#38 Kristy's Mystery Admirer Part III (Chapters 9-12)
Part I: http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/497746.html
Part II: http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/498356.html
Today in the latest deathbytamarind snark, Kristy's ongoing saga with the phantom love notes reaches a full tilt boogie complete with daddy issues, Shannon gets way more ink than she ever has and ever will in this series, and the countdown to the World Series of Dice drags on.
Chapter 9
Kristy fills Shannon in on her "lunatic theory" of kidnappers salivating at her door. Shannon insists that Bart is the creep and insinuates that he's trying to "psyche" Kristy out before the World Series of Dice.
I don't know if "psyche" out is spelled as such in physical copies of the book, but it appears several more times as such in my edition and it's throwing me off.
Kristy is mad and vigilant for creepers on her way to the baseball diamond.
A bunch of kids are walking ahead of Kristy and Shannon, who again has been blessed with more time by the ghost writer before she fades back into her obscure world of being too busy to appear in any books aside from the obligatory Chapter 2 mention. Shannon assures Kristy that she gave Bart the cold shoulder at their fancy private school.
Because nothing stings more than your sort-of girlfriend's peripheral friend giving you the evil eye.
Kristy gets angrier when Shannon tells her that a kidnapper probably would get more value out of snatching up Karen or Andrew because "they're Watson's own children, plus they're littler and they'd be easier to capture."
I get what she's going for here. She's trying to rule out the idea that some nutbar would get Kristy and put her friend's mind at ease. But it comes off as insensitive to a girl with severe unspoken daddy issues, plus it's laughable that anyone would keep Karen after five minutes of receiving her.
Kristy takes it poorly, natch, and they arrive at the diamond and see Mary Anne and Dawn. Dawn brought the Braddock kids and Mary Anne just has no life. Kidding, she came to cheer on the Krushers. Shannon hangs out with those two and Kristy fumes a bit over Shannon's comments about Karen and Andrew. Bart smiles at Kristy. How dare he!
But ain't nobody got time for that. It's time to play ball!
To be honest, the way this chapter was written made it really unclear in what context the softball was happening. I wasn't sure if they were going to a practice, or a game, or what. Bart and the Bashers showing up was put in there randomly.
Matt Braddock is one of the best hitters on the team and he crushes the ball in his first at-bat. He ends up on third base and gets stuck there because Nicky Pike gave him the wrong sign. According to Hayley, Nicky was signing "swim!" to Matt instead of "run!"
Now this could have been solved with a third base coach and the windmill arm motion that means "run home". It's the third base coach's job to relay instructions to the runners on base with signs, which the team knows and can interpret. Baseball signs are fairly universal and easy to understand. No need for ASL or anything else here. Kristy should have known this and could have employed an older kid as a coach or something. I blame the ghost writer.
See? The third base coach (the guy with his back to the camera) is waving in the runner in to home from third. The runner knows exactly what to do. There's no confusion.
Bleh.
Claire Pike is up next and she makes contact with the ball on her first swing! She runs to first base and everything! Unfortunately it's a line out, which is called as the first out by the "referee."
Yes, the writer used "referee" and not "umpire" despite using "umpire" as the official's title in the game in the first chapter of the book.
This can get hairy in its own right, as umpires and referees co-exist in football (the American version, anyway). But the only officials in baseball and softball are umpires.
God damn it, ghost writer.
More kids fail to get hits and Matt B is stranded at third. The ghost writer again incorrectly uses baseball jargon and describes a "hit" as an "out." I shan't go into details of that lest I bore you, but please know I'm dying inside at this blatant disregard for my favorite sport on the planet.
Nicky Pike sucks at pitching and the Bashers take an early lead. Kristy speaks in a paragraph-long parenthetical about how she's amazed at her fuck-up kids and how they keep on keepin' on. Buddy Barrett comes up to bat and hits a ball "out of bounds" (FUCK YOU GHOST WRITER) instead of the correct terminology of "foul" and the ball ends up hitting Shannon on the head.
Buddy is upset that he nearly brained Shannon and the writer again fails at life by describing a softball as soft.
Hold the fuck up. I played softball for years and there's nothing soft about those balls. If you're catching and a pitch skips off the plate or off the dirt right into your crotch, it hurts like a motherfucker. I've been hit by errant pitches on padding and it still hurts.
I may never recover from this butchery of my beloved sport.
Shannon's okay, at least enough to give Bart some more stank eye after he comes over to check on her.
The game resumes and the Krushers lose 10-1. Bart comes over again to show sportsmanlike conduct and pays Kristy a compliment on her coaching skills, but she shuts that shit down quick.
Mary Anne, Dawn, and Shannon are gossiping about Bart and the letters and the World Series of Dice. Kristy joins in briefly before she has to go home with DM, Karen, and Andrew. She's still unsure if she wants to go to the dance with Crazy ol' Bart, who calls her at home after the game undoubtedly asking what the shit is up. She hangs up on him.
Chapter 10
Mary Anne is baby-sitting for the Barrett kids. She's bowled over that Mrs. B isn't a ratchet ass mess like usual. She has a present for Marnie: a Krushers T-shirt! That's pretty cute, I'm not gonna lie.
Marnie is super jazzed on the walk over before Buddy brings up his crush on Shannon. Again, this is cute so I won't go in on the kid. Suzi wants to use this information for personal gain but Buddy denies her plot by lording some unknown secret over her. It works, but I'm not sure if the ghost writer ever mentions what it is. I'm not sure I care.
At the diamond, again unsure of whether this is a game or a practice, the cheerleaders are done up in their Three Stooges costumes and ready to provide pep.
Another note arrived, by the way. This one is even more threatening and it includes fingernail clippings. What kind of sasaeng bullshit? http://www.soompi.com/2012/03/08/list-of-crazy-actions-done-by-jyjs-sasaeng-fans-scare-netizens/
It's a practice, something only mentioned in passing in another paragraph. If Kristy and Bart had a woefully underdeveloped fight over the duration of the World Series of Dice earlier in the book, why the hell are they playing so many games? Didn't they agree to just the one? Even as this is just a practice, they played that one game in the previous chapter.
I don't even know anymore.
Like clockwork, the Krushers suck again. Jackie falls down a lot. Jamie Newton is still afraid of the ball. Even trusty DM can't throw strikes. Kristy gives them generic coaching advice before giving the kids a break mid-practice. She joins Mary Anne and Claudia, who is sitting for the Perkins girls, and OMG it's Shannon again! Yes, she's described as being there with an exclamation point. The ghost writer invented a cancelled hockey practice (field hockey? IDK if Shannon would be into ice hockey) to get her some more time with the girls. Buddy shows up out of nowhere to be Creepy, Jr. to Shannon before Kristy shoos him away to tutor Jackie on hitting. The girls look over the new note and they're rightfully repulsed.
And then Kristy leaves them to coach some softball.
Buddy hits a double. The other kids still suck, including Jackie blowing his chance at a double by tripping on his way to second base.
But Buddy scores a run on the hit! The cheerleaders are going crazy. So crazy that their wigs fall off and Vanessa's pants are at her knees, creating the most scandalous wardrobe malfunction since Justin and Janet (Ms. Jackson, cuz I'm nasty).
One more inning passes and Kristy calls off the practice. The kids aren't focused on softball. The kids head home and Suzi and Buddy clash again over his crush and the still unknown sin Suzi has committed. Mary Anne is still disturbed by the sasaeng note.
Chapter 11
Kristy calls the practice "disastrous." I wonder what she expects. Like, truly. She runs a softball team for kids who just want to play, and she's surprised when they don't have their heads 100% in the game?
Bart shows up again wanting to walk Kristy home but she rebuffs him. He's pressed because neither she nor Shannon will speak to him. Charlie asks what's up on the drive home and gets goose egg.
Bart comes over to the Thomas-Brewer house, which is a bit on the obsessive side for me. He wants to talk and she suggests her room.
Earlier in the book she was all clandestine about a phone call with a girl friend, but she'll just let a boy into her house and up to her room like it's no big deal? Wouldn't that be cause for more secrecy? She's more worried about Bart seeing her underwear (as in laundry) than what anyone would say about a boy being in her room.
He asks her "what…is…going…on?"
They finally hash it out. The letters, his feelings, everything. Kristy's getting wet at the idea that Bart really likes her, but Bart's still pissed off, especially at the idea that she thinks he would fuck with her to get the upper hand at softball. He tries to help her figure out who the psycho is and she tells him about Alan Gray, another dweeb, and calls him stupid. They calm down and Shannon calls so they invite her over.
I swear this doesn't set up a three way, but from Kristy's loving gaze of Shannon at the beginning of the book to Bart revving her engine with talk of middle school love, I'm surprised it doesn't go in that direction.
The three of them go on and on and on about who dunnit and come up with no answers. Bart and Shannon leave without having sexytimes with Kristy and she's still nervous that the psycho is still out there. But hey, at least her sort-of boyfriend isn't nuts!
Chapter 12
It's week before Halloween and six days before the Hop. Kristy relaxes a little about the potential psycho, because she's more worked up about the World Series of Dice. Yes, the Big Game™ is finally here! Everyone in Stoneybrook is coming because these people have no lives. Andrew, Karen, and DM are behaving like monkeys on acid on the morning of the game, and Kristy's mom is packing up the stuff for the refreshment stand.
In yet another ridiculously long parenthetical that really should have been its own paragraph, Kristy offers exposition that they sell snacks at games to raise money for team equipment such as hats, but at the last game that fucking loser Jackie Rodowski ruined everything by knocking over the refreshment stand with a flying bat and they didn't earn enough money. Sounds to me like if they'd tied the stand down or otherwise secured it, a seven year old's errant bat wouldn't have done shit. But yes, blame the kid for your fuck up.
Kristy's mom made brownies (best mom ever!) and talks passive shit about Jackie aka "your walking disaster." (worst mom ever!)
The Krushers prove again that they're irresponsible fuckups and Kristy asks herself why she ever had this boneheaded idea in the first place. She fields phone calls for sick kids, lost t-shirts, and forgotten coaching tips.
The Bashers show up and look lean and mean in matching t-shirts and hats. Their cheerleaders show up too, in real uniforms. The Krushers cheerleaders are in their Three Stooges getups, of course. Kristy hopes they won't lose their wigs or their pants.
Cokie and her crew are in the stands for some goddamn reason.
You guys, help a sister out. If the subject of the pronunciation of Cokie's name has already been addressed here, please forgive me. But is it "cookie" or like the bloke named Smokey in Minnie the Moocher? She loved him although he was cokey? Many thanks for clearing that up for me.
Kristy's mad as hell at Cokie being there even though it's a free country or some other lame middle school comeback, and she suppresses her rage long enough to coach her team. Besides, she knows the BSC would "take care of them" if "Cokie made any trouble."
Kristy gives her kids some instruction and again leaves them to their devices to talk shit about Cokie to Mary Anne. Bart's kids are fighting amongst themselves again. Kristy looks over at Bart and thinks about how hard it is to like a guy and want to destroy him at softball at the same time.
Oh, Kristy. Welcome to the joy of angry sex.
The two coaches go over the rules and instead of getting the game underway or giving a last minute pep talk to the team or doing anything else related to softball, Kristy goes right up to Cokie and calls her out.
Cokie plays coy at first and then sort of monologues her way into confessing that she wrote the creepy notes to Kristy, not before Kristy outright calls Bart her boyfriend and says that they're spending their lives together. Cokie knows the jig is up but she can't get away. Kristy grabs her sleeve. She should just kick the bitch down the stairs novela style, but that might cause a scene in front of the kids.
Oh, wait. She already did cause a scene.
Cokie confesses that she sent the notes to get back at the BSC for making her and her crew look bad in front of Logan. Which was payback for her being a cunt to Mary Anne a year ago in a world where nobody ages. All of this previous drama was over a boy she wasn't even going out with and who had a steady girlfriend. I hate to say it, but this is the most age appropriate thing in this whole book. That truly sounds like 13 year old girl behavior.
Also Cokie blames Kristy for bringing all this on herself for bringing the notes to school when it was Cokie's nosey ass who got all up in Kristy's shit.
Cokie runs away and takes her crew with her. Kristy tells Bart that she found the psycho who was writing the letters but makes him wait until after the game for the deets.
And then the game starts. After all that bullshit.
And Part III ends! You'll have to wait until the conclusion for the World Series of Dice!
Part II: http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/498356.html
Today in the latest deathbytamarind snark, Kristy's ongoing saga with the phantom love notes reaches a full tilt boogie complete with daddy issues, Shannon gets way more ink than she ever has and ever will in this series, and the countdown to the World Series of Dice drags on.
Chapter 9
Kristy fills Shannon in on her "lunatic theory" of kidnappers salivating at her door. Shannon insists that Bart is the creep and insinuates that he's trying to "psyche" Kristy out before the World Series of Dice.
I don't know if "psyche" out is spelled as such in physical copies of the book, but it appears several more times as such in my edition and it's throwing me off.
Kristy is mad and vigilant for creepers on her way to the baseball diamond.
A bunch of kids are walking ahead of Kristy and Shannon, who again has been blessed with more time by the ghost writer before she fades back into her obscure world of being too busy to appear in any books aside from the obligatory Chapter 2 mention. Shannon assures Kristy that she gave Bart the cold shoulder at their fancy private school.
Because nothing stings more than your sort-of girlfriend's peripheral friend giving you the evil eye.
Kristy gets angrier when Shannon tells her that a kidnapper probably would get more value out of snatching up Karen or Andrew because "they're Watson's own children, plus they're littler and they'd be easier to capture."
I get what she's going for here. She's trying to rule out the idea that some nutbar would get Kristy and put her friend's mind at ease. But it comes off as insensitive to a girl with severe unspoken daddy issues, plus it's laughable that anyone would keep Karen after five minutes of receiving her.
Kristy takes it poorly, natch, and they arrive at the diamond and see Mary Anne and Dawn. Dawn brought the Braddock kids and Mary Anne just has no life. Kidding, she came to cheer on the Krushers. Shannon hangs out with those two and Kristy fumes a bit over Shannon's comments about Karen and Andrew. Bart smiles at Kristy. How dare he!
But ain't nobody got time for that. It's time to play ball!
Click to viewTo be honest, the way this chapter was written made it really unclear in what context the softball was happening. I wasn't sure if they were going to a practice, or a game, or what. Bart and the Bashers showing up was put in there randomly.
Matt Braddock is one of the best hitters on the team and he crushes the ball in his first at-bat. He ends up on third base and gets stuck there because Nicky Pike gave him the wrong sign. According to Hayley, Nicky was signing "swim!" to Matt instead of "run!"
Now this could have been solved with a third base coach and the windmill arm motion that means "run home". It's the third base coach's job to relay instructions to the runners on base with signs, which the team knows and can interpret. Baseball signs are fairly universal and easy to understand. No need for ASL or anything else here. Kristy should have known this and could have employed an older kid as a coach or something. I blame the ghost writer.
See? The third base coach (the guy with his back to the camera) is waving in the runner in to home from third. The runner knows exactly what to do. There's no confusion.
Bleh.
Claire Pike is up next and she makes contact with the ball on her first swing! She runs to first base and everything! Unfortunately it's a line out, which is called as the first out by the "referee."
Yes, the writer used "referee" and not "umpire" despite using "umpire" as the official's title in the game in the first chapter of the book.
This can get hairy in its own right, as umpires and referees co-exist in football (the American version, anyway). But the only officials in baseball and softball are umpires.
God damn it, ghost writer.
More kids fail to get hits and Matt B is stranded at third. The ghost writer again incorrectly uses baseball jargon and describes a "hit" as an "out." I shan't go into details of that lest I bore you, but please know I'm dying inside at this blatant disregard for my favorite sport on the planet.
Nicky Pike sucks at pitching and the Bashers take an early lead. Kristy speaks in a paragraph-long parenthetical about how she's amazed at her fuck-up kids and how they keep on keepin' on. Buddy Barrett comes up to bat and hits a ball "out of bounds" (FUCK YOU GHOST WRITER) instead of the correct terminology of "foul" and the ball ends up hitting Shannon on the head.
Buddy is upset that he nearly brained Shannon and the writer again fails at life by describing a softball as soft.
Hold the fuck up. I played softball for years and there's nothing soft about those balls. If you're catching and a pitch skips off the plate or off the dirt right into your crotch, it hurts like a motherfucker. I've been hit by errant pitches on padding and it still hurts.
I may never recover from this butchery of my beloved sport.
Shannon's okay, at least enough to give Bart some more stank eye after he comes over to check on her.
The game resumes and the Krushers lose 10-1. Bart comes over again to show sportsmanlike conduct and pays Kristy a compliment on her coaching skills, but she shuts that shit down quick.
Mary Anne, Dawn, and Shannon are gossiping about Bart and the letters and the World Series of Dice. Kristy joins in briefly before she has to go home with DM, Karen, and Andrew. She's still unsure if she wants to go to the dance with Crazy ol' Bart, who calls her at home after the game undoubtedly asking what the shit is up. She hangs up on him.
Chapter 10
Mary Anne is baby-sitting for the Barrett kids. She's bowled over that Mrs. B isn't a ratchet ass mess like usual. She has a present for Marnie: a Krushers T-shirt! That's pretty cute, I'm not gonna lie.
Marnie is super jazzed on the walk over before Buddy brings up his crush on Shannon. Again, this is cute so I won't go in on the kid. Suzi wants to use this information for personal gain but Buddy denies her plot by lording some unknown secret over her. It works, but I'm not sure if the ghost writer ever mentions what it is. I'm not sure I care.
At the diamond, again unsure of whether this is a game or a practice, the cheerleaders are done up in their Three Stooges costumes and ready to provide pep.
Another note arrived, by the way. This one is even more threatening and it includes fingernail clippings. What kind of sasaeng bullshit? http://www.soompi.com/2012/03/08/list-of-crazy-actions-done-by-jyjs-sasaeng-fans-scare-netizens/
It's a practice, something only mentioned in passing in another paragraph. If Kristy and Bart had a woefully underdeveloped fight over the duration of the World Series of Dice earlier in the book, why the hell are they playing so many games? Didn't they agree to just the one? Even as this is just a practice, they played that one game in the previous chapter.
I don't even know anymore.
Like clockwork, the Krushers suck again. Jackie falls down a lot. Jamie Newton is still afraid of the ball. Even trusty DM can't throw strikes. Kristy gives them generic coaching advice before giving the kids a break mid-practice. She joins Mary Anne and Claudia, who is sitting for the Perkins girls, and OMG it's Shannon again! Yes, she's described as being there with an exclamation point. The ghost writer invented a cancelled hockey practice (field hockey? IDK if Shannon would be into ice hockey) to get her some more time with the girls. Buddy shows up out of nowhere to be Creepy, Jr. to Shannon before Kristy shoos him away to tutor Jackie on hitting. The girls look over the new note and they're rightfully repulsed.
And then Kristy leaves them to coach some softball.
Buddy hits a double. The other kids still suck, including Jackie blowing his chance at a double by tripping on his way to second base.
But Buddy scores a run on the hit! The cheerleaders are going crazy. So crazy that their wigs fall off and Vanessa's pants are at her knees, creating the most scandalous wardrobe malfunction since Justin and Janet (Ms. Jackson, cuz I'm nasty).
One more inning passes and Kristy calls off the practice. The kids aren't focused on softball. The kids head home and Suzi and Buddy clash again over his crush and the still unknown sin Suzi has committed. Mary Anne is still disturbed by the sasaeng note.
Chapter 11
Kristy calls the practice "disastrous." I wonder what she expects. Like, truly. She runs a softball team for kids who just want to play, and she's surprised when they don't have their heads 100% in the game?
Bart shows up again wanting to walk Kristy home but she rebuffs him. He's pressed because neither she nor Shannon will speak to him. Charlie asks what's up on the drive home and gets goose egg.
Bart comes over to the Thomas-Brewer house, which is a bit on the obsessive side for me. He wants to talk and she suggests her room.
Earlier in the book she was all clandestine about a phone call with a girl friend, but she'll just let a boy into her house and up to her room like it's no big deal? Wouldn't that be cause for more secrecy? She's more worried about Bart seeing her underwear (as in laundry) than what anyone would say about a boy being in her room.
He asks her "what…is…going…on?"
They finally hash it out. The letters, his feelings, everything. Kristy's getting wet at the idea that Bart really likes her, but Bart's still pissed off, especially at the idea that she thinks he would fuck with her to get the upper hand at softball. He tries to help her figure out who the psycho is and she tells him about Alan Gray, another dweeb, and calls him stupid. They calm down and Shannon calls so they invite her over.
I swear this doesn't set up a three way, but from Kristy's loving gaze of Shannon at the beginning of the book to Bart revving her engine with talk of middle school love, I'm surprised it doesn't go in that direction.
The three of them go on and on and on about who dunnit and come up with no answers. Bart and Shannon leave without having sexytimes with Kristy and she's still nervous that the psycho is still out there. But hey, at least her sort-of boyfriend isn't nuts!
Chapter 12
It's week before Halloween and six days before the Hop. Kristy relaxes a little about the potential psycho, because she's more worked up about the World Series of Dice. Yes, the Big Game™ is finally here! Everyone in Stoneybrook is coming because these people have no lives. Andrew, Karen, and DM are behaving like monkeys on acid on the morning of the game, and Kristy's mom is packing up the stuff for the refreshment stand.
In yet another ridiculously long parenthetical that really should have been its own paragraph, Kristy offers exposition that they sell snacks at games to raise money for team equipment such as hats, but at the last game that fucking loser Jackie Rodowski ruined everything by knocking over the refreshment stand with a flying bat and they didn't earn enough money. Sounds to me like if they'd tied the stand down or otherwise secured it, a seven year old's errant bat wouldn't have done shit. But yes, blame the kid for your fuck up.
Kristy's mom made brownies (best mom ever!) and talks passive shit about Jackie aka "your walking disaster." (worst mom ever!)
The Krushers prove again that they're irresponsible fuckups and Kristy asks herself why she ever had this boneheaded idea in the first place. She fields phone calls for sick kids, lost t-shirts, and forgotten coaching tips.
The Bashers show up and look lean and mean in matching t-shirts and hats. Their cheerleaders show up too, in real uniforms. The Krushers cheerleaders are in their Three Stooges getups, of course. Kristy hopes they won't lose their wigs or their pants.
Cokie and her crew are in the stands for some goddamn reason.
You guys, help a sister out. If the subject of the pronunciation of Cokie's name has already been addressed here, please forgive me. But is it "cookie" or like the bloke named Smokey in Minnie the Moocher? She loved him although he was cokey? Many thanks for clearing that up for me.
Kristy's mad as hell at Cokie being there even though it's a free country or some other lame middle school comeback, and she suppresses her rage long enough to coach her team. Besides, she knows the BSC would "take care of them" if "Cokie made any trouble."
Kristy gives her kids some instruction and again leaves them to their devices to talk shit about Cokie to Mary Anne. Bart's kids are fighting amongst themselves again. Kristy looks over at Bart and thinks about how hard it is to like a guy and want to destroy him at softball at the same time.
Oh, Kristy. Welcome to the joy of angry sex.
The two coaches go over the rules and instead of getting the game underway or giving a last minute pep talk to the team or doing anything else related to softball, Kristy goes right up to Cokie and calls her out.
Cokie plays coy at first and then sort of monologues her way into confessing that she wrote the creepy notes to Kristy, not before Kristy outright calls Bart her boyfriend and says that they're spending their lives together. Cokie knows the jig is up but she can't get away. Kristy grabs her sleeve. She should just kick the bitch down the stairs novela style, but that might cause a scene in front of the kids.
Oh, wait. She already did cause a scene.
Cokie confesses that she sent the notes to get back at the BSC for making her and her crew look bad in front of Logan. Which was payback for her being a cunt to Mary Anne a year ago in a world where nobody ages. All of this previous drama was over a boy she wasn't even going out with and who had a steady girlfriend. I hate to say it, but this is the most age appropriate thing in this whole book. That truly sounds like 13 year old girl behavior.
Also Cokie blames Kristy for bringing all this on herself for bringing the notes to school when it was Cokie's nosey ass who got all up in Kristy's shit.
Cokie runs away and takes her crew with her. Kristy tells Bart that she found the psycho who was writing the letters but makes him wait until after the game for the deets.
And then the game starts. After all that bullshit.
And Part III ends! You'll have to wait until the conclusion for the World Series of Dice!