SS#15: BABY-SITTER'S EUROPEAN VACATION! aka: kristy vs. the canadian!
so, i decided to try my hand at snarking a super special and as a canadian, i HAD to pick this one. i just couldn't resist -- it's the only BSC book with canadian characters! i hope you guys enjoy it. :)
this might just be one of the WORST covers, because pretty much EVERYONE looks horrendous. stacey looks like she's about fifty for chrissakes! only part of this cover i like is the tagline: "look out, london -- prepare yourself, paris -- the BSC is headed your way!" because it's so fucking true.
PROLOGUE
jessi
the prologue starts out as yet another BSC travel journal. jesus, what is it with these girls and their obsession with tracking everyone's movements and love lives while on trips? and having to give these travel journals TITLES?!
'BSC european journal
jessi ramsey version
the prequel'
thank you for taking this oh so very seriously, jessica. though i'm still beyond angry that mallory never got to narrate a super special. that was bullshit!
'saturday
dear mary anne, dawn and claudia,
i know i shouldn't be writing in this yet. it's a travel journal. we're all still in stoneybrook.
besides, we'll be seeing each other at kristy's big farewell party tonight.
but i have to write. otherwise i may float away.'
jesus, get to the point, already, jessica!
'i have been dancing all day long. screaming, too. i pack an outfit. then i let out a scream. then i pack some more.
i have never been out of this country in my whole life. and tomorrow, i, jessica ramsey, am flying to europe!
oops. screamed again.'
i'm thirty-three motherfucking years old and i've never been out of my country, jessi. guess i should've gone to SMS instead of being homeschooled. i could've been a seasoned, jet-setting snob by now.
jessi says aunt cecelia is pissed off with her and keeps telling her that she's making becca jealous. well, no kidding, right? jessi tells dawn, mary anne and claudia that:
'frankly, i think becca will survive just fine. she's already practicing for her european trip when she's in sixth grade. (she's convinced that stoneybrook middle school will arrange the exact same tour three years from now.)'
and why the hell wouldn't she be assuming that? how is she to know that SMS will stop this charade of fancy school trips and lavish school dances every other weekend, once the BSC graduates?
they're only turning this into a party school to keep the BSC happy, because they know of the power that kristy's evil influence has in this town. that's why the teachers are too drugged and drunk to actually teach, because they're scared shitless of kristy and abusing substance heavily to get through the day's interactions with her. they keep telling themselves, "just one more year, one more year and she'll be SHS's problem!" but the year stretches and stretches into the length of twenty-odd years, ever repeating the same seasons over and over, the same year, over and over, in a never ending loop.
no one ages, simply because kristy wants to stay thirteen forever. for thirteen is the age where she has had the most power and influence of her life, and who would want to give that up? not kristen amanda thomas, that's for sure!
so what is rebecca doing to prepare herself for her european vacation--which, as we now know, will never actually happen?--she's speaking with a british accent. oh dear god, i just had to put up with kristy pulling that crap in the last book i snarked! and i'm sure rebecca will be doing it phonetically, just to break my brain. lemme guess, it's a "right ho, pip pip, cheerio old boy!" british accent, isn't it?
sorry becca, you're no bertie wooster.
and you never will be!
'so she's speaking with a british accent. she's even tape-recorded victoria kent (before vicki went home to london) just to pick up slang. like "abfab." as in absolutely fabulous." (squirt loves hearing that. he says, "fabab!")'
i'm not sure that "abfab" was ever actually british slang. there was a show called 'absolutely fabulous' that was shortened to "ab fab" :
but i've never in my life heard brits running around saying "abfab!"
'is this ironic or what?' jessi asks. 'considering vicki had been trying desperately to sound 100% american. i can just picture it -- the english princess bouncing around her castle saying "way cool" to all her courtiers, while becca's making a scene at the washington mall, shouting "abfab" and "top hole" and "quite right."'
oh god. *buries head in hands*
by the way, text edit's dictionary absolutely refuses to accept "becca" as a name or a word and automatically changes it to "beck" every. fucking. time. it's annoying and requires constant fixing, so if "beck" ever shows up in one of my snarks instead of "becca" it's because i just couldn't fix them all. plus they revert back to "beck" even after being fixed, so, it's a constant fucking battle with her damned name. and mal gets changed to "mall" constantly as well. nobody got time for that shit.
'well, maybe not. today becca finally realized i'm going to france, too, not just england. so she's watching a lot of pepe lepew cartoons.'
oh for fuck sake, really child? this one must've been written by saint peter, right? oh, and "pepe lepew" gets autocorrected to "peep leper" which is hilarious.
'now she has a new expression. all day long, she's been saying, "oooh-la-laaa…"'
maybe it's a good thing that SMS will cancel these trips once the BSC finally ages out of middle school. rebecca won't be able to offend the british or the french that way. you know, rebecca, it's little dumb asses like you that make some europeans snottily look down on americans. keep doing your country proud.
CHAPTER ONE
jessi
what ho, what ho, what ho! what do we have here? oh for fuck sake, jessi again. bringing us. "the prequel, part two.' SERIOUSLY JESSI? SERIOUSLY?!?
she's updating the damned travel journal. later on in the same day.
'already my trip has changed. i had the best news today…'
jessi relays to us a telephone conversation she had with one maritza cruz, of the brooklyn, new york cruz's. not to be confused with:
penelope cruz
or
tom cruise.
'"you're what?" maritza cruz's voice snapped at me over the phone.
she was mad. i could tell. i mean, i hadn't spoken to her in weeks, and suddenly, the day before my flight, i was calling to say i was off to europe.'
blah blah, dance new york, blah blah, almost sisters.
'some sister i was. long-lost.'
womp womp!
'"i know. i'm sorry," i replied. "my school offered this trip really late, and you had to sign up, but the spaces were limited, so i wasn't exactly sure i'd be going. and we had to have all these meetings, and this canadian school is taking the trip with us, so we had to learn about--"'
learn about what? that's what i want to know. i wish jessi hadn't been cut off this time. about canadian culture? about poutine and beavers? about manners? about…what…?
'"where in europe?" maritza interrupted.
"england, france…"
"london?"
"yeah. and paris--"
"AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHH!"
i had to take the receiver from my ear. "i promise i'll write--"
"no. that's not it. tanisha's going to be there! the whole dance new york company is performing there!"
"AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHH!"
now it was my turn to shriek.'
and mine, jessi. because shit like this always happens to you girls.
'i could not believe it. my dance company -- the group i trained with, the group i was invited to join -- was going to be with me on my vacation!'
of. fucking. course.
because you bitches always get everything you want. whether you know you want it or not.
so she explains that tanisha is maritza's older sister, and a member of dance NY's "permanent company," personally selected by david brailsford, who she adds a parenthetical 'yes, the david brailsford, ballet legend' as if he were a real person that we should know about. which makes me head over to ye olde internet search engine…
nope, he doesn't exist, not in this context. the closet thing that comes up is the BSC wikia page for "jessi's big break" where he is referred to as "a fictional ballet master."
'and yes, he did ask me to join.'
yes, jessi we know, you're an eleven year old ballet prodigy who will wind up becoming the world's most famous prima ballerina by the age of twelve provided you are ever allowed to age. we get it.
'and i still may someday. i'm only eleven, so i have time.'
yep, if the BSC has anything, it's time. never ending stretches of time, stuck at the same age. forever.
jessi explains dance NY to us, saying that if you're in the company, it is your school. full stop. 'you take intensive dance classes in the company's studios in manhattan, you study your academic subjects with tutors, and you travel all over the world.'
yet you said no. why? i haven't read that particular book in well over a decade, so i don't remember.
maritza tells jessi that she has to see them perform at the barbican. adding, '"and guess what they're performing? gotham rhythm."
"oh."
psssshhh went my excitement. like air out of a bicycle tire.'
yup, this is saint peter all right! yay!
'i knew gotham rhythm. maritza and i had learned it during our training. we had performed it at a recital.
which means that if i had joined the permanent company, i would have been going to europe with them. i would have been performing instead of watching.
i did not want to think about that. i was in too good a mood.
but boy, it was hard to sound cheerful.'
haha! so you're finally learning what you're giving up by being a member of the BSC. it's a hard lesson to learn, jessi, but a necessary one if you are ever to escape the evil clutches of k. ron.
she gives maritza the name of the hotel she will be staying at, maritza, in turn, promises to talk to tanisha. for…reasons.
jessi hangs up, her brain going 'a mile a minute.'
'you said no for a good reason, jessi, it told me.
which is true. i mean, i could have said yes to mr. brailsford if i lived in new york city. but stoneybrook is two hours away, so i'd have had to commute to school. or move.
i was frustrated at first, but i took it in stride. frankly, i couldn't stand the idea of leaving all my stoneybrook friends anyway.'
i knew that would come up. what she means is, she would never make it to new york city alive if kristy found out she had to quit the BSC to follow her dream.
jessi convinces herself that though she loves maritza and her other dance NY friends, stoneybrook is her home and she belongs there. then she decides to take this time to tell us about what it was like when her family first moved to stoneybrook: the townsfolk were horrible racists that 'obviously didn't want african-americans in their neighbourhood.' she was dying to move back to jersey, which 'was much more racially mixed.' BUT: 'things are better now. people grow up, i guess. attitudes change. and i don't miss oakley so much anymore.'
i don't think people just grow out of racism, jessi. i'm sorry. it's not like hating broccoli as a kid and coming to enjoy it or tolerate it as an adult. or like joining a preteen baby-sitting club when you're young and then realizing it isn't the be all and end all if you are ever allowed grow up.
'what really glues me to stoneybrook is the baby-sitters club. my absolute best friends.'
see, now we get to the truth of the matter!
'which one is the absolutest? mallory pike.'
absolutest bestest friendsies forevers!
and so, we get mallory's life story. and the total improbability of people who have little in common becoming best friends--SHOCK! HORROR! never happens in REAL LIFE! in real life, if you aren't an exact carbon copy of someone, they get shoved into the pits of hell before they'd ever become your friend, let alone your absolutest best friend! and so on, and so forth. but since saint peter wrote this, i will skim through the info-dumpage, just in case something hilarious or wacky crops up. because that's just how i roll when i snark a saint peter.
ah, i see, for the first time EVER, we are informed that mallory has cousins 'all over the globe.' SPOILER ALERT! she'll meet some on this very trip! which is the only reason why this never before known fact about mallory's relatives is even being mentioned.
'well, at least in england. she was planning to visit them during our trip.'
jessi tells us the biggest thing she and mallory share is passion. i could tell jessi, by the way you play horsies together. oh yes, there is a lot of passion in your relationship.
oh, she claims it's her passion for dancing and mallory's for writing. but what are they passionate about the most? i'll give you three guesses:
1-baby-sitting
2-being the butt-monkeys of the baby-sitters club, or
3-all of the above.
'but most of all, we are passionate about baby-sitting. you have to feel that way to be part of the baby-sitters club.'
oh god, this is fucking barfy in and of itself:
'mal and i are junior officers. we're the only sixth-graders among thirteen-year-old eighth graders, so it's kind of an honour to be included. not that anyone ever says that. we treat each other as equals.'
equals? you all get treated as equals? haHAHahhHahHAHAHhaaa….*wipes angry tears from eyes* okay, keep telling yourself that, jessi. you just keep lying to yourself. but you can't lie to us. we know the truth.
so then jessi explains the club and all of it's members.
yawn.
we learn that 'if you drew connecting their [kristy and mary anne's] old houses and claudia's, you'd make a triangle.' an evil, evil triangle.
we also learn that…oh god…oh god…oh GOD!! DAWN IS IN STONEYBROOK THIS SUMMER! NOOOOOOOO!!!!
she, mary anne, claudia and logan will be counsellors at some playground camp run by SES, while the others travel to europe. oh yeah, that totally sounds like a good trade off.
she was telling us all about her friends and the club through an imaginary meeting scenario, which ends with: 'add thirty minutes of phone calls, laughter, and eating, and you have a good idea of why i didn't want to move to new york city.'
do i? do i really?
'my fame and fortune can wait. travelling to europe with my best friends is something i'd never want to miss.'
with that thought, she pulls a leotard and some ballet slippers out of her dresser and packs them. the chapter finally, thankfully ends on this note:
'if i was going to meet the dance NY kids and see david brailsford, i'd better stay in shape.
a few hours of practice in hotel rooms wouldn't hurt.'
gee whiz, i wonder if they'll come in handy?
CHAPTER TWO
abby
oh wow, my first experience with an abby chapter.
abby starts off the chapter by stating: 'today, stoneybrook. tomorrow, abby's new life begins.'
do you often speak in the third person, abby? i don't know you well enough yet to figure out whether or not this is normal behaviour on your part.
enter abby's grand delusion:
'checklist for meeting the queen:
1: avoid scaring her -- brush hair.
2: check between teeth for unsightly bits of lunch.
2: de-gooberize nose in advance. [thanks for that, abby.]
4: shake hands gently to avoid breaking elderly fingers.
5: do not kiss her on lips. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
6: ask about elvis only if the opportunity presents itself.
"elvis? abby, please." kristy thomas rolled her eyes at me, then turned toward the buffet table.
"he must have performed in europe," i said, munching on some carrot sticks. "he was an international star. like the queen. i'll bet she met him."'
abby is at a BSC going-away party at kristy's real-inanimate-but-still-live-mansion, crowded around what abby refers to as 'the grub table.' mmm, grubs. she also lets us know that watson and elizabeth had 'made a lot of the food themselves.' what? as opposed to hiring fancy-pants chefs to cook for your going-away shindig? or ordering everything from a deli? whatever, abby.
the music? watson's collection of big band vinyl records. sweet. i love big band music! apparently abby and the rest of the BSC are too good for big band music, though. 'we tolerated it because the food was good.' so elvis, 'i love lucy' and all things fifties are cool, but big band music sucks and is somehow too old fashioned for you kids? really? all right…
big band music: somehow more uncool than 'i love lucy'--
i could listen to that all day long and there are often days where i actually do just that. so, fuck you, baby-sitters club, and your era-elitism.
i hope this is how they are greeted when they arrive in london:
'i was dying to sneak around in his record library and find some vintage elvis recordings.'
well, i too, have a special place in my heart for elvis, abby. to the point where i insisted that 'i can't help falling in love with you' be played at my wedding for the first dance. but there are other kinds of music out there and discovering them won't fucking kill you.
abby explains to us that one of her few character traits, outside of allergies and being a total clown/jock, is that she 'LUVS elvis.' we know, abby, we know. meanwhile kristy continues to scoff at her delusion about meeting the queen:
'"first of all, your list makes no sense," kristy said. "i mean, who says we're going to meet the queen?"
"just in case," i replied. "we are visiting victoria's castle, right? maybe the queen'll drop by to borrow some sugar."
"yuck," exclaimed dawn schafer, duchess of health, as she loaded sprouts onto her plate.'
SHUT UUPPPPP DAWN!! no one cares about you being a food-nazi right now, shut your fucking mouth. *inhales a two pound bag of granulated sugar to spite dawn*
'"actually, i don't think victoria really lives in a castle," said mary anne. "she does like to exaggerate."'
uh, did victoria ever actually say she lives in a castle? or did you bitches just assume she lives in one? i can't remember. but you bitches are the ones who usually jump to conclusions and exaggerate, so maybe shut the fuck up.
'claudia nodded, her mouth full. "ishpobbia-pashashum."'
because it isn't a baby-sitters club book without someone--usually claudia or kristy-- talking around a mouth full of food.
'"swallow, please," stacey said.
"it's probably just a palace or something," claudia repeated.
"anyway, elvis was in the army," i said, "so he might have entertained the overseas troops during the war. but where?"
claudia spun around from her table, her plate stacked high with tortilla chips and pretzels. "elvis was in a war? which one?"
"i don't know," i admitted. "civil?"'
kristy nearly spits out her triscuits and i nearly spit coffee all over my computer screen at that. uh, abby, how the fuck old do you think elvis was? you're supposed to be a die-hard elvis fan, yet you think there was even the most remote chance he was alive during the civil fucking war?! you haven't been in the stoneybrook school system that long, what the hell is your excuse for not knowing when the civil war took place?
elvis served in the army during the 1958. there wasn't a war at the time, but he was stationed in germany for awhile. the civil war on the other hand, took place between 1861-1865, abby. elvis wasn't even close to being alive during the civil war. you knob!
wow, the stoneybrook's public school system apparently trumps long island's:
'kristy nearly spat out her triscuits. "that was in the eighteen hundreds. didn't they teach you that in long island?"
i shrugged. "i must have been absent that day."
"maybe he sang at the barbican," jessi suggested. "that's where i'm seeing dance new york."
"cool," stacey remarked. "can you get us tickets?"
"not me," kristy said. "i'll be visiting all the cricket stadiums."
"are those like flea markets?" i asked.
kristy threw a dinner roll at me.'
about time someone did.
and also, kristy? i don't think you're going to have much fun watching cricket. i don't think you know what cricket is actually like. one word sums it up for me: BORING.
claudia tells them that they're all crazy and she's glad she decided to stay in stoneybrook. then she puts her arm around mary anne, who, as usual, is on the verge of tears.
'jessi smiled at her sympathetically. "we're going to miss you too, mary anne."
fwoosh. up went the floodgates.
logan bruno was the first to hug mary anne. then kristy. then the rest of us.
a big old BSC group hug.
a weepy one.'
they won't even be gone that long! why must they always act as though someone has died just because they'll be separated for a short span of time?
sam echoes my thoughts when he walks in on them weeping and asks, "who died?" ha, nailed it, sam!
and also, thank you saint peter, for making someone finally fucking say it!
'"can't you let us have a Moment?" i asked.
mary anne was wiping away sniffles. "i'm really glad i signed up for playground camp. but i don't know…i guess it's hard seeing you so excited. and knowing i'll be here…"
"hey, a choice is a choice," logan remarked [like a douchebag].
"thank you, o wise one," i said.
stacey sighed. "not all of us are so thrilled about the trip, mary anne.'
oh christ, what are you so hard done by about now, anastasia?
'"right," kristy agreed. "we have to share it with this strange school. who knows what those kids'll be like?"'
oh, i know, us strange, strange canadians. watch out, kristy, they might be going through the horror's of canadian puberty!
which, lets be frank, is closer to puberty than you bitches will ever get. stoneybrook doesn't allow puberty. or is it that…you don't allow puberty, kristy? DUN DUN DUN!
but this isn't why stacey is in such a foul mood. nope. it's because she has to share this trip with robert. and…her mother. her mom is one of the chaperones on this trip. HAHAHA!!
abby fills us in: 'robert is stacey's former boyfriend. mom is stacey's permanent mother.
personally, i think they're both pretty cool. but i'm not stacey.'
abby tries to tell her to chill the fuck out: '"hey, your mom's not the only chaperone," i reminded her. "when we split into groups, go with mr. dougherty or a chaperone from that canadian school."
"right," stacey muttered. "abby, you don't know my mom. she used to lead me around new york city with a telephone cord attached to my wrist!"'
say whaaaat? this wasn't in 'stacey's book' was it? because i just read that book a few months back and i don't remember that! and ya know what, stacey? even if she did, we're talking new york city, here, probably one of the busiest, most crowded cities in the world. she was just trying to keep your ass safe. unlike mrs. pike, who would just let all eight of her kids loose and pray they get kidnapped or something.
'claudia nodded solemnly. "but she gave that up when you turned thirteen."'
HAHAHA! claudia, you're still funnier than abby, i don't care what they say about abby being the comedienne of the club, you are. or, at least, you come out with a lot more funny one liners.
somehow claudia's crack goes unnoticed. probably for the best, because stacey is being dramatic enough as it is right now without realizing that claudia just totally burned her.
'"don't worry," dawn reassured her. "i thought jeff would ruin my family trip, but i didn't even notice he was there. there's just so much to see."
"you went to england?" kristy asked.
"no, france." dawn's eyes grew faraway and misty. "the loire valley…i still remember the names of the chateaux: chambord, chenonceaux, chervery, chinon--"
"champagne?" asked watson, holding out a tray of drinks.
"that was beautiful too," dawn said.
"the drink, dawn," kristy said. "not the region."'
dawn, you're such a pretentious little twatstain. god forbid your only sibling "ruin" a family trip, just by being there! and also, is watson for real going to serve the girls booze?
'actually, it wasn't champagne.'
BORING.
'watson was offering us sparkling apple cider. which, in my opinion, tastes much better.'
whoa, abby's had champagne before? which responsible adult allowed that to happen?
'we each took one beautiful, fluted glass. and mrs. brewer announced, "i want to propose a toast. here's to a safe, educational trip!"
"a fun trip!" kristy called out.
"to adventure!" mallory piped up.
"to shopping!" stacey said.
"to mary anne, claudia, and dawn!" jessi said.
logan held up his hand. "uh, hello?"'
logan, shut up, as far as i'm concerned, you don't even exist except to be a massive dickhead, so jessi was right to leave you out.
i drew this a few weeks back from a book and it was such a crappy drawing i turned it into logan. "but i lik dik mary anne!" we know, logan, we know.
'"and logan, too," mary anne said.
"to a break from baby-sitting!" i added.
"yyyyyes!"
i don't know who yelled that.'
whoever did will end up at the bottom of a lake right along with you, abby. no worries!
the chapter ends with this lie: 'but we all drank to it.'
how are they all still alive after that? kristy is losing her touch!
CHAPTER THREE
stacey
it is sunday and anastasia is writing in the travel journal.
'we're off!
au revoir, etats-unis!
ta-ta, yanks!
we are now passing the curvy arm of cape cod, massachusetts. below us is nothing but ocean. the next land we see will be…the old country!'
stacey internally monologues about what a weird expression "the old country" is. but says that mr. dougherty -- who i will refer to as mr. d, because text edit hates the name dougherty. -- had been saying it ever since they arrived at the airport. mr. d, i'll say right now, is a massive flake and a total douche. i've read this book fairly recently, and yeah, i hate mr. d.
'when you think about it, though, it makes no sense. europe isn't "older" than any other part of the world. i mean, dinosaurs lived in the americas too.'
uh, stacey?
dictionary:
old′ coun`try
n.
the original home country of an immigrant or a person's ancestors, esp. a European country.
thesaurus:
Noun 1. old country - the country of origin of an immigrant. old country - the country of origin of an immigrant, country of origin, fatherland, homeland, mother country, motherland, native land - the country where you were born.
you need to buy a dictionary. or start asking questions when you don't understand something instead of just assuming you know everything. better to ask questions and learn when you don't know something than assume you do, start spouting a bunch of crap and looking like an idiot.
she stupidly tops that off with: 'oh, well. i guess that's why mr. dougherty teaches creative writing, not science.'
*slams head into wall so i, too, can be a brain damaged walrus like stacey*
stacey notices that as the plane is rising higher over the atlantic, mr. d is deep in conversation with mallory and some other kids, giving them advice about 'their persona journals.' uh. okay. 'he was probably telling them to seek out places where the famous writers hung out. shakespeare's favourite snack shop. whatever.'
yeah, stacey, WHATEVER. i'm kind of done with your shit right now. and i have a buttload more pages to go of your inane drivel.
mr. d. is wearing a beret, which stacey says is 'so corny,' more like uber douchey. but anything mr. d does is automatically super douchey to me. i seriously hate that guy. stacey remembers that her dad once bought a beret when her family went to ireland. 'he thought it looked cosmopolitan. mom thought it looked dorky. so it stayed in his suitcase.'
actually, stacey, a beret sounds like something you would wear. in fact, i'm pretty sure you probably have worn one.
yes, she has! the hypocrite!
'fortunately, mom was being very kind to mr. d. she hadn't mentioned a thing about the beret. nor about the stray pieces of honey-roasted peanut that were nesting in his big handlebar moustache.'
oh, so, i see. he's one of those moustache aficionado hipsters. mr. d was a hipster before being a hipster was cool!
and also, text edit keeps insisting on autocorrecting "moustache" to "mustachio." jesus fucking christ, text edit autocorrect, were you configured by mr. d?!
stacey says that 'unlike everyone else in our group, i never received a bag of those peanuts.' she's very, very butthurt about this because her mom had grilled the flight attendant about the sugar content before she'd allow stacey to have any. you know, because her mother is such a huge fucking bitch to care about the health of her diabetic daughter! 'then she made a scene, pointing me out and demanding i be given a non-sugary snack.' well, that's a tad much, but still.
'as if i couldn't have taken care of that myself. without making everyone in the cabin stare at me.
grrrr.'
well, stacey, between school, baby-sitting and sucking off random dudes, you have NO TIME to spend with your mother. so, your mother doesn't see how you handle your condition while you're out--for all she knows, you could be mainlining sugar at claudia's with the rest of the BSC three days a week. how the fuck would she know? you don't really spend time together. i get that it's embarrassing, but would you rather have your mom, who cares about you but is occasionally embarrassing about it, or say, mallory's mom, who wouldn't give a shit if mallory lost both her arms in a fist fight with a bear--she'd just make mallory learn to clean up spills and tie shoes with her teeth, so as not to lose her child-slave/her children's surrogate parent?
'do i sound like a terrible daughter?'
in this book, kinda, yeah.
'i'm not. i love my mom. because i'm an only child, and mom's divorced, we're super close.'
we rarely see this super closeness between you too, stacey. maybe time to show, not tell, if you want us to believe your bullshit.
'but in a way, that's a problem. sometimes -- just sometimes -- it's nice to have a break.'
you're hardly ever home, stacey. like i said, between school, baby-sitting and blowing random dudes for compliments and change, you're RARELY HOME. if you didn't have to sleep there at night, you'd probably only go back to do laundry and grab more clothes and insulin. jesus. and i didn't even mention all the trips you go on! new york to see your dad, camp, california, vermont, that never-ending road trip across the states, hawaii, sea city multiple times, the list just goes on and on. and now, europe. like i said, stacey, you are rarely fucking home. and also? you're a spoiled fucking brat, to boot, so shut your sugar-free pie hole!
stacey tells us that while she is sitting in seat 29A, her mom is trapped in seat 14C. she says she thinks her mom imagined that she'd be sitting next to her only child in seat 29B, but claims this distance was totally not her fault!
'the separate seating wasn't my fault. as i approached the ticket counter, mom was off fetching kids from the candy shop (including alan gray, the plague of the eighth grade, who should have been banned from the flight because he is definitely hazardous waste.) well, maybe i did slide closer to the counter just then. i didn't exactly wait for mom.'
of course you didn't. and also, leave poor alan the fuck alone. he never did anything to hurt you, so stop being such a raging cunt to him.
'anyway, robert was standing next to me at the time, so the agent assigned us seats together.'
womp womp!
stacey confesses that she felt 'a little funny' and uncomfortable about having to sit next to her ex. she had been hoping to be seated closer to kristy, abby, jessi and mallory. well, see, this is karma for ditching your mother, stacey.
probably better for everyone else on the plane that the BSC isn't all sitting together anyway, they're annoying enough on a good day, can you imagine how loud and obnoxious they'd be on a plane?
the BSC on a plane: a MILLION times worse than snakes on a plane.
ooh, and now we get an illustration! yay!
sorry, it was boring, i fixed it.
so because stacey is a hoor, her mother is stuck sitting next to mr. d the hipster douchebag, while she is karma's BITCH and trapped with robert, her formerly completely co-dependent, super clingy boyfriend! i don't know who is suffering more right now, but i sure hope it's stacey!
she says that she could hear her friends 'chattering away happily.' meanwhile, she's sitting in utter silence with robert. then she goes on to explain their history in phases, which i can sum up more quickly and honestly than she did:
phase one: they dry hump a lot, have fun and he's super over-involved and co-dependent.
phase two: they break up. i believe he cheated on her, but i haven't read that particular book in awhile and stacey neglects to mention why they broke up here. which would make sense if he did cheat on her.
phase three: they make up?
phase four: robert comes down with a temporary case of depression and uses her as his emotional tampon.
phase five: she tells him to talk to someone else about his problems because she's sick of being his tampon. there are only so many emotions a jumbo-sized tampon can soak up before it begins to leak onto her panties and then down her leg. robert totally ruined her white jeans, you guys! so he talks to his coach instead, who apparently suggests taking a trip to cure his depression. must be nice to have that option. also? a trip wouldn't cure the clinical depression he supposedly had.
stacey tells us that she and robert haven't really seen each other or spoken since then, but assures us that it's not because they're avoiding each other! oh heavens no! it's because they 'finally became real, honest-to-goodness friends.'
because real friends are people you ignore and pretend don't exist, i guess? well then, i guess that old saying about keeping your friends close and keeping your enemies closer is kind of true. except in stacey's case it'd be: keep your friends a football field's distance away and spend every monday, wednesday and friday afternoon with your enemies.
'i liked it that way. a little distance was just what we needed.'
she's feeling nervous on the plane because she's worried she'd given him 'the wrong signal' at the airport counter. 'did he think i'd plotted to sit next to him?' maybe he plotted to sit next to you because he misses your proclivity for performing sexual acts in public and semi-public places?
robert tries to shake stacey out of the drool-drenched near-comatose state i imagine she is in while internally monologuing, by making small talk: '"this is way cool," robert exclaimed. "it's too bad we can't see outside." (we were taking a night flight, so we'd have a full day ahead of us when we arrived in london.)'
stacey can't help but be a snooty, snobby, spoiled snot-rag: '"don't tell me this is your first plane ride," i said.
"first one overseas," he replied.
"uh-huh. wow." i needed to loosen up. i was tense.'
time to signal the flight attendant for a triple martini and fish some xanax out of your purse!
stacey takes a deep breath while her brain struggles to form a possible conversation. just as she's turning to ask him if he's up for joining the mile high club, she notices that he's facing away from her…
'looking at a pair of extremely tight bell-bottoms.'
ashley wyeth is on this trip?
'well, at the girl in the bell-bottoms. jacqui grant.'
ruh roh…
hey jacqui, why don't you go sneak some booze into a concert or something? stacey's trying to work here!
'"are you finished with those?" jacqui asked sweetly, nodding toward his bag of honey-roasted peanuts. which was obviously empty.
"these?" robert held up the bag. "sorry."
jacqui giggled. "i am such a pig."
robert smiled shyly.'
yeah, nothing sexier than a chick calling herself a pig! and what an awesome message to inadvertently slip into a book for young girls: wanting more than one tiny packet of peanuts makes you a PIG. oink oink, fatty, put those peanuts down!
*RAAAAAAAAGE!!*
'"isn't this the clearest day?*" now jacqui was standing in the aisle, leaning over robert.
way over robert. with a low-cut shirt that showed…well, a lot.
puh-leeze. i mean, how obvious can you get?'
ya jealous stace? does someone at SMS besides you finally have a rack? is it bigger than yours? i thought you just wanted to be "friends" with robert, anyway, so what does it matter to you if jacqui is giving him an eyeful of the goods? i didn't realize there was a One Tramp Per Town rule in connecticut.
*continuity error? or is jacqui just stupider than the average SMS student? we've already established that it's fucking NIGHT TIME.
'this was no accident. i know jacqui pretty well. we used to hang out together. she got me into big trouble once at a rock concert. she sneaked liquor into the stadium and got caught--and she blamed me. i have never, ever forgotten that.'
yes, we'll never forget it either, 'stacey and the bad girls' was one of the most hilarious baby-sitters club books ever.
stacey says that jacqui had 'tried to flirt' with robert in the past but that 'it didn't work.' maybe because you out-tramped her? 'she's not his type. he doesn't go for girls with red-and-green-dyed hair and nose rings.'
how do you know what his type is? and also, how the hell did jacqui, who is thirteen, convince someone to pierce her nose? don't you need to be like, at least eighteen or have parental consent for getting anything other than a simple ear piercing? actually, i believe you need parental consent for even regular ear piercings, too. i know when i got mine done when i was twenty-one, i needed fucking ID. and that was at claire's.
by the way, my ears got super infected for months and i can no longer wear earrings, so fuck claire's for getting piercings!
i repeat: who allowed a thirteen year old to get her nose pierced?
well, this is jacqui, who's favourite pastimes are shoplifting and drinking wine out of mini shampoo bottles, so i guess maybe her parents are done with giving a shit about what she gets up to.
'"you can really see so much, jacqui," i said.
not that i cared.
i was just annoyed at jacqui's obnoxiousness.
that's all.'
yeah, you keep telling yourself that, mcgill. you don't fool us, but maybe, just maybe, if you keep telling yourself that you don't care, you'll start to believe it. even if no one else ever does.
stacey says jacqui 'finally gave up when the captain turned on the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign.' well, yeah, because that sign means she has to sit the fuck down and buckle the hell up, dumb ass. she had no choice but to give up.
soon after the 'BUCKLE THE FUCK UP' sign flashes the meal is served. stacey gets the diabetic meal, which is a salad 'that tasted as if it had earned frequent flyer miles for life.' sounds fucking delicious! after dinner there is an in-flight movie, which puts stacey to sleep, 'which was good, since we were flying through the middle of the night.' yeah, you mentioned that already. and yes, that does mean that jacqui is especially dumb, even by SMS standards. eventually stacey wakes up and walks around visiting her friends/harassing the other travellers aboard the plane by being loud and obnoxious, i'm sure.
'of course, jacqui moved right in on robert.' why do you care?
'and she wasn't the only one. at one point she was sitting in my seat while kathleen lopez [WHO?!?] and kara mauricio were facing him from the seats in front.'
stacey admits to feeling 'a little strange' about this. adding, 'but hey, it's a free country. and it was good to see him talking to someone besides me.' you SURE about that, stace? because i'm still completely unconvinced by your performance.
there is a bit of turbulence as they are about to land that scares a few stray poops into stacey's panties, even though the captain keeps telling them that everything is fine. she says that by the time the wheels hit the ground, her knuckles were white from grabbing the armrest. i've never been on a plane myself. why? because, i'm scared shitless. and also, the opportunity has only presented itself to me once--at which point i freaked out and said hell no. so i can't really snark her being scared. i would've royally shat my pants at turbulence on a plane.
'when we finally stepped onto solid land, i was so relieved.'
i'll bet!
'now, i have done a fair amount of travelling [nice bragging there, stace!], and most airports look the same. but the minute i stepped into heathrow airport, i wanted to scream with delight.'
don't go having a 'when harry met sally' moment in the middle of heathrow, stace, i don't think ANY one would appreciate THAT. except maybe robert. and any of the other dudes from SMS that you've banged. which…let's be real here, is everyone but alan gray. maybe just don't do it for our sake, okay? WE don't want to hear it!
'i don't know why. maybe it was the relief. or maybe the unfamiliar billboards. the accent of the airport announcer. the £ before all the prices on the ads.
it all just felt…so totally, fantastically, foreign.'
still, stacey, no need to whorgasm everywhere.
meanwhile, jessi is literally twirling around heathrow, saying--shouting, i'm sure--"even the air smells different!" really, jessi? is that even true? i've never been to england myself, sadly, but would the air really smell different? maybe stoneybrook typically reeks of desperation, humiliation and human waste.
'"tallyho!" mr. [d] suddenly called out, marching toward the baggage claim area. "once more into the breach!"'
say fucking what? and i'm sure the brits just LOVE it when north americans come to england and start shouting shit like "tallyho!" and, i'm sure, putting on fake accents.
'nobody was paying much attention to him. we were all yakking like crazy. alan was trying to sneak off into a sweetshop. abby and kristy were reading billboards and laughing at the strange phrases.'
and somehow alan, who just wants to get some awesome UK candy, is seen as the jerk of SMS? i think abby and kristy are the assholes in this scenario. as pretty much all BSC members are in ALL scenarios. fuck these bitches!
stacey says she only realizes how tired she is once things start to slow down a little--and the excitement begins to wear off, i guess--'after all, it was still the middle of the night in stoneybrook!' good, go to sleep then, do us all a favour!
but somehow this stacey chapter still isn't over. good golly, miss molly, do i ever wish it would end!
maureen ends up having to drag all the kids to the baggage claim area to get their luggage. i bet that was fun.
stacey says that at least one other flight is 'sharing' 'their' conveyer belt. uh, stace, it's not your conveyer belt. just because your family probably has more money than rockefeller, doesn't mean everything in the world belongs to you and your lame friends.
'people were blocking every inch of it, so we had to squeeze between them whenever we saw our suitcases. little kids were screaming and running around, and alan gray actually stopped the carousel for a long time because he sat on it.'
maybe he was just trying to help you bitches get your luggage by shutting down the carousel? maybe he ate too much candy from the sweetshop and wanted to take a ride? who knows.
she says it seemed like hours before they got all their luggage and she bitches that after that, they had to wait in line for customs! THE NERVE! don't they know the BSC is on this trip?!? how dare they make them go through CUSTOMS!
oh, that's right, it's procedure. and also, no one outside of stoneybrook gives a shit about your little kiddy club.
stacey whines that by this time she was dyyyyyying for a nap. why don't you just take a nap in the customs line? i'm sure no one will slip bricks of hashish or heroin into your suitcase, you put that "USA is A-OK!" sticker on it, plus, even more important, one of those "DON'T FUCK WITH ME, I'M BSC!" stickers that kristy had made up before you gals left town! it's all good. nighty night, stacey!
'"are they going to search us?" mallory asked.
"oh, no," said mr. [d] reassuringly. "it's just a formality. they only search the suspected--"'
criminy craps, he says the T word. can you even write that online safely these days? not gonna risk it. LOL. making fun of ann is not worth getting a random scary knock on my door, only to have to explain i'm making fun of a kid's book.
mr. d is one of the first people through. i don't know why they didn't hold him up just for that beret, you know, to fuck with the guy a little because he is CLEARLY a douchebag, between the beret, the creepy handlebar moustache, and his insistence on running through heathrow saying shit like "tallyho!" i'd probably want to shake him up a little, just to get him to stop being a massive bag of dicks in my country!
maureen has to wait until the end, because she appears to be the only one actually doing their chaperoning duties here. even stacey, who has been a bitch to her mother thus far, admits: 'i felt bad for her. mr. d seemed to be in his own world.'
mr. d is such a douche, i should just change his name to mr. douche every time he is mentioned. seriously.
stacey and the rest of the BSC members on this trip 'didn't stop jabbering. the customs officials just stamped our passports and waved us by.' nice technique ya got there girls. be so loud and annoying that you just get waved through because they don't want to hear your blabbing any longer than absolutely necessary.
and that, my friends, is how stacey sneaked a suitcase full of dildos and hash into england.
as they are lugging luggage toward the exit, they hear a commotion. and maureen's voice, pleading. stacey spins around.
ruh roh.
'"there must be some mistake," she was saying as she walked behind two customs officials, who were heading toward a small office.
between them, looking very scared, was alan gray.
"oh my lord…" i mumbled.'
oh, alan. *FACE PALM FOREVER*
stacey says that kristy, who is the uber cunt of stoneybrook, possibly the uber cunt of the universe, had a very different reaction: 'i'll bet her laugh could have been heard halfway to wales.'
what did alan do to get into trouble? he was acting suspicious, on purpose, and pretending to hide shit in potted plants and …
oh my god.
'tying a kerchief over his mouth, speaking in a nonsense language.'
for fucking serious?! well, that is:
1-not cool.
2-fucking offensive.
i don't think old alan would've gone that fucking far. this was clearly part of alan gray's character assassination.
stacey says she figured the experience would've quieted his ass down, but nope. 'he was proud of himself.' he tells all sorts of bullshit lies about being tortured, tied to a chair and having flashlights shone into his eyes and 'asked about his connections to the stoneybrook liberation front.'
or is he lying?
i guess we'll never know, because even in a book where someone as lame as robert gets his own chapter [oops! spoiler alert!], alan never does.
'alan is such a jerk.'
actually, you guys are jerks. and also, this seems pretty close to something kristy would do and if she did, it would get big laughs out of all of you bitches, so whatever.
she is happy that he sits far away from her crab infested ass on the bus ride to the hotel. well, of course he would, he doesn't want to catch any of those crabs! the drive to the hotel freaks her out, maybe even enough to shake loose the few poops that somehow managed to remain firmly planted in her bowels during the turbulence debacle earlier. 'even though i knew that the english drive on the left side of the road. it felt as if we were heading for an accident anyway.'
i'm sure the brits feel the same when they visit the states, stacey.
stacey tells us that it's all good, because she gets used to it and soon enough, she has her sophisticated new york city nose 'plastered' to the window, 'like everyone else's'. that sounds unsanitary. and also, very fucking gross.
london is 'mega-cool' according to stacey, and, i'd imagine, 'dibbly fresh' according to mallory. 'crowded, narrow streets, a little like greenwich village in NYC, but with much older buildings. even though we were all tired, our excitement jolted us awake.'
damn it, you mean they won't be sleeping after all? i wanted a break from stacey's madness! like a whole chapter with nothing but the word: "sleeping" repeated over and over for like, ten pages.
as they are nearing their hotel, they pass 'an enormous park' that is actually kensington palace. jessi asks if they can check it out, but maureen says they are scheduled to take a tour later in the week, so that's a no! abby says, "maybe that's where victoria kent lives." and i slam my head into the keyboard.
fhowerfwnerf98hfej fnwurfhwle
'"oh? a member of the royal family?" asked mr. [douche].
"like, forty-ninth in line to the throne," i explained.
mr. [douche] laughed good-naturedly. "she's probably in one of the lower-priced palaces."'
god, i hate mr. douche. and everyone who lives in stoneybrook. right at this minute, i hate everyone in these books. i can't even explain why, i just do. to the point of incomprehensible rage. i. just. CAN'T. with these idiots right now.
the bus is rolling along as buses are wont to do when suddenly mallory gasps! and cries! "baker street!" and i don't blame her because i would be super excited too. and kristy makes me unreasonably FURIOUS with her stupidity when she says, "yeah, i could go for some pastries."
WHNKAGHJBDFKAFJHQJQWHAT!?!??!?!
'mallory shook her head. "no! that's where sherlock holmes lived!"
"i knew that," kristy muttered.'
no, you didn't. and also, i see mallory has forgotten what the terms "fiction" and "fictional character" mean again. but it's all good, because i'd want to go for the exact same reason. one of my sisters has been and i am envious to this day.
'"and there's marylebone lane, where charles dickens wrote several of his books," mr. [douche[ said.
"kristy knew that too," abby remarked.
kristy stuck out her tongue.'
you have redeemed yourself abby. thank you. i do love it when you shit all over kristy. it's your best feature/trait.
soon they pull up to their "hotel" which is called an "inn". so is it a hotel or an inn?! it's the 'cardington inn.' which i seriously have to look up online, i need to know if this place exists! well, there is a cardington street in london. but so far, no cardington inn. therefore, i will conclude that this is a fictional hotel/inn.
stacey claims to have watched 'faulty towers', but i don't fucking believe her ass for a second. 'it wasn't at all what i expected. i guess i've seen too many fawlty towers reruns with mom, so i had pictured a run-down place with eccentric characters running around.'
you're imagining a game of 'let's all come in' then?
'the cardington was as modern and comfy as the holiday inn.'
we-ell…i actually spent a few too many hours reading hotel/motel and inn reviews last spring and i can tell you, people had some big complaints about finding pubes in the beds of a few holiday inn locations. maybe people are getting a little too comfortable there?
here is a whole page of bad reviews for holiday inns:
LOL.
god, do i ever wish i'd bookmarked the pube reviews. i can't find my screen caps and fear i may have deleted them. :(
this shit, i don't fucking believe: 'just inside, we were met by a balding man in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe.'
oh, no, compared to that, THIS SHIT I CAN'T EVEN COPE WITH! and of course, today's bullshit is brought to you by mr. douche himself:
'"the return of the colonists!" mr. [douche] announced, shaking the man's hand. "from new england to old. i'm [douche], from stoneybrook middle school."
"phelps," replied the man. "from the cotswolds." then, without another word, he walked out the front door."
BAHHAHAHAHAHA!! *slaps knee* ah fuck, that's some good shit. i hope mr. douche feels like a fucking moron right now, because that's exactly what he is.
'mr. [douche] looked bewildered.
"he's a guest," mom whispered.
we were cracking up. poor mr. [douche] was bright red.'
GOOOOOOD!!
maureen is clearly the only actual adult on this trip, so she finds the front desk and speaks to the clerk.
'"the other school has already arrived," she announced to us. "let's settle into our rooms, and i'll find out where the two groups are going to meet."'
YAY! MY PEOPLE!
the clerk hands maureen a big envelope [?!?! mystery envelope!] and tells them: "take the lift to the third story. and heavy rain is on its way, so if you do go out, remember your macs, wellies, and bumbershoots!" and you totally know saint peter only made the clerk mention the rain so he could blurt out this "macs, wellies, bumbershoots" mess. "bumbershoots" being, as we know from the awesome alula_auburn something no british person has ever actually fucking said. i've said it myself as a joke though, to my husband on a rain day after reading him this book. "do remember to take the bumbershoot, old chap!" because i'm as much of a dick as mr. douche, i guess? nah, i was just mocking this ridiculous fucking book.
stacey explains to us that a "lift" is an elevator. no! really? *rolls eyes* and says that they were 'politely trying not to laugh.' jesus fucking christ.
'except alan gray. "bumbershoots?" he cried out. "sounds like some kind of weird vegetable.
"you have relatives here?" asked kristy.' who is a bitch.
stacey says the lift dings! on the third floor, which she explains is actually the fourth floor and that the english count them differently. really? is that even true? jessi and mallory get to share a room for their super special horsie times. abby is sharing with a girl named kara, who was one of the girls trying to ride robert's preteen dick on the plane. stacey is sharing with kristy.
stacey claims that she and kristy were SUPER PSYCHED about sharing a room! LIAR! i hope kristy gives you the same treatment she gave dawn and just throws her garbage all over the hotel room and makes you bathe in her filth. because that's what happens to liars stacey!
her faux-citement lasts until she opens her suitcase.
aw shit, someone took her suitcase filled with hash and dildos! this one is full of men's clothing. and stacey's sophistication just can't extend to attempting the androgynous look, so she flips her fucking wig.
but it gets worse.
'"uh-oh," kristy said, reaching for a metal canister tucked into the middle of the neatly piled clothing.
"don't touch it!" i said. "it doesn't belong to--"'
as if that ever stopped you bitches from snooping and prying into other people's shit? really?
the chapter ends with this horrific discovery:
'"what the heck is this?"
kristy turned the canister around, revealing a label:
HANDLE WITH CARE
HUMAN ASHES
***
REMAINS O MR. D. PETROPOULOUS'
dun dun DUUUUUNNNNNNN!!
this might just be one of the WORST covers, because pretty much EVERYONE looks horrendous. stacey looks like she's about fifty for chrissakes! only part of this cover i like is the tagline: "look out, london -- prepare yourself, paris -- the BSC is headed your way!" because it's so fucking true.
PROLOGUE
jessi
the prologue starts out as yet another BSC travel journal. jesus, what is it with these girls and their obsession with tracking everyone's movements and love lives while on trips? and having to give these travel journals TITLES?!
'BSC european journal
jessi ramsey version
the prequel'
thank you for taking this oh so very seriously, jessica. though i'm still beyond angry that mallory never got to narrate a super special. that was bullshit!
'saturday
dear mary anne, dawn and claudia,
i know i shouldn't be writing in this yet. it's a travel journal. we're all still in stoneybrook.
besides, we'll be seeing each other at kristy's big farewell party tonight.
but i have to write. otherwise i may float away.'
jesus, get to the point, already, jessica!
'i have been dancing all day long. screaming, too. i pack an outfit. then i let out a scream. then i pack some more.
i have never been out of this country in my whole life. and tomorrow, i, jessica ramsey, am flying to europe!
oops. screamed again.'
i'm thirty-three motherfucking years old and i've never been out of my country, jessi. guess i should've gone to SMS instead of being homeschooled. i could've been a seasoned, jet-setting snob by now.
jessi says aunt cecelia is pissed off with her and keeps telling her that she's making becca jealous. well, no kidding, right? jessi tells dawn, mary anne and claudia that:
'frankly, i think becca will survive just fine. she's already practicing for her european trip when she's in sixth grade. (she's convinced that stoneybrook middle school will arrange the exact same tour three years from now.)'
and why the hell wouldn't she be assuming that? how is she to know that SMS will stop this charade of fancy school trips and lavish school dances every other weekend, once the BSC graduates?
they're only turning this into a party school to keep the BSC happy, because they know of the power that kristy's evil influence has in this town. that's why the teachers are too drugged and drunk to actually teach, because they're scared shitless of kristy and abusing substance heavily to get through the day's interactions with her. they keep telling themselves, "just one more year, one more year and she'll be SHS's problem!" but the year stretches and stretches into the length of twenty-odd years, ever repeating the same seasons over and over, the same year, over and over, in a never ending loop.
no one ages, simply because kristy wants to stay thirteen forever. for thirteen is the age where she has had the most power and influence of her life, and who would want to give that up? not kristen amanda thomas, that's for sure!
so what is rebecca doing to prepare herself for her european vacation--which, as we now know, will never actually happen?--she's speaking with a british accent. oh dear god, i just had to put up with kristy pulling that crap in the last book i snarked! and i'm sure rebecca will be doing it phonetically, just to break my brain. lemme guess, it's a "right ho, pip pip, cheerio old boy!" british accent, isn't it?
sorry becca, you're no bertie wooster.
Click to viewand you never will be!
'so she's speaking with a british accent. she's even tape-recorded victoria kent (before vicki went home to london) just to pick up slang. like "abfab." as in absolutely fabulous." (squirt loves hearing that. he says, "fabab!")'
i'm not sure that "abfab" was ever actually british slang. there was a show called 'absolutely fabulous' that was shortened to "ab fab" :
but i've never in my life heard brits running around saying "abfab!"
'is this ironic or what?' jessi asks. 'considering vicki had been trying desperately to sound 100% american. i can just picture it -- the english princess bouncing around her castle saying "way cool" to all her courtiers, while becca's making a scene at the washington mall, shouting "abfab" and "top hole" and "quite right."'
oh god. *buries head in hands*
by the way, text edit's dictionary absolutely refuses to accept "becca" as a name or a word and automatically changes it to "beck" every. fucking. time. it's annoying and requires constant fixing, so if "beck" ever shows up in one of my snarks instead of "becca" it's because i just couldn't fix them all. plus they revert back to "beck" even after being fixed, so, it's a constant fucking battle with her damned name. and mal gets changed to "mall" constantly as well. nobody got time for that shit.
'well, maybe not. today becca finally realized i'm going to france, too, not just england. so she's watching a lot of pepe lepew cartoons.'
oh for fuck sake, really child? this one must've been written by saint peter, right? oh, and "pepe lepew" gets autocorrected to "peep leper" which is hilarious.
'now she has a new expression. all day long, she's been saying, "oooh-la-laaa…"'
maybe it's a good thing that SMS will cancel these trips once the BSC finally ages out of middle school. rebecca won't be able to offend the british or the french that way. you know, rebecca, it's little dumb asses like you that make some europeans snottily look down on americans. keep doing your country proud.
CHAPTER ONE
jessi
what ho, what ho, what ho! what do we have here? oh for fuck sake, jessi again. bringing us. "the prequel, part two.' SERIOUSLY JESSI? SERIOUSLY?!?
she's updating the damned travel journal. later on in the same day.
'already my trip has changed. i had the best news today…'
jessi relays to us a telephone conversation she had with one maritza cruz, of the brooklyn, new york cruz's. not to be confused with:
penelope cruz
or
tom cruise.
'"you're what?" maritza cruz's voice snapped at me over the phone.
she was mad. i could tell. i mean, i hadn't spoken to her in weeks, and suddenly, the day before my flight, i was calling to say i was off to europe.'
blah blah, dance new york, blah blah, almost sisters.
'some sister i was. long-lost.'
womp womp!
'"i know. i'm sorry," i replied. "my school offered this trip really late, and you had to sign up, but the spaces were limited, so i wasn't exactly sure i'd be going. and we had to have all these meetings, and this canadian school is taking the trip with us, so we had to learn about--"'
learn about what? that's what i want to know. i wish jessi hadn't been cut off this time. about canadian culture? about poutine and beavers? about manners? about…what…?
'"where in europe?" maritza interrupted.
"england, france…"
"london?"
"yeah. and paris--"
"AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHH!"
i had to take the receiver from my ear. "i promise i'll write--"
"no. that's not it. tanisha's going to be there! the whole dance new york company is performing there!"
"AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHH!"
now it was my turn to shriek.'
and mine, jessi. because shit like this always happens to you girls.
'i could not believe it. my dance company -- the group i trained with, the group i was invited to join -- was going to be with me on my vacation!'
of. fucking. course.
because you bitches always get everything you want. whether you know you want it or not.
so she explains that tanisha is maritza's older sister, and a member of dance NY's "permanent company," personally selected by david brailsford, who she adds a parenthetical 'yes, the david brailsford, ballet legend' as if he were a real person that we should know about. which makes me head over to ye olde internet search engine…
nope, he doesn't exist, not in this context. the closet thing that comes up is the BSC wikia page for "jessi's big break" where he is referred to as "a fictional ballet master."
'and yes, he did ask me to join.'
yes, jessi we know, you're an eleven year old ballet prodigy who will wind up becoming the world's most famous prima ballerina by the age of twelve provided you are ever allowed to age. we get it.
'and i still may someday. i'm only eleven, so i have time.'
yep, if the BSC has anything, it's time. never ending stretches of time, stuck at the same age. forever.
jessi explains dance NY to us, saying that if you're in the company, it is your school. full stop. 'you take intensive dance classes in the company's studios in manhattan, you study your academic subjects with tutors, and you travel all over the world.'
yet you said no. why? i haven't read that particular book in well over a decade, so i don't remember.
maritza tells jessi that she has to see them perform at the barbican. adding, '"and guess what they're performing? gotham rhythm."
"oh."
psssshhh went my excitement. like air out of a bicycle tire.'
yup, this is saint peter all right! yay!
'i knew gotham rhythm. maritza and i had learned it during our training. we had performed it at a recital.
which means that if i had joined the permanent company, i would have been going to europe with them. i would have been performing instead of watching.
i did not want to think about that. i was in too good a mood.
but boy, it was hard to sound cheerful.'
haha! so you're finally learning what you're giving up by being a member of the BSC. it's a hard lesson to learn, jessi, but a necessary one if you are ever to escape the evil clutches of k. ron.
she gives maritza the name of the hotel she will be staying at, maritza, in turn, promises to talk to tanisha. for…reasons.
jessi hangs up, her brain going 'a mile a minute.'
'you said no for a good reason, jessi, it told me.
which is true. i mean, i could have said yes to mr. brailsford if i lived in new york city. but stoneybrook is two hours away, so i'd have had to commute to school. or move.
i was frustrated at first, but i took it in stride. frankly, i couldn't stand the idea of leaving all my stoneybrook friends anyway.'
i knew that would come up. what she means is, she would never make it to new york city alive if kristy found out she had to quit the BSC to follow her dream.
jessi convinces herself that though she loves maritza and her other dance NY friends, stoneybrook is her home and she belongs there. then she decides to take this time to tell us about what it was like when her family first moved to stoneybrook: the townsfolk were horrible racists that 'obviously didn't want african-americans in their neighbourhood.' she was dying to move back to jersey, which 'was much more racially mixed.' BUT: 'things are better now. people grow up, i guess. attitudes change. and i don't miss oakley so much anymore.'
i don't think people just grow out of racism, jessi. i'm sorry. it's not like hating broccoli as a kid and coming to enjoy it or tolerate it as an adult. or like joining a preteen baby-sitting club when you're young and then realizing it isn't the be all and end all if you are ever allowed grow up.
'what really glues me to stoneybrook is the baby-sitters club. my absolute best friends.'
see, now we get to the truth of the matter!
'which one is the absolutest? mallory pike.'
absolutest bestest friendsies forevers!
and so, we get mallory's life story. and the total improbability of people who have little in common becoming best friends--SHOCK! HORROR! never happens in REAL LIFE! in real life, if you aren't an exact carbon copy of someone, they get shoved into the pits of hell before they'd ever become your friend, let alone your absolutest best friend! and so on, and so forth. but since saint peter wrote this, i will skim through the info-dumpage, just in case something hilarious or wacky crops up. because that's just how i roll when i snark a saint peter.
ah, i see, for the first time EVER, we are informed that mallory has cousins 'all over the globe.' SPOILER ALERT! she'll meet some on this very trip! which is the only reason why this never before known fact about mallory's relatives is even being mentioned.
'well, at least in england. she was planning to visit them during our trip.'
jessi tells us the biggest thing she and mallory share is passion. i could tell jessi, by the way you play horsies together. oh yes, there is a lot of passion in your relationship.
oh, she claims it's her passion for dancing and mallory's for writing. but what are they passionate about the most? i'll give you three guesses:
1-baby-sitting
2-being the butt-monkeys of the baby-sitters club, or
3-all of the above.
'but most of all, we are passionate about baby-sitting. you have to feel that way to be part of the baby-sitters club.'
oh god, this is fucking barfy in and of itself:
'mal and i are junior officers. we're the only sixth-graders among thirteen-year-old eighth graders, so it's kind of an honour to be included. not that anyone ever says that. we treat each other as equals.'
equals? you all get treated as equals? haHAHahhHahHAHAHhaaa….*wipes angry tears from eyes* okay, keep telling yourself that, jessi. you just keep lying to yourself. but you can't lie to us. we know the truth.
so then jessi explains the club and all of it's members.
yawn.
we learn that 'if you drew connecting their [kristy and mary anne's] old houses and claudia's, you'd make a triangle.' an evil, evil triangle.
we also learn that…oh god…oh god…oh GOD!! DAWN IS IN STONEYBROOK THIS SUMMER! NOOOOOOOO!!!!
she, mary anne, claudia and logan will be counsellors at some playground camp run by SES, while the others travel to europe. oh yeah, that totally sounds like a good trade off.
she was telling us all about her friends and the club through an imaginary meeting scenario, which ends with: 'add thirty minutes of phone calls, laughter, and eating, and you have a good idea of why i didn't want to move to new york city.'
do i? do i really?
'my fame and fortune can wait. travelling to europe with my best friends is something i'd never want to miss.'
with that thought, she pulls a leotard and some ballet slippers out of her dresser and packs them. the chapter finally, thankfully ends on this note:
'if i was going to meet the dance NY kids and see david brailsford, i'd better stay in shape.
a few hours of practice in hotel rooms wouldn't hurt.'
gee whiz, i wonder if they'll come in handy?
CHAPTER TWO
abby
oh wow, my first experience with an abby chapter.
abby starts off the chapter by stating: 'today, stoneybrook. tomorrow, abby's new life begins.'
do you often speak in the third person, abby? i don't know you well enough yet to figure out whether or not this is normal behaviour on your part.
enter abby's grand delusion:
'checklist for meeting the queen:
1: avoid scaring her -- brush hair.
2: check between teeth for unsightly bits of lunch.
2: de-gooberize nose in advance. [thanks for that, abby.]
4: shake hands gently to avoid breaking elderly fingers.
5: do not kiss her on lips. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
6: ask about elvis only if the opportunity presents itself.
"elvis? abby, please." kristy thomas rolled her eyes at me, then turned toward the buffet table.
"he must have performed in europe," i said, munching on some carrot sticks. "he was an international star. like the queen. i'll bet she met him."'
abby is at a BSC going-away party at kristy's real-inanimate-but-still-live-mansion, crowded around what abby refers to as 'the grub table.' mmm, grubs. she also lets us know that watson and elizabeth had 'made a lot of the food themselves.' what? as opposed to hiring fancy-pants chefs to cook for your going-away shindig? or ordering everything from a deli? whatever, abby.
the music? watson's collection of big band vinyl records. sweet. i love big band music! apparently abby and the rest of the BSC are too good for big band music, though. 'we tolerated it because the food was good.' so elvis, 'i love lucy' and all things fifties are cool, but big band music sucks and is somehow too old fashioned for you kids? really? all right…
big band music: somehow more uncool than 'i love lucy'--
i could listen to that all day long and there are often days where i actually do just that. so, fuck you, baby-sitters club, and your era-elitism.
i hope this is how they are greeted when they arrive in london:
'i was dying to sneak around in his record library and find some vintage elvis recordings.'
well, i too, have a special place in my heart for elvis, abby. to the point where i insisted that 'i can't help falling in love with you' be played at my wedding for the first dance. but there are other kinds of music out there and discovering them won't fucking kill you.
abby explains to us that one of her few character traits, outside of allergies and being a total clown/jock, is that she 'LUVS elvis.' we know, abby, we know. meanwhile kristy continues to scoff at her delusion about meeting the queen:
'"first of all, your list makes no sense," kristy said. "i mean, who says we're going to meet the queen?"
"just in case," i replied. "we are visiting victoria's castle, right? maybe the queen'll drop by to borrow some sugar."
"yuck," exclaimed dawn schafer, duchess of health, as she loaded sprouts onto her plate.'
SHUT UUPPPPP DAWN!! no one cares about you being a food-nazi right now, shut your fucking mouth. *inhales a two pound bag of granulated sugar to spite dawn*
'"actually, i don't think victoria really lives in a castle," said mary anne. "she does like to exaggerate."'
uh, did victoria ever actually say she lives in a castle? or did you bitches just assume she lives in one? i can't remember. but you bitches are the ones who usually jump to conclusions and exaggerate, so maybe shut the fuck up.
'claudia nodded, her mouth full. "ishpobbia-pashashum."'
because it isn't a baby-sitters club book without someone--usually claudia or kristy-- talking around a mouth full of food.
'"swallow, please," stacey said.
"it's probably just a palace or something," claudia repeated.
"anyway, elvis was in the army," i said, "so he might have entertained the overseas troops during the war. but where?"
claudia spun around from her table, her plate stacked high with tortilla chips and pretzels. "elvis was in a war? which one?"
"i don't know," i admitted. "civil?"'
kristy nearly spits out her triscuits and i nearly spit coffee all over my computer screen at that. uh, abby, how the fuck old do you think elvis was? you're supposed to be a die-hard elvis fan, yet you think there was even the most remote chance he was alive during the civil fucking war?! you haven't been in the stoneybrook school system that long, what the hell is your excuse for not knowing when the civil war took place?
elvis served in the army during the 1958. there wasn't a war at the time, but he was stationed in germany for awhile. the civil war on the other hand, took place between 1861-1865, abby. elvis wasn't even close to being alive during the civil war. you knob!
wow, the stoneybrook's public school system apparently trumps long island's:
'kristy nearly spat out her triscuits. "that was in the eighteen hundreds. didn't they teach you that in long island?"
i shrugged. "i must have been absent that day."
"maybe he sang at the barbican," jessi suggested. "that's where i'm seeing dance new york."
"cool," stacey remarked. "can you get us tickets?"
"not me," kristy said. "i'll be visiting all the cricket stadiums."
"are those like flea markets?" i asked.
kristy threw a dinner roll at me.'
about time someone did.
and also, kristy? i don't think you're going to have much fun watching cricket. i don't think you know what cricket is actually like. one word sums it up for me: BORING.
claudia tells them that they're all crazy and she's glad she decided to stay in stoneybrook. then she puts her arm around mary anne, who, as usual, is on the verge of tears.
'jessi smiled at her sympathetically. "we're going to miss you too, mary anne."
fwoosh. up went the floodgates.
logan bruno was the first to hug mary anne. then kristy. then the rest of us.
a big old BSC group hug.
a weepy one.'
they won't even be gone that long! why must they always act as though someone has died just because they'll be separated for a short span of time?
sam echoes my thoughts when he walks in on them weeping and asks, "who died?" ha, nailed it, sam!
and also, thank you saint peter, for making someone finally fucking say it!
'"can't you let us have a Moment?" i asked.
mary anne was wiping away sniffles. "i'm really glad i signed up for playground camp. but i don't know…i guess it's hard seeing you so excited. and knowing i'll be here…"
"hey, a choice is a choice," logan remarked [like a douchebag].
"thank you, o wise one," i said.
stacey sighed. "not all of us are so thrilled about the trip, mary anne.'
oh christ, what are you so hard done by about now, anastasia?
'"right," kristy agreed. "we have to share it with this strange school. who knows what those kids'll be like?"'
oh, i know, us strange, strange canadians. watch out, kristy, they might be going through the horror's of canadian puberty!
which, lets be frank, is closer to puberty than you bitches will ever get. stoneybrook doesn't allow puberty. or is it that…you don't allow puberty, kristy? DUN DUN DUN!
but this isn't why stacey is in such a foul mood. nope. it's because she has to share this trip with robert. and…her mother. her mom is one of the chaperones on this trip. HAHAHA!!
abby fills us in: 'robert is stacey's former boyfriend. mom is stacey's permanent mother.
personally, i think they're both pretty cool. but i'm not stacey.'
abby tries to tell her to chill the fuck out: '"hey, your mom's not the only chaperone," i reminded her. "when we split into groups, go with mr. dougherty or a chaperone from that canadian school."
"right," stacey muttered. "abby, you don't know my mom. she used to lead me around new york city with a telephone cord attached to my wrist!"'
say whaaaat? this wasn't in 'stacey's book' was it? because i just read that book a few months back and i don't remember that! and ya know what, stacey? even if she did, we're talking new york city, here, probably one of the busiest, most crowded cities in the world. she was just trying to keep your ass safe. unlike mrs. pike, who would just let all eight of her kids loose and pray they get kidnapped or something.
'claudia nodded solemnly. "but she gave that up when you turned thirteen."'
HAHAHA! claudia, you're still funnier than abby, i don't care what they say about abby being the comedienne of the club, you are. or, at least, you come out with a lot more funny one liners.
somehow claudia's crack goes unnoticed. probably for the best, because stacey is being dramatic enough as it is right now without realizing that claudia just totally burned her.
'"don't worry," dawn reassured her. "i thought jeff would ruin my family trip, but i didn't even notice he was there. there's just so much to see."
"you went to england?" kristy asked.
"no, france." dawn's eyes grew faraway and misty. "the loire valley…i still remember the names of the chateaux: chambord, chenonceaux, chervery, chinon--"
"champagne?" asked watson, holding out a tray of drinks.
"that was beautiful too," dawn said.
"the drink, dawn," kristy said. "not the region."'
dawn, you're such a pretentious little twatstain. god forbid your only sibling "ruin" a family trip, just by being there! and also, is watson for real going to serve the girls booze?
'actually, it wasn't champagne.'
BORING.
'watson was offering us sparkling apple cider. which, in my opinion, tastes much better.'
whoa, abby's had champagne before? which responsible adult allowed that to happen?
'we each took one beautiful, fluted glass. and mrs. brewer announced, "i want to propose a toast. here's to a safe, educational trip!"
"a fun trip!" kristy called out.
"to adventure!" mallory piped up.
"to shopping!" stacey said.
"to mary anne, claudia, and dawn!" jessi said.
logan held up his hand. "uh, hello?"'
logan, shut up, as far as i'm concerned, you don't even exist except to be a massive dickhead, so jessi was right to leave you out.
i drew this a few weeks back from a book and it was such a crappy drawing i turned it into logan. "but i lik dik mary anne!" we know, logan, we know.
'"and logan, too," mary anne said.
"to a break from baby-sitting!" i added.
"yyyyyes!"
i don't know who yelled that.'
whoever did will end up at the bottom of a lake right along with you, abby. no worries!
the chapter ends with this lie: 'but we all drank to it.'
how are they all still alive after that? kristy is losing her touch!
CHAPTER THREE
stacey
it is sunday and anastasia is writing in the travel journal.
'we're off!
au revoir, etats-unis!
ta-ta, yanks!
we are now passing the curvy arm of cape cod, massachusetts. below us is nothing but ocean. the next land we see will be…the old country!'
stacey internally monologues about what a weird expression "the old country" is. but says that mr. dougherty -- who i will refer to as mr. d, because text edit hates the name dougherty. -- had been saying it ever since they arrived at the airport. mr. d, i'll say right now, is a massive flake and a total douche. i've read this book fairly recently, and yeah, i hate mr. d.
'when you think about it, though, it makes no sense. europe isn't "older" than any other part of the world. i mean, dinosaurs lived in the americas too.'
uh, stacey?
dictionary:
old′ coun`try
n.
the original home country of an immigrant or a person's ancestors, esp. a European country.
thesaurus:
Noun 1. old country - the country of origin of an immigrant. old country - the country of origin of an immigrant, country of origin, fatherland, homeland, mother country, motherland, native land - the country where you were born.
you need to buy a dictionary. or start asking questions when you don't understand something instead of just assuming you know everything. better to ask questions and learn when you don't know something than assume you do, start spouting a bunch of crap and looking like an idiot.
she stupidly tops that off with: 'oh, well. i guess that's why mr. dougherty teaches creative writing, not science.'
*slams head into wall so i, too, can be a brain damaged walrus like stacey*
stacey notices that as the plane is rising higher over the atlantic, mr. d is deep in conversation with mallory and some other kids, giving them advice about 'their persona journals.' uh. okay. 'he was probably telling them to seek out places where the famous writers hung out. shakespeare's favourite snack shop. whatever.'
yeah, stacey, WHATEVER. i'm kind of done with your shit right now. and i have a buttload more pages to go of your inane drivel.
mr. d. is wearing a beret, which stacey says is 'so corny,' more like uber douchey. but anything mr. d does is automatically super douchey to me. i seriously hate that guy. stacey remembers that her dad once bought a beret when her family went to ireland. 'he thought it looked cosmopolitan. mom thought it looked dorky. so it stayed in his suitcase.'
actually, stacey, a beret sounds like something you would wear. in fact, i'm pretty sure you probably have worn one.
yes, she has! the hypocrite!
'fortunately, mom was being very kind to mr. d. she hadn't mentioned a thing about the beret. nor about the stray pieces of honey-roasted peanut that were nesting in his big handlebar moustache.'
oh, so, i see. he's one of those moustache aficionado hipsters. mr. d was a hipster before being a hipster was cool!
and also, text edit keeps insisting on autocorrecting "moustache" to "mustachio." jesus fucking christ, text edit autocorrect, were you configured by mr. d?!
stacey says that 'unlike everyone else in our group, i never received a bag of those peanuts.' she's very, very butthurt about this because her mom had grilled the flight attendant about the sugar content before she'd allow stacey to have any. you know, because her mother is such a huge fucking bitch to care about the health of her diabetic daughter! 'then she made a scene, pointing me out and demanding i be given a non-sugary snack.' well, that's a tad much, but still.
'as if i couldn't have taken care of that myself. without making everyone in the cabin stare at me.
grrrr.'
well, stacey, between school, baby-sitting and sucking off random dudes, you have NO TIME to spend with your mother. so, your mother doesn't see how you handle your condition while you're out--for all she knows, you could be mainlining sugar at claudia's with the rest of the BSC three days a week. how the fuck would she know? you don't really spend time together. i get that it's embarrassing, but would you rather have your mom, who cares about you but is occasionally embarrassing about it, or say, mallory's mom, who wouldn't give a shit if mallory lost both her arms in a fist fight with a bear--she'd just make mallory learn to clean up spills and tie shoes with her teeth, so as not to lose her child-slave/her children's surrogate parent?
'do i sound like a terrible daughter?'
in this book, kinda, yeah.
'i'm not. i love my mom. because i'm an only child, and mom's divorced, we're super close.'
we rarely see this super closeness between you too, stacey. maybe time to show, not tell, if you want us to believe your bullshit.
'but in a way, that's a problem. sometimes -- just sometimes -- it's nice to have a break.'
you're hardly ever home, stacey. like i said, between school, baby-sitting and blowing random dudes for compliments and change, you're RARELY HOME. if you didn't have to sleep there at night, you'd probably only go back to do laundry and grab more clothes and insulin. jesus. and i didn't even mention all the trips you go on! new york to see your dad, camp, california, vermont, that never-ending road trip across the states, hawaii, sea city multiple times, the list just goes on and on. and now, europe. like i said, stacey, you are rarely fucking home. and also? you're a spoiled fucking brat, to boot, so shut your sugar-free pie hole!
stacey tells us that while she is sitting in seat 29A, her mom is trapped in seat 14C. she says she thinks her mom imagined that she'd be sitting next to her only child in seat 29B, but claims this distance was totally not her fault!
'the separate seating wasn't my fault. as i approached the ticket counter, mom was off fetching kids from the candy shop (including alan gray, the plague of the eighth grade, who should have been banned from the flight because he is definitely hazardous waste.) well, maybe i did slide closer to the counter just then. i didn't exactly wait for mom.'
of course you didn't. and also, leave poor alan the fuck alone. he never did anything to hurt you, so stop being such a raging cunt to him.
'anyway, robert was standing next to me at the time, so the agent assigned us seats together.'
womp womp!
stacey confesses that she felt 'a little funny' and uncomfortable about having to sit next to her ex. she had been hoping to be seated closer to kristy, abby, jessi and mallory. well, see, this is karma for ditching your mother, stacey.
probably better for everyone else on the plane that the BSC isn't all sitting together anyway, they're annoying enough on a good day, can you imagine how loud and obnoxious they'd be on a plane?
the BSC on a plane: a MILLION times worse than snakes on a plane.
ooh, and now we get an illustration! yay!
sorry, it was boring, i fixed it.
so because stacey is a hoor, her mother is stuck sitting next to mr. d the hipster douchebag, while she is karma's BITCH and trapped with robert, her formerly completely co-dependent, super clingy boyfriend! i don't know who is suffering more right now, but i sure hope it's stacey!
she says that she could hear her friends 'chattering away happily.' meanwhile, she's sitting in utter silence with robert. then she goes on to explain their history in phases, which i can sum up more quickly and honestly than she did:
phase one: they dry hump a lot, have fun and he's super over-involved and co-dependent.
phase two: they break up. i believe he cheated on her, but i haven't read that particular book in awhile and stacey neglects to mention why they broke up here. which would make sense if he did cheat on her.
phase three: they make up?
phase four: robert comes down with a temporary case of depression and uses her as his emotional tampon.
phase five: she tells him to talk to someone else about his problems because she's sick of being his tampon. there are only so many emotions a jumbo-sized tampon can soak up before it begins to leak onto her panties and then down her leg. robert totally ruined her white jeans, you guys! so he talks to his coach instead, who apparently suggests taking a trip to cure his depression. must be nice to have that option. also? a trip wouldn't cure the clinical depression he supposedly had.
stacey tells us that she and robert haven't really seen each other or spoken since then, but assures us that it's not because they're avoiding each other! oh heavens no! it's because they 'finally became real, honest-to-goodness friends.'
because real friends are people you ignore and pretend don't exist, i guess? well then, i guess that old saying about keeping your friends close and keeping your enemies closer is kind of true. except in stacey's case it'd be: keep your friends a football field's distance away and spend every monday, wednesday and friday afternoon with your enemies.
'i liked it that way. a little distance was just what we needed.'
she's feeling nervous on the plane because she's worried she'd given him 'the wrong signal' at the airport counter. 'did he think i'd plotted to sit next to him?' maybe he plotted to sit next to you because he misses your proclivity for performing sexual acts in public and semi-public places?
robert tries to shake stacey out of the drool-drenched near-comatose state i imagine she is in while internally monologuing, by making small talk: '"this is way cool," robert exclaimed. "it's too bad we can't see outside." (we were taking a night flight, so we'd have a full day ahead of us when we arrived in london.)'
stacey can't help but be a snooty, snobby, spoiled snot-rag: '"don't tell me this is your first plane ride," i said.
"first one overseas," he replied.
"uh-huh. wow." i needed to loosen up. i was tense.'
time to signal the flight attendant for a triple martini and fish some xanax out of your purse!
stacey takes a deep breath while her brain struggles to form a possible conversation. just as she's turning to ask him if he's up for joining the mile high club, she notices that he's facing away from her…
'looking at a pair of extremely tight bell-bottoms.'
ashley wyeth is on this trip?
'well, at the girl in the bell-bottoms. jacqui grant.'
ruh roh…
hey jacqui, why don't you go sneak some booze into a concert or something? stacey's trying to work here!
'"are you finished with those?" jacqui asked sweetly, nodding toward his bag of honey-roasted peanuts. which was obviously empty.
"these?" robert held up the bag. "sorry."
jacqui giggled. "i am such a pig."
robert smiled shyly.'
yeah, nothing sexier than a chick calling herself a pig! and what an awesome message to inadvertently slip into a book for young girls: wanting more than one tiny packet of peanuts makes you a PIG. oink oink, fatty, put those peanuts down!
*RAAAAAAAAGE!!*
'"isn't this the clearest day?*" now jacqui was standing in the aisle, leaning over robert.
way over robert. with a low-cut shirt that showed…well, a lot.
puh-leeze. i mean, how obvious can you get?'
ya jealous stace? does someone at SMS besides you finally have a rack? is it bigger than yours? i thought you just wanted to be "friends" with robert, anyway, so what does it matter to you if jacqui is giving him an eyeful of the goods? i didn't realize there was a One Tramp Per Town rule in connecticut.
*continuity error? or is jacqui just stupider than the average SMS student? we've already established that it's fucking NIGHT TIME.
'this was no accident. i know jacqui pretty well. we used to hang out together. she got me into big trouble once at a rock concert. she sneaked liquor into the stadium and got caught--and she blamed me. i have never, ever forgotten that.'
yes, we'll never forget it either, 'stacey and the bad girls' was one of the most hilarious baby-sitters club books ever.
stacey says that jacqui had 'tried to flirt' with robert in the past but that 'it didn't work.' maybe because you out-tramped her? 'she's not his type. he doesn't go for girls with red-and-green-dyed hair and nose rings.'
how do you know what his type is? and also, how the hell did jacqui, who is thirteen, convince someone to pierce her nose? don't you need to be like, at least eighteen or have parental consent for getting anything other than a simple ear piercing? actually, i believe you need parental consent for even regular ear piercings, too. i know when i got mine done when i was twenty-one, i needed fucking ID. and that was at claire's.
by the way, my ears got super infected for months and i can no longer wear earrings, so fuck claire's for getting piercings!
i repeat: who allowed a thirteen year old to get her nose pierced?
well, this is jacqui, who's favourite pastimes are shoplifting and drinking wine out of mini shampoo bottles, so i guess maybe her parents are done with giving a shit about what she gets up to.
'"you can really see so much, jacqui," i said.
not that i cared.
i was just annoyed at jacqui's obnoxiousness.
that's all.'
yeah, you keep telling yourself that, mcgill. you don't fool us, but maybe, just maybe, if you keep telling yourself that you don't care, you'll start to believe it. even if no one else ever does.
stacey says jacqui 'finally gave up when the captain turned on the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign.' well, yeah, because that sign means she has to sit the fuck down and buckle the hell up, dumb ass. she had no choice but to give up.
soon after the 'BUCKLE THE FUCK UP' sign flashes the meal is served. stacey gets the diabetic meal, which is a salad 'that tasted as if it had earned frequent flyer miles for life.' sounds fucking delicious! after dinner there is an in-flight movie, which puts stacey to sleep, 'which was good, since we were flying through the middle of the night.' yeah, you mentioned that already. and yes, that does mean that jacqui is especially dumb, even by SMS standards. eventually stacey wakes up and walks around visiting her friends/harassing the other travellers aboard the plane by being loud and obnoxious, i'm sure.
'of course, jacqui moved right in on robert.' why do you care?
'and she wasn't the only one. at one point she was sitting in my seat while kathleen lopez [WHO?!?] and kara mauricio were facing him from the seats in front.'
stacey admits to feeling 'a little strange' about this. adding, 'but hey, it's a free country. and it was good to see him talking to someone besides me.' you SURE about that, stace? because i'm still completely unconvinced by your performance.
there is a bit of turbulence as they are about to land that scares a few stray poops into stacey's panties, even though the captain keeps telling them that everything is fine. she says that by the time the wheels hit the ground, her knuckles were white from grabbing the armrest. i've never been on a plane myself. why? because, i'm scared shitless. and also, the opportunity has only presented itself to me once--at which point i freaked out and said hell no. so i can't really snark her being scared. i would've royally shat my pants at turbulence on a plane.
'when we finally stepped onto solid land, i was so relieved.'
i'll bet!
'now, i have done a fair amount of travelling [nice bragging there, stace!], and most airports look the same. but the minute i stepped into heathrow airport, i wanted to scream with delight.'
don't go having a 'when harry met sally' moment in the middle of heathrow, stace, i don't think ANY one would appreciate THAT. except maybe robert. and any of the other dudes from SMS that you've banged. which…let's be real here, is everyone but alan gray. maybe just don't do it for our sake, okay? WE don't want to hear it!
'i don't know why. maybe it was the relief. or maybe the unfamiliar billboards. the accent of the airport announcer. the £ before all the prices on the ads.
it all just felt…so totally, fantastically, foreign.'
still, stacey, no need to whorgasm everywhere.
meanwhile, jessi is literally twirling around heathrow, saying--shouting, i'm sure--"even the air smells different!" really, jessi? is that even true? i've never been to england myself, sadly, but would the air really smell different? maybe stoneybrook typically reeks of desperation, humiliation and human waste.
'"tallyho!" mr. [d] suddenly called out, marching toward the baggage claim area. "once more into the breach!"'
say fucking what? and i'm sure the brits just LOVE it when north americans come to england and start shouting shit like "tallyho!" and, i'm sure, putting on fake accents.
'nobody was paying much attention to him. we were all yakking like crazy. alan was trying to sneak off into a sweetshop. abby and kristy were reading billboards and laughing at the strange phrases.'
and somehow alan, who just wants to get some awesome UK candy, is seen as the jerk of SMS? i think abby and kristy are the assholes in this scenario. as pretty much all BSC members are in ALL scenarios. fuck these bitches!
stacey says she only realizes how tired she is once things start to slow down a little--and the excitement begins to wear off, i guess--'after all, it was still the middle of the night in stoneybrook!' good, go to sleep then, do us all a favour!
but somehow this stacey chapter still isn't over. good golly, miss molly, do i ever wish it would end!
maureen ends up having to drag all the kids to the baggage claim area to get their luggage. i bet that was fun.
stacey says that at least one other flight is 'sharing' 'their' conveyer belt. uh, stace, it's not your conveyer belt. just because your family probably has more money than rockefeller, doesn't mean everything in the world belongs to you and your lame friends.
'people were blocking every inch of it, so we had to squeeze between them whenever we saw our suitcases. little kids were screaming and running around, and alan gray actually stopped the carousel for a long time because he sat on it.'
maybe he was just trying to help you bitches get your luggage by shutting down the carousel? maybe he ate too much candy from the sweetshop and wanted to take a ride? who knows.
she says it seemed like hours before they got all their luggage and she bitches that after that, they had to wait in line for customs! THE NERVE! don't they know the BSC is on this trip?!? how dare they make them go through CUSTOMS!
oh, that's right, it's procedure. and also, no one outside of stoneybrook gives a shit about your little kiddy club.
stacey whines that by this time she was dyyyyyying for a nap. why don't you just take a nap in the customs line? i'm sure no one will slip bricks of hashish or heroin into your suitcase, you put that "USA is A-OK!" sticker on it, plus, even more important, one of those "DON'T FUCK WITH ME, I'M BSC!" stickers that kristy had made up before you gals left town! it's all good. nighty night, stacey!
'"are they going to search us?" mallory asked.
"oh, no," said mr. [d] reassuringly. "it's just a formality. they only search the suspected--"'
criminy craps, he says the T word. can you even write that online safely these days? not gonna risk it. LOL. making fun of ann is not worth getting a random scary knock on my door, only to have to explain i'm making fun of a kid's book.
mr. d is one of the first people through. i don't know why they didn't hold him up just for that beret, you know, to fuck with the guy a little because he is CLEARLY a douchebag, between the beret, the creepy handlebar moustache, and his insistence on running through heathrow saying shit like "tallyho!" i'd probably want to shake him up a little, just to get him to stop being a massive bag of dicks in my country!
maureen has to wait until the end, because she appears to be the only one actually doing their chaperoning duties here. even stacey, who has been a bitch to her mother thus far, admits: 'i felt bad for her. mr. d seemed to be in his own world.'
mr. d is such a douche, i should just change his name to mr. douche every time he is mentioned. seriously.
stacey and the rest of the BSC members on this trip 'didn't stop jabbering. the customs officials just stamped our passports and waved us by.' nice technique ya got there girls. be so loud and annoying that you just get waved through because they don't want to hear your blabbing any longer than absolutely necessary.
and that, my friends, is how stacey sneaked a suitcase full of dildos and hash into england.
as they are lugging luggage toward the exit, they hear a commotion. and maureen's voice, pleading. stacey spins around.
ruh roh.
'"there must be some mistake," she was saying as she walked behind two customs officials, who were heading toward a small office.
between them, looking very scared, was alan gray.
"oh my lord…" i mumbled.'
oh, alan. *FACE PALM FOREVER*
stacey says that kristy, who is the uber cunt of stoneybrook, possibly the uber cunt of the universe, had a very different reaction: 'i'll bet her laugh could have been heard halfway to wales.'
what did alan do to get into trouble? he was acting suspicious, on purpose, and pretending to hide shit in potted plants and …
oh my god.
'tying a kerchief over his mouth, speaking in a nonsense language.'
for fucking serious?! well, that is:
1-not cool.
2-fucking offensive.
i don't think old alan would've gone that fucking far. this was clearly part of alan gray's character assassination.
stacey says she figured the experience would've quieted his ass down, but nope. 'he was proud of himself.' he tells all sorts of bullshit lies about being tortured, tied to a chair and having flashlights shone into his eyes and 'asked about his connections to the stoneybrook liberation front.'
or is he lying?
i guess we'll never know, because even in a book where someone as lame as robert gets his own chapter [oops! spoiler alert!], alan never does.
'alan is such a jerk.'
actually, you guys are jerks. and also, this seems pretty close to something kristy would do and if she did, it would get big laughs out of all of you bitches, so whatever.
she is happy that he sits far away from her crab infested ass on the bus ride to the hotel. well, of course he would, he doesn't want to catch any of those crabs! the drive to the hotel freaks her out, maybe even enough to shake loose the few poops that somehow managed to remain firmly planted in her bowels during the turbulence debacle earlier. 'even though i knew that the english drive on the left side of the road. it felt as if we were heading for an accident anyway.'
i'm sure the brits feel the same when they visit the states, stacey.
stacey tells us that it's all good, because she gets used to it and soon enough, she has her sophisticated new york city nose 'plastered' to the window, 'like everyone else's'. that sounds unsanitary. and also, very fucking gross.
london is 'mega-cool' according to stacey, and, i'd imagine, 'dibbly fresh' according to mallory. 'crowded, narrow streets, a little like greenwich village in NYC, but with much older buildings. even though we were all tired, our excitement jolted us awake.'
damn it, you mean they won't be sleeping after all? i wanted a break from stacey's madness! like a whole chapter with nothing but the word: "sleeping" repeated over and over for like, ten pages.
as they are nearing their hotel, they pass 'an enormous park' that is actually kensington palace. jessi asks if they can check it out, but maureen says they are scheduled to take a tour later in the week, so that's a no! abby says, "maybe that's where victoria kent lives." and i slam my head into the keyboard.
fhowerfwnerf98hfej fnwurfhwle
'"oh? a member of the royal family?" asked mr. [douche].
"like, forty-ninth in line to the throne," i explained.
mr. [douche] laughed good-naturedly. "she's probably in one of the lower-priced palaces."'
god, i hate mr. douche. and everyone who lives in stoneybrook. right at this minute, i hate everyone in these books. i can't even explain why, i just do. to the point of incomprehensible rage. i. just. CAN'T. with these idiots right now.
the bus is rolling along as buses are wont to do when suddenly mallory gasps! and cries! "baker street!" and i don't blame her because i would be super excited too. and kristy makes me unreasonably FURIOUS with her stupidity when she says, "yeah, i could go for some pastries."
WHNKAGHJBDFKAFJHQJQWHAT!?!??!?!
'mallory shook her head. "no! that's where sherlock holmes lived!"
"i knew that," kristy muttered.'
no, you didn't. and also, i see mallory has forgotten what the terms "fiction" and "fictional character" mean again. but it's all good, because i'd want to go for the exact same reason. one of my sisters has been and i am envious to this day.
'"and there's marylebone lane, where charles dickens wrote several of his books," mr. [douche[ said.
"kristy knew that too," abby remarked.
kristy stuck out her tongue.'
you have redeemed yourself abby. thank you. i do love it when you shit all over kristy. it's your best feature/trait.
soon they pull up to their "hotel" which is called an "inn". so is it a hotel or an inn?! it's the 'cardington inn.' which i seriously have to look up online, i need to know if this place exists! well, there is a cardington street in london. but so far, no cardington inn. therefore, i will conclude that this is a fictional hotel/inn.
stacey claims to have watched 'faulty towers', but i don't fucking believe her ass for a second. 'it wasn't at all what i expected. i guess i've seen too many fawlty towers reruns with mom, so i had pictured a run-down place with eccentric characters running around.'
you're imagining a game of 'let's all come in' then?
'the cardington was as modern and comfy as the holiday inn.'
we-ell…i actually spent a few too many hours reading hotel/motel and inn reviews last spring and i can tell you, people had some big complaints about finding pubes in the beds of a few holiday inn locations. maybe people are getting a little too comfortable there?
here is a whole page of bad reviews for holiday inns:
LOL.
god, do i ever wish i'd bookmarked the pube reviews. i can't find my screen caps and fear i may have deleted them. :(
this shit, i don't fucking believe: 'just inside, we were met by a balding man in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe.'
oh, no, compared to that, THIS SHIT I CAN'T EVEN COPE WITH! and of course, today's bullshit is brought to you by mr. douche himself:
'"the return of the colonists!" mr. [douche] announced, shaking the man's hand. "from new england to old. i'm [douche], from stoneybrook middle school."
"phelps," replied the man. "from the cotswolds." then, without another word, he walked out the front door."
BAHHAHAHAHAHA!! *slaps knee* ah fuck, that's some good shit. i hope mr. douche feels like a fucking moron right now, because that's exactly what he is.
'mr. [douche] looked bewildered.
"he's a guest," mom whispered.
we were cracking up. poor mr. [douche] was bright red.'
GOOOOOOD!!
maureen is clearly the only actual adult on this trip, so she finds the front desk and speaks to the clerk.
'"the other school has already arrived," she announced to us. "let's settle into our rooms, and i'll find out where the two groups are going to meet."'
YAY! MY PEOPLE!
the clerk hands maureen a big envelope [?!?! mystery envelope!] and tells them: "take the lift to the third story. and heavy rain is on its way, so if you do go out, remember your macs, wellies, and bumbershoots!" and you totally know saint peter only made the clerk mention the rain so he could blurt out this "macs, wellies, bumbershoots" mess. "bumbershoots" being, as we know from the awesome alula_auburn something no british person has ever actually fucking said. i've said it myself as a joke though, to my husband on a rain day after reading him this book. "do remember to take the bumbershoot, old chap!" because i'm as much of a dick as mr. douche, i guess? nah, i was just mocking this ridiculous fucking book.
stacey explains to us that a "lift" is an elevator. no! really? *rolls eyes* and says that they were 'politely trying not to laugh.' jesus fucking christ.
'except alan gray. "bumbershoots?" he cried out. "sounds like some kind of weird vegetable.
"you have relatives here?" asked kristy.' who is a bitch.
stacey says the lift dings! on the third floor, which she explains is actually the fourth floor and that the english count them differently. really? is that even true? jessi and mallory get to share a room for their super special horsie times. abby is sharing with a girl named kara, who was one of the girls trying to ride robert's preteen dick on the plane. stacey is sharing with kristy.
stacey claims that she and kristy were SUPER PSYCHED about sharing a room! LIAR! i hope kristy gives you the same treatment she gave dawn and just throws her garbage all over the hotel room and makes you bathe in her filth. because that's what happens to liars stacey!
her faux-citement lasts until she opens her suitcase.
aw shit, someone took her suitcase filled with hash and dildos! this one is full of men's clothing. and stacey's sophistication just can't extend to attempting the androgynous look, so she flips her fucking wig.
but it gets worse.
'"uh-oh," kristy said, reaching for a metal canister tucked into the middle of the neatly piled clothing.
"don't touch it!" i said. "it doesn't belong to--"'
as if that ever stopped you bitches from snooping and prying into other people's shit? really?
the chapter ends with this horrific discovery:
'"what the heck is this?"
kristy turned the canister around, revealing a label:
HANDLE WITH CARE
HUMAN ASHES
***
REMAINS O MR. D. PETROPOULOUS'
dun dun DUUUUUNNNNNNN!!