Hi, kids! Hi, counselors! Welcome to another wonderful summer at Camp Tenochtitlan, where the staff sacrifices for you, every day!

We're going to be having a great time for the next few weeks! Helsingør here, back from his winter home in Iceland, will be assigning you all to your bunks according to age, gender, religious beliefs and ability to withstand pain.

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We've renovated every bunk completely this year, so there'll be no more problems with poison insect bites or scabies. The Blue Angels in Bunk 14 will notice that all that damage from last year has been thoroughly patched up with armor plating and a new specially-reinforced guard tower, which all of you can see looming above the anti-tank barriers at the end of the soccer field.

You junior campers are in for some great surprises, too. Madame Smek is back from Moldavia, where she performed valuable services for our country's own crackerjack intelligence services. She's promised to share her experiences with all the 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old girls, especially if they choose to ignore lights-out time, and she'll tell some really scary stories, too, of what happens to 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old girls who ignore Madame Smek.

There's a whole lot of new activities, too, this year. Tommy Bulcetta of the Survivors Bunk showed so much promise last year in the Major Trauma Olympics that we're making that a permanent part of the program. He's asked me to remind you that we'll need volunteers who are fit and don't scar too easily. Please report to the ER Tent after Opening Ceremonies are complete; it would be most helpful if you have your blood and bone marrow type handy.

Joey "Big Joe" Contrapunto is still in charge of the camp's athletic program, and it's a good thing, too, since we will no longer tolerate losing to our arch-enemy Camp Cortez across the lake! Let me be the first to say it: we will beat them, defeat them, cheat them and eat them for lunch between two slices of Tenochtitlan toast!

Yes, that's right! We will spear them through the guts because we are nuts! Repeat after me, campers: Tenochtitlan terrorizes! It makes no difference that Camp Cortez campers are all pre-k to six! Makes no difference at all!

I was going to let Big Joe speak a few words here, but he's been too busy preparing the baseball team's special nutritional supplements for the start of the season, and then he's got a Congressional subcommittee hearing he can't miss, on account of that unfortunate subpoena.

But he asked me to specially welcome our new second baseman from the Dominican Republic, Fernando Bolus, who-trust me, kids-is only twelve. And let's also give a big Tenochtitlan welcome to his knock-out wife, Cristal, who is, I'm told, the cover girl on HOT MAMA next month...check your local newsstands.

A lot of you first-year campers are probably a little bit nervous about being away from Mom and Dad for so long, so I want to talk to all you cute little Bunnies and Hamsters in the Junior Camp. We're going to do everything we can, short of actually giving a damn, to make you as comfortable as possible, and that includes sedation.

Which reminds me-this year is the first we're offering an elective in bartending for you Juniors.That's right: you get to mix up blue stuff and green stuff and brown stuff in pretty glasses, and then press "Puree." This elective will be offered in the arts-and-crafts room adjoining the senior staff quarters at 5 p.m. each afternoon.

But now we have to be serious, campers. Sometimes we have to let Mom and Dad come and visit Camp Tenochtitlan, and that's a very special day for all of us. We have special activities the day before. We scrub and scrub the whole camp the day before Visiting Day, and we hide many things so Mom and Dad can't find them! It's so much fun!

What do we hide, who can tell me? Yes, we hide the blenders, and the blue and green and brown stuff, and the pretty glasses, too. We hide the dog collars some campers wear every day. We hide Fernando Bolus and his wife, Cristal. We hide the poles in the pole-dancing tent, and we hide our very special secret garden, the one with the tall, bushy plants, and we hide the beer cans. That's a lot, isn't it? But we can do it because we're Camp Tenochtitlan!

Let's sing the song!

Tenochtitlan, we are great, we are goodly,
We are better than anybody should be.
Our bunks are full of great furnitures
‘Cuz we're unindicted co-conspirators!
Go, Tenochtitlan!
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