This edition of the Dirtbag Series is brought to you by Jason.
[SALLY KIMBALL rushes into ENCYCLOPEDIA’S office in the garage. ENCYCLOPEDIA is leaning back in a chair, feet on his father’s squad car, eyes closed, smoking a cigarette]
SALLY: Oh, Encyclopedia, I think I’ve solved the mystery of the missing umpire! The umpire was a fraud — no real umpire ever dusts off the plates with his back to the c–
[ENCYCLOPEDIA holds up his hand]
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Sally
you know what would be really helpful to me right now
is if you could find out where my dad keeps the key to the liquor cabinet
SALLY: you mean — like another mystery?
ENCYCLOPEDIA: yeah
SALLY: I don’t see what that has to do with the umpire
ENCYCLOPEDIA: well
it does
so go solve that mystery
[CHIEF BROWN and ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN are sitting together at the dinner table. CHIEF BROWN pulls an ENVELOPE out of his pocket]
CHIEF BROWN: Oh, before I forget, Encyclopedia, this letter came to the station for you this afternoon. It’s enclosed with 25 cents. They want you to meet them at Mr. Dunning’s gas station tomorrow morning at sunrise.
[ENCYCLOPEDIA leans back in his chair and closes his eyes]
ENCYCLOPEDIA: I’m not getting up at sunrise to go to a gas station unless someone sucks my dick when I get there
[CHIEF BROWN begins to choke]
ENCYCLOPEDIA: so I’m sure as fuck not going for twenty-five fucking cents
CHIEF BROWN: WHO DID THIS
ENCYCLOPEDIA: who did what
CHIEF BROWN: WHO WROTE “DETECTIVE PUSSY” ON MY FACE WHILE I WAS SLEEPING
ENCYCLOPEDIA: where
CHIEF BROWN: HERE
RIGHT HERE
RIGHT ON MY FACE
ENCYCLOPEDIA: looks normal to me
CHIEF BROWN: WELL IT ISN’T
MY FACE DOESN’T NORMALLY SAY THAT
ENCYCLOPEDIA: real tough case, Dad
unsolvable stuff if you ask me
SALLY: Oh, Encyclopedia
Bugs is dead
Oh Christ, he’s dead, he’s dead
ENCYCLOPEDIA: that so
listen do you have any cigarettes
SALLY: Why, Encyclopedia
you know I don’t smoke
ENCYCLOPEDIA: well maybe you should
it might make you look older
SALLY: I — all right. But Encyclopedia, we’ve got to get down to the school right away –
ENCYCLOPEDIA: You go ahead
I’ll catch up
I’m working on the Case of the Missing Ginger Ale right now
SALLY: Didn’t you hear me? Bugs is dead.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Sally. What does this sign say?
SALLY: He’s dead –
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Tell me what the sign says.
SALLY [sobbing]: It says — no case too small.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: No case too small.
SALLY: All right, Encyclopedia
ENCYCLOPEDIA: So you go ahead and run on down to the school and figure out who bludgeoned Bugs, and I’ll stay here and look for that pesky ginger ale.
SALLY: I never said Bugs was bludgeoned to death.
[ENCYCLOPEDIA freezes. Then he reaches into a drawer behind him and pulls out something heavy and hidden from view.]
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gosh, you’re right, Sally. What an idiot I am. I must have heard something about it on TV before you got here. I think I will come down to the school with you after all.
SALLY: Oh, thank goodness, Encyclopedia.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Will you come over here for just a minute first? I need your help finding something.
Tags: books, encyclopedia brown, mysteries, teenage dirtbags
I feel like once you graduate to murder, you can no longer fairly be described as a dirtbag. Just me?
That troubling thought crossed my mind, too.
Yeah, I was thinking this might actually be ‘psychopath Encyclopedia Brown,’ frankly.
Yeah. Though, I wanna say the Anne of Green Gables one went pretty psychopath-y, too.
Right? There’s something lovably relatable about dirtbags. This Encyclopedia Brown seems more like, say, a lowlife than a dirtbag.
Like a dirtbag might call hismom a fascist and stomp out of the house, but a dirtbag might also hug their mom after he ate the leftover dinner she kept warm for him in the oven. … or am I romanticising the dirtbag too much?
I think I was just moved by an IRL Dirtbag sighting outside of McDonalds–a dirtbag & his girlfriend were talking (he was doing that staring at his feet, shuffling thing). She looked upset about something and he gave her his hoodie to wear. She got on his skateboard and he (playfully?) pushed her off of it. #truelove
Dirtbag Anne also seems to have murdered Gilbert. I think Mallory has suspicions about the wholesome harmlessness of dirtbag teens.
But Gilbert. UGH.
Sally, on the other hand. And Bugs; Bugs is just perpetually making a play for love and affection via minor theft and scams! He’ll grow up to be a nice, solid mortgage adjuster someday.
I don’t know, we started out with dirtbag Shakespeare. Those were pretty full of murder.
Oh! Oh! I figured this one out without having to read the explanation at the end of the chapter!
Finally.
Encyclopedia Brown always struck me as kind of a know-it-all dick anyway.
More like Encyclopedia Brownnoser amirite. he’s probably really good at mansplaining by now.
Ahh, you’re gonna feel like a jerk when you find out what really happened to him: http://www.theonion.com/articles/idaville-detecti…
Oh god, now I really want to know the answer to “WHAT DID ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOW THAT WOULD HAVE HELPED HIM SOLVE HIS OWN MURDER?”
Straight up cackling alone in my apartment…
Ahhhhhhh! It seems with every post you tear down my childhood memories a little more, and build them back up into something grotesque and disturbing but so much better.
Is this growing up?
The best part about looking up books from my childhood on Amazon is reading the reviews written by children.
“I did not like Bugs Meany….because he really was a ‘meany’. This book shows that you should always tell the truth.”
Don’t worry, kid. Bugs gets what’s coming to him.
I TAKE THIS TO MEAN THAT THE TOAST IS CANON.
Congratulations, Dirtbag Encyclopedia Brown! You may be eligible for a merit scholarship to St. Brutus’s Home for Criminally Insane Boys.
Teen dirtbag sighting!
We were in the car on our way to the carpark that lets you stay for 2 and 1/2 hours for free, and crossing the road just in front of us was a uniquely british-style teenage dirtbag – pasty, wearing tracksuit bottoms (his hand firmly inside the front) and a ratty tshirt.l He was blantantly smoking a joint.
I have walked by a circle of teenagers in the park before and thought, “Wow, it is weirdly cloudy around those kids for such a nice da- OH. Oh.”
There ae parts of my city that CONSTANTLY smell like weed.
The legalization of weed in my state does not appear to have appreciably changed the number of times I smell it on the street.
One of my neighbors in Utrecht is totally a Dirtbag. He came out in his tracksuit bottoms and white T-shirt walking his pit bull while I was going to the gym.
So close to Dirtbag Hardy Boys!!
Wait – is this the dirtbag series or the children’s stories made horrific?
Crossover genre!
They’re merging.
“I found the clue. At the North Pole there are no fucks that I give.”
I spent last weekend in my hometown and there were So. Many. Dirtbags. Dirtbags everywhere, of all ages and genders. The dirtbags vastly outnumbered the non-dirtbags. It was amazing/disheartening.
This is why I hate visiting my parents. Unfortunately they don’t accept it as a legit excuse.
TURN TO PAGE 83 TO FIND OUT WHO BROKE THE WINDOW!
Page 83: Fuck off I’m busy
Probably your mom
this is the perfect occasion to ask: does anyone remember the Encyclopedia Brown where I don’t know what the mystery was because who cares, right, but one of the “clues” was that a girl had lured the school fop into the forest and forced him to take all of his clothes off (forced how? Donald Sobol does not say) and then run away with his clothes, and then he either had reluctantly stolen a towel to cover his shame with or had refused to do so because his socks were blue (or green) and the towel was green (or blue) and (this is verbatim I think) “Blue and green? The colors – they clash!”
I think the fellow’s name was Percy and he may have been a ponce and not a fop, I am not sure about that part. The quote I remember for sure. Is this real? Did this happen? That girl was a dirtbag for sure.
“the school fop”
omg YES
His name was Chauncey, and he was terribly embarrassed because he was wearing green socks and blue underwear, or vice versa. I had completely forgotten about this, and I don’t recall thinking it was odd at the time I read it.
OH WHAT A WORLD
CHAUNCEY
why ever did I think Percy, of course it was Chauncey. And I feel like his style sense was instrumental in proving his innocence of whatever it was, like the criminal had done something demonstrating like total ignorance of the color wheel and this scene was meant to establish that it could not have been him
edit: stop the fucking presses, there was a percy AND a chauncey and they were both as poncey as all get out. or, fancypantses, as the Encyclopedia Brown tumblr has it. I didn’t know that existed, did you know that existed?
http://brownencyclopedia.tumblr.com/post/24201347…
OH MY CRIPES
Now that I read it, the name Percy Arbuthnot washes over me with a weird familiarity. Man, I apparently have a lot a lot of Encyclopedia Brown data floating just below the surface of my consciousness, but not accessible to me without prodding.
Percy features in The Case of the Two-fisted Poet! I remember this one, and specifically I remember thinking it was an insolently trivial mystery that Sobol presented as if his nitwit readers would be confounded by it.
It was an early experience – probably not my first such experience, but early – in being conscious of an author talking down to me. I remember muttering something like “I’m a kid, not a moron” and dropping the book in disdain.
I feel like I must not have read this one, because it seems impossible that I would have FORGOTTEN it.
The ones I remember most are the one where the clue was the lobster was red and therefore ALREADY COOKED and the one where Sally correctly guessed that someone was in drag because of where the person sat in a restaurant (OBVIOUSLY you would never have a lady sit facing the WALL).
“I’m not getting up at sunrise to go to a gas station unless someone sucks my dick when I get there”
I am CRYING
I feel the same way about gas stations @ sunrise tho
& I don’t even have a dick
I thought Encyclopedia Brown was such a nice young fellow, but I was mizzled!
NGL, Encyclopedia Brown was one of my first literary crushes. Non-threatening and super smart. The grown up me is kinda diggin’ the murderous EB though…
When I was a kid, I thought it was awesome that a girl was the muscle of this pair.
By the by, I have thoughts about any police officer whom encourages their adolescent to meet some mystery person who wrote a letter at a gas station at dawn.
Yeah. Though, I wanna say the Anne of Green Gables one went pretty psychopath-y, too.
They're merging.