MERRY CHRISTMAS, FRIENDS!!! Hope you’re enjoying the holiday today (if you celebrate it). In the event you get a little down time from unwrapping gifts and eating, please enjoy our gift to you, in the form of a (yet to be produced) musical from a popular 90s young adult series. It’s really the gift that keeps on giving, folks. Yay Santa!
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The Baby-Sitters Club: The Musical — Excerpts From The Libretto
{originally posted January 17th}
If I know one thing that sells these days, it’s nostalgia. And if I know two things that sell these days, they’re nostalgia, and making musicals out of things that were never intended to be musicals. While I haven’t exactly worked out the whole thing, here are some song titles and sample lyrics from my smash hit in the making, The Baby-Sitters Club: The Musical.
The Chapter Where We Find Out About Everyone: This number is narrated by the Greek Chorus, which is comprised of three ladies dressed as Ann M. Martin, Beverly Cleary, and Francine Pascal (read: three women in cardigans with glasses and sensible haircuts).
- Sample lyrics:
I know you will skip over this,
As you wait for the story to begin –
But listen, Please! And don’t forget
About Jessi’s cocoa colored skin.
And Mallory’s clear braces hide
The potential she has within –
Hey Reader! Come back here! Do not disparage
The chapter that tells of the Schafer-Spier marriage
It’s The Chapter Where We Find Out About Everyone,
Ghostwritten just for you!
Stonybrook’s Divorce Rate: In this selection, the babysitters and their charges mourn the demise of the nuclear family, as evidenced by Stonybrook’s sky-high divorce rate [see Dawn’s mom, Kristy’s parents, the Brewers, most of the charges who weren’t part of the 27-kid Pike family].
Stonybrook’s Divorce Rate, Reprise: The ever-opportunistic BSC celebrates the economic advantages of marital instability in Stonybrook: with so many single-parent households and moms on the dating market, there is an obscene need for babysitters.
Shannon Kilbourne is Boring: As associate member Shannon Kilbourne leaves the BSC to pursue additional college courses (probably with that nerd Janine Kishi, am I right?), the Baby-Sitters Club does not care. Because Shannon Kilbourne is really, really boring.
- Sample lyrics:
Shannon Kilbourne is Boring
There’s nothing else to say
If Shannon Kilbourne’s a color
Then Shannon Kilbourne is grey
Like the stony halls of S.M.S.
On an empty summer day
No one cares about Shannon Kilbourne
We’d gladly give her away.
She’s our associate member
We call her when we get stuck
But Shannon’s not at our meetings
Cause Shannon Kilbourne sucks
She gives it her best effort, yes
But I still don’t give a fuck
We won’t miss Shannon Kilbourne
Shannon, Good Bye,
Good Luck!
[Shannon shrugs and walks away. She even walks away boring. There is no point to Shannon Kilbourne, and everyone knows it.]
The Diabetes Ballet: In this dance interlude, a dreaming Stacy finds herself stalked by dancing Twinkies, Twix, and Twizzlers that are hidden throughout Claudia’s room. She wakes up having wet the bed. [I can’t be the only person who has that moment in Stacy’s medical history seared in her memory.]
Almond-Shaped Eyes, Broken-Shaped Heart: Claudia mourns Mimi, her grandmother who taught her what love really is.
- Sample Lyrics:
My earrings are ketchup and mustard bottles,
My leggings are airbrushed with relish
But my themed outfit grows from a sorrow below
Like a Bedazzler that cannot embellish.
My cowboy hat and boots may match
My cactus skirt and bolo tie
But nothing can match the sadness
Of the tears from my almond-shaped eyes.
Bart’s Bashings: After Kristy’s Krushers defeat Bart’s Bashers on the Little League field, Bart delivers his own crushing blow: he breaks up with Kristy due to their “incompatibilities.”
- Sample Lyrics:
[Bart] Hey Kristy! When I talk to you, I run out of words to say –
Because all you talk about is softball, or the gym pants you bought today,
It’s not that I think you’re annoying – No! I just kinda think that you’re —
[Greek Chorus] SHH!
[Bart, spoken:] Well, you know everyone’s been thinking it…
You act like we’re an item, Kris, but girl, you’re no great thespian,
And those are some clunky boots you’ve got for a girl who’s not an equestrian,
It’s clear from context and subtext that your character’s really a —
[Greek Chorus] Bart! Come on!
Kristy Thomas, Bossy Bitch: The BSC members discuss how Kristy, while a smart and savvy go-getter, is also a controlling teen tyrant:
- Sample Lyrics:
But that’s just a bit of what The Babysitter’s Club: The Musical has to offer! Check some stage very far from Broadway around 2018 or so to hear these other great selections: JK Rowling, Plagiarist (in which the Pikes file suit for copyright infringement because the Weasleys were obviously based on them), Nobody Likes You, Karen Brewer (Gigundoly Bratty remix), BSC Super Special! (it’s exactly like a regular song but longer and with occasional cursive), and I Know He’s Just a Young Adult Character But I’ve Always Felt Like Logan Bruno’s Probably Really Hot.
Cookies + Sangria 