On the Demise of Texas Summer Camps and a Remembrance of Hells Past: It Wasn’t “Meatballs” or Camp Mystic

Posted on May 5, 2026 by williamjcobb

So I just read in the Dallas Morning News that only nine Texas summer camps are approved to open after last year’s Camp Mystic tragedy. Not having Texas summer camps is a tragedy in itself. The population of Texas is over 30 million so it’s an easy guess that only nine camps won’t be able to serve a great percentage of kids who want (and should) experience summer camp. So what are they going to miss? Childhood memories, for one thing.

I spent a couple weeks at a summer camp in the Hill Country near Mason, Texas many years ago—think I was in fifth grade. What I remember most: It was hot—baking hot, Sahara hot, summer-in-Texas hot. We panted like dogs, our tongues hanging out. At the end of every day we were sunburned and scruffy. Not at all like the many slasher movie summer camps such as Friday the 13th (1980) and its iconic Camp Crystal Lake. We didn’t have frisky camp counselors Kevin Bacon and Adrienne King (the original slasher-movie Final Girl) trying to sneak off to make out while we got away with murder. Nope, we were on a tighter leash than that. 

Our counselors were all football-coach wannabes with fat necks, bulging biceps and bowling-pin calves who wanted to whip our little grade-school asses into shape. (And keep us so tired and worn-out we wouldn’t get into any trouble. It worked.) Although we played sports and had cookouts and ate hot dogs, it was less Bill Murray’s iconic Meatballs (1979) . . . .

. . . and more Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). More like Boot Camp than Summer Camp. We slept in bunkbeds in a long barracks building and you had to hide your stuff or your other little happy campers would steal it. But they had chocolate milk in the mess hall, which made it a little like Heaven.

Part Lord of the Flies as well: I remember one kid bawling that he missed his Mommy and wanted to go home. He was kind of a small kid and maybe people made fun of him but I don’t remember that at all: We felt sorry for him. The counselors said he had a bad case of Homesickness. Gone the next day, mustered out. Me, I’d be ashamed to be sent home for crying and didn’t want to get sent anywhere (unless perhaps a nice house with air conditioning) so I didn’t sniffle or mope. This was not a rich-kid’s camp. It was run by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, and as I was a good Irish-Catholic kid I think I got sent there for free or a small fee. Some of the other kids were black and Latino inner-city kids from San Antonio, which gave more of a mixed, urban feel to the camper population.

It was survival of the fittest. Toward the end of Week One we did an eight-mile hike, in the middle of the day, when the air temperature in the shade was probably like 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Kids were dropping like soldiers in the Bataan Death March. But at the end of the hike we reached a swimming hole on the Llano River, one of the Hill Country’s limestone-bed rivers with cool, clear water. There were no floods that summer. The only safety measures I recall were roped buoy-barriers around the swimming spot to keep us from drifting downstream to the rapids. We didn’t have any kids drown, thank god. We ate s’mores and fashioned crude designs on belts in Arts & Crafts class. We made hand-prints in foil-pans filled with wet plaster. I was a small kid and somehow survived the kickball games . . . barely.

After two weeks I was ready to go home and back to hanging out at the suburban swimming pool we spent all our summer days at, eating Giant Sweet-Tarts and playing Marco Polo. Being out in the sun and heat and river water for two weeks was a good experience, toughened me up a little. I learned that if you were sunburned badly enough your skin peeled off in sheets. That was the first summer I went “camping,” which involved sleeping around a campfire in my friend’s backyard. Kids need time in the outdoors. We should expect the owners to run places like Camp Mystic safely, but I hope they don’t go extinct.

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Ran the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon Today!

Posted on May 3, 2026 by williamjcobb

So since 1990 I’ve been a bit of a distance runner, have run 16 full marathons and 5 half-marathons, including today’s. The real treat this year: My daughter, Liliana, ran the Half-Marathon with me. She didn’t think she was going to make it and did great! It was chilly at the start but by mid-morning it was all blue sky and sun. Pittsburgh—The City of Bridges—is actually quite charming and scenic. Yesterday we visited the Andy Warhol Museum, though I rather doubt Andy ever ran their marathon.

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“Dragonfly” Review: Chronicle of Broken Britain Packs a Punch

Posted on May 2, 2026 by williamjcobb

So a friend of mine turned me on to the recent film (seen via streaming, from last year) Dragonfly (2025) that I knew nothing about. It stars the terrific character actress Andrea Riseborough as Colleen, a downtrodden British gal with no family or friends, no job, and a seriously jaundiced view of life. But she has one precious thing to make her life worth living: her big dog, Saber.

Saber is a costar of the film, in the animal world at least, although the human costar is Brenda Blethyn, who plays Elsie, a widowed woman living next door to Colleen in a council-house neighborhood in the north of England, an area that seems to signify the term “Broken Britain.” Jobs and money are scarce. Elsie’s middle-aged son is being threatened with being “redundant,” as in he’s on the verge of getting fired or laid off. (He seems frightened, uptight, not particularly warm and compassionate.) Elsie and Colleen are neighbors and hit it off, as Colleen befriends Elsie and helps to care for her. Meanwhile the only other thing in Colleen’s life is Saber, with whom she sleeps. (As I allow my beagle-mutt to sleep in my bed this made me connect with Colleen and sympathize with her, naturally.)

For about the first half of the film it’s a quiet, careful depiction of these two women’s lives. There’s a bit of mystery: As the viewer you’re suspicious of Colleen through some of her actions, and suspect she might be trying to take advantage of Elsie somehow, to either rob her or for some other reason. But she’s also caring and kind, so that suspicion seems mainly to arise from the mystery of intentions: Why is she being so nice to Elsie? What’s up with that? Which is itself a jaundiced view of the world: Why shouldn’t she be nice to Elise? When Elsie asks that very question, Colleen replies, “We’re neighbors. Neighbors should look out for each other.”

The final half of the film is heartbreaking and stunning. I won’t give it away. But as devastating as it is, it’s a fresh view of the world, not a rehash of superheroes, aliens, ghosts, monsters, and other silliness. The lives of Colleen and Elsie are heartbreaking but they seem real. At times it does seem like Grim & Grimmer, but it’s touching. That’s a good thing.

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Paul Andrew Hutton’s “The Apache Wars”: Historical Origins of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” (1986)

Posted on April 27, 2026 by williamjcobb

So as an aficionado of Old West histories I’ve stumbled onto a real gem: Paul Andrew Hutton’s The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History (2016). I should first mention that in the last month I’ve picked up and discarded several nonfiction histories of the West, two of them concerning the history of New Mexico. Why? They simply weren’t worth the reading time. A good history vivifies the past and helps you understand its importance events and cultural/historical ramifications, and it takes a certain kind of skilled writer to pull that off. While I was disappointed in these failed books I won’t name names: I’d rather celebrate good writing than nitpick bad. And as chance would have it, I happened to read a description of Hutton’s The Apache Wars and bought it, quickly became hooked. I’ve been binge-reading ever since.

Quotes about the book compare it to S.C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon and I second that, although I think I favor The Apache Wars over Empire. Both are quite good, both gripping page-turners, and both about Native American tribes of the Southwest: Empire concerns the Comanches while Wars obviously concerns the Apaches. Although their territories in the Southwest overlapped the two tribes were not in league, and were actually mortal enemies. They fought tooth-and-nail for dominance in the southern Great Plains. The Comanches essentially won and forced the (Lipan) Apaches into far West Texas, although the heart of Apacheria was actually western New Mexico and Arizona. (There were several bands of Apaches and the Lipan’s territory overlapped with the Comanche.) 

The Apache Wars has an excellent structure to frame its detailed account of the conflict from 1861 to 1886, using the kidnapping of the white boy Mickey Free as its touchpoint. As with the Comanche wars, trouble between settlers and Natives began much earlier than that, as soon as the westward expansion heated up in the late 1830s and into the 1840s. For many readers the most famous and visionary depiction of this era unfolds in Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel of western frontier brutality, Blood Meridian (1985).  There are passages in Wars that seem lifted straight out of Meridian, although it actually must have been the other way around: It seems McCarthy researched both Apache and Comanche history, and came across scenes that he used later in his description of the Glanton gang. 

In particular is this incident detailing the actions of the mercenary Irishman James Kirker: 

“In July 1846, Kirker achieved true infamy when he conspired with the leading citizens of Galeana, Chihuahua, to lure a mixed band of Chokonen and Nednhi Chiricahuas into town with promises of a peace treaty and rations. Negotiations were held between the Mexicans and the Apaches while Kirker and his men hid themselves. A pledge of eternal peace was secured and to cement the bargain a liberal disbursement of whiskey was provided. On the morning of July 7, while the Apache men lay in a drunken stupor after a nightlong fandango, Kirker and his land pirates slaughtered 130 Chiricahuas.

“Spybuck supervised the scalping, for his Shawnees had perfected a rapid technique. A neat circle was cut at the crown of the victim’s head. The scalper then grabbed hold of the Apache’s long hair and pushed off with his feet against the victim’s shoulders. A loud pop followed as the scalp came off. The scalps were taken to Spybuck, who treated them with some salt for preservation and attached them to long scalp poles. Each scalp was a debit against the treasury of the state of Chihuahua.

“Kirker marched his men into Chihuahua City in a grand procession headed by the governor and several priests, with musicians escorting them into the town in triumph. They carried the Apache scalps before them on long poles. In the fiesta that followed, the priests ornamented the front of their church with the scalps. “Opposite the principal entrance, over the portals which form one side of the square, were dangling the grim scalps of one hundred and seventy Apaches,” noted an English visitor, “who had been inhumanely butchered by the Indian hunters in pay of the state.”—Hutton, The Apache Wars, p20-21.

For those unaware of the stature of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, know that it was ranked by a group of editors/writers as the second best novel of the past 50 years (I believe Toni Morrison’s Beloved was #1). In it McCarthy does a masterful job of turning history and legend into an artistic epic that is both beautiful and awful. Hutton’s The Apache Wars, a nonfiction work, provides great context and understanding to this era, and reinforces the visions of McCarthy. 

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“Beef” Imagines a World of Scheming, Conniving, Duplicitous Grifters

Posted on April 25, 2026 by williamjcobb

So Season 2 of the Netflix series Beef has dropped and is quite good. Think of it as The White Lotus meets Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019). It’s about a quartet of grifters using whatever nefarious arrows in their quiver to get ahead, the main one being an iphone snippet of a middle-aged couple’s old-fashioned “domestic dispute” (in the husband’s “man cave,” no less) caught on video by a much-younger couple. 

Although everything is not what it seems is undoubtedly a movie cliché, it works to great effect in this season’s storyline. The most captivating character is Ashley Miller, played by Cailee Spaeny, who possesses the sweetest smile and the darkest heart. At first she genuinely seems to care about her boyfriend and the abused wife she videos, but one surprise after another makes you rethink exactly how much Ashley cares about any people other than herself. (Spaeny reminds me of the great Sixties/Seventies actress Sandy Dennis, in a good way.)

Second most captivating character must be the always terrific actor Oscar Isaac, who plays Josh Martin, the manager of a high-end California resort. He’s ambitious, mercurial, and at times seriously deranged. Carey Mulligan plays his wife, Lindsay, who puts up with his shenanigans . . . until she doesn’t. As usual, I’ll refrain from giving it all away. Like Season One of Beef there’s a Korean-American plotline that’s important, but not the sole focus, as opposed to the first season. One thing I admire from series creator Lee Sung Jin: Things happen very quickly. It’s not as frantic as the Oscar-darling Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) but dramatic events unfold, spurt, bounceback, and recoil with a fast, deft touch. It features eight episodes, all of which have major plot twists and developments. I was hooked and binge-watched it.

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“The A.I. Doc”: Dumb & Dumber Meet the Digital Overlords

Posted on April 23, 2026 by williamjcobb

So I’ve already posted about the several A.I. books I’ve read recently, including Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares’s excellent doomsday-predicting If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (2025) and Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave: A.I., Power, and Our Future (2023). It’s obvious I’m fascinated by the topic and want to know more. Now along comes a new documentary titled The A.I. Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptomist (2026), by the documentary filmmaker/artist Daniel Roher, which is certainly worth a viewing.

I have significant quibbles: As the interviewer, Roher comes across as simply too naïve/dim-witted with some of his questions about A.I. This simpleton attitude frames the documentary as intended for some mythical “general” audience who doesn’t know much if anything about A.I. and hasn’t bothered to read some of the excellent books about it. (Roher’s first question is “What is A.I.?” and he asks it repeatedly, as if he wasn’t listening to the explanations of his interviewees.) With a combination of silly graphics and animation that documentary filmmakers all seem to love (but which seems like dumbed-down filler to me, usually) Roher establishes that he has a loving wife and child, and is worried about all the doomsaying coming from the A.I. community. That’s nice and all, but let’s get to the heart of the matter: A.I. . . . friend or foe?

That’s where the documentary really takes off. Roher may seem a bit dim as an interviewer but the tech-world savants he interviews know what they’re talking about, without dumbing it down too much, and have many insightful tidbits to add. As usual with A.I. predictions, they tend to split along into two camps: A.I. as Doomsday Machine or Greatest Thing Ever. The interviewees include the two authors I’ve read (Eliezer Yudkowsky and Mustafa Suleyman), among many others. They share their opinions on A.I. of course, but also fascinating anecdotes: One tells of an A.I. that was granted access to the company’s emails, through which it learned it was going to be replaced. The A.I. also learned that one of the company’s researchers was involved in an affair, and it blackmailed the researcher, telling him that it would expose the affair if he didn’t cancel the phase-out of that A.I. That seems awfully “sentient,” doesn’t it?

Some say A.I. will most likely do away with humans in a quest for unlimited power, while others say that’s scifi nonsense. After reading much about the subject I find the extreme predictions on either end—either Doomsday or New Era in Human Evolution—less than convincing: The extremes are guessing what might happen in the future, about technology we admittedly don’t understand completely. Here’s my fundamental question: So if AI can soon(ish) do all jobs that humans could do, and corporations/businesses quit hiring people because A.I. will do the same jobs cheaper and faster . . . what will people do? This is touched on (rather obliquely) in both AI books I read, and it seems right now the answer to my Q is: “We have no idea.” That’s pretty scary for upheaval. Both books mentioned the hazy idea of Universal Basic Income. So . . . someone (government?) is just going to give us money? That seems very unlikely. For my money that’s one of the biggest issues of all. We’re rushing to build robots to replace human work but if you don’t have a job and an income from work how would you benefit from it? How would you afford that new-fangled robot maid/butler (or boyfriend/girlfriend)? Once the A.I. digital technocracy has a good answer for that question I think we’ll all sleep a little easier.

Posted in A.I., A.I. 2027, A.I. Apocalypse, A.I. Documentaries, A.S.I. (Artificial Super Intelligence), Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares' If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Mustafa Suleyman's The Coming Wave: A.I., Power, and Our Future | Tagged | Leave a comment

“Normal” Movie Review: Bob Odenkirk Blows Up the Fonz

Posted on April 19, 2026 by williamjcobb

So any movie starring Bob Odenkirk is a cause for celebration and this new action/comedy, Normal, does not disappoint. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at so many people getting shot, stabbed, killed, maimed, or blown to smithereens—including Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz from TV’s Happy Days sitcom of the Seventies. 

Winkler plays the mayor of Normal, Minnesota, a frosty-cold town in the middle of nowhere. Odenkirk plays Ulysses, an interim sheriff (“Like a substitute teacher,” he quips) who has taken the job after the unfortunate demise of the previous sheriff (Gunderson), who froze to death in his underwear in the snow, holding a fly-fishing rod and an augur. “That’s funny,” says Odenkirk. “You usually don’t take a fly rod to go ice fishing.” After a quiet buildup and introduction to the wacky/charming town citizens all hell breaks loose. Since the movie debuted Friday I’ll withhold more details so as to avoid spoilers.

Odenkirk has many moments of great comic timing, typical for him. Since he’s made the action/comedies Nobody (2021) and Nobody2 (2025) I’ll note he’s in familiar comic territory. Normal is like the Coen Brothers’ Fargo meets Nobody, kind of. It features zany plots involving Japanese Yakuza gangsters and Midwestern folksiness. As the action heats up it gets uber-violent, but you know it’s all “good, clean fun”: It’s a silly movie and none of these deaths are real, nor are we supposed to think they are. When they’re in an auto shop and someone gets squished when a car falls off its jacks I burst out laughing. There are several cliches that they satirize: Odenkirk is a disgraced sheriff, due to an unfortunate incident in his recent past. He’s estranged from his wife, to whom he leaves phone messages, angling for redemption. The end is essentially comic, even if the body-count is astoundingly high. It’s not as clever as Odenkirk’s great character Jimmy McGill in Better Call Saul, but that’s a high bar to clear. It’s funny and doesn’t pretend to be more than that. 

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Jonathan Kennedy’s “Pathogenesis”: Mystery of the Neanderthal Extinction Solved!

Posted on April 17, 2026 by williamjcobb

So I’m fascinated by human prehistory and especially the migrations out of Africa and into Europe that took place roughly 50,000 years ago, which also coincides with one of the great Paleo-World mysteries: Around the time humans immigrated to Europe the Neanderthals died out. They had been thriving for 300,000 years and suddenly (in geological time, at least) poof they were gone. (A simplification, of course. Isolated pockets may have survived to 32-35,000 BP. They were part of the Late Pleistocene Megafauna Extinction Event that saw the disappearance of mammoths, mastodons, smilodons, and many others.) But what caused it? A popular theory has been the humans basically pushed them out of their territory and prevailed because they were smarter. Not so, according to Jonathan Kennedy.

First off he notes the misconceptions about Neandethals: Their brains were actually slightly larger than Homo sapiens. They certainly seem to have mastered their environment and survived for many thousands of years . . . before humans arrived. This is where Kennedy’s subtitle reveals his essential thesis: “A History of the World in Eight Plagues.” He argues that humans had developed antibodies and a history with many more diseases than the Neanderthals. The climate/landscape in Africa is friendlier to pathogens, and thus the human population had their own thousands of years of evolution to adapt. They then arrived in Europe and infected the Neanderthal population, who had no immunities to these pathogens.

It’s an intriguing idea, one that he backs it up with numerous examples of DNA evidence that reveal migrations of different human populations into Europe during the Bronze Age, and how one local population often was supplanted by an immigrant population. It occurred repeatedly in the British Isles, for one example. Although it can’t be proven definitively, it’s an excellent theory.

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The Finale of “DTF St. Louis”: Sad Coda to Great Character

Posted on April 15, 2026 by williamjcobb

So the NY Times had a piece about the end of DTF St. Louis about which I’ll quibble: The writer was disappointed, it seems, that Floyd and Clark did not become lovers, implying that their “toxic masculinity” (groan) is what keeps them back from happiness and sexual fulfillment. Here’s the quote: “Floyd is reduced to the self-hating, gay-coded character whose sexual exploration concludes with death. And Clark is the male character who grew too close to his friend in a way that threatened his heterosexuality, so he ultimately finds his life upended as well.”

That’s so wrongheaded. It misses all the joy and charm and pathos of the series. Yes, Floyd and Clark love each other. When Jason Bateman (as Clark) insists he didn’t kill Floyd his justification is a confession: “I loved Floyd.” The detectives investigating the case are surprised by this, somewhat, but it’s only the beginning of Clark’s confessions that ultimately resolve the murder mystery and the sadness of Floyd’s unfortunate death. At the end it’s clear Clark loved Floyd but didn’t want to have sex with him. That seems perfectly reasonable. It’s also touching: In the final scene at the pool house Clark tries to alleviate Floyd’s crushing depression and lack of self-esteem by sexual overtures that fall flat. It seems real to me. And as far as the “charm” of the series, most of it involves the tragic-yet-lovable Floyd Smernitch, played by David Harbour. He’s a good guy who cares about others. Admittedly, sometimes too much. At the end we finally learn what caused Floyd’s “crooked dick.” And it’s heartbreaking. 

Here’s what I find most fascinating and admirable about DTF: The writers/director cleverly frame the season as a murder mystery, when it isn’t. It tricks the viewer into watching the story, paying attention to all the clues, only to be surprised at the end when all is not what it seems. But the mystery forces you to pay attention to all the subtle interactions between Carol, Floyd, and Clark. All three of them are “lost” in some way: Carol squirming under crushing debt and disappointment, Floyd suffocating under his weight-gain and idealistic decisions, and Clark ultimately voiceless as a victim of his own peculiar loneliness. The final image conveys Clark’s anguish: He’s sitting on the child’s swing where he would sometimes sit and talk to Floyd, only he’s all alone and bereft. He loved his friend, who is now gone forever. Clark has a successful career and family life, but what good is it when you’re friendless? Much is being written now about American males lack of close friends. That argument often seems rather academic and abstract. The story of Clark and Floyd makes it real.

Posted in David Harbour, HBO series, HBO's "DTF St. Louis", Jason Bateman, Prestige TV, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Keanu Reeve’s New Movie “Outcome”: Schizophrenic Comedy/Drama on Fame and Goodness

Posted on April 11, 2026 by williamjcobb

So Apple TV has recently debuted a new movie starring Keanu Reeves, Outcome, which is a hybrid of sorts: On the one hand it’s a wacky satire on fame and excess, on fandom and the celebrity curse of no privacy, and on the other hand it’s a serious drama about a famous actor’s guilt, isolation, and sins of arrogance. 

The cast is excellent and very much a part of its schizophrenic personalities: Keanu Reeves plays Reef Hawk, described as the most beloved and acclaimed actor of his generation, who has two Academy Awards (this detail is used for both serious and comic effect). After a hiatus of five years from filmmaking he’s on the comeback trail when a stranger contacts his lawyer with damaging video footage from his past. The plot centers around that event, and suspense: It’s not divulged what is actually on the video, or if it’s even real, until near the end. 

A very much slimmed-down Jonah Hill (who also wrote and directed) plays Reef Hawk’s lawyer and zany fixer. That part of the plot is energetic if not frenetic satire, with Hill going over the top in several scenes, to good comic effect. Cameron Diaz plays Kyle, a high-school friend of Reef’s, who keeps him grounded, kind of—along with Matt Bomer, who plays Xander, Reef’s gay friend. There are some funny and touching cameos, including Martin Scorsese playing Reef’s first agent, and David Spade playing a sleazebag. My favorite was Drew Barrymore playing herself, with a funny joke about Ellen Degeneres. 

As a contrast, Reeves plays this seriously. It’s like his Hamlet. He even has moments of anguished indecision, like the famous Dane, when he’s offered a way to short-circuit the extortion attempt by playing the victim-card. From the outside he’s emotionally devastated, in part because he claims he’s been so careful not to be filmed or to film anyone else when involved in bad behavior. (It’s revealed he was a heroin addict for many years.) There’s a meta angle to the accusations: Keanu Reeves is known as being a good-guy celebrity, sensitive to others, friends of the movie crew, and free from the usual bad-behavior associated with male mega-stars. But in this role all that is actually a fiercely maintained myth: One of the funniest scenes occurs when they try to brainstorm who could be out to get him, and it turns out many many people consider him an asshole. Toward the end he’s really able to pull off the emotional pain of his situation, his guilt and vulnerability. At a late moment he asks his accuser, “Do you hate me?” The accuser replies, “No, man. I love you, bro.” Then why extortion? “I needed the money.”

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