Underbelly of a cruise ship, part 2: it's showtime!

March 18, 8:32 AMNY Underground Travel ExaminerDJ Hazard

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Welcome back, my friends, to the cruise that never ends. In this installment, come take a peek behind the curtain with me, where every sequin is stuck on with crazy glue and every seam is stapled at the last second while you’re being introduced.

Try to imagine yourself telling all your friends that being on a cruise ship is driving you nuts and that you can’t stand it. Try to imagine them telling you, “You must be nuts, you’re being paid to go on cruise ships, for heavens sake! What on earth is wrong with you!”

Okay, you really ain’t gonna take my side when I tell you that each cruise/week required me (or whoever) to work about an hour, maybe an hour and ten minutes. There were three shows to do- the aforementioned Welcome Aboard and Farewell shows and one late night ‘adult’ show.

Now, dig if you will this picture. Your part of the Welcome Aboard and Farewell shows is supposed to be fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of squeaky clean, non-controversial, non-political, non-religious yet very funny comedy for fifteen hundred to two thousand audience members, comprised of adults, senior citizens, teens, tweens, pre-adolescents, toddlers and newborns in swaddling. You’re the last act of a tight little ‘Ed Sullivan’ show, with the cruise director as Ed. He or she comes out and executes a very entertaining opening monologue (which is mostly being performed word for word by every other cruise director on every other ship) and then introduces the acts. The other acts are usually the ship’s singers and dancers doing a number and some nice European husband and wife who are in excellent physical shape and either throw each other around or throw knives at each other. Then you come out. You can't dance, you don't have anybody to throw around and you don't have any knives.

The adult show, a day or two after the Welcome Aboard show, was a midnight solo half hour, where everybody expected you to come out of the gate swearing like a drunken pirate and regaling in all things below the waist. It was expected. Passengers who saw you night before come up to you the following day, "We're going to be at the adult show tomorrow night. You're going to be dirty, right? Dirty? Good."

Now, I am neither super dirty, nor am I super clean. I’m an adult and I make my living talking about adult things from an adult point of view. Ever see the episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk gets split into two Kirks by a transporter malfunction? One is super wimpy, the other dark and evil. Neither is the true Kirk. Know what I mean?

It took sufficient brain bending to neuter and sanitize what material could be altered into a twenty minute totally inoffensive set. Likewise, I had to dredge every scatological premise I EVER came up with to fill the late night adult half hour. Neither was me. Both were forced and half-baked. I never felt good about my performances, although many a passenger would come up to me and be very flattering. The folks from Ireland were the best.. They sensed where I was coming from, and that was with one arm tied behind my back. I have to get over to Ireland. I think I’d like it there.   

Then, over the months, the cruise director department started asking for more time. The reasons varied. Some were pretty fishy. However, I wanted to show that I could be a team player, even though it was contracted how much time I was being paid to do. I would try to squeak a few more squeaky clean minutes into the set.

At this point, I should also mention the travel arrangements to the ship. Theoretically, you’re supposed to be flown to wherever the ship is going to be the next day. Since you’re joining the ship in mid-cruise, that sounds pretty cool, right? If you’re doing more than one week, which is usual, they supposedly put you up in one of the ports where you’ll be meeting your next ship, or fly you back to Miami for a few days before flying you to meet the ship. Miami, St. Thomas, Belize,  St. Maarten- lay it on me, baby.

On my very first cruise, I was to meet my very first ship in San Juan. I was flown down on Sunday night and checked into a very nice hotel that was arranged for me. I got up the next morning, checked out and, per my instructions, took a cab down to the pier to meet the ship.

No ship, the ship comes in on Tuesdays. Apparently, it always comes in on Tuesdays.

I went back to the hotel and checked back in. The hotel said that unless they heard from the cruise line, I would be responsible for the extra night. Instead of enjoying that extra night in San Juan, I spent the rest of the day burning up prepaid phone cards leaving voice mails at the cruise line transportation main office and not leaving the hotel room for fear of missing a return call. Around 6pm, I called down to the front desk and asked if they heard anything. They said, “Oh yeah, they called this afternoon. You’re all set.”

Shell-shocked, I got something to eat and watched TV, just happy to be not forking over the room rate. It never got better. There was always some insanity to the travel arrangements. Once, they actually were going to fly me all the way back to NYC (well, Newark) for a six hour lay over. I called them on that and, after some hemming and hawing, they changed the flight.

Near the end of my fling with the floating entertainment industry, some twenty months into it, I was flown from NYC to Texas to spend the night- in Texas. The next day, I was flown to another city in Texas to get on another flight to meet the ship in Cozumel, Mexico. I remember there being a terrible thunderstorm when we landed.This is one of those airports where you walk from the runway into a glorified hut. The only good part was that I never heard thunder in Spanish before. By the time I got through Cozumel customs, I barely made it to the ship some thirty minutes before they set sail.

Upon being met on the pier by the production manager, I was told that they had a new cast of dancers and singers and they’re not ready yet. So, rather than doing the Farewell Show on Saturday, they wanted to do it tonight (Thursday). None of this made sense to me, but all I could think about was that this was giving me about sixty minutes to check in, shower, dress and do a guitar check with the sound tech before they opened the doors to the theater.

Then he asked if I could do FORTY FIVE MINUTES of squeaky clean, non-controversial, non-political, non-religious yet very funny comedy for fifteen hundred to two thousand audience members, comprised of adults, senior citizens, teens, tweens, pre-adolescents, toddlers and newborns in swaddling.

I was jet-lagged, I was hotel grumpy, I was rain ragged and customs cranky. I told them maybe I could stretch to half an hour and not offend anybody. As I was waiting backstage, the cruise director/host, who was an assistant cruise director last time I was on that ship, ends his set by doing one of my songs! Either he had been doing it ever since he last saw me and forgot from who he stole it or he had gaul. Correction, he had two gauls- big brass ones. I went out there and just did the best I could. I’m pretty sure the stress was affecting my already half baked, now stretched out and watered down set. I'm pretty sure that's when I began to not care.

Next chapter: Dancing On The Moon

Stay tuned, my babies!