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.”