to have a week off.
Brooke Suchomel: 19:41
Yeah, it seems like she's volunteering to do this because she probably feels that she has to, right? Or she wants to make her mark.
Kaykay Brady: 19:49
Yeah, she's trying to prove herself.
Brooke Suchomel: 19:51
Everybody's like, "If they can't find a pet sitter, they're gonna miss out on their dream vacation." That's kind of their problem, right? It's not these kids. It's not their problem. So yeah, she says, "So much for my week of freedom." It's like she does it because she sees that everybody is arguing, and so she interjects like, "I'll just do this so that people will stop arguing," because she's really afraid of losing the Baby-sitters Club. There's a lot of points in this book where everybody is afraid that this club is going to fall apart because of the tensions and the frustration. And she's like, "I only have my place, really, in this society that we're in, where we are very out of place, and my sister is really struggling. I have the Baby-sitters Club, which has helped me." She doesn't want to lose it, so she's like, "I've got this precarious place in society. I'll secure it by being overworked and not having what I want, just so I don't lose my place."
Kaykay Brady: 20:46
Yeah, that's probably a very good interpretation of that.
Brooke Suchomel: 20:50
So she's doing this, but it's almost like this is a distraction from what the real issue throughout the book is, which is this critique of power. Which you get a lot at the beginning, about how Kristy, the president, contributes the least but holds all the power, and is like, quote, unquote, "more important," but just IS more important. Like, it was her idea, therefore she will remain more important throughout. Even though it's made very clear, and Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne all say it, they do the most work. They have the most responsibilities with all of the other tasks that they have to do.
Kaykay Brady: 21:32
Yep.
Brooke Suchomel: 21:32
They have rank, so they feel like they can voice their frustration. They're the ones that call for elections, they assemble this coalition. But in the end, they vote to maintain the status quo, and everybody just walks away when the election is done.
Kaykay Brady: 21:45
Yeah, that's my take on it, was that what actually was happening was there were lots of feelings about the power structure. And Kristy had stopped listening to other people because the power had gone to her head.
Brooke Suchomel: 21:59
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 21:59
And it's Jackie that finally sort of uses "I" statements with Kristy, communicates his feelings in a really powerful way, and is like, "When you do this, I feel this," and Kristy starts to have to listen again. Then everybody gets to express their emotions about how this system has been impacting them, and the once this thing is allowed to be shared, and emotion is allowed to be present, it actually resolves itself. Which is really right on, in my mind as a therapist, because you see this in families all the time, where families have a particular structure, and nobody's in love with everything they have to do within this structure to make the system function. A whole bunch of shit you have to do sucks and is annoying, but it's the feelings about all of that, that really become the problem. And if there's not a space for the feelings to be welcomed, and communicated and processed, it really starts to affect the system. So it was kind of cool the way the election is sort of like the ruse for the feelings to come out. And then once the feelings come out, they all actually sort of realize, "Oh, we're actually pretty well suited to our roles. And yeah, it sucks, but we can manage it, and there's lots of benefits." So that’s why I was thinking it was a lot about feelings that weren't getting expressed. There's research that's come out that looks at people who are in positions of power. The thing that puts somebody in a position of power is often their ability to hear other people and understand the needs and perspective other people. That's what put them in positions of power. But once they get there, the lose the ability to hear other people. They've done studies where like, they go into meetings, and they see that the boss is not reading anybody's cues and everyone's reading he boss's cues. Like, the boss isn't looking at people. He's not looking at how they're feeling. And you actually become less intelligent in positions of power, because one of the greatest and powerful parts of human intelligence is the ability to read other people and anticipate what the group might need. So it's like Kristy is suffering from this.
Brooke Suchomel: 24:09
This is interesting. It makes me wonder if it's correlation or causation. Is it they are good at reading those cues from people because they see it as necessary to get to the position that they want, and once they get into the position that they want, they don't feel the need to read those cues anymore? Makes me think of the book, The Psychopath Test from Jon Ronson, where they look into all of this research that's been done, and it's like, the percentage of CEOs? You think of psychopaths and you think like, "Oh, psychopaths are murderers." No no, they are in leadership positions. They are CEOs, they are politicians, that's where you get a lot of psychopaths. Because they're so charismatic, and the fact that they lack empathy makes it possible for them to do things to get ahead.
Kaykay Brady: 25:02
Yeah, it's an asset, in some regards, to capitalism.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:04
Right, where it's like, "Yeah, I'll lay off 2000 people, I don't care."
Kaykay Brady: 25:08
Yeah, the bottom line.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:10
Right. "I got to my position, and so I've just got to do what it takes to hold that position." So it makes me wonder, is it a matter of the kind of people that become bosses are ones that are really only empathizing when it benefits them, when it's a transactional thing? Is that the case? Or is it the case of like, everybody has that? And is everybody only doing it for ultimately selfish purposes, and then once they don't have to use it to maintain the position they want, it's a skill that goes away? I would like to think the former rather than the latter. It's more comforting to think that like, "Oh, it's just because these psychopaths are doing it" than "We all are a little bit psychopathic," but I wonder what the study says.
Kaykay Brady: 25:51
I think the study that I remember was generalizing it a little more, that there's something about the nature of power that actually makes us a little, like, mentally disabled. All people experience this. It's not just, you know, psychopaths. There's something about being on top that means that, you know, whether you were sort of like faking that skill to get to the top, or whether you truly have the ability to read other people and care about other people, being at the top really compromises your ability to continue doing that. That was sort of the gist of the study was like, basically power is very dangerous to humans.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:30
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Kaykay Brady: 26:32
Yeah. And dangerous to all humans. It's something that when anyone starts to move into a position of power, it's really important to be aware of this because this is a general human vulnerability that you see time and time again. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter who's in power, it doesn't matter what this person's intentions were coming in, they still suffer from it.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:54
What a great argument for term limits.
Kaykay Brady: 26:56
Yeah!
Brooke Suchomel: 27:00
Oh, you've been in office since the Eisenhower administration?
Kaykay Brady: 27:04
Time to go!
Brooke Suchomel: 27:04
Time to go to bed, Grandpa! That may be aimed at a very specific person that happens to be in the senate from Iowa. Anyway.
Kaykay Brady: 27:14
Anyway, it really made me think of that. And it was Jackie that makes Kristy have to pay attention again, and listen again, and start to use those skills. And to her credit, she does. She takes that lesson to heart, and she tries. She doesn't succeed terribly well, but she tries to come in and have a different approach to her power with the Baby-sitters Club after hearing from Jackie how she's affecting him by bossing him around.
Brooke Suchomel: 27:46
Right. So yeah, ultimately, what Kristy realizes is that, just how we talked in our last episode about how the communication can be great in between them, but it's still about like, let's figure out what the problem is, and then come up with a solution. And then you go to the person who is affected, and you say, "Here's the solution that we figured out." Kristy kind of jumps to that too, where rather than involving the other members of the Baby-sitters Club in discussion about like, "What can we do about this?" It's just, "Hey, we have this problem. I figured it out. Here's what we're gonna do."
Kaykay Brady: 28:21
Yeah. And there's no space for listening and honing, revising, making it better. It's just like, it's a my way or the highway kind of thing.
Brooke Suchomel: 28:30
Yep. And so what she is proposing to do is that she's going to make everybody sign off on this checklist to confirm that they have read the notebook every week.
Kaykay Brady: 28:42
Which was hilarious. That fucking made me laugh so hard. Oh, and this, to me, like, I hope it's okay, I'm just gonna do a deep fucking dive into Kristy's psychology.
Brooke Suchomel: 28:53
Let's do it.
Kaykay Brady: 28:53
Because Ann M. gets so close to what I would say is Kristy's core issue, which is they're talking about the checklist and then they basically say to Kristy, "Do you not trust us?" And that's really the problem, right? Is that Kristy has had an attachment disruption, which means she's lost one of her primary caregivers in a really traumatic way.
Brooke Suchomel: 29:15
With her dad. How her dad ran off, and she hasn't heard from her dad in like two years.
Kaykay Brady: 29:20
Exactly. And when you have an attachment disruption, fundamentally, you lose the ability to trust, and then you start to see the world as some place that's not safe. The world is something that is always gonna like, surprise you and terrify you. And so actually, a lot of kids will then become sort of hyperregulated. Some kids get hyporegulated, where like, they can't pull their shit together and they're failing at school and stuff. And some kids get hyperregulated, and that's what you're seeing in Kristy. She's getting hyper regulated. She's like, "Gotta control, gotta have lists. I can't even trust my friends, who have shown that they're very trustworthy." So I thought it was cool. Ann M. really explicitly calls out the trust issue.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:06
That's an excellent point. I didn't think about that fact at all, that- because it's not inspired by anything, right? It's not like, "Somebody forgot to read, we've got a problem," it's kind of solving a problem that doesn't exist.
Kaykay Brady: 30:19
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:20
And it comes out that Kristy is feeling that she is being put upon, and that she is being effectively bossed around and bullied by her brother Charlie, the one that is responsible for getting her to and from the Baby-sitters Club meetings three times a week. So she's in these close quarters with him, she has some sort of obligation to him in order to maintain her position that she has. And you know, she says that, basically, she's lashing out. It's like she's being beaten down on and so she's turning around, it's like the cycle of oppression, right?
Kaykay Brady: 30:56
Yeah, exactly. She does call that out explicitly, like, "Oh, this is like what Charlie's doing to me. And now I'm doing it to you." And I think Ann M. takes it a step further with the trust issues. Maybe like even unbeknownst to herself, she was digging into a deeper level of psychology than even Kristy went through in the book, which was really cool.
Brooke Suchomel: 31:17
I love that we both are tapping into the same things and our interpretations are both sort of honing in on the same problem, which is what is going on with this tension with the Baby-sitters Club. And I love how the take that you have makes complete sense to me, and it didn't even come into my mind.
Kaykay Brady: 31:37
Yeah, you mean the sort of emotion parts of it? Kristy's motivation and attachment?
Brooke Suchomel: 31:43
Kristy having that trust issue being compounded with the fact that she has been abandoned before? How that is deep at her core and might affect her ability to properly communicate and relate to people who see her in this position of authority. The way that the abandonment by her dad affects that is really smart, and yeah, I didn't think about that at all, but it makes a lot of sense. So cool that you're looking at this from the individual psychology perspective. I was looking at it at the structural overarching perspective, so I think we've got these two complimentary interpretations. Cuz I totally agree, that's the problem. That trust issue, that communication issue, that's a huge problem with the group itself. And I also think there's the layer of the structural imbalances.
Kaykay Brady: 32:38
Yeah, and the book is very explicit with this. I think you're totally right, I mean, even to the point of, Mallory and Jessi are like, "No, we sit on the floor."
Brooke Suchomel: 32:48
Yes! I brought that out too. Literally, direct quote, "We're the youngest, and we belong on the floor. Period," coming from Jessi.
Kaykay Brady: 32:59
That's so sad.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:01
It's so sad, but nobody corrects them. It's not that that's something- she thinks that to herself, and she writes that down as the narrator in the book. She doesn't say that to the others. But nobody else says, "Why do you sit on the floor? You can sit on the bed. It's totally fine." Nobody corrects them. So there is this very clearly delineated hierarchy within the Baby-sitters Club. You basically have the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat.
Kaykay Brady: 33:29
Yeah, exactly!
Brooke Suchomel: 33:30
Gonna go right back to my grad school days. Maybe that's why I'm so excited because I'm pulling out all of these analogies. You've got Kristy as the aristocracy. You've got Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne as the bourgeoisie, where they get to have a voice, they can call for elections, they can assemble coalitions, all of that. But still, it's like, "We do more work, and the president does nothing and just gets to benefit from legacy," right? Like, "I came up with this idea, and so I get to sit here and I get to make decisions. But yeah, you're going to continue to have off-hour calls, and you're going to continue to be overloaded with the work." Like, everybody else will continue to be overloaded with work, but at least they won't have to check off that checklist.
Kaykay Brady: 34:13
Yeah, they've won that battle.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:15
Right. And the people who do the work and don't have any rank, which would be Jessi and Mallory, their whole thing is, "We want to avoid discussion. We are resigned to our position at the bottom of the hierarchy."
Kaykay Brady: 34:30
In fact, they feel blessed to even be there!
Brooke Suchomel: 34:32
Yeah. "We just want to be in the room, so it's fine. We won't make waves." And the thing that's funny about it is, if you think about it, if Jessi and Mallory weren't there- again, this goes right back to the aristocracy and the proletariat.
Kaykay Brady: 34:45
I love it.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:46
If Jessi and Mallory weren't there, Kristy wouldn't have a fucking chance, because she would immediately be out-voted by everybody else.
Kaykay Brady: 34:54
Right.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:54
It's the ability for Jessi and Mallory to potentially vote to boost her position that gives Jessi and Mallory the respect from the aristocracy. The proletariat can vote to help the aristocracy, otherwise the bourgeoisie is going to outvote the aristocracy very, very quickly. So anyway...
Kaykay Brady: 35:16
It works perfectly!
Brooke Suchomel: 35:17
It actually really does work in a really sad way. Because the voting alone- the message of this, I found this to be a bleak ass book.
Kaykay Brady: 35:28
Yeah, tell me.
Brooke Suchomel: 35:29
The voting alone doesn't solve their problems. You know? They are in exactly the same position that they were in at the beginning of the book. Literally the same position.
Kaykay Brady: 35:37
Literally. Quite literally, they all stay in their positions.
Brooke Suchomel: 35:42
And the working conditions that they are frustrated about do not change. The only thing that changes is that basically, you know, you hear about the carrot and the stick, the stick that Kristy had introduced is taken away. That's all that changes. They just don't have to do the thing that she said. And then she's like, "I'm sorry, I see that I've been bossy. I will try not to be bossy to you anymore. I'm doing this because I feel like I'm being bossed around by Charlie, so I'm like, beating down." So you hope that that changes. But the working conditions that they're frustrated with haven't changed. They could actually do things to address this. Like, if you want to be in the same position, that's fine, but what can we do to make those positions more efficient, less stressful. They don't have that conversation. That doesn't happen. And at the very end, it almost felt satirical. That's why I was like, I feel like this is another situation where Ann M. is trying to communicate something that, by talking just about elections and fairness and all of that, it might be like, "Whoa whoa whoa, what are you doing here? That might be too controversial." So it's like it has this sheen of, "This is a book about petsitting." But on top of it, as a distraction.
Kaykay Brady: 37:03
It's literally like, "Look over here!"
Brooke Suchomel: 37:04
100 percent!
Kaykay Brady: 37:05
"There's snakes! We got dogs, we got snakes! We got guinea pigs giving birth! Hamsters!"
Brooke Suchomel: 37:10
Chaos, yes! So it felt to me like this was just a cover for what actually read to me like, this is just me saying, Hey, I'm trying to think about what was going on with the commentary because it felt very sort of defeatist about elections, and the ability of elections to change conditions, where at the end, it's like, "Happy endings everywhere you go!" Like, that's not a line that you would expect to hear. It's very TGIF, end of Full House, right?
Kaykay Brady: 37:43
Who says "Happy endings"? I don't remember that one.
Brooke Suchomel: 37:45
So it's Kristy. Kristy is the one that said, "Happy endings, everywhere you look! We got our club problem straightened out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, happy endings," and then it just ends, right?
Kaykay Brady: 37:57
"Everything's fine!"
Brooke Suchomel: 38:00
Yeah, I don't believe you. It felt disingenuous. We don't get to see that it actually is a happy ending. We're just told this is a happy ending, even though we know that the things that they were really frustrated about didn't change. So this came out in March 1989. This would have been written amidst the incredibly ugly 1988 presidential campaign. And you have this line in there, where Jessi talks about how she's relieved that it's Election Day, she said, no matter what happens, because frankly, the process leading up to it has been so terrible.
Kaykay Brady: 38:35
Yeah, there's a lot of stress for both of them. This election is extremely stressful for both of them, they almost just want it to go away. They don't seem to have like a sense of that they have a dog in the fight, as much as they just want the tension to go away.
Brooke Suchomel: 38:49
Right. And the 1988 presidential campaign was really one of those like, it's considered to be sort of the start of really ugly, really vicious campaigning. Dad Bush's campaign manager was a man named Lee Atwater, who was an actual monster. His influence is felt, honestly, in every social and political problem we face today. Even he called it a campaign of quote "naked cruelty."
Kaykay Brady: 39:15
Damn.
Brooke Suchomel: 39:16
Right before he died of a brain tumor, he claimed to have converted to Catholicism and was repenting, and was probably full of shit and just sort of covering his bases. But anyways, I mean, this campaign was really awful. Their whole focus was on using coded language. He was a master of using coded language to put a sheen on naked bigotry. Also the focus was on leading the public away from truth by speaking in abstractions. That was how he managed campaigning. And so that's one of the main things that we try to highlight here, I think, is like, look at what's not being explicitly said, look at what's being implicitly said. Looking at how rhetoric is leading you to come to a certain conclusion that maybe you wouldn't come to otherwise if people were speaking truthfully.
Kaykay Brady: 39:59
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 40:00
Because there's a real ugly thread of that in American discourse, and it was ramped up to 11 in the presidential campaign. And I think it's really interesting, too, that we see that Jessi, the one Black member of the Baby-sitters Club, is the narrator in this book about elections. She is the narrator in a book where she says, "I'm just going to sit on the floor, I don't want to use my voice," like she's very isolated, and, you know, doesn't have really any power. She's completely overworked. And this was a campaign where, speaking of Jessies, Jesse Jackson was a serious contender in the Democratic primary for the 1988 election. So as a part of that, that is where Dad Bush's campaign manager is like, "We we are really gonna use racism as a wedge issue, big time." And they did. It was very ugly. Actually, Dukakis had a 17 point lead in late July, and then that just completely got obliterated and he lost in a landslide just a few months after they ramped up the racism in the campaign. So again, I could go on a whole thing about how terrible that campaign was, and how big of a change, like, how we are feeling the ramifications of this today. But there is this thread that you can see echoed in the way that elections are presented in this book. This is a very pro worker book. Very pro worker, which was a big part of the Dukakis campaign. One of his campaign slogans was, "Good jobs at good wages." That was the big message of it. And the other one was, "Because the best America is yet to come," which is literally the opposite of MAGA. So to me, this read like a book that was written by somebody who was going through effectively the stages of grief, after what was an incredibly progressive candidate for the time. And it really, really resonated with the people, he was big time in the lead until they decided to go all in on race. So you have the Black member of the Baby-sitters Club kind of laying bare the way that these elections work, and how, fine, everybody votes, but nothing changes. And it has this sort of, "yay, it's all fine in the end," but you don't believe her.
Kaykay Brady: 42:17
Yeah, that is such a really interesting read, especially because it would really track with how much she's willing to engage in this. Because you get the sense that Ann M. is kind of engaging in it a little bit, but also has to just let it go. Because, you know, she can't come in and be like, "This is bleak and hopeless."
Brooke Suchomel: 42:35
Right, no.
Kaykay Brady: 42:36
So you almost get the sense of like, she doesn't, she raises these really complicated systemic challenges and issues and problems, and then just kind of runs away from it in a way. And I agree, it's really interesting that both you and I have kind of noticed something a little like, disintegrated about this book, right?
Brooke Suchomel: 42:56
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady: 42:57
Where we can't quite put our finger on what the book's message is, and it doesn't get wrapped up in the way that other books, and that really tracks with someone who's going through the stages of grief, right? Where like, it's so fresh that you have not taken lessons from it and integrated it into your life. It's more just sort of like, it's poking through. It's like, brought forward and poking through, and then it's kind of run away from. So I think that's a really smart read, and this is one of those topics where I would be so curious if Ann M. was aware.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:30
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 43:30
Because like, you could almost imagine that this could easily be something where she was like, "Oh, I just thought, you know, it was an interesting point to put in a book like this," where maybe this wasn't even conscious, right? That there's a real struggle going on in her subconscious and it pokes out in this book. So I think that's really interesting and I hadn't even thought about it.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:51
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely not saying that it's a conscious thing, but if you were reading this in the time, as a kid, you would have been a few months before in the middle of adults talking about this campaign. I remember this was the first campaign where we voted at school. "Who would you vote for," you know? You had to color an elephant or a donkey. Not kidding. That was a real thing. But yeah, you get the line- I mean, this line is where I was like, "Okay, yeah, I feel like there's something at least a little deliberate there." Where Kristy at the very end goes, in the same paragraph where she says, "Happy endings, everywhere you go," she says, "Jackie lost the election, but he got a hamster." Is the hamster NAFTA? You know? For me, I was like, "Okay, what were the explicit lessons that we got in this? What was she explicitly communicating?" Where we can point to things in the book and say, she literally is saying this. So you get, "Elections are a right." Dawn says, "Elections are our right, we're demanding an election." Kristy tries to be like, "Well, I'll consider if we should have an election," and Dawn's like, "Nope. That's our right, we're having an election." And then Jessi's mom tells Jessi, "Vote for who you honestly think would do the best job in the role and forget the rest." That is seen as being a good lesson for everyone to learn. And then the third one is really, "Isolate a pregnant hamster before it gives birth to five to 10 babies, which are called pups." So those are the three lessons that Ann M. wants every kid who reads this to know. But the implicit lesson that I got out of it was that it's really fucking hard to change the status quo when the status quo keeps you too overworked and under empowered to do what's required to change it. Like, the fact that every officer besides Kristy has a job that takes time away from them outside of the meetings and outside of babysitting, that doesn't change. Claudia is still going to be getting phone calls on a Saturday morning from people that don't pay attention to their rules. Nothing is proposed to change that. And Jessi, you see, like, she doesn't have a moment to herself, she doesn't have a day off. She's working all the time.
Kaykay Brady: 46:08
She doesn't think that she could say no, either. She's not empowered.
Brooke Suchomel: 46:12
So it seems kind of like to me that was why, the way that the end felt so bleak to me, like, what are you taking away from that? And it's like, it's not just voting for who you vote for, and then you're good. Voting alone doesn't solve problems. The people that you voted for need to do the work required to solve the problems. And you don't see that happening in this particular book.
Kaykay Brady: 46:38
Yeah, I can definitely see that. It wasn't as clear to me to what extent those problems are consistent and explicit, and to what extent people just needed to feel heard. Because they say at one point, like, "Well, we all kind of fit in our roles, and they are kind of working." So I think that's why my read was a little less bleak. And a little more, one of the big problems for them were that they had gotten into this process of, it was no longer really a democracy, it was more like Kristy was a king. And so they were trying to bring it closer in line with democracy. And the way that that was expressed was the voices being heard, and the process being respected. Then once that happened, they kind of felt, "Okay, we're actually pretty good here," you know? But I also can see 100% this sort of cynicism bleeding around the sides in the corners, that I think is probably coming out, and possibly betrays the author's ambivalence about, to what degree democracy's really operating the way that it should.
Brooke Suchomel: 47:48
Right. And I think a part of the cynicism, the impression of cynicism, comes from the fact that the plots are so discordant.
Kaykay Brady: 47:57
Exactly. I mean, I think you pointed out beautifully, at the end, that line from Kristy. I mean, that is so blatantly upside down world.
Brooke Suchomel: 48:06
Yeah, she's the one that says- so she maintains her position that she thought that she wouldn't, and is like, "Everybody's happy!" Kristy says, "Everyone is happy, nothing needs to change."
Kaykay Brady: 48:16
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 48:17
Kristy says everything is good. Guess we're just gonna take her word for it. You know? But yeah, I think your interpretation of it is 100% valid. It's pretty cool to have YA books, particularly of this time, aimed at girls, and a series of them, where even 23 books in, with a super special, you still have books that allow for rich and diverse interpretations of them.
Kaykay Brady: 48:47
Well, and I also think it's possible that they live together in a reality of the sense of like, there's so many different levels that the author can be operating on. And then there's also the level of like, she knows she's writing a YA book, and there's only so much that she can put in there that's going to be tolerated by an editor and by a publishing house. So I guess what I'm saying is it's also possible that within her own mind, both of these are living at the same time and being expressed at the same time. You're picking out one and I'm picking out the other, but they kind of live simultaneously, side by side. it makes perfect sense to me that, in some ways, this is an author's consciousness like come to light, and it's gonna have that complexity of human mind.
Brooke Suchomel: 49:29
Definitely.
Kaykay Brady: 49:30
And that's the coolest thing about these books is that it's a kid's book, but you really pick up how much depth is going on underneath.
Brooke Suchomel: 49:38
Mm hmm. Even though she might try to distract you with shiny pet names, you know?
Kaykay Brady: 49:45
Pregnant hamsters!
Brooke Suchomel: 49:47
Snicklefritz! Snicklefritiz, the pregnant hamster. Igga-Bogga.
Kaykay Brady: 49:51
Snakes!
Brooke Suchomel: 49:52
The dog at the vet named Igga-Bogga. I-G-G-A hyphen B-O-G-G-A. You know, that common dog name, Igga-Bogga? The names were so freaking- did you note any, were you laughing at the names like I was? I just thought they were...
Kaykay Brady: 50:09
Yeah, Pooh Bear was the poodle, Cheryl was the Great Dane. What was the third dog?
Brooke Suchomel: 50:15
There was a great mix of like, animals with human names are just the most delightful to me.
Kaykay Brady: 50:21
Yes. You know, Ann M. is really ahead of her time here. I feel like nowadays, you see that more and more, you know, a dog named Bob or something. Back then? No, this is real breaking news here, Ann M.
Brooke Suchomel: 50:34
The dogs were Cheryl, Pooh Bear, and Jacques.
Kaykay Brady: 50:38
Oh yeah, Jacques.
Brooke Suchomel: 50:40
Those are the dogs. And then you have cats where it's like, the mom is Rosie and the kitten is Powder. So she dedicates this book to her friends, Nicole, Anna, Rebecca, Katie and Allison, which were very much kids' names at the time that this was published. So my theory is she had like five nieces or friends' kids or whatever, and she's like, "Give me some names. What are some names for pets?" And they all were just like, bombarding her with pets' names. And she's like, "Cool. I'm putting them in." Because they don't make any goddamn sense together.
Kaykay Brady: 51:12
No.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:13
And it's great.
Kaykay Brady: 51:13
They're so random.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:15
It was funny.
Kaykay Brady: 51:16
What did you have for 80s moments?
Brooke Suchomel: 51:18
Well, the whole book felt very 80s in terms of power dynamics to me. But then they have a bird named Frank.
Kaykay Brady: 51:24
Yes! That is exactly where I was going.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:27
Who just recites lines from commercials, including "Where's the beef?"
Kaykay Brady: 51:33
Classic.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:33
The vintage Wendy's commercial with the elderly woman who was asking where the beef is. That was everywhere.
Kaykay Brady: 51:41
I mean, talk about taking us by cultural storm. Do you remember like, what a thing this lady in this commercial was?
Brooke Suchomel: 51:47
It's one of my earliest memories, honestly, was the "Where's the beef?" lady. And the reason why it stuck with me is because I didn't understand why people were so fascinated with it, but they were. So it was intriguing to me, because I'm like, this has this mass appeal that doesn't-
Kaykay Brady: 52:06
I just see a youn Brooke in a doctor's coat like "Tell me more. What is this be f you speak of?"
Brooke Suchomel: 52:13
I was very focused on it because I was trying to understand, and I never did. Did you understand? Can you tell me what the appeal is of the "Where's the beef?" lady?
Kaykay Brady: 52:23
I don't know, she's just fucking hilarious. I thought it was funny because she just reminded me of like, one of my old aunts.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:29
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 52:31
I mean, I lived with "Where's the beef?" people. That was something, that level of sass and right-on folksiness, I lived at that every day.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:41
Every time we have gone out to eat together, it is the first thing that you say to our server when you sit down, so that makes sense.
Kaykay Brady: 52:47
Yeah. So for me, it just, I was like, "Yeah, she's funny, like my aunts and my grandmother. Funny like that." I didn't think of it beyond that. But yeah, I also noticed it was such a cultural sensation and was like, Okay, I felt like Frank was so interesting for me because I feel that there is a Frank in my brain, and it just spouts 80s commercials at me constantly.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:11
I was gonna say, you are the Frank of lines from movies, for sure.
Kaykay Brady: 53:15
That too, but I feel like part of my brain is like Frank, being an 80s child. It's sort of like part of my brain just got devoted to that and still lives within me.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:28
So you're just going about your life, you're just like, shopping at Trader Joe's or something and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it's just like, "Where's the beef?"
Kaykay Brady: 53:34
Correct.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:35
In your head, you're just like, "Where is the beef? Does anyone know?"
Kaykay Brady: 53:38
A million different commercials.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:41
What other ones come to mind?
Kaykay Brady: 53:42
Gosh, well, a lot of New York based commercials. I think I shared this with you, Food Emporium.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:49
Yeah, I knew you were gonna say this one.
Kaykay Brady: 53:51
Okay, this going out to all my East Coast 45 year old ladies who I know listen to this podcast, I'm gonna do Food Emporium. "Someone made a store just for me! Food Emporium, Food Emporium." That. Um, "Come on along and take us to a Lullaby of Broadway." It was commercial for a hotel in New York City. So stuff like that. It just goes in a loop. And the nice thing is that my partner has the same thing going on in her mind. And sometimes it'll meet, we'll do the same thing. Something will trigger something like a "Where's the beef?" and we'll say it to each other at exactly the same time, and I'm like, how much of our love for each other is just the Franks in our brain finding a partner?
Brooke Suchomel: 54:38
Just, your Franks love each other. Yeah, you just have the same cultural references.
Kaykay Brady: 54:42
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:43
No, that's important. That goes a long way.
Kaykay Brady: 54:46
For the 80s kid it is. So I loved Frank. Frank made me happy.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:50
Frank spoke to you, literally and figuratively.
Kaykay Brady: 54:53
Frank continues to speak to me constantly in my brain.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:57
There is something so delightful about just watching YouTube, you can go and just plug in any year and "commercials." I may have spent days just watching 80s commercials, because it jogs these things in your memory. It's like time travel.
Kaykay Brady: 55:13
Yeah, and isn't it interesting, too, how it doesn't jog like the logical part of your brain. No, it jogs your limbic system, which is the emotion. That's where these things live, which is so fascinating to me from like, a capitalist perspective. These things are like part of my animal body because they came to me when I was a kid, and they were like part of my psychiatric development.
Brooke Suchomel: 55:39
So insidious. And as you're saying that it makes me wonder, are we now seeing this, like, critique of capitalism, occurring at a level that it hasn't before for so many reasons, but one of them is like, I wonder if it's because with streaming and the ability to fast forward through commercials, kids just aren't watching commercials. And so it's not like, capitalism as entertainment. You know? I don't know, that'd be interesting.
Kaykay Brady: 56:09
Yeah. And also just the ability to, in a million different ways, have choice about what kind of ads you're consuming.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:16
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady: 56:17
It's very different.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:18
And the fact that we can reference them, but we're generally- I mean, for me, I think of all the songs, right? It's the jingles. And it's the way that music, you can remember things if you sing it. If you put something to a melody, that's when it really gets in your brain. If it's like, just a line? If there's nothing else, if it's just words, it's much more difficult for something to stick than it is if you make somebody like, really laugh, as people did with "Where's the beef?" for some reason that maybe one day I'll understand. Or if it's like music, because that was such an important part of communication throughout human history, has been singing and chanting. And so you're doing that, but you're doing it for Doublemint gum.
Kaykay Brady: 57:03
There's also theories surfacing now that we actually sang before we spoke.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:09
Oh, that makes sense.
Kaykay Brady: 57:10
It makes total sense to me. It makes sense, too, because when you remember a lyric or you sing, again, it's not your cognitive mind. It's your limbic system. It's your emotional brain, which is like thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. That's why you can remember mnemonics that are sung versus words that you're logically pulling up with your prefrontal cortex.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:32
It's like Food Emporium is in your genetic code. Like, if you were to bear children, they they would be born -
Kaykay Brady: 57:42
They would be lobsters. They would be the freshest lobsters being pulled out of a tank by a Barbie white woman.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:51
But the tank is your vagina.
Kaykay Brady: 57:56
I am a lobster and Food Emporium is capitalism. And I am a lobster in a tank being manhandled by a Barbie white woman. Oh!
Brooke Suchomel: 58:08
I was gonna say, I was going with like, your kids would be born knowing the Food Emporium song.
Kaykay Brady: 58:15
Ah, kind of like intergenerational trauma.
Brooke Suchomel: 58:17
Exactly! The Food Emporium theme is intergenerational trauma. Or you could give birth to a lobster. Again, we're "yes and"-ing this episode. Any way you want to go with that, by all means. All interpretations are valid.
Kaykay Brady: 58:29
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 58:30
Oh man. So the next episode is going to be interesting, because we're leaving Stoneybrook.
Kaykay Brady: 58:38
What?
Brooke Suchomel: 58:38
In the next episode.
Kaykay Brady: 58:40
Are we going back to New York City?
Brooke Suchomel: 58:41
No, we are going much further away, as we are going to be discussing Dawn on the Coast. So Dawn goes to California. The next Baby-sitters Club book will take place in California, where Dawn goes to visit her dad and Jeff
Kaykay Brady: 58:56
Oh wow, I can't believe it. I'm so excited to and her best friend. see the representation of California, to see what happen It is a cliffhanger. This would have been like my first real with Dawn and her brother. It' a cliffhanger for me depiction of Cal- well, I take that back. This would have been my first non-Sweet Valley High depiction of California that I had. I haven't read it since. I'm trying to think what my first California- I can't even pinpoint it. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? Was she? Wasn't she on the West Coast. Oh my god, you almost fell down on the ground laughing at that. I think maybe she's in Pacific Northwest, I don't know.
Brooke Suchomel: 59:39
She was like frontier, right?
Kaykay Brady: 59:41
Yeah. Which could have been California.
Brooke Suchomel: 59:43
You're like, "It's not the Northeast, so that's California, right?"
Kaykay Brady: 59:49
True.
Brooke Suchomel: 59:49
Holy shit. Wait a minute. There's one thing before we go that I have to flag. Did you get the queerest reference yet in this series in this book?
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:01
No!
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:03
At the end, Kristy says that her friends' butts are quote "attractive."
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:08
Oh, yes! She said it's her best feature!
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:10
Dawn says, "My backside is my best side."
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:13
Yes, I did clock that.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:15
For literally no reason. There is no reason whatsoever. That is just thrown in there. That's why I am like, Ann M. is like, "I've fucking had it with this country. I'm throwing in whatever the hell I want. Guess what? Kristy is checking out her friends butts. Dawn's like, 'Yeah, I got a nice butt.' That's how we're gonna end this book."
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:36
This is like how if you watch musicals in the 40s, it's like watching Drag Race. I mean, it's so gay.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:46
Oh, yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:46
And nobody clocked it because it just wasn't part of the mainstream culture. So in some ways, it was much more acceptable.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:54
Because people were so clueless.
Kaykay Brady: 1:00:57
Exactly.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:00:57
Because it was like, "There couldn't possibly be anything entertaining or redeeming about somebody." And it's like, no.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:02
It's just some red blooded healthy males oiling each other up in a gymnasium.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:01:06
It's Top Gun. It's the movie Top Gun.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:09
Yeah. But that's what it reminds me of. It's just, people are so clueless that Kristy could just be talking about asses. I feel the same way about Mary Anne. She's talking about boobs all the time.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:01:19
Yeah, Mary Anne is very boob focused.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:21
She's very fixated on them. She's a breast gal. And then clearly we've found out that Kristy is an ass gal.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:01:25
Clearly. Because her friends, all three of them just had to get down on the floor to look for chips under the bed together.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:34
Before they come, she's hiding the chips.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:01:37
They're paying Mimi $10 to go stash them somewhere.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:44
It's very 9 to 5. It's very Dolly Parton in 9 to 5.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:01:48
Yeah. So Dawn is liberated enough to be like, "Yeah, that's right. My backside is my best side." That sassy Dawn is going to take us to California in the next episode.
Kaykay Brady: 1:01:59
I can't wait.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:02:00
And I hope that we get to see how Dawn came to be so comfortable and accepting of herself in a way that was not common in the 1980s. Ann M. is like, "I gotta get away from here."
Kaykay Brady: 1:02:14
We need a break.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:02:15
Ann M.'s taking a vacation, so we're all going to take a vacation to California with her in the next episode, and it's gonna be dope.
Kaykay Brady: 1:02:20
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:02:21
But until then...
Kaykay Brady: 1:02:23
Just keep sittin'. [THEME] Listen to me, chickadees...
