Summer Camp

// There’s an App for That

By Charles Hodges .
04.26.09 // Summer Camp

iPhones have drastically changed the way we communicate.  More importantly, they have changed the way we spend our idle time.  For those of us who own iPhones, there is never a dull moment.  I do not own one, but have seen the antisocial-socializing toll first hand through my best friend’s recent purchase of one of the little fuckers.  Now, I am looking for a new best friend.  I sit there, watching Jeopardy with a ghost, a witness to this toy-for-adults movement that is sweeping through the great digital media age.  In this new odyssey of the 21st century, the iPhone represents the Sirens – so beautiful, so irresistible, luring us in, leaving us dead.  We have yet to hit the rocks.  Rest assured, it is coming.

Of all the iPhone’s features, none is more intriguing than the “app”.  It is the ultimate incorporation of technology with third party creativity.  However, the app – bathed in the guise of functionality – is destroying our ability to do numerous things including, but not limited to, the following:

Enjoy five minutes of down time
Trust our intuition
Count
Cross the street
Bullshit about NFL statistics
Love animals

But what is the societal net gain from the app?  Does it do more harm than good?  Only time will tell.  For now, it appears to do nothing but solve problems.

Looking for a restaurant?

There’s an app for that.

Want to know how much to tip?

There’s an app for that.

Want to find a bowling alley?

There’s an app for that.

Stranded on an island and need to fire a signaling flare?

There’s an app for that.

Best places to drop a body?

There’s an app for that.

Need to reapply self-tanner while watching/rewinding a VHS?

There’s an app for that.

Have you eaten too many sour patch kids and your tongue is raw and you wonder how long it is going to last?

There’s an app for that.

Want to find out how many people are committing adultery at this very moment in your zip code?

There’s an app for that.
Apps. Apps. Apps.  What are we really solving?  The problem for people who have iPhones is that they never have any time to let their mind wander.  They won’t ever solve any big problems because they are too busy solving the small ones.  I don’t think Einstein would have been able to come up with the theory of relativity if he was playing cube runner, tweeting about his breakfast cereal and checking the level of all the picture frames in his office.  Then again, if he was doing those things, we might not have discovered the atomic bomb.  Good or bad?  You be the judge.

Apps allow us to dodge the question.  What do I want to do?  Let’s ask the iPhone.  What do I think about something?  Hold on, I have to “slide to unlock”.  What are my thoughts about Summer Camp?  They don’t have an app for that yet.

Human logic is a double-edged sword.  Maybe iPhone apps just make both sides of that blade a little more dull.

View Comments / Apr 26.09 / Summer Camp / by Charles Hodges

// Rich kids went to camp, poor kids just went outside

By Joey Camire .
04.25.09 // Summer Camp

Growing up I ALWAYS wanted to go to camp.  I mean, I desperately wanted to be in a log cabin.  I wanted to get poison ivy in places I should not.  I wanted to play practical jokes on bunk mates and then get stuck with some stupid punishment.  I’m not sure why it started, probably the glory of Hollywood and Nickelodeon, but it didn’t matter, I just wanted in.

Every spring I would beg my mother to send me to camp.  She never did, not even a single week.  The problem is that every year when I would ask she would totally play it off like she was going to send me.  One year she actually got the phone book out and started calling people.  Good scam mom! I’m sure she hoped, being the ADHD monster that I was, i would just forget about it.  Well I didn’t.  I was scared for life.  I still watch “Bug Juice” re-runs on the Disney Channel to try to vicariously live the pre-adolescent experience of love and freedom.

I know it was never an intentional thing, It wasn’t as though my mom was trying to torture me at least not in this case.  It was always a money issue.  Camp is fricken expensive and it makes sense.  If you wanted me to take your kid(s) and entertain them for extended periods of time I would charge you a shit ton.  Growing up we just didn’t have a ton of money so I had to settle for the next best thing, Camp “Go Outside”.  The thing was, just because my parents couldn’t afford to send me to camp didn’t mean they wanted to entertain me all day, so they did what any good parent would do; they sent me outside to entertain myself.

Camp “Go Outside” wasn’t all bad, there were the occasional ups.  So I’ve re-built a typical day’s itinerary to show you all the fun I had.

9am – 10am: Collect Rocks – Campers will collect rocks and put them in a wagon on the off chance that some of these minerals have some unknown value.

10am – 11am: Dig Holes - At this point campers can attempt to dig holes to China.  We do caution campers to be weary of accidentally digging into the Devil’s lair on their way to China.

11am – 11:30am: Light Fires – This is the point of the day where campers find products from the tool shed and find out whether they are flammable or not.  Campers typically do this in a wooded area because that’s where things can catch fire.

11:30am – 12:15pm: Beg To Go Inside - This is the point of the day when campers get bored and beg to go inside and play video games.

12:15pm – 1pm: Lunch – Mom allows children back inside to eat, but quickly grows annoyed and sends them back outside.

1pm – 2pm: Fort Building - This activity can be done in or out of a tree.  When done in a tree, it typically only consists of an individual board in a tree creating a sort of perch.  Campers use adult tools so it’s fairly advanced.

2pm – 2:05pm : Fall Out Of Tree Fort – Self explanatory.

2:05pm – 2:30pm: Recover From Fall

2:30pm – 4pm: Weapon Building – Every fort needs makeshift weapons and booby traps to protect it, even if you are currently afraid to go back up in that fort right now, you still need to protect it.

4pm – 4:30pm: Hide From Older Campers – by this point of the day the other campers have grown bored and usually resort to violence as a result.  This can be a fun activity if successful.

4:30pm: Mom Allows Return Home

You can clearly tell how awesome this camp was.  Who needs sports, field trips or adult supervision when you can have none of them instead?  I learned a lot in my time at that camp.  For example I learned that… well I didn’t really learn that much, but I was occupied, and that counts for something.  I mean I’ve heard some pretty awesome stories about other camps, especially Jewish ones, but who wants to be kissing girls when you could be lighting fires in the woods?

OK, I’ll admit it, I still desperately want to go to Summer Camp!  If there are any adult ones in existence, I’m so in!

View Comments / Apr 25.09 / Summer Camp / by Joey Camire

// Misspent Youth

By Jordan Childs .
04.24.09 // Summer Camp

When I was eleven, I was given an opportunity.

An opportunity some kids spend the length of their pre-adolescence wishing for and never receive. Fourteen days living the dream.

Space Camp.

No exaggeration, it was everything it is rumored to be. Two weeks of full, hot Florida days doing the “exploration, simulation and discovery” of spacey goodness and dipping our toes into all the benefits our nation’s last pioneers enjoyed. Imagine top gun, full of pre-teens, no competition and no Kenny Loggins. Sweet flight suits everyday. The backstage tour of every museum, lab, building site and control room we saw in Apollo 13. I can say I sat in the seat of a freaking rocket.

A fortuitous event to say the least.

So what does this 11-year-old do with this god-granted moment in time? Does he spend it furthering his aeronautical education? Does he learn the intricacies of jet propulsion? Perhaps a moon bounce or two? Sure, all those things and probably even more that escape me presently.

But do I remember any of it?

No.

My memory of space camp is dreading the night because it induced an illness I suffered from for the majority of campy days- home sickness. A rush of sadness, panic and isolation sweept over my baby fat wrapped body and I could barely hold it together. A Hardly eating, sobbing in the sheets, lonesome little tyke.

I’m quite positive there could have been some first rate summer love in a young man’s destiny too- squandered.

In retrospect I get that “youth is wasted on the young” feeling. I want to walk right up to this young man and shake the ever-loving snot out of him and demand this blubbering fool tighten it up. But alas, as with so many childhood moments, we can only look back and passively regret. We didn’t know and we were simple.

My parents still have the patented space camp video, an original form of reality televsion, that documents a young man’s ascension through the ranks of a nerded up summer camp. I watch it and want to try again.

View Comments / Apr 24.09 / Summer Camp / by Jordan Childs

// This One Time, At Jew Camp

By Jake Dubs .
04.23.09 // Summer Camp

Summer sleep-away camp is a strange place for two reasons. First, there’s no diversity. It’s made up almost entirely of upper middle class white kids from Long Island and North Jersey. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s the backdrop during the nexus of many early lives, where childhood meets adulthood, where you first begin to morph into the person you will soon become. That’s a big time in a kid’s life, those 5th through 10th grade years. You learn a lot about yourself during those years. A lot about other people. A lot about life.

What follows is a brief compendium of things I learned at camp. Unfortunately for me, none of it really crystallized until now:

Don’t try to be like the cool kids. They all eventually turn into douches. All of them.

The most beautiful girl at camp would not be the most beautiful girl at school, and vice-versa.

At least kids are cruel to your face.

Don’t try and sell your bunkmates bags of tea for $.50 each.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re all specks of dust suspended in a sunbeam for a split second in time. Ask that girl in bunk 7 out.

Gossip is for chacks.

Be nice to the kid with problems who sometimes drools when he speaks.

Don’t mess with a roided-out counselor who misses free swim every day to go lift and/or drink protein shakes.

Don’t eat the potato salad on Fridays.

Public diarrhea happens. Accept it.

When given the chance, beat Daniel Goldman’s ass. He was, is, and always will be a complete asswad.

View Comments / Apr 23.09 / Summer Camp / by Jake Dubs

// The underpants weren’t the weirdest part.

By Ben Cheney .
04.22.09 // Summer Camp

1994 was a terrific year. I graduated from the 4th grade. I got a pair of Adidas Sambas. And my parents sent me to summer camp.

I packed a pair of teal Umbros and my Sambas and set off for Kamp Kanakuk. I was ready for one week of wacky fun away from my parents.

After registration, I got settled in tee-pee 7 with the rest of my group. I was watching the commotion of high fives and listening to talk of who would jump off the high dive this year, when a peculiar kind walked through the door. He was short and skinny and had buck teeth. His hair was dirty blonde and had that kind of would-be-curly-but-his-mom-cuts-it-so-it-doesn’t-curl style.

Feeling slightly bored, I jumped down from my bunk and asked him if he needed help unpacking. Startled, he agreed to my proposition and said I could fold his underpants.

Unsure of what to do, I consented to folding his size small BVDs. Not wanting things to get weird, I proceeded to make small talk. He was a shy fellow named Sean who liked to talk a lot. He had a lisp thanks to his buck teeth and really liked science books. He had a rocket ship collection at home and a movie about dinosaurs. He had a hamster named Zinsser and a fish named Charlie Brown. He used to have a fish named Zinger too, but his mom set it free. His favorite musician was Amy Grant and his dad liked her too because he liked the way she held the microphone.

I agreed that Amy Grant had nice hands and tried to pull the subject away from whatever he was talking about.

I asked him if he was going to dive off the high dive and he said only if I went with him.

I asked him what he wanted to eat tonight in the mess hall and he said chicken and tomatoes, because his mom didn’t let him eat things that move, even if the wind moved them.

I asked him if he liked sports and he said yes. He liked water polo and batchi ball and he liked Jell-o too because it jiggles like his mom’s arm when she writes on the calendar.

As I finished folding the last pair of underpants, I agreed that Jell-o was nice and the jiggle didn’t hurt. I placed the pile of underpants in front of him, gave him one of those “you make me feel awkward” smiles, and went back to my bunk to fold my own underpants.

View Comments / Apr 22.09 / Summer Camp / by Ben Cheney

// REC PAC Left Me With Nothing

By Alex Aloise .
04.21.09 // Summer Camp

View Comments / Apr 21.09 / Summer Camp / by Alex Aloise

// IN WHICH THE HERO DOES NOT LEARN HOW TO TIE A ROLLING HITCH KNOT OR TAKE OFF A BRA

By Tristan Smith .
04.19.09 // Summer Camp

The summer camp column in my life ledger is sparsely filled out.  Rather than attend some well-supervised, well-organized sailing camp that would have taught me useful things about girls and knots, I opted to do a bit of an independent study during my adolescent summers.  That is, I co-wrote, directed and acted in a series of films.

The fields and forests around my house were sets.
Goodwill supplied costumes.
My friends and I were the actors.
Parents were a cheerful audience.

So, without going in to it too deeply, the synopses that explain why I didn’t go to many summer camps.  Please note that I am in no way boasting.  I don’t think this makes me cool.  On the contrary, I would kill to go to sailing camp now.  My parents would have sent me anywhere.  I refused.  Horrible.
If anyone requests, I’ll upload clips.  Otherwise, just imagine.

Delusion – 1995

Depressed and alone, a young man volunteers for a series of brain experiments, a choice that transports him (or does it?) into an alien world where threatened by a dictator’s tyranny.

Toto – 1996

Residents of a small Kansas town search for a murderer among an even smaller group of recent arrivals.

Of Midgets and Men – 1997

Tormented by a stressful career, a young man takes a week to recuperate at a country inn.  The inn is inhabited by tiny blue humanoids that eventually murder the inn owner and get the man sent to an insane asylum.

Booney Road – 1998

To escape abusive parents, three Appalachian boys set out on Booney Road, hiking North towards hopes for a better life.

The Third Degree – 1999
A story of millionaire blackmail is recounted via separate interrogations.

Mad Cell – 2000

A mysterious cellphone that arrives with the morning paper entangles a young man in a chain of criminal events.

Red Wolf – 2001

In a dystopian future, youth gangs conduct open warfare over who controls an ancient power.

Freeing Luke Dawson – 2002

A young man begins a surreal journey after attending the funeral of an infant with his same name.

View Comments / Apr 19.09 / Summer Camp / by Tristan Smith