Tri's and Bi's

The shows went really well last night. I was a little nervous beforehand because the ship was rocking before we began, but it seemed to calm down by the end and all went well. Afterwards we went to the Sky Bar, which is on the top deck. We’ve been there the last few nights and I’m always surprised that more people aren’t there. It’s right next to the big steak restaurant in the boat, so it has more of a 1950’s double martini at lunch décor. From there we went to the dance club a few floors down. We had been there the previous night and it had been empty but this time it was packed with late high school/early college students whose general demeanor could best be described as “where are your parents” attire. We ended up staying there for a while making new friends brushing the dirt off our collective shoulders.

Afterwards Jason, the piano player, and I went to the ship’s 24 hour diner. He had a cheeseburger and I had the chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. A few minutes after we had been served one of the kids from the club staggered in and sat down with us. I’m not sure why he chose us out of all the other tables as neither Jason nor I had met or even seen him at the club, but we were soon deep in conversation. He explained that he had to leave the club because they had questioned his fake ID. He was waiting for some time to pass before he re-entered in the hopes that the bartenders would have forgotten about him by then, and then he was “going to chill with this girl” that he met. I offered him one of the nuggets, but he said he couldn’t since they were breaded and he doesn’t eat carbs. This launched a fifteen monologue where he explained his new devotion to the Atkins’ Diet. He told us how he couldn’t eat “carbs, pasta, any kinds of bread, macaroni, and carbohydrates.” When I asked him about drinking, he said you don’t drink beer (although he thought Michelob Ultra might be okay) and were allowed to drink as much hard alcohol as you wanted (he prefers flavored vodka and diet Coke). He guaranteed we would lose weight if we would only follow his plan. All the red meat you wanted! Protein city! He also outlined his workout regimen for us, which consisted of separate days at the gym devoted to “legs, chest and back, tri’s and bi’s, and abs.”

He told us more about himself. He is on the cruise with his father and brother, who is a gynecologist in suburban Chicago. His brother and father had fought the night before when the brother came back from the club and farted on the sleeping father’s head. This caused the father to flush a bottle of Raspberry Stoli down the toilet in retaliation. Our new friend also told us that he was a college sophomore from Rhode Island who wants to be a property manager in Florida. He advised us to buy property in New Tampa (although he warned “you didn’t hear that from me”). Since I don’t have the money for that at this time, I thought I might pass it on to those of you with the means to do so.

Then the dam broke. He found out that we had performed that night and a shadow fell across his face. He confessed that he had not enjoyed the show at all, and had only laughed twice. He said that he thought the juggler from the previous night had been funnier, and he hadn’t thought that the juggler was that funny. He complained that most of the stuff we had done had been done by “those British guys in the 80’s” (we later concluded this was in reference to one of the improv games in the show and thought he was referring to the original “Whose Line is it Anyway” cast). The conversation at this point became a little circular. It took him a while to place us from the cast. He didn’t realize that we’d been on stage at first; finally about halfway through he squinted his eyes at me, pointed his finger at me, and said, “I know you. I know you dude.” He would keep repeating how much he hadn’t enjoyed the show, and then apologize and say “I’m just being honest.” His main fault with the show was that it hadn’t been edgy enough, which is a fair complaint since our show is contracted to be a PG show and so is specifically softer than a typical touring or resident stage show. He asked us if we had seen a 21+ show on a previous cruise put on by “that black guy from Comedy Central,” which had been hysterical. He invited us to go back to the club with him but we explained we were tired and wanted to go to bed (it was 4:00 am by this point). His parting words of advice were that we should make our show “more erotic.”