The Great Outdoors...I'll Pass Thanks

"Let's go camping Dad!"

Few other phrases make me cringe quite as much. I just don't get it. Why do people want to go camping? Didn't we evolve and develop our society to move forward from our primitive hunter-gatherer roots? I just fail to see the appeal.

Now let's be clear, I'm not talking about the rolling luxury suites that are larger than most urban apartments and far more comfortable. I'm talking about 'real' camping: Sleeping on the ground, in a tent, with a sleeping bag, and cooking over a fire. If your camping adventure includes a mattress, a kitchen, indoor plumbing, wall to wall carpeting, and most of all air conditioning, that isn't really camping and certainly not what my wife and kids have in mind. No, their definition involves becoming one with the mosquitoes, eating charred hot dogs covered in the floating ash of kindling, and the togetherness that can only come from cramming 4 rectangular bodies into a hexagonal tent. They seem to think that the fun lies in learning the intricate contours of the earth with my vertebrae, or hiking 200 yards to use a campground bathroom, a hike that seems far longer in the cold morning light for a shower of cold to tepid water under a trellis of spider webs.

To add insult to injury, our sad little tent is usually surrounded by RVs and we are forced to try to find slumber amongst the whir of their A/C compressors kicking on and off all night long. Not that anyone is sleeping anyway, since the tent turns into a sauna once the zipper is closed, only to find that the sauna has mystically turned into a cold damp cave come morning and everything inside is wet.

So next time the kids ask to go camping, I'll just pretend I can't here them over the TV and A/C while I lay on my comfy bed.

Don't Call it a Comeback...

So, my fans (AKA immediate family) have been asking me, 'Why haven't you written a blog entry lately'? Maybe the world has achieved a level, and there's nothing more to write about? Or perhaps its just been outright laziness. My vote is the latter. So here I am trying to re-kindle the spark and to get back to writing meaningless posts read by a handful of people...and there was much rejoicing.

While we are on the topic of laziness and do-overs, let's talk about Hollywood's love of remakes. If I have to hear about another remake of the Wizard of Oz, Robin Hood, or Godzilla I'll go batty. Does the world really need to see another version of Annie? How many times do we have to see Peter Parker get bit by a Spider, or Superman landing on Earth? Whatever happened to coming up with a new story line?

However, as with any good rant, there are exceptions. The latest series of the Planet of the Apes movies are excellent, although technically these are prequels, so I'll give them a pass. At any rate, it would blissful to see a new and totally creative story line come out of Hollywood, rather the current flow of rehashed versions of the same ones.

And hopefully this spark will catch fire and I will return to quietly ranting to the few.