BSC Mystery #9: Kristy and the Haunted Mansion

Synopsis:

This was one of the stories I found really creepy as a kid, and even creepier as an adult. Kristy and Bart (her sort of kind of maybe love interest) have put the best players from both of their baseball teams (the Krushers and the Bashers) together to form the Krashers and they play against another rag tag team in a town thirty miles over. Charlie drives Kristy, Bart, and some of their team members and equipment in a van (four Bashers, Karen--insert shudder--David Michael, Jackie, and Buddy). On the way back from the game, there's a storm and they get lost. Outside this huge old mansion known as the Sawyer House, a couple of bridges wash out and so they're stranded. The caretaker who lives in a little old cottage lets them stay up in the old house till morning. Everyone's worried back home because there's no phones to call and it's back in the day before you could just use your crackberry to Twitter: "Staying in a creepy old house with my older brother, my beard, and eight kids, one of whom is Karen Brewer--someone kill me, kthnxbai."

The house is a bit spooky because the electricity is out and there are rumors of ghosts. Doing some snooping (newsclippings and an old diary), the kids find out that a young woman named Dorothy Sawyer used to live here. She wanted to marry her fiance, Will Blackburn, whom her father didn't think was good enough for her. She planned to run off with Will one night outside the creek and elope but she never showed up and was presumed dead (drowned, one assumes).

Kristy and the others figure out that the old caretaker is Will and they ask him what's up. He explains that he moved back here and bought the house as a way of keeping his love for Dorothy alive. Too bad you're separated by oceans and time from another literary loon who'd be perfect for you. Miss Havisham and Will would make quite a couple. I've really got to start up a Missed Connections page on the blog.

Kristy goes back home and a week later the BSC has a sleepover. Karen, bitch that she is, stole a snapshot of Dorothy and brings it up to Kristy's room to show the others because she's figured out who Dorothy is. Turns out she looks just like the woman who owns the Stoneybrook sewing shop and Mary Anne agrees. The next day, the sitters go to the sewing shop to ask Dorothy about what's going on and if all goes well, play matchmaker between her and Will.

Dorothy explains that she ran away because she was afraid Will would make her live the conventional boring existence of a housewife in a pre-Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan world: "I didn't have to answer to any man: not Father, not Will. For, as much as Will loved me, I knew he would have given me the same sort of life that Father had...I knew it was wrong to let them think I was dead, but it was the only way I could see for me to take control of my life." This is what happens when you base your strong willed female characters off of Aladdin's Princess Jasmine.

• When the kids meet up with Dorothy, they think that she should tell Will she's alive. She smiles, thinking it'll give him a surprise and that she'll do it. Yeah, that won't traumatize him even a little. Dotty, you creep, you're probably planning to give him a heart attack so you can take over your old house, hire the kids who weren't good enough to be Krashers as your Oompa Loompa-esque minions, and make cutesy kitschy craft items galore with an even lower overhead than an Indonesian sweatshop.

(Claire, Margo? "Crap" has a "p" in it.)

• This book was ghostwritten by Ellen Miles. I'll refresh your memory--she normally writes a series called The Puppy Place and no, it's not as cutesy wutesy as it sounds. It's worse. It makes Pound Puppies look like that show on Animal Planet with all the hoarders who collect dogs.

• And yes, this time, I know Ellen didn't farm out any ghostwriting to a hip twentysomething aspiring writer. If some young hipster with more TV knowledge than sense had written this book, Dorothy would be a really awesome old person, like a former hippie who ransacked a Nuclear Power Plant back in the day, now going under the alias Muddy Mae Suggins to escape the fuzz. Or she'd be Dr. Ruth. Or Carol Kane's character in The Princess Bride. But no, Dorothy comes back to Stoneybrook and takes the absolute hippest, coolest job that Ellen and Ann M. could think of. She owns a sewing supply store. It's called Sew Fine. Not even the Widow Towne or Nannie, the resident Stoneybrook biddies, could top that.
  

• You know how we associate some of the books with food? I always associated Island Adventure with candy bars, Stacey's Emergency with homemade brownies, and Jessi and the Awful Secret with Burger King. This one sucks in terms of food. Will gives the kids some apples, bread and a jug of water instead of readimade pop tarts and double chocolate Oreos. And since it's Ellen Miles, not Peter Lerangis writing, you just know that the bread was whole wheat and that those apples weren't even Granny Smith. If the BSC members weren't such goody goods, instead of solving old people love affairs, they'd go back the next weekend to egg and TP Will's house. But no. They had to go and create an American version of As Time Goes By.
  
  
• I wonder how that meeting between Will and Dorothy will go. "So, Dorothy, how's your life been?" "Wonderful! I've been around the world several times, met countless suitors whom I've all turned down, and seen all kinds of thimbles from around the world. How about you?" "My collection of gnarled apples that look like you is almost complete...so...I've got that going for me."
  

• Dorothy thinks she's so empowered because she ran away and let all her friends and loved ones think she was dead. When I reread that, I had the same reaction as when I found out that damned Lindberg baby wasn't kidnapped at all and really ran off to start a career as a baby model for Gerber.
  

• Babysitting! On the fateful night that Kristy's missing, Claudia's babysitting for the Newtons. She shows up wearing a tie dyed shirt. Since it's raining, she's covered in colors and has to call Janine over to bring her fresh clothes. Not shown: Stacey's commentary on Claudia's wardrobe malfunction.

Claudia: "Well, I just made the outfit myself, and I guess the dye didn't hold--"

Stacey: "Gee, Quinn Claudia, it's almost like you're saying that people don't need to buy out Bloomingdale's to look good."

Claudia: "No, Stacey! I just meant that since..."

• Claudia doesn't lose another opportunity to mock Janine for being smart. When she's worried about Kristy, Janine comments that Kristy will probably be fine because she's so intelligent and resourceful and Claudia eyerolls because Janine thinks intelligence can solve any problem. Duh, Janine. Wearing a cute pink tank top with matching pink elephant studs in your ears is the best way of coping in a crisis when you're stranded in the rain. Besides, popular people don't need to be intelligent in a crisis.
  

• Later, Janine has no idea what to do to make baby Lucy stop crying, so Claudia suggests Cheerios (oh, Claud, bleemers and compulsive eating are right around the corner for you, aren't they?). Janine responds with, "'She'll get milk all over herself'" and Claudia smiles thinking that Janine may be booksmart but she sure doesn't know kids. Ann? When I last met you, you said the child you'd must love to spend time with was that five year old Dexetrin addict on last month's Toddlers and Tiaras ("She could be the next Gabby Perkins!"). And Ellen, the last time you spent any meaningful time with an actual puppy was the cover shoot for one of your books where you tried to stick a tutu on a bulldog who promptly peed all over it.

• Claudia almost doesn't take that sitting job, FYI, as she's so worried about Kristy. But she does because she knows Kristy would have made Claudia eat her own head been upset and told her it was unprofessional. BSC Uber Alles!

Conclusions?

Ann M. and Ellen have no clue what feminism really means. Not a clue. That's how they created a character like Dorothy, who thinks that being a strong woman means pulling a Falcon Heene and making your family and friends worry while you go off and have fun. Note to Ann and Ellen: those self involved, "I just need to find myself on my parents' dime in an Indian ashram/hitchhiking around the country/in the loft apartment of every guy in the East village" that you knew in college were not feminists. When I e-mailed Ann about this, I got a smug response about how Amelia Earhart disappeared and isn't she a feminist? Oh, Ann and Ellen, I'll send you guys copies of The Second Sex and Vindication of the Rights of Woman--review before you create another adult female character ever.

Sitcom Secrets: Lies My Fictional Teacher Told Me

Hey, fans. I've covered siblings and college so far. Now let's look at what you have to do to be a great teacher (and what you have to do to be a mean, evil one).

Above and beyond. These are the ones who go above and beyond teaching. Who take kids into their very homes and lives. Like Mr. Katimski who took in gay student Ricky after his aunt and uncle kicked him out. Or Mr. Turner who adopted Shawn Hunter, let him keep a barnyard animal in his two room apartment, and saved him from a cult, thus proving himself a superior human being to any of the parents or mentors in the lives of Squeaky Fromme or Leslie Van Houten. Illustrating that no good deed goes unpunished, Mr. Turner got into a motorcycle accident in the season four finale, and then by senior year, he was never spoken of again, presumably wished into the cornfields.

Too acerbic, without love. The teacher who doesn't try to teach a lesson. Or who teaches a lesson that may serve you well but sure doesn't make you feel good. Like Dawson Leery's film teacher Ms. Kennedy, a former Hollywood screenplay writer, who tells Dawson his little semi autobiographical film Creek Daze sucks triceratops balls. (The lesson here being both that it's really sad when a TV show needs to do the show within a show gag by season 2 and beware bitter Hollywood roadkill on the wrong side of thirty.)

Or Mr. Kowchevski teaching the kids that hard work and stick to it-iveness are nothing compared to natural talent by demoting poor sweet Millie to second string when Lindsay came back to Mathletes.

Or Professor Kingsfield (The Paper Chase), who taught James Naughton that having a photographic memory doesn't mean you belong at law school. (To be fair, James Naughton did technically prove Kingsfield wrong when he later successfully defended both Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly.)

Never gonna give you up. The teacher who follows the students everywhere. Ordinarily this would be creepy. (Mr. Rosso, with his singing Alice Cooper songs to try to reach these freeakz, was definitely borderline, as was his constant stalking of Lindsay Weir to woo her back into the smart kid fold. Mr. Rosso, let's face it, she's just not that into Mathletes, AP English, or you.)

Mr. Feeny, however, takes it to an art form and it isn't even a little bit weird when every year, he's somehow teaching the kids or being their principal or going back to college with them.

You can't change the system. A teacher wants to make a difference. How? The answer is always by shaking things up. Sometimes with feminism. Sometimes with rock and/or roll. Usually with a slab of humor and a dollop of sensitivity. Of course, as soon as the administration gets wind of Teacher X's unseemly ways, he/she is summarily fired (out of a cannon, into the sun!), giving the students a chance to rally to his/her side in protest. After said teacher is reinstated, he or she immediately resigns, making the students wonder what the fuck it all was for. (What WAS it for? I don't know, but it probably makes for a good college app essay.)

I always wondered why it was that a bunch of entitled, zip-code blessed students could manage to get Donna Martin to graduate but poor Marcie Lewis couldn't get her favorite English teacher back and Principal Green had to resign from Capeside High.

A teaching staff of mavericks. When the teacher shakes things up. To eleven. Think Harry Senate shooting off a gun with blanks during class. Or Eric proctoring Mr. Feeny's citizenship class mock exam and having the students rip up their test papers. Or Ms. Frizzle and her mantra of "Take chances, make mistakes, and GET MESSY!" In an age of hand sanitizing every five minutes and coughing into elbows, you just know she'd be 86ed within minutes, and her "Ms." appellation probably went over like a lead balloon.

Inner City Blues. Plucky white teacher heads into the inner city to try to inspire minority kids. (Or, in the case of Sidney Poitier, dignified black teacher heads into the London School system to reach out to white kids.) So how DO you reach these kids? Montages with touching songs in the background. With Lulu singing To Sir, With Love, Coolio rapping Gangsta's Paradise, and Mr. Mister performing Stand and Deliver in the background, not even the surliest, most disadvantaged kid can stay cynical for long. (Unless you're Seven of Nine, in which case you don't need anything but your fine self.)

Don't drink the flavor aid. These teachers don't just inspire their students to action. They're more like cult leaders. Actually, there's only one teacher whom I can think of who really fits into this category, and that's Irene from Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan. In addition to teaching, she also runs an organization called Daughters of Eve which is like Take Back the Night, an evening with Dworkin, MacKinnon, and Brownmiller, and a bra burning protest rolled into one.

It's meant to be a feminist organization for very smart or talented female students but turns into a manhating extravaganza (otherwise known as a misanthropaganza) with the Daughters sabotaging male students' lab work...and murder. On the plus side, Irene is one teacher who wouldn't get pissed off at the "filthiness" of burning a sanitary napkin in the classroom fireplace (and in fact would probably celebrate the idea of Patriarchy being Subverted through a Feminine Taboo).

Your hard work pays off. The teacher who's really hard on you, who works you like a dog to test your mettle. Like Prof Stromwell kicking out Elle and her cute heart shaped notebook for not doing the reading which only spurs her onto greatness.

And of course, the quintessential example. The strictest teacher of all time--but who gets the job done, ultimately. Whose students are always prepared. I'm talking of course about Nigel Ratburn.

Hey, it's because of him that the kids got to be on the Let's Talk to Some Kids segment of Magic Toolbox, and don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about--no one's too old for Arthur. No one. Arthur is the dark secret of every painfully hip Generation Y-er. Yes, I know you all like to think that the only kids shows you like are the cool, ironic ones like Transformers or He-Man or Jem and the Holograms so you can snark on the bad animation. You're not fooling anyone.

Prove me wrong, kids! The teachers who assume you have no future. Like Mr. Strickland deeming both George and Marty McFly "slacker!" They exist solely so you can show up twenty years later with a wealth of accomplishments to gloat over while they're still bitter and bald--like your very own sci fi book, or the knowledge that you're responsible for inventing skateboards and inspiring Chuck Berry to write Johnny B. Goode.

Here are some things that are absolutely necessary if you want to be a good cool teacher.

Sitting backward in a chair

It's how you show that you're on the level and hip, but still able to rap with your students, one on one.

First name basis only

"Don't call me Mr. _________--that's my father's name!"

Ripping things up

Nothing says stellar teaching record like defacing other people's property. See John Keating having Dr. Wilson, Ethan Hawke and the rest of the dead poet society members rip up part of their English textbook. Or Angela Chase's teacher Mr. Racine who threw the kids' horrible creative writing assignments out the window to make a point. Or Eric Matthews proctoring Feeny's class.

Giving up something important

Like if you leave your high powered job as an attorney or i-banker to teach, it shows that you're really giving back, and that teaching truly is a vocation. Like Ms. Cook in Boston Public. (The writers conveniently omitted the part where Ms. Cook was disbarred for burning down a 9/11 memorial and had to take a job teaching in the inner city to pay last month's Prada bill.)

Sitcom Secrets: Mighty Morphing Siblings

In a sitcom, siblings are magical and can pop up, disappear, reappear, and do all kinds of bizarre tricks. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself.

The Anti Chuck Cunnigham. In real life, you can't spontaneously get an older brother or sister. I don't care what they told you at the Big Brothers and Sisters of America. You only get new siblings who are younger than you in real life. I always wished for an older sibling, though--an older sister whose clothes and makeup I'd rifle through or an older brother who would beat up on any guy who dared to stand me up. (Having a younger sibling does have its perks, though--like the time I convinced my little brother that whiplash is when you get into a car accident and your neck falls off.)

But when you're in sitcom land, all bets are off. The best excuse for a spontaneously appearing older sibling is that they were away at school all this time and no one thought to mention them. Chip Crosswire of Arthur and Sondra Huxtable I'm looking at you.

Gretchen Witter also gets a nod because even though Pacey's older sisters are mentioned in a generic sort of way, we never get a real mention of her till season four when they retconned a whole "Gretchen was Dawson's absolute first love, before Jen or Joey, back when he was a horny preteen" to give Dawson something to do when Joey and Pacey were getting it on. Gretchen's also a reverse anti Chuck Cunningham because after she's had enough of Dawson, she returns back to Fictional U, never to return again.

Half brother (or sister) from another planet. This occurs when you realize that one of your parents has been catting it up on the side.

Like, if you're Shawn Hunter, you can go from having an off screen never seen older sister to having a cute, rich half brother from your father's first marriage which he decided not to say anything about for no real reason. And not just any half brother--one of the Lawrence brothers. And what luck--the one who didn't have "Whoa" as a catch phrase and who somehow wasn't traumatized by at one point having Sally Field as a mom and a cross-dressing, voice-acting, Scottish nanny for a dad. I used to pray that my dad had an undisclosed marriage that resulted in an older half sibling for me when I was a young teen, never realizing the icky Joe Jackson esque implications of it.

Or you can get really lucky...like if your philandering dad had an affair with a carnie who rolled into town years ago. And the carnie gave birth to your half-brother who's the CEO of his own car company and who came up with an invention that translated baby speak.

Of course, it can also be sort of creepy. Like if you're the sexy blonde character at Capeside, and a blonde hussy with a pixie cut and a penchant for wearing bikini tops in New England autumnal weather shows up to bewitch, bother and bewilder every male thing in sight. (And to reveal, eventually, that Jen Lindley's mother gave up a child for adoption. Stupid B-plot that never went anywhere.)

Evil parents. If you have a long lost sibling, don't you think this is the kind of thing your parents should have maybe kind of brought up? Like Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap and her parents who split up, each taking one twin girl until the two girls reunite as teenagers at summer camp, plotting to get their parents back together. (And no, despite my pop culture savvy, I refuse to pander to the young uns by replacing "Hayley Mills" with "Lindsay Lohan." Oh, fine, I will say this--back when Miss Bliss was Disney's Lindsay Lohan.)

As a child, I wondered if I too had a hidden away sibling because my parents weren't telling me something. But no. I didn't find anything incriminating when I searched the attic (after wearing out my copies of Face on the Milk Carton and Claudia and the Great Search, natch). No weird papers or notes. Not even a bucket of half eaten fishheads.

Aging at the speed of life. Sitcoms also taught me that it doesn't matter if you hate changing diapers or dealing with tantrums. You'll never have to. Audiences love cuddly babies but they grow weary of two and three year olds (Full House fans and pedophiles aside). After all, you need to be at least five to be able to coin your own catch phrase. Hence, the freakiness that was Nicky Banks and Andy Keaton, both of whom aged so fast that they either had the aging disorder that Robin Williams had in Jack or their moms had affairs with Klingons (which would explain why they axed the first Mama Banks).

Back in the closet. If you have a particularly boring sibling, sometimes the powers that be intervene and wish those worthless sibs into the cornfield. Like if you're Chuck Cunningham but Ritchie already has an older male influence in his life. Or if you're Nebula "Stop the War" Lawrence and you were only a walk on one joke character (and you were basically collateral damage when the writers decided to retcon that pesky "Topanga's family is a bunch of dirty hippies" trait). Or you're Judy Winslow and the producers of Family Matters erroneously think that Steve Urkel is cute and/or hilarious enough to carry the show and that they can 86 the adorable more laid back version of Rudy/Olivia.

However, my least favorite version of this is Phoebe Buffay's long lost brother, Frank, who appeared with his post menopausal wife asking Phoebe to be a surrogate mother for them, and then never appeared again. There was even an episode where we don't see Frank, but where Phoebe has to babysit for the triplets she carried and birthed. Frank, you deadbeat brother, you pretty much owe big sister Pheebs a kidney and a lung if she wants it. (I guess choice movies like The Other Sister and Lost in Translation made Giovanni Ribisi too good for the small screen.)

Did you cut your hair? You look...different. Off screen demands can lead to actor replacements. Cory Matthews got a new and (in my opinion, more obnoxious) actress to play the younger sister. I guess the old Morgan wasn't growing up cute enough for their liking. And of course, let's not forget Roseanne and the two Beckys. I never knew why they didn't do the same thing on Full House. So many opportunities to stop paying the Olsens a double salary and bring in an adorable four or five year old. (Hell, a twelve year old Macauley Culkin in drag would have been cuter than those two radioactive Cabbage Patch creatures.)

But to be fair, there was probably a good reason for it. You know how much the blind/deaf organizations are complaining about Helen Keller in the new revival of The Miracle Worker being played by a non disabled actress? You just know that the deformed lobbyists would have been pissed if Michelle had been played by a non-troll.

It'll bring us together! If you're just not sure your families are blending well, there's always one way to ensure that everything turns out fine. Pump out a baby! It'll belong to both of you and bond with both sets of siblings. See Lilly from Step by Step and Erin Silver from 90210 (the latter currently slutting it up on new 90210). Adopting a kid from Vietnam also works fine (see the Brewer-Thomas family). This usually works, oddly. I have no idea why--babies and toddlers are the greatest anaphrodisiac since imagining Patty and Selma naked.

Late in life sibling. Even if you're over 40 and you've told all your drinking buddies you're an only child and that your dad is dead, you can always gain a sibling late in life by leaving your Boston bar based sitcom and setting up shop as a radio shrink in Seattle. Best of all, he'll love all the same pretentious crap as you.

The Brady Bunch from hell. I sure do love mixed families. Stepkids galore! And there's always a sexually charged atmosphere when two adolescents come into the same family. Josh and Cher. Kelly Taylor and David Silver (granted, one sided). Marsha and Greg. (Hey, I know nothing really happened but unless E! True Hollywood Story has been lying to me, more than one director had to throw some cold water on Maureen and Barry and tell them to project a brotherly/sisterly vibe that wasn't straight out of V.C. Andrews.)

Honorable mention to Bill Henrickson for saddling Sarah, Ben, and Teeny with five extra siblings, two extra sort of moms, a bundle of opposite sex issues that their significant others will be untangling for years to come, and in the case of his third kid, a horrible non-name.

Build a Better Chick Lit: College Life

I'm starting a new blog feature--posts where I break down the cliches that I love to hate about certain books/movies/TV shows. I call it: Build a better chick lit. Here's the college edition.

I used to love reading books and watching TV shows and movies about the college experience. It's so...collegiate. It's a world unto itself. Where it's always fall and professors are always throwing intimate parties at their houses and the lessons we learn in books somehow always reflect upon real life. Where there are mixers and box socials galore. As may be obvious, I'm telling this from the POV of the female protagonist since the whole Animal House frat boy thing has been done to death. Here are the staples of college life as told through fiction:

Bitchy roommate. If you're a freshman, you get usually stuck with a roommate, and she's not just a bitch. She's a rich bitch. She spends her time analyzing the different levels of sarcasm ("I love your new top!" versus "I love your new top--I wish I could get away with shopping at the Salvation Army"). She's got a thousand pictures on her wall of her and her blonde cute female friends in a variety of places from St. Tropez to Asspen. And, as I learned from Prep, she's got the perfect cute flowered bedspread which marks her as part of the upper echelon of society.

World weary 21 year olds. Our main character, if she's a senior, spends the bulk of her time talking about keggers of years past in a world weary tone of voice that suggests that she's been there, done that, and had the hangover to boot. Like Chloe (she of the novel Chloe Does Yale written by Yale's real life former sex columnist, and yes, I can think of at least two things wrong with that title, too) who regales us with stories of how as a freshman, she was declasse enough to go to a dive bar in four inch heels and a tight pair of jeans in the same tone of voice that Kanye probably uses to describe how he wore an off-white vest his first time at P. Diddy's White Party.

What, me study? No one ever studies unless a test or paper is impending and it's 85% of your grade and you're going to flunk out unless you make haste to the library. Anybody who so much as glances at a syllabus early in the semester may as well move into the Lamba Lamba Lamba house, stat. No normal student has time to study in advance.

Like Charlotte Simmons (of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, a screed against college students who dare to have fun), who was too busy spending the weekend shedding her hymen all over a hotel's posh sheets after the fall formal to bother with writing an essay until the morning it was due. And of course, there's always a mad dash at the last minute because no else seems to have perfected the time-out that Zach Morris made famous (maybe he had it copyrighted).

I used to think this was just something to be found in the annals of fiction. But one of my suitemates senior year left off her entire thesis till the last few weeks of the semester and as a result subsisted on Pilsbury ready made cookies every night so she'd have time to work on her paper. As soon as you see that detail in a movie somewhere, you'll know I'll have sold my screenplay.

Always a Mary Anne, never a Ginger. This one's mainly related to books. The main character's never drop dead gorgeous. Sure, they'll get Scarlett Johansson or Amanda Seyfreid or Julia Stiles to play her in the film and the girl on the cover will always have a bitchin' bod. And she's never ugly (in fact, she's usually pretty cute), but she's meant to be an Every Woman type and she knows it. She'll drop so many lines about being self-conscious about her body that the woman settling in to read will feel justified turning off the treadmill and picking up a pint of the chocolate swirl strawberry ice cream. So we have Chloe, despite her charming silhouette on the cover, angsting over her excess fifteen pounds at Yale's Exotic Erotic (aka, the Ivy League's answer to Hefner's scantily clad Valentine's Day party), or internally sighing over having to go to the gym to compete with the anorexic automatons.

Of course, when it comes down to the big date or the important formal, the protagonist always pulls out all the stops to look incredible. But at 9 am when she's late for her English discussion group, she's a sweat pants wearing, flat-haired, bleary eyed hot mess.

Star pupil. Somehow, professors will be in awe of our heroine's shining intellect based on the fact that she did the assigned reading. (Hey, every other student on campus is busy sexually servicing barnyard animals.) If she not only did the required reading but read a couple of articles on the syllabus that were just "recommended", well, expect stars to fall from the sky, along with coveted research positions that most grad students are giving their eye teeth for. If Charlotte Simmons and little Joey Potter had been real freshmen given such coveted job offers, they would have been found on campus so badly mutilated by jealous overworked TAs that no amount of candlelight vigils and Take Back the Night marches would bring them back.

Orgy porgy, orgy porgy! When they're not pulling all nighters and studying under trees, college students enjoy a non-stop orgy lifestyle. Nowhere is that true more at The Rules of Attraction's college, Camden, where the semi conscious sex with townies is the average loss of virginity scenario, where smeared ketchup at the dining hall reminds them of the weekly abortion being procured by someone somewhere on campus, and where everyone's bi because it's just easier that way.

I have to admire Tom Wolfe for managing to make his book something more than Animal House lite. I have a feeling that when he prepared for Charlotte Simmons, he knew he'd have a hard time making his fictional DuPont seem more depraved than anything Bret Easton Ellis cooked up. So while I might ordinarily have responded to the detail about the drugged girl being carried off on frat boy's shoulder while feces trickles out of the leg of her pants with "Ewww, Tom, why couldn't you have written about a girl who was fed roofies laced with Pepto!" I suppose I have to give him his dues.

Culture clash. Because college is so debauched it would make Caligula, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hedonism-bot all cluck their tongues and say, "In MY day..." most writers rely on the innocent outsider who's supposed to gape at the horror of it all. Tom Wolfe once again wins because you can't get much more horrified than Charlotte Simmons' indignity at seeing a scantily clad actress on the cover of a Cosmo magazine left in the common room.

Here I have to give Prep (boarding school, not college, but still) some love because while it's all too easy to make your heroine head for the fainting couch every five minutes, the protagonist here felt some major culture clash for a pretty good reason--they're all east coast summer home owning types and she knows it.

That's sexual harassment, and I can take it. No girl seems to get out of college without at least one rape attempt on her resume, if she's halfway decent looking, three if she's a real looker, and one per season if she's Kelly Taylor. And professorial misconduct is absolutely de rigeur. Charlotte Simmons shocked me by getting quite bit of unwanted male attention from students but never from a prof. Joey Potter and her English professor made out a little, but that was okay because he was cute and so beloved by students that he often had to pull a Dr. Jones to get away from all his adoring fans during office hours. (Yes, I'm serious.) Topanga got a creepy come on in her dorm room from a prof played by Fred Savage (hey, that's what you get for passing up Yale--you could have been Harold Bloom's lovething, but no, you had to settle for sexual harassment from Kevin Arnold, Ph.D.).

These professors make Clarence Thomas look like a choirboy. After a steady diet of sitcoms and chick lit, I assumed that I'd have to show up to my first college lecture with RapeX and mace.

O Captain, my Captain. There's always that professor who mentors the main character(s), inspiring them to do lame but camera-friendly stunts when said teacher leaves, like rising on their desks screaming "O Captain!" or riding their bicycles after their teacher's departing car (that's Mona Lisa Smile, for those of you who had better things to do than go to the movies in 2004). For those of you wondering how you make that kind of effort if the teacher doesn't get kicked out, you're not paying attention. Good teaching means getting fired by a square administration who just doesn't get it. Anybody who actually stays and teaches clearly has never asked themselves the question, "How do I reach these keedz?"

Once again, much love to Prep for having a teacher character whom the rich bitch set mocks for her poor fashion sense and who clearly is trying to be that kind of mentor to protagonist Lee Fiora but pretty much just makes her life miserable.

One book to rule them all.

So, which of my favorite books/shows make the cut in terms of being the most cliched of all? We can rule out Chloe Does Yale. It fails at portraying college as anything close to depraved on the first page when the campus sex columnist won't even flash a freshman a single breast for free admission to the naked party (damn you, glossy pink cover, for promising something you failed to deliver!).

Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction rocks the debauched, world weary characters, but fails on the teacher/class front because everyone's too jaded to care about GPAs or mentors.

I Am Charlotte Simmons comes close but it's ultimately College FAIL because Charlotte Simmons' self deprecating quotient is lacking. Charlotte is quite attractive and knows it. In fact, in one chapter when she and another character are commiserating over not having boyfriends and being on the fringes of the college scene, Charlotte's new friend mentions that she wouldn't mind trading legs with the dumb bimbo flirting with the stupid jock. Charlotte thinks to herself, "Wait till you see my legs"--sorry, babe, you haven't learned to internally either deprecate the paucity of your tits or the overabundance of your thighs.

Sadly, I think Dawson's Creek comes closest--we've got the debauched school party scene from the POV of the sheltered smart girl (consisting mostly of Joey at a party staring disdainfully at the cleanest, most candle/incest lit frat bathroom in the entire world while sighing over erstwhile lover Dawson at a "wild party"), the smart girl acing every hurdle in her path, the vaguely inappropriate professorial relationship, and the rich roommate. Though Joey is clearly a hottie, she still gets all her self deprecating points because, as people are always telling her, "...you're beautiful, and you don't know it...you're smart and you don't believe it...you're the kind of girl that other girls get compared to."