Scattered Flurries

So in all the excitement of writing about Evan’s visit, I forgot to mention that there was a toga party. Maybe because after all the excitement of Toga Keggers I-IV, regular toga parties have a hard time living up. At any rate, it happened, and I once again sported what I believe may be a Hershfield original, the poor man’s toga, in which you put one of your arms through the neckhole. Feel free to try it sometime when you’re laying around the house thinking “Man, I could sure be wearing a toga right now.” Just know that the shirt may not be the same.

So on the five-day, I ventured into Grand Cayman for the first time. It’s fairly crazy that I haven’t yet, but it’s our show day, so I like to be fresh, plus I heard it was kind of dull. And it was. But I did meet up with Mike and Megan at the Daily Grind (a good little place for all your internet needs), and we went for drinks. And now I can say I’ve been there, which is probably more than most of you can say.

Then St. Patty’s Day. Good times were had, green was worn. There was a Crew Party, nominally hosted by Second City, so we were working the bar. I did my shift with Mike, me opening Coronas as fast as I could, him making them green. (Though it must be said that many of them went out ungreened, as the crew is pretty international, and the rule seemed to be if you didn’t know what the holiday was, you wanted your beer normal.) My favorite decoration at the party was a Romanian leprechaun Rodney drew. For some reason, it was a vampire, and so I suggested the name St. Vladdy. It was so dubbed, hung on the wall for all to see, and Dragos (our local Romanian) went crazy for it and took several pictures with it.

Then in Cozumel, a group excursion. Rodney took four of us (no Nate) to La Choza, reputedly the best Mexican food around. This was a very big deal, because it was Rodney’s first time off the ship in about sixty days. I know. Don’t get me started.

At any rate, the food lived up to its advanced billing. The guacamole was holy moley, the tortilla soup was decadent joy, and we had fajitas as a group, which were delish. And Ashley played drums with the wandering mariachi band, which was very charming. The meal done, Rodney raced back to the comfort of the ship (not to leave again until we disembark, by the looks of things.) The rest of us went on to Playa Azur for lazy fun in the sun. All in all, a very nice day.

It was this night that I finalized my March Madness picks for a pool run by Allen Morrison. I essentially went with Obama’s picks, as he’s the decider and all, with a few variations of my own. My big success: for some reason, I had a feeling it would be a bad year for Mormons, and based on this, I went against Obama and successfully predicted two upsets, Texas A&M over Brigham Young and Arizona over Utah. My big failure: I went with Obama and picked Temple to win; Jo goes there and it sounds vaguely Jewish, and while these are positives in the grand scheme, I should have known they would not augur well for basketball success. And of course, I needed Duke to win to stay ahead of Simone Bailly, and they lost, giving her the well-earned right to be insufferable. For that reason, I suggest everyone call them “Douche” for the entire off-season. That’ll learn them.

The sea days were fairly unremarkable. I quite regrettably made what may have been the world’s first too-soon Natasha Richardson joke. Ashley and I have been, as all good Canadians do, yelling out “Canadian!” any time a Canadian celebrity is mentioned. And having only briefly scanned the Globe and Mail webpage over the few days preceding, all I knew was that she’d hurt herself on a bunny slope, so I’d presumed it was one of those typical ridiculous Canadian news stories where we make a huge deal out of anything that happens to a celebrity while within our borders. So anyway, we were at dinner, Nate says “Hey, did you hear about Natasha Richardson?” and I quickly blurt out “Injured in Canada!” Oy! The moral of the story, besides “Don’t be a sardonic asshole,” seems to be “Don’t do topical humour if you don’t know the topic.” Since I’m probably incapable of the former, I’m going to focus on the latter. (Or feel guilty; it comes pretty naturally.)

The other “event” of the sea days is I finally started taking advantage of the spa. After 10 p.m., the spa is open to crew only, so we can go down there and hot tub, sauna, steam, etc., all away from passengers’ prying eyes. On the one hand, I’m kind of an idiot for not having done this all along. On the other, I was somewhat consciously saving it, and I’m glad I did. I can tell it’s the kind of thing I would have tired of, but having saved it, it’s a fun little ritual that I’ll probably do every few days until we leave. I must say, nothing brings the mind into focus like going from the hot tub into the plunge pool (which is a nice cold, not a crazy ice cold.) And I should probably take a shvitz, if only because I like saying “shvitz.”

Then a pretty laid back day in Miami. I did manage to buy a pair of drumsticks, figuring to take advantage of having both a good teacher available in Rodney and regular access to a drum set in the Crew Bar. Thus far, I’ve only actually used the drum set once, but I’ve been puttering around in the room fairly often; my paradiddling is coming along nicely, thank you for asking. I also made a point of downloading a fair number of podcasts to while away the remaining hours: CBC Radio 3 for music (it’s an excellent podcast, enjoy it now before Stephen Harper successfully makes Canadian culture illegal), The Sound of Young America for my pop culture needs (thank you, Kevin Lee), and Stop Podcasting Yourself for the occasional sound of familiar voices. All good stuff thus far. I also procured some Gaelic Storm, who I missed during Ships ‘n Dip but everyone’s been raving about, and they have not disappointed. Check ‘em out, folks!

That night, dinner at Azura, where we were introduced to Serpe, a guest of Megan’s. (She is technically a Megan too, but due to our Megan’s seniority, she gets the last name treatment.) She’s delightful, and it’s been very enjoyable to watch the Megans finish each other’s thoughts the way old friends can.

The first sea day, we got a tour of the engine room. It was hot, it was loud, it was neato! I can’t say I know substantially more about how things work than when I went in (it was pretty loud), but what I did learn was fascinating, and the scale of the operation is impressive. To prove this, here is a picture:

Oh, and those are earplugs, though if you thought my ears were bleeding, you wouldn’t be far off.

The next day was Samana, where I did the Mangrove Exploration by Kayak excursion. It was one of those excursions where you feel like you’re being rushed the whole time, but I do like me some caves and mangroves. Of course, the rum was flowing pretty hard and heavy on the way back, which got the passengers all riled up and interfered with my well-intentioned plan to nod off. Ah well.

Then the shows, and a retreat to Crew Bar, where I suffered the first pangs of premature nostalgia. There’s a lot I’m looking forward to about coming home, but I am going to miss these people and this life. But ‘tis better to have lived and lost…

In Tortola, we once again faced the where-to-take-a-guest dilemma of Virgin Gorda vs. Brewer’s Bay, and once again, we opted for the latter. This time, there was not even an attempt at snorkeling, but the upside was that we had, for my first time this cruise, huge waves! Happy, happy, joy, joy! I don’t know if they were huge to wave-knowing folk, but well over our heads at any rate. I alternated between trying to stand up to them and trying to ride them, and both provided great entertainment. One particularly good wave drove me backwards, planting my shoulders into the sand ridge and flipping my body over, an experience that ended with the most public display of my junk since my bris. But damned if I didn’t keep going back for more.

We then retreated to Pusser’s for lunch, we being Megan, Serpe, Mike, and myself. I can’t say the food was bad, because it was certainly tasty, but Serpe bit into a chunk of wood in one of her conch fritters, and digestion problems from my curried chicken roti forced a fairly hasty retreat to the ship. A somewhat inauspicious end to one of my favorite ports, but oh, those waves!

That night, I ended up having an unintended dinner with JAR Fran, unintended in the sense that we both just happened to be at the Garden Café alone at the same time. It was interesting, because most of the people you meet on ships you only interact with in group settings, and it was fun because she’s young enough that you can actually track her growth as a person from when we first got onboard to now. As previously mentioned, nostalgia has kicked in.

In Antigua, I did a Kayak and Snorkel Adventure. The snorkeling was somewhat underwhelming, but fearing I might not get another chance, I polished off the remaining film on Evan’s underwater camera. (You’ll develop them and you’ll like it, Stinkpot!) And I did get a single kayak, which was fun.

In Barbados, I finally got an excursion that I’ve been signing up for for weeks, the trip to Harrison’s Cave. It was kind of sad to miss my last Boatyard (nostalgia!), but it was pretty spectacular. Here’s a picture:

Notes on the picture: I actually turned off the red-eye reduction just before this picture was taken, because it was taking too long for pictures of the cave itself, and then someone asked me if I wanted my picture taken. Murphy’s Law. And the drops all over my shirt that look like stains are actually from water dropping from the roof of the cave. So stop with the judging already. (Although if you were inclined to judge, you might notice that I need new shorts, as, since the weight loss, my shorts often tend to slip below my belt. I smell another shopping spree!)

That night, I discovered that the “four crew maximum can sit together in the Garden Café” rule was apparently being enforced. I mention it only because it’s irritating, especially with me being all nostalgic. Plus the rules don’t apply to Second City (as guest performers), but we count against other people. In other words, if there were four crew members eating together and I was to join them, they could lose their privileges but I wouldn’t. It seems silly to me, but no one’s putting me in charge of anything, and since I have nothing to lose, it’s not really my place to play Rosa Parks. But maybe Norma Rae…we’ll see if I can come up with a catchy protest slogan in time…

In St. Lucia, I did the Horseback Beach Adventure excursion. Somewhat disappointing, but hey, time on a horse! His name was Smoky, and his pace makes me think the name may be because of a pack-a-day habit. In case he finds himself missing me, here’s a picture to show him:

That night, we had our improv shows. They went pretty well: Mike picked me up and spun me around in a dance number for what may have been the last time (more on this later), and in what was generally a strong 1,001 Blanks for me, I found out the hard way that Canadians are apparently the only ones who use the phrase “homo milk.” Live and learn.

The next day, I was teaching the workshop with Nate (me leading, he had the previous one we did together.) I was waiting for him to show up, and he ended up arriving just before it was to start, delayed because Mike had apparently broken his foot (a self-diagnosis that was later confirmed.) He’d been playing soccer up on the sports deck when strong-man JAR Massimo stepped on his foot. It is a major bummer, of course, but Mike is handling it with usual aplomb, and we are waiting for Miami to get him to a hospital and find out exactly what the prognosis is. And on the plus side, if he was Smoky…

The workshop was fun. The new thing I introduced was Animal Characters, which there wasn’t much time for, but as with all the times we give passengers character exercises, there were big laughs, many of the horrified variety. But for my last workshop onboard, a fun one to go out on.

That night, I went out for drinks at Star Bar with Annelise, a JAR from France (ooh la la!) It was very nice, as I enjoy her company greatly, and what better way to ring in a birthday than dressed to the nines with a beautiful lady? That’s right, the big 3-2. I’m still not a big one for birthdays, as it seems to me that celebrating your birth is something best left to emperors and the like, but when on a cruise…Festivities planned for tonight include a group excursion to see Cirque Bijou, a sushi dinner, and a late-night improv jam. And at some point, I will hold my breath until someone peels me a grape.

And now, I leave you with some vaguely racist comments I heard passengers say over the last cruise:

In Samana: (to a guide who really didn’t) “Hey, you look like Barack Obama!”

In Barbados: (in response to a guide talking about the national sports of BARBADOS) “What about your bobsled team?”

In St. Lucia: (to a guide talking about school uniforms being mandatory throughout the country (and to be fair, this one may have been strictly ageist)): “I wish we had that. Maybe then we wouldn’t have the problems we have.”

Vive le difference!< >< ><–>

Before I get into the events of the last two weeks, there are two events I failed to report on around the time they happened, partially for reasons of propriety, partially because they weren’t actually that important. But since I keep reflecting back on them and giggling, I think they bear recounting:

First, there was a security training seminar that has stayed with me. It could have been five seconds long, since the entire lesson was “If you see someone suspicious, call security.” (I suppose technically there were some subsets to this, but lessons like “Don’t try to disarm a bomb on your own” could probably have gone without saying.) Now, I know I tend to be more irreverent than your average bear, but believe me when I tell you that whether it was in spite of or because of the subject matter, it was the most bizarre and hysterical Powerpoint presentation I’ve ever seen. There was the security officer pulling a prop gun on an audience member, there were sound effects between slides alternating between explosions and bullet ricochets (and once, for no apparent reason, a toilet flushing!), and one slide featuring the world’s most infamous bearded baddie spinning the world on his fingers like a Harlem Globetrotter. It was surreal, and it wasn’t until our cast got into the hallway and looked at each other that the laughter exploded and the tears started pouring down our faces. This is the stuff of memory.

Second, I had a great overheard. (Finally, something to say if I’m ever on “Stop Podcasting Yourself”!) A bunch of JARs were talking about how they hate the way they look in photographs, and one of them said “I make a pouty face when I’m being photographed, because when I smile, it makes my nose look wide.” Now, maybe you have to know the person who said it (and know that she’s ridiculously pretty and impossibly skinny), but it makes me laugh every time.

Thank you.

Now, the last two weeks started with a five-day cruise packed to the brim with spring break students. They were loud, they were drunk, and I spent most of the first sea day hiding from them in my room.

Then Grand Cayman, our show day. I was slightly anxious about the shows, because I knew the late one was being taped, and I’ve always had this weirdness about live shows being recorded, or anything being presented in a medium it wasn’t intended for. What can I say? I love neuroses! They’re like hobbies you don’t have to work on! (And actually, this being the third time I thought we were being taped, with one castmate requesting a second taping due to an unsatisfying performance the first time, and the man with the camera getting the wrong show time the second time, I’ve more or less been cured.  Nevertheless…)

This is all background to my being determined to have a good time in Grand Cayman. What happened instead is that I woke up at the crack of dawn only to find out after having gotten dressed and prepared that my excursion had been cancelled due to inclement weather. So I dragged myself back to bed and tossed and turned my way through some catch-up sleep. I puttered around for the rest of the day, and then we had our shows. And for the early show, for whatever reason, the crowd just didn’t seem to be on my side. I actually thought I was having a pretty good show, and I don’t think anyone who wasn’t familiar with how the show usually goes would pick up on anything, but it just didn’t seem like I had them the way I normally do. I was feeling pretty meh.

And then for the late show, with the bigger and younger crowd, I could do no wrong. I couldn’t feel a significant difference in my performance, and maybe there wasn’t one, but for whatever reason, I had them. Comedy: such a bizarre enterprise. And while I still am no fan of watching theatrical performance on film, I’m glad that the DVD I’ll have as a keepsake captured a well-received performance. Maybe something to show my kids when I’m a compromised old office worker, or my grandkids when I’m a crazy, old bigot. (Note: As far as I know, I’m not a bigot at present. But I’m sure most grandparents weren’t in their heyday either, and look what happens! Hmmm…alright, I may be an ageist…)

So after the show, we make our way up to the Spinnaker for the White Hot Party. And no sooner have we walked in then suddenly I’m flanked by a posse of blonde coeds telling me they loved the show and that I was their favorite. Now, throughout my time onboard, the odd passenger here and there has told me this, and it’s always nice. And as a group, we’ve had guest entertainers who’ve spent a lot of time on ships tell us that we’re the best Second City cast they’ve seen, which is even nicer. But to have a bunch of young ladies (did I mention they were blonde?) say that, well, I’d assumed I’d have to learn guitar if I ever wanted that to happen! Good thing I haven’t been wasting my time practicing! So I held court for awhile, in case it never happens again.

It was pleasant and weird. Pleird.

The next day was Cozumel, which was spent quite lowkey. It may have been my last snorkeling from No Name Bar, though, which would be kind of sad. Pretty, pretty fish. And that night, Ashley hosted a goodbye party for techie Luke and YC Milkshake, which ended up being a small, sitting-around-drinking type affair. It will mostly be remembered (at least by me, possibly by Ashley) for my saying “Oh, I’m so sorry I took the conversation about orangutan rape to a dark place!”

There was a context. You don’t need it.

The next night, our improv shows. Vaguely reminiscent of Vancouver, as they were younger, drunker and louder than we’ve been accustomed to. I personally really enjoyed performing for them, as, whatever other limitations they had, their energy was great. I also discovered early on that while they weren’t necessarily as worldly as you might think a college crowd would be, they enjoyed being made fun of for it. For instance, Megan and I were doing commentary for Slo-Mo Commentary, and she said “And there’s Sam Sheepard, not to be confused with Sam Shephard, the playwright,” and in the silent beat that followed, I added “Not by this crowd, no,” expecting to have them turn on me a little (in a good-natured way, of course), but it actually seemed to work.

I also had a very good moment doing Dream. The interviewee was hitting on Mike the whole time he was interviewing her, and she said as part of the interview that she was there because she had a thing for Nate. So at the point of the Dream sequence that she was out for dinner, I entered and said “Hi, I’m Dan. I’m the one in Second City you didn’t want to hit on.” And it killed. Got an applause break, it did.

And that was just the first show.

The second show was even crazier, and the nicest endorsement is that nearly all of the crowd from the first show stuck around for the second show. My personal highlight of the second show was actually setting up a scene. I was getting suggestions for Stage Directions / Blind Line, and no sooner had I sent the three of them out of the room then the crowd started catcalling me and yelling “You’re the sexiest!” Which, of course, I am, but who knew they’d recognize that?!? Then one guy yelled out “You’re bald, ” which gave me the opportunity to pull out an intentionally inane heckler’s retorts, in the proud tradition of Hank Kingsley.  I chose to bastardize Winston Churchill with “Yes, but in the morning, I’ll have hair, but you’ll still be drunk.” Oh, how they cheered!

Another highlight was Bar Pickup with Megan. Sadly, I don’t remember much of what was said, but suffice it to say, it’s a scene I love to do with Megan, and if you’re going to play an innuendo game, this is the crowd you’d want.

And to close out the night, my all-ladies fan club provided me with beers for the evening. Bud Lites, mind you, but actors can’t be choosers.

And that was the five-day. Then the much-anticipated nine-day, because my brother Evan was coming for his visit. For those who don’t know him, HE’S VERY CHARMING! For those who do know him, he’s alright. And though there was a not-insignificant part of me that would have been very happy to have a room to myself for a week, I was glad to have him here.

This is the only picture I took of him, as he was doing most of the photography for his time here, old-school photography, film and everything. So this is the only proof I have that he was here, and it pretty much sums up his first day onboard.

The first night was dinner with the cast at Azura. Some good instant bonding, and either no embarrassing information was exchanged in either direction or I’ve blocked it out. Either way, nothing to report. And that night, he experienced Crew Bar. I don’t remember anything particularly interesting happening, beyond performing a karaoke duet with Stacey from Shore Excursions to Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds.” And drinking to the wee hours.