I like Jane Austen. I think her writing was funny, and I think it translates well to modern life (when interpreted, of course). And I think that her writing had a lot of heart to it. I still get anxious butterfly-ish every time I read Emma and get to the part with Emma and Mr. Knightley’s walk around the garden.

The point is, I like Jane Austen.

I did not like Becoming Jane.

There is nothing redeeming about the movie save for the scene in the beginning where James McAvoy’s character goes to a party and has to sit and listen to Jane read a long, boring, pointless story about her sister and fiancee to her sister and fiancee (and acted all, like, I’ll read it because everyone twisted my arm, like she didn’t write the story, come down with the story, and sit with it in her lap all afternoon waiting for someone to tell her to go read it), and he falls asleep. The movie is over-long and turns what historians have decided was basically nothing into the greatest romance ever. Jane is obnoxious and gawky and awk and embarrassing. Tom seems mildly grossed out by her and then mildly amused by her and then mildly interested in her, while she gets mad at the slightest mention of his name, and then suddenly they’re in love, but there seems to be a huge leap from how they felt to how they felt and I don’t like it.

The movie actually is guilty of a much bigger offense, though, and it has to do with James McAvoy. Because, I don’t understand how, in all of his other movies, he went from, like,

Bleached Hair Hot (no, seriously)

to Nerdy Hot

to Kinda Dirty Hot

to 1930s Hot

to Brandishing a Gun Hot

to… Creepy Old Leprechaun?

I mean… what kind of … what??

And I don’t even want to get into the alternate universe where, 20 years later, Jane’s older brother and MUCH older sister-in-law look like this:

but, Jane and Tom manage to look like this:

Were the stylists just effing with everyone? Seriously?

Oh, and one more thing. I promise.

Is that supposed to be hyperbole? Because, way to overstate, writers. Jane Austen wrote two great novels (Pride & Prejudice and Emma), two entertaining novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion), and two craptacularly boring novels (Mansfield Park and Sense & Sensibility). Even if you disagree about which novels fit into which of those categories, I think we can all agree: six of the greatest novels of the English language? That’s some bullshit.

Review forthcoming. Answers will be provided.

So, I’m very very upset because this blog entry disappeared a few days ago and was replaced by a list of about a hundred porn sites. And I don’t know how this happened? But, it sucked. But, here’s the thing. I didn’t save the entry (I’ve started saving them since), and I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I did save all the pictures. So, what follows is a condensed comic book style version of the original.

(PS – However, I do remember that I made the correlation between the BSC and this year’s Superbowl, and that correlation was this: the Giants were the underdogs and not expected to win at all, and when they did win [and stole the Patriots' perfect season right out of their greedy little hands], it was pretty damn exciting. There was much cheering and screaming and freaking out in our house. Not as much as the week before when they got INTO the Superbowl and all my brothers were over, but there was a lot of screaming between my mom and Sally and my dad and me. Anyway, afterwards, the Patriots tried to make it seem like THEY were the underdogs going into it and they should be felt sorry for because everyone expected the Giants to win, which is crap. And the thing with the BSC is that they’re just like the Pats. When lame ass Mary Anne’s lame ass boyfriend Logan is hit on by a much cuter girl, the whole club goes after her with an intent to destroy. But, she never had a chance. SHE was the underdog. The BSC rules the whole town, but they still want the glory of being considered the put-upon, when they’re not. Victory for MA and the sitters over Marcy wasn’t really that sweet to watch, because Marcy never had a chance to win. If the Patriots had won, a “stomp them out” style speech during the parade would have been petty gloating in the same way that the BSC’s “special Babysitters Club party” at the end of this episode seemed so cheap and nasty, considering Marcy was stuck somewhere, boyfriend-less and soaking wet. Well, anyway, it was at one time worded more eloquently than this. Read on.)

“Just wait till I mix this paint with your blood, BITCH!”

(more…)

Somewhere close to the end of my senior year at NYU, I went to the movies with my friends Molly, Avani, and Jillian, and we saw 13 Going on 30. Later that night, Molly and I went across the street to the Hollywood Video and forwent our usual game of “What Movie Would I Watch From This Wall?” to rent Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. I know, I know. Why? Well, we were in a romantic comedy mood, and kind of wanted to see it. Plus, we liked Topher Grace, so that was something. And, I get a kick out of seeing Leo from All My Children being all quasi-famous now.

It’s funny. Leo was actually one of the only characters on AMC that I always liked. When I didn’t totally hate Bianca and her increasingly shiny and exagerated face, he was friends with her. And he was involved with Greenlee when she was still just bratty and not totally despicable. And, okay, he was married to Laura when she needed a heart transplant, and she became obsessed with him, and Brooke did, too, in this sort of creepy attempt to give Laura something to live for which caused her to keep saying, “Love my daughter,” but I didn’t hate Leo for getting into this whole thing (even though, okay, money may have been involved) even though Greenlee still loved him, because it wasn’t really Leo’s fault that Brooke and Laura were so heinous and awful. He got into it for bad reasons, but he stuck by her because she was dying, and you’ve got to at least give him some credit for that. Plus, his mother was Vanessa! Vanessa was awesome! Well, except for that whole Proteus storyline, because that dragged for months and months and who really gave a crap about Mateo and what he had to do with it anyway? And Chris STAMP? Gag me. Oh, and Leo’s brother was David, who, despite his total obnoxiousness, was actually kind of a great character occassionally, like the time he “accidentally” drugged an entire boatload of people with Libidizone – a hyper-arousal drug of his own invention – and it created mayhem (he did this with the help of his trusty assistant/sidekick Gordon aka Gordo aka that guy that’s been in everything, including Ugly Betty, where his name was NOT Gordon but Sally and I called him that anyway)! Like, everyone on the boat getting all randy, and Greenlee pushing Laura overboard, and Bianca passing out! And then, of course, there was the fact that David slept with Dixie, which was NOT awesome, because despite the fact that Tad had NOT cheated on her that night, she still tried to make it seem like he had and she was just retaliating, and then, when that didn’t work, she just brought up his past mistakes which was so beat of her. I hated Dixie. And that really amped up David’s Dixie obsession, and then he wasn’t awesome anymore. Anyway, so Leo was great, but he died. I mean, it was suspicious, because he was fighting on this rickety bridge over the falls with his mother Vanessa and they both went crashing to their deaths. They found Vanessa’s body, and no one was too sad to see her go, because she was an evil drug dealer, selling to high school kids, and she goaded David’s father into killing himself, AND she had killed her niece and blamed it on Erica Kane. AND, I mean, she was trying to kill Leo! Bitch! But, Leo’s body was never found. All they found was this weird tan, like, member’s only jacket he had been wearing, which I thought was an odd costume choice, seeing as how he had never worn something that old-man-ish before. But, anyway, he’s dead, and I hope they never bring him back, because the new Greenelee played by not-Rebecca Budig is bad enough. A not-Josh Duhamel would be awful.

Oh, my God. What was I talking about?

Oh, right. Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. It was awful. I mean, not even the kind of movie I could justify watching again on a rainy Sunday afternoon when it just happens to come on HBO. I tried one day. I couldn’t get through ten minutes of it. However, the thing about that movie is that the premise seemed to have been lifted from this Richie Tankersley Cusick book called Starstruck.

This would be my second favorite RTC book ever. See, I even wrote “Win a Date With Richie Tankersley Cusick” on the cover, because it’s the same story (except with murder, and the movie star never goes to her hometown to make himself a better person, and the guy that she ends up with is not her best friend from the Piggly Wiggly, but a sleazy guy that the famous guy knows … well, the whole win a date with a movie star thing is the same anyway).

P.S. Why are the cover artists for her books so bad?? I mean, he went to all the trouble of trying to do something resembling collarbones, and the inner tube is actually pretty well-drawn, but look at her hairline.

Those sunglasses are pretty awesome, though. (Spoiler alert! That shadow in her glasses is a big statue that’s about to kill her! Don’t say I didn’t say spoiler alert!)

Anyway, so the premise of this one is pretty obvious. Miranda Peterson (mousy, unattractive, yet completely captivating teenager) wins a date through a magazine contest to meet Byron Slater, hunky movie star. Basically, she and two other girls will live in his house for a week and then he’ll pick one of them to have sex with.

Or, star in his movie. Something like that.

The first chapter of the book is her and her younger sister watching a Byron Slater movie, and then her getting the phone call that she won. What’s weird about it, though, is the fact that her sister is only described as “younger”, not “little”, and she’s got a pretty good vocabulary, so she can’t be much younger than, like, 14, yet she’s all, “You want to kiss a boy? Icky!” What’s that about?

Anyway, Miranda’s plane is late, or something, and her luggage is lost, and Lucille, the reporter from the magazine, and she end being totally late to the opening ceremonies of this contest, which I think was just meeting Byron and being shown rooms in the guest house. But, of course, it’s a tragedy.

The limo driver who’s come to meet them isn’t a limo driver at all! He’s Byron’s (the “GOOD GUY”) oldest friend, Nick (the “BAD GUY”). He looks like this:

“Baggy black pants had been cut off just below his knees, and he wore a rumpled white dress shirt, red socks, orange tennis shoes, and a chauffeur’s cap. … His hair looked soft and silky, sun-bleached nearly white. It swung loosely over his shoulder blades, a sharp contrast to the deep bronze of his tan.” Is it just me, or does he sound H.O.T. I think he must look like this:

RTC must have had a thing for guys with long hair, because her ultimate romantic interests almost always have “silky” long hair that “swishes” over their shoulder blades. It’s kind of gross, if you ask me, but whatever. I just pictured them with short hair, because it was a book, and that’s what you can do.

Anyway, they get to the house and she meets Byron Slater and gives him some bs about how she knows how to read palms (she’s totally lying), and then it turns out that there’s no room in the guest house (!!!) so they have to put her in a bedroom in the main house, not three doors down from Byron himself. I mean, shouldn’t they have checked how much room they were going to need for their THREE contest winners before they came there? When Nick shows her to her room, it’s as big as her entire house (of course), and she’s all flabbergasted, and she says that it’s beautiful. And then Nick does this creepy thing:

“‘Close your mouth,’ Nick reminded her, tapping her gently on the chin.”

I mean, dude just met her. A) What is his problem? She’s just excited about what’s going on. And B) Inappropriate!

She starts to unpack and then immediately overhears a conversation between Nick and Byron. Turns out Byron had no idea that this contest was even happening, and he doesn’t like that there are strangers in his house right after he’s come back from “a rest” in a “restful place” somewhere in Italy. (Read: rehab/mental hospital.) He also lets Nick on on a secret: there’s a crazed stalker fan after him, who wants him dead. Her name may or may not be Byron Slater. Spoiler alert! Anyway, Miranda immediately takes this information on as if it were a secret told to her, and starts to take everything having to do with Byron totally personally.

Later that evening, Miranda has a party to attend, and since her suitcase is gone, she’s gotta wear her dowdy plane clothes. The other two girls in the contest are Kelly, who looks like a model, and Jo, who’s fat and entered the contest as a joke. Miranda and Jo wander around the party, get lost, and encounter a tiger on the loose. I am not making this up.

Byron comes to their rescue and, like, wrestles the tiger, and then he and Miranda take a private walk, where he tells her that he thinks his crazed stalker let the tiger loose to kill him. TMI, man! She just met you! Byron also has a “tiny cellular flip phone,” which makes me think that it looks like the phone Derek has in Zoolander.

Okay, so anyway, Bryon tells her his whole life story or whatever, and she thinks he’s awesome, and then she drinks some lemonade and passes out. When she wakes up, he tells her that he thinks the lemonade was meant for him, and that SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM! Then Byron’s manager, Robert, tells her all about his stint in rehab for a “rest” and leaves her alone and she finds a note written in a “curious reddish-brown stain, like blood!” (Richie loves messages written in blood, btw – there’s one in every single book she writes) that says:

“TO BYRON FROM YOUR STARSTRUCK FAN – IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU, NO ONE CAN.”

Blah blah blah crying and Byron tells her he wants to keep her safe, as well as survive Starstruck.

The next morning, Byron’s stylist has left Miranda some clothes, which just happen to be cheesier and sexier than her normal clothes. Because it’s a dream come true to wear a high-cut electric blue lace thong. Then Lucille shows up and they look out the window and see Nick, standing on the roof of the guesthouse, wearing a red cape, and flapping it up and down like wings, saying he can fly. Nick is retarded.

And since Miranda is an idiot, this doesn’t phase her. Nor does the fact that she changes into the skimpy bikini (and sheer matching jacket – CLASSY) that was left for her, looks in the mirror, and turns around to realize that Nick has “flown” to her balcony. Stalker! Maybe he’s Starstruck. Hello, Miranda! He watched you change into a bathing suit! That’s so creepy and wrong and inappropriate!

Then she goes to the pool, where everyone else has already gone onto their makeover consultations (she’s always late for everything – what a fool). She floats around in an inner tube for a while, ala the cover of the book, and then she hears this scraping sound, and a giant human-sized statue falls into the pool, landing on her inner tube, and trapping her under water for a few seconds (oh, my God, maybe this story is true, and it’s about Coral!). Still, nobody’s around, but when Bryon, a few minutes later, calls to take her for a drive through the mountains, she tells him about the statue and instead of being freaked out by the fact that this thing almost drowned her, and also, almost LANDED on HER, she’s just indignant about the fact that she thinks someone pushed it into the water. That Starstruck is not only after Byron, but is now after her, because how could life go on if it weren’t completely and totally about her?

Anyway, they drive around maniacally for a while, and then they make out, and then they drive fast through the treacherous mountains some more, and then this ridiculous thing happens. The car suddenly just starts violently lurching back and forth on the road, and then lands halfway through the guardrail, where Byron has to rescue Miranda from plunging, with the car, to her death over the mountain. But, there’s no talk of a car actually hitting them, and it’s daytime, so it’s not like Miranda wouldn’t have been able to see another car. I mean, doesn’t she wonder why the car was just careening all over the road for no reason? And how was he making it seem like the car was being hit? It doesn’t make sense!

Anyway, he rescues her, tells her again that SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM, and then she says that now they’re TRYING TO KILL HER, TOO! And then they make out some more. Suddenly. Nick shows up. And, of course, Miranda suspects him.

Later that afternoon (because in RTC’s head, days last long enough for four years’ worth of adventures), they get makeovers, and then she has time to take a nap, and then she puts on a short, strapless black cocktail dress (right), and opens up the corsage box that Byron was supposed to have sent her. Except it’s not a corsage. It’s a heart.

But, surprise, surprise, it’s gone when she tries to show people! Because she couldn’t possibly have carried the thing downstairs with her! It’s not like it’s in a box or anything.

Anyway, when they go to dinner, Byron’s security guard is stabbed and killed, and Byron and Miranda assume that he was killed by Starstruck, who they’ll never find because they were being herded through a million people outside of the restaurant. So, obviously, they go back home, and everyone’s stunned and upset, and then there’s this awesome exchange where Kelly, Jo, and Miranda are saying that they don’t want to be alone, and Miranda goes, “I thought I was gonna die,” and the other two look at her all, “Bitch crazy,” because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HER and someone SERIOUSLY DIED, like, an hour ago! And then they make the three of them watch a Byron Slater movie, like, what?

And then Miranda wanders around some more (this is still the SAME DAY) and Peg, Byron’s bitchy agent, is in a hot tub and Robert is talking to her and there’s some dumb dialogue that makes it sound like Peg is Startstruck. Finally, the day is over, and Miranda has an entire chapter’s worth of dreams that basically recap the entire book for you.

The next day, they’re taken on a shopping spree, and Miranda and Nick wander off to have a serious discussion about what the two of them know about what’s really going on with Byron and then they make out. No lie. And he tells her that Byron was also stabbed. Uh oh!

Then Peg dies in the hot tub.

And then Byron finds Miranda and tells her that he knows who Starstruck is. It’s Nick! And he has to save her! From Nick! So they go to his creepy deserted cabin in the woods, where he, of course, reveals that HE’S Starstruck, and he’s going to kill her.

Well, I mean, any convoluded story works when you just say that the person doing the killing is crazy, right? Blah blah blah, Nick saves Miranda, Byron and Nick struggle on the cliff, Byron throws himself over the cliff to save Nick, Byron dies, Miranda heads back home with Nick in tow. What. Ever.

If they ever make this into a movie, Josh Duhamel can still play Tad Hamilton aka Byron, because he knows all about fatal falls off cliffs.

I’m going to be 25 in a couple of weeks – a fact which is totally weird to me and (this is said without a shred of my usual conceit) everyone in my family. I actually really enjoy being the youngest person in the room and, save for the occassional teen angst/rebellion moments and periods of “but, it’s not FAIR!” when my brothers and sister had priveleges I didn’t, I always have. I like being the baby of the family.

I said something to the effect of “it’s all about me” a few days ago and my mom and dad responded, “It’s been all about you for the last 25 years.” Frankly, I like it that way.

And I actually have changed very little over the years. Take Jane at 12, for example. I really really liked Boyz II Men back in the day, and I ain’t gonna lie about it. I still rock out to On Bended Knee. I also loved borrowing my brother Jeff’s cd’s and sneaking in his room to play his video games. You have no idea how pleased I am now that we live together and he’s at work most of the day. And that he doesn’t care that I stole his gameboy. I also used to watch the same movies over and over and over and over again, and, if I found a book that I liked, I would read that book over and over and over and over again. Certain things about me have not changed at all.

In fact, here’s me at the pumpkin patch in 1992, rockin’ a super fly teal plastic headband:

And here’s me, about ten minutes ago.

Mmhm. Here’s one of me, at 10, wearing a Kraft Cheese and Macaroni Club sweatshirt (something that you are so. damn. jealous of!).

And here I am less than a year ago, showing my love for another brand name comfort food.

(Campbell’s, btw.) I also have a love for large sunglasses and fake moustaches. And my dad in fake moustaches, ’cause he’s 10 kinds of awesome.

Thankfully, my fashion sense has changed some over the years, because if it hadn’t, I’d be writing this post in a pair of pink sweatpants with a turtleneck tucked in, and deck shoes on my feet. And unbelievably dry hair that seriously looked like I had gotten a bad dye job, but I swear I never dyed my hair. Especially not at 10.

So, as far as essentials go, here is a little bit more proof. Witness me being obnoxious at my sister’s birthday in 1993.

I mean, it was 14 years ago. Sally’s thankfully changed wardrobe and hair stylings since then as well. And here is Sally and me back in January, out at a bar.

Mmhm. Sally still looks pretty and I still look obnoxious. That will never change.

Another thing about me around that age would be my love for young adult horror novels. I loved loved loved them. Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine were pretty good, but I never read Goosebumps, because I was so too grown up for them.

Sometimes, though, Christopher Pike’s books got too supernatural and there was too much going on with monsters and aliens and everything. And sometimes R.L. Stine’s dumb, flat, boring conclusions would annoy me. So, that is when I would look to Richie Tankersley Cusick.

Her books were really less about the murders or whatever and more about the sex! Well, not really sex, but, you know, the boys that the main charater liked. And I do mean boys, pluaral. There were always several. Her stories were more like soap operas, so I really liked reading them, and I’d read them over and over, despite the fact that, obviously, after the first time, I knew who did it and why. Although, the why was sometimes confusing, because she’s not a very good writer and doesn’t come up with very good explanations.

Anyway, one day I was telling Sally about the books and I told her how funny they always were to me and I was having trouble explaining, so I just opened the book and started reading funny passages (the location of which I knew because I read it so many times). And then I just kind of read the whole book to her.
That sort of evolved into me reading all of the RTC books to her, with different voices for each character.
And when we ran out of them, and weren’t sure what to read next, I read some of them over to her.
See? Some things never change.

Anyway, so my favorite book by RTC back in the day was called Fatal Secrets. It was RTC’s raciest because it involved drugs and naked people.

The cover of the book, as usual, gives not one clue to what the story’s about, and this is probably the worst cover. Not the ugliest cover. That honor goes to Help Wanted. This is just the dumbest. I mean, sure the main character works in a toy store, but it’s not like there are evil toys after her.

P.S. WHAT is up with that guy leaning against the house back there? Hahaha!

Anyway, so the stories all follow a sort of formula. The main character is a girl who’s initially described as plain-looking, and she always has a gorgeous glamarous looking best friend. She either lives with a single parent who’s constantly working and, thus, never home, or she’s on a vacation where there’s no parental supervision.
She meets some new people, gets sucked into some kind of scary situation which usually has nothing to do with her until she totally makes it all about her, and makes at least two, usually three guys fall in love with her. One will be a “bad guy” who turns out to be good. One will be a guy who totally comes off as sort of gay and turns out to just be a friend. And one will be a “good guy” who turns out to be bad. It almost always works this way, with only one or two exceptions.
Anyway, Fatal Secrets’s main character is Ryan, and her sister drowned in front of her about a year ago. Her single mother is not dealing well with it and is, therefore, fairly absent. Ryan’s best friend Phoebe is hot and is always going out on dates. Phoebe’s brother Jinx is kind of a pest, and kind of an asshole, and totally mean to Ryan all the time, so they’re obviously gonna get together. Ryan works at a toy store for a guy who’s name is Mr. Partini, but I always thought his name was Mr. Pantini, which is funnier. Her mother is also dating a guy named Steve.
So, it’s around Christmas time and this mysterious guy shows up at the house, claiming his name is Charles and he was a friend/boyfriend of Marissa’s (that’s the dead sister). The mother takes him in immediately and, of course, Ryan gets HYSTERICALLY suspicious about this, and keeps stomping over to Phoebe’s house to vent about him, where Phoebe and Jinx are all, “Why don’t you go out with him, you prude?” Charles is really nice to her all the time, but she hates him because he accidentally walked in on her once when she was getting changed.
So, here’s where things start getting weird for Ryan. She’s at the toy store and she sees this big fat guy staring at her through the window. And then she looks at the doll house which has been arranged in this vignette to look like a doll is drowning in the little mirrored glass pond outside. So, Ryan FLIPS OUT and starts screaming for help and then falls down and hits her head and passes out. It’s so stupid. And of course no one believes her because when she waked up, the vignette has been cleared away and Mr. Pantini’s all, “Eh, bambina, eh, eh, eh!” ’cause he’s Italian.
Then, suddenly, a million things start happening to Ryan. Like, she sees this guy in a Santa costume and he starts chasing her and she runs and slips on some ice and falls and gets all stunned, but he’s gone by the time Phoebe finds her. And she goes out to the car and hears Marissa’s voice asking her for help or something and sees a mannequin or something in Marissa’s coat, and she falls in the garage and hits her head and passes out. And she goes to this New Year’s Dance and gets drugged and, like, falls out of the van that they’re driving home in or something and stumbles around in the woods for a while and thinks she hears Marissa’s voice again and then passes out. She seriously passes out a lot, so it’s surprising she’s not dead by the end of the book.
But, anyway, all of the things have to do with Marissa. One of the Christmas presents Charles brought with him turns out to be the necklace M had on the day she dies, so Ryan flips out and screams at him, and then he neatly tells her that that wasn’t even a box that he came with. Someone’s setting him up. Ooh! She also gets trapped in the toy store after hours and thinks the fat guy’s after her again and busts through the glass door and wanders over to the gas station where Jinx (who’s seriously, like, 15 years old) is working, and everyone thinks she tried to slit her wrists. It doesn’t help that she keeps going, “I did this. I just had to get out,” instead of saying, “Don’t forget to board up the door that I just broke.” Then when she’s in her house resting after her hospital visit, she looks outside and someone has built a snowman that looks like it’s drowning (there’s an elaborate description, which I won’t repeat. Just trust me.).
So, throughout all of this intrigue, there were two parts of the book that I thought were the best, because they had nothing to do with Marissa’s death or Mr. Pantini or anything else going on.
First of all, the night that she passes out in the woods, she ends up being carted off by someone, and wakes up the next morning TOTALLY NAKED, laying in bed in the middle of, like, a living room. It’s crazy. She’s naked! Seriously! I’m not exaggerating!
And then this guy wanders in and it turns out that he goes to school with her (high school!) and his name (get this) is Winchester Stone. He tells her that he found her out there, she was soaked, and he brought her back to his house in the woods so she wouldn’t die of pneumonia. But, the issue of who stripped her naked and put her into bed is NEVER addressed! It was so scandalous. And there’s this dumb adding suspicions to Winchester thing where he tells her he couldn’t call her mom ’cause the phone was dead, and then his dad later says that there was nothing wrong with the phone, but that doesn’t even really matter.
And the other part I liked really was over several chapters and several locations, but it was all the same day. Anyway, Ryan gets all upset and calls up Phoebe, who’s on a date, but then she convinces Jinx to come to her rescue (I think she thought someone was stalking her as usual). He shows up and he suddenly starts being all nice to her and asking her what’s wrong, and then almost slips up and tells her that he’s, like, TOTALLY in love with her. Then they go back to his house so she can sleep. When she wakes up, Phoebe shows up and they go out for coffee, but when they’re out, someone slashes the tires on the car. But, it wasn’t Phoebe’s car! It was JINX’S car! And when they get home, he is so pissed that he calls up his parents (who are on vacation) and convinces them to punish Phoebe by not letting her go to the New Year’s Dance (oh, no!). Her retaliation is to humiliate Jinx by bringing up the fact that he’s in love with Ryan and has been forever, and he has a box with pictures of her and he wrote her a love letter, and he gets all embarrassed and almost starts CRYING and then doesn’t speak to Ryan again out of sheer embarrassment until the time that she finds him at the gas station with the slit wrists.
Intense! Or, anyway, it was when I was 12. I loved that part. I reread it, like, a million times all, “Someday, some boy that I kind of sort of like is going to be outed in his love for me, and it’ll be totally awful but totally awesome for me.” And that’s kind of formed my entire notion of romance to this day – awkward and unsettling embarrassment leads to love. JK JK!

Anyway, so the story has more to do with than romance, even though I don’t think it should have. It turns out that Marissa’s death was this multi-level conspiracy. Basically, Charles was a drug-runner for both Mr. Pantini (!!!!!) and Steve, the mother’s boyfriend (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). He’s actually not a bad guy, he was just sort of drawn into their evil drug scheme because he was a poor college student (inspite of his country club name: Charles Eastman) and needed some cash. Marissa found out and took some pictures of their sleazetastic operation and Charles found out and, unfortunately, kind of had to turn her in. She hid the film in Ryan’s purse (which she found and tried to develop, but her ambiguous name made it easy for Charles to steal the prints from the drug store), and then fell into the pond (duh), and tried to get Ryan in on the whole operation as she was dying by saying “Steve, Steve!” over and over again. But, Ryan was dumb and thought she was saying “sleeve”, like she wanted Ryan to grab onto her sleeve. Although, and forgetting the fact that the girl was drowning at the time, saying “Steve” wouldn’t have really clued Ryan in on what was going on. I mean, “Steve’s a drug dealer,” maybe.
Ryan finds all of this out when Mr. Pantini and Steve lure her to this old warehouse with some story about Charles being dead, or something (Jinx follows her because he knows something’s up because he loooooooves her), but they’re really trying to lure her to her death. But, not before they divulge their whole operation and how Marissa died. AND the fact that they would’ve killed her if she hadn’t stupidly drowned. The toy store is a drug front and the big fat man Ryan’s been seeing was Steve in a big giant coat!
Charles tries to get them to leave her alone (’cause he’s not really a bad guy!) and they shut him DOWN and kill him! They seriously kill him! But not before Charles sets fire to the warehouse and they have to escape. And then Winchester, the denuder, shows up, and it turns out that he’s been Mr. Pantini’s driver and kind of sort of knew that they were drug dealers, but he DIDN’T know that they were murderers, and the fact that they were going to kill Marissa, who, it turns out, was his girlfriend once upon a time, makes him go crazy and he tries to rescue Ryan and then almost gets killed himself!
!!!
But, he doesn’t die. Nor do Steve or Mr. Pantini. Winchester testifies against them and they go to jail and Ryan’s mother is still not even involved in everything that’s going on, but Jinx is! Jinx is there to pick Ryan up from the police station and playfully insult her and then kiss her the end.
Such a good book.

But, here’s the biggest problem I have with it. What they wanted from Ryan was to a) find the film that Marissa gave her, and b) find out how much she knew about Marissa’s death. So, doesn’t it seem like a BAD idea to make her suspicious by torturing her and stalking her and setting up spooky vignettes that resemble the way her sister died? Doesn’t it seem like she would then TRY to dig into the death? I mean, it just seems like bad business to be pushing the one link out there between a girl’s accidental drowning and a huge drug cartel to the brink of hysterical anger over what’s been happening to her and to KEEP BRINGING UP THE DEATH THAT YOU WANT KEPT UNDER WRAPS. Duh.

So, I realized the other day that I make a lot of references to the Babysitters Club on this blog, but I’ve never actually said anything substantial about it. And, I mean, it’s so awesome that I’m kind of surprised at myself.

See, the Babysitters Club isn’t just a series of hundreds of incredibly similar books about a group of 13-year-old babysitters who run their own business (with a crappy model – like, I don’t think they ever made any money). It’s also a series of awful Disney Channel show episodes which you can now buy on tape if you find a library that’s trying to purge itself of topically unimportant vhs tapes. And, it’s a feature-length film from 1995, starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Schuyler Fisk (you know, what’s her name’s daughter), AND Alex Mack.

Basically, the girls are 13, so they’re screechy and hysterical and loud and overly dramatic and excited about EVERYTHING and I SO wanted to be their friend when I was little.

Anyway, the books are absolutely great. Each one is written from a different girl’s perspective, in first person, and they follow the same format every time: there’s an establishing chapter; then a chapter where the girl painstakingly details the club, its inception, and each member with nauseating accuracy (which was a highly skippable chapter after you read, like, the first book, except for the fact that Ann M. Martin gave amazing clothing descriptions … I’ll get to that in a second); then the story is told interspersed with boring chapters where they talk about babysitting jobs they went on. Like, I’m reading a story about Mary Anne finally getting a boyfriend. Do I really care about the fact that a 3-year-old peed his pants and Claudia stepped on the dog, and it was such a disaster until somehow she completely saved the day by making a mural on the wall of the living room that the parents didn’t even care about?
I’m getting ahead of myself.

The babysitting wasn’t that interesting, and while it fascinated and intrigued me that these girls had basically the enitre run of the household, including the psychological development of their charges (like the time they learned all about this fat boy with wispy hair hiding food in his room, therapy-ed him, healed him, got his sister to stop making fun of him, and then didn’t even tell the parents what had went down) , I was also kind of annoyed that they were so “we’re babysitters and you’re not.” So, what I was obviously more interested in were the soap-opera-like stories that were going on between the girls. You know… Mary Anne gets a makeover and everyone hates her! Stacey gets a boyfriend and stops hanging out with the babysitters! Claudia breaks her arm and becomes terrified of children!

I thought that the Disney channel bringing the show to life was the most awesome thing ever. The girls they got to play the characters were sort of so unlike the books that it made it like an entirely different story. And the soap opera-y elements were even MORE soap opera-y (what can I say? I was watching All My Children before I was even born). Dawn and Mary Anne are caught in a love triangle! Stacey travels to New York to tell her Dad to BACK UP OFF trying to get her to move in with him! Claudia holds a seance in her attic!

Awesome.

By far, though, the best episode is Dawn Saves the Trees. The girls are supposed to be from Connecticut, and Dawn is supposed to have grown up in California, but the actress playing her has this insane midwest accent, so every time she gets hysterical (which is all the time), it sounds really funny. And she’s even more hysterical in this episode than in the one where she likes a boy who thinks he’s asking out Mary Anne on the phone and she gets totally embarrassed showing up for their date and he’s all, “You look nice. Where you headed?” Wait. I should tell you about the girls first.

That’s Dawn. She’s an environmentalist – like, an insane one that would probably grow up to blow up buildings in protest or something. And she only eats health food and she has looooooooooong, looooooooong, super light bloooooooooonde hair, and her style is “California Casual”. Whatever that means. She’s always indignant and crosses her arms a lot.

Then there’s Kristy. She’s the leader of the club, ’cause it was her idea. She’s also a bitch. And a lesbian. She coaches a softball team and is “dating” the male coach of another softball team (like, how many little league softball teams coached by 13-year-olds does one town need?). She doesn’t care about clothes! Or boys! And she doesn’t wear a bra yet! She rolls her eyes a lot, and she’s bossy and mean and doesn’t really care about other people’s feelings.

Mary Anne is Kristy’s best friend, and she’s the sappiest because her mother died when she was little, and her father, in this creepy move, made her wear her hair in braids forever (because that will keep her from liking … boys? I don’t know), but then he eased up, and now she’s getting more interested in clothes and Kristy feels left out! She cries a lot, and she’s soft-spoken to the point of frustration and she wears a lot of frumpy jumper dresses. She’s also the only one with a boyfriend, which is kind of strange.

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