Stoneybrookite

the best friends you’ll never have

Browsing in the internet

I have been busy studying for the biggest exam of my life, moving twice, writing my dissertation, etc. Now that I have returned from my 18-hour round-trip sojourn to acquire One (1) document, I am hoping that I should be able to return to semi-regular posting. Even though I still have to write my dissertation.

Anyway, I would like to show you this:

It is a website with pictures of food and oddly-spelled captions, and to me, it captures the SPIRIT of Claudia Kishi and her Disposable Comestibles.

Potabo.com!

Coming up when I get around to it: my all-time, top 5 best/worst BSC boys.

“Fun bag”? Not only is it also a slang term for boobs, but they totally stole the Kid-Kit idea from Kristy. She should sue.

(via Everything is Terrible)

Site stuff: I am currently working on two real posts and considering a redesign. Whew. More exhausting than making sure your clients paid you more than ten bucks.

Entropificus is doing a series of drawings where she recreates Claudia’s outfits as described by Ann & co. Definitely worth checking out.

I like to check out Ann’s website every once in a while. She doesn’t update all that frequently–maybe once every two or three months–so it’s a nice surprise when there’s something new.

It has been updated for April, with a 25 Random Things post. Sound familiar? In this missive, we learn that Ann (gasp!) likes I Love Lucy and salmon–I thought she was a vegetarian? Maybe she just doesn’t eat red meat.

About this list, Ann writes,

If you’re familiar with the Internet (and since you’re reading this online, you probably are!), a lot of questionnaires, quizzes, and polls may have come your way. I’ve definitely seen my fair share of these, but nothing had caught my eye until a friend sent me her “25 Random Thoughts.”

She then talks about how much fun she’s been having reading her friends’ lists. Now, it’s entirely possible that maybe her friends are just emailing her this stuff. But questionnaires? Quizzes? Polls? It’s pretty obvious that Ann has a facebook account. And sits around doing quizzes like “Which Wizard of Oz character are you?” and posting them to her news feed.

Peter Lerangis has a facebook page. And Ann has an official page, so you can be her fan. But I bet that her real facebook page, where she posts pictures of her dog and her latest sewing projects, is hidden. Smart lady, that Ann.

Yahoo! Answers is basically a repository of FAIL. The following question is proof positive of this fact:

peterlerangis.jpg

Let’s dissect the many layers of FAIL in this question. Wanting to know how to best contact Peter Lerangis isn’t FAIL, because how do you think I found this question? I was googling that shit. No, the issue here is that the asker wants to know 1) Where Peter Lerangis lives 2) because they want to write him an email 3) and how many stamps it would require.

OK, first of all, you don’t need to know where someone lives to write them an EMAIL. You need their EMAIL ADDRESS. You also don’t need STAMPS to write an email. Emails are FREE. And even if the asker were writing a letter, presuming they live in the United States, he/she should know that a normal letter can be mailed using ONE STAMP.

Has your head exploded yet? Mine has.

Many have noticed that the wiki is broken. I don’t know how to fix it. If you know some stuff about MediaWiki/PHP/MySQL, and want to help–please email me at greer @ stoneybrookite.org or reply to this post. I will send you a fun surprise in the mail or something, and you could rest easy at night knowing that you have helped BSC fans everywhere.

Thank you!!

Did you know that Lois Lowry has a blog? So does Meg Cabot. Meg’s blog is very relatable, because she talks about things like the latest episode of Gossip Girl. Tuesdays (or Wednesdays, depending) are often reserved for serious discussions of CHUCK BASS around these parts.

What other middle grade/YA authors do you know who have interesting blogs?

Speaking of Lois Lowry, I have been rediscovering Anastasia Krupnik lately. I think one of the things that make Anastasia books so enjoyable–besides the fact that they’re laugh-out-loud funny, so much so that my mother has commented on it while I was reading on the couch–is that her family just seems so cool. You read it and think, “Now this is the family I should have had!” (Not that I don’t love my family or anything.) Harvard professor dad, illustrator mom, cute and smart little brother… all witty and understanding. Plus, they live in a really cool Victorian house with a study full of Great Books.

Who is your favorite fictional family?

Also, I feel a little harsh in my treatment of Dawn Schafer in my recent post. So soon I will write about what I like about Dawn. She was, after all, my favorite character for a while in my childhood, and there are certain ways in which I really relate to her now.

AOL’s Hometown shut down on Halloween, taking one of the best BSC resources out there (The Baby-Sitters Club Companion) with it. After a quick google search, I found its new home. The full site isn’t up yet, so to navigate, keep on changing the url–bscchap1 to bscchap2 and so on. Happy reading!

Having just started a small fire in my kitchen while cooking rice, now seems like as good a time as any to stop my hiatus and return to posting here.

I have also been more absent than usual from my regular BSC-related internet activities, but not so absent that a shift in the fandom has passed me by. It’s a small shift, to be sure, barely perceptible except to those who have been around for a while and pay close attention. It used to be that I, born in 1986, was at the young end of the BSC fan spectrum. Perhaps this is just a natural part of life, that you used to be the baby and now you feel like a seasoned old-timer who should be retiring to Florida within the next couple of years, but now I can name a handful of people in the fandom, who are active and post on the boards and on the lj and on ff.net (illegally!) who were born in 1997. 1997!!!! In 1997 I was revelling in my angst and listening to silverchair! And of course, reading new BSC books, although I was already embarassed to be seen buying them in the bookstore.

And now we have new readers of the BSC, for whom the fashions of the late eighties and early 90s are as difficult to understand as the sanitary belt of the unupdated Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret was for our generation. But something still resonates with them, and they build their collections secondhand, not lucky enough to have been around when you could count on a new regular series every month, a new Mystery every other month, and a Super Special in the summer. They come online and discuss the books with us, bringing their currently-happening middle school experiences to the table.

I have long been a cynic when it comes to the question of reissuing the books or Ann writing a reunion book. A reunion book is something I just plain don’t really want, but a new print run I have always thought to be not particularly financially viable. The BSC was a huge series, and it’s just not conceivable that it would sell as well as it did at its peak to make printing them justifiable. And true, the graphic novels did not sell well enough to merit extending the series beyond the planned four books. But some kids aren’t into graphic novels, even though the BSC ones are awesome and I adore them. My sister, who is eight, didn’t want the graphic novels, but she wanted my regular books. I gave her my doubles, along with some other childhood favorites, and my dad said she “really loved the books,” so perhaps I have created another young BSC fan.


Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the BSC books would do well, well enough at least to republish the first 25 or so books. But one thing: no updating, like SVH. I think part of what makes BSC so popular is that it is from a relatively simpler time, without cell phones and before the internet had really taken hold. I liked books from before my time as a kid for this very reason. I loved reading about life in the early 1960s on the Upper West Side almost as much as I liked reading about Harriet M. Welsch herself. So please Scholastic, if you do rerelease the books, don’t trade in the Junk Bucket for a unnamed used Honda Civic, like what happened with poor 1BRUCE1.

I found this on youtube. It’s a song by a Czech band called SandWitch entitled “Mallory on Strike.” I’d like to think they were inspired by Ann’s novel, which I have been reading lately.

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