Buzz Buzz Beez

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Christmas Elves

The new Ballroom Couple are a two person Social Committee, and organized a hall party on our hall for Christmas Eve. This despite the fact that they do not live on our hall, but no matter, it was great to have a party. Each of the rooms was open to all, with snacks and drinks inside. There was kind of a sad moment when the new Ventriloquist who no one had met came back to his room, took a look at the gathering of semi-drunk people farther down the hall, sneered, and went into his room. I was told about this second-hand, and like to think if I had been a witness I would have invited him to come join the party. However, I was never sure which was his name and which was his dummy’s, and also he is perhaps the worst ventriloquist I have seen on the ship, which is not an easy title to win. He not only uses his own voice for his dummy’s voice, but he also moves his lips when his dummy talks. Beth closed her eyes during his show and wasn’t able to discern who was talking to who.

Maybe it was because the egg nog was flowing, but I treated the party as a chance to come clean with a lot of the people who I hadn’t really met. For example, I confessed to the new costume designer that when I had walked into the dressing room earlier in the week and she was steaming the costumes and I had said that I was looking for a magazine that I had left in there, I was lying. I was in fact hoping to borrow one of the costume coats for a video bit Sue was doing. She said that she knew I had been lying, and we both agreed that I should have told the truth.

I spent a lot of time talking to the Former NFL Cheerleader and her husband, the Gymnast, about their wedding and acquiring a green card. The Gymnast is now a U.S. citizen but he was born in Russia (he was the 1990 Russian Gymnastics Champion but blew out his knee before the 1992 Olympics, so was unable to compete!). Much as I had suspected, the movie “Green Card” has done nothing but create a false impression of what a couple has to go through to get one. The Former NFL Cheerleader even said that everyone kept telling her that her husband would have to know what kind of face cream she uses (the crucial question that Gerard Depardieu messes up in the movie). Most of the questions, however, ended up being about living on the ship, so all of their studying was for naught.

The Former NFL Cheerleader is best friends with the female half of the Ballroom Dance Couple, and the Ballroom Dance couple were Maid of Honor and Best Man at the wedding. The thought of a wedding between a Cheerleader and Gymnast Champion, attended by Canadian Ballroom Dance champions, was just too much for me to process. I imagined that the reception was like the end of “You Got Served” (playing on the crew channel today, worth watching if only for Jackee’s reaction shots at the end), with groups of dancers constantly one-upping each other. I asked them all about this later and the Ballroom Dancers said that whenever they go to a wedding they are asked to “do a little something” by somebody, usually one of the couple’s mothers. This request puts them in an uncomfortable situation, because they don’t have the right shoes etc. and it’s difficult to graciously decline. The Former NFL Cheerleader said things weren’t all that different from a normal reception at her own, thus dashing my images of Battle Dancing, except that at one point she looked over and realized a group of her family was watching her new husband drunkenly try to do a handstand on a chair. This story made me resolve to get invited to a former gymnastics champion’s wedding immediately.

New Acts!

We had waited for it for seven and a half months and were finally rewarded with it in the last cruise’s passenger talent show: the dramatic monologue. The actor was a thin-faced college student with shaggy brown hair. We had noticed him earlier in the cruise because he wore a tight-fitting vest to formal night. His slot in the talent show’s running order came about midway through; the tech crew had outfitted him with a lavaliere mic and placed a chair center stage to set the scene. His monologue was from a play called “The Owl and the Pussycat.” At first I thought he was going to recite the poem from “Alice and Wonderland,” because the cruise director had announced he was “performing a monologue, ‘The Owl and the Pussycat.’” I thought that was kind of endearing, that a twenty year-old would recite a poem more commonly associated with childhood, and I imagined all of us in the audience being gently reminded of the need to connect with memories of our childhood. This version of “The Owl and the Pussycat,” however, was a mentally unhinged man’s consideration of the best method to commit suicide. It’s what we in the biz refer to as “dark.” If you were ever wondering whether a theater full of one thousand cruise ship passengers, most of them elderly and a healthy minority non-English speaking, is the ideal audience for an edgy and intense monologue about offing oneself, it isn’t. To their credit, people in the audience were respectfully quiet. One grandmother did escort her four year-old granddaughter out of the theater, and as she walked by me I could hear the little girl ask, “But why are we leaving? Why?” The actor must have sensed he was losing his audience, but his energy never flagged. He determinedly used the stage, perching on the chair and then dramatically crossing stage left, arms gesticulating expressively the entire time. The monologue ended with him running off stage (dramatically) and then saying in a meek voice, “That’s it.”

Other acts included a man in a leather jacket singing “Hoochie Coochie Man,” the Martial Arts Instructor from our improv show singing “Blue Suede Shoes” with a tribute/history lesson about Carl Perkins before the song, a college age girl singing “Astonishing” from the new “Little Women” musical (consensus was that she could have won if she had sung a more recognizable song), and the winner, a man who did a number of very intricate yo-yo tricks. The last act was an elderly German woman who sang “Que Sera” and demanded that everyone sing along with her during the chorus. This was complicated by the fact that she sang pretty far away from the meter of the song and had changed the lyrics to the chorus. She was pretty frail so did not get back to her seat when the cruise director came back onstage to wrap up the show. The cruise director kibitzed with her a little bit, and the old woman took this as an imprecation to perform an encore. She sang an a cappella version of “Shalom” as the cruise director and audience looked uncomfortably on.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Drunky

We do a half hour improv show on one of the last nights of the cruise. We perform on the dance floor of the disco, so the show has a much more relaxed and informal feel. Usually this is a really fun experience for us, but this week proved to be a little more trying. The trouble started during our second game, which is called Pillars. We get two audience volunteers, and the two actors improvise a scene. Periodically the actors don’t finish their sentence but tap the audience volunteer, who provides the rest of the sentence. (Example: I went to the store to buy some (touch) groceries! Hilarity ensues.)

The audience volunteer who was matched up with me was a bleach blond haired woman in her early forties. She was very tan and wore a loose fitting top, white Capri pants, and high-heeled shoes with red flashing lights. I thought she might be trouble because she didn’t really pay attention when I explained the game to her and she appeared drunk. When I went through the example with her, she finished the sentence by shouting “Tampons!” I hissed that this was a family show and menses had no part in it.*

The game ended up lasting approximately a minute and forty seconds. Its brevity was due in part because the woman basically talked nonstop, regardless of whether I had tapped her or not. Paul wisely called it short at the woman’s last line, when I tapped the woman and she slurred, “I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy looking at your ass.”

Drunky (as I now privately referred to her) made a second appearance in our next game, Stage Directions. In this game two actors go out of the room and the audience gives us stage directions for them to perform throughout the scene. Paul had picked up the stage direction “Do a Split” and was attempting to do so when Drunky shouted, “No, no! Like this!” She then ran on the dance floor and dropped into a split, having earlier removed her flashing high heels to do so. Everyone looked at her awkwardly for a second and then the scene resumed and she returned to her seat unfazed.

Our final game was Party Quirks, where the host of a party tries to guess the unusual characteristics of his or her guests. Sue had had a good idea of getting an audience volunteer to play a Christmas present, with the idea that one of the actors could then provide the clues about what the volunteer’s identity was. We were thrown for a loop when the audience said the volunteer should be a martial arts instructor, which required the volunteer to play a more active role in the scene. We were thrown for a bigger loop when the audience volunteer walked on stage and shouted excitedly, “I’m a Martial Arts Instructor! Hi-ya! I’m a Martial Arts Instructor! I’m a Martial Arts Instructor!” That game ended much quicker than anticipated as well.

Our night was capped by returning to the disco around midnight, when the new Singing Duo took over and the dance floor reverted to its original purpose. The Duo was setting up on the stage while Drunky danced by herself to the music playing on the overheard speakers. She then sat down on the stage and started braying, “Dance! C’mon everybody, have a good time and dance!” While this was going on, one of the members of the duo was trying to hook up his guitar to the amp using the cable that Drunky was sitting on. She remained unfazed.

Eventually the Duo was ready and began their set. Unfortunately they kicked it off by playing the anthem for Loud Drunk Women, “I Will Survive.” Drunky lit up and started marching around the dance floor, pumping her fists, and loudly singing along. People were obviously intimidated by her bravado and a little entranced by her performance, so they steered clear of the dance floor. Eventually one of the Dance Hosts bravely brought a partner to the floor, and they tentatively danced alongside Drunky. Slowly, more couples made their way, and Drunky tried to interact with each of them. She briefly found a partner with a heavy guy wearing a “I Heart to Fart” t-shirt, but he abandoned her for a younger woman in a more revealing top. We could only watch so much before we too had to abandon Drunky and we all went to bed.

* I didn’t, but now I wish I kind of did.

Nip/Tuck

Beth, Jordan and I went to Playa Mia in Cozumel again. Jordan and I both climbed up the iceberg (fun for me, practice for Kilimanjaro for Jordan), and then the three of us made our way over to one of the seemingly deserted Aqua Jumps in the water. An Aqua Jump is basically a floating trampoline. We hadn’t been able to go on one before, so we were looking forward to trying it out on this day. When we swam over, however, we realized that there was a middle-aged French couple trying to get on. He was wearing what I can only describe as a baggy Speedo and she was wearing a bikini. She had managed to get a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, but was unable to muster the upper arm strength to pull herself up. He was trying to push her haunches up, but to little effect. Looking back, she might have been Frank Oz in a bikini, because she only communicated by a series of high-pitched squeaks, a la Beaker from The Muppet Show. He continued pushing, she continued squeaking, and Beth, Jordan and I continued looking on in uncomfortable silence. He finally got her up, but not before a prolonged period in which one of her breasts popped out of her top. This was a huge coup for Jordan, because normally the only middle-aged nudity we see is during the ten day cruises in St. Maarten. We tried to let Jordan know how lucky he was as we waited for the couple to finish up on the Jump, but I guess some gifts are best appreciated in hindsight. They soon squeaked and splashed away, and we took our turn.

The River Jordan

Randall left the ship at the end of the last cruise because he has another job with the theater company we work for, and that was going to start before our current contract ends. So we got a new cast member this cruise, Jordan. It’s been fun having someone new on the ship to show around and see his reactions to things we have grown used to. While I did not know Jordan very well before he got on the ship, it has been fun getting to know him on the high seas. He enjoys American History, Minneapolis hip-hop, and will be hiking Mount Kilimanjaro in March. I feel this gives a complete picture of what Jordan is about so I will move on.

Unfortunately for Jordan- and I try not to dwell on this- two of the three cruises he will be on are the eleven day ones, which are filled with the animals as I described in the previous entry. I felt that I might have been too hard on them before, but seeing them up close once again confirmed my belief that they are primarily gross and ugly (on the inside) people. Jordan has been resilient, choosing instead to see their inherent goodness. But I think the rest of us are looking forward to resuming the ten day cruises on January 2nd.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Portrait of an Eleven-Day Passenger

We have noticed that while the ten day cruises are full of fun-loving respectful people, the eleven day cruises tend to be comprised of hateful whiny babies. On our last eleven day cruise, I was in the steam room/water-born virus center when several middle-aged men entered and soon began a conversation. One of them asked the other if he and his partner had resolved some problem they had had the day before. “Oh, God no,” sighed the other man, “That was yesterday’s issue. Roger and I had gone down to get some stamps for our postcards yesterday, and they did this whole song and dance about how it would be “no problem” to mail them from here and how they would “absolutely” go out blablabla. Well, come to find out today that they won’t go out until we get back to f---ing* New York. I mean, Roger was livid. He had spent all afternoon writing nine postcards and now they won’t be able to be mailed until we get home? He was furious.” I tell this story not only because it is going to have bearing on later events, but also because this kind of response is typical of the eleven-day cruise passengers, where their vacation is ruined because their postcards won’t have a postmark from a foreign country. Anyway, I left soon after that because I had to get ready for the show that night, little thinking how soon I would see them again.

The men from the steam room, plus their partners, ended up sitting in the front row of our show that night. They were wasted. I should also mention that the man who had relayed the postcard story was wearing a see-through shirt. At first, I thought they loved the show. Lines in scenes that never got laughs were getting raucous responses, and I thought we were in for a good time. Their slightly buzzed reverie, however, soon gave way to drunken belligerence. We play an improv game called Scene Tag in our show, and I have to get a bunch of suggestions for it, including a line of dialogue that you have said that day. When I asked for this, Mesh Shirt’s boyfriend said, “(Name of Cruise Line I work on) sucks.”* I was momentarily taken aback that I knew exactly why he thought the cruise line sucked and I debated bringing up the whole postcard fiasco, but better judgment prevailed. While I usually take the first suggestion I hear (provided it’s appropriate for an all ages show), I’m enough of a scaredy cat that I thought the higher ups would somehow get upset if they ever heard about it, so I weakly laughed and said, “How about something that won’t get me fired”* and moved on.

Our problems with the front row resurfaced during our next game. Randall, Beth and I were all playing it and it was going fine when all of a sudden Postcard Guy started yelling out the name of the Cruise Director (whom we’ll call Sammy for the sake of this entry). Since he was so far gone, it sounded like, “Saaammy! Sam-MEEE! Sammy sucks! Sammy sucks!” At this point I began to think that this guy had an unreasonable expectation about how the U.S. Postal Service works off a ship in the middle of the ocean. Luckily they left soon afterwards and our show was able to continue undisturbed. And while I never saw him again, I knew two things about Postcard Guy: he loves his postcards and he loves the word “sucks.”

*He said the real swear word. I am editing for content because I think sometimes my grandmother reads this.

*He said the actual cruise line. I’m just trying to keep this as generic as possible to avoid hurt feelings.

*Probably a sign that I’ve been working on the cruise ship for too long. Singleton acts like jugglers, stand-up comedians, and ventriloquists say something to this effect whenever they say something remotely controversial, and when I say “remotely” I mean “not at all.” It’s a hack line and I apologize to everyone in the audience for saying it.