10. The slogan above the entranceway: All Parents Pay Up Front!

9. Every night at midnight, your bunkmate likes to go “pretend berserk” with a steak knife

8. All those late-night lectures about ‘Allah’ and ‘virgins’

7. The only “facility” available is a nearby lake

6. They let you build black snowmen out of tarballs on the local beach

5. All day, all the counselors talk about is how hunky Justin Bieber is

4. The cuisine: possum jerky and RC Cola

3. The Camp’s Indian name translates as ‘Winding Trails and Sheer Cliffs’

2. Each night, two hours of intimately checking each other for ticks

1. The horse they’re dragging you around on isn’t responding
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, travel & foreign lands by Bob Sullivan
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Happy Independence Day to everyone.

For me this day normally consists of a nice cookout and fireworks with the kids (unless you live in a nanny state that says you can operate heavy machinery at 70 miles an hour but not light a Roman Candle). For the last several years (when I haven’t been deployed), Dave and I would go spend a ridiculous amount of money at South of the Border to get all the “good” fireworks. We would then have an amazing display in my backyard that the whole neighborhood would appreciate (at least I like to think that they appreciated it). I would make chicken wings and we would grill steaks and other animal parts. The kids would come over and love the fireworks. Eventually we would drink too much and start getting braver and braver (or dumber and dumber depending on how you look at it). Now my son just refers to the stupidity that I teach him on a regular basis. When I ask him what he’s talking about he simply says, “You taught me to shoot fireworks at people.” Oh. Yeah. That’s right. I did that.

Anyway, this year there will be no fireworks for me. But there is a cookout here and we just might get steaks cooked to order. When you’re deployed, that’s pretty significant. [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, movies by Jeffrey Maryak
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Rumor has it that Kobayashi will not be competing in this year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest because of some sort of contract dispute. For those of you who don’t know who Kobayashi is, just reference the When Falls All-Coliseum Awards FD2K. Without Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut — last year’s champion and the only person who can come close to Kobayashi’s eating greatness – will undoubtedly run away with the title. Ratings will surely suffer for tomorrow’s noon (EST) showdown on ESPN.

I have a few questions to express my disappointment. The first is, they have contract disputes in competitive eating? Don’t they just pay them in Robitussin? The second question is, what is Major League Eating thinking? Pay Koby whatever he wants. He and Chestnut are the Tiger and Phil of the 4th of July. Their Independence Day showdowns inspire millions of Americans to take it to the grill later in the day. No Koby, no interest in the sport. And my last and most important question is, what is Kobayashi thinking? Sitting out the 4th of July in competitive eating is like holding out of the Tour De France in cycling. Where else can he make a name for himself? Just sad.

Tags: sports by Robert O'Hara
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… Thomas M. Disch, the great and too much unsung author of The Genocides, Camp Concentration and 334 who on this day two years ago declared his own independence from a  world he could no longer endure by opening up his skull with a liberating blast from a gun.

Mr. Disch, your prose was pure, joyous darkness and your poetry was damn fine too. I still visit the ghost ship you left us from time to time.

Rest in peace.

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Daniel Kalder
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Yesterday brought us the funeral of Sen. Robert Byrd.  He was the nation’s oldest and longest serving Senator. He also comes with a fairly controversial past, one which drew much criticism while he was alive. I’m obviously referring to his membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and his work as a recruiter for the organization.

So what is the best way to eulogize someone’s racist, cross-burning, terrorist past? Just ask former President Bill Clinton.

[Read more →]

Tags: politics & government by Mike McGowan
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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said yesterday that the Afghanistan War was of “Obama’s choosing” and that the president should’ve known from history that a war there was unwinnable.

Of course, he couldn’t be more correct. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government by Colin Cohen
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Last year, I wrote a piece here called “The Future of Literary Fiction” , which included a list of authors that I regularly search for at Amazon.com for their upcoming novels or short story collections. In essence, it’s a personal version, exclusive of age or nationality, of other recent attempts to list the best writers of fiction. I referenced the list of authors in the 1999 “Future of American Fiction” issue of The New Yorker, which has held up extremely well. Now, TNY has published a new list of “20 under 40″, which doesn’t pretend to be a “best of” list as much as a grouping of representative voices for our current culture. This has generated a number of alternate lists, including this one at The Guardian of British authors and this tiresome and nearly incoherent screed by Lee Siegel in The Observer informing us that fiction is dead. Nonsense. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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This week I would like to review the latest film from master filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, entitled Mindbender: The Last Shyamalan. This is an exciting movie with lots of great twists and turns like you’ve come to expect from this unpredictable filmmaker, so hold on tight while I give you my four-star review (full disclosure: I did not actually see the film).

Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you don’t want to know about all the great twists, then don’t read any more. Go on, I dare you not to read it (please read it — also, click on the ad at the bottom of this review)! [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, movies by Ricky Sprague
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I realized something today: I don’t care about Chris Bosh. Bosh is a power forward who is rumored to be teaming up with fellow free agent LeBron James to form a “superteam”; it may also include shooting guard Joe Johnson. And it dawned on me: if the NBA has reached a point where playing with Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson makes you part of a superteam, the league has officially gone the way of hockey. [Read more →]

Tags: sports by Sean Cunningham
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‘Tis the season to go to amusement parks and scare ourselves silly with ridiculous roller coaster drops and rides that spin around so fast your face gets spread out like a pancake. I love rides and have never met one that I wouldn’t try. In fact, on my very first date with my husband we went to a fair and I wanted to go on the Zipper so bad that I told him I would go on without him. I thought he was just being a wussy. Well, he sucked up his lack of excitement for the ride and went on it with me. Later that night, when his pounding headache was too much to hide, he explained that during a childhood accident his left ear drum shattered, leaving him with poor equilibrium (and no hearing in that ear) — he isn’t allowed to scuba dive, etc. Have you ever seen the Zipper? This isn’t a ride for someone with poor equilibrium. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, family & parenting by Amy Boshnack
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