We Hate Movies - S5: WHM Mail Bag: Special Summer Camp Edition!

Episode Date: July 17, 2015

On this special edition of WHM Mail Bag, Andrew and Eric take a look at a selection of letters from summer camp! Well, not actually from a summer camp, but the letters are about some insane summer camp experiences!   This is the last Mail Bag of the season, gang, so head into the woods and proceed with caution -- some of these stories are OUT there! Unlock Exclusive Content!: http://www.patreon.com/wehatemovies

We've got a couple of cocktails on this hot summer day, the kids are at camp. Oh, yeah, that's right. It's just me and you today. Just us, Andrew and Eric. Yeah, we shipped our kids, Chris and Stephen, off to Camp Oingo, Boingo. Yeah, oh, definitely Campoongo, Boingo. Secret Fat Camp. They don't figure it out.

But this is the WHM Mailbag for July. And Eric and I have a camp-themed entry into the Mailbag saga. These are all camp stories because we're waiting to hear back from our beloved children. off at camp as well. But we got some stories of yours. Totally. Well, this first one. Are any of these spooky, by the way?

Oh, they're all spooky. Oh, all right. Spooky in their own WHM way? Yeah, this is some, yeah, this is going to... All right, so this one's called LARP camp run by a hobo who went by Lucifer. And for those who don't know, LARP is an acronym for live action roleplaying.

I thought you were going to say, for those who you don't know, Lucifer. Also known as the Prince of Darkness. Or the Morning Star. This one hits home because I actually worked at a camp like this for one brief summer. Oh, you worked at a LARP camp. That's right. Right. Worked. Didn't go. Got paid money. To film kids. To film kids. Right? Yeah. It's a lucrative business. I did not.

Click, clink, clink, clink, clink. No, uh, no cost. for me just what kind of role playing were they doing I think there's like swords so more of your traditional larping I think they had beanbags for magic

spells oh good you know all right I think I told the story once before but I got accosted by one of the head dudes yeah I guess he was an elf well that's a pretty high rank I think for breaking the reality too much.

Mm. Yes. All right. All right. So let's get to this first email here. Hi, gang. Love the Camp Nowhere episode. It took me back to my younger days when I was 16 and in a live action roleplay group called Amtgard.

Yeah, sure. If you've seen role models, you might be familiar with LARPing, but it's basically medieval reenactment with a dash of D&D thrown in to make. things extra weird. Just a dash. Yes, that's true. You might think to yourself, what kind of adult organizes the camp ads for LARP

groups? Well, my parents did. Well, actually, side note, that camp I worked at was run by the villain from Tough Turf, who played Nick Paul Monez. Oh, that's right. I actually before I saw Tough Turf,

I knew one of the actors. Was this dude walking around like, I'm a fucking star he had some director's chairs in his count in his camp director's office and he had a couple movie posters framed although no no tough turf which is a you know a big mistake yeah whatever blunder and a half but he was he was a good enough dude and i took his money there you go so okay his parents didn't okay now he says he goes on to say my teenage friends and i were off by my brother deep in the forest of Oregon on a Friday. After wandering through the woods for a while,

we met a disheveled man who went by the name Lucifer or Lucy for short. Sure. Lucy told us, I don't think this guy was involved in any camp. I think you just came across that. No, that dude was living out there. He was writing all sorts of letters like Christopher Law. Lucy told us that he had been living in the woods for three weeks to secure the campsite for the camp. out. I'm pretty sure Lucy was just

squatting in the woods and thought it would be somewhat neat to have a camp out. He led us to a river that he had built a rock bridge across Jesus. He told us that he told us it was the river sticks. Oh, here's where it is. And we were entering the realm

of Hades. Oregon, who knew? This is where you run, right? Totally, they're hanging out with this guy. Let's see where this is going. When we reached the other side, it was less Hades and more of a lean-to. I don't know what that means.

A lean-to, it's like a... I think it's like a little shitty tent you make. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. You had a small fire pit with some crawfish cooking. Oh, man! This is really devilish, right? The red... The boiling red crawfish?

The prince of darkness has to use his long fingernails to take apart the crondads. Oh, it's the best when you crack them right through the middle and get out all the juicy innards. this spicy butter will do nicely. I call it the juicy lucy. Oh, gross. So he offered us some.

You fucking guys are about to eat food from a homeless man in the woods. This is your lucky to be alive story. This is like very lucky to be alive. So he had. I was just getting a coaster. He was saying he was living off the land. and a.k.a. hiding from the police.

He said, okay, he goes on to say, I'm pretty sure the land wasn't offering meth, but later I heard he had plenty. Oh, yeah. So Lucifer has meth as well. Well, that's the devil's choice. I guess so. It's certainly not marijuana.

Long story is short, we set up camp and had crazy adventures. Adventures include, this is, this needs to be a TV show. Wait, they set up camp with this guy. Yeah, they're living with this guy. They moved into his lean to? Adventures included trading the food our parents sent us with Lucy to Lucy's friends for weed and beer. Oh, what is the shit?

Here's a Drake's coffee cake. How much weed can I get for it? Man, that is a, a bad barter system. Lucy's showing me a dagger that turned into a pipe. You want to see my knife pipe? Lucy losing his bag of drugs are recruiting us to look for it in exchange for LARP currency.

Whoa, wait a minute. Why does he have LARP currency? He is involved in the camp. No, he is. Yeah, his parents weren't, but this is the guy running the LARP camp. No, but wait, so how is Lucy using LARP bucks? That's what you just said, right? Yeah, he's, I think it's like,

uh, hey kids, if you look from my bag of drugs, I'll advance you to the next level, XP points. But that's what I'm asking, though. How is this dude doing that? Because he basically conned some parents Camp Nowhere style and said, yeah, give me your kids.

We do live action role playing. And you get there. No one else is there, but this crazy guy. And he's just like, he's mostly doing drugs. But then once in a while, he's like, here have some medieval de blooms, kids. Maud!

I lost a bag of math, Mudd. These counselors are going to be here any minute, bud. Help me find the bag of math That is exactly what was happening That was actually It was live audio from the cat I'm actually debating if this is fictional

Someone's pulling our leg I think this might be a phony baloney A little summertime screw job Yeah All right Yeah And Lucy's friends Dubbing my underage girlfriend

Minor felony Good God I guess it's a felony And she's a minor Oh yeah I don't you know These guys are intelligent, huh? Oh, boy.

That's really, really nuts. So you brought your girlfriend into these woods? Hey, I got a friend of mine I like you to meet, baby. If this doesn't end with you stabbing Lucifer in the chest, I'm going to be disappointed. He had to get those 12 daggers from the Omen movies. The highlight of the weekend was Lucy's friends looking for a guy named Swifty. Lucy and his squire named Nanzo found Swifty. laying on a dirt road with a broken bottle

of booze in his hand. These are named after Masters of the Universe characters. A broken bottle of booze. Oh, man. Oh, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a weapon. Lucy and Enzo woke Swifty up. Swiftie looked at Enzo,

Enzo, I guess, Anzo, excuse me, looked at the bottle and yelled, how convenient, then swiped, then he swiped at Anzo with the broken bottle and ran into the woods. the entire camp had to form a search party to look for Swifty.

Why is the camp getting involved looking for Swifty? Swifty does not want to be found. He just over slashed someone with a broken bottle. This was not a real camp. So no one found him until he wandered back into the camp

in the morning like nothing happened. I guess this was a quote unquote counselor of some kind. Oh, Swifty was a counselor? I thought he was friends with Lucy. He is, which makes me think he's also running this dirtbag shit show. Anyway, love the show.

Thanks for the hours of entertainment and the trip down memory lane. Andrew. This makes no sense. No, and also there's no ending. What happened? Is this guy still alive? This guy needs to be found and shot. Lucy?

Yeah. Lucy needs to be taken into custody. And Swifty. The whole lot of them. That was, that's how Camp Nowhere could have easily have gone. light them up mud it's over it's all over mon oh man am i reading the one entitled summer camp horror story yes you are i think so i think that's the next one on the docket okay i grew up in a religious household so one summer when i was seven years old my parents decided to send me to christian summer camp

i heard these are pretty cool uh there was a tradition at this camp unknown to me that the person who gets the most male from home would have a prank played on them at the end of the week That's not very Christian. Now shalt not prank. Right. It's right there. It's right there. It was number three.

The typical prank was having to jump in the lake with your clothes on or serve dinner to everyone. Well, neither of those are pranks. They're just making someone do things. Wait, so you have to either get naked and jump in a river or serve dinner. Just serve dinner. Serve it? You're not cooking it. You didn't say cook dinner.

Yeah, one just served dinner. Well, it doesn't say anything about nudity. But a prank is like... I infer nudity. When in doubt, infernudity. Well, a prank is when something happens to you without, you know, advanced warning of said act. Usually a bucket falls on your head. Sure.

That's a number one prank. Yeah, or like they replace your toothpaste with foot paste. Mm-hmm. I don't know what foot paste is. You know, another bathroom paste. John Madden product. He was hawking all types of shit. Dude, I don't even want to look at John Madden's feet.

you know harmless fun well this year they took it a little too far uh oh someone had to skim the pool I was of course the unfortunate one to get the most male since my family was familiar with this prank business they thought it would be fun oh my god he was set up

Jesus all right one of the last nights we had spaghetti for dinner and I noticed that the camp counselors were instructing everyone to scrape their leftovers into a 50-gallon garbage can they had near the dish area after dinner it was announced that i had received the most mail i was blindfolded by the counselors and led into a field where all the other kids were waiting in silence this is like oh my god children of the cord shit seriously where's eli or the rest of those creepy kids um but uh they announced that i was to receive my punishment for getting mail and proceeded to dump bucket after bucket

of spaghetti leftovers onto my head in front of everyone. That is so disgusting. That's like a crime, right? What are you dowsing someone with garbage for? That's really gross. It's like, it'd be one thing if the kids were pulling pranks on each other,

but the counselors are like... Getting in on it. From the garbage bag on his head, boys. Because you know, these like, later on teenagers, you know, these older kids are like, yeah, you're gonna fucking... get these kids good stupid christian camp i feel like whatever the camp is like the counselor's just a hired gun oh what is it a christian camp this summer okay i'll take that gig oh you're

working fat camp this summer oh okay yeah it's like hiring blackwater it's like exactly if you don't expressly tell them not to shoot random people in traffic they're gonna do it um all right this gets worse uh i was terrified and furious and tore off the blindfold to see the horror of 100 kids laughing at me. The laughing stopped when I started sobbing and vomiting all over myself. Honestly, I would have done the exact same thing. Oh, yeah. Just throw up everywhere.

Throw up on people. That's the way to go. I wish that my parents would have sued the shit out of that place. But it turns out that's not the Christian, they put in parentheses, or quotations rather, thing to do. Thou shall not litigate. thanks guys and don't worry I'm okay I think I guess so

I mean you don't get over something like that no you I yeah I remember every single thing that transpired to me every day I mean I wake up in every wake up I remember every single embarrassment I've ever had

I mean I humiliate myself in front of the world every week on this show I get it you don't get over that I guess I guess we hate movies is the equivalent of us being dumped in garbage and having a bunch of people laugh at

at it. Yeah, exactly right. Dipped in garbage. I never thought of it like that. I feel worst. All right, so we got another one here, another terrifying camp tale. Great way to start. Yeah, it's a big old sigh at your subject line, uh, listener. It's called from my humiliation to your mailbag. That's kind of funny.

Here's a camp story for you guys. I was a Girl Scout as a kid and my troop went to, a week at Camp Dean every summer. I remember one year, through some scheduling miracle, we had the whole place to ourselves. The camp director just handed his ring of keys over to the troop leader and said, lock up when you're done.

What? Lock up when you're done. And then fucked off back to the cabin to smoke weed and or cheat on his taxes. You don't do both at the same time. No way. No, no. You don't want to be high on weed

when you're trying to cheat on your taxes. taxes. You're going to make some wrong. Or even do your taxes regularly. Oh, yeah, that's true, too. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's tough business right there. Flash forward to the day we were supposed to leave. We were all peck. So I guess what they're saying is like, they were there, but they weren't paying attention kind of a thing. Right. Yeah, the camp director doesn't care. The troop leader is handling this thing. I don't know if the troop leader is like an appointed camper or is it a counselor? Yeah, I don't know. So we're all packed up and ready to go. Everything's locked, including the door to the bathroom.

And bathroom is in quotation marks. I use that word loosely because the toilet's inside were really just seats perched over 30-foot deep sewage holes. Oh, that's camp. This is the camp toilet. Yes, of course. Or a shit house, as they'll say sometimes. Anyway, I had to pee one last time before we left. being a stupid and disgusting child

I brought the keys into the stall with me so now she has she's got the giant ring of keys for the whole camp right inside this this shit house yeah and somehow managed to them drop them into the literal shithole she's dropped the entire ring of keys

into the 30 foot drop of sewage oh man the camp director had to get a ladder and climbed down inside to fish them out. That's what you get for fucking awful summer, buddy. Dive in. That was the master set, and he had no copies.

Always have a spare. Seriously, also don't give your keys to children. Yes. He made our whole troops stay and watch him do it. You're going to watch me swim through this shit, God damn it. Or rather listen to the swearing rant that got more and more belligerent as he got closer to the bottom. So, Andrew, you were pretty on point with that impression. I learned a lot of new words that day

I thought I was going to be learned things But no, she learned words You know what? Learn to not bring your keys Into the toilet with you like this Also I cried a bunch Why are you crying? You're not ankle deep And then knee deep and waist deep Here's the thing is decent people feel

Certain responsibility when they cause Oh so that's what you're explaining to me What it's like to not be a sociopath? Yes Like what's this girl's problem? I think she was feeling um something us people call guilt oh yeah love the show rachel well rachel thank you for your letter rachel what i want to know is in order to get those keys i mean

was he going under i feel like he's definitely do you oh my god are you picking it up with your feet because that's you got to at least try for the feet but if you can't get i mean if you're going down there on a ladder yeah and like you're trying to reach down with your your arm and then like the ladder starts going backwards or something oh my god i think this guy got covered oh i'm imagining a really pissed off i don't know why thomas lennon is coming to mind but i'm picturing thomas leon as this camp director and he's covered in shit yeah oh wow rachel that's great what a great time at camp if you're in was it a girl scout camp she said yeah if you're in a girl scout camp are they teaching you the recipe to the cookies because that's something

that's like the secret stuff i take that intel back with you i don't think they're letting that out to the kids i guess that's true that's uh classified so summer camp stories i've wanted to contribute to the mailbag episodes for quite a while now and after listening to your camp nowhere episode i couldn't help but think ah so it's summer camp stories you want a well try this on for size this happened in 1995 the worst year of my life, the year my mother died. I was trying to cope with her death by burying my emotions in the deepest hole my mind could manage when my father decided I needed a distraction and asked if I wanted to go to a summer camp.

I figured, eh, what's the worst that could happen? Well, right there, if you're thinking that about going to a summer camp, Camp Krusty is just around the corner. Mr. Black. Please listen to Mr. Blank. well first of all the camp was not where i was told it was yikes it was in a rather remote location at least half a dozen miles from the nearest payphone the day i arrive i find out that the only person i know there is an old bully now a bully who had previously bullied you or like an old guy who's like hey kid maybe both i'm picturing like a teamster in a white t-shirt with cigarettes rolled

up in his sleeve um the kid was way too old for summer camp uh the bullies still wanted to beat me half to death over a two dollar bet i lost to him we hadn't seen each other in four years and he sure remembered that i owed him money two dollars just come on that is sad that's sad for the bully not for you that is just pathetic oh yeah totally let it go bully unless it was like that was the whole bet was it like two dollars short of a 20 bet and this this this dude still got like 18 bucks because then shut up right but if you're reneging on this whole bet dude there's just bet justice this is like like a john cusack movie what was that um uh better off dead yeah two dollars yeah that's right it was actually two dollars um almost all the other boys there and no

small number of girls were proud criminals. Okay. So this person got sent to like a bad kid camp? I guess. I guess all the jerks went to camp. Like military academy camp or something? I guess you know what? Let's read on and find out. Some of whom could definitely be classified as a threat to themselves and others. But I haven't gotten to the best part yet. The camp

was a Christian camp. Oh, here we go. Oh, there you go. I was raised by an extremely secular family, and this was an overwhelming experience. It was just a continuous stream of Christian propaganda. That's, you know, chalk this up to like, you got to read that brochure. Yeah. You got to read that brochure.

Yeah, and especially when you said, what's the worst that could happen? Where you got to think, where do wackos live? Ooh, maybe in the woods. Yep. When I asked to use a phone, I was flatly told that I wasn't allowed. Two days

in, I made the big mistake of telling the bully and a few others that I was going to escape in the night, but I decided against it because I had no idea which way to run. When they saw me the next morning, the bully made a big show about what a coward I was. Don't tell people your escape plans, especially a bully. No, yeah. I mean, Steve McQueen didn't do that in the Great Escape. Totally. He just did it. You take that motorcycle and you ride. Now, to give you an idea of what went on at this camp when they weren't shoving Christianity down our throats, there was a pie. that no one was allowed to swim in because it was

full of leeches. Fair enough. The food bizarrely alternated between superb and borderline and edible. And the only activities I recall were a brief class in woodburning. Woodburning. What the fuck? Here's how you do it.

Class dismiss. It's a Christian camp. I think that's a typon. It was book burning. All those copies of Darwin's species. Oh, yeah, totally. Woodburning, a knife throwing. Oh, sure.

Both done by instructors who had no idea what they were doing, sounds about right. I don't know how to burn wood. Oh, man. I got stuck with advanced wood burning again. We flying blind through this class. I don't know. Gasoline? Woodburning. Oh, mercy.

I guess that started campfires, right? We're just being idiots. I guess that makes sense. You know, like you get the twig or like gasoline. That's how I do it. A bunch of kids got so bored that they snapped and started eating prodigious quantities of toothpaste. What? That's going to poison you, by the way.

You can't be eating toothpaste. I heard there's this theory about wrapping toothpaste in a banana peel to get like high. Yeah, people are doing that. You snort it. That makes no sense. You freeze it and then you crush it up and you snort it. Oh, really? I think that's the idea.

I think that's what Lucifer does. That's what he was making at his camp. Yeah, that's back in Oregon. Quote, quote, meth, the oral bee meth, the crest meth. The toothpaste eating only stopped when a counselor walked in and told those doing it that eating toothpaste could kill you or at least fuck up your digestive tract. Well, fucking finally, some counselor intervention. Yeah, it's nice to hear. We had seldom of it these days.

um eventually i was overwhelmed by the christian stuff and submitted to a baptism that's weird you don't do a baptism on someone at camp yikes all right the parents need to write a permission slip for a baptism totally in my opinion uh at the moment the ritual was completed i kid you not all the power went out in the camp like something out of a movie about demonic possession if i needed a sign from god that whatever this particular flavor of christianity was wasn't for me i can hardly imagine some something better than that. Finally, finally, it was over and my dad came to pick me up. As soon as I saw

his car, I ran to it and told him to take me home right fucking now. He was confused, so I said, I will tell you all about it once we were out of here. Now drive, damn it. Now, to give you an idea of what kind of person my father is, he's a manic-depressive who will bitch and moan for a week

overspending $30 on clothes, then blow $500 at a poker table. Geez. Once I was done telling him about the worst week of my life, all they had to say was, I can't believe I wasted $180 on that. $180?

It was a gamble. Dude, that's also suspiciously cheap. That is, right? Holy shit. They're feeding these kids all types of stuff. Yeah. Sometimes it's superb. Sometimes it was superb and sometimes it was dog food.

I can't imagine it being superb. Keep up the good work on the podcast. You guys are one of the relatively few things, keeping me sane at the moment, Miles. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, Miles. That's nice of you. Jesus, though, $180. That's, again, read the brochure and look at the price tag.

Because what are we doing? Clearly, this is another scam. Yeah, yeah, this is, that's why they only have those. See, that's the thing also. That price point is making it to all the rotten kids that their parents, their parents hate all those kids. Yeah, they want them out. Yeah, exactly.

So this will do it. The cheapest option, fine. Yeah. Go send him to Lucy's Christian summer camp. Sorry that your father had a bad day at the tables there. Maybe if you had a good day,

would have been to a better camp, you know? Yeah, that's true, actually. But, you know, Black just wasn't biting that night. But the thing is, when you get that feeling that it might, you've got to keep doing, you got to keep seeing. You know, that's what everybody tells me, dude,

I just don't understand gambling in that way. It doesn't work for me. I'm totally numb to gambling. Me too, actually. I'm not numb to a whole lot of other things, but, you know, gambling. Yeah, even the lottery, I'm just like, you know, if there's an office pool happening, I'll contribute. But other than that, I'm just like, it's a waste of time. Yeah.

It's a waste of money. I'm like, I can be buying whiskey with this. Right. That's your whiskey budget. You know, you put that five bucks a week away and you get your whiskeys. I think much like how our, um, Um, listener mail has been blowing the lid off of things like lazy teachers showing movies and classes. I think we're on to another one now.

Crazy camp counselors? Just like the, the twisted camping industry. Yeah. There's got to be like no regulation. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, oh, yeah. There's no one, there's no government inspectors.

No. Man, also, I just want to quickly do a quick plug here. Sure. That we're speaking of camp stories today. Oh, right. On Blaming on outer space, we actually have some harrow. camp stories scary camp stories yeah the spookier the better dude right we did this last summer we did uh scary we did scary camp stories uh huh i don't know if it's called that it's something

like that something something scary stories we just did a second volume yeah this summer it's on blame it on outer space dot com and we're just we're reading stories from like official camping websites and guides like here are some scary stories you should tell us around a campfire which i love that that's a website right yeah well yeah they all have their one of them stuck up on printing out your camping stories one of the websites i forget what it is but um the slogan is for camp people by camp people you know who what type of people you don't want to meet camp people i i identify as a camp person oh i'm a camp person oh are you good day it's scary summer camp

no I'm going to look it up look it up sure look it up we got all day don't worry it's just the thing I introduce oh mercy me but I'll tell you what so these were some scary stories like from IRL this is like LARPs and Christians and right you know

the stories I'm reading on that podcast have big feet and ghosts yeah there's also last year by the way it's scary summer camp stories is the name of the episode And then we just released scary camp stories, too. And in the first volume, I have to say, there is a story called The Creature from the Pit Toilet.

Oh, right. And that's when, you know, you're lucky that sewage, you dropped those keys into, Rachel, wasn't sentient. Because shit monsters are abounds at camp. Beware out there. It's unbelievable. Actually, I'll say this, gentle listener. there's a story in this volume of blaming on outer space

scary stories that I almost threw up listening to Eric Reed. Oh, the skeleton lady. Yeah, almost threw right up. I was eating Chinese food at the time. Probably didn't help. It's about an elderly cannibal. Well, that's the mailbag gang. Thanks for checking in on us.

Maybe one day our camp guys will get back to us here. But right now it's just the two of us. You know, maybe without that baggy sweater on. Maybe they'll be looking a little better And that is the mailbag Until we come back in September So until then The mailbag is still open

Still keep writing emails Sure, yeah There will just be no August edition So until September I'm Andrew Jupin And I'm Eric Siska Have a good summer