Transcript - BSFC #34: Mary Anne and Too Many Boys

[00:00:00] Brooke: 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 the 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.

[00:00:24] Kaykay: And I'm Kaykay Brady. I'm a therapist, and I'm new to these lovely books.

[00:00:29] Brooke: Lovely ass books. Perhaps with the exception of this one. We'll get into that. Umm...

[00:00:34] Kaykay: Thank you! I am so relieved. I'm so relieved you came out ahead of me with that, my friend. I was like, dang, am I gonna, am I gonna drag this book?

[00:00:44] Brooke: Oh Kaykay, we are going to drag this book. It's getting dragged.

[00:00:54] Kaykay: It deserves to be dragged, for real.

[00:00:56] Brooke: This book is getting dragged as it deserves to be dragged. I think we're up to the challenge.

[00:01:02] Kaykay: We love you Ann M, don't get us wrong, but we're going to drag your fucking book to filth.

[00:01:06] Brooke: Here's the thing, this isn't an Ann M book. So that might be why we're dragging it.

[00:01:14] Kaykay: Sorry, oh, my dogs just jumped up and ran over to me thinking I was giving them treats.

[00:01:18] Brooke: They're like, we're here for the dragging. We're here for the dragging. This week, we are taking you back to May 1990, when this eminently draggable book was published. Just like this book was a bummer, there was a bummer that happened in May 1990, which was, this was the month that Jim Henson died, who was such a foundational part of my childhood. Did you have like a huge affinity for the Muppets?

[00:01:42] Kaykay: Oh yeah. I mean, the Muppets were our nighttime show. Never missed it. And then Fraggle Rock when I was a little bit older, obsessed with Fraggle Rock. And then Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas is my favorite movie of all time. I could sing every song. "We're closer now than ever before." That's going out to all the Emmett Otter lovers, which is probably really just my sister and my brother-in-law.

[00:02:10] Brooke: I think there's a cult following for Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas. I've never seen it myself. I know we need to rectify that.

[00:02:17] Kaykay: Yeah, we should do it. That should be one Christmas. We got to do that.

[00:02:20] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:02:21] Kaykay: You would love it, Brooke. You would love it. There's a fucking rival band, they're called River Bottom Nightmare Band. The main guy is like a, he's like a mean bear that plays the organ. He kind of looks like Bootsy Collins. It's fucking amazing.

[00:02:36] Brooke: That's the thing. That's why the Muppets were so great, because they were weird too. There is a purity about the Muppets, but like purity doesn't mean perfection.

[00:02:46] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:02:46] Brooke: They have their quirks and their nuances, and so it makes it feel really real. Like, less than two weeks before Jim Henson died, and I actually, I remember when he died and it like hit me really hard. I was like, oh my gosh, it was such a surprise.

Cause this, it wasn't like he had been sick or anything. He was very much a person who you would see on TV. Less than two weeks before he died, he was on Arsenio Hall actually with Kermit and Rowlf. And they were sitting on the couch next to LaVar Burton. You can see this on YouTube. It's so great to watch.

Jim Henson was like promoting a "reading is fun" campaign, and he was talking with LaVar Burton about how they had done Reading Rainbow together and everything. And I'm watching this and it's just like, my heart feels so big, you know, with these two people who made such an impact on my young life, sitting there together.

And he talked about how the Muppets are so popular, he thinks, because they have this innocence that like it appeals to the child that remains in all of us still, is what he said. So he was like, the child that you were never leaves you. You still always are that child. You just become more around that, right? You have more experiences and you grow. But like, it's not like you grow away from your childhood, you grow around it. So it's still there.

[00:04:13] Kaykay: Yeah, they're still in there.

[00:04:15] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:04:15] Kaykay: Oh girl, let me tell you, a therapist knows this.

[00:04:18] Brooke: I bet.

[00:04:19] Kaykay: A lot of people need to touch that child and nurture that child and heal that child in therapy.

[00:04:26] Brooke: Yeah. It's amazing the way that, you know, as you're saying that, and I'm thinking how the Muppets really do that, there is that healing property to the Muppets. Like the fact that "Rainbow Connection" can make grown adults cry.

[00:04:40] Kaykay: Yes.

[00:04:40] Brooke: There's a reason.

[00:04:41] Kaykay: This is one such grown adult that will cry over "Rainbow Connection."

[00:04:45] Brooke: Cause it just speaks to this purity.

[00:04:48] Kaykay: Mm.

[00:04:48] Brooke: And when I say purity, not, again, not as in like perfection, but as in like a purity of intention that is in everyone. And that can get corrupted over time as you age, but it's still there.

[00:05:01] Kaykay: Yeah. So sometimes I think of it as you know, that little kid, that sort of like pure heart of you is still there. It's just layers get built on top of it. And sometimes the layers get so deep you can't even touch that child anymore, but there are certain things that like really feed that child and bring it out. So, for example, like humor and fun stuff, like that's a way for adults to like retouch that child. And that's why, like, it's so important for adults to play and have fun. Little kids are the shit.

[00:05:30] Brooke: And it's sort of society's expectations that get put upon them that changes that. Which, let's just say, that is a hint at how we'll be dragging this book later.

[00:05:45] Kaykay: This book is not Jim Henson approved.

[00:05:47] Brooke: No. No, it's not. No, definitely not.

[00:05:50] Kaykay: This does not stack up to Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

[00:05:54] Brooke: It doesn't, no. But what does hold up is this segment from the Arsenio Hall show. I'll link to it because it's really, it's like 12 minutes and it's really, really sweet and lovely, but also irreverent. Like, Rowlf says "son of a bitch."

[00:06:11] Kaykay: Yeah, the Muppets. Um, there's a, I, I can't remember where it's streaming, but there's some documentary about the making of Sesame Street and you see a lot of behind the scenes footage of like all those guys. And it was mostly guys, you know, doing the puppets and joking with each other.

And yeah, they're just like laying into each other and the camera goes off, they're just like pure adult humor. And, uh, it kinda like shines through a little in the kid parts too, you know, just like a little realness to it. Like, it's not saccharine in the way that a lot of kids shows are saccharine. Like, it has like an edge to it.

[00:06:47] Brooke: It doesn't talk down to the kids. Again, hint at how are we going to be dragging this book. Okay. But in any event, if it's been a while since you've treated yourself to some Muppets, rectify that for yourself, because they're just so delightful still. I mean, they just hold up so well, and man, that is a person that I am really grateful that he was on our planet at our time and just seemed like such a beautiful soul and has created things that were so lasting for us today.

Music. Okay. Kaykay. So "Nothing Compares 2 U" was still number one in May.

[00:07:27] Kaykay: Holy shit. We were so prescient in our discussion of bald heads.

[00:07:31] Brooke: I'm telling you, there are so many times that I'm like, literally the day we record something, then it's like something that relates to something that we just said happens. So...

[00:07:43] Kaykay: We gotta be careful here!

[00:07:45] Brooke: We gotta be really careful about what we summon in these conversations.

[00:07:49] Kaykay: We got a little Karen Brewer energy going here.

[00:07:52] Brooke: Yeah. But I think what we said still holds true, which is bald heads are hot on a woman.

[00:07:59] Kaykay: Yeah!

[00:08:00] Brooke: We were just proven correct, thank you.

[00:08:02] Kaykay: That's right.

[00:08:03] Brooke: And then it was knocked off the charts by "Vogue," by Madonna.

[00:08:08] Kaykay: Yes! God, I love this song. I love this video. Watching this video just rockets me back to this time.

[00:08:14] Brooke: Did it feel like super fresh and different and new to you?

[00:08:18] Kaykay: Yeah, of course!

[00:08:19] Brooke: Like the black and whiteness?

[00:08:21] Kaykay: Yeah. And the queerness. I mean, I couldn't pick it up as queerness, but you know, certainly I was picking it up.

[00:08:28] Brooke: Yeah. You're like, this is different. And it speaks to me in some way that I don't quite understand, but I feel seen.

[00:08:34] Kaykay: Yeah. I mean, and in fact, like it was almost too much for me. A little threatening, I would even say.

[00:08:40] Brooke: Really?

[00:08:41] Kaykay: Yeah. Like anything that was like deeply coded queer was frightening for me. And that was because, you know, I was gay.

[00:08:48] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:08:48] Kaykay: But, you know, I was able to hang with it. I adored it, I loved it. I probably watched it, you know, cause I watched MTV so much, probably watched it like three times a day.

[00:08:57] Brooke: That was the thing about MTV. It was like, you couldn't watch a video on demand. If you wanted to see a video, you just had to turn on MTV.

[00:09:06] Kaykay: Had to watch MTV.

[00:09:07] Brooke: And just have it going in the background and hope that it would come up.

[00:09:10] Kaykay: Yeah, you might get real unlucky and hit like a Richard Marx or something. You just got to roll with those punches and wait for "Vogue."

[00:09:18] Brooke: You are queuing me up perfectly...

[00:09:22] Kaykay: Psychic moment!

[00:09:23] Brooke: Because Kaykay, while I was putting together the playlist for this month, I cannot tell you how many videos I'm turning and I'm like, "Wait, this is the most 1990 video that exists. Oh no, wait. This is the most 1990 video that exists. Oh no, wait, what the fuck, is this real?"

Like, I literally had to have my husband come over and like watch the video with me, because I was like, "This is real, right? I'm not hallucinating this video?" There are so many terrible, awesome videos from May 1990.. The video playlist for this month is an embarrassment of riches. So check out our video playlist for this week, because good god are there some gems in there.

Movies. Number ones, Pretty Woman, Bird on a Wire...

[00:10:14] Kaykay: Goldie Hawn?

[00:10:15] Brooke: Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson. That pairing gives you a sense of how well it holds up. Let me just say that the Wikipedia summary ends with quote, "Rick winds up suspended over a tiger in a pit, requiring Marianne to save him. When she is not quite able to reach him, he offers her the extra incentive of marriage and children, which does the trick."

[00:10:38] Kaykay: Dang. Oh, next.

[00:10:39] Brooke: That's how the movie ends. And funnily enough...

[00:10:41] Kaykay: Turd on a plate!

[00:10:43] Brooke: Speaking of "turd on a plate," Mary Anne and Too Many Boys, which has a similar moral.

[00:10:49] Kaykay: Yes! Multiple turds on a plate. Too Many Turds. That's what I call this book, Too Many Turds.

[00:10:55] Brooke: Mary Anne and Too Many Turds on a Plate. That's what's called, "Growing Up in the 90s."

[00:11:06] Kaykay: Everybody's a turd in this book.

[00:11:06] Brooke: Everybody's a freaking turd in this book, my God. Except for like, maybe Mallory? Which is very weird where you're like, "Oh, Mallory is the one I'd rather follow." That's an unusual feeling for me. And also out this month was a movie called, I don't know if you've seen this, Longtime Companion.

[00:11:26] Kaykay: I know this movie. I only know this movie because of LGTBQ film retrospective kind of documentaries.

[00:11:34] Brooke: Yeah. So this was the first major American feature film to focus on AIDS. In 1990! That's how long it took for this to be treated as an issue with a story worth telling, which is pretty shocking.

[00:11:53] Kaykay: Devastating.

[00:11:54] Brooke: Yeah. But I need to watch this movie. Everything that I've read indicates that it's definitely worth watching.

[00:11:59] Kaykay: Well, you would imagine. I mean, I hope they don't, you know, take a Look Who's Talking Too approach to Longtime Companion. I hope somebody good and real is writing this fucking screenplay,

[00:12:08] Brooke: Wait. You hope they don't have...

[00:12:12] Kaykay: Talking babies.

[00:12:13] Brooke: A talking baby narrating what's happening with the AIDS crisis.

[00:12:18] Kaykay: Right, exactly.

[00:12:19] Brooke: Actually, I'm kind of seeing some potential there.

[00:12:23] Kaykay: You're like, "I don't know about that. It sounds kind of amazing."

[00:12:28] Brooke: Right. I might actually trust it what a talking baby would have to say better than the typical authority figure in America in 1990 on the AIDS crisis. It's like, a talking baby will give it to you straight. You know?

[00:12:39] Kaykay: True.

[00:12:40] Brooke: Ah, man. Um, on TV, debuting, America's Funniest People. Do you remember this show? It was a spinoff off of America's Funniest Home Videos.

[00:12:52] Kaykay: I mean, there were people in that too.

[00:12:54] Brooke: Yeah. So here was the difference.

[00:12:56] Kaykay: More balls? More getting kicked in the balls?

[00:13:00] Brooke: So America's Funniest Home Videos is supposedly people accidentally being kicked in the balls, whereas America's Funniest People would be people intentionally being kicked in the balls. Does that make sense?

[00:13:10] Kaykay: Oh, so it's Jackass.

[00:13:11] Brooke: Yeah. This was like people creating their own videos that they thought were funny, as opposed to like, found footage, you know. Which didn't last that long, but the theme song for this literally lives rent-free in my head.

I am telling you, I maybe watched the show like five times or something when I was a kid, it wasn't something that I watched religiously. I don't know what it is about this theme song. It like comes into my head once a month out of nowhere to this fucking day.

[00:13:40] Kaykay: "America's Funniest People! People getting kicked in the balls." Is that it?

[00:13:46] Brooke: Yeah, that's how it goes. No, it's like, "Short people, tall people. Looking for the funniest people!" Yeah.

[00:13:56] Kaykay: Short people are funny, and so are tall people. They're right! I just laugh and laugh when I see a short and a tall person.

[00:14:04] Brooke: Oh yeah, basically it's like, "If you're not normal, you're funny and we're gonna record you!" Um, yeah.

[00:14:11] Kaykay: Fucking nineties.

[00:14:12] Brooke: Ugh, the fucking nineties.

[00:14:16] Kaykay: Fuck off!

[00:14:17] Brooke: That should be, that should be how we refer to the nineties at all times. Fucking nineties, fuck off. Fuck off, nineties. God dammit. Oh man.

Ending that month, You Can't Do That On Television.

[00:14:31] Kaykay: Oh, I loved this show.

[00:14:34] Brooke: Finally coming true. Apparently you cannot, because you will no longer be on television. And The Tracey Ullman Show, which I know you loved so dearly. This was the final month.

[00:14:44] Kaykay: Loved. My gosh. I thought Tracey Ullman was such a genius. She is such a genius.

[00:14:48] Brooke: I'm glad that you found her in your youth. And then, an event that was on TV, and I don't know if you remember this. I remember it vaguely. Andrew Dice Clay hosted Saturday Night Live. And Sinead O'Connor was supposed to be the musical guest. Two days before, when she found out she was going to be sharing a stage with Andrew Dice Clay, she was like, "Fuck this, I'm out."

[00:15:12] Kaykay: You go, Glen Coco.

[00:15:13] Brooke: Yeah. And then Nora Dunn, who was a cast member, did the same thing. They boycotted the show. Cause they were like, "This dude is homophobic, misogynistic. I don't want to be involved in anything where we're like highlighting him."

[00:15:28] Kaykay: Yeah, back when like you could just be a white man just shitting on any targeted community. There was just like no guide rails at all.

[00:15:37] Brooke: The more you did that...

[00:15:38] Kaykay: The more popular you were.

[00:15:40] Brooke: Right. I can't get into this because like, honestly, I would end up talking about this for like at least 45 minutes, like minimum. But there was this really astute piece that I found from this columnist in the Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York. His name is Anthony Violanti, and he wrote this really astute piece-

[00:16:01] Kaykay: Anthony Violanti! Ayy!

[00:16:04] Brooke: Yeah, I was gonna say, you know him?

[00:16:06] Kaykay: Probably.

[00:16:07] Brooke: Right. So he wrote this piece in February 1990, where he was sort of digging into like, what's going on? There was this concern about, wait, why is comedy now leaning really heavily into like the bigotry and misogyny, et cetera, compared to what came before it? Focusing on how comedy and rock music we're taking this, like fascism turn that was a sharp pivot away from anti-establishment roots. So you think of like what rock and comedy were coming up in like the sixties and the seventies...

[00:16:39] Kaykay: Yeah, like Lenny Bruce and comics of color and like women hitting the scene and...

[00:16:43] Brooke: You were punching up. And now it was punching down and it's like, what the fuck is up with that?

And he interviews a man named John Smith of the Buffalo Black Media Coalition and something that he said, I thought pertained very closely to what we talk about in this show, the whole principle of the show.

He says, "There's a knowledge gap within a lot of people. They don't know history, they don't know rhetoric, and they don't understand the meaning of words. I'm afraid what we're doing is defining the underclass through music and comedy. When we degrade and hurt other people for entertainment, what does it say about our society?"

He dug into the danger of how entertainment, how things that you are encountering that are like pop culture, that are not ostensibly what you're turning to for like any sort of moral education, that can desensitize you to really dangerous rhetoric. And you don't even know it.

[00:17:41] Kaykay: Damn, that is so ahead of its time.

[00:17:45] Brooke: Again, this was over 30 years ago. And I'm like, literally everything in this piece was so fucking prescient.

[00:17:53] Kaykay: And it speaks so closely to something you and I talk about all the time, how the most devastating biases and assumptions are those that come through jokes in this book series. You're presenting it as if it is such a known thing that this community is sad and laughable and funny that that's more dangerous than saying, "This community is sad, laughable, and funny, and we should denigrate them." Right? Cause you're like slipping it in.

[00:18:20] Brooke: Yeah. And the roles that you say, like these are the roles that people play. And when there's like, it's just an assumption that, "Of course this is the role to play. And of course this is what is good and right and moral." Like, there's no questioning about it. How dangerous that is, because then you feel like you're not even allowed to question or challenge that.

And how, when that's happening in spaces that you're not looking for, how that's extra insidious. Like, how there was a deliberate pivot that coincided with Reaganism into taking these naturally antagonistic spaces to authoritarianism. Comedy and rock used to be what was fighting authoritarianism.

And so it's like, let's take those spaces, because you've got, it's kind of like looking at capitalism, right? It's like, that's your growth audience. That's your audience that isn't yours yet. How can you get that audience? And so you go to where they are, and you put your messages in through the forms of entertainment that they already enjoy. And now they're hearing your message and they're not alert for it.

And now, next thing you know, you have a bunch of people who are apt to be most hurt by authoritarianism supporting authoritarianism, because they don't understand what's happening.

[00:19:34] Kaykay: You gotta send me that article.

[00:19:35] Brooke: Yeah. It's really, really good. I'll link to it as well, because what's great is that it's not moralistic, you know, like a lot of stuff at that time. Like a lot of the Tipper Gore shit and everything was very sort of judgmental and moralistic, and also kind of like the whole "all sides are equally bad," you know.

[00:19:51] Kaykay: Yeah, like false equivalence shit.

[00:19:53] Brooke: Yeah. Like, "If you're hearing like the N word in rap lyrics, that's just as bad as racist shit coming from white areas." It's like, it's not though. It's not. There is an important distinction in the power structure that you're completely overlooking, and in the language that communities are using, that they can reclaim as their own versus being imposed upon them. This has a much better sense of that. So I found it shockingly insightful, except for the part where he calls Jay Leno "witty." So just ignore that, that doesn't hold up as well. But the rest of what he said, I thought was really smart.

But all of that sort of bullshit messaging that you're getting without being cognizant of it is very visible in the 34th Baby-Sitters club, Mary Anne and Too Many Boys, which was released in May 1990. So it's time for some back cover copy. And I quote,

"It's Sea City Part Two when Mary Anne and Stacey return there as mother's helpers for the Pike family. The girls can't wait to catch some rays, stroll along the boardwalk... and baby-sit, of course!" Yes, they can't wait to baby-sit. "But neither of them expects to meet up with her boyfriend from last summer. And to further complicate things, little Vanessa Pike has a crush on the cashier at the Ice Cream Palace -- only he has a crush on Mallory! Will a summer romance come between Logan and Mary Anne? Will an older boy break Vanessa's heart? Only one thing's for certain: there are too many boys in Sea City!" End quote.

So Kaykay, let's get into this shit.

[00:21:29] Kaykay: But there's like three boys.

[00:21:32] Brooke: I know!

[00:21:33] Kaykay: There's three boys and three girls.

[00:21:36] Brooke: There's too many. And why is there too many? Because this book is all about segregation of the sexes.

[00:21:43] Kaykay: Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, this is the most heteronormative book by far. You lose all the queerness.

[00:21:53] Brooke: Yeah. So to start off, this is a ghost written book, and you can tell the ghost written books, because at the beginning on the copyright page, that is where Ann M will "gratefully acknowledge Mary Lou Kennedy for her help in preparing this manuscript."

So by "help in preparing this manuscript," it means "you helped me by preparing this manuscript." And I think you can tell that in not just the way that the events of the book play out, but the prose is so fucking different too. Did you notice that? Did it read differently to you?

[00:22:31] Kaykay: I can only say what my response was. That like, again, I had that feeling of non-engagement. Like, I just kind of kept putting it down a lot. It didn't grab me in the same way, but I couldn't say what changed about the prose. What did you notice?

[00:22:44] Brooke: There's a lot of telling and not showing.

[00:22:48] Kaykay: We've noticed this before with ghostwritten books. We reached that after like talking about 15 minutes in the past.

[00:22:54] Brooke: Yeah. What I noticed throughout this is, I was like, this writer doesn't know me and she doesn't trust me. She doesn't trust my intelligence to figure things out. There is a lot of overt "and this is what this means. And this is what that means." There was also a lot of, I noticed, I was like, oh my God, am I back in CCD? Because there was a lot of like, "And why is that? Because..." And it was like, but that wasn't my question, actually.

And that's not what Ann M does. It just felt like this author doesn't really know the capacity for the readership of these books to actually decipher things and figure things out, you know?

[00:23:41] Kaykay: And the author really is missing the beating heart of the book, which is the like, process. Right? The character's processing, us processing, that's the beating heart of the series. And when you lose the process conversations and action, you kind of lose the primary appeal of the book for me. Because I'm just like, I don't really want to be like reading about like 13 year olds smashing. This is not what I'm here for, you know. It's like, all that's left is plot and I'm like, as a kid, I would have been like "Next," you know, because that plot, as a little queer kid, would not have spoken to me.

[00:24:18] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:24:19] Kaykay: You know, so it's like, it's just supremely non satisfying to read.

[00:24:23] Brooke: Yeah. And I noticed when you're talking about the plot, that was something I noticed too, like with Kristy's chapter, it's like, "this happened and then this happened and then this happened," and I didn't care about any of it. You didn't just get to see things unfold.

And it was boring. Like, just a list of different things that I would see if I was watching Kristy babysit. That's not interesting. We're not here for the plot.

[00:24:48] Kaykay: Exactly.

[00:24:49] Brooke: We're here for the relationships. We're here for the realization, like...

[00:24:54] Kaykay: And the journey. You know, the journey of those realizations.

[00:24:58] Brooke: Yeah. So speaking of plots, how do we describe what happens in this book? You wanna take a crack at it?

[00:25:06] Kaykay: Mary Anne and Stacey go down to Sea City. They're yet again, "mother's helpers." They run into, well, I'm doing it just like the back cover copy, because the back cover copy is actually the most right on I've ever heard of back cover copy. Because it is just a plot book, you know? And then like Mary Anne is still dating Logan, but for some reason, like starts seeing Alex.

And there's no thoughts behind why she's doing that, if she should be doing that. She's just like, "Sure, let's, let's start dating." And she doesn't even think about, there's no process around that, which is very un-Mary Anne. Like she feels very, I mean, as much as we detest Logan, Mary Anne loves Logan.

[00:25:46] Brooke: Yeah, he's the love of her life, and she will always be true to him. She is 13 fucking years old.

[00:25:51] Kaykay: I know, it's fucked. And then Stacey is dating Toby again. We don't see a lot of that. The only real action we see around that is Stacey and Mary Anne fighting, because only one of them can go out and do their own thing once a week?

[00:26:09] Brooke: Which makes no sense. It makes literally no sense.

[00:26:12] Kaykay: But so they're fighting over it because they both want to like go out with their dates on the same nights. And I guess I'll just say also, everyone is such a dick in this book.

[00:26:22] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:26:23] Kaykay: I don't even recognize Stacey. She's just an asshole. So is Mary Anne, just like everybody's an asshole.

[00:26:30] Brooke: Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest problems with this book is, again, what are we here for? We're not here for the girls' dating adventures.

[00:26:40] Kaykay: Right.

[00:26:40] Brooke: If you think that's what the Baby-sitters Club readership is here for, you have completely misinterpreted the appeal of the Baby-sitters Club. We're here for the friendships. And we see none of that. The girls are all completely separated.

[00:26:58] Kaykay: And the only friendships have high confrontation. Like so disrespectful, high confrontation.

[00:27:04] Brooke: Well, and it's not even like, these aren't even friends. Like Stacey and Mary Anne, who by the way, are literally in a room with the yellow wallpaper. Did you notice that?

[00:27:16] Kaykay: No! Kate Chopin, shout out.

[00:27:21] Brooke: Yeah. It's very Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

[00:27:23] Kaykay: Oh, is that who wrote it?

[00:27:24] Brooke: Yeah. Kate Chopin was The Awakening, which also I can see one of them just walking out to sea. I see Mary Anne walking out into the sea.

[00:27:39] Kaykay: Dang. That's the only way this book could be saved, like a tragedy.

[00:27:44] Brooke: Everyone walks into the sea. I was about to walk into the sea, reading this.

[00:27:50] Kaykay: I would read that book. Everybody just shuffles off their heteronormative shackles by drowning themselves.

[00:28:01] Brooke: I mean, based on what you see in this book who wouldn't? Jesus.

[00:28:04] Kaykay: That's the best option.

[00:28:07] Brooke: Right. Yeah, because what I saw in this book for what they were fighting, is they're fighting their own autonomy in order to adhere to patriarchal heteronormative roles.

[00:28:19] Kaykay: Yeah, I had they're fighting the weight of heteronormativity.

[00:28:23] Brooke: Yeah. And I had the way that they're doing that is by manipulation, which we see with, I was really creeped out by the Vanessa Pike storyline.

[00:28:36] Kaykay: The secret admirer?

[00:28:37] Brooke: The nine year old secret admirer of, why is a 12 year old employed?

[00:28:43] Kaykay: Right? Like even in the nineties, you had to be 16, no?

[00:28:47] Brooke: Well, at least in my experience, you had to be 14.

[00:28:49] Kaykay: Okay.

[00:28:49] Brooke: Cause I was working at 14. Um, but you could only work until 9:00 PM on a school night. You could not be 12 years old working at an ice cream parlor and doing something with, what is a whipped cream machine? I, I have to know. I worked in ice cream, okay?

[00:29:08] Kaykay: Feeling a very like Lucille Bluth flavor to Mary Kennedy. Like, "It's a banana, Michael. How much could it cost, ten dollars?"

[00:29:17] Brooke: You know, the whipped cream machine that plugs into the wall. What? What the fuck are you talking about?

[00:29:23] Kaykay: Those chimney sweeps, the 12 year olds working ice cream parlors.

[00:29:27] Brooke: I like literally had to stop when I read about the whipped cream machine. Cause I was like, what is she fucking talking about? It made me so angry. So where Vanessa Pike is like writing these poems to a 12 year old boy that she thinks is cute that is working at the ice cream parlor, and she like creeps over there every day and like sneaks a new poem onto his, like the counter.

[00:29:54] Kaykay: Oh. And she knows that his comings and goings.

[00:29:57] Brooke: Yes!

[00:29:57] Kaykay: She knows when this kid goes on break.

[00:29:59] Brooke: His shifts.

[00:29:59] Kaykay: She's, she's stalking him.

[00:30:01] Brooke: She's totally stalking him. She's nine! I'm straight as fuck. I don't remember thinking boys were cute at nine. Boys are gross at nine! What are you talking about?

[00:30:10] Kaykay: I was wondering that. I really was, cause I was like, maybe this is just me being queer, but like, this feels weird and young to be behaving like this.

[00:30:20] Brooke: Yeah. And you would never like, every waking moment is going to be taken up by this boy who served me ice cream once.

[00:30:30] Kaykay: You know, and I think the book there, there is this sort of theme in the books of that kind of like love at first sight feeling. And how accurate is that? I gotta ask the straight person in the room.

[00:30:42] Brooke: So here's where I'm thinking that this book is super dangerous. Because it's speaking to something that you get sort of hit over the head, time and time again, but it was something that I didn't feel you got hit over the head with in this book series until this book, which is purity culture. And the valorization of like, you remain pure until you find the one. And then once you found the one, you're done.

That is your role as a straight girl. You are to remain chaste and pure until you have found the one that will protect you for the rest of your life. And then you devote yourself to that person and you never waiver. And that is a way of subjugating women. You know?

[00:31:35] Kaykay: Of course!

[00:31:36] Brooke: Like, you have no agency in that beyond withholding. And then when you choose to no longer withhold, you have to withhold yourself from everything and everyone else. And it's really fucking dangerous.

And I know that it's kind of rich coming from me, because I'm married to my high school boyfriend. But I am not holding myself up as an example of what should be considered the norm. I don't think that that should be normal. And I don't think that it's something, like, we are an exception and should be an exception to the rule, not the rule.

Like it just so happened to work out that way for us, but I think most people need to do a whole lot of experimenting, figuring out what they want, finding the right person. Most people are not going to find the right person for them at 16 or, for the love of God, if you're Mary Anne, 13.

[00:32:37] Kaykay: Yeah. And I think, you know, the important part too, is that there not be any rules. You know what I mean? That like all models are considered valid, because it totally depends on the people and the person and the circumstance. And even having a model that says like, "Oh, you got to do it this way. You got to do it that way." Even that eats into people's agency.

And that's the struggle of fucking heteronormativity. Like there's so many fucking rules and models, and they're constantly being argued. And it's exhausting.

[00:33:07] Brooke: And it requires you to shut off your own wants and needs, because you have been told by society, "This is what your wants and needs are. This is what is acceptable to be your wants and needs, and you got to find someone who fulfills that and you got to lock it down. And once that's done, you're done." Like, you can't change as a person, you can't grow as a person. You know? It's so, it's so limiting.

And then as an extension of that, this book was so focused on fucking segregation. It carries through in really creepy ways. Again, like looking at, where are the things that seem like asides that are actually not asides at all, that are giving you a really dangerous message?

Like with Jessi, when Jessi is babysitting her siblings and Charlotte Johannsen, and letting her one and a half year old brother go and hang out by himself in the kitchen for 20 minutes before checking in on him, like that's totally cool. And then she finds that he went and-

[00:34:12] Kaykay: Well, it's baby proofed.

[00:34:14] Brooke: Not baby proofed enough for him not to be able to get into the fucking hamster cage where, they are watching the Pike's hamster...

[00:34:20] Kaykay: Oh, they got off easy on that one. Jesus, Mary.

[00:34:23] Brooke: Yeah. And instead of him doing what would probably happen, which is like, let's be honest, killing the fucking hamster. If you got like a one and a half year old, just like, here you go, have fun with this hamster.

[00:34:33] Kaykay: Yeah, your meaty little one and a half hands. Come on.

[00:34:34] Brooke: It's not gonna know.

[00:34:35] Kaykay: You don't even have the hand dexterity to handle that thing without harming it.

[00:34:39] Brooke: Right. I'm trying to figure out how the fuck he carried it up the stairs without anyone noticing and put it in the hamster cage with their hamster. Because he was watching something on what seems like it was Sesame Street that was basically like, "What goes together? Things that are the same go together!" and so they were getting a lesson on how, like, "Does this go with that? No, that doesn't go with that, because it's different. Things are the same should be together and things that are different should stay apart." And he's like, oh, hamsters, the same, gotta take the hamster and put it in the other hamster cage.

I was so creeped out by that because I'm like, that's coming in a chapter about Jessi. And we know that she has been treated terribly, because she's black, by the people of Stoneybrook who are like, "You're different." And now they're watching a thing about how, like, things that are different should be kept apart and things that are the same should be kept together.

And I'm like, what the fuck is this? And then you've got the fact that like, boys and girls, if they are to interact, it must be in a romantic fashion. Like it can't be, like the potential for platonic friendship is not addressed until the very fucking end when Mary Anne-

[00:35:54] Kaykay: In a very like, strange weak way. Unclear way.

[00:35:58] Brooke: Yeah. And to me, that's something that I've always found so fucking gross. This concept of like, any sort of male, female relationships must have some sort of romantic component to them, because I think that's fucking horseshit.

[00:36:15] Kaykay: Yeah, of course.

[00:36:17] Brooke: And it really limits, you know, and there's a reason for that, right? It's, it's meant to uphold sort of patriarchal power structures. You know, if you've got the men in power having mutually rewarding friendships and learning from women, women could potentially take more power. And so you've got to make sure they stay subjugated by you are only really having romantic or familial relationships.

[00:36:42] Kaykay: Yeah. It's gotta be that the only access women get to that power structure is through a sexual channel.

[00:36:48] Brooke: Exactly.

[00:36:49] Kaykay: It can be through no other channel.

[00:36:51] Brooke: Right. Which puts Mary Anne in a difficult position, because even in this book, she likes Alex, but like in a friendly way, you know. But it's almost like you can't envision that it's possible to be friends with a boy, so she has to like get with the whole manipulation, secrecy, sort of lying by omission. Like, "Don't tell Logan that I'm hanging out with a boy, because he'll get really jealous. Because the only way that I could be interacting with a boy is if this was romantic."

And so instead of just being friends, they're like going out to fucking lobster dinners, what is this? They're going out to like fancy restaurants with like where they wear dresses. They're 13! What the fuck is happening?

This is the problem. Mary Lou Kennedy doesn't know kids. In this book, maybe she does now, I don't know. But this is so unrealistic. It's like, oh, they wouldn't go to the Burger Garden. We're going to a real restaurant. When you're 13, the Burger Garden is a real restaurant!

[00:37:53] Kaykay: Right. And like you have limited money to spend, right? Like you could go to the Burger Garden four times for the amount you're going to go once for a stupid lobster.

[00:38:02] Brooke: It made no sense.

[00:38:03] Kaykay: Yeah. I also get the feeling that, um, my guess too is, okay. So like rich people don't go down the shore. This is like not a thing, you know, they're going to go to the Hamptons. She's probably a little out of touch with what these characters are presented as socioeconomically.

[00:38:19] Brooke: Yeah. How the hell is a 13 year old on a babysitting gig, has enough money to take a girl that he met for a couple of days last year out for two fucking lobster dinners? What?

[00:38:33] Kaykay: He's just a baller like that.

[00:38:35] Brooke: What are you gonna do?

[00:38:35] Kaykay: It's Alex.

[00:38:36] Brooke: He's a baller mother's helper.

[00:38:38] Kaykay: He probably does get paid double, let's get real.

[00:38:40] Brooke: Cause he's a boy. Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:42] Kaykay: They're like, "Well, we're not going to pay him like what we pay the girls. Shit, he's gotta be taking girls out for lobster dinners. We gotta double it.

[00:38:49] Brooke: He was getting paid at least 30% more. We know what the pay gap is like.

[00:38:54] Kaykay: This is what the book could have been about! Shit!

[00:38:57] Brooke: Ah! Yeah, you get, you get no interaction. I don't know, it just felt like this was written by somebody who... I don't know. And it's like, it makes me wonder, are we getting more of this because we don't have a queer author? Sorry to make an assumption about Mary Lou Kennedy, but this book read a straight as fuck to me.

[00:39:21] Kaykay: I was just going to say like, as a queer person reading this, I was just like, "Hmm, not for me." You know, like I just wanted to put it down. I didn't engage with it as deeply as I engaged with any of the books. My partner and I have a joke about, any time there's something like super straight and like, for us, super lame on, we don't really like get mad about it. We just shrug and go, "Not for me." We change the channel. That was my impression of this book. I just shrugged and was like, "Not for me." To be honest, I just kind of read it as fast as I could. So yeah, like it lost the queer person in the room for sure.

[00:39:57] Brooke: It was also not for me, you know? And it made me angry because I'm like, You want this to be for me.

[00:40:04] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:40:05] Brooke: You know? Where I am the intended audience of this, and I'm angry about the message that you want to implant in my head.

[00:40:14] Kaykay: Right.

[00:40:14] Brooke: I see this. I see what you're doing, and I don't like it.

[00:40:18] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:40:18] Brooke: Um, and it made me doubly angry, because this was the book series where I went for escape from that horseshit.

[00:40:25] Kaykay: I was just going to say, and like for you, this was part of your life at a really seminal time and spoke to you so deeply when you were a kid, right? It's like what we were saying about Jim Henson and the little kid inside, right? Like, your kid really grew up on this. And so it must make you irate to feel that special thing be completely turned on its head in ways that are so like disappointing.

[00:40:53] Brooke: Yeah. And in much the same way that, you know, this felt like a subversion, just like we were talking about with like the way that comedy and rock music were subverted, they took something that was aimed at one audience and subverted it to deliver a completely different message, a harmful message, to that audience. I see that happening in this book.

[00:41:19] Kaykay: Especially after you've attained the trust.

[00:41:22] Brooke: Yes.

[00:41:22] Kaykay: Like you've, you've really attained the trust over time. And then, you know, and like, we're grownups. We can parse this and we can not let it in and we can understand like, why we're angry. But like a little kid, they're not going to be able to clock any of that, you know? And like, so that's, that could be really harmful.

[00:41:42] Brooke: Yeah. And I think it is. And I'm sure that, I know for a fact that I internalized a lot of this messaging.

[00:41:48] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:41:49] Brooke: I know for a fact that I did. And it takes a lot to get out of it and you have to be really alert and attuned to your own feelings and to the sort of cognitive dissonance that you might have with living in a world that doesn't feel like it is made to accommodate you. And not everybody is either equipped or desires to fight back against it, cause it's a lot. And that's why it's like, when I see those messages being implanted completely unnecessarily, it makes me all the more angry because it's like we already have to fight this battle everywhere else. Can I not fight it here too?

[00:42:37] Kaykay: Yeah, your like, special place.

[00:42:39] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:42:39] Kaykay: Your special, safe place.

[00:42:42] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:42:43] Kaykay: I hear that.

[00:42:44] Brooke: What I thought was really interesting. So as I'm thinking, I'm like, God, I wonder what Ann M thinks about this book, you know? As I'm reading, I'm like, what is her reaction to this shit?

[00:42:55] Kaykay: She had a little letter at the end, but it doesn't say much.

[00:42:59] Brooke: I thought it said a lot.

[00:43:01] Kaykay: Oh shit, tell me. Break it down.

[00:43:02] Brooke: So the copy that I have is the, I have the nineties version of this one, which has the letter at the end. And I think this is from Ann M, I think this really is her commentary. It says, "Dear reader, In Mary Anne and Too Many Boys, Mary Anne finds herself torn between Logan and Alex. In the end, she realizes that Logan is the boy for her. Many kids write to me saying they are concerned because they don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend." I love that she said, "or girlfriend," because she did not write books aimed at males. I love this. It's a minor thing, but I love it.

"While Mary Anne may be ready for a steady relationship, lots of kids her age are not." That again feels subversive because you see in this book, even nine-year-old Vanessa is looking for a steady relationship. Everyone in this book is looking for a steady relationship, so that feels subversive to me. "The truth is many kids feel more comfortable being a friend instead of a boyfriend or girlfriend, like Mary Anne and Alex, or Kristy and Bart."

[00:44:05] Kaykay: Yes, I saw that!

[00:44:08] Brooke: Yes! Settling the fucking argument once and for all. Bart is not her boyfriend!

[00:44:18] Kaykay: Kristy and Too Many Beards.

[00:44:20] Brooke: Right! Um, so she's saying that like, it's okay to have friends of the opposite sex. "Sometimes knowing when you're ready for a relationship can be confusing. The most important thing is always to do what feels right for you." That should have been the foundation of this book.

[00:44:43] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:44:43] Brooke: It was not the foundation of this book. It should have been, honestly, you could have the same plot with some super fucking minor tweaks. Mary Anne, she knows that she just wants to be friends with Alex. And they're fine with that, and they're having to deal with perhaps some of the outside bullshit of people being like, "Oh, you're being disloyal to Logan" or something.

And you can see her like writing letters, just being like, "Hey, this is my friend Alex." And maybe Logan gets jealous and she explains, "No, we're just friends," and it's about getting people to understand that having friends of the opposite sex is perfectly good and normal and fucking encouraged.

That would be a really, really good book. And it could be like, it's "too many boys" because people are telling her that she's involved with too many boys. And she's like, "No, no, no, no, no. I have my boyfriend, and then I have my boys who are friends." Like that would have been a really healthy message and something that I would have appreciated as a kid. I had, especially when I was like in high school and stuff, I had periods of time where most of my friends were boys. I know you had the same thing.

[00:45:50] Kaykay: Yeah, I would say, until high school, I exclusively hung out with boys. I mean, I had some female friends, but my close friends were all boys.

[00:45:58] Brooke: And there, I can't think of representations of that, broad representations of that, in culture. Especially not in books, you know?

[00:46:08] Kaykay: Definitely not.

[00:46:09] Brooke: Like, can we get an exploration of that?

[00:46:11] Kaykay: Yeah. And you know, it's funny, I'm glad you brought up this letter. I'm glad you read it because as you're reading it, I'm thinking, you know, she's never put lessons in those follow-up letters. Those follow-up letters are very, uh, like neutral usually. And she'll be like, "Yeah, I wrote it because of this." And it'll be some sort of neutral, like, "Because I like this," or "I'm interested in this."

This is the first letter where she's explicitly putting lessons in the letter. Almost as if she read the book and was like, "Ooh, let me, uh..."

[00:46:43] Brooke: Oh, I think she read the book and was like, "Ew." I very much think that.

[00:46:46] Kaykay: "Let me fix this up here."

[00:46:48] Brooke: Yeah. I'm convinced that that's deliberate.

[00:46:51] Kaykay: Okay, so you also mentioned the scene where Mary Anne and Alex are, it's their, it's their final date. And somehow they get to this realization that they should just be friends. I think it's on their final date, but anyway, they hit this realization finally that they should just be friends. Then all of a sudden things become comfortable and easy again, but it feels forced.

And it almost feels like an editor came in and said, "Hey, what if this is how this resolves?" you know, because there's no arc towards that resolution. It's just, you know, this kind of gross, like heteronormative shit, and then that just kind of walks through the door. So I wonder if an admin came in and was like, "Well, what if we added this piece?"

[00:47:34] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:47:34] Kaykay: You know, just to like salvage it a little bit.

[00:47:36] Brooke: Right. So that Mary Anne can still go back to Logan being "pure," but really it's so much worse what she did. Like, "I'm going to keep it secret and I'm doing this on like the down low," as opposed to being like, "Hey, I'm just going out for dinner with my friend."

[00:47:52] Kaykay: Right. In her mind, it's a date.

[00:47:54] Brooke: Right! So like she is sort of like mentally cheating on Logan.

[00:47:57] Kaykay: She is so strongly on a date in her mind, yeah.

[00:47:59] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:00] Kaykay: And that's the thing is I get, it just seems, uh, it just doesn't seem realistic either. Uh, you, you would really think somebody would have to like, okay, I could believe it if she was going to lie to herself and basically be like, "Oh, it's just friends." And it's more, that seems more typical for like how a human mind works.

[00:48:17] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:48:18] Kaykay: Than like, "I'm just going to consider this a date. I'm not going to tell Logan. I'm going to vaguely feel bad about it."

[00:48:24] Brooke: Yeah, that wouldn't be like a Mary Anne thing. Cause Mary Anne, of all of them, is the most sort of like, moralistic.

[00:48:31] Kaykay: And sensitive!

[00:48:32] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:48:33] Kaykay: In her own feelings and also sensitive to pick up other's feelings and not wish to hurt them.

[00:48:40] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, you could see maybe Stacey doing this, but not Mary Anne.

[00:48:46] Kaykay: Right.

[00:48:46] Brooke: You know? It's just not... yeah. This author doesn't know, she doesn't know the characters and she doesn't know us.

[00:48:55] Kaykay: Yeah, I love that "she doesn't know us." I feel like that's really insightful and, you know, really like resonates with me deeply. And I think that's exactly what made me just kind of want to turn away from it.

[00:49:10] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:49:10] Kaykay: That feeling of like, Hmm. Not, not feeling seen by the author.

[00:49:15] Brooke: Yeah. It was very disjointed. She comes across to me as an authority figure rather than a confidant. That's the difference to me. It's like, "Why, you ask, did we decide to meet in Claudia's room? Because blah, blah, blah."

And it's like, I didn't ask that. You're coming through and you're just like telling me things and you're not letting me see things unfold. You're not letting me figure it out. You're not letting me into how you're feeling. You think you know what I'm thinking, and so you're telling me, like, I felt like the author was trying to manipulate me and I didn't like it. I, I felt like I had to resist that at all times.

[00:49:53] Kaykay: Yeah, definitely. And it makes me think also that the larger team that is sort of putting out this book possibly doesn't even know what they have. Like they don't know how subversive the book is and they don't know the depth of the book series. They're just, "Oh, it's a kids book series that sells like gangbusters. Let's keep crapping them out."

And possibly no one even knows or talks about how unique, subversive, and ahead of its time the book is, because when they give it over to another author, it gets completely lost. So it makes me think that's really coming from Ann M's heart and soul, and possibly her management team is not clear.

[00:50:40] Brooke: Yeah, I'm hoping, fortunately, we only get one other book ghost written by this author. I hope we get another queer voice for a ghost writer.

[00:50:50] Kaykay: That'd be dope.

[00:50:50] Brooke: I think we need that. I think we need a voice of somebody who feels like they don't fit into the norm, and are writing for kids who feel that they don't fit into the norm. As opposed to a writer who is like, "I'm very much in the norm, and here's what you should be thinking and feeling." That's what I got from this one.

[00:51:11] Kaykay: Yeah. That's like all fucking books. We don't need that.

[00:51:14] Brooke: We do not need that shit at all.

[00:51:16] Kaykay: Mary Lou, ya basic!

[00:51:20] Brooke: You're basic and you're weird. Like, what is it with the whole "Stacey's skin looks like maple sugar" and like...

[00:51:28] Kaykay: Holy shit!

[00:51:29] Brooke: "Logan's voice sounds like molasses?" She's very focused on dark colored sweeteners as a metaphor.

[00:51:36] Kaykay: Maybe she was dieting.

[00:51:36] Brooke: Oh, maybe! It is 1990.

[00:51:38] Kaykay: Mary Lou is hungry. I bet that answers everything, she's hungry.

[00:51:44] Brooke: Basically so much of what happened in 1990...

[00:51:47] Kaykay: Was women being hungry.

[00:51:49] Brooke: Women were hungry, yes.

[00:51:51] Kaykay: I know.

[00:51:51] Brooke: So much of it. Maybe that explains Mallory's night terrors, which again, where it's just like, oh, Vanessa is very used to Mallory waking up in the middle of the night shouting and then Vanessa has to go over and push her down.

[00:52:06] Kaykay: What the fuck was that?

[00:52:09] Brooke: I don't know, I don't want to live in this world. This is like, it's like, this is what, everyone is in the yellow wallpaper. Everyone in this book is living in the yellow wallpaper. I want out!

[00:52:23] Kaykay: The author's hungry and she's had too much bad coffee. That's my read.

[00:52:26] Brooke: Yes.

[00:52:27] Kaykay: Maybe she's on Dexatrim. This is Dextatrim terrors.

[00:52:28] Brooke: Gotta watch out for that diet speed. That over the counter, legal diet speed that makes you make bad decisions, including in your prose. Speaking of diet speed, what did you have for most nineties moments?

[00:52:43] Kaykay: Um, first, there was an amazing description of Stacey's outfit. "Stacey looked very New York, as usual, in a pair of khaki safari pants, topped with a jungle print blouse and a leather belt that must've cost two months allowance! Stacey's a real city girl." Something about that was very like Troop Beverly Hills.

[00:53:07] Brooke: It's also very like, "It's a Chico's kind of day." That doesn't seem very New York.

[00:53:12] Kaykay: Not at all!

[00:53:14] Brooke: That's seems Midwestern Mom, like at a PTA mixer or some shit.

[00:53:21] Kaykay: Yeah. But like something about that, the khaki safari pants, felt nineties. Felt very Troop Beverly Hills.

[00:53:27] Brooke: Yeah. It felt very "Banana Republic is new and fancy."

[00:53:30] Kaykay: Oh, my God. You remember when Banana Republic actually just sold great fucking shit? It was like outdoor gear.

[00:53:36] Brooke: It was like safari-esque, right?

[00:53:39] Kaykay: Yes, and like, the quality was very good and you could wear it outside and they wouldn't get holes in it. You know, it was just very rugged shit before it became so bougie-fied.

[00:53:49] Brooke: Yeah, we never had it, so I never encountered it in that time. I think Banana Republic came to Iowa, maybe in like the 2000s at some point. It was not a thing we were exposed to. But I've heard stories.

[00:54:01] Kaykay: Well it was perfect for a teenage lesbian. Cause it was just all sensible rugged outdoor gear.

[00:54:09] Brooke: Nice.

[00:54:10] Kaykay: Lots of pockets on those pants. You know lesbians, we love our pockets. Sensible hats, easy going button downs that were comfortable...it was good..

[00:54:20] Brooke: Banana Republic, the store for lesbians. Let's bring it back.

[00:54:24] Kaykay: Only in the 90s.

[00:54:26] Brooke: Can we reboot Banana Republic?

[00:54:28] Kaykay: For lesbians?

[00:54:29] Brooke: Yeah. I'm very excited by the prospect of this.

[00:54:34] Kaykay: We'll make a million dollars.

[00:54:35] Brooke: Sweet.

[00:54:37] Kaykay: And then my second was postcards, which I think we've done before, but sending postcards when you go on vacation, cause you're going to be gone for a whole two weeks. So what did you have?

[00:54:48] Brooke: I had a coupon drawer. Mary Anne talks about how Dawn's mom put a tomato in the coupon drawer. There was a lot of, I didn't like, there's a lot of Sharon shade in this. Mary Anne is kind of talking mad shit about Sharon and her like ADHD. Dawn's mom is my ADHD queen, okay? I feel a very strong affinity for her.

She is trying, Mary Anne. She's trying, and all you're doing is talking at every opportunity that you can about how disorganized she is. So whatever, but yeah, the coupon drawer where you would clip physical coupons and save them. You know, you had to have a place to keep your coupons and organize them. Did you do this as well? Was there a coupon drawer in your household?

[00:55:33] Kaykay: My parents didn't, but my aunt did. She was huge into coupons. I think there might've been two coupon drawers.

[00:55:39] Brooke: Yeah. I remember like Sunday mornings with a newspaper, clipping coupons with my mom. Still to this day, I'm just like, if I get coupons in the mail, I am looking through all of those coupons. Do I need a coupon? I do not need a coupon. Do I want a coupon? And will I use one? Yes, but I don't have a drawer.

[00:55:57] Kaykay: Brings you back.

[00:55:58] Brooke: Yeah, it brings me back. And then the whole like picking out tapes to take on vacation.

[00:56:04] Kaykay: Yeah!

[00:56:04] Brooke: You had to pack your tapes. You know, you had to like-

[00:56:06] Kaykay: Obviously you're going to pack the Cocktail soundtrack.

[00:56:08] Brooke: Oh, always the Cocktail soundtrack.

[00:56:09] Kaykay: And hopefully Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you had it by this point now.

[00:56:12] Brooke: No, it went back.

[00:56:14] Kaykay: So two Cocktail tapes. You just bring the two.

[00:56:16] Brooke: Well, we're going to get pretty close to where I had the very first MTV Party to Go. And that went fucking everywhere with me. Yeah, so all of those things were very nineties. And then we had the reappearance of the Sun-Lite. You know, the Sun-In.

[00:56:31] Kaykay: Oh right, putting Sun-In in your hair.

[00:56:33] Brooke: Yeah, Stacey does that. And Stacey is our narrator for the next episode. We will not have Mary Lou Kennedy being her voice, fortunately. Um, cause it was bad enough with Mary Anne. This woman in Stacey's head? No. I'm saying no.

[00:56:53] Kaykay: No!

[00:56:54] Brooke: I can't testify as to what flavor of Stacey we do get, but we won't get the Maple Sugar Stacey that we get in this book, and I am very happy with that. So our next book is Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook.

[00:57:10] Kaykay: Ooh, another mystery!

[00:57:12] Brooke: Another mystery.

[00:57:13] Kaykay: What could it be?

[00:57:14] Brooke: I don't know, but I am looking forward to finding out and discussing it with you next time, Kaykay.

[00:57:22] Kaykay: Me too, my friend. Hopefully it will be a palate cleanser from Turds On the Ocean.

[00:57:28] Brooke: Right, we'll take a Mentos from the turds. Hopefully the next one will be a freshmaker. So we will find out in our next episode. Until then...

[00:57:38] Kaykay: Just keeps sittin'! [THEME] Fucking nineties. Fuck off.