Birthdaymania

On Monday it was my birthday, and the ship decided to dock in Cozumel so everyone could celebrate. We got off the ship early and made our way through the stores in the downtown area. After this, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at a local, authentic, Mexican restaurant.

Following lunch, Paul, Sue, Beth, and I got in a cab to go to Playa Mia, a beach resort that one of the Shore Excursion guys recommended to us. This place was perfect. It had a floating “iceberg,” a large inflatable toy with rungs on its side, in the water and we quickly swam over to conquer it. But it proved to be a lot harder to climb than it had looked from shore. After a few minutes of floundering, Sue and I managed to get up, but then we found ourselves in the awkward position of helping two middle-aged British men up as well. These men were pretty forthright about demanding our help. I was sitting on one of the ledges of the iceberg, contemplating my past twenty-nine years on the planet, when one of the man’s arms shot into my view.

“Here,” he cried. “Grab my arm!”

I leaned over and pulled him up, pretending I was in the first scene of “Cliffhanger” and trying to save my best friend’s girlfriend from plummeting to her death. I expected that as soon as he got up to the ledge, he would try to climb to the top. Instead, he sat next to me and we awkwardly looked out at the ocean for the next few minutes. Then Sue made her way up, and we both helped her onto the ledge. This new addition spurred the man to make his way to the top, a process in which Sue almost took an aqua sock-clad foot to the temple.

After he left, Sue and I realized that we had to get off the iceberg quickly, since the man’s friend was fast scaling the side. Sue slid off, and then I followed, shouting, “You won’t beat me, Forty!” (Side note: I have two favorite bits right now. One is to pretend that I’m turning forty, in the hopes of people saying, “You look great for your age!” The other is whenever a sentimental song is playing on the radio, to say, “I sang that at my high school graduation.” Both bits are met with polite indifference by the public at large.)

After the iceberg all that was left to conquer was the trampoline bungee jump. I paid my eight dollars and then quickly got set up. The man running the whole operation was setting me up in the harness and making what I thought was polite conversation. He asked me where I was from, and I said Chicago, and then he asked me where my family was, and I said Massachusetts. I was somewhat taken aback that he was so interested in why my family wasn’t with me, but I figured that it was part of the Cozumel Customer Service that we’ve heard so much about. But he shook his head at my answer. “No,” he said, grabbing his crotch, “Your family.” Thus proceeded an awkward tightening of straps with which I’ll spare you the details.

The trampoline was much harder than I had anticipated, quickly turning my arms and legs to jelly. The kindly attendant quickly transformed into Bela Karyoli, demanding that I stick my landings, push off harder with my legs, and then perform a never-ending series of single, double, and triple flips (I never really mastered the triple flip – Bela kept shouting, “Flip faster!” – but there’s always next time). Even when I said that I had had enough, he made me do one more double flip before he let me down.

Sue got on next, and jumped for a couple of minutes, but the harness cutting into her thighs proved to be too painful to withstand. There was an awkward two seconds where we were all nervous that Bela wouldn’t let her down before she did her final demanded double flip, but he politely backed off and let her down.

That night we all ate at the Mexican restaurant on the ship, in keeping with the day’s theme. The waitstaff gave me a cake and sang “Happy Birthday,” which made me feel special. In all, it was a great day.

Me conquering 29



Sue doing her Ya-Ya Sisterhood Impression

Halloween (a little late)

Here are some photos from Halloween. We all tried to have a ship theme for our costumes. I went as a Bingo Card, Beth went as a Krack-it (the ship’s scratch lottery ticket), Paul and Sue went as crew ID cards, and Jason went as The Typical Passenger. This pandering had its rewards, as Paul and Sue won third place in the costume competition. Randall had about a million brilliant costume ideas but ultimately decided not to dress up, which was everyone's loss. Our group was in the distinct minority of not dressing in "sexy" costumes: there was a Sexy Devil, a Sexy Angel, a Sexy Little Miss Muffett, a Sexy Cruella DeVill, and a Sexy Cat. There was also a terrifying Mummy Costume comprised of dough and toilet paper that I did not take a picture of, but you would have had nightmares if you had seen it. I have also put up some photos from our Disney trip in the “Bum-Bum’s Birthday” entry and hope to have pictures from my birthday celebration tomorrow. Enjoy.

Paul and Sue


Beth with Harry Potter


Me and Beth; I grew a goatee for ten weeks in late October/early November. It has since gone.


Jason, posed shot

Brennies

I've taken to mentally handing out awards to passengers who I think have done something particularly noteworthy or kind. This can be for anything as simple as holding a door open for an elderly person to dressing up their infant in a captain's costume (which I think everyone with an infant on a cruise ship should do). I refer to these as Brennies, and in my mind, the award ceremony is simple and tasteful with the winners allowed ample time to give their acceptance speeches. Last week I only gave out one Brennie, although I suspect there was a lot of shameless campaigning. We had just gotten back from St. Maarten and were eating ice cream by the gangway when we witnessed a nine year-old girl crying by the bathrooms. An older woman in a black tank top and thick New York accent swooped in and quickly took charge. She comforted the girl, found out which ship she was on, determined the last sighting of the girl's parents, marshaled someone over to said location of last sighting, and then distracted the girl by complimenting her on her braids. The whole thing was handled efficiently and positively and I quickly nominated and awarded her a Brennie. The girl's family turned out to be in the rest rooms and were soon retrieved. When they were all reunited the Brennie winner didn't make any value statements about leaving your emotionally fragile daughter unattended in a foreign country, but simply made sure everything was okay and discreetly walked away.

Beth and I watched the reunion for a few minutes (we still had to finish our ice cream so it wasn't like we were stalking them or anything), but it rapidly became uncomfortable. The mother (who kind of looked like a 1985 version of my Aunt Kathy if that helps you) clasped the daughter to her bosom and they locked in together for a few minutes. The daughter was still crying and the mother was dramatically stroking her hair, her eyes closed as if your daughter forgetting that you had told her to wait outside the bathroom was too intense a human tragedy to witness. The rest of the family stood around looking at them awkwardly, all of them clearly viewing this as a well-worn routine on the little girl's part. The older sister was around twelve, wore a lot of bright blue eye shadow, and had the hardened look of someone whose busy schedule of sneaking cigarettes with members of the reggae band was being interrupted. The older brother just looked sad that he was missing a week of lacrosse practice. But like last week's winner, the Brennies don't make value judgments about who gets helped, they just recognize good deeds done out of a good heart.

Freedom of Talent

The Talent Shows have been especially rich the past few cruises. I don’t know if it’s because the cruises are slightly more expensive so they cater to a higher class of customer, but whatever the reason, we have been the beneficiary. Last cruise a seventy year-old Ruth Gordon lookalike danced to “Roxie” from “Chicago.” She didn't do more than wave her arms, cross the stage a few times, and wink suggestively at the audience, but then she really didn't need to. She wore her hair in a bob and had a possibly authentic flapper girl costume. She was a big hit.

We knew we were in for something special this week because we had run into the Show Band after they had had rehearsal. They were all laughing and wiping away tears and implored us to come. We were hooked. The show began inauspiciously enough with a man in a U.S. Flag tie and what possibly could have been a toupee singing “New York, New York.” A Canadian Woman (and the eventual winner) who was celebrating her birthday delivered a soulful rendition of “Something to Talk About” and then a young man played “The Greatest Love of All” on the piano (you’ll be relieved to know they’ve moved the piano further out on stage so know the piano playing contestants are visible to the audience. I don’t know if this improves their chances or not as none has yet to win).

And then the bombshell. A middle-aged man from New York who kind of looked like he might teach seventh grade science (based solely on the short sleeve dress shirt and thick glasses; I apologize for stereotyping) sat at the piano bench. He fumbled with some sheet music and then announced that he had written an original tune “criticizing President Bush and his war in Iraq” to the showtune “Razzle Dazzle” (from “Chicago”). This information was quickly met with scattered applause and more resounding boos. I am sorry to report that as a piece of satire it wasn’t very strong, and as a piece of piano playing it was even worse. The lyrics were along the lines of “George Bush isn’t very sma-art/ Razzle Dazzle them” and then he would fumble through the hook for an excruciating five seconds. Perhaps spurred on by the sight of an (extremely) easy target, those who did not agree with his viewpoints began booing and catcalling him. They began pretty generically, along the lines of “Boo! Get off the stage!” and then evolved into the angrier (and more retroactive) “You commie pinko!” One person shouted, “Immigrate” but since it’s a homonym, I couldn’t tell if they meant to immigrate to a different country or to emigrate from the United States. He finally ended and walked off stage and we all nervously wondered what would bring the night back on its tracks.

But in a masterful stroke of running order composition, an elderly woman was the next to take the stage. She sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a high soprano and had the peaceful look of someone who had spent the last forty years leading her church choir. After the last performance I could sense how satisfying and thrilling it had been for people to boo a performer and I was tempted to shout out, “Take it back to Russia, you Nazi bitch!” Fortunately, better sense prevailed.

The audience’s healing was completed with the next performer. He was an eighty-one year old man who danced to “Staying Alive.” I hate to throw around words like “exuberant” and "rapturous” but that’s exactly what his performance was. He just bobbed and shuffled around stage for five minutes and it was delightful. The rest of the performers were the usual: an old woman singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and two little girls dancing to “Hollaback Girl (Radio Version).”

I would have thought it would be impossible for someone to still be angry after the elderly dance recital. Yet apparently at the show’s end, when all the performers gathered on stage, an old man in the audience held up his index and middle fingers (ironically the peace sign) and shouted at the Razzle Dazzle man, “This is how many wars I fought in! And I didn’t fight in them so that you could get on stage and denigrate our President!” This is all a paraphrase as we had zoomed out as soon as the winner had been announced, but it was all the other performers were talking about the next day.

Bum-Bum's Birthday

If Sue were to make a Hot List of her own, one of her Hot Pastimes would be Assigning Nicknames. She frequently gives people in the group nicknames, some having a longer shelf life than other. She and Jason had toured with each other for a while before both were on the boat, and she had successfully christened him Lord. She has variously tried to name me Pristine, Sweezer, and Badger.* She has alternatively tried to name Paul Baby Girl, Tender Tinies, and Honey Chile. It should be noted that Sue is not, as one might suspect from such a list, from the South. But the one that has had the longest legs for Paul is Bum-Bum. Sometimes when we are all walking around we refer to ourselves as The Bum-Bum Brigade. There’s even a little song that goes along with it, but that is for another post. In any case, on October 6, Paul, Sue, Beth, our friend Patrick, and I went to Disney World in celebration of Bum-Bum’s Birthday.

Since Beth and I had both been to Disney World earlier in the summer (she with her mother, me with a World Class Magician) we had definite ideas of what we wanted to see. But the day was really for Paul, so we ceded all of our wishes to his own. Luckily, Paul graciously allowed us to select rides that we wanted to go on, so Beth was able to see The Hall of Presidents and I was able to go on the Flight of Peter Pan. Patrick fell asleep during The Hall of Presidents but he can be forgiven since he is Canadian, and the whole thing really didn’t have the same resonance for him.

A lot of special things happened to us at Disney World. For one, we kept on being given a special pass when we stood in line that we had to give to the person at the front of the line so they could figure out how long the wait was. I made a big deal out of this when I got to do it, and I think the Disney Employee appreciated the extra attention. Paul was able to get a Birthday Pin at the Town Hall that forced all employees to say “Happy Birthday” to him and give him a free dessert. A special note: they are surprisingly lax about checking to see if it is your actual birthday. My friend Joey’s sister Abby works at Disney World right now in their Pinnochio Pavillion (I can’t remember the actual name – I think it involves the word “Haus”) and we had made arrangements to have lunch there. Abby and her friend Lauren had taken it upon themselves to write a specialty birthday song when they realized their restaurant didn’t have one. It has a dance as well, and due to its popularity has now been implemented park-wide. We were lucky enough to have a performance by the original creators, and it was terrific. It’s funny and snappy, and if you were priviledged enough to hear it yourselves you’d be humming it for the rest of the day.

After Abby and Lauren got off work, they met up with us and we all rode Space Mountain. They were great guides and filled us in on a lot of inside Disney information, which I won’t repeat here because that’s not really the blog’s purpose and I don’t want anyone to get fired. All I’ll say is Aladdin is a ladies’ man. In all, it was a great way to celebrate Bum-Bum’s birthday and we left the park feeling enlivened and invigorated.

*I made up the Badger one just so I could have three, but the other two are actual nicknames she has tried to give me.

Here are some pictures of Bum-Bum's birthday:

Me with Lauren and Abby, outside of Pinnochio's house


Me completing my duties as line pass monitor



Abby hard at work

Summer Movies

Right now they are playing a lot of this past summer’s movies on the crew channel, and fortuitously they are the ones we did not see at Merritt Mall (with the exception of “War of the Worlds”). I have seen bits and pieces of “Herbie Reloaded” (neither Lohan nor Keaton’s finest hour) and most of “The Longest Yard” (absolutely delightful. Probably one too many slow motion montages of football accompanied by classic rock for my taste but I laughed out loud a lot during it, mostly at the Prison Guard whose steroids get switched with estrogen and Cloris Leachman, who I now think is a genius). But I would like to devote this entry to the snuff film that is “March of the Penguins.” This movie is great if you spend your Saturdays pouring hairspray into the eyeballs of rabbits. Otherwise, it’s pretty upsetting. I had almost seen the movie this summer and my sister had asked me to see if it would be appropriate for my four year-old niece. I think it’s a fine movie for little children, if you’re interested in having them immediately reclaimed by the DCFS. I spent the entire time mentally checking the points in the movie where my five year old self would have had to have been escorted out of the theater and into a hospice for short term trauma care. They were:

• When one of the mother penguins gets dragged back into the icy waters by a seal;
• The extended close-ups of said seal’s snapping, penguin breaking jaws;
• When the young penguin couple hurry through the egg transfer and break the egg, and then have to watch “the ice reclaim the egg” (Morgan Freeman’s words, not mine);
• The extended montage of the horrifying razor-billed duck trying to snatch up one of the penguin chicks as the adult penguins stand by and DO NOTHING;
• The lingering close-up of the frozen penguin chicks;
• The numerous penguin deaths due to starvation, exhaustion, or exposure, and then Morgan Freeman smugly saying how this would mean the chick would die too since they would not get the food the parent was procuring for them.

While I am not a Licensed Zoologist by any means, the documentarian’s work seems pretty biologically shoddy to me. There’s tons of anthropomorphizing, with the narration constantly projecting human emotions (joy, lust, grief, manic depression etc.) onto the penguins. And there are obvious parts where they have edited parts together or are trying to imply something has happened when it hasn’t (e.g., seal attack). While I have no problem being manipulated with images of adorable fuzzy penguin chicks and fat waddling penguin parents, I don’t want to see those same penguins then being subjected to the limits of penguin endurance for eighty minutes. I will be limiting my penguin entertainment to Chillie Willie cartoons and “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” from now on.

Hot List - Fall 2005

As an apology for not writing here for over a month, I thought I would compile a list of the things that I have been doing and enjoying in the month that I have not written here: a list of what’s hot in the cruise industry, Fall 2005.

Hot Fall Jam: Gold Digger, Kanye West Featuring Jamie Foxx. I first heard this song at Matt and Rebecca’s wedding, and it quickly replaced the Hot Summer Jam, Yeah! by Usher featuring Ludacris and Lil’ John. We request it now whenever we go to the Disco, which is rare because the Disco has been moved to one of the Lounges which really gives it a cramped zoo-like vibe. But I think I have now listened to it enough to become a little sick of it.

Hot Fall Read: The March by E.L. Doctorow. I bought this book at the Border’s in KOP (I ain’t afraid to pay full price). Even though I’ve been reading it for over a month and still have sixty pages left, I heartily recommend it. It’s terrifically written and entertaining, and concurrently makes you grateful that you didn’t live in the 1860’s and depressed that you’ll never know as much about the Civil War as E.L. Doctorow.

Hot Video Game: Ms. Pac-Man. Beth hooked up her Game Cube and I have been able to reconnect with my love of dot games. In elementary school, we had a Texas Instruments computer/gaming system, aka The Poor Man’s Atari (I’m saying this not because we were poor – which we were, desperately so - but just because all of their games were bastardized versions of Atari and Colecovision games). TI’s version of Pac-Man was called Munch-Man, which I was really good at in first grade. Its last level, the 20th, had an invisible maze that was particularly thrilling to navigate. I am happy to report that my skills have not lessened in the succeeding years, and I was able to make it as far as the Pear Board on Ms. Pac-Man yesterday.

Hot Season Ones: “Lost” and “Veronica Mars.” Lost played on the crew channel and we were all hooked. None of us (except Randall, who was able to keep quiet after an ugly Harry Potter spoiler incident) had seen the show last year so we would tensely await each day’s episode, spending entire meals silently wondering whether Jin would ever get over himself and forgive Sun. It just ended and so now we’re trying to avoid any spoilers from Season 2, which was successful until the character who was just killed was mentioned in the scroll on CNN, which caused me to cry out in frustration, which caused Beth to look over from the computer, so now it’s ruined for both of us.

I bought Season One of Veronica Mars at the Plaza las Americas (a pretty good mall, but no KOP, but then what is) in Puerto Rico. I had seen one and ¾ episodes (including the season finale where she discovers who raped her and murdered her best friend) last spring and knew I would be a fan. Despite knowing the outcome, I enjoyed every episode (except maybe the one about her pregnant upstairs neighbor). I leant the dvds to the cruise staff and they’re currently playing them on the crew channel. Part of each day is now spent in a detailed study of each episode and hoping that the predominantly Phillipino crew has likewise fallen under the spell of the spunky girl detective from Neptune, California.

Hot Past time: Speculating. While we do interact with other crew members, our main social network is the six of us. This close-knitness is great, but it means that our conversation topics are exhausted pretty quickly. We have thus taken to taking small bits of knowledge and then making wild speculative leaps with them. Here are a sampling of some of the things we’ve conjectured with absolutely no factual basis: that the lead dancer and the new international hostess are dating since they were seen together twice in the same day; that they probably knew each other before they got on the ship since they got together so soon after she arrived; that one of the Guest Entertainers is lying when he says that his wife is a private investigator, that he ran marathons, that he used to smoke, and that it’s no problem for him to lose 20 pounds quickly; that one of the new maitre’d’s has had a lobotomy; that another of the Guest Entertainers wasn’t really on Broadway as she claimed and that her condo didn’t actually suffer damage from Hurricane Wilma; and that the new German Juggler’s show is actually a children’s show called “Heinrich and the Missing Beans.”

Cherish Your Friends!

This is very delayed, but I thought I should recount it. At the beginning of October, Paul, Sue, and I woke up early and made our way to the Nassau airport so we could fly to Philadelphia to go to our friends Matt and Rebecca’s wedding. I’ve had to fly out of Nassau twice before, and each time has been a stress-filled departure, on account of how difficult it is to catch a cab at an early hour of the morning. You inevitably spend all the free time you have not catching a cab you spend worrying about how you’re going to get your throat slashed by dock riffraff or get raped by one of the homeless three legged dogs that make their home by the Nassau seaside. But this was not the case that morning. We got into a cab where the air-conditioning was high and the Junkaroo tunes were jamming. All signs pointed to a pleasurable travel experience.

When we arrived at the airport, we had time to spare. I think a woman cut me in the customs line, but I was like, no worries, we’re here so early everyone can get ahead of me. Sue and I enjoyed a breakfast of eggs and grits and we settled in to read the local paper. The paper was essentially a church newsletter as its cover story was about an evangelical actress who performs at conventions and office parties as an elderly alcoholic woman who professes the Good Word. My guess is that she’s the female Bahamian Tyler Perry. It also had an editorial that admonished readers to cherish your friends, and then listed the names of some of his own friends, which I think is a little defensive. If you have to write a newspaper column to prove you have friends, than maybe you don’t have very good friends in the first place.

Our flight time approached and we all noticed a curious lack of announcements telling us to board, or any evidence of a plane on the runway. I went over to investigate and was told that the plane had to have some mechanical operation performed, which I reported to Paul and Sue. But then the flight got cancelled, which was announced over the airport’s loudspeaker. I have this somewhat ungrounded fear that I’m losing my hearing, and the Nassau airport sound system does nothing to alleviate that. Everything that’s filtered through their speakers sounds like the garbled voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher, only at 300 decibels (I have no idea if 300 decibels is really loud or not, because I can’t recall how loud a decibel is, so just go along with it if you’re a licensed audiologist or something. Mainly, this is a note to my sister telling her that I know I’m probably wrong and she doesn’t need to publicly correct me).

The passengers reacted as passengers always do when their flight gets cancelled. Our bloodthirstiness was only spurred on by the indifference of the clerks behind the counter, who processed each request with a cool and unapologetic helplessness. Somehow we figured out that we were supposed to go to different airline counters, see if they offered a flight that we could transfer to, get the transfer paperwork filled out at our airline, and then go back to the new airline counter and hope that the seat we were trying to get hadn’t been taken by another savvier passenger. But Paul, Sue and I worked as a well-oiled machine, holding places in lines, securing flights, and beating off other passengers. We finally found a direct flight to Philadelphia (we had a transfer beforehand, so this was an upswing of luck for us – cherish your friends!) and a few hours later found ourselves in the midst of our friends from Chicago, relaying our travel ordeal. I was going to say I’m always bored by people telling bad travel stories and zone out when they tell them, but then realized I had just written a page-long one myself, so I apologize.

The wedding was a blast. They had a chocolate fountain, which was the best thing ever. If my parents are reading this I would like to have a chocolate fountain for when I come home in January. I can’t really remember too much from the wedding now except that our friend, Jen, who is pregnant, was jamming out to “Gold Digger” (see upcoming “Hot Entry”), and we spent a lot of the next day brainstorming names for her (and her husband Bumper’s) baby, which was really entertaining.

Saturday morning we woke up early and went to The King of Prussia Mall (henceforth known as KOP mall). My sister went to college near there so when I called her and told her where I was, she said, “What are you doing at KOP?,” which clued me in to its hipper nomenclature. Being away from malls for six months really makes you appreciate them when you have the chance, and we took full advantage of all of KOP’s bounties.

We met Sue’s college friend Katie and her daughter Maggie for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (I might have switched the names and Katie is the daughter and Maggie is the mother, so please forgive me if you’re reading this Katie/Maggie). Katie told this great story which I’m not going to repeat here because I would use it if I ever write a spec script for “Desperate Housewives.” I can tell you it contained some of my favorite storytelling tropes: divorce, deception, betrayal, former sorority presidents, and redemption.

In all, it was a great weekend full of teamwork, laughs, reunions, and pregnant women. We came back to the ship Sunday afternoon refreshed and rejuvenated. If nothing else, it taught me to cherish my friends.