Stoneybrookite

Janine Kishi, World’s Smartest Woman

greer — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:16:16 +0000

I’ve written about it before, but Janine’s impossibly high IQ continues to haunt me. Today, I happened upon an article on the man with the world’s highest IQ–and his is 198, making Janine’s 196 a sure bet in the competition for the world’s smartest woman.

Is it possible, theoretically? Sure. But in fiction, coincidences are less believable than they are in real life, and so are such extraordinary things as the smartest woman in the world being a sixteen-year-old girl in suburban Connecticut. If Ann and co. had really wanted to run with this plot, they could have centered a whole series around Janine and how she deals with her life as the world’s smartest teenager, rather than focusing on her semi-literate younger sister’s baby-sitting foibles. But as it stands, Janine’s ridiculously high IQ is something that is just tossed around casually, with no real importance given to its significance–only that Janine annoys Claudia sometimes and really loves school.

If we take Janine’s IQ at face value, however, and also regard it with more significance than Ann and the ghostwriters allowed–because whoa, smartest girl in the world is even more pressure than JUST being a genius–I suppose that Claudia’s poor school performance and crappy spelling almost make sense, despite the fact that she was never allowed to be diagnosed with a learning disability. I can sympathize, to a point. My brother is a talented musician; I never got very far with an instrument because I could never compete. Claudia would never be a rocket fission scientist or whatever; she’ll never do as well in school; fuck it, let’s paint.

(N.B.: The article on that guy is pretty weird. Apparently he is a former stripper who is addicted to online porn. Bodes well for Janine’s future, no?)

Ann and Pop Culture

greer — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:50:52 +0000

Recently, there was a post in the BSC Snark livejournal community where a member had just seen Sixteen Candles for the first time and had the same reaction I did all those years ago, when I first saw that movie: how the hell is this Mary Anne’s favorite movie? It includes such topics as underage drinking, date rape, and people paying money to see a girl’s underwear.

Obviously, it was just a movie that was popular at the time the book was written–I believe it’s in The Ghost at Dawn’s House–and Ann was like, “Oh, family forgets sixteen-year-old’s birthday, but she ends up with the school hottie! Perfect for Mary Anne!” Actually, this is really strange, but I just tried looking up Sixteen Candles in the Complete Guide and it’s NOT THERE. Obviously, someone at Scholastic realized that this wasn’t an appropriate movie for their target audience to want to watch. Luckily, we do NOT censor the wiki and it’s in there.

It’s not uncommon for authors to stick a bit of themselves and their interests into the things they write. Sometimes, this works out fine. I am a huge fan of Meg Cabot, and Mia, in The Princess Diaries, is a character who has obviously inherited a lot of Meg’s interests. Mia sits around watching Buffy and Lifetime movies and makes references to topical pop culture events all the time. If you read Meg’s blog, as I do, you’d know that these are things that Meg is really into as well. And that’s ok, because these interests are pretty believable for a teenage girl. (I would personally LOVE to sit around and discuss TV and celebrities with Meg!)

Ann, however, as all fans of the BSC know well, is into, well, I Love Lucy and Wizard of OZ. Now, I would say it would be OK for one or two of the characters to be into these things. When I was a teenager, I watched a lot of old tv–I was even weirdly obsessed with this programming block on GSN they showed at like, 3 in the morning that was game shows from the 50s and 60s. I’ve Got a Secret/What’s My Line/To Tell the Truth, etc. But I was a weirdo who had few friends! EVERYONE in Stoneybrook, it seems, is well-acquinated with the plot of every Lucy episode and has seen OZ too many times to count. When Ann does try to insert references to current trends, like with Mary Anne loving Sixteen Candles, it often is a strange choice or inappropriate because Ann truly does not to get out much. Recall, if you will, Ann’s biography, where she recalled a “wild night with the girls” in college–EATING A TON OF ICE CREAM. Which is totally fine! There is not wrong with being pop culture illiterate, or a homebody. I think that in Main Street, where Ann makes zero pop culture references and writes about a bunch of kind-of-nerdy girls, plays to her strengths well, and uses her hobbies and interests in a way that doesn’t seem anachronistic for the age she is writing about.

This is one of the things that actually IMPROVED with the ghostwriters, I think. I trust Peter Lerangis to be pretty up on pop culture–I got into a twitter discussion with him a while ago about SOPA, and he knew who Louis CK was. (So do my parents, I guess–both my mom and my dad love his show. But still. I don’t think Ann would be familiar.) But anyway, once you get past the books where Ann was the actual author and no one was thanked for their help with the manuscript, you start getting references to things that were popular at the time, like 90210 and grunge and Hanson. There is a little less Lucy and a little more “I’ve been told I look like Jason Priestley.”

There is a downside to this, however. Like how many references in The Princess Diaries will be totally confusing to kids in ten years or so (Who is Jason Alexander and why did Britney Spears marry him?, they will ask), the references in the later BSC books very firmly place them in their years of publication. Whereas the endless old-stuff references just seem a little strange in the early books, but I don’t see that many things that really clearly mark them as late 80s/early 90s the way the later books are so clearly 90s.

So, you know, often I think the best thing is to just make up your own pop culture. Let U4Me go on tour with Spider and the Insects.

Long time no see…

greer — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:48:50 +0000

After the Challenge, instead of kicking my posting butt into gear, I’ve sort of moved into a phase where I’m less interested in BSC stuff: no motivation to post here or work in the wiki, less time spent on the various BSC communities I belong to… This happens from time to time, I suppose.

I’m not a big “fandom” person, so it’s not like I lose interest in the BSC and start, say, blogging about Community. I think it’s only natural that after nineteen years, sometimes I want to do nothing more than to read and think about the BSC, and other times I’m more interested in living my life outside of Stoneybrook. I mean, I started reading the series when I was the same age as Karen Brewer and now I’m old enough to teach at Stoneybrook Middle School or have a BSC client of my own. I’m older than Wesley Ellenburg!

I tend to retreat into BSCland when I’m feeling uneasy or a bit sad about my own life and want something comforting. But now I’m busy trying to start a career and balancing that with a social life and dipping my toes into the world of adult responsibility. I do hope to post more, and to add to the wiki (which you can all do too). But for now, I’d like to ask a few questions:

1) How long have you been reading the BSC?
2) Do you find that your interest in the series waxes and wanes with the seasons/life events/whatever?

30 Day Challenge Round-up

greer — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:00:14 +0000

The original thread for the 30 Day Challenge is here. I encourage everyone with a BSC-focused blog to do it; it’s really good for getting your cognitive BSC juices flowing.

Here are all my answers:
Day 1, Favorite Sitter: Stacey
Day 2, Least Favorite Sitter: Logan
Day 3, Favorite Regular Book: Stacey and the Bad Girls
Day 4, Least Favorite Regular Book: Kristy Thomas, Dog Trainer
Day 5, Favorite Mystery: Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum/Stacey and the Stolen Hearts
Day 6, Least Favorite Mystery: Kristy and the Missing Child
Day 7, Favorite Super Special: Baby-Sitters on Board!
Day 8, Least Favorite Super Special: Baby-Sitters’ Island Adventure
Day 9, Favorite Minor Character: Cary Retlin
Day 10, Least Favorite Minor Character: Clarence King/Mark Jaffe
Day 11, Favorite Sitting Charge: Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold
Day 12, Least Favorite Sitting Charge: The Perkins Girls
Day 13, Favorite Parent: Maureen Spencer
Day 14, Least Favorite Parent: Patrick Thomas
Day 15, Favorite Fight: Stacey versus the BSC
Day 16, Favorite Love Interest: Ethan Carroll
Day 17, Favorite BSC-organized Event: Valentine’s Day Party
Day 18, Favorite BSC Vacation Spot: Paris or Disney World
Day 19, Favorite Holiday Book: Baby-Sitters’ Christmas Chiller
Day 20, Favorite Couple in the Books: Amalia/Brendan; Maggie/Tyler
Day 21, Favorite Couple Not in the Books: Mary Anne/Cary
Day 22, BSC Member or Minor Character You Could See Yourself Being Friends With: Sunny Winslow
Day 23, Favorite Friends Forever: Claudia and the Disaster Date; Welcome Home, Mary Anne; Mary Anne’s Revenge
Day 24, Least Favorite Friends Forever: Graduation Day
Day 25, Moment/Scene From the Books That Sticks Out For You the Most: Wine bottles in flop socks
Day 26, Favorite Claudia Outfit: “Serious Artist” Outfit
Day 27, Favorite Stacey Outfit: Stacey’s Dad Award Dinner Outfit
Day 28, One Thing You Learned From the BSC: “Continue on” is redundant
Day 29, Favorite BSC “Villain”: Bad Girls/Badd Boyz
Day 30, Biggest “Wouldn’t Happen in Real Life” Moment: The Mystery Series

Young Adult, or this is totally not a film review

greer — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:49:08 +0000

Last week I watched the movie Young Adult, which stars Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt and was made by the people behind Juno, which I’ve never seen. Besides feeling lots and lots of secondhand embarrassment for Charlize Theron’s character, Patton Oswalt’s excellent turn at dramatic acting, and this song from Teenage Fanclub, the movie has one very important thing going for it. In the movie, Charlize Theron’s character’s profession is… wait for it… YA series ghostwriter!!!

Now we can imagine how Nola Thacker looked while working on the BSC, amirite?

So Mavis, Theron’s character, is a ghostwriter for a YA series called Waverly Prep, which I imagine to be more in the Gossip Girl vein than the BSC or SVH, but whatever. The thing that stuck with me, besides the realization that ghostwriter for a YA/middle grade reader series is kind of a dream job for me, is that the fact that the series has just been CANCELLED is a plot point that’s kind of floating in the background the whole time, and, in my opinion, the thing that really sets off Mavis’s mid-30s crisis, even more than the fact that her long-ago boyfriend had a baby and is apparently happy.

This, of course, brought to mind the BSC and its end in 2000. The end of the BSC has always been spun as, “Ann decided it was time for the thing to end,” but it’s always struck me as more PR than truth. Let’s look at the facts:

Before the introduction of Friends Forever, they redesigned the Mystery series, only to use the new covers for, oh, three books. Now, it’s possible that the art department and the editorial department just didn’t communicate that well, but it says to me that Friends Forever was something that was moved along quickly and was somewhat of a surprise to those who worked on the series.

California Diaries and Little Sister ended without a satisfying, wrap-everything-up ending, whereas Friends Forever had Graduation Day. The Claudia/Alan, and yes I am just going to go with this fantasy of mine here, Mary Anne/Cary (or at least Mary Anne-on-her-own) plotlines were not resolved. Stacey/Ethan also didn’t really get a satisfying conclusion.

It seems to me that the ending of the BSC, and perhaps even the transition to Friends Forever, was more sudden than Ann & Co. let on. It would have been fairly easy to put together Graduation Day, because it’s the obvious conclusion to the series. It would have been harder to decide a proper sendoff for Ducky and Karen. Perhaps the California Diaries team and the Little Sister team didn’t even know they were being axed alongside the BSC and figured that rumors about the end of the BSC wouldn’t affect them–maybe Little Sister had better sales than its big sister series, much like how the Full House “Michelle” books were being published long after ABC cancelled the show. I’m not sure how good California Diaries sales were, but I can see them attracting the audience that felt embarrassed to be buying the BSC, but still wanting to feel some connection to the characters.

It’s entirely possible that only the FF editorial team was given enough notice to properly finish out the series. Maybe the LS and CD people had a whole bunch of books outlined that they never got to finish. I’d ask @PeterLerangis, but I’m sure Scholastic made him sign a blood oath to never tell the true story.

One of the things that struck me about the plotline in the film is that they did in fact use the word “cancelled,” exactly as you would for a television series. I guess it makes sense for a book series as well; I had just never thought of that way. I had always seen the end of a book series as more as an agreement between the author and publisher, not the publisher deciding to no longer publish the books. Looking back on it, I think this is probably a naive attitude to have about how the publishing world works. Just like how many cancelled series have episodes in the can that will never air, I am sure that many book series had more plots outlined and new characters in the wings that never ended up on bookshelves.

30 Day BSC Challenge, Day 30: Biggest “wouldn’t happen in real life” moment

greer — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:06:11 +0000

Last day of the Challenge… hope you guys enjoyed it. Soon we’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled Stoneybrookite programming, and I hope it’ll be more regular than it has been in recent years.

It’s hard to choose just ONE moment. There are so many. Let’s see, Watson paying for Dawn and Claudia to go on a cruise. Jessi being left in charge of Squirt and Becca and having it seen as a responsible thing for parents to do. I agree with BSCAG that ten-year-olds would so NOT listen to an eleven-year-old and all of those independent softball teams in the surrounding towns of Stoneybrook? Yeah, most kids don’t find Little League that threatening of an activity.

But probably the BIGGEST is the Junior League Detective Agency they ended up turning into over the course of the Mystery series. In the beginning, it was a little more realistic, and dealt with things that weren’t necessarily “mysteries,” per se–the Missing Ring, Janine acting weird, Jessi and Quint THINKING they found a Mystery when in fact they found rehearsing actors, etc. And then things got weird and they required an entire separate notebook for “cases” and became de facto members of the Stoneybrook Police Department and everything else. I actually kind of like how they ended the Mystery series, with “Whoa, this shit has gotten real/totally dangerous,” even though the Super Mysteries were just as dangerous, with CRAZY STALKERS and everything.

30 Day BSC Challenge, Day 29: Favorite BSC “Villain”

greer — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:58:17 +0000

I am going to go with 2 answers for this one: The Badd Boyz and the Bad Girls.

Both of them are just hilarious to me. SMS’s very own GANG, who have matching leather jackets and send threatening notes to Logan? Comedy gold! I wrote about my love for them here.

As far as the Bad Girls go, my boundless love for their antics can be summed up in six words: mini wine bottles in flop socks.

30 Day BSC Challenge, Day 28: One Thing You Learned From the BSC

greer — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:18:33 +0000

“Continue on” is redundant.

In all seriousness, although I DO think of Janine Kishi every time I hear “continue on,” there are so many random things I know that I first read about in the BSC. In the 200 or so books that comprise the series, there’s a lot of room for random facts, new vocabulary words, and grammar lessons. One of the real benefits of the books, I think, is that it encourages its readers to explore other books and to be interested in the world.

I think we also all learned a lot more about plots of various I Love Lucy episodes, although since my mom had it on every day before school when I was growing up, I had already seen all the episodes.

30 Day BSC Challenge, Day 27: Favorite Stacey Outfit

greer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:07:32 +0000

My favorite Stacey outfit is far easier. It has always been the kind of out-there outfit Stacey wears to her dad’s dinner in Stacey’s Choice. Now, I think some people might question wearing a leotard to such a fancy event, but I love that Stacey went with something daring and fashion-forward. Leotards are so Edie Sedgwick. Plus, light pink and black is one of my favorite color combos.

Now, the real question–who is your preferred BSC Fashion Plate, Claudia or Stacey? Or do you hate both and prefer Kristy’s “uniform,” Mary Anne’s selections from the LL Bean catalog, Dawn’s California Casual, Jessi’s “I didn’t have time to change after ballet,” Mallory’s desire for glitter, or Abby’s umbros?

30 Day BSC Challenge, Day 26: Favorite Claudia Outfit

greer — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:58:52 +0000

I don’t like many of Claudia’s outfits. If you have to preface an outfit with, “It sounds crazy, but on [person] it totally worked!” I believe that you are just filtering your view of that outfit through your love of your friend, and not the aesthetic reality of their sartorial choices.

I do, however, like the outfit Claudia puts on to go to Serena McKay’s class in Middle School Dropout. I believe it is just black jeans and a black sweater and her snake bracelet and converse sneakers, or something like that. I basically wear that every day. I also secretly want a snake bracelet. In my mind, the snake bracelet is a wooden and painted green. I would wear it with my imaginary I’M AWESOME necklace that I am also still searching for.