BSC #39, Poor Mallory! (Chapters 1-4)
Hello! This is not my first snark -- I had an account here three or four years ago and then deleted it for vague reasons known only to fifteen-year-old me. Anyway, I've grown a wee bit older and hopefully, a wee bit funnier.
I'm too lazy to post a cover, but on it Mallory is looking pouty while the loaded Delaneys play in their pool. There's also a featured opportunity to win a trip to NYC, which was evidently offered five years prior to me being born.
The dedication is to some lady named Bonnie Black, whom I hypothesize this website belongs to. While she doesn't admit to writing for Ann (who would?), editing is a thing she does from time to time. She also looks appropriately out of the loop enough to ghostwrite a BSC book.
Anyway, on to the snark.
The book opens with a positively scintillating rendition of some shitty song Mallory's brothers like to sing:
"Undewear! Underwear!" I sang. "How I itch in my woolly underwear. How I wish I'd gottennnn" (I held the note for as long as I could) "a pair of cotton, so I wouldn't itch everywhere."
I'll spare you the pain of Jessi joining in to finish the song, but rest assured it is just as stupid as the above. Bonnie Black is another one fond of excessive parentheses, as there are three phrases within them on that first half-page. Turns out these two are walking home from Stoneybrook Middle School (or SMS) together. After they part, Mallory sings another song about some guy making sausage out of the neighbors' pets, causing her to gross herself out.
She gets home and calls out only to her mother, who Claire explains "in a small explosion of words" is lying upstairs in bed as a result of a phone call she received earlier. Mallory runs through the worst-case scenarios, but concludes that if someone had died her mother would be running around in a buzz of activity, not lying down. She goes to investigate.
Mom Pike is sitting on the edge of her bed. Mallory says this hilarious thing:
Maybe she'd heard those awful words: We have your test results, Mrs. Pike, and they don't look good.
I laugh for about five minutes. Then I cry because I'm on page five.
Mom assures Mallory that no, she does not have an STI because she's been perfectly faithful to Dad. Instead, the corporate firm for which lawyer Dad works is in trouble and will be laying off half its employees. Mallory is confident in her father's not getting laid off. By this time, the other kids have arrived home and Mom explains all this to them. Claire's like, "I hope he gets fired so he can stay home and play with me," but Adam retorts that they need to get money for food from somewhere. Dumbass five-year-olds. Mallory's not much better -- she worries about having to go on food stamps, despite not knowing what they are. But she knows one thing: this is an emergency!
Chapter two opens not with a BSC meeting, but with Mallory calling Jessi to deliver this news. Jessi is all, "Fired? Lose his job? Your father?" Mallory explains the company's troubles, and that it's hard to lose your job when you have a wife, eight kids, and a hamster (I am not joking) to support. They hang up and then it's typical chapter two fare, beginning with the Mal/Jessi Venn diagram. I'm black, so when I was younger I tended to sympathize with Jessi. Dance School Phantom was one of my favorites. Unfortunately, as I age I've realized that Jessi kind of suffers from Mary Sue-ism. A lot. En pointe at eleven, starring in every ballet under the sun... yeah. It's also noted that she goes to a school she had to audition for. This ghostie sure is wild for italics.
We get a talk about BSC slang, which Ann secretly hoped would catch on. Dibble = incredible, which is comparable to distant, the antonym of which is stale. I did not know that Kristy's the only thirteen-year-old BSC member that doesn't wear a bra. Interesting.
We get some examples of things Claud might wear: wild clothes like big hats; flowered vests over shirts that belong to her father and which she leaves untucked; short black pants; and then, something just a little offbeat like penny loafers from the 1950s with white bobby socks.
Mal also makes a big deal out of the jewelry, saying that she is restricted to gold hoops and studs only, but I'm fairly certain that when her mom agreed to let her get pierced ears, she did it under the condition that Mal branch out and wear other things. Bizarre. Almost like Ms. Black hadn't kept up with canon.
I am very certain that Claudia Kishi is going to be a hoarder someday. I was convinced as a kid that there was no possible way she could keep all that junk food hidden. Where does she even put her trash? If you opened her closet, you'd probably get buried in an avalanche of Mallomars. Her room cannot be that big. Thank god Dawn's health food is approved of; she'd have rotting celery stalks shoved under her mattress.
Blah de blah. Mary Anne's father was dibbly strict, Stacey is glamorous, Dawn wouldn't touch meat with a ten-foot pole. Done.
Chapter three and I'm screaming because we already got descriptions of all the members, but now we need to know what they do within the club. Damn it. The only relevant (I use the term loosely) things that happen here are that Mrs. Prezzioso is revealed to be pregnant and that Mrs. Delaney needs a MWF sitter from 3:30-5 for the next month. Kristy gets stuck with it for now since she lives near the Delaneys but the cover says otherwise!
Mallory gets home to begin chapter four and of course it's bad news. Dad Pike was given a pink slip and is now jobless. He's also pissed and snipes at NIcky when the poor boy suggests saving food for when they need it. Mom Pike takes control and says she'll be taking temp jobs for a little while. She asks the kids to work together and not complain about money being tight. Reasonable. Dad tells the kids to listen to him while Mom is at work.
Upstairs, Mallory calls her siblings into her and Vanessa's room. Calling this "The Pike Club," they brainstorm ways to help their parents save money, which is nice of them. Vanessa does not rhyme once, which is how you can tell shit's serious.
And it looks like that's all I have time for because I move out tomorrow and need to do last-minute shopping. See y'all!
I'm too lazy to post a cover, but on it Mallory is looking pouty while the loaded Delaneys play in their pool. There's also a featured opportunity to win a trip to NYC, which was evidently offered five years prior to me being born.
The dedication is to some lady named Bonnie Black, whom I hypothesize this website belongs to. While she doesn't admit to writing for Ann (who would?), editing is a thing she does from time to time. She also looks appropriately out of the loop enough to ghostwrite a BSC book.
Anyway, on to the snark.
The book opens with a positively scintillating rendition of some shitty song Mallory's brothers like to sing:
"Undewear! Underwear!" I sang. "How I itch in my woolly underwear. How I wish I'd gottennnn" (I held the note for as long as I could) "a pair of cotton, so I wouldn't itch everywhere."
I'll spare you the pain of Jessi joining in to finish the song, but rest assured it is just as stupid as the above. Bonnie Black is another one fond of excessive parentheses, as there are three phrases within them on that first half-page. Turns out these two are walking home from Stoneybrook Middle School (or SMS) together. After they part, Mallory sings another song about some guy making sausage out of the neighbors' pets, causing her to gross herself out.
She gets home and calls out only to her mother, who Claire explains "in a small explosion of words" is lying upstairs in bed as a result of a phone call she received earlier. Mallory runs through the worst-case scenarios, but concludes that if someone had died her mother would be running around in a buzz of activity, not lying down. She goes to investigate.
Mom Pike is sitting on the edge of her bed. Mallory says this hilarious thing:
Maybe she'd heard those awful words: We have your test results, Mrs. Pike, and they don't look good.
I laugh for about five minutes. Then I cry because I'm on page five.
Mom assures Mallory that no, she does not have an STI because she's been perfectly faithful to Dad. Instead, the corporate firm for which lawyer Dad works is in trouble and will be laying off half its employees. Mallory is confident in her father's not getting laid off. By this time, the other kids have arrived home and Mom explains all this to them. Claire's like, "I hope he gets fired so he can stay home and play with me," but Adam retorts that they need to get money for food from somewhere. Dumbass five-year-olds. Mallory's not much better -- she worries about having to go on food stamps, despite not knowing what they are. But she knows one thing: this is an emergency!
Chapter two opens not with a BSC meeting, but with Mallory calling Jessi to deliver this news. Jessi is all, "Fired? Lose his job? Your father?" Mallory explains the company's troubles, and that it's hard to lose your job when you have a wife, eight kids, and a hamster (I am not joking) to support. They hang up and then it's typical chapter two fare, beginning with the Mal/Jessi Venn diagram. I'm black, so when I was younger I tended to sympathize with Jessi. Dance School Phantom was one of my favorites. Unfortunately, as I age I've realized that Jessi kind of suffers from Mary Sue-ism. A lot. En pointe at eleven, starring in every ballet under the sun... yeah. It's also noted that she goes to a school she had to audition for. This ghostie sure is wild for italics.
We get a talk about BSC slang, which Ann secretly hoped would catch on. Dibble = incredible, which is comparable to distant, the antonym of which is stale. I did not know that Kristy's the only thirteen-year-old BSC member that doesn't wear a bra. Interesting.
We get some examples of things Claud might wear: wild clothes like big hats; flowered vests over shirts that belong to her father and which she leaves untucked; short black pants; and then, something just a little offbeat like penny loafers from the 1950s with white bobby socks.
Mal also makes a big deal out of the jewelry, saying that she is restricted to gold hoops and studs only, but I'm fairly certain that when her mom agreed to let her get pierced ears, she did it under the condition that Mal branch out and wear other things. Bizarre. Almost like Ms. Black hadn't kept up with canon.
I am very certain that Claudia Kishi is going to be a hoarder someday. I was convinced as a kid that there was no possible way she could keep all that junk food hidden. Where does she even put her trash? If you opened her closet, you'd probably get buried in an avalanche of Mallomars. Her room cannot be that big. Thank god Dawn's health food is approved of; she'd have rotting celery stalks shoved under her mattress.
Blah de blah. Mary Anne's father was dibbly strict, Stacey is glamorous, Dawn wouldn't touch meat with a ten-foot pole. Done.
Chapter three and I'm screaming because we already got descriptions of all the members, but now we need to know what they do within the club. Damn it. The only relevant (I use the term loosely) things that happen here are that Mrs. Prezzioso is revealed to be pregnant and that Mrs. Delaney needs a MWF sitter from 3:30-5 for the next month. Kristy gets stuck with it for now since she lives near the Delaneys but the cover says otherwise!
Mallory gets home to begin chapter four and of course it's bad news. Dad Pike was given a pink slip and is now jobless. He's also pissed and snipes at NIcky when the poor boy suggests saving food for when they need it. Mom Pike takes control and says she'll be taking temp jobs for a little while. She asks the kids to work together and not complain about money being tight. Reasonable. Dad tells the kids to listen to him while Mom is at work.
Upstairs, Mallory calls her siblings into her and Vanessa's room. Calling this "The Pike Club," they brainstorm ways to help their parents save money, which is nice of them. Vanessa does not rhyme once, which is how you can tell shit's serious.
And it looks like that's all I have time for because I move out tomorrow and need to do last-minute shopping. See y'all!