Episode 89: Mary Anne and Camp BSC

The episode for "Mary Anne and Camp BSC" was originally released on November 27, 2017 and is Baby-Sitter's Club #86. **You can listen to it here.** This episode is 1:07:03 long.This week's ghostwriter: Nola Thacker.

*Previous:* Episode 88: Claudia Kishi, Live From WSTO! | *Next:* Episode 90: Stacey and the Bad Girls | *Or,* see all episodes.

## Official Episode Description

What seems at first to be a very straightforward “paint-by-numbers” installment in the sitterverse (yawn: the sitters hold a day camp for some of their charges) turns out to be an intricate, surprising, and genuinely frightening origin story for Mary Anne Spier herself. As the boys pick apart the strands in this delicate tapestry woven by Ann M. Martin and the great Nola Thacker, they begin to wonder whether they’ve uncovered something that none of us were meant to know. Because this one goes all the way down, Baby Nation. All the way. Down. Some completely unwarranted and baseless slander of the fine city of Cleveland in this episode, which is still nowhere near as offensive as how many total minutes it takes Jack to get through one two-clause sentence about the B-plot of this book. Put your tinfoil hats on for this one, Baby Nation, because you’re gonna need ‘em!

## Music Credits

* “Silly Fun,” by Robert Austin
* “Lavender Town,” by Myuuji
* “Dead Silence,” by Myuuji
* “Love Potion,” by Fasol Prod
* “Link,” by Jim Yosef
* Original Intro by Scott Lamb
* Heavy Metal Outro by Baby Bee Wolfkiller

## Ann's Epithets

Tanner calls out Jack for having the epithets written down.

## Book Description

Jack gives Tanner a C+/B- score on his description. "High score from the Russian judge!"

## Segments

###  Burn Of The Week

Jack: "Let's do something extravagant!" / "Clean the kitchen?"

###  Refrigerator Play

This week, the true name of the act is revealed: "stove wrestling".

###  Tanner Googles

Tanner Googles to find out which earth we are in. "Earth 1218" in the Marvel universe. In the DC universe, pre-crisis timeline, unclear.

###  Thack Attack

Tanner Sings and Jack Sings the Nola Thack Girl song.

###  Wandering Frog People

Tanner sent a Direwolf onesie for Cyril and sent a Wandering Frog Person directly to Jack. "If you don't know you've been frogged, can you have been frogged?"

## Theories

###  Bread Theory

"Dawn and I were even making real bread, from the ground up." Homemade bread, wrapped in red and white. Tanner draws parallels with the three main estates of the ancient regime: red, nobility; white, church; missing is the blue, bourgeoise. He also notes the parallels with "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Where is the bourgeoise, where is the liberty?

It's bread, all the way down. Jack is no longer a Scully.

###  Witchcraft

Fate, destiny, supernatural: Mary Anne's "weird babysitters".

## Jack's References

* "It's a causal clause and not a concessive clause."
* Tanner's fear of flying is a contrapasso from Dante (Tanner tries to distract with "antipasto".)
* Jaques Lacan and a Lacanian reading of this text: the real vs. the not real.
* Jack goes into the roots of exegesis (Greek, to lead through or discuss).
* The Red and The Black by Stendhal

## Tanner's References

* Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it.
* Tanner was distracted from book descriptions because of a NYT push alert about a note so high, it's never been sung before.
* "Well, I watch a Youtube channel called "NumberPhile"."
* Mr. Spier is like Cypher in The Matrix.
* Things from Cleveland: a bar called The Warsaw, and Drew Carey lives there.
* Tanner dances to Chaka Khan instead of engaging in Jack's discussion about The Real.
* Tanner recites part of The Lord's Prayer in Swahili. He knows this because it was the theme song for Civilization IV.

## Notes

* Jack describes a Rock'n'Play for Tanner.
* Don't triangulate: Tanner is going to Berlin for work next week.
* The parallel construction during today's intro is quite amusing.
* This week was GCBSF but light on the F.
* "The Eternal Dingleberriness of Mary Anne"
* Hellmath: 20\*8=160\*5=900\*4 does not equal ten thousand dollars
* Reiteration of the pineapple on pizza discussion.
* Chapter nine in this book features Jackie Rodowsky: he's the focal point of a chapter about ghosts, scaring, etc. There is no Trackin' Jackie this week - Jackie's doing great, nothing. Notable and weird, no blips. Somewhere inside the husk is a little boy who just wants to go to camp and eat marshmallows. Time is different now.
* Introduction of Stacey = Stakey
* The stinger is a discussion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jack loves it all. Tanner watched one episode and didn't like it; he blames his dad for not liking Buffy, since his dad watched Angel, which Tanner thought was dumb. Relevant to the text: the girls all watch "Buffy" the movie.

## Sign Off

Jack explicitly adds "am I being detained" to the outro during the beginning of the episode. This week begins a pattern for the Sign Off that will last through most episodes until the end of the main canon series:

- round off the corners in your bedroom
- drown all your dolls
- call your senator and demand your right to bear time
- don't forget to let daddy love you as much as I do
- am I being detained? I am a sovereign citizen, am I free to go?

- Claudia's wearing a bra now, and the way she talks, you'd think that boys had just been invented

## References & Links

1. ↑ High score from the Russian judge: http://skateguard1.blogspot.com/2018/04/unravelling-russian-judge-stereotype.html
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates\_of\_the\_realm
3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,\_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,\_fraternit%C3%A9
4. ↑ To be fair, Scully was somewhat of a believer by the end, too.
5. ↑ concessive clause: "a clause, often beginning with "though" or "although", that expresses an idea that suggeststhe opposite of the main part of the sentence" https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/concessive-clause
6. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques\_Lacan
7. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Real
8. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Red\_and\_the\_Black
9. ↑ Put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UODX\_pYpVxk
10. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/arts/music/metropolitan-opera-high-note-exterminating-angel.html
11. ↑ The NumberPhile channel has 2.8 million subscribers as of 3/26/2019: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A
12. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaka\_Khan
13. ↑ The Lord's Prayer in Swahili / Baba Yetu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba\_Yetu. Interestingly, the song won a Grammy in 2011, in the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) category.
14. ↑ Hellmath is a classic Buffering bit: https://www.bufferingthevampireslayer.com/

* Random Page | The One Where...