BSC #45: Kristy and the Baby Parade

Synopsis:

Kristy and co apparently don't have enough kid related stuff going on in their lives. At the beginning of this book, Kristy reads about an event in Stoneybrook called a baby parade. Yes, a baby parade. With themed floats with babies in costumes or, alternatively, babies in strollers or in go-karts. Kristy thinks this is a wonderful idea for her adopted sister, Emily Michelle. At the same time, Mrs. Prezzioso (mother of infant Andrea and four year old Jenny) hires Kristy for a regular twice weekly sitting job for four weeks, but only after Kristy (and all the sitters) take a class in infant care.

Then the girls decide to have their own float in the baby parade, using The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe as their theme. They borrow nine babies from clients and use two of the girls' siblings (Emily Michelle and Jessi's brother, Squirt). For once, everything goes terribly wrong: the float looks awful, the babies all cry, and the girls get into a big fight. But they patch things up and they also get a few new clients from the baby class. There is a bright side (sort of). Mrs. Prezzioso, who entered Andrea in the parade, wins first prize in the stroller division.

• Kristy's sitting for her brother David Michael as well as Emily Michelle when she reads about the baby parade and thinks that it would be a great idea to enter her sister:

But after I'd read that ad, my glance kept resting on Emily Michelle...I looked at her glossy, straight black hair cut like a Dutch girl's. I looked at her sparkling brown almond-shaped eyes. I looked at her plump, pink cheeks and at her sturdy little hands...and at her round little tummy.

• Can we rename this book Kristy and the Baby Fetish? Or could we at least end the above passage with "and then I broke free from my humanoid suit and devoured the fleshling" because that would make more sense and be slightly less frightening.

• So, the baby parade actually has divisions. Division A is for kids in fancy, decorated strollers and so forth, Division B is for kids in comically decorated strollers, and then there are divisions for the floats. I'm supposed to think that a thirteen year old who has friends would voluntarily enter this? We've entered the realm of barren, lonely middle aged women who go into chatrooms to bond over their shared love of Anne Geddes pictures, voluntarily wear snuggies, and watch Jon and Kate Plus Eight to fill the void in their lives. Kristy, get out while you still can. You're only thirteen--it's NOT too late for you!

• The cover of this book makes it look like the baby parade was a big success but in actuality the shoe looked like a big orange blob. Also, the cover of this edition says you can enter to win a BSC party with Ann M. Martin. Considering that Ann M. Martin admits that her favorite ice cream flavor is "plain old vanilla" and that based on reading BSC books, her idea of fun sleepover movies are "The Parent Trap" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," I'm not sure that's much of a prize. (Of course, the little eight year old who resides inside of me would be breaking out the bubbly and screeching excitedly if I ever got the chance to really party with Ann M.)
  

• When Kristy and Mary Anne arrive at the baby course, Mary Anne looks a little frightened and overwhelmed to be surrounded by pregnant women. Kristy scolds her, telling her she's seen pregnant women before, but MA points out that usually that was only one at a time, and this is a whole room full of them. I was kind of hoping the pregnant ladies would break out into screams of, "ONE OF US, ONE OF US, GOOBLE GOBBLE" but no luck!

• There's a really odd part where Kristy mentions having a crush on one of the men running the baby course. It's only odd because it goes nowhere (Kristy thinks he's pretty cute and then her crush disappears a few pages later because she sees him as a family man with a wife and kids). My theory is that they put that in to dispel any inappropriate rumors of Ms. Thomas's budding sexuality. Yep, she may be a tomboy who loves sports, but she still likes men. Yup, absolutely. No sexual ambiguity there.

• In one scene, Jessi sits for her little brother, Squirt. He loves watching Sesame Street, especially his favorite character, Elmo, who isn't featured very often. And that's how you can tell this is a very old book. Oh, for the days when it wasn't the Elmo Show and when Cookie Monster got to eat cookies whenever he damn well pleased!

• I really love the scene where the girls argue about the float theme. Kristy wants to do a baseball theme, Dawn wants to do a surfing one, and Mary Anne wants to do a Three Little Kittens one. Stacey tells Mary Anne that her idea is too immature and that they need to do something more glamorous. She then proposes to dress the babies up in little tuxedos and evening gowns for a New York City theme. I don't know whose idea is stupider, and I'm not even sure I care. It's like LARPers vs. Furries: Which Are Slightly Less Maladjusted?

• This is definitely the book where I started to think that maybe Ann M. had a warped view of babies and children. When you add it all up, it starts to look odd. References to characters winning cutest baby contests when they were little (Dawn and one of Stacey's "cool" friends, Andie). Little girls in beauty pageants (Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn). Rosie Wilder, Stoneybrook's wunderkind. Derek Masters, the TV star. All the little kids who love to perform on cue (Gabbie and Myriah, I'm looking at you). On the plus side, maybe Ann M. Martin was on the cutting edge of the "Exploit your child for fun and profit trend." You just know that Patsy Ramsey was reading stuff like this when she was pregnant with JonBenet.
  

• Mrs. P. really, really wants Andrea to win the stroller division. She has the baby dressed up as Queen Andrea. She then takes a page from "Pimp My Stroller" and has Kristy decorate the baby carriage to look like a little horse drawn carriage. Jenny's too old for the competition, so apparently all her hopes are pinned on baby Andrea. Later on in the book Mary Anne and Miss Priss, Mrs. P. also has Andrea star in some baby commercials. Jenny also wants to act, but apparently doesn't quite have the same sparkle. I saw Gypsy, so I know where this is going. Mrs. P., after Andrea gets tired of this and runs off in about sixteen years, you'd better get used to whoring out your eldest.

• Mallory is assigned to make the costumes and like everything else associated with this awful, awful float, they are chock full o' fail! The costumes look like clown outfits and they clash with the float, so Dawn (who is sitting for one of the babies, Eleanor Marshall) tells Mrs. Marshall to put Eleanor in a blue party dress instead, without telling anyone else. Let's file this under Dawn is a passive aggressive bitch, okay?

• Apparently, there really are baby parades out there. Or so Google tells me. So Ann M. didn't just come up with this all on her own, which is a relief. But it also disturbs me that there really are people who think dressing up babies in cute outfits and putting them on wagons is a good time. I have to find these people and introduce them to a little thing called Wikipedia. You can waste hours of time and never have to humiliate your baby.

Conclusions:

Cat Fashion Shows. Cuddle Parties. Everybody Loves Raymond. System of a Down. Liking the aforementioned things makes you bizarre and possibly not worth knowing. But all of these things have some redeeming social value. Unlike a baby parade. If you are reading this and you know me in real life, you have permission to slaughter me the minute I propose having a baby parade. (Stuffed animal parades, however, are still in play.)

Award

The Splash Award--for alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive and inspiring blogs. I received mine from Insert Book Title Here at {Insert Book Title Here}. Thanks!

The Rules:

1) Put the logo on your blog/post.

2) Nominate up to 9 blogs which allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you.

3) Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.

4) Let them know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog.

5) Remember to link to the person from whom you received your Splash award.

My nominees:

1. Banana Bomb at BSC Rediculosity
2. Jan at Fitzie's Soda Shop
3. Donica at SMS Cafeteria
4. BSC Snarker aka Kristen at BSC Revisited
5. Sunstreakedblonde at The Unicorner
6. Sada at 13 is the New 30
7. Snappleaddict at Tales of a Former Walking Highlighter

Keep on blogging, all!

I Was a Teenage Fairy

Brief synopsis:

I actually liked Francesca Lia Block for the most part, and this was one of my favorite books of hers when I was a teenager. But you know what they say. You only snark the ones you love. Oh, and hate. This book is the story of Barbie Marks, a young girl who ends up becoming a model because of her scary pushy stage mother who makes Mama Rose look well adjusted. Barbie doesn't want to have anything to do with modeling even though she's supposed to be gorgeous (don't hate her 'cause she's beautiful!). Her mother even makes her go to a photographer (Hamilton Waverly) who's a pedophile who ends up molesting her. Her only real comfort in life is her best friend, a fairy whose existence is unknown to everyone else, called Mab.

The story fast forwards a few years later to when Barbie is sixteen. She meets a guy called Todd and eventually, Barbie gets the strength to out pedophile-photographer, and then Mab ends up shacked up with a guy-fairy. Oh, and Todd has a gay best friend called Griffin who's secretly in love with him and was also molested by the creepy photographer. (Yes, Griffin finds love, too, at the end.) I'm not really sure why Barbie's best friend had to be a fairy now that I read over this summary, but there you go.

• When Barbie's mother takes her to meet with a modeling agency, she tells the agent that their last name is Marks because their real name (Markowitz) would hold them back in the modeling world. Aww, someone's changing her name to impress the Gentiles!

• When I first read this book, I didn't realize just how much of a bitch Mab was. She makes cutesy insults that are supposed to be witty, but Barbie's always so in awe of how tiny and perfect looking Mab is that she lets her get away with it. I used to think Mab was cool, too, Barbie, but then I read a little book called The Game and it taught me that in order to get hot girls (large and small) to respect you, you have to treat them like crap. C'mon, neg that little fairy brat! "You're the best looking thing I almost swallowed today." Or try, "Nice wings. How much did you pay for them?"

• This book makes use of one of my ultimate pet peeves. The main character is beautiful, and even her flaws are things most people would love to have. Barbie talks about how she's thin, maybe even too thin. And her breasts are small, but she is a model. The fact that she has them at all means that she's ahead of the game! And in one scene, she thinks to herself that her eyes are too big, her nose is too small, and her mouth is too big. Yeah, because all the Jewish girls I know are complaining about how their noses aren't big enough. And the cosmetic industry is constantly coming up with new ways to make our lips look tiny. As for the big eyes, again bullshit. Although, I read somewhere that we like cats because they have such big eyes, but if our eye to face ratio was the same as that of a cat, our eyes would be baseball sized. Okay, from now on I'm going to imagine Barbie looking something like this. You have to admit, it's scary.

• Hamilton Waverly, the pedophile, seems to like having kids pose with animals. Barbie has to pose with a stuffed lion and a little boy at a photo shoot later has to pose with an actual cub. Maybe he's not a pedophile after all. Maybe he's a furry and the lion is his spirit animal. Which would make him less of an actual Bad Guy, but lower on the totem pole of freaks and geeks.

• Barbie's beau, Todd, is such a catch. He's a vegan, he's got scraggly facial hair, he's one of those famous for being famous guys, and he drives a pink and black convertible. He also really loves women, so much that every time he falls in love he gets "[Insert Girl Du Jour's Name] FOREVER" tattooed on his chest (I guess temporary henna tattoos weren't in vogue back when this took place):

He really couldn't understand how his genuine appreciation of ladies could cause so much trouble. As far as he saw it, they all should be worshiped and have their names permanently branded on flesh; it was just that he couldn't accommodate each one...

• For some reason, I can't help reading the above in Tim Meadows' Ladies Man voice. Also, I feel like Barbie needs to either get Friend Todd to a doctor or at least get him a non veggie burger, stat, because I subscribe to South Park's views of what happens when you go vegetarian and I feel Todd's pussification is well underway.

• Todd tells Barbie and Griffin they both have the same strange, sad looking eyes. Barbie says that hers look that way because she smokes too much. So...wrinkly and squinty? Rocking that sad eyed Shar-pei look? I know I'm a real square when it comes to my health, but when I want to evoke that "the world is too much for me, I'm overcome with vapors and/or ennui, let's read Kafka and talk about philosophy" look, I just wear an extra layer of eyeliner. Panda eyes may be tacky but they'll never give you lung cancer!

• To make up for the tattoo incident (Barbie gets pissed when she sees all of Todd's tattoos), Todd gets the tattoos changed to say SELENA FOREVER (Barbie changes her name to Selena Moon). Awww, that's awesome. Awesome that Todd and I both love that episode of "The Critic" where the rock star Johnny Wrath turned his tattoo of "Maggot" into "Margo." And Todd even has the same obnoxious soul patch as Johnny Wrath. Besides, now all he has to do is exclusively date girls named Selena and everything should be made in the shade for him.

• One of the characters says something about Barbie being kind of weird because she smokes and does too many drugs. In Francesca Lia Block's world, this may result in eerily gorgeous looking girls but in real life, I think Barbie's going to start reminding us of another famous Jewish girl who did way too many drugs at a young age.

• And what is with all the "Smoking makes you look like a haunted, magical elf" messages, seriously? I feel like I'm sitting in at one of Don Draper's pitch meetings, but instead of targeting 1960s era white guys, they're trying to hook the hipster/emo crowd.

• I feel like Francesca Lia Block has a somewhat limited view of what it is New Yorkers do for fun. Barbie goes to New York for a fashion shoot, and the city is personified as a cold, hard working woman type (but who buys herself flowers at the end of the day just 'cause) who wears lipstick picked out by her local MAC drag queen (sorry, but for me it's Sephora all the way!). And every single time a character in one of her books goes to New York, they always end up at museums or vegan restaurants. It's never the Natural History Museum either, my personal fave. (Maybe Barbie didn't want to be reminded of her own physique--too many skeletons?) And just once, I'd love to see one of her characters be forced into one of New York's many great steakhouses--the passages devoted to vomiting would be so slinkster cool.
  

In this book's defense, it had a lot of things going for it. It's really progressive about gay people, it's pretty original, and it's a lot of fun. It has the dubious honor of being the only book I'd admit to reading in public that I've blogged about so far. The rest get little makeshift paper bag book covers. So despite the fact that I almost never say this, you should really read this if you get a chance.

Award Time

I received this from Laina at Laina Has Too Much Spare Time. (Thank you, Laina!)

Rules:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate up to 10 blogs which show great attitude and/or gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog and/or in their CBOX.
5. Remember to link to the person from whom you received your award.

My nominees:

1. Elizabeth and Emily at Underage Reading
2. Nikki at Are You There Youth? It's Me, Nikki
3. Outpost Road at Shannon's Sweet Valley High Blog
4. R. G. Quimby at Little Snarky Two Shoes
5. Taren at Chick Manifesto

And now, the Zombie Chicken Award from Lenore. Thanks, Lenore!

The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken - excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all...

1. L.K. Stine and A.M. Stine at Shadyside Snark
2. Fear Street at Fear Street
3. Troy Steele at Blogger Beware
4. I Hate Wheat at Dairi Burger
5. Longwinter at Like Pike