Ugh. But, then you read the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and you’re just like…

Ewwwwwwwwwwwgross.

I’ve never read a vampire romance novel before, or even very many romance novels (except for that one time I was in vacation in Lake George with nothing to read except for what the owners of the house we were renting left behind), but is this for real? Are these Sookie Stackhouse books for real?

Obviously, the sex scenes on True Blood are mostly just eye-rollingly bad, but I am so grateful that the series is not following the books closely. Because if it was, there would be a whole lot more hot tub. In the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Vampire Bill remodeled the downstairs bathroom in his house to include a HOT TUB with CEDAR DECKING and POTTED FERNS. In the bathroom! Also, carpeting. Gross. And after he and Sookie have sex in this hot tub and then she is carried into the bedroom (OH YEAH DID I MENTION HE EFFING CARRIES HER EVERYWHERE IN THE BOOKS BECAUSE HE DOES AND IT’S GROSS), they have the following conversation:

Bill: I want to enter you again.
Sookie: You mean-? Oh, yeah. I see what you mean. I’d like that, too.

Gross!

After they have been dating for, I don’t know, two days, they have a conversation about how Sookie wants to start calling Bill baby names like “honey” and “sweetheart”, and then for the rest of the book, they’re all, “But, honey, I thought we were going to stay in tonight,” and “I know, sweetheart, but we have to go to the vampire bar first.” GROSS.

And after they have been dating for, like, four days, Sookie decides that she’s had a bad day and wants to just go straight home after work. FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Bill flies over to her house to say, “But, honey, you didn’t call or come over.” FIFTEEN MINUTES! Gross. No wonder I hate vampires. They’re so smothery and I am always late.

But, the grossest thing? Is the clothes. Nothing makes your writing more dated than describing the awesome clothes your characters are wearing. The Babysitters Club is an obvious example. Another is RL Stine’s books and his consistent use of Esprit brand sweatshirts on his characters. But, the thing is, this Sookie Stackhouse book was only written in 2001, and these clothes are way gross.

With the help of my book Drawing Fashions (and my amazing skillz at drawing faces), I have illustrated these amazing outfits which somehow never made it to the series.

“She was wearing spandex. An exercise bra in flamingo pink and matching calf-length leggings, with a man’s white dress shirt flung on unbuttoned.”

“I changed to a blue and green knit short set, brushed my hair and secured it with a banana clip.”

“Diane was wearing a one-piece lime green bodysuit spun out of Lycra, or some other very thin, stretchy cloth.”

“I yanked out some khaki slacks and a bronze silk blouse with short sleeves. I had brown leather sandals and a brown leather belt that would look good. I hung a chain around my neck, stuck in some big gold earrings, and I was ready.”

BEST FIRST DATE OUTFIT EVER.

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.

(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!”

So, here’s the story, as I remember it…

Kristy finally has her baby and misses a meeting.

Stacey tries to wrap things up early, because she’s headed to an interview at Angela Bower’s ad agency.

Claudia’s head wound starts to get worse.

Marcy tries on some kind of shoddy makeup being sold right near the sporting goods and develops a mild and temporary case of thrush.

Mallory’s grandmother shows up.

Marcy affixes a brand new head onto her acid washed denim suit to approach Logan with.

Kristy’s lazy eye makes her think Logan and Marcy are twenty feet apart.

Claudia’s head wound turns out to be a symptom of a contagious disease, which has now affected Stacey. It is possibly sexually contracted, thus proving that there are more lesbians in the BSC than once anticipated.

Marcy’s dulcolax kicks in while rollerblading.

Mullet.

Mallory purposely topples Jesse to the ground, lets her hand linger on J’s back too long, and causes Jesse to stiffen in fear.

Once Jesse leaves, Mallory vows never to wash her hands again. And a little girl runs off to tell her mother that there are predators in the park.

Logan tries to get MA’s attention to save him from the park predator.

Marcy shows off her true NJ skillz and goes to help Logan herself. Just picture this girl at D’Jais if you need context.

Kristy, Claudia, and Stacey get stuck between worlds and try to call for help.

Logan stabs Marcy in the side during chemistry.

Jesse, Dawn, Claudia, and Stacey are pissed at Mary Anne for making them late to the PTA meeting.

Mary Anne does some drugs.

Mary Anne brings a baby head in a jar to the fair.

Some cracked out kids play with inner tubes with no pool in sight.

Mary Anne means to partner with Logan, but gets drawn into a three-legged race with Satan instead.

Marcy comes back from the dead, and Logan tries to kill her again.

The ghost of Marcy comes to destory Mary Anne with two creepy twin demons.

Little Pete just continues to freak me the f out.

The costume party is moved to a remote location in the woods.

Marcy’s evil spirit is defeated with a hose. She vows revenge.

Someone tells the sitters that babysitting is one of the easiest, most boring jobs in the entire world.

Mullet.

Don’t delete yourself again, entry!

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 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.

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.

Except for the fact that Logan, her boyfriend, is totally gay. He’s from Kentucky, and Ann M. Martin loved to write out his speech phonetically so we could all understand what a Southern accent sounded like. “Mayuh Ree Ayun.” Something like that. He’s super sensitive as well and also loves to babysit, so they let him babysit sometimes, even though Kristy gave him a super-feminist hard time about it. Like, get with the times, Kristy! Isn’t making babysitting a job that’s only appropriate for girls the last thing you want to do? He’s also a dog and starts macking on Mary Anne and ordering for her in restaurants to the point where she has to break up with him. But, they get back together, like, four books later.

Claudia is the “artist” of the group, which means she’s dumb. She can’t spell, she doesn’t like school, she’s probably got some kind of borderline mental deficiency, but she can paint, so nobody cares. Except for her parents, who are militant about school and hate the fact that she reads Nancy Drew books. I mean, she’s reading, which seems like a battle won, but I guess that’s not how they look at things. And she hides candy around her room. But, she’s Japanese-American which (I guess) gives her perfect skin. Or something. And she wears ridiculous clothes. Like, leggings under sweatpants, with an oversized shirt with a parrot on it, and her hair in three braids on side and loose on the other side, and a big giant parrot earring in one ear. But, she’s an artist. An artist!

And then Claudia’s best friend is Stacey, and they’re best friends because they’re both sophisticated and they’re not big fat babies like Mary Anne and Kristy, or weird vegans like Dawn. Stacey’s from New York (the BIG APPLE!) and she knows all about getting cabs by herself and taking the Statue of Liberty tour, and her style is so sohpisticated that she gets her blonde hair permed into a big fluffy mess. She also wears awful clothes, like big sweater dresses over leggings with ankle boots. Although, now that I think about it, that’s kind of a current style.

Jessie and Mallory totally never count ’cause they’re only 11, and no one cares about 11-year-olds. Jessie’s a dancer, and they make this big deal out of the fact that she’s black and has cocoa-colored skin, and Mallory’s white and she has … white-colored skin, but they’re still best friends. Also, Jessie’s kind of a bitch, too, but they blame it on her being “sassy” and Mallory’s totally a lesbian. Their books are boring. Like, Jessie learns sign language to deal with a deaf kid, and Mallory hates boys and gym! Big deal.

Anyway, now that you know who’s in the story, here’s the gist of it.

The show always starts out with the girls screaming about something over which plays the awful theme song (“say hello to your friends/babysitters club/say hello to the people who care”) , and in this episode they’re at the awkwardly named Flat Rock Brook Park with a whole crapload of kids. They’re tying peanuts to the trees and Claudia says, “A feast for the birds!” But, then you can hear Jessie going, “Will the birds eat that?” except you can’t see her and you don’t know what she’s talking about, besides the peanuts, and … obviously they’ll eat the peanuts, otherwise, why are they wasting their time?

Then one of the little kids says in this super calm voice, “Hey, everyone, look at this,” and they all come racing over, like he broke his leg and noticed the bone coming through the skin or something. He found a bird with a broken wing, and they all stand around and look at it, and it’s hilarious because all the little kids are upset and are all like, “What do we do? Do we call the hospital??” and the babysitters are totally ROLLING their EYES and talking in these exasperated voices, like the last thing they want to do is figure out how to help this baby bird that can’t move. Bitches! Later, Dawn says she called the park and told them where the bird is and she just seems totally annoyed that she even exerted that much energy.

Then they all get up to leave and it looks like they’re walking right on the bird. Good job, guys.

So, as they’re leaving the park, they see some surveyors, who are just standing in the field, minding their own business, looking through that little surveyor tool they have. You should hear the babysitters! They freak out!! “What are they doing?” “Who are THEY?” “What could be going on?” “I’ve never seen THEM before!”

So, Dawn marches up and asks them what’s going on, and comes back with frustrated tears in her eyes to announce an impending road RIGHT THROUGH THE PARK! Everyone gasps and wonders if all the birds in the park will die now, and Dawn starts to stomp off in the kind of huff that only a 13-year-old girl can produce:

Mary Anne calms her down with the promise of finding out more information (and also, presumably, to stop her from freaking out all the kids they’re babysitting).

But, see, Dawn’s crazy, so when they go to the town hall and are told that 12 trees will be cut down to make room for an “access road”, and then give her (GIVE HER!) about 100 sheets of paper pertaining to the proposal, she says they’re just trying to stall her so they can vote yes on the road before her tiny 8th grade mind has read past the first page, and then she throws out the paper.

Wait. I don’t think you heard that. Dawn. The environmentalist. The girl CRYING over the prospect of 12 trees being cut down, THROWS OUT A HUNDRED SHEETS OF PAPER. And nobody bats an eye. WHAT??

Well, anyway, for a split second in this episode, she kind of acts like a normal 13-year-old when she spots Logan walking up with a guy she thinks is cute.

Of course, she yells in her harsh midwestern accent, “Who’s THAT???” within earshot. And who is it?

Yup. It’s Zach Braff. At his most awkward, too, which is saying a TON where ZB is concerned. He’s Logan’s baseball buddy, it turns out, and I think he likes Dawn as much as she likes him. Can you tell? No? Well, they’re not very good actors. Anyway, ZB is from New Jersey, and that’s where this show was filmed, so this could perhaps have been his first big acting job, which is pretty hilarious. And he’s got some fantasticly large hair.

Anyway, Dawn suddenly recovers from normalcy and realizes that there’s no time for crushes when there’s a planet to save, so the girls organize an emergency action team, composed of the girls in the babysitters club and some children they babysit. Effective.

They’re all making posters at Dawn’s house (slave labor!) and then Jessie just sort of wanders in from out of nowhere to make them play a game with her. Which is awesome. They play Mother May I which is a terrible game. Worse than Red Rover. How about kickball or tag or, ooh! Freeze Tag! Anyway, Jessie puts on her sassiest sass face and voice…

…before Dawn shows up to ruin the “fun” by making everyone start working on their useless project again.

Apropos of nothing, Mallory “accidentally” lands in the same chair as Claudia, who looks back at the camera for no reason with this “get this lesbian OUTTA here!” look on her face.

Then, Dawn tries to bully Little Pete into wearing a tree costume at the rally tomorrow and gets mad at him when he doesn’t want to. Then, Kristy and Mary Anne come tearing up the deck, fanny packs-a-flyin’ and Dawn gets mad at them for being late.

She’s so annoying! She’s all, This is super serious, guys! Which, you’re thirteen, Dawn! Stop being such a mother.

Anwyay, Kristy and Mary Anne apparantly had to stand in a long line at the copy center, which Dawn doesn’t even give them a break on, and then she gets even more bent out of shape when it turns out that they made a double date for the movies. When she tells them they don’t have time for dates, and Kristy says, “We don’t have to do this every second of the day,” Dawn ACTUALLY says, “Yes, we do!” Is she kidding?

Anyway, then Kristy gets all Jane Austen and says that it’s not just a double date, it’s a triple date, because “David Cummings asked specifically for you!” Did he also mention how much he has a year and then ask her father’s permission to marry her? Finally, Dawn cools down for another half a second at the thought of getting some ass.

Cut to Dawn getting ready in her room. She’s put on white leggings and a giant cranberry sweater, and is deciding on earrings. But, it’s funny because Kristy’s still wearing her striped shirt and fanny pack, and Mary Anne’s still wearing her the oversized plaid jumper she borrowed from her home ec teacher, so I don’t know what Dawn’s getting so bent out of shape about.

Anyway, Kristy and Mary Anne have this banter where they’re playing up ZB by saying things like, “Logan says he’s a greeeeat baseball player!” and “He’s in my class and he’s reeeeeeally smart!” and “I heard he has a greeeeeeat sense of humour” and “Dawn doesn’t care if they’re smart, as long as they’re soooooooo cute!” I mean, replace some of those words, and you’d be watching an episode of Sex and the City. It’s weird. And plus, they keep overenunciating everything, which makes it seem even more like they’re all double entendres.

But, Dawn starts in again about how important trees are (I think they make a joke about them at some point – something like “As long as he’s dressed like a tree…”), and Mary Anne and Kristy are totally done with her whining.

I mean, seriously. They’re going on a date! Mary Anne just wants to hold Logan’s hand, and Kristy just wants to “accidentally” grab Mary Anne’s boob, and then they were probably hoping that Dawn would shut up once she got a little from ZB, and Dawn’s making it so hard!

And to make things even worse, Dawn has her hair up in this kind of matronly meets prom queen style when they start the scene, right?

And then Mary Anne says that she likes Dawn’s hair down ’cause it’s so pretty, so Dawn FLIPS OUT and pulls half of her hair down, leaving this little tiny bun on top.

And, of course, she blames Mary Anne, who’s, like, already forgotten she said anything about her hair and leaves the room all clapping and saying, “Yay, Logan’s at the door!” leaving Dawn to brush out her dry messy hair through frustrated tears.

Ten hours later, when she finally comes down and is ready to leave, ZB gives a slight look of disappointment as she decends the stairs, but has, in the meantime, discovered her posters and poorly made petition about the trees and asks about it. She starts in on her spiel and then when ZB expresses an opposing opinion, she starts screeching at him.

And that’s when she discovers that he’s not just Logan’s baseball buddy. He also happens to be the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works’ son. He is so for the park improvement plan that it’s not even funny, and Dawn basically wants to punch Commiss-lette in the face. There will be no triple date tonight.

So, moving on, there’s a picket line and, again, a bunch of babysittees doing all the work (why are their parents letting 7-year-olds get involved in this?), and all these cars are driving by and honking, and the drivers look like their flipping them off.

Which is awesome. And then there’s a reporter and a photographer covering the story, who both look like they’ll kill their editor if they get sent on another story like this again.

Plus, they hilariously smack down Kristy when she starts to babble on about the Babysitters Club, because this is neither the time nor place to promote your side business, dope.

They’re all excitedly reading the article and congratulating themselves when Dawn tells them once again that it is not time for fun, and that they should be gearing themselves up for the next fight. They tell her to calm down a bit, and she gets even more mad, and when they say that she should ask ZB for help since he’ll know more about what’s going down than they do, she yells that “he’s on the other side!” Just like a social protester.

The next day, they head to the meeting, and get ready to kick some DPW ass.

The Commissioner, aka ZB’s mom, has some crazy Jersey hair. She’s also probably actually somebody’s mom or actually the Commissioner of the town they filmed the show in because she speaks in this weird, whispery, halting voice. Like this: “We have spent… many months… looking at various proposals, uh… in order to find theeeee… best use of the wooded area in… theeeee… Flat Rock Brook Park.” She gives Dawn a condescending little smile of “let’s see where this goes” when Dawn steps up to the mic.

But, not long after, she. Gets. Pissed.

Dawn hasn’t prepared a speech and is just screaming (literally, screaming into the microphone) about how cutting down trees is wrong, and how dare they tell kids to take showers instead of baths when they’re going to cut down trees and make every single animal in the park extinct.

The Commissioner is all, “Look. You didn’t even read the proposal, and if you had, you’d realize that it’s not a road for cars. It’s a road for wheelchairs. Jerk.”

So, Dawn’s got no legs to stand on anymore, because she can’t deny that people in wheelchairs should be able to go to the park, but she also kind of thinks that people in wheelchairs shouldn’t be going to the park, ’cause they’re dirty and will create pollution and garbage which will deplete the ozone layer and cause acid rain.

Meanwhile, ZB weeps terribly to himself in the back of the room.

Commissioner smacks Dawn down again saying that the proposal included something like more garbage cans, which is better for the park, so Dawn has to sit down all defeated, punctuating her last moment in the spotlight by giving out a weak, “Well, I still think it’s not right to cut down trees.” And the Commissioner just goes, “Well, thank you.” And then takes a vote and approves the plan anyway.

After the meeting, Dawn feels like a failure, and the other girls are so fed up with her. They tell her she was rude to ZB, that he was nodding (and crying) at a lot of her points at the meeting, and that she should figure out a way to compromise. She says compromising is giving up. She’s such a whacko. I’m surprised she hasn’t set fire to the park in protest.

Anyway, she invites ZB to her house and tries to make him do origami. And when he doesn’t know how and tosses the paper across the table angrily, she calls herself a jerk and sits on the table all “let’s play doctor”, and tells him she’s got a plan that she needs his help with.

She and the other babysitters have gotten their degrees in architectural landscaping and have come up with an incredible packed-dirt-road plan that won’t disclude the cripples and won’t warrant cutting down the trees. They’ve also made the road only wide enough for one wheelchair to pass at a time, so I don’t know what happens if two old women in jazzies are trying to enter and leave the park at once, but I guess that’s not really her problem.

Of course, her plan doesn’t include facilites for garbage, so I don’t know how she’ll possibly reduce the waste in the park. ZB loves it and loves her and wants to have sex with her on the new packed dirt road and says that he’s in on ambushing his mother before the first saw hits the first tree.

So, they sort of trick her into coming to the park so Dawn can reveal her plan, but it kind of all seems like Dawn and ZB were really revealing a pregnancy and impending marriage. Anyway, Commissioner’s all, “I… don’t know… what… is going on here… but… I really have to say, I really don’t appreciate being tricked into coming here! Now… what is… going on?”

ZB shows off his best north Jersey accent when he says they couldn’t do it any other way, and Dawn shows off her proposal, which is so unprofessional.

I mean, she showed ZB this at her house:

I mean, I don’t really see what the bottom has to do with the top, because the road’s supposed to wind around the trees, and the top paper seems like a straight line. But, anyway, it’s a lot better looking than this:

This is what she gives to the Commissioner. It’s more artsy and doesn’t really get the point across, and it’s not in any kind of scale, like the first ones are. And who cares about the pond? It has nothing to do with anything! And why are there pictures of turtles everywhere? So ridiculous.

Anyway, Commissioner is breathlessly impressed and will call the committee together to rethink the proposal the next day! Of course, about twenty seconds later, ZB goes, “So, Ma, what do you think?” Didn’t she just tell you?
Then they eat chicken and laugh and laugh.
The next day, at a BSC meeting, the Commissioner calls up Dawn, who fakes everyone out by looking upset, and says that the trees won’t be cut down and Dawn is going to head up a youth committee on the environment. Oh, sure, that’s just what she needs to get the head swelling down. And, plus, everyone’s telling her how, trees aside, at least she’s got a guy interested in her (one that’s not under the false impression that she’s someone else, that is), and she gets all red-faced and embarrassed because the girls are teasing her. But, they don’t do a very good job of it, because half of them are going, “Daaaaaaaaaawn!” and the other half are going, “Daviiiiiiiiiiiid!” so it just sounds really stupid.

Then, in a story everyone forgot about, because it’s been a week-and-a-half since they found the bird, everyone’s back in the park to watch what looks to be an actual park ranger let the bird with its repaired wing fly away, like suddenly they all care when originally they could give a crap about a dying bird.

And Kristy creeps everyone out by leaning her head against Claudia’s neck, who does her best to ignore her and push her away at the same time. Even Jessie’s little sister over on the right looks weirded out.

Best episode ever. And don’t worry. There are 11 more to recap.