[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. And we survived middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:28] Meg: And now we are podcasting about it and from it.

[00:33] Jessica: Yes, indeed. I handle pop culture.

[00:36] Meg: And I do ripped from the headlines. Jessica, I have some feedback from one of our good listeners. Do you remember Future Wave?

[00:47] Jessica: I sure do.

[00:48] Meg: Okay, well, as it turns out, his name is Eric.

[00:50] Jessica: Oh, hi, Eric.

[00:52] Meg: And he just wrote in just today.

[00:54] Jessica: No way.

[00:55] Meg: Yeah. Hey, guys. I had to write about the most recent episode. One, the Friedman case, the McMartin case, and the entire Satanic Panic is endlessly fascinating. There's a great book called Satanic Panic that goes through tons of the cultural aspects of the panic. I will be buying that.

[01:14] Jessica: Wonderful recommendation.

[01:16] Meg: Yes. And he goes on to say, the Valley Girl stuff was so perfect. I grew up in a small town in Missouri and was insanely fascinated with the Valley Girl stuff. I'm sure it was because I was a twelve year old boy who had a crush on the girls. I remember seeing an episode of That's Incredible! oh, my God. That had a segment on Valley Girls and I lost my mind.

[01:40] Jessica: Fran Tarkenton. Wasn't that Fran Tarkenton who did That's Incredible!?

[01:43] Meg: That sounds familiar.

[01:44] Jessica: All right. Anyway, go ahead.

[01:45] Meg: The ironic thing is that now I live in the Valley. No, I can tell you that that scene is long gone, but there are vestiges left. Driving down Ventura Boulevard looks pretty much the same as it did in the movies. Some of the spots are gone, but the vibe is there. The Galleria Mall is long gone. It was wrecked in the Northridge earthquake back in 1994 and then rebuilt as an outdoor mall. Los Angeles has a terrible habit of letting go of its past, not unlike New York City, but it can't kill the vibe. Best, Eric.

[02:21] Jessica: Eric, you are just a delight. Thank you so much for the feedback. I really love that.

[02:27] Meg: And he also actually mentioned Square Pegs. And I will be happy to tell you, Jessica, you can get Square Pegs. And I got Square Pegs on Amazon Prime and I started watching it today.

[02:42] Jessica: Without me. Are you insane?

[02:48] Meg: It is delightful. And I was wondering if you remembered the waitresses.

[02:51] Jessica: I know what boys want. Exactly. Yeah. No, no, no. Was that the theme song?

[02:58] Meg: That was not the theme song was Square Pegs?

[03:01] Jessica: Right.

[03:02] Meg: But they sang I Know What Boys Want in the very first episode. And I got to say, Sarah, Jessica Parker could have been your sister.

[03:11] Jessica: Really?

[03:12] Meg: At that age? Absolutely. I saw a lot of Jessica.

[03:16] Jessica: Jessica from now or Jessica from back then. Jessica from then. Sad 80s. No, it's sweet. Dorky 80s.

[03:26] Meg: No, she's beautiful.

[03:27] Jessica: No, no, I mean, that was the character was supposed to be hopelessly dorked out.

[03:31] Meg: And beautiful as soon as she took her glasses off.

[03:35] Jessica: Oh, that's right, I forgot that was her big trick.

[03:36] Meg: And you didn't even wear glasses.

[03:38] Jessica: Yes, well, I convinced my mother to move me over to contacts the minute that I went to Nightingale because I was like, it will be social death to have this hair and glasses. It was a regrettable haircut, as you well know. So. Thanks, Mom.

[03:56] Meg: Well, I can't wait for you to check it out.

[03:57] Jessica: And did you know who created that show?

[04:00] Meg: No.

[04:01] Jessica: Anne Beatts.

[04:03] Meg: Okay, I saw that name, but I did not have a reference for it.

[04:06] Jessica: SNL, she's the one who invented Lisa Loopner and the character that Bill Murray played, the nerd. She was part of the National Lampoon and she's like comedy royalty and unfortunately died in 2021.

[04:25] Meg: Oh, my gosh. How do you know that?

[04:27] Jessica: Because I looked her up. Why did I look up?

[04:30] Meg: How did she die?

[04:31] Jessica: Because she was oh, I don't know. I didn't morbidly check it, but when I was looking up all the Valley Girl stuff, I looked that up and I forgot to mention it. But she was awesome.

[04:41] Meg: So, are you ready for your engagement question?

[04:44] Jessica: Yeah.

[04:44] Meg: There's so many benefits of growing up in New York City if you're a young person. We've mentioned a few of them. What would your parents say is the best thing about you growing up in New York City?

[04:57] Jessica: How I was able to hone my sparkling cocktail party conversation.

[05:01] Meg: And you get to go to cultural events and cultural places that have art.

[05:08] Jessica: For example, the museum. Yeah. Well, yes, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a straight shot from my apartment over to Fifth Avenue. And I will tell you at some point that as a child, little kid, I became obsessed with, let's not forget Jewish child. I was obsessed with paintings of Jesus and his feet specifically. I think I had an early Jesus foot fetish. But yes, I loved going to the museum and my parents were down with it.

[05:41] Meg: And there are so many amazing museums in the city and art galleries, and today's story deals with the art world in the 80s, in a much darker capacity. My sources are Vanity Fair and Vanity Fair article from 1988, a The New York Times article from 1992, and ARTnews from 2020. And my dear friend Tim Murphy suggested this story. He's got a great blog called The Caftan Chronicles.

[06:18] Jessica: Oh, stop it. I love that. That's such a great title.

[06:20] Meg: I will send it to you.

[06:21] Jessica: Please.

[06:22] Meg: Okay. Are you ready?

[06:23] Jessica: Yes.

[06:24] Meg: On St. Patrick's Day in 1985, a group of 13 year old boys were hiking through the woods in Rockland County and came across an old stone smokehouse. Inside was a charred and mutilated corpse.

[06:42] Jessica: Sorry, I was wondering how long it was going to take us to get to the corpse in today's. Soright up front. Okay.

[06:50] Meg: Mostly skeletal, saved for the head, which was bound in a black leather hood with a zipper on the mouth.

[06:58] Jessica: Zipper mouth. S&M. Okay.

[07:02] Meg: The stone house was on the property of the LeGeros family, and when the police interrogated their 22 year old son Bernard, he confessed that he shot two bullets in the back of the head of Eigil Dag Vesti. Eigil was a 26 year old from )slo who was studying at FIT. His friends had reported him missing three weeks earlier. They had become concerned when he failed to show up at his classes and didn't respond when they kept buzzing his apartment. His friends put up posters all over Chelsea and they contacted his family in Oslo and his family came over. He was very beloved, one of his friends told The Daily News. He was so good looking, so fashionable. You couldn't help noticing him. He blew everyone away. The guy who confessed to shooting Eigil. Bernard LeGeros. He worked for Andrew Crispo, who was 40 years old and owned an art gallery in The Fuller Building on 57th street and Madison Avenue. Crispo's summer house was next door to Gloria Vanderbilt's on Gin Lane in Southampton.

[08:10] Jessica: Gin Lane down, even.

[08:12] Meg: He was well known amongst the well healed, but he preferred to spend his free time with rough young street toughs, who would supply him with cocaine for his seven gram a day habit and accompany him to S&M clubs like Hellfire Club and Mineshaft.

[08:30] Jessica: Oh, classics.

[08:33] Meg: Crispo grew up in Pennsylvania orphanages and foster homes. When he came to New York, he worked as a gopher for art dealers and met Heini, the Swiss billionaire Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

[08:50] Jessica: Wow.

[08:51] Meg: I know. That's why they call him Heini.

[08:52] Jessica: Heini. Okay.

[08:54] Meg: Heini was the heir to a steel fortune, and he became Crispo's primary client and established him in the art world. As Crispo's drug habit escalated, so did his sadomasochistic activities. He and his employee, Bernard LeGeros, would call payphones on Abington Square in the Village or in the Meatpacking district and proposition whoever picked up.

[09:20] Jessica: No way.

[09:21] Meg: Yeah.

[09:22] Jessica: Well, you do know what Abington Square was, where the hustlers are.

[09:26] Meg: Oh, really?

[09:26] Jessica: Oh, you didn't know them? Abington Square used to be where hustlers congregated and you could, if you were so inclined, pick someone up right there. So calling that spot is actually not a bad plan if you want to.

[09:43] Meg: Pick up. If you want to pick up a guy. And when the men showed up at Crispo's West 12th Street apartment, Crispo would socialize with them for a while and then brace yourself LeGeros would enter dressed in an SS uniform. Crispo liked to watch LeGeros and others of his gang take turns chaining the victims, beating them and screaming anti-gay epithets.

[10:11] Jessica: Oh, this is so wholesome.

[10:13] Meg: Ultimately, they would be forced to sodomize Crispo in order to be released. Crispo and LeGeros believed that the assaults and rapes wouldn't be reported because the victims were too humiliated or too scared to go to authorities. And for years, they were right. On Friday night, February 22, 1985, Crispo and LeGeros started their evening at the Hellfire Club and took turns roaming through its dank and dungeon like basement rooms. This is a quote "On a plywood stage, a woman dressed in a leather bikini was paddling a naked older man. A crowd gathered around another couple who were engaged in oral sex." Later that night, they found their way to The Limelight, which is a dance club, normal. At some point, Vesti, the Norwegian fashion student, went willingly back to Crispo's apartment. This is Eigil yeah, Eigil Vesti. After that, we only have LeGeros's side of the story. According to LeGeros, he and Crispo incapacitated Vesti drove him to the LeGeros family house in Stony Point, abused and assaulted him, and under Crispo's orders, shot him. On their drive back to the city, LeGeros and Crispo, they disposed of a whip, several cans of Crisco, and a foot and a half long dildo out the car window. The gun they had used, they hid that in Crispo's art gallery. Now, all of these items, all of them were later retrieved by the police after LeGeros's confession and LeGeros was put on trial. Crispo..

[12:01] Jessica: Wait, hold on. I can only assume that they were whacked out of their skulls on drugs when they did this because that is the worst disposal of evidence I've ever heard of. What did you do? The dildo as long as your arm? I just threw it out the window.

[12:23] Meg: I think they were on drugs. But also, remember, they've been getting away with things for years. They feel invincible.

[12:32] Jessica: It frightens me how quickly you get into the psychology of these people.

[12:37] Meg: Okay, so LeGeros is put on trial for all of this because he confessed. Like, I think it's not like he confessed immediately. It was a bit of an interrogation, but it was within the day. Crispo, in the meantime, invoked the Fifth Amendment. He lawyered up, said not a word. And in New York State, the uncorroborated testimony of a confessed accomplice can't be used as the sole evidence against a defendant. Interesting, right?

[13:06] Jessica: Fascinating.

[13:07] Meg: According to the prosecutor. Another quote "Dildos and whips are a lot like staplers. They all look alike. Who's to say where they came from?" An investigation found that as many as 50,000 foot and a half long dildos were in the hands of New York area consumers in 1985.

[13:25] Jessica: Okay, this is the kind of statistic that makes my day. This is I thought you'd like that one. This is a slice of heaven. What I love about that is that it specifies the length. It's not like, oh, there were 50,000 dildos. It's of the nine zillion kinds of dildos that are going to be running around New York. This type happens to also be popular or maybe we don't know. We don't know what percentage of the dildo population that is.

[13:53] Meg: I know. Maybe it's not a popular one.

[13:55] Jessica: I am. And of course, as we both know, this is long before DNA evidence became a thing.

[14:02] Meg: This is true. But still, it's a little odd that Crispo was never indicted and LeGeros was found guilty of second degree murder.

[14:13] Jessica: I'm feeling like there was a little Heini action going on here.

[14:18] Meg: Interesting. The story continues.

[14:21] Jessica: Do you like my double entendre? Thanks.

[14:26] Meg: By all accounts, it was a good thing that LeGeros was locked up. He was the one who pulled the trigger, and he was very involved in all of their horrors.

[14:37] Jessica: SS uniform alone lock him up.

[14:40] Meg: I mean, what's up with that?

[14:42] Jessica: I don't know.

[14:43] Meg: According to LeGeros best friend's diary, quote, "I'm coming to grips with the fact that a person whom I like is a psychotic murderer. I assume Crispo pushed him to the point of no return, and finally he slipped over into the realm of fantasy." But Andrew Crispo was not done with the law. He was charged with the kidnapping and torture of another 26 year old man.

[15:09] Jessica: This is after LeGeros is in jail.

[15:13] Meg: This is after LeGeros is in jail. And he was acquitted. He did end up going to jail, though. He was convicted of evading $4 million in taxes and spent 15 months in Otisville Correctional Facility playing tennis and lifting weights in the jail's fitness compound while he was imprisoned, Sotheby's held a blockbuster sale of 69 lots of American art owned by Crispo. The auction set records, bringing in $15 million, including the cover lot, Edward Hopper's 1927 Captain Upton's House that sold to Steve Martin for $2.3 million, and another work by Hopper Hotel Window, which went to Malcolm Forbes for $1.3 million. The auction easily paid off his tax debt and left him with $10 million to spare. And then his home in the Hamptons blew up, it just exploded. And in 1991, a court ordered that the Long Island, New York utility LILCO pay Andrew Crispo $7.6 million for his lost home and art collection. He has reportedly been spotted in recent years dining in Manhattan, and LeGeros was paroled in 2019.

[16:35] Jessica: Have they been seen together?

[16:36] Meg: I seriously doubt it.

[16:39] Jessica: Wait, before we move on, what happened to Heini?

[16:42] Meg: Oh, I think he was old to begin with, in fact.

[16:46] Jessica: Okay.

[16:47] Meg: If you want to get into the Heini situation

[16:47] Jessica: I really, definitely do.

[16:50] Meg: Once Crispo started having tax problems, Heini's handlers said, you've got to distance yourself from Crispo, because if he's having tax problems, that means people are going to start looking at your finances, and you do not want that. And word on the street was that Crispo found that just heartbreaking.

[17:11] Jessica: Wait, so we're not saying that Heini was involved with juicing the palms of the judicial system to get Crispo?

[17:20] Meg: No.

[17:20] Jessica: Okay.

[17:21] Meg: But someone, I'm thinking someone did, and I'll tell you why.

[17:25] Jessica: Okay.

[17:26] Meg: I've gotten kind of good at sleuthing and finding articles especially articles that were written in the 80s, at the times that these events happened. I had the hardest time finding articles and I saw that they existed. The Daily News, The New York Post. They went wild for this stuff. This was like the scandal, and there's the art world and there was S&M and all of this. So I know they existed. I saw the covers of the magazines. But the internet's been scrubbed.

[17:59] Jessica: No.

[18:03] Meg: It is fascinating. His wikipedia page is like five bullet points. That's ridiculous, considering all of this drama.

[18:14] Jessica: You do realize that there are two jokes that I've completely let go. Number one, that he had bullet points, and number two, that there were 69 lots at the Sotheby's sale. Oh, I just I'm sorry. I was bursting. I had to get them out. I feel better now. Okay.

[18:33] Meg: Do you know who he reminded me of while I was doing all this research?

[18:36] Jessica: Who?

[18:37] Meg: Jeffrey Epstein much. Speaking of Heini, all you need is one whale, right. Jeffrey Epstein hooked up with that guy Leslie Wexner.

[18:49] Jessica: Oh, Les Wexner from Ohio. Who's The Gap and the Limited and all of Victoria's Secret.

[18:54] Meg: And that was his big whale. And everyone else was like, oh, well, if you are investing Lex's money, then you must be okay. So Heini was Crispo's whale.

[19:09] Jessica: I see. Heini was the entry point.

[19:12] Meg: And both Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. Yes. And Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Crispo have so much in common.

[19:22] Jessica: Clearly. Yes. Isn't it interesting how pop culture has made the leather, zipper mouth hood into the ultimate symbol of evil?

[19:32] Meg: It's terrifying.

[19:33] Jessica: Yeah. I mean, The Gimp, for example.

[19:36] Meg: Yes.

[19:37] Jessica: But it's a detail that really it sets the tone for the story really quite perfectly.

[19:43] Meg: And it's also worth saying I mentioned it earlier that S&M can be done with rules and regulations and consent. And what Crispo was doing was taking advantage of this environment where people would be humiliated. They wouldn't go to the authorities because they'd be so humiliated and used that to rape and torture people.

[20:09] Jessica: Yes. I don't want there to be an implication that we are not sex positive, sex play positive, whatever floats your boat within a consensual relationship, but especially because.

[20:22] Meg: They took advantage of mores of the time.

[20:25] Jessica: Right. I mean, the reason that a place like Hellfire Club existed with relative sanity was that you're exactly right. There are rules. Do you read Savage Love?

[20:39] Meg: Oh, on occasion, yeah.

[20:40] Jessica: I mean, read a few of Dan Savage's articles and you learn pretty quickly that it is a very, very regimented scenario. What? Ohh..potpourri I was like, oh, is that a sex thing that I don't know about? Is that a word?

[20:55] Meg: There are many options.

[20:58] Jessica: My safe word is potpourri.

[21:00] Meg: There are choices out there.

[21:01] Jessica: Okay. Well,that is absolute deliciousness.

[21:07] Meg: Oh, I'm glad. Jessica, I wasn't sure how you would take this one.

[21:10] Jessica: No, I love this one. I love this one.

[21:12] Meg: It's the foot and a half dildo that got you.

[21:14] Jessica: Yes. Absolutely. You know what it is again? It's the details. It's always in the details. And I don't care who you are, how old you are, how sophisticated you are, there are certain things that will always be funny. Farts and dildos are right at the top of the list, so I can't help it. I'm enchanted. I am horrified at the activity and the death.

[21:41] Meg: And also that he walks amongst us and he's a really messed up guy.

[21:47] Jessica: Do we need to Harriet the Spy him?

[21:50] Meg: Oh, my God. I'm more terrified of him than Sammy the Bull.

[21:54] Jessica: Sammy the Bull has a podcast. He's one of us. I know.

[21:57] Meg: I kind of want him to reach out, but anyway, that's another..

[22:00] Jessica: Well you tagged him, didn't you? I did, yes. We won't tag Andrew Crispo. Okay. Meg?

[22:09] Meg: Yes.

[22:09] Jessica: Get ready. A magical mystery tour.

[22:13] Meg: I'm ready.

[22:14] Jessica: Okay. When you think of fun in the sun and games and tanning and having a great time, what do you think?

[22:28] Meg: Well, I love to go to the beach during the summer, and I like to go to the lake during the summer.

[22:35] Jessica: When you were a child, is that what you did?

[22:38] Meg: Two years I went to camp, but it was a complete disaster. And so after that, I did not go.

[22:43] Jessica: Okay. This is a good segue. I'm glad you brought it up. There are two kinds of people who go to camp those who love it and those who were obsessed. I wound up being in the second category, obsessed. I loved it, eventually. But there's a story here, Meg. Okay, so let's just pump the brakes, sister. I'm just asking. Here we go. All right. Well, let's just start with a little information about summer camp in the United States, because I did not know some of this originally. And I suppose, not surprisingly, summer camps were organized by YMCAs and other charitable organizations to get city urban dwellers whose parents did not have a dime to get them to the country. Fresh air, not just to air them out, but it was shown that being in nature for any extended period of time was actually really good for their development, physical, mental, helped them to concentrate at school during the school year. All kinds of good things.

[23:53] Meg: Agreed.

[23:54] Jessica: And it was always for boys. Oh, I know what and then around 1910, 1913, maybe around 1913, girls camps started. Now, boys camps were sports, sports, sports. And these camps were supposed to prepare kids for life.

[24:15] Meg: So the boys like Boy Scouts, stuff like that.

[24:17] Jessica: It was like Boy Scout stuff. And sports meaning, like, teamwork and all that kind of stuff, and some trade stuff. Girls, their activities were like homemaking activities. They learned how to make lunch and then they got to eat.

[24:37] Meg: Fun.

[24:37] Jessica: Yeah, but it wasn't as raucous and good fun as the boys.

[24:42] Meg: Now, this makes me grumpy.

[24:44] Jessica: Don't you worry. As time went on after World War II and there was more money and people were getting more affluent, obviously, camps became a thing that were not for poor kids, but were, in fact so kids could get out of the suburbs as well as the cities. Give their parents a break and give the kids an opportunity to, you know, same sort of program of development and socializing and all of that. But gone were the betterment activities, and in came all kinds of, you know, making lanyards.

[25:26] Meg: Yeah.

[25:27] Jessica: You know, learning how to throw a pot. What?

[25:30] Meg: Friendship bracelets.

[25:31] Jessica: Do you remember what it was called? The plastic string.

[25:34] Meg: No.

[25:34] Jessica: You're going to love this - gimp.

[25:37] Meg: Oh, my God.

[25:38] Jessica: I know. Is that our tie in? I think that's today's tie in. This is like our Peewee playhouse. Word of the day. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Gimp. And these camps that were springing up were primarily on the East Coast, as they were originally because that's where most settlement and industrialization was. So if you needed to get away from an urban right, an urban environment, you're not going to do it in the middle of Minnesota. Right. So after World War II, summer camps, and this also started in the late 1800's. There's a parallel track here, which is Jewish summer communities in the Catskills.

[26:25] Meg: Yes.

[26:26] Jessica: And for those of you who are fond of Dirty Dancing, and it's ilk as we are, or whatever came out, wasn't there like a remake of Dirty Dancing?

[26:36] Meg: I don't know. Blasphemy but The Marvelous. Mrs. Maisel.

[26:40] Jessica: That's right. Mrs. Maisel goes to the Catskills. By the way, those Catskills resorts started out as dairy farms that people would visit and go for, like the healthy fare and and just became part of the Jewish world.

[26:57] Meg: Have you seen their pictures of those hotels in disrepair that are actually gorgeous because nature has come and taken over the buildings. I'll try and find some photos. Oh, absolutely.

[27:12] Jessica: That sounds fantastic.

[27:12] Meg: Fascinating.

[27:14] Jessica: Love it. So the idea of going away for the summer was already instilled in this population. So what I'm going to talk about today is being a New York kid who goes to camp. And one of the jokes about New York and camp is if you meet someone, if you're Jewish, there's an assumption that you're going to know it's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

[27:42] Meg: Okay?

[27:43] Jessica: And for those who don't know, when you start asking questions like, where might I know you from? It's Jewish geography. And the number one question is, what camp did you go to? Okay, so camp, big thing, particularly New York, particularly Jewish kids. So that was an experience that I had and that I'm bringing to the program in all of its madness and variety. There is one book that I absolutely love that I referred to called Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies, which could not be more correct by Roger Bennett and Jules Shell, and it is hilarious. And it has tons and tons of photos of kids in the mid 80s, early 80s, late 70s, just looking exactly as really bad as we really did. So I encourage anyone with even a shred of interest to get it because you will not stop laughing. And some of the contributors are really well known comedians and actors and writers like Nick Kroll and David Wain. Now, David Wain. Interesting crossover, you say? Why, yes. Now, do you know him? Because he's part of your world.

[29:07] Meg: I do know him, and I know that he with a bunch of those guys. Michael Showalter and Seth Herzog. They all went to the same camp.

[29:16] Jessica: Which one was that?

[29:17] Meg: I don't know the name of it.

[29:19] Jessica: Could it be Greylock?

[29:20] Meg: Yeah, I think it is. It sounds familiar.

[29:22] Jessica: David Wain. Before I go into my personal experience, if anyone wants to know what 80s summer camp was like, there are a few movies that are essential. I can't say enough about them. They are really perfect movies. There's Meatballs, which, if you recall from an earlier episode, some online writers, whoever they maybe tried to say it was this exploitation flick. Not even remotely. It's so sweet. So there's Meatballs there's Little Darlings. Not so sweet. That's from 1980. Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol. Yeah, and Armand Assante.

[30:03] Meg: Oh, you're right.

[30:04] Jessica: I remember him. And dangerous. He was dangerous and hairy in a little tiny white shirt. And he had just come off his moment of glory as the terrible French boyfriend, gynecologist in Private Benjamin.

[30:24] Meg: I love that movie, but I do not remember him.

[30:27] Jessica: Well, he was the one she was going to marry.

[30:29] Meg: Okay.

[30:30] Jessica: And steps in the dog shit on wedding day. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So Little Darlings and David Wain's masterpiece, Wet Hot American Summer, which makes fun of the exact period that we're going to be talking about, but it doesn't make fun of it maliciously. It just amplifies the facts as they were, and it could not be more spot on. So David Wain and Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black, wherever you are. Well done, guys. And in fact, when it came out, a friend of mine from camp, Andy, called me and was like, you have to see this immediately. And when I saw it, it's pretty brilliant. Well, and it all takes place on the last day of camp. And wonder, there's a sequel, too. Yes, but what's so great about it is that that last day of camp, they break it down. Not even by hour, by minutes, by increments of, like, 15 minutes, which so perfectly encapsulates what it's like to be a preteen or a teenager at summer camp. Because things happen that are so important and they're so amplified that eight weeks away is a lifetime. And there's this great line in Wet Hot American Summer where someone says, I can't remember the whole thing. But like, weren't you doing blah, blah, blah, or isn't this what you strongly believe in? And the other one says, oh, not since dinner. And that's exactly what summer camp is like. And I spoke to the friend Andy, who told me to see Wet Hot American Summer, earlier today, and I asked him if I could tell the story just to illustrate this point. And he graciously said it was okay. But in 1982, I was at my third and final camp. It was my first year there. And unsurprisingly, it was theater camp. That's where I found my tribe. Hi, Meg. He was this really good looking, tall, lanky boy, which is sort of the prototype for everyone I've dated or married since then, but nice kid. He asked me to be his girlfriend at flagpole. I was very flattered, but I was a young twelve, as we have talked about on many occasions. So the minute it really sank in that I was supposed to be his girlfriend and whatever that entailed, I immediately balked. I was horrified. And I was like, what if people see me with him? Not that there was anything wrong with it, but suddenly I felt labeled. I had to rebel. I couldn't handle it. So that night was movie night. And at this camp, it was an outdoor it was like a projector. It was always a James Bond movie for some unknown reason or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World, the only movie they had. And it was projected against a sheet that was tacked up on the side of a barn. And there was a perfect incline for all the kids to sit on. So it was like an amphitheater. Anyway, so the big deal was to see which kids were sitting together, and if you were, quote, going out, the girl would sit in front of the guy and lean against his chest. Like that was a big action. And I grew more and more horrified by being fenced in. By his burdensome no, the burdensome relationship. Possibly his thighs, but metaphorically hemmed in. So when he went in for the final kiss, after I scrammed out of there, amscray gone. And then the next morning, I broke up with him. Andy and I broke up with the person you didn't do anything with. Yes. I didn't even hold his hand. And I was like, I can't do this. This is just too much for me. And because twelve, he was so bitter and angry, it was like the soap opera of all soap operas erupted. It was like As the World Turns and our bunks were strife over it. And I was and I'm not joking, a hussey. But you weren't so no, it was the opposite. But I was toying with his fragile male emotions. It was too frightening.

[35:13] Meg: How is Andy's ego now?

[35:15] Jessica: Andy is an absolutely lovely human being.

[35:18] Meg: I'm glad.

[35:19] Jessica: And a father of three and an absolute sweetheart. But what did you guys.

[35:26] Meg: How did you guys make up after all this?

[35:28] Jessica: Well, we kept on going to the same camp, and eventually we had to become friends again. Andy always appreciated my sense of humor, and, oh, I remember how we became friends again, because this is exactly what children should be doing. We did a production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and I was Roxanne, and he was Cyrano, and he could not remember his lines for one particular part of the play. And I knew it was horrible every time. So for the night of the play, he's supposed to be reading a letter, and he couldn't remember the lines that are the letter, and he takes the letter out of its little pouch. And I had given him the page from the script, oh, Jessica. And he was like, oh, my God, we can be friends now. That's sweet. And I was like, see? I'm not all bad. I might toy with your heart, but I'll give you your cues. So going to camp, big deal. As a New Yorker, it was a really, really important thing, particularly going to all girls school, because even though my older brother and his friends and I had friends from school before Nightingale, nonetheless, it was a much more intense coed situation. One of the things that was so interesting about camp and as a New Yorker is that it was the first time I understood exactly how different New Yorkers are from most other people on the planet. It was my first opportunity to have major perspective, like the story I told last time about the girls who were in Jordache jeans, and I was in my Lee jeans, and they called me English for the summer. So here's a weird thing. Our buses would pick us up in Port Authority, which at the time, as you know, was not a place you'd want to be. So we started camp.

[37:26] Meg: Oh, my God.

[37:27] Jessica: At the Minnesota Strip. Basically.

[37:30] Meg: That was hard to imagine. Just a group of children.

[37:33] Jessica: Yeah, a group of children to get.

[37:35] Meg: Hope you get on the right bus.

[37:36] Jessica: Exactly. And our parents hovering. Remember the story I told you about how I told my mother, do not ever do that again. About the birthday cake?

[37:45] Meg: Yes.

[37:46] Jessica: Well, I wouldn't let her wave at me at the bus either. See, I was fiercely independent. Andy didn't understand. He could not lock me down. So it's not going to happen anyway. So this camp that I'm going to talk about primarily was in Camptown, Pennsylvania, as in the races prior to that was Camp Danbee. I bring it up only because it adheres to my discussion about the very, very Jewishness of camp. It was a Jewish camp. And I looked it up in the back of The New York Times Magazine, which was where you would see all the advertisements for camps. And I will never forget my parents selected it, and someone's daughter had gone there, and I was like, okay. And I looked it up, and in the back it said, we have fine Jewish cuisine. And I was like, already you're liars. There's no such thing. What the hell is going to happen to me in this God forsaken place? And it was a sports camp, not unlike the first camp where I was English. And these girls were mean. I mean, they made Jordache girls look like bush league. This was hardcore. Knee socks up to the knees with Nike sneakers and Dolphin short shorts, winged hair, ringer T shirts named, like, Melissa. Terrifying. And they would come and get you. They were mean and they would tease. It was horrible. All Jewish girls and our fine Jewish cuisine was served, are you ready for this one, by waiters in the dining hall. So it was like a hold of I'm seriously Catskills. Yes. It was this weird sort of like bridging the gap between cat skills and what summer camp was originally intended to be. That camp had something that all normal camps, not aka, not theater camps have, which is it's another thing that traumatized me called Color War. Do you know about Color War? Right. For those of you who don't know, Color War is a horror show where some social group, in this case the entire camp, is split into two groups, blue and white, blue and silver, whatever. Of course, the colors of the Israeli flag, blue and white. And it was fierce competition that would break up friendships and anything went. It was horrible. And it would be announced at this sports camp, as with all other camps like this, by something called Breakout, the 80s, not a politically correct time in so many ways. I remember vividly, it must have been 1980/81. All of these camps had fake Indian names. That was what it was called. They're Native American names, and they were usually concocted of the first syllables of the names of the camp owner's children. What they did for Breakout was they lowered someone in Native American garb from a helicopter onto the roof of the main building, where this person, who I assure you was not Native American, did some kind of dance and then screamed, Breakout. And really bad things happened after that. So my sport, you ask my bunkmates, knew who they were dealing with. I was required only to eat a package of saltines, walk across the shallow end of the pool, and then whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy. Oh, no. No tennis matches for me.

[41:34] Meg: That was your assignment?

[41:35] Jessica: Yes. And the other one I had was to bake a cake. That one had we sold the vestiges of Home Economics at that one. We had Home Economic classes where you had to learn to cook and sew. And so I had to make a cake. It was fine. It was better than the whistling situation. I never won once, not once ever. But eventually I found my way to Camp Ballibay.

[42:04] Meg: Okay.

[42:04] Jessica: And that was my theater camp. And made lasting friendships as they always advertise you will; lasting friendships for the rest of your life. Mostly founded on singing inappropriate musical. I was really horrified. I read recently, or I've heard recently, that the camp redid the lyrics for Grease Lightning because they were too sexy. And I was like, Come on. Lighten up, Francis. Seriously. Anyway, so there I was, finally going to a camp that I was supposed to be going to as my tribe, and yet still there were problems. So here's the New York kid stuff. Part of summer camp is your parents trying to tell you that they still love you even though they sent you away for eight weeks. How is that done? Well, they send care packages, but more importantly, on parents weekend, they bring food. Now, normal campers parents bring things like Nestea iced tea powder in these giant barrels, and we'd stick our fingers in it and lick it and stick your finger back in. And you'd know who, you just had a care package because everyone had a brown finger. It's disgusting. Fruit Loops, EZ cheese and crackers, candy. Everything that you normally don't ever get. When my parents came for camp visiting day, you know, my parents what did they bring? My parents were like, we'll bring a marvelous lunch. I was like, okay, cheese and crackers, a baguette. Oh, that's great. French sausage. Okay, brie. I was right. Perrier. And instead of junk food for the other girls, which was de rigueur it was really sweet. It couldn't have been nicer, but I.

[43:50] Meg: It wasn't wasn't on brand.

[43:52] Jessica: It was not on brand. It was like googly eyed stickers and troll pencils. And I was just like, I need to die right now. And the ingratitude of children, I look back on it now.

[44:04] Meg: How long were you there? Do you remember?

[44:06] Jessica: Eight weeks.

[44:07] Meg: Eight weeks is a long time.

[44:08] Jessica: I started eight weeks when I was eight years old because my brother went to a science camp called Camp. Oh, here's a good one. This is a Native American fake name, Camp Watonka. And the owner was named Mr. Wacker, I kid you not. And John famously burned down the steps of his bunk at science camp. This is like, what these nerds were doing. But he was going for eight weeks, and that was fine because he was twelve. But I was like, there is no way that he's going to do something that I can't. So I insisted. And then I think I sobbed the rest of the summer away very long time. You know what? To be honest with you, that's sort of an embellishment. I don't remember crying once. I just remember being confused. And I was like, where am I?

[44:55] Meg: Did they give me away?

[44:57] Jessica: What exactly is expected of me at this place? And I'm not English. I don't know what to do for these people. Another New York thing was at this camp. And this is something that comes up in our own swag. My dear friend Hilary came to camp with and this is a big part of camp, is the music. She came with a Canal Jeans bag filled with new wave cassette tapes oh, great. Yes. That we listened to. And that Canal Jeans bag, the arrival in the bunk was the sign that fun was going to happen. Oh, also, my parents outfits. All other parents were in, like, shorts, and a visor or whatever people wear when they're going to play tennis. You know, my dad, he was wearing a blue button down shirt, khakis, and boat shoes. And my mom wore a skirt. And I was just like, again, death is too good for me right now. New York kids. New York Jews going to camp. Very, very big deal. Will revisit this. Absolutely.

[46:00] Meg: We must we can only scratch this. Well, Jessica, at some point, I'll have to tell you about my camp experience. All girl in the south. Very different.

[46:11] Jessica: See, that brings me so much joy. And you can tell just for my delivery of and then, and then, and then camp brings me joy.

[46:21] Meg: I'm glad it made you happy.