Cabin Pressure: The Josh Wolk Interview |
MyCampFriends.com Presents 
CABIN PRESSURE: THE JOSH WOLK INTERVIEW
Author Josh Wolk is just like all of us who love camp. (Except that his writing has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Golf Magazine, and Time Out New York. And you thought your mother was proud.)
And yet despite that impressive body of work, we at MyCampFriends.com think Josh's towering accomplishment is his 2007 novel, "Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor". (If you haven't read it yet, do it. Trust us; you'll love it. We'd even offer a money back guarantee if we weren't so damn cheap. You can order the book from Amazon by clicking here.).
Who exactly is Josh Wolk? What's it like to return to camp as an adult? Would Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" really be on his personal camp mix tape? And what's the deal with his borderline-psychotic obsession with Steve Guttenberg? The answers to this and more follow, in our exclusive Q and A with Josh.
Tell us a little bit about your camp – what kind of camp was it, what are some of your favorite memories, camp traditions, etc…?
I went to Camp Kabeyun, an all-boys camp on Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire, the land of gimp and honey. It was a “non-competitive camp,” a description that always made it seem like the kind of place where frail kids who get knocked out of dodgeball first would go. But all it meant was that instead of concentrating on traditional team sports and the yelling of “You suck!”, it was all outdoorsy stuff (sailing, hiking, kayaking, etc.) where there were no losers, per se. Not that there weren’t losers there, but not statistically more than anywhere else. As for memories, I think about 93% of all my best memories from the ages of 15-19 came from camp. The clearest would probably be from my counselor days. My 39-year-old self cannot comprehend how my teenage self could get drunk playing Quarters in the staff lounge until 2am and still get up at 7am to teach swimming. But I did, and it was glorious. But beyond the insane fun I had with great friends, I owe every shred of self-confidence I now have to my counselor days. You look at a 17-year-old now, and you can’t imagine how anyone would trust such a tiny, greasy excuse of a manboy with anyone else’s kids’ lives, but our directors did, and I think we matured quickly wanting to prove they were right to do so. Which doesn’t explain the Quarters until 2am, I realize, but please just let me have my theory.
How did camp help make you who you are today?
Again, it’s the self-confidence thing. I never did much for the camp paper (which was a short-straw kind of duty), so it didn’t really inform my career directly. But when I knew what I wanted to do with my life, thanks to camp I had the confidence to know that I could do it. I was a pretty timid kid when I first went to camp, and was gently and sometimes "toughlovingly" urged to do stuff I was terrified of (say, whitewater canoeing or jumping off a high bridge into said whitewater). And I couldn’t get over the thrill when I actually got myself to face my fears, all without crapping my Speedo. And once you curb your need to constantly crap your pants, it makes pursuing your career (not to mention job interviews) much easier.
How did writing Cabin Pressure come about, and what made you go through with the experience of going back to camp as an adult?
I first got the idea for writing a book about going back to camp when I was around 25, and my camp had a big 75th anniversary celebration. I went and saw many of my old friends and peers there. We had a fantastic night, and it was just like old times, and of course we all started drunkenly talking about how great it would be if we’d all take a summer off from work and go back again. Later that night, the current staff (mostly in their teens) finished their duties and joined our campfire, and my friend Rich and I brought over some beers and joined them, figuring we’d blend in, much like we used to pal around with counselors in their 20s when we were teenagers and it seemed like age had no meaning. And after a few minutes, I realized I had nothing to say to these kids. I felt like the world’s oldest and crankiest 25-year-old, in that I had no idea what they were talking about, nor much interest in it. It was completely at odds with my persistent reveries that I could go back to camp at any time and it would be exactly the same. Not that those reveries didn’t persist: the urge to go to camp still nagged at me. In fact, the farther along I trudged into adulthood, the more I idealized those days by the lake. So when I got engaged and my wedding was set for September of 2003 (I was 34), I realized that this would be my last chance to go back, and I did it. I knew the generation gap would be even more distinct if I came in my 30s, so there would be good fodder for a book, but on another level I think I was just looking for an excuse to go back to camp one more time.
For those who haven’t read the book, what did you learn about yourself and the camp experience during your return as an adult?
Camps are a lot more careful now; they have to be, because parents are so overprotective, not to mention litigious. The craziness that went on among the staff in the ‘80s would never be permitted today. And yet for all of that, I was relieved to find out that at its heart, camp isn’t all that different. I cover entertainment as a journalist, and am constantly reading articles about how kids today are so much more violent today and have such tinier attention spans because of TV and videogames and the internet and what have you. Yet when the kids entered camp, it felt like they were no different than kids were in my day. They were still as dopey and obnoxious and smelly as any group of boys, but they were also really into fishing and archery and kayaking and talking about carabiners. If you’re the kind of person who tends toward apocalyptic visions about where our society is heading, visiting a camp will definitely make you feel better. It’s still a very Boys Life existence.
Based on what you experienced going back to camp, what advice would you give to someone who’s considering following in the footsteps of your book?
I think I’d tell them not to do it unless they can arrange for everyone they ever worked at camp with back in the day to come back with them. You treasure your camp memories not just for the activities and traditions, but for the people you experienced them with. So while I was awash with nostalgia just walking around the camp grounds and jumping back into the same routine, it wasn’t the same without the people I grew up with. It was like revisiting your childhood home, finding all the same furniture and decorations, but a completely different family living there. And just from a pure age perspective, sleeping on a tiny cot in a room full of 10 snoring boys loses its thrill after you’ve tasted life in your own apartment.
How has the camp world changed between your camper days and your return as a counselor?
As I mentioned, it’s a lot more safety conscious. And there are a lot more lectures to the staff about things like “inappropriate touching,” stuff like that. Messing with the kids isn’t tolerated; I remember a friend coming back from a sailing trip in ’83 covered in black and blue marks because two counselors gave him two days of endless Elephant Bites. (A more painful variation on the Purple Nurple.) Granted, he was really obnoxious, but that justification no longer holds water. And gone are the days of hard-drinking underage counselors. While my reflexive reaction to that was, “The poor counselors of today, who will never know the joys of getting blitzed away from their parents at age 17,” it makes all the sense in the world: You can’t really come up with a good defense for kids’ counselors stumbling around out of their mind. As much as that was a fond memory of my own adolescence, camp is supposed to be for the kids, not the counselors. I know: Crazy.
Also, at my camp there was no more riflery, which is common in many camps. It started getting phased out even before Columbine, but that sped up the trend: I think directors felt that there was no sense in nurturing kids’ love of guns, let alone their marskmanship. At least not in liberal New England. Also, parents worry more. To the point where I think many camps are struggling because more parents don’t want to let their kids stay away for a month, let alone two. Obviously, I think camp is the best thing you can do for a kid, as all the new challenges gives them confidence. I always told parents that camp is the safest dangerous activity their kids can do.
Are you in touch with any of your camp friends? What have they meant to you through the years?
A few of them, sure. They’re the kind of people who even though I don’t see or talk to that regularly, when we do reconnect we instantly start up again with the same rapport. You’re together 24 hours a day at camp, and end up going through many of life’s big firsts together (first beer, first hamhanded grab at a woman’s breast), so it’s a deeper kind of friendship.
What’s your theory as to why Jews in particular have such a strong relationship with camp?
I guess after gaining control of the media, banking, and Hollywood, the next logical thing to tackle was complete control of the Nature Wedgie complex. Actually, I have no idea. I didn’t go to a Jewish camp. Though there were many Jews there, it was founded by a minister. When I first started there in 1980, it had become secular (the founder had died a couple of years earlier), but at the Sunday service we’d still sing along in a hymnal and not really think much about it. You had a lot of Epsteins and Schwartzes singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” That faded away quickly, though.
You’ve written for Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications. (Yes, we’ve been stalking you. That’s what the internet is for.) What’s the piece you’re most proud of – and is there one that provided the biggest headache?
A few years back I wanted to write a story about the 20th anniversary of the first Police Academy movie, and talk to the cast about what it’s like to be part of a pop-culture punchline. I got pretty obsessed with it, and couldn’t stop tracking them down, to the point that I found myself out to lunch with Bubba Smith, Leslie Easterbrook (the busty sergeant), and Marion Ramsey (the meek squeaky-voiced recruit who would always end up yelling at someone at the end). The one guy I couldn’t get was Steve “the Gutt” Guttenberg. He was my white whale. I’d always get politely rebuffed by his publicist, until she finally gave me a flat-out no. I was in L.A., finally finishing up my reporting, and was out to dinner for my last night, bummed about how it all felt empty without the Gutt. And then, randomly, I looked to my left, and at the table next to me was Steve Guttenberg. I went up and introduced myself, and he was very nice but told me, basically, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but every time I talk to you guys at EW, you crap on me, and it’s not worth it. He was kind of right, actually, but I actually came away thinking about the movies differently: they were dumb but harmless, and clearly they made a lot of people happy because they kept paying to see them, so who am I to snicker? (Which is easy for me to say, as I had already made Larry the Cable Guy my new pop culture punchline, so I wasn’t sacrificing anything.)
“Meatballs” or “Wet Hot American Summer”, and why?
“Wet Hot American Summer.” Not only is it clearly made by someone who loved camp, but also, I rewatched “Meatballs” last year, and it didn’t hold up. I know, it was made a long time ago when its slobby characters weren’t clichés yet, but I couldn’t muster a laugh for a fat kid constantly stuffing his face with chocolate bars, and a nerd with tape on his glasses. But that’s a lesson I learned going back to camp at 34: never fact-check your nostalgia.
If you had to create a camp soundtrack of your top 5 songs from your days as a camper, what would they be – and do any hold memories you’d like to share?
“Eyes Without a Face,” Billy Idol. My friend Peter loved that, and I equate the song with him debriefing us all on his conquests at the rare dances we had with nearby girls’ camps. He always scored. We never did.
Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. The soundtrack to the photography shack. I know, that probably sounds like the least popular or interesting soundtrack ever, but I idolized the photography instructor.
Anything by the band Rainbow. I didn’t know much about music when I was 14, and my metalhead friend Doug indoctrinated me and my malleable brain with his own tastes. He made me really believe that singer Ronnie James Dio was a true virtuoso. A tiny, tiny virtuoso who was fond of writing hard-rock songs about elves and witches.
“Who Are You,” by the Who. When you’re only 12, it is the cheapest thrill around when your counselor plays a rock song with the word “fuck” in it.
“Relax,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Not for the song, exactly, but because I have a vivid memory of all the girls wearing those giant “Frankie Say Relax” T-shirts at my first camp dance. I remember my cabinmate Dean asking one to dance, and when she said no, he said, “That’s all right, I had to take a shit anyway.” He came back to us with a huge, proud grin on his face as if he’d just discovered the cure for acne on his walk across the dance floor.
Any last thoughts about your camp experiences or your book, Cabin Pressure?
Pardon my plug: There are definitely “camp people.” They are the ones who, as soon as the temperature cracks 70, find themselves slipping into reveries about their camp days and fantasizing about quitting their jobs and doing one last summer. If you’re that person, you’ll enjoy my book, because I lived that fantasy. Not only will you be able to live vicariously through me, but at the end you’ll realize that while your love of camp is real, maybe you’re right not to tell your boss, “Fuck you and fuck this job, I’m going to teach Arts and Crafts!”
And yet despite that impressive body of work, we at MyCampFriends.com think Josh's towering accomplishment is his 2007 novel, "Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor". (If you haven't read it yet, do it. Trust us; you'll love it. We'd even offer a money back guarantee if we weren't so damn cheap. You can order the book from Amazon by clicking here.).
Who exactly is Josh Wolk? What's it like to return to camp as an adult? Would Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" really be on his personal camp mix tape? And what's the deal with his borderline-psychotic obsession with Steve Guttenberg? The answers to this and more follow, in our exclusive Q and A with Josh.
Tell us a little bit about your camp – what kind of camp was it, what are some of your favorite memories, camp traditions, etc…?I went to Camp Kabeyun, an all-boys camp on Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire, the land of gimp and honey. It was a “non-competitive camp,” a description that always made it seem like the kind of place where frail kids who get knocked out of dodgeball first would go. But all it meant was that instead of concentrating on traditional team sports and the yelling of “You suck!”, it was all outdoorsy stuff (sailing, hiking, kayaking, etc.) where there were no losers, per se. Not that there weren’t losers there, but not statistically more than anywhere else. As for memories, I think about 93% of all my best memories from the ages of 15-19 came from camp. The clearest would probably be from my counselor days. My 39-year-old self cannot comprehend how my teenage self could get drunk playing Quarters in the staff lounge until 2am and still get up at 7am to teach swimming. But I did, and it was glorious. But beyond the insane fun I had with great friends, I owe every shred of self-confidence I now have to my counselor days. You look at a 17-year-old now, and you can’t imagine how anyone would trust such a tiny, greasy excuse of a manboy with anyone else’s kids’ lives, but our directors did, and I think we matured quickly wanting to prove they were right to do so. Which doesn’t explain the Quarters until 2am, I realize, but please just let me have my theory.
How did camp help make you who you are today?Again, it’s the self-confidence thing. I never did much for the camp paper (which was a short-straw kind of duty), so it didn’t really inform my career directly. But when I knew what I wanted to do with my life, thanks to camp I had the confidence to know that I could do it. I was a pretty timid kid when I first went to camp, and was gently and sometimes "toughlovingly" urged to do stuff I was terrified of (say, whitewater canoeing or jumping off a high bridge into said whitewater). And I couldn’t get over the thrill when I actually got myself to face my fears, all without crapping my Speedo. And once you curb your need to constantly crap your pants, it makes pursuing your career (not to mention job interviews) much easier.
How did writing Cabin Pressure come about, and what made you go through with the experience of going back to camp as an adult?I first got the idea for writing a book about going back to camp when I was around 25, and my camp had a big 75th anniversary celebration. I went and saw many of my old friends and peers there. We had a fantastic night, and it was just like old times, and of course we all started drunkenly talking about how great it would be if we’d all take a summer off from work and go back again. Later that night, the current staff (mostly in their teens) finished their duties and joined our campfire, and my friend Rich and I brought over some beers and joined them, figuring we’d blend in, much like we used to pal around with counselors in their 20s when we were teenagers and it seemed like age had no meaning. And after a few minutes, I realized I had nothing to say to these kids. I felt like the world’s oldest and crankiest 25-year-old, in that I had no idea what they were talking about, nor much interest in it. It was completely at odds with my persistent reveries that I could go back to camp at any time and it would be exactly the same. Not that those reveries didn’t persist: the urge to go to camp still nagged at me. In fact, the farther along I trudged into adulthood, the more I idealized those days by the lake. So when I got engaged and my wedding was set for September of 2003 (I was 34), I realized that this would be my last chance to go back, and I did it. I knew the generation gap would be even more distinct if I came in my 30s, so there would be good fodder for a book, but on another level I think I was just looking for an excuse to go back to camp one more time.
For those who haven’t read the book, what did you learn about yourself and the camp experience during your return as an adult?Camps are a lot more careful now; they have to be, because parents are so overprotective, not to mention litigious. The craziness that went on among the staff in the ‘80s would never be permitted today. And yet for all of that, I was relieved to find out that at its heart, camp isn’t all that different. I cover entertainment as a journalist, and am constantly reading articles about how kids today are so much more violent today and have such tinier attention spans because of TV and videogames and the internet and what have you. Yet when the kids entered camp, it felt like they were no different than kids were in my day. They were still as dopey and obnoxious and smelly as any group of boys, but they were also really into fishing and archery and kayaking and talking about carabiners. If you’re the kind of person who tends toward apocalyptic visions about where our society is heading, visiting a camp will definitely make you feel better. It’s still a very Boys Life existence.
Based on what you experienced going back to camp, what advice would you give to someone who’s considering following in the footsteps of your book? I think I’d tell them not to do it unless they can arrange for everyone they ever worked at camp with back in the day to come back with them. You treasure your camp memories not just for the activities and traditions, but for the people you experienced them with. So while I was awash with nostalgia just walking around the camp grounds and jumping back into the same routine, it wasn’t the same without the people I grew up with. It was like revisiting your childhood home, finding all the same furniture and decorations, but a completely different family living there. And just from a pure age perspective, sleeping on a tiny cot in a room full of 10 snoring boys loses its thrill after you’ve tasted life in your own apartment.
How has the camp world changed between your camper days and your return as a counselor? As I mentioned, it’s a lot more safety conscious. And there are a lot more lectures to the staff about things like “inappropriate touching,” stuff like that. Messing with the kids isn’t tolerated; I remember a friend coming back from a sailing trip in ’83 covered in black and blue marks because two counselors gave him two days of endless Elephant Bites. (A more painful variation on the Purple Nurple.) Granted, he was really obnoxious, but that justification no longer holds water. And gone are the days of hard-drinking underage counselors. While my reflexive reaction to that was, “The poor counselors of today, who will never know the joys of getting blitzed away from their parents at age 17,” it makes all the sense in the world: You can’t really come up with a good defense for kids’ counselors stumbling around out of their mind. As much as that was a fond memory of my own adolescence, camp is supposed to be for the kids, not the counselors. I know: Crazy.
Also, at my camp there was no more riflery, which is common in many camps. It started getting phased out even before Columbine, but that sped up the trend: I think directors felt that there was no sense in nurturing kids’ love of guns, let alone their marskmanship. At least not in liberal New England. Also, parents worry more. To the point where I think many camps are struggling because more parents don’t want to let their kids stay away for a month, let alone two. Obviously, I think camp is the best thing you can do for a kid, as all the new challenges gives them confidence. I always told parents that camp is the safest dangerous activity their kids can do.
Are you in touch with any of your camp friends? What have they meant to you through the years?A few of them, sure. They’re the kind of people who even though I don’t see or talk to that regularly, when we do reconnect we instantly start up again with the same rapport. You’re together 24 hours a day at camp, and end up going through many of life’s big firsts together (first beer, first hamhanded grab at a woman’s breast), so it’s a deeper kind of friendship.
What’s your theory as to why Jews in particular have such a strong relationship with camp? I guess after gaining control of the media, banking, and Hollywood, the next logical thing to tackle was complete control of the Nature Wedgie complex. Actually, I have no idea. I didn’t go to a Jewish camp. Though there were many Jews there, it was founded by a minister. When I first started there in 1980, it had become secular (the founder had died a couple of years earlier), but at the Sunday service we’d still sing along in a hymnal and not really think much about it. You had a lot of Epsteins and Schwartzes singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” That faded away quickly, though.
You’ve written for Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications. (Yes, we’ve been stalking you. That’s what the internet is for.) What’s the piece you’re most proud of – and is there one that provided the biggest headache?A few years back I wanted to write a story about the 20th anniversary of the first Police Academy movie, and talk to the cast about what it’s like to be part of a pop-culture punchline. I got pretty obsessed with it, and couldn’t stop tracking them down, to the point that I found myself out to lunch with Bubba Smith, Leslie Easterbrook (the busty sergeant), and Marion Ramsey (the meek squeaky-voiced recruit who would always end up yelling at someone at the end). The one guy I couldn’t get was Steve “the Gutt” Guttenberg. He was my white whale. I’d always get politely rebuffed by his publicist, until she finally gave me a flat-out no. I was in L.A., finally finishing up my reporting, and was out to dinner for my last night, bummed about how it all felt empty without the Gutt. And then, randomly, I looked to my left, and at the table next to me was Steve Guttenberg. I went up and introduced myself, and he was very nice but told me, basically, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but every time I talk to you guys at EW, you crap on me, and it’s not worth it. He was kind of right, actually, but I actually came away thinking about the movies differently: they were dumb but harmless, and clearly they made a lot of people happy because they kept paying to see them, so who am I to snicker? (Which is easy for me to say, as I had already made Larry the Cable Guy my new pop culture punchline, so I wasn’t sacrificing anything.)
“Meatballs” or “Wet Hot American Summer”, and why? “Wet Hot American Summer.” Not only is it clearly made by someone who loved camp, but also, I rewatched “Meatballs” last year, and it didn’t hold up. I know, it was made a long time ago when its slobby characters weren’t clichés yet, but I couldn’t muster a laugh for a fat kid constantly stuffing his face with chocolate bars, and a nerd with tape on his glasses. But that’s a lesson I learned going back to camp at 34: never fact-check your nostalgia.
If you had to create a camp soundtrack of your top 5 songs from your days as a camper, what would they be – and do any hold memories you’d like to share?“Eyes Without a Face,” Billy Idol. My friend Peter loved that, and I equate the song with him debriefing us all on his conquests at the rare dances we had with nearby girls’ camps. He always scored. We never did.
Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. The soundtrack to the photography shack. I know, that probably sounds like the least popular or interesting soundtrack ever, but I idolized the photography instructor.
Anything by the band Rainbow. I didn’t know much about music when I was 14, and my metalhead friend Doug indoctrinated me and my malleable brain with his own tastes. He made me really believe that singer Ronnie James Dio was a true virtuoso. A tiny, tiny virtuoso who was fond of writing hard-rock songs about elves and witches.
“Who Are You,” by the Who. When you’re only 12, it is the cheapest thrill around when your counselor plays a rock song with the word “fuck” in it.
“Relax,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Not for the song, exactly, but because I have a vivid memory of all the girls wearing those giant “Frankie Say Relax” T-shirts at my first camp dance. I remember my cabinmate Dean asking one to dance, and when she said no, he said, “That’s all right, I had to take a shit anyway.” He came back to us with a huge, proud grin on his face as if he’d just discovered the cure for acne on his walk across the dance floor.
Any last thoughts about your camp experiences or your book, Cabin Pressure?Pardon my plug: There are definitely “camp people.” They are the ones who, as soon as the temperature cracks 70, find themselves slipping into reveries about their camp days and fantasizing about quitting their jobs and doing one last summer. If you’re that person, you’ll enjoy my book, because I lived that fantasy. Not only will you be able to live vicariously through me, but at the end you’ll realize that while your love of camp is real, maybe you’re right not to tell your boss, “Fuck you and fuck this job, I’m going to teach Arts and Crafts!”