Transcript - BSFC Super Special #1: Baby-sitters on Board!
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 Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel.
Kaykay Brady: 0:29
And I'm Kaykay Brady! I just worked out! Can you tell?
Brooke Suchomel: 0:33
Yeah, I love that. Bringing that fierce energy to our first Super Special. Super special energy for a super special book.
Kaykay Brady: 0:44
It's super Super Special energy. It reminds me of Fargo, "You're such a super lady."
Brooke Suchomel: 0:50
You are a super lady.
Kaykay Brady: 0:51
You are a super lady, my friend Brooke!
Brooke Suchomel: 0:56
Aww, well that's a lovely start as we head back to July 1988. This was an interesting month for music. So the number one songs for that month included Cheap Trick's "The Flame," and the theme to my freshman prom, which was Richard Marx's "Hold on to the Nights."
Kaykay Brady: 1:04
Damn.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:04
Anytime I hear that song I think about, and here's why I know that, like, who remembers prom themes? Nobody remembers prom themes. Who gives a shit about prom themes?
Kaykay Brady: 1:25
You think?
Brooke Suchomel: 1:26
Or do you remember your prom theme?
Kaykay Brady: 1:29
I never went to prom. Well, when I was a junior, maybe, but I don't think rich boarding schools do themes. They think that's low class or something.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:37
Well, they're right.
Kaykay Brady: 1:39
Correct! You fuckin' snobs. You fuckin' Massachusetts snobs, good job.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:46
Or, I mean, they wouldn't be right if there were like cool options, but they're never cool. They're always so lame, e.g. "Hold on to the Nights."
Kaykay Brady: 1:56
Okay, what would be a cool option? Like, Golden Girls.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:58
Yeah, "Thank You for Being a Friend" would be an amazing prom theme.
Kaykay Brady: 1:59
Yeah! The straight people would be so fucking mad. Except for you. Except for the very cool ones.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:08
Oh my god, just let the gays plan prom. Okay? That's the problem. Who plans prom? It's like the preppy kids. No. Give prom to the gays.
Kaykay Brady: 2:21
You got to let the gay men do the event planning, and then you need the lesbians to do sort of all the school policy. It's like Bob the Drag Queen, when they had that episode where they're running for office, and Bob was like, "My whole platform is developed by lesbians. So you know it's gonna work."
Brooke Suchomel: 2:42
Right, "platforms" in every sense of the word, right? Like, your principles, and then also the structure. Like the set construction, hand that over to the lesbians.
Kaykay Brady: 2:52
No doubt about it.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:53
I mean, obviously. Yeah, so my friends were trying to get Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize..."
Kaykay Brady: 3:01
Yeah, that's a million times better.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:03
It was two middle fingers that the whole concept of a prom theme. So it's like, if it has to be a prom theme, let's go with "Cum On Feel the Noize." And no, it was "Hold on to the Nights."
Kaykay Brady: 3:15
Barfarama. I'm so sorry.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:17
Thank you.
Kaykay Brady: 3:17
Did you hide in the bathroom again?
Brooke Suchomel: 3:20
No.
Kaykay Brady: 3:21
You made it out of the bathroom?
Brooke Suchomel: 3:22
I made it out of the bathroom and into prom. Although, I mean, prom is lame.
Kaykay Brady: 3:28
It's very lame.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:29
Is anybody not sorely disappointed by prom?
Kaykay Brady: 3:32
Yeah, it really gets built up into this nonsense. And here's the real bummer about when you go to boarding school, you go to prom on like a yellow bird bus. And you're not allowed to go on your own.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:43
That doesn't sound like something that boarding school kids would like.
Kaykay Brady: 3:49
It might be a fancy bus. But you know, basically you're not allowed to drive, you're not allowed to go on your own. They're so anal about drinking, so it's basically, everybody goes on to one of these stupid buses and it's not even a party bus.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:01
So it's like forced fun prom. It's like an outing that you have if you're at like a sales meeting in business, but like, everybody has to go in dresses.
Kaykay Brady: 4:10
That's a very good metaphor. And so I went to my junior year prom, but I did not go to my senior, because I was like, "...no." Also, the rule was, if you got caught drinking at prom, you were immediately expelled. That was another bummer, I would rather just go drink in the woods. I was like, I can stay here and get drunk, or go there and risk getting expelled for a complete nonsense event where I have to wear a dress. The calculation is easy.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:34
I see how the math worked out for you. Woods it is.
Kaykay Brady: 4:38
Anyway, Richard Marx. "Hold on to the Nights." A young Brooke Suchomel...
Brooke Suchomel: 4:42
...being disappointed while listening to "Hold on to the Nights." Yeah, but July '88 was also a big month for hair metal, with both Poison's "Nuthin' but a Good Time" and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me."
Kaykay Brady: 4:58
Classiques.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:00
I was waiting for the moment when these two would appear. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's first charting single, "Parents Just Don't Understand" peaked this month at number 12.
Kaykay Brady: 5:11
Sweet.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:12
So music was fun that month, as was the movies. There's something for everybody out in the theater in July '88. First of all, we had the re-release of Bambi. It was the last time it was in the theater. This is when Disney used to re-release their old movies because this was before The Little Mermaid and when they had this renaissance.
Kaykay Brady: 5:33
Started doing new content.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:34
Well, they were doing new content. It's just nobody was really watching it.
Kaykay Brady: 5:37
I see. It was just crap.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:41
Or not even crap, but not like...like, Oliver and Company is not considered on the same level as The Little Mermaid. Billy Joel soundtrack or not.
Kaykay Brady: 5:50
I don't even know what it is.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:51
It was Oliver, but redone with like, the concept is it's like stray cats, I think.
Kaykay Brady: 5:57
Strong concept.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:58
But Billy Joel had a song, "Why Should I Worry"...
Kaykay Brady: 6:02
"You're a cat! And you're stray. And you're living on the streets!" Is that what the song was?
Brooke Suchomel: 6:11
No, but I like it. And then a movie that I think everybody in our generation watched on a Saturday afternoon in their friend's living room, License to Drive, with the two Coreys was released. That was an HBO staple.
Kaykay Brady: 6:26
I don't remember that one so much. I don't know why.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:30
It was about getting a license to drive. Does that ring a bell?
Kaykay Brady: 6:34
Yeah, sort of.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:36
The two Coreys getting a license to drive. Then also this month, we had Big Top Pee Wee.
Kaykay Brady: 6:42
Ah, yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:44
Die Hard, which hopefully this will resolve the question of, "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?"
Kaykay Brady: 6:49
I was just gonna say!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:52
Do you think Die Hard is a Christmas movie?
Kaykay Brady: 6:53
I don't think of it that way, frankly.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:55
Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
Kaykay Brady: 6:57
We're taking a strong stance here folks.
Brooke Suchomel: 6:59
It's like, because it takes place around Christmas makes it a Christmas movie? Christmas does not factor into this movie, which was released in July of 1988. No. It's a summer blockbuster that just so happens to be set at Christmas time. Stop with the nonsense. And then Cocktail. Cocktail came out this month, so prepare for that soundtrack to take over in future episodes when we talk about the music.
Kaykay Brady: 7:28
Was Elisabeth Shue in this?
Brooke Suchomel: 7:30
She sure was.
Kaykay Brady: 7:31
I had such a crush on Elisabeth Shue. I mean, it hurt. It was painful. In The Karate Kid, especially because in The Karate Kid, she plays soccer on the beach. And like you can tell she actually knows how to play soccer. And ah, did I have a crush.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:45
She was in so many 80s classics. She was everywhere at this time.
Kaykay Brady: 7:53
And she was a perfect 80s girl because she was sort of blonde and vaguely Swedish looking.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:58
But also had that like Girl Next Door quality...
Kaykay Brady: 8:01
Down to earth.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:02
...that was held up for the 80s which, you know, was why he was so traumatized. Tom Cruise couldn't hang with the fact that she was wealthy. That her parents were wealthy.
Kaykay Brady: 8:15
I forgot this plot. What is the plot? The plot is that he can't date her because she has too much money?
Brooke Suchomel: 8:20
No, that it's, it's...it's... Yeah. You're like, "Not worth it." Yeah. Cocktail is a stupid movie with a great soundtrack. That's the takeaway. Cocktail has such a great soundtrack that I had two copies of it. So, I had like a tornado kit. So it was, what do I grab to take down into the basement with me, when the sirens go?
Kaykay Brady: 8:47
Both copies of Cocktail.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:50
One copy was in the tornado kit. So I had two copies of Cocktail, one of the copies was ready to go at any time, and then I played the other one.
Kaykay Brady: 9:01
What else was in your tornado kit?
Brooke Suchomel: 9:04
I don't remember. I mean, definitely books.
Kaykay Brady: 9:06
Just Cocktail, it's all you remember.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:10
Books. Probably one of my brass bunnies. I don't frickin know. And then the Cocktail soundtrack was kind of the centerpiece of the tornado kit. Like, I couldn't imagine living a life, like, would a post tornado existence be worth it without the Cocktail soundtrack? No. It would not.
Kaykay Brady: 9:31
Does that mean you were gonna bring a boombox, too, down there?
Brooke Suchomel: 9:34
Well, no.
Kaykay Brady: 9:36
You were just gonna praise the tape with no playing mechanism. It's just a shrine to Cocktail tape.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:42
Right? I was just gonna like, I don't know, get a pencil and then just like wind it really fast and put my ear up to it. I don't know. I don't know, I didn't think that
Kaykay Brady: 9:53
For our younger listeners, that did not work. far. Couldn't do that. Somebody's gonna try that now.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:59
I will not be held responsible. On TV, Family Feud returned to daytime TV. So if you watched Family Feud lead into The Price Is Right in the summer, because you were an indoor kid in the summer, this is when Family Feud was back on your screen. So that's exciting. And we had the first ever Shark Week.
Kaykay Brady: 10:20
Oh, that long ago?
Brooke Suchomel: 10:22
Shark Week's been around for this long. Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 10:24
Damn!
Brooke Suchomel: 10:25
So that's what was going on in July 88. And the very first Baby-sitters Club Super Special, Baby-sitters on Board, was released. So it's time for some back cover copy, and I quote, "Guess who's going on a dream vacation? The Baby-sitters, of course! Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia and Dawn are the luckiest baby-sitters in the world. This summer, they're going on the greatest trip ever: a plane ride to Florida, a boat trip around the Bahamas, and then three days of fun — in Disney World! Of course, they have a million adventures. Claudia gets notes from a mysterious ‘Secret Admirer.' Kristy, Mary Anne and Stacey make some unusual new friends. Dawn has her first real romance. And they still have time for what they like best of all — baby-sitting!" That's loaded. End quote. So the Super Specials are really different from the regular series title . They're longer. The typical Baby-sitters Club book is around 150 pages, while this particular book, Baby-sitters on Board, is 224 pages. And instead of being told from a single character's perspective, each of the Baby-sitters, and in this book, also Karen Brewer and Byron Pike, take turns narrating each chapter. And in the future, you'll see that most of the Super Specials also take place outside of Stoneybrook, like this book does, so you get to see how the group dynamics change in a different environment.
Kaykay Brady: 11:57
When do they go to Vegas?
Brooke Suchomel: 12:01
I don't think that happens, but we get an outing to New York.
Kaykay Brady: 12:05
Ooh, I can't wait for that! Oh, I'm gonna make all these guesses about what they're gonna do.
Brooke Suchomel: 12:11
And they also will come to California, so I think that both of those will really resonate with you. But this is very different. And also, just to set the context, even though this book comes after Stacey has moved back to New York, and Mallory and Jessi have joined the Baby-sitters Club, this exists in a world where none of those things have happened. So we have sort of exited the space time continuum, once we go into the Super Specials, and Stacey is still here, and Mallory is just a sitting charge and all of that.
Kaykay Brady: 12:49
Yeah, it definitely made me wonder, you know, when was this written? And why was this written? I kind of thought maybe this was written just so that Ann M. could get a free comped vacation to Disney World.
Brooke Suchomel: 12:59
Oh, I have a whole theory on why this book was written. I have a big theory on why this book was written.
Kaykay Brady: 13:05
Because I was perplexed the whole time.
Brooke Suchomel: 13:07
Yeah, there's little cues. And then there's one line in particular that I was like, Oh shit, that explains that. We'll get into it.
Kaykay Brady: 13:15
I can't wait.
Brooke Suchomel: 13:16
So with all of the context in mind about how this book differs from the usual Baby-sitters Club book reading experience, how did this Super Special reading experience resonate with you, Kaykay?
Kaykay Brady: 13:29
It was kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, I found it kind of harder to read, because I found the bouncing around every chapter to a new perspective to be almost confusing, even as an adult reading the book. I just found it hard to keep up. So that was just kind of frustrating and hard. But it also had this interesting way of really personifying something that I think the book was showing really well, which is just what it's like to be that age, going someplace cool. Just the frenetic, you know, "What's this? What's that? Oh my God! A squirrel! Ah, I want this! Ah, I wanna go to the castle!" So I felt like that, I felt frenetic. I felt like a 10 year old because I didn't know whether to shit or go blind. I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Who the fuck is talking? What is happening?
Brooke Suchomel: 14:24
That's kind of like the experience of being on a cruise, do you shit or go blind? One of the two is going to happen, at least.
Kaykay Brady: 14:34
So it was mixed. How about you?
Brooke Suchomel: 14:37
Yeah. In so many of the other books there is actually like a depth there. There is something more meaningful that is available. That is not the case in this book. There's really no depth to this book, with one exception, which I think is Ann M. Martin's commentary on being forced to write this book by her publisher. That's what came through to me. Normally we would get into it, we would, as we do with all of the books, look at it through the lens of like, What is the deeper theme here? Again, as I mentioned in the first episode, I really see that plot sort of exists to demonstrate conflict, and the ultimate resolution, or perhaps lack thereof of a resolution of conflict. You can't really do that, there's no overarching tie in this book. There's no real lesson to learn. This particular book doesn't really have any depth. It's very light, fluffy, surface level at best, because you aren't just in one character's head for 15 plus chapters. Like you said, you're jumping all around. And so it reminded me of the sixth book, which is Kristy's Big Day, where we talked about how it was kind of just all plot. That's what this book was, to me. It's just like, it's just sort of going through the motions. This book felt almost like Ann M. Martin was doing an experiment or something.
Kaykay Brady: 16:07
Yeah. And it kind of made it a little bit, in my opinion, harder to read, because it's really those kind of themes and the deeper things that draw me in and make me want to turn the page. It was just so much description of Disney World. Like I said, clearly, she had just gone to Disney World, and or did a trip to Disney World knowing she was writing this book, because the level of detail is just so spot on and so deep, and it's really boring to read.
Brooke Suchomel: 16:39
And so, like, "Here's why Disney World is fun." So the original version of this that came out, it just said Super Special. It wasn't like Super Special Number One, it was just Super Special. So it doesn't seem like this was necessarily planned to be a recurring thing in the way it ends up becoming, but it had on the cover, "Win a trip to Disney World."
Kaykay Brady: 17:06
What?!
Brooke Suchomel: 17:07
Yeah, so it was pretty obvious cross promotion. So whereas normally, what we would talk about would be, "Here's what they're fighting," the characters, there's nothing that deep, since it's all sort of surface level. But I think actually Ann M. Martin is fighting her publisher sort of forcing, like, "You have to write a book that's basically an advertisement for Disney World and associated cruises." And the reason why I think that is because the framing of this book is that there are 23 people who go on this trip. It's like the entire goddamn Baby-sitters Club, and all of the Pike kids, and everyone in Kristy's new blended family. They're all on this trip together.
Kaykay Brady: 17:58
Yeah, it would have cost like $100,000 or something insane.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:02
An obscene amount of money. And so it's established that the reason why this trip is even instigated in the first place is that Mr. Pike wins a contest to name a product at work. And so his reward for naming a product is his entire family gets sent on a vacation. And this is a man with eight children, right?
Kaykay Brady: 18:26
Correct.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:27
So obviously, it's nonsense. And then the Pikes call back to Boy-Crazy Stacey. They want Mary Anne and Stacey to come and be, you know, quote unquote, "mother's helpers" on this trip. And then when Kristy mentions it to Watson and mentions that she's never been anywhere outside of Connecticut before, Watson is like, "I'll take you and I'll take the entire family on this exact same trip. And we can't possibly let any of your friends not go along, so I will pay for Dawn and Claudia to come as well." It's a silly premise, and is underlined by the fact that Mr. Pike is a corporate lawyer. No corporate lawyer is winning a branding competition.
Kaykay Brady: 19:23
They're corporate lawyers and an ad agency!
Brooke Suchomel: 19:26
Right, right. Perhaps, sure, but it's unlikely. To me, that actually read as a bit of a dig.
Kaykay Brady: 19:34
From Ann M?
Brooke Suchomel: 19:35
From Ann M. Like, kind of the last person in any organization who's going to win a branding competition is going to come from Legal. So it was like, "Okay, is that like a little bit of shade thrown by Ann M. Martin?" And then when The Mayor of Casterbridge comes up, as this book that, you know, just sort of jumping ahead a little bit, that Kristy's friend...
Kaykay Brady: 20:02
Yeah, I don't know the book.
Brooke Suchomel: 20:05
It's a book by Thomas Hardy. So I was a Victorianist, both in undergrad and in graduate school, and so I have read The Mayor of Casterbridge. And like, it's not a fun book to read, kind of in the same way that this book is not the most fun book to read in terms of having a cohesive narrative experience. It is widely considered to be sort of scattershot. There's too much crammed into The Mayor of Casterbridge, because like a lot of books at that time, it was written in a serialized form. And so every chapter had to have a cliffhanger. Because these books weren't even books initially, right? They were these serialized, you would get like a broadsheet that you would pay a penny for. And you'd get a chapter and then you're kind of like, "Okay, what's the next chapter?" They want you to pay for the next chapter of this book, which will ultimately come together into a book, but before that people are reading it just a chapter at a time, and they're paying for the privilege to do so.
Kaykay Brady: 21:10
Yeah, and it definitely changes the cohesion of a book in tremendous ways to write it like that.
Brooke Suchomel: 21:16
And this is super common at the time.
Kaykay Brady: 21:20
Yeah, Dickens was like that, too, right?
Brooke Suchomel: 21:22
Yeah, a lot of works that we consider to be like classics of Victorian literature were serialized works of fiction. But The Mayor of Casterbridge sort of was coming along at the later end, I believe it's from 1886, and it's just kind of considered to be just like, "You just had way too much crammed in there." So it's an odd book to mention, because it's not necessarily a book that people would know.
Kaykay Brady: 21:47
Yeah, not at all.
Brooke Suchomel: 21:48
I don't think anybody would really know the book, particularly in America, unless you were a Victorianist, which is not a huge field, particularly, you know, looking at Thomas Hardy in particular. So when I saw The Mayor of Casterbridge, I was like, Oh, Ann M. Martin is casting shade on the book that I'm reading right now, and this book is clearly Marketing's idea. So that's what I'm reading. The characters aren't fighting shit, but Ann M. Martin is fighting with her publisher, and the tool that she's using to fight is by making a book that is as convoluted as The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Kaykay Brady: 22:21
Literary shade!
Brooke Suchomel: 22:23
Literary shade.
Kaykay Brady: 22:24
What a great theory. You know, it's funny, because we both picked up that something felt strange, odd and different, and that there were ulterior motives somehow. And I think your theory's right on.
Brooke Suchomel: 22:38
I could be completely wrong. This could be Ann M. Martin's idea 100%. She could be super passionate about this book, and saw The Mayor of Casterbridge as something for her to aspire to, with this particular framing.
Kaykay Brady: 22:52
Stick to your guns.
Brooke Suchomel: 22:53
Yeah, but I would put money on the other way. And the way that this particular book is framed, as a way to sort of like, bring it all together, to explain the strange construction of it that deviates so strongly from every Baby-sitters Club book that came before it, is that the premise is that this is a thank you gift that all of the kids have put together as a gift to the parents who took them on this journey. So in the first chapter, again, there's always some sort of framing that is kind of presented as the problem to solve. Strangely, Kristy's like, "We need to figure out what to get them as a thank you." And it's like, well, we know that what you get them is this, because it's stated at the very beginning of this book. And so it's a little strange that it's not until like chapter 22, and there are 23 chapters, or 24 chapters, I guess, although chapter 24 is just a very brief epilogue, it's where they decide like, "I know what to give them." And this is Claudia's idea, ultimately. So Claudia is like, "We're gonna put together albums full of photos of the trip and of their kids. We've all been taking pictures, I bet we've got tons of great shots. We can organize the albums to show everything from boarding the Ocean Princess to our last day here at Disney World. And then we can write about the trip, a sort of diary to go with the pictures." And so, you know, the premise is that it's after the trip has taken place, and the kids are all sort of writing their recollections. And obviously, this is not how children would write, you know, they wouldn't be this detailed in their recollections, whatever, but it's the premise. And the pictures that are included, you see theoretical examples of what they're including, and there wasn't a whole lot of effort that went in.
Kaykay Brady: 24:45
It's like clipart. It basically looks like clipart.
Brooke Suchomel: 24:49
Yeah. The one that immediately comes to mind is, Stacey mentions that while she's watching Claire Pike, they're in their cabin on the cruise, the boat is rocking side to side, a lot things are flying through the air, and they take a picture of a banana that is flying through the air. And it's just like a picture of a really rough outline of a banana. And then it has like little like motion signs, where it looks like it's like, "Weeeee!"
Kaykay Brady: 25:23
"I'm a flying banana!"
Brooke Suchomel: 25:26
So that's why I'm like, Man, this whole thing feels half assed to me, and like, intentionally half assed.
Kaykay Brady: 25:35
I feel bad throwing some shade on this book, but it was boring to read. And I almost got burned because I was signing up for 16 chapters. And then as 16 rolls around, I'm like, Okay, when are we gonna wrap this up, y'all? 24 fucking chapters! I almost didn't have enough time to finish.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:53
Yeah, it's a longer one. And I will say, like, I know that I read at least six of the Super Specials before I sort of tapped out. But my recollection is that the other Super Specials get better.
Kaykay Brady: 26:08
Great!
Brooke Suchomel: 26:09
Which, again, makes me more and more convinced that this particular book was foisted upon Ann M. Martin in a cross promotional effort between Scholastic and the Disney conglomerate. And this is her way of saying, "Fuck you both."
Kaykay Brady: 26:25
Not that were being paid by Disney World either, but Brooke, have you been to Disney World?
Brooke Suchomel: 26:30
I sure have. As an adult.
Kaykay Brady: 26:33
As an adult!
Brooke Suchomel: 26:34
Only as an adult.
Kaykay Brady: 26:36
What was your take on Disney World?
Brooke Suchomel: 26:39
Um, that it would have been better to experience as a child.
Kaykay Brady: 26:44
Yeah, that's probably a good take.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:50
I mean, I like Epcot. Epcot is much more my jam. And one of the nice things is like, I can go on all the rides at Disney World, because I get motion sick. A lot of roller coasters, I am the Margo Pike who would be puking constantly, and that's not a problem at Disney World. I feel like a big kid.
Kaykay Brady: 27:11
You can hang with Space Mountain?
Brooke Suchomel: 27:12
I can hang with Space Mountain. Yeah. But Disney World is not made for me. And that's 100% fine.
Kaykay Brady: 27:20
Yeah. I'm also so curious, I want to talk to a young person who goes to Disney World today. And I'm wondering, how does Disney World hold up when you have video games in your life? Because I was really struck by the way that the kids, I mean, they just were so blown away to be in this sort of immersive environment and experience. And I'm wondering if that's tempered a little bit for kids today? Because, you know, they're living in Minecraft, and they already live in magical lands that are not 105 degrees and filled with people, real people?
Brooke Suchomel: 28:00
Yeah, it's a good point. I think that that sort of immersion into virtual worlds is definitely acknowledged by the Imagineers at Disneyland and Disney World, and particularly at like Universal Studios and some of the other theme parks that seem to have a little bit more flexibility of like, going beyond G rated everything in that, you know, they do work in more 4D stuff. Some of my favorite things at Disney World are like the more like 4D experiences where you're watching a movie, and it's 3D and then like, water comes in sprays out, you know what I mean? So it seems like they're trying to work that in but like, for me, it's just hard for me to see past the commercialism. It's really hard for me to see past it. And I wish that I could, but I'm just that cynical of an adult. And so that's why I think that it's definitely aimed at somebody who hasn't developed their sense of, I'm here as something to be sold to. And, you know, like, this is a money making machine, as opposed to a magical experience. How about you? I take it you've been?
Kaykay Brady: 29:17
Yeah, so I had more of the kid experience where, I think when I was six, we took a trip down there. I don't know how we afforded it. But for some reason, we did it. And it was the first time I was on a plane, so I remember that and then, God, I don't remember that much. I'm so bad. I have such a bad memory. I do remember being terrified of the witch in Snow White's ride, and I don't remember much else.
Brooke Suchomel: 29:46
Do you remember being excited?
Kaykay Brady: 29:48
I do. Yeah, I remember being excited and being excited for the plane, and I'm pretty sure I remember being really hot.
Brooke Suchomel: 29:54
Yeah, sounds right.
Kaykay Brady: 29:55
That sounds right, that tracks. And then we went back when I was probably 13 or something? And yeah, at 13, you're a little too jaded, I feel. Or at least I was at 13. But I will say that it was really fun reading about a cruise, because we didn't cruise down to Disney World, but we did go on a cruise when I was about 13 years old.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:17
So the same time!
Kaykay Brady: 30:19
Yeah, exact same time. So it was very interesting to be reading that and remembering what it was like for me at 13. And on the cruise, I met an English boy and had my first kiss. His name was Daniel. And all I remember about that is being so underwhelmed, for obvious reasons.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:36
I wonder why!
Kaykay Brady: 30:37
Gee, why could that have been? I remember, I also kept my gum in my mouth. And after he was like, "Did you have your gum in your mouth the whole time?" And I was like, "Yeah." And he was like, "That's weird."
Brooke Suchomel: 30:50
It's your signature move.
Kaykay Brady: 30:54
But yeah, it feels so weird to say "my first kiss" because it's sort of like I consider more when I kissed a woman my first kiss.
Brooke Suchomel: 31:03
Right. It was a test run. Practice. It doesn't count or matter.
Kaykay Brady: 31:10
I also remember about that cruise, they had skeet shooting, and I'm a really good shot. My uncle was the fire marshal for the Bronx for years, and he taught me how to shoot when I was like, five. They used to call me Annie Oakley in my family because I took to it really well. And we were on the cruise and there was skeet shooting, and it was only men doing it. And my dad went up to the guy who was facilitating and said, "Let her have a try." He was like, "Oh, she can't do it. What is she, 13?" He's like, "Just let her try." And the guys that were going were getting, so you had 20 skeets. And the guys were getting like maybe 10. And so I got out there, I got 20 out of 20. And the guys, I've never, I mean, you could see the testicles shrink into their body cavities as I was shooting.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:03
That's how Sean Hannity was born. Sean Hannity was there.
Kaykay Brady: 32:05
There was Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. They're like little Gremlins. They just pop. They're just popping out like little Gremlins.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:15
Because they got owned by a 13 year old girl, skeet shooting on a cruise. So you're really, I mean, you are a groundbreaker in both cruise skeet shooting, and under-age miniature golf Jersey Shore winning.
Kaykay Brady: 32:30
Yeah. It's true.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:32
You're just breaking barriers up and down the eastern seaboard. Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 32:39
I'm very good at pointless sports.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:40
Did you win a trophy?
Kaykay Brady: 32:42
No, it was just, you know, I won my pride.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:46
Right, and you stole the pride from so many men.
Kaykay Brady: 32:51
I won all of their pride. Basically, I was like a succubus. I sucked in all of their white male pride for myself and I hoarded it like a dragon.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:58
Yeah, we need you on every goddamn cruise. Let's find out every cruise that has a skeet shooting competition, and you're on it. This is how we're gonna end the patriarchy once and for all. I can't wait.
Kaykay Brady: 33:11
No, but maybe we'll just have thousands of Sean Hannitys.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:14
That's true.
Kaykay Brady: 33:15
If that's what it does.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:17
Well, you're on a cruise. You can always leave 'em. "Oh! Yeah, this cruise is going to be departing from this private island at...eight o'clock tonight! Yeah, eight o'clock, that's it!" Leave 'em there. Just an island full of, you know, misogynistic...
Kaykay Brady: 33:35
Gremlins.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:36
Yeah, Misogynistic Gremlin Island. Just leave 'em all there. That sounds delightful.
Kaykay Brady: 33:40
To me, they sort of looked like the hormone monsters from Big Mouth. "Taking a bubble bath." Anyway, that's my cruise. Oh! And the arcade. I played arcade games constantly on that cruise. They had an RC Pro Am with an actual steering wheel. Man, it was dope. I must have pumped $200 in quarters on that fucking thing. And it was worth every penny.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:10
That's what I love about the concept of going on a cruise and then just spending the whole time inside playing video games.
Kaykay Brady: 34:17
I know, that's what I did. That's like, I really want to go on an Olivia cruise. Mostly because I really just want to play pick up basketball. And I feel like that would be my dream spot to play pick up basketball.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:31
You're just like, "Okay..."
Kaykay Brady: 34:33
"Here's $6000!"
Brooke Suchomel: 34:33
"I really want to play pick up basketball. What is the most likely way for me to get the peak pickup basketball experience. I know! Lesbian cruise."
Kaykay Brady: 34:45
You've got it. You've got it, friend.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:48
I love the way your mind works. That's fantastic. Because yeah, that would be Peak Experience. You're playing your ultimate pickup basketball experience, at sea.
Kaykay Brady: 34:59
At sea. Exactly.
Brooke Suchomel: 35:01
That's awesome.
Kaykay Brady: 35:03
With the wind in your hair. So it was a fun read for me in that regard, it reminded me of all those fun childhood experiences of that cruise.
Brooke Suchomel: 35:11
So were there any of the...since each of the characters sort of has their own narrative arc, that's one of the things that made it really difficult, you know, to come up with an overarching framework for the entire book, because the characters don't really interact with each other that much.
Kaykay Brady: 35:28
Yeah, they kind of are having their own adventures.
Brooke Suchomel: 35:30
They're all going off on their own, and so you don't get to see the same sort of friendship dynamics and relationships. You don't have that sort of foundation that you have in all of the other books. So was there any of the characters that connected, that you were just like, "Oh, yeah, this seems the most like my cruise experience." Were you Dawn? With your British boy?
Kaykay Brady: 35:53
I mean, they were American boys. But yeah, the I guess. people that were hooking up with boys, but you know, it's so hard to relate to it because my internal experience was so different than theirs.
Brooke Suchomel: 36:07
Yeah. You weren't like, "Oh, this is the thing I've been waiting for."
Kaykay Brady: 36:10
No. I'm like, "Hmm..."
Brooke Suchomel: 36:12
You're like, "Dammit. I gotta kiss this Brit. Goddammit."
Kaykay Brady: 36:16
"Motherfuck! Come on, let's get this over with."
Brooke Suchomel: 36:19
Especially as, you know, deeply Irish as you are. What would your Irish grandmother think, that your first kiss was with an English boy?
Kaykay Brady: 36:30
I know. She would've been scandalized. "Jaysus Mary and Joseph."
Brooke Suchomel: 36:36
"I'd rather have you kiss a girl!" There you go!
Kaykay Brady: 36:40
Did I already tell you the story about when I want.... So I had to sort of fight to go to boarding school, because boarding school has this reputation of being for bad kids or something, but actually East Coast boarding school is like going to college. You know, it's really hard to get in.
Brooke Suchomel: 36:54
East Coast boarding school is very different.
Kaykay Brady: 36:56
Yeah, right, everybody's trying to go there. And so I had to petition my mother and father to let me go, and my aunt was like, "You can't go to boarding school, you're gonna become a lesbian!"
Brooke Suchomel: 37:10
"That has nothing to do with my motivation..."
Kaykay Brady: 37:15
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Brooke Suchomel: 37:19
Oh man, I'm glad you went to boarding school and became a lesbian.
Kaykay Brady: 37:23
Yeah. Well, you know, I definitely did not really figure out I was a lesbian until college. I should have known though, and good god, like all of my friends at boarding school when I told them later they were like, "Oh, really?"
Brooke Suchomel: 37:38
"I can't believe that..."
Kaykay Brady: 37:40
"Finally. Good for you."
Brooke Suchomel: 37:41
"That's so surprising. Thank you for trusting me with sharing this shocking information with me."
Kaykay Brady: 37:48
I mean, all you had to do is see me on the mini golf course or see me with a shotgun in my hand skeet shooting on a cruise.
Brooke Suchomel: 37:55
Chewing gum while a British boy kisses you.
Kaykay Brady: 37:56
It does not take, you know, Masters and Johnson.
Brooke Suchomel: 38:02
So let's lay out what the individual stories were, just to sort of encapsulate this book. So Kristy's story is really her being a slob and an asshole about being a slob.
Kaykay Brady: 38:19
Yeah, this was a weird one.
Brooke Suchomel: 38:21
Who then spends all her time hanging out with a random cranky elderly man.
Kaykay Brady: 38:27
Yeah, so let's stop on the slob, because I was perplexed by this. So the story is that she's sharing a room with Dawn. And who else?
Brooke Suchomel: 38:37
Claudia.
Kaykay Brady: 38:38
So it's Dawn, Claudia, and Kristy sharing a room, and Kristy is a slob and Dawn is a neatnik, and they both get more extreme in their approaches with each other, knowing that the other is irritated. So Kristy gets messier, Dawn gets neater.
Brooke Suchomel: 38:56
Yeah, I mean, Dawn says she gets neater but like, that's some bullshit "both sides"-ism. Kristy was being intentionally messy, like literally opening up a bag of Fritos and just dumping it out on the nightstand, and then throwing the bag on the floor and just staring at her.
Kaykay Brady: 39:19
You know, like couldn't figure out what was going on.
Brooke Suchomel: 39:21
It's a power trip.
Kaykay Brady: 39:23
I am a slob, unabashedly, and have always been my whole life. But it's really nice when people pick up and you feel kind of bad about being a slob around neat people. So I couldn't understand what was happening for Kristy, and it didn't seem believable.
Brooke Suchomel: 39:42
Yeah, I mean, to me it just read as a total power trip.
Kaykay Brady: 39:46
But like, what's the power?
Brooke Suchomel: 39:48
Well, first of all, Kristy's stepdad paid for Dawn and Claudia to come. So they are like indebted, and it's so strange that they didn't take the angle of Kristy and Dawn and Claudia doing a bit more bonding, because I would say that those three characters are kind of the most disconnected from each other.
Kaykay Brady: 40:14
And they're the ones that are not working.
Brooke Suchomel: 40:16
Right. And they're the ones that are, you know, sort of brought along together. That's why they're sharing a room, because Kristy's stepdad paid for it. And they all just go off independently. You know, at first Dawn and Claudia go off separately, because it seems like Kristy's family, and they're really trying to do family bonding. And in that case, it's like, well, then why would you bring Dawn and Claudia? But you know, again, it's just a premise that they're setting up for having to create this marketing material for Disney World. But then Kristy just spends the whole time hanging out with this cranky old man and is like, really disappointed when she sees him checking out when they arrive in Orlando because he wanted to spend the day with him at Disney World. What and why and no. I mean, no, that's nonsense.
Kaykay Brady: 41:09
It doesn't make sense.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:10
And then she's like, gonna set this old man who's sad because his wife died a couple of months ago, and so he's going to go on a trip to distract himself from his sadness, and it doesn't work. And so he spends the time reading The Mayor of Casterbridge, and being cranky at everyone who isn't reading The Mayor of Casterbridge. And Kristy's like, "This is who I want to hang with." It was a strange...
Kaykay Brady: 41:37
Subplot.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:38
It was one where I was just like, this is perhaps the most strange, although I did like how the book encapsulated Kristy's excitement of the first time being on an airplane.
Kaykay Brady: 41:49
Yeah, that was cool, and I related to that.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:51
Because that is very, very real.
Kaykay Brady: 41:53
Very real. I wanted to say, club meetings on vacation? Come on, Kristy.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:58
Fuck that, Kristy.
Kaykay Brady: 41:59
Take a fucking break man.
Brooke Suchomel: 42:00
Fuck that.
Kaykay Brady: 42:01
You need to chill out, girl.
Brooke Suchomel: 42:02
Doesn't even make sense! Like, the only one who's actually quote unquote "working" are Stacey and Mary Anne. They're the ones that are there for a babysitting job, so you don't need to have club meetings to check in, but whatever. What did you have for Claudia's arc?
Kaykay Brady: 42:18
Well, her secret admirer, who winds up being Timothy.
Brooke Suchomel: 42:22
Who is a total fucking creep.
Kaykay Brady: 42:24
So, again, really creepy shit. So I was trying to figure out what they were all fighting, and I had, "She's fighting to justify a relationship built on lies."
Brooke Suchomel: 42:34
I mean, this is a book of lies. This is a book of cons and scams and creeps.
Kaykay Brady: 42:40
On multiple levels! It's meta.
Brooke Suchomel: 42:42
This is a book of creeps and cons.
Kaykay Brady: 42:45
Yeah. So okay, she basically has a secret admirer on the ship that keeps giving her presents. And then she also meets some kid, and it turns out the kid is their secret admirer, and he doesn't tell her. So basically, they start spending time together, and he's still being her secret admirer, and he's not telling her that he's doing that. And it's creepy as fuck.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:05
It is disturbing as fuck.
Kaykay Brady: 43:08
It's so disturbing.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:08
The way that he's stalking her, I mean, straight up stalking. Like, to t e point where she's looking at earrings in a store and can't afford it. And then, you know, next thing she knows, those earrings have been placed into her bag that she's carrying.
Kaykay Brady: 43:09
It's not okay.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:21
And she's just out on her own, wandering around at this port. And someone is literally fucking stalking her, following her. And it's presented as like, cute, and it's not fucking cute. So reading this at the time, I would have been like, "Oh, that's cute." No, it's not. It's disturbing. And then when, like, he knows... So he introduces himself to her with the premise that he saw her secret admirer run away. And it's not him. He looks different. "Oh, yeah, he had red hair, and he had great shoes." He's blond, and presumably has on some dumb shoes, so like, that's the disguise.
Kaykay Brady: 44:12
And the author sort of presents it as, Oh, this kid's just shy. But you know, it's just as easy to read it as an exercise in power and control.
Brooke Suchomel: 44:21
Oh, 100%.
Kaykay Brady: 44:22
And gaslighting.
Brooke Suchomel: 44:24
Right, he's like, literally indebting her to him. So he says, and I tagged it with like, my equivalent of red flags. She's telling him that she has a secret admirer. And, you know, "Why wouldn't the secret admirer, why wouldn't he just talk to me?" And he's like, "Well, maybe he thinks that you wouldn't like him. You know, maybe your secret admirer is shy. Maybe if he's afraid you won't like him, so he's being really nice to you before he introduces himself." Like, he's being nice to you before he introduces himself so that it's like, "Well, now you owe me something." Like, "I'm giving you a bunch of gifts. Now I'm going to introduce myself, I don't think you're going to like me, but I'm going to give you a bunch of gifts so that you're going to be forced to, sort of, like you owe me something."
Kaykay Brady: 45:15
I think this is another example of, you know, just the author living in that soup, swimming in that soup so deeply that all of these levels of creepiness can't even be seen. And today it's just like the veil is just whisked back, and you're like, "Ugh."
Brooke Suchomel: 45:36
Well, and the response is even worse, because Claudia says, "'You know, I bet you're right. How come I didn't think of that? You're a complete stranger, and you have it all figured out.' 'I'm a boy,' said the boy." Goddamnit. "I have it figured out because I'm a boy."
Kaykay Brady: 45:51
"I'm a boy, we constantly sit here thinking about ways to manipulate and control you."
Brooke Suchomel: 45:56
Right, "and we know everything." Like, that's the thing. He knows, and he's lying to her this whole time. And then she's just like, "Oh, haha," like, "It's fine!" when she finds it out. And then it turns out that this kid is also the quote unquote "stowaway" that several characters think, you know, it's like "There's a stowaway on the ship!" Who's the stowaway? It's Claudia's creepy stalker who entertains himself when he's not stalking Claudia, and psychologically manipulating her, he entertains himself by hiding in piles of rope and stuff and jumping out because he just wants to see what he can get away with.
Kaykay Brady: 46:38
Yeah, Peeping Tom behavior. Okay, so this is also the brother of Mary Anne's hot orphan woman who turns out not to be an orphan. In fact, their parents, okay, so it's this kid and then his sister who lies to Mary Anne and says that she's an orphan and has all these lies that wind up not being true. And then it turns out their parents are a famous singing duo for older people.
Brooke Suchomel: 47:08
Like the Captain & Tenille or something.
Kaykay Brady: 47:10
That's what I thought, exactly!
Brooke Suchomel: 47:12
The Captain & Tenille's psycho children, yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 47:14
The Captain & Tenille's psycho children. And Mary Anne is very fascinated, yet again, by this person and talks a lot about her breasts and her body.
Brooke Suchomel: 47:27
Her "skimpy bikini where she fills the top out very nicely."
Kaykay Brady: 47:32
So I say Mary Anne is fighting her faggotry, and I stole that term from Bob the Drag Queen, but I don't care. I'm using it. I love it.
Brooke Suchomel: 47:42
TM Bob the Drag Queen. Yeah, that one, I mean, I just had "Mary Anne gets conned by a rich kid." Like, there's no point to the con. It's just a pathological liar who lies for the sake of lying. And she's young and pretty, and so she gets away with it. And rich. That's the moral of the story there.
Kaykay Brady: 48:04
Yeah. And then I had, "Karen is fighting early onset schizophrenia."
Brooke Suchomel: 48:11
She's scamming up and down the Caribbean. Karen is at her scammer best in this book. It is remarkable. This is my favorite. This was my favorite one.
Kaykay Brady: 48:25
Same.
Brooke Suchomel: 48:25
I just want just Karen being a fucking scammer. An unapologetic scammer.
Kaykay Brady: 48:30
She's a scammer, and she also is seeing a ghost the whole time, who's talking to her and telling her to do things. So now Karen is having delusions and hallucinations.
Brooke Suchomel: 48:43
Yeah, Watson and Kristy's mom Elizabeth make the mistake of taking Karen on the Haunted Mansion. That's a mistake.
Kaykay Brady: 48:52
As if she needs any more grist for the mill.
Brooke Suchomel: 48:55
Right. So we have Karen, in her first chapter, going back to the room to get ear plugs, but going on a meandering trip along the way, which winds up with her being like, "Oh, here's the salon. I'm going to go get my nails done. Charge it to the room." And then she goes into a soda fountain and gets a Coke, "Charge it to the room." So she's just charging shit to the room and everybody ends up finding it funny. And then she goes and sees her ghost that she decides that the ghost that she saw in the Haunted Mansion is real. And now it is like the demon that lives on her shoulder and controls what she does.
Kaykay Brady: 49:37
Although she comes to see him as protective in the end, which was interesting to me, because I've actually read a lot about folks with schizophrenia, that that's the way that they get a lot of healing eventually is, you know, they're never really going to be able to get rid of the voices, but they befriend the voices. And the voices, once they're befriended, move from you know, a threatening to a protective presence. So I actually thought that was cool. Karen had me thinking about all of this. I was like, Look at Karen! Karen's ahead of her time. Not only does she have schizophrenia, but she's befriending those voices and making them protective. You go, girl!
Brooke Suchomel: 50:15
She can be a beacon of hope. And when she's at the character breakfast, and she sees the characters singing "Happy Birthday" to people that are celebrating their birthday, and she's like, "It's my birthday, too!" Which, everyone should just do that all the time. Like, I don't know why people aren't always saying it's their birthday literally every time they go to a restaurant. Just like, lean in. But yeah, she then blames the ghost.
Kaykay Brady: 50:41
Well if you wanna do that, no matter where we are, I got your back. Like, we're at Sizzler...
Brooke Suchomel: 50:45
You won't run screaming from a Fridays, like Mary Anne? Karen is the opposite of Mary Anne in a lot of ways, but they're also the same in that they both have, I think, the most devious minds.
Kaykay Brady: 50:56
Truth. Straight up truth. Boom.
Brooke Suchomel: 50:57
So it's like, you have the same mind. You can go in one direction, you're Karen, go the other direction... If you're like, leaning in and accepting the voices, you're Karen. If you externalize the voices and you're afraid of them, you're Mary Anne. Boom. We got it. We've cracked the code.
Kaykay Brady: 51:13
Print it. Send it to the printers.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:14
And then, I don't know, I thought the other storylines were all boring.
Kaykay Brady: 51:17
Yeah, not even worth talking about, really.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:19
Dawn wanders around in a daze crushing on this sullen jerk named Parker. So it's a preppy dude named Parker. Not worth mooning over a sullen preppy dude named Parker. Nope. And then Stacey has a Very Special Episode bonding with a kid in a wheelchair because they understand each other, because he has a deadly heart condition and she has diabetes.
Kaykay Brady: 51:43
Same thing. Same diff.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:43
They get each other. It's the same thing. The kid who has the deadly heart condition is going in for surgery that may kill him, and the parents don't tell him that.
Kaykay Brady: 51:55
I know.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:56
Like, "Let's go on a big vacation. You're going for surgery. The surgery could kill you. We're gonna keep that a secret."
Kaykay Brady: 52:03
Again, capitalism saves us all. Yet again, let's avoid our feelings with capitalism.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:09
Yep. And then Byron Pike goes hunting for treasure based on a Dutch copier diagram, which we find out at the end.
Kaykay Brady: 52:19
I was like, I'm checked out at this point. What is happening? I don't know.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:23
And then Mallory spends her entire trip just creeping on everyone and logging shit in a journal. So this is when it's reinforced that the Pike children are all a bunch of spies. The Pike children are all narcs. Don't trust a Pike.
Kaykay Brady: 52:36
You know she's got Spy Tech. She's got every piece of Spy Tech equipment that there is. What did you have for 80s moments?
Brooke Suchomel: 52:44
I'm gonna bring it back to what you mentioned about the arcade. The Most 80s Moment to me was when they go to the arcade. They're excited to see three games. Two of those games are Donkey Kong and Pac Man, which you know, I think that kids today still know what those two things are. But the other one, which, the fact that this one is highlighted shows you how big of a deal it was in the 80s. And it's really sort of fallen off today. But it was like, "Oh, shit, that game was huge." Centipede.
Kaykay Brady: 53:14
Centipede.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:15
Centipede was such a huge game. I was looking it up just to sort of refresh my memory because I remember being like, "Yeah, Centipede!" You know, you play that on your little table game at Pizza Hut. I looked it up, and did you know that it was one of the first games that was co developed by a woman? Was intentionally developed to attract female players?
Kaykay Brady: 53:38
Oh, that's so cool!
Brooke Suchomel: 53:41
I got really excited about that. Yeah, they said it was one of the first arcade games that had a significant player base, so they did this survey in 1982 and 50% of the players of Centipede in arcades were women.
Kaykay Brady: 53:55
So cool.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:56
So there's a little feminist 80s moment in there with the emphasis on Centipede.
Kaykay Brady: 54:02
Better than Ms. Pac Man. I mean, that was also developed for women but Centipede was better.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:07
Well, Pac Man also had a lot of female players, which is probably why they were like, "Let's make this even more for women. Let's put a bow on Pac Man. Girls will like this more. It's the same fucking game but with a bow."
Kaykay Brady: 54:21
They were like, "Are these girls realizing that this little Pac Man doesn't have a bow? Wow, we need to address this immediately."
Brooke Suchomel: 54:27
"Here's the thing, it's not for you. Pac Man's not for you. He doesn't have a bow. We actually need to segregate." What about you? What did you have for your Most 80s Moment?
Kaykay Brady: 54:35
I had so many 80s moments. Number one, cameras.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:39
Oh, yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 54:39
You know, they all bring cameras.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:41
It was the only way you could document.
Kaykay Brady: 54:42
Yeah. And so, what the world was like before we had cameras in our phones.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:47
And the pictures that they show, too, are like in the parameters of a Polaroid. So you imagine that they may be lugging around giant fucking Polaroids. Each kid is lugging around a Polaroid. I like that.
Kaykay Brady: 54:57
I know, exactly. The other thing is that there were R movies in the hotel rooms, or that's what they were hoping to see, instead of straight up porn, and that just had me sort of thinking about a world without porn, you know, when we were kids.
Brooke Suchomel: 55:13
But that wasn't the case. Every 80s kid was like, "Your parents have Cinemax?"
Kaykay Brady: 55:21
Porky's.
Brooke Suchomel: 55:21
Porky's, right.
Kaykay Brady: 55:23
And that was as bad as it gets. And now...
Brooke Suchomel: 55:25
Any PG movie has porn, back in the 80s. Because if it wasn't a G movie, it had to have boobs in it. You were required to have gratuitous boobs in every movie.
Kaykay Brady: 55:35
But it was also so tame because, you know, it was just like, boobs. It wasn't, you know, hardcore pornography at the click of your fingertips, so that was very 80s. And then also, they had that song in there, "Comet. It tastes like gasoline!" And I was just thinking about those random, stupid, dirty songs that everybody knew in the 80s. I don't know if it's a thing now, but it was such a thing in the 80s. Just all of these stupid songs. Do you know when I was in kindergarten, I started a cursing club? And we sang dirty songs primarily. That's primarily what we did.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:11
Okay. Was it called the Cursing Club?
Kaykay Brady: 56:14
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:14
So it was Kaykay's Cursing Club?
Kaykay Brady: 56:17
It was on the DL. Like, we didn't do it through school, obviously.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:20
How did you get initiated into the Cursing Club? Did you have to say "fuck" five times fast?
Kaykay Brady: 56:25
Well, you had to sing a really good dirty song with panache. Of course, I was the Kristy, so I got to say who was in the Cursing Club and who wasn't. And a lot of people wanted to be in the Cursing Club, but you know, you had to pass muster.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:38
Was it pretty exclusive? Like what percentage, what was your admission rate? Was it like the Harvard of...
Kaykay Brady: 56:43
It was probably one in 10, I would say.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:45
Damn! So you had a lot of people who could potentially out your Cursing Club.
Kaykay Brady: 56:50
They would never.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:53
They were like, "This one? She knows how to shoot a weapon. You don't fuck with her."
Kaykay Brady: 56:58
Nobody wants to tank the Cursing Club, dude! It's the most fun thing happening in kindergarten. You just gotta aspire to the Cursing Club.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:08
What was your song? Was it the "Comet, it makes your mouth turn green" song?
Kaykay Brady: 57:12
I loved Old MacDonald. "Old MacDonald sittin' on a fence, picking his balls with a monkey wrench. Wrench got hot and it burned his balls. Pissed all over his overalls." That was my favorite one.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:22
You were like five years old.
Kaykay Brady: 57:26
Yeah, five, six.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:27
So you're like, "This is what you have to aspire to, kids. You want to be in the club? You got to approach this. This professionalism."
Kaykay Brady: 57:39
"This professionalism! You need to rise to this level, kids."
Brooke Suchomel: 57:43
Right, all the kids are like, "Ooh, shit!"
Kaykay Brady: 57:46
Yeah, exactly.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:48
Wow.
Kaykay Brady: 57:49
Anyway, it reminded me of my Cursing Club. It reminded me of all my old songs. So, nice.
Brooke Suchomel: 57:55
Aww, we need to bring that back. We need another
Kaykay Brady: 57:57
Like, you're at your work, somebody's like, "
Brooke Suchomel: 57:57
"What do you at the Cursing Club?" "I sing about Cursing Club. h, what are you doing tonight?" "I'm going to my Cursing Club 'Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. Batmobile " lost its wheel and the Joker got away.' And then I do the thing where I'm like, 'I am a Girl Scout and I do not swear' on my fingers, and you keep doing it until it ends with the middle finger up."
Kaykay Brady: 58:23
Perfect. "Type in 'boobs' on a calculator. There's so much we do. You don't even know! I mean, I would show you but you're not initiated and you probably won't get in." That's also what you say.
Brooke Suchomel: 58:35
Oh man. Oh god, I love Kaykay's Cursing Club. Holy shit. That was beautiful. Frankly, I don't think that we could possibly top that.
Kaykay Brady: 58:44
Time to just talk about next week's book.
Brooke Suchomel: 58:46
I think that's where this episode has to end. Speaking of problematic shit...
Kaykay Brady: 58:53
Oh boy.
Brooke Suchomel: 58:53
Next we get into the world of child pageants.
Kaykay Brady: 58:56
Oh shit. Are you serious?
Brooke Suchomel: 58:59
I am 100% serious. We are getting a preview of the Toddlers and Tiaras world with Little Miss Stoneybrook…and Dawn.
Kaykay Brady: 59:09
We're gonna have to dust off the feminist engines. Bring 'em up to full throttle.
Brooke Suchomel: 59:17
I'm breaking out my Gloria Steinem right now, actually, to freshen up. Getting a little Judith Butler out. We're gonna go in. We're gonna go in! Erica Jong, what's up? Let's do this, Bella Abzug. Come on! So that's what you have to look forward to in our next episode, but until then...
Kaykay Brady: 59:40
Just keep sittin'.
Brooke Suchomel: 59:41
Just keep cursing.
Kaykay Brady: 59:43
Just keep fucking cursin'. [theme song] I'm a flying banana!
