Experience the Majesty of Notre Dame by Getting a Free Download of the Video Game Assassin’s Creed Unity (Free for a Limited Time)

in Games, History | April 20th, 2019

FYI: In the wake of the great Notre Dame fire, the French video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft has decid­ed to make its pop­u­lar video game Assas­s­in’s Creed Uni­ty free through April 25th, allow­ing gamers to “expe­ri­ence the majesty and beau­ty of the cathe­dral.” The goth­ic cathe­dral fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the game. Start your down­load (avail­able only for PC users) here. Once you down­load the game, you’ll own it for­ev­er in your Uplay games library.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Laugh­ing Squid

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Watch a Playthrough of the Oldest Board Game in the World, the Sumerian Royal Game of Ur, Circa 2500 BC

in Games, History, Museums | December 20th, 2018

They may not sur­prise the aver­age mar­ket ana­lyst, but the gam­ing industry’s fig­ures tell a pret­ty com­pelling sto­ry. New­zoo esti­mates that “2.3 bil­lion gamers across the globe will spend $137. 9 bil­lion on games in 2018.” Ven­ture­Beat reports that mobile games account for over 50 per­cent of the total. Cur­rent­ly, “about 91 per­cent of the glob­al mar­ket is dig­i­tal, mean­ing that $125.3 bil­lion worth of games flows through dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed chan­nels as opposed to phys­i­cal retail.”

That’s a lot of vir­tu­al dough float­ing around in vir­tu­al worlds. But this vast and rapid growth in dig­i­tal gam­ing does not mean phys­i­cal games are going away any­time soon—and that includes cards, board games, and oth­er table­top games, a mar­ket that has “surged as play­ers have grown jad­ed with the dig­i­tal screens they toil over dur­ing the work day,” wrote Joon Ian Wong in 2016.

Ven­ture cap­i­tal is flow­ing into board game devel­op­ment. Table­top bars and cafes are pop­ping up all over the world, encour­ag­ing peo­ple to min­gle over Scrab­ble and Cards Against Human­i­ty. It seems the time is just right to revive the old­est playable board game in the world. If some­one hasn’t already launched a Kick­starter to bankroll a new Roy­al Game of Ur, I sus­pect we’ll see one any day now. At least four-and-a-half-thou­sand years old, accord­ing to British Muse­um Cura­tor Irv­ing Finkel, the Roy­al Game of Ur was prob­a­bly invent­ed by the Sume­ri­ans. And it seems like it might still be a blast, and a con­sid­er­able chal­lenge, to play.

“You might think it’s so old that it’s irre­triev­able to us, that we’ve got no idea what it was like play­ing, what the rules were like,” Finkel says in the video at the top, “but all sorts of evi­dence has come to light so that we know how this game was played.” He promis­es, in no uncer­tain terms, to wipe the floor with YouTu­ber Tom Scott in a Roy­al Game of Ur show­down, and Scott, who has nev­er played the game before, seems at a decid­ed dis­ad­van­tage. But watch their con­test to see how the game is played and whether Finkel makes good on his threat. Along the way, he lib­er­al­ly shares his knowl­edge.

For a short­er course on the Roy­al Game of Ur, see Finkel’s video above. It takes him a cou­ple min­utes to get around to intro­duc­ing his sub­ject, the dis­cov­ery and deci­pher­ing of the “world’s old­est rule book.” A con­sum­mate ancient his­to­ry detec­tive, Finkel describes how he decod­ed an ancient tablet that explained a game, but which game, no one knew. So, the ded­i­cat­ed cura­tor tried the rules on every mys­te­ri­ous ancient game he could find, till he land­ed on the “game of twen­ty squares” from Mesopotamia. “It fit­ted per­fect­ly,” he says with rel­ish. See the orig­i­nal board, pieces, and dice from about 2500 BC, and learn how Finkel had been search­ing for its rules of play since he was 9 years old.

For more of Finkel’s pas­sion­ate pub­lic schol­ar­ship, see him demon­strate how to write in cuneiform and read about how his work on cuneiform tablets led to him dis­cov­er­ing the old­est ref­er­ence to the Noah’s Ark myth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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A Beautiful Short Documentary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

in Games, Life, Philosophy, Travel | December 14th, 2018

Chess Forum in Green­wich Vil­lage is, like Gramer­cy Type­writer and the Upper East Side’s Ten­der But­tons, the sort of shop New York­ers feel pro­tec­tive of, even if they’ve nev­er actu­al­ly crossed the thresh­old.

“How can it still exist?” is a ques­tion left unan­swered by “King of the Night,” Lone­ly Leap’s love­ly short pro­file of Chess Forum’s own­er, Imad Khachan, above, but no mat­ter. We’re just glad it does.

The store, locat­ed a block and a half south of Wash­ing­ton Square, looks old­er than it is. Khachan, hung out his shin­gle in 1995, after five years as an employ­ee of the now-defunct Vil­lage Chess Shop, a rift that riled the New York chess com­mu­ni­ty.

Now, things are much more placid, though the film incor­rect­ly sug­gests that Chess Forum is the only refuge where chess lov­ing New York­ers can avail them­selves of an impromp­tu game, take lessons, and buy sets. (There are also shops in Brook­lyn, Harlem, and the Upper East Side.) That said, Chess Forum might not be wrong to call itself “New York’s last great chess store.” It may well be the best of the last.

The nar­row shop’s inte­ri­or trig­gers nos­tal­gia with­out seem­ing cal­cu­la­tion, an organ­ic reminder of the Village’s Bohemi­an past, when beret-clad folkies, artists, and stu­dents wiled away hours at bat­tered wood­en tables in its many cheap cafes and bars. (Two blocks away, sole sur­vivor Caf­fé Reggio’s ambi­ence is intact, but the prices have kept pace with the neigh­bor­hood, and the major­i­ty of its clien­tele are clutch­ing guide­books or the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent there­of.)

Khachan, born in Lebanon to Pales­tin­ian refugees, gives a warm wel­come to tourists and locals alike, espe­cial­ly those who might make for an uneasy fit at tonier neigh­bor­hood estab­lish­ments.

In an inter­view with the Green­wich Vil­lage Soci­ety for His­toric Preser­va­tion, he recalled a “well-dressed and high­ly edu­cat­ed doc­tor who would come in wear­ing his Har­vard logo sweater, and lose repeat­ed­ly to a home­less man who was a reg­u­lar at Chess Forum and a chess mas­ter.”

The game also pro­vides com­mon ground for strangers who share no com­mon tongue. In Jonathan Lord’s rougher New York City chess-themed doc, Pass­port Play, Khachan points out how dia­grams in chess books speak vol­umes to expe­ri­enced play­ers, regard­less of the lan­guage in which the book is writ­ten.

The store’s mot­tos also bear wit­ness to the val­ue its own­er places on face-to-face human inter­ac­tion:

Cool in the sum­mer, warm in the win­ter and fuzzy all year long.

Chess Forum: An expe­ri­ence not a trans­ac­tion

Smart peo­ple not smart phones.  (You can play a game of chess on your phone, Khachan admits, but don’t fool your­self into think­ing that it’s giv­ing you a full chess expe­ri­ence.)

An hour of play costs about the same as a small lat­te in a cof­fee­house chain (whose preva­lence Khachan refers to as the Bostoniza­tion of NYC.) Senior cit­i­zens and chil­dren, both revered groups at Chess Forum, get an even bet­ter deal—from $1/hour to free.

Although the store’s offi­cial clos­ing time is mid­night, Khachan, sin­gle and child­less, is always will­ing to oblige play­ers who would stay lat­er. His soli­tary mus­ings on the neighborhood’s wee hours trans­for­ma­tion sup­ply the film’s title and med­i­ta­tive vibe, while remind­ing us that this gen­tle New York char­ac­ter was orig­i­nal­ly drawn to the city by the specter of a PhD in lit­er­a­ture at near­by NYU.

Read­ers who would like to con­tribute to the health of this inde­pen­dent­ly owned New York City estab­lish­ment from afar can do so by pur­chas­ing a chess or backgam­mon set online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

Chess Grand­mas­ter Gar­ry Kas­parov Relives His Four Most Mem­o­rable Games

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920–and It Now Gets Re-Issued

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Play Chess Against the Ghost of Mar­cel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

Chess Grand­mas­ter Mau­rice Ash­ley Plays Unsus­pect­ing Trash Talk­er in Wash­ing­ton Square Park

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When Pinball Was Deemed Immoral & Outlawed in Major American Cities

in Games, History | May 31st, 2018

I remem­ber the ear­ly days of the video arcade, where my friends and I went to have fun and spent our par­ents’ cash on Gala­ga, Robot­ron 2084, or–if you were a real­ly big spender–Dragon’s Lair. Then, when we’d get home, and we would see scare pieces on the nation­al news about the evils of the very arcades we had just vis­it­ed, dens of drugs and deprav­i­ty! Where were *those* arcades, we won­dered.

Noth­ing has changed, it seems. Let’s go back near­ly 80 years to anoth­er moral pan­ic: pin­ball.
As these two mini docs show, in the 1930s and ‘40s pin­ball was banned in cities like New York (by may­or and future air­port Fiorel­lo LaGuardia) and Chica­go because of its asso­ci­a­tion with orga­nized crime, but also the appeal it had to the chil­dren of the work­ing class.

They kind of had a point: ear­ly pin­ball machine were pure­ly games of chance, which put it very close to gam­bling. (A mod­ern pachinko machine is clos­er to these ear­ly ver­sions.) Like a carny game, you paid your mon­ey, and you watched as the ball careened down the table, out of your con­trol.

But with the inven­tion of user-con­trolled flip­pers that sent the ball back in play, these games of chance became games of skill. But that didn’t stop some moral cru­saders.

And, as sev­er­al pin­ball fans have found out–like the gen­tle­man in the VICE doc below who want­ed to open a pin­ball museum–antiquated laws remained on the books from those ear­ly years and had nev­er been changed for mod­ern times.

Roger Sharpe, known as “The Man Who Saved Pin­ball,” even went to a Chica­go court in 1976 to prove that pin­ball was a game of skill. In a scene that sounds per­fect for a final act in a movie, Sharpe, with his bar­ber­shop quar­tet mus­tache and groovy out­fit, played pin­ball in front of leg­is­la­tors. Call­ing shots like a pool play­er might, he soon con­vinced the court that skill was every­thing. Sharpe would go on to become a star wit­ness in sim­i­lar hear­ings in Ohio, West Vir­ginia, and Texas over their pin­ball laws.

Iron­i­cal­ly, while video games replaced pin­ball in most arcades, home sys­tems and com­put­ers replaced the need for arcades. It’s now a per­fect time for these pure­ly ana­log and tac­tile machines to make a come­back. Hell, a rock band might even make a musi­cal about it one day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Teach­es Bac­carat, Craps, Black­jack, Roulette, and Keno at Cae­sars Palace (1978)

Sad 7‑Foot Tall Clown Sings “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” in the Style of John­ny Cash, and Oth­er Hits by Roy Orbi­son, Cheap Trick & More

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov Relives His Four Most Memorable Games

in Games | April 25th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Many con­sid­er Gar­ry Kas­parov one of the great­est chess play­ers of all time. And for good rea­son. In 1985, at the age of 22, Kas­parov defeat­ed the reign­ing cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov. From that moment, until his retire­ment in 2005, he dom­i­nat­ed. For the next 225 out of 228 months, he was the #1 ranked play­er in the game. Above, in a video cre­at­ed by The New York­er, Kas­parov “replays some of his most unfor­get­table games,” and “relives the hap­pi­est and the most painful moments of his career,” includ­ing:

  • Gar­ry Kas­parov vs. Ana­toly Kar­pov: World Cham­pi­onship Match 1985
  • Gar­ry Kas­parov vs. Ana­toly Kar­pov: World Cham­pi­onship Match 1987
  • Gar­ry Kas­parov vs. Viswanathan Anand: PCA-GP Cred­it Suisse Rapid Final Blitz Play­off 1996
  • Gar­ry Kas­parov vs. Deep Blue: I.B.M. Man vs. Machine 1997

In recent months, Kas­parov has also cre­at­ed an online course for Mas­ter­class, Gar­ry Kas­parov Teach­es Chess, which–in 29 video lessons–offers a deep­er explo­ration of his chess the­o­ry, tac­tics, and strat­e­gy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Play Chess Against the Ghost of Mar­cel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

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Professional Scrabble Players Replay Their Greatest Moves: Their Most Improbable, Patient & Strategic Moves of All Time

in English Language, Games | March 9th, 2018

If ever the cre­ators of the musi­cal The 25th Annu­al Put­nam Coun­ty Spelling Bee are cast­ing about for sequel-wor­thy source mate­r­i­al, we sug­gest they look no fur­ther than The New York­er’s video above, in which pro­fes­sion­al Scrab­ble play­ers replay their great­est moves.

The bingo—a move in which a play­er uses all sev­en tiles on their rack, earn­ing a bonus 50 points—figures promi­nent­ly.

It seems that top ranked play­ers not only eye their racks for poten­tial bin­gos, they’re con­stant­ly cal­cu­lat­ing the odds of draw­ing a next-turn bin­go by get­ting rid of exist­ing tiles on a three or four let­ter word.

And what words!

The desire to win at all costs leads top seat­ed play­ers to throw down such igno­ble words as “barf” and “mayo” in an are­na where rar­i­fied vocab­u­lary is the norm.

How many of us can define “stop­banks,” 2017 North Amer­i­can cham­pi­on Will Ander­son’s win­ning word?

For the record, they’re con­tin­u­ous mounds of earth built near rivers to stop water from the riv­er flood­ing near­by land….

The pros’ game boards yield a vocab­u­lary les­son that is per­haps more use­ful in Scrab­ble (or Banan­grams) than in life. Look ‘em up!

aeru­go

cape­skin

celom

engi­nous

gox

horal

jupon

kex

mura

oxeye

pya

ure­dele

varve

zin­cate

Don’t neglect the two-let­ter words. They can make a one-point dif­fer­ence between a major win and total and unmit­i­gat­ed defeat.

ag

al

da

ef

mo

od

oe

qi

xi

yo

Care­ful, though—“ir” is  not a word, as Top 40 play­er Jesse Day dis­cov­ered when attempt­ing to rack up mul­ti­ple hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal points.

Bear in mind that chal­leng­ing a word can also bite you in the butt. Bust­ing an opponent’s fake word play costs them a turn. If the word in ques­tion turns out to be valid, you sac­ri­fice a turn, as top 100 play­er, Prince­ton University’s Direc­tor of Health Pro­fes­sions Advis­ing, Kate Fukawa-Con­nel­ly, found out in a match against David Gib­son, a pre­vi­ous North Amer­i­can champ. Had she let it go, she would’ve best­ed him by one point.

Appear even more in the know by bon­ing up on a glos­sary of Scrab­ble terms, though you’ll have to look far and wide for such deep cuts as youngest North Amer­i­can cham­pi­on and food truck man­ag­er, Con­rad Bas­sett-Bouchard’s “fork­ing the board,” i.e. open­ing two sep­a­rate quad­rants, thus pre­vent­ing the oppos­ing play­er from block­ing.

Read­er Con­tent:

With Or With­out U: Pro­mot­ing a Scrab­ble Book to the Tune of U2

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Cult Director John Waters Hosts a Summer Camp for Naughty Adult Campers: Enrollment for the 2018 Edition Opens Today

in Comedy, Film, Games, Gender, Life, Nature | October 16th, 2017

I hat­ed sports at camp, so at this camp I think we should reward every team that los­es. This would be the camp where the fat peo­ple get picked first in dodge ball. 

- Film­mak­er-cum-Camp Direc­tor John Waters

I can think of many chil­dren who would scram­ble toward the refuge of the com­pas­sion­ate state­ment above, but Camp John Waters is a decid­ed­ly adult activ­i­ty.

The Pope of Trash shares actor Bill Mur­ray’s rel­ish for odd­ball set­tings in which he can meet the pub­lic as some­thing close to a peer. But where­as Mur­ray spe­cial­izes in sur­prise drop-in appear­ances—recit­ing poet­ry to con­struc­tion work­ers, crash­ing parties—Waters favors more immer­sive expe­ri­ences, such as hitch­hik­ing coast to coast.

His lat­est stunt brought him and 300 fel­low trav­el­ers to a rus­tic Con­necti­cut facil­i­ty (from Sept 22–24) that nor­mal­ly hosts cor­po­rate team build­ing events, fam­i­ly camps, and week­end get­aways for play­ful 20-to-30-some­things keen to make new friends while zip lin­ing, play­ing ping­pong, and par­ty­ing in the main lodge.

ART­news pegged the inau­gur­al ses­sion thus­ly:

 The Waters camp com­bines two of the more absurd devel­op­ments in con­tem­po­rary leisure: the celebri­ty-based get­away (see also: the Gronk Cruise) and a cer­tain recre­ation­al aes­thet­ic that seems to advo­cate for a sort of devel­op­men­tal pur­ga­to­ry.

Here,  there were no reluc­tant, home­sick campers, weep­ing into their Slop­py Joes. This was a self-select­ing bunch, eager to break out their wigs and leop­ard print, weave ene­my bracelets at the arts and crafts sta­tion, and bypass any­thing smack­ing of offi­cial out­door recre­ation, save the lake, where inflat­able pink flamin­gos were avail­able for aquat­ic lol­ly­gag­ging.

“Who real­ly wants to go wall climb­ing?” the founder him­self snort­ed in his wel­com­ing speech, adding that he would if Joe Dalle­san­dro, the Warhol super­star who accord­ing to Waters “for­ev­er changed male sex­u­al­i­ty in cin­e­ma,” wait­ed up top.

Naughty ref­er­ences to water sports aside, cer­tain aspects of the camp were down­right whole­some. Pine trees and s’mores. Canoes and cab­ins. Pre­sum­ably there was a camp nurse. (In Waters’ ide­al world, this posi­tion would be filled by Cry Baby’s Traci Lords.)

Waters’ rec­ol­lec­tions of his own stint at Maryland’s Camp Hap­py Hol­low seem pri­mar­i­ly fond. It makes sense. Any­one who tru­ly loathed sum­mer camp would be unlike­ly to recre­ate the expe­ri­ence for them­selves and their fel­low adults.

Camp Waters harkens back to the 1950s trans­gres­sions its direc­tor mer­ri­ly fess­es up to hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed in: unfil­tered cig­a­rettes and short sheet­ed beds, cir­cle jerks and panty raids. From here on out the sub­ver­sion will be tak­ing place in the sun­light.

Anoth­er spe­cial camp mem­o­ry for Waters is regal­ing his cab­in mates with an orig­i­nal, seri­al­ized hor­ror sto­ry. He retells it on Celebri­ty Ghost Sto­ries, above:

At the end there was this hideous gory thing and then all the kids had night­mares and their par­ents called the camp and com­plained — and I’m still doing that! It was the begin­ning of my career…. It was a won­der­ful les­son for me as a 10-year-old kid that I think helped me become what­ev­er I am today. It gave me the con­fi­dence to go ahead, to believe in things, to believe in behav­ior I couldn’t under­stand, to be drawn to sub­ject mat­ter I couldn’t under­stand.

Reg­is­tra­tion for Camp John Waters 2018 opens today at noon, so grab the bug spray and get ready to sing along:

There is a camp in a place called Kent

It’s name is Camp John Waters

For here we come to spend the night

For we all love to fuck and fight

Camp John Waters — rah rah rah!

Camp John Waters — sis­boom­bah!

Camp John Waters — rah rah rah!

Three cheers for Camp John Waters!

Could Waters’ own con­tri­bu­tion to such camp clas­sics as Meat­balls, Lit­tle Dar­lings and Wet Hot Amer­i­can Sum­mer be far behind?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

John Waters Nar­rates Off­beat Doc­u­men­tary on an Envi­ron­men­tal Cat­a­stro­phe, the Salton Sea

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She attend­ed Gnaw­bone Camp in Gnaw­bone, Indi­ana, recap­tur­ing that hap­py expe­ri­ence three decades lat­er as the Mail Lady of Beam Camp.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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