The Ports

St Maarten: The locals call it “Sint Maaaaah-Dane”. This Caribbean island is the smallest in the world to be owned by two different countries. There is a Dutch side and a French side. We took a water taxi to the Dutch part of the island. Endless t-shirt shops, expensive bars, and cheap pharmaceuticals were abundant. I got six months of birth control pills at a local drugstore for the same price I pay for one month at Rite-Aid. I also got 22 mosquito bites on my right calf. (I didn’t bother counting on the left).

I did find a treasure amidst the sweaty and the sunburned... the Church of St Maarten. It was a peaceful little Catholic Church on a popular bar-crawl strip. The holy statues were brightly painted, Dutch inspired figurines, and the church was charming and simple.

Nassau: What can one say about the Bahamas? Steamy? Loud? Annoying? Local crafts-people shout at you to buy their straw baskets, barely clad woman nursing babies on their teats haunt you to get your hair-braided, and stinky old men berate you if you don’t accept a personal tour of the island in their 1983 Honda.

There were 4 other cruise ships that shared the port with us. Over 12,000 tourists and passengers clogged up the narrow streets of the small island. The temperature was in the humid and high 100’s. And there were 3 different marching bands constipating any exit into the shopping area. It was all more than overwhelming. So instead of going to a casino, aquarium, water-park, or shopping, I came up with an alternate plan... I will head to a Starbucks. The thought of yummy coffee, air-conditioning, and free wi-fi were comforts calling my name. But after I waited in line for 20 minutes for a coffee, paid $3 for wireless that didn’t work, and suffered an indoor temperature that even Bikram Yogi’s would reject, I rushed back to the ship! Some days you just can’t win.

St Thomas: This is a US Virgin Island, which means one thing... no roaming charges! It was such a luxury to use my cell phone on the beach. Like most tropical destinations, one minute the sky was clear blue and the next there were torrential downpours. Once the storms passed, we went to what I will describe as the most perfect beach I have ever laid eyes and feet upon! It was called Morning Star Beach and it was a paradise. Lazy iguanas greet you at the grassy entrance. Colorful buildings and quiet little shops line the lush forest landscape behind you. And soft-sand-bottom, warm ocean water spread out before you. It was a sanctuary.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that just about does it. It is time to retire this blog. I head back to LA this weekend. This is my last entry (sob, blubber, weep). Thanks for reading. This has been fun way of connecting with all of you, a creative route to processing this circus-like existence that I have led, and a means of journaling my post-nuptial adventure. I feel thankful to have traveled/ worked with my new husband. I feel proud of the great performances I have shared with thousands. And I feel particularly grateful for the small conveniences that lay ahead. I’m really looking forward to life on land. Have a great summer, friends. Good-bye for now. New adventures for us all...

Small Town, Big Chains

After nearly a year of living on cruise ships, I still find this existence to be odd and surreal. Each day I smell coconut oil on a barely-clothed, bumpy human form that I wish I could erase from my memory. Passengers in fogged up sunglasses, wander aimlessly throughout the ship, bumping into you, because they are lost, drunk, or over-stimulated by the indulgences around them. Every day on the elevator I hear something along the lines of this: (insert thick New York accent here), “Maaaaa, that ain’t the spaaa deck. You gotta go up ta deck faaw-teen. Whaddaya stoo-pid?” Such a pleasure. And when you eat, sleep, and share public restrooms with the same people you perform for/ with, there really is no such thing as privacy. I am flattered by admiring audiences. But sometimes it’s weird. Like the night I was eating tomato soup and noticed a teenager snapping photos of me slurping. Or when I was standing in line to pee and some lady said, “Oh, YOU. I wanted you to die. You were such a b-i-t-c-h.” (I can only assume she is speaking of my Murder Mystery character that was nearly voted dead by the audience that afternoon).

Another unusual aspect of life at sea is that you have very limited daily choices. Do you want to go to big dining room (I hear it’s chicken piccata night)? Or do you want to go to the smaller dining room (also chicken piccata night)? Until now I’d never quite understood why people in small towns felt so restless. Now I know... You have repetitive options so it makes you feel trapped. Even a ship as large as this one already feels very routine. Wake up, exercise, same breakfast at the same Bennigans-type restaurant (cause it’s all that’s open at 11AM). Go do an afternoon show, eat lunch at the buffet (cause it’s all that’s open at 2:30PM). Take a nap, read a little, and do night shows (hopefully eat at the buffet or in a dining room depending on what’s open). That’s my predictable existence.

One thing, that I will never get used to, however, is the noises in my cabin at night. Now, most ships creak and squeak because they are in motion. They might even occasionally thud when they drop from a wave. This is expected. But my cabin makes metal-dragging sounds. Since the first night of trying to sleep, I would wake from a deep sleep to the sound of dragging chains, ala Ebenezer Scrooge. Then, just today, as I was waiting in another miserable Miami port debarkation line, I discovered something hanging on the wall outside of the security office. It was a draft of the deck plan. I located my cabin in the drawing, Room 6005, and then figured out which room was just above us. Lo’ and behold, it is something called the Chain Locker. Upon further investigation, I uncovered this. (See picture above). This is the room directly above our cabin. I am not crazy! The chains are real! And in case you forgot, we are just above the Carpentry Shop! This explains the noisy nights. Note to self: never sleep under a Chain Locker again.

Next and final blog (I swear) is my impressions of the ports of the eastern Caribbean...

That's ent-er-tainment.

Have I told you about our shows? I love them. We do 4 different sketch shows and a ton of improv sets. In the sketch shows I play a variety of characters from Shakespeare’s Ophelia, to a blow-up doll, to a woman who is explaining to a guy she is about to have sex with (Jeff) that she has a Nuva Ring in her vagina. The material is fun and the response is amazing!

Because we do so many shows, we really vary the improv sets. We may do a whole night of short-form improv games. We might do a Pad set, where we get a list of audience ideas and mix them together to create scenes. We might do an Armando (we get a ship “celebrity guest”, like the Cruise Director, to tell real stories about his life and then we do inspired scenes based on his monologues).

The most fun I have been having lately is doing an improvised solo song. I get a suggestion and then make up a song on the spot. It’s often a torch song... about bad drivers or small cabins. But the other day I did an up-tempo R&B about snoring. And last night I did a Calypso song called “Going to the Gynecologist”.

Yes, we are getting paid for this.

Other fun stuff: As always the Crew Staff on board provides a number of entertaining activities for guests. The usual Bingo, art auctions, scavenger hunts, and ballroom dance classes are well-attended.

Some genius came up with the idea to do a belly flop contest in our incredibly shallow pools. Last week we heard “Code Alpha, Code Alpha. Deck 16, Pool Portside.” Yup. The first contestant in that contest cracked his head open on the bottom of the deep end. Vacation memories!

The Crew Staff is also responsible for kicking off the many themed dance parties. The non-dancer staff has to do these intricately choreographed dance numbers that are themed to include Caribbean vibes or “Zuke” (no one, including the locals, knows what that is). They do a 1920’s flapper number in the Casino, and then get harassed by dirty old men. And then of course there is my favorite, FABBA. It’s a fabulous ABBA tribute complete with sequins, shiny bell-bottoms, and open silk shirts.

The dorkiest event on board (apart from our Murder Mystery, which actually turned out to be pretty cool. I know you don’t believe me.) is the Twilight Teen Night in the nightclub. It’s called “Thirst”. It’s a 2-hour gothic dance party for ages 12-17. The nightclub is dark. And they put up this super-cheesy cardboard castle. It’s super gayballs! But, I love all of this corny stuff. I wish I had more nights off to attend these functions. They make me laugh uncontrollably.

I will post one more blog of our final week. I still haven't told you about the ports...

Hanging in there....

In our last couple of weeks, we are making the best of this strange and terrible life. Despite the facts that:

1. We found out that construction in our cabin would not have been accomplished until mid-September. Our contract ends the first week of October. And the noise has reached an all-time high!

2. Our schedule is whacko. We have shows from 12noon – 1AM. We have time off in between shows to almost get something done. Almost.

3. Getting off the ship in Miami is a prison movie reenactment. The port security officers bark things like,” You in my house now.” And “This is MY Army. The honeymoon is over.” I am not even sure what that means... Last week we waited in line for an hour and 15 minutes in the deadly summer Florida heat. We were in line with a progressively angry group of 300 crew members. We were all ordered to take our shoes off, got frisked, and wanded. And there are weird rules like: your ship ID must be in a clear plastic card, upright, that you wear on your shirt, not carry in your hand or wear on your belt loop. If all of these rules are not obeyed, you can’t step foot on land. Prison!

4. Oh and did I mention our toilet hasn’t worked for the last day and a half? Yup. How’s your plumbing? Good? Functioning? Oh. Because you are civilized? Treated like a human being and not an animal? Ohhhhhh... What’s that like anyway?

On the bright side: Our shows are a hit! American audiences adore us. We are constantly stopped to take pictures with passengers. And we make each other laugh as much as we can.

And the food is good! The Brazilian steakhouse is really amazing – steak on a stick, chicken wrapped in bacon, mango rice pudding! The American steakhouse has a dangerously sweet warm fudge brownie with macadamia icecream treat. And the Noodle Bar has the yummiest pot-stickers ever!

We had a celebrity studded holiday weekend with Reba McIntire (the Godmother of the ship), Jeff Garland (the emcee of the Inaugural events), and the Macy’s 4^th of July Fireworks TV Spectacular shot on our top deck: Enrique Iglesias, Justin Beiber, Leann Rhymes, etc... Oh and Andre 3000 came to see a couple of our shows last night too. He’s super-nice.

10 days until we are back in LA!!!!

The Trans-Atlantic Crossing:

After many adventures in Europe, it was time to cross the pond back to America. The course would last 7 days at sea. The good news, we gained an extra hour daily with the time zone changes as we headed back home. The bad news, the ocean was rocky and the sky was foggy for most of our journey. It is a weird feeling to be involuntarily flipped over in your sleep.

We had a mostly non-American audience on the crossing. We were lucky if our audiences spoke English, let alone understood American references and humor. Our shows were discouraging because the material wasn’t getting the response we’d anticipated. We changed the 5 scripts, running orders, and shows every single day. Even now, we still aren’t sure if the shows will be changed again... And we’ve yet to do the same show twice.

Our schedule was a struggle. We were doing up to four shows a day in addition to rehearsals. We all wanted the shows to be their best, but personally I was not at mine. Our room situation remained and continues to remain the same: we sleep apart in a cabin that has temperature inconsistencies in both air and water. Our TV does not work (Jeff likes that part), so I have no idea what is going on in the world, which is not good when you are improvising every night. And the noises above and below our cabin continue to make sleep impossible.

My basic quality of life necessities were unreliable: freezing cold showers, boiling hot room, no sleep, a constantly changing schedule of work that need to be approached with focus and clarity since the work itself was also changing at a constant rate, and a cast of performers that have lost any sense of morale.

After nearly 4 straight weeks of crying myself to sleep, (and by sleep I mean jags of 10 minutes of rest until thunderous sounds awaken me), I knew we had to go. We gave our notice the night before we returned to the states. We were fortunate enough to secure some work back in LA. We had such high hopes and excitement for this job, so you can imagine what a disappointment this has all been. I think we’d be willing to hang on if we knew our circumstances would eventually change. But, we are at the bottom of an endless list of problems. And I would like to sleep before October.

We are grateful for the wonderful travel. And we are proud of the Murder Mystery show that we helped to create, which is a huge success on the ship, and is going to be added to other ships as well. But, we also know this is the absolute best decision for us.

New York:

The morning after we made the decision, Jeff and I woke up very early to run up to the top deck as we approached New York City. This journey from Europe to NYC was the same course that so many of our ancestors had traveled. We passed Ellis Island, and I felt a little lump in my throat. We sailed right by the sunlit vision of America’s favorite lady waving us home, the Statue of Liberty. I’ve never seen her up so close. She is a green beauty. I couldn’t help but try to connect this Patriotic vision to our personal situation. After making this painful decision to take control of our circumstances, Lady Liberty stood there as a symbol of freedom from feeling trapped. As artists, we are so often put in a position to please. Sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves. We have to protect our sanity, our spirit, or we cannot feel the playful joy needed on stage.

After Coast Guard drills and immigration meetings, we were greeted at the bottom of the gangplank by two familiar faces. My Mom and Dad! Good ol’ Jeanette and Dave took a train into Manhattan to visit us, and the ship, for the day. It is so nice to be around people who have good intentions for you.

We gave them a tour of this beautiful ship we inhabit. It is gorgeous: elegant dining rooms, sleek and sexy dance clubs, relaxing parlors, a fun water park, 2 bowling alleys, arcades, batting cages, a pristine spa ... At the end of our tour, we took them to our cabin, and my mom actually laughed and cried at the same time when she saw our cabin bathroom. Again, it’s a shower with a toilet in it! It is laughable. And cry-able.

We had a lovely dinner, walked around the busy NYC streets, and went to see a show, starring the handsome and talented Mr Greg Triggs (in case he’s reading this). The show reminded me of the fun of improv and my love for musical improv. All in all, a great evening.

LONDON

LONDON:

We had 4 hours in London. We ran around and saw everything we could. It was wonderful: charming pubs, ornate architecture, friendly bridges, double-decker buses, glorious fountains, and amazing statues. We visited Big Ben, Trafalger Square, the West End, and Piccadilly Circus. Neat-o, mate!

Impressions of London: amazing weather ( I know i am the only person to ever say that about this city). Gay is the same no matter where you are in the world. And good Brazilian food.

Rotterdam

ROTTERDAM (good food and great subways):

With only a few hours to explore this city, we visited a local café where we ate the “famous apple pie”. I don’t recall ever in my life hearing of Rotterdam’s apple pie, which means it can’t be very famous. But, once I tasted it, I thought it should be, cause it’s yum-my. They also have these amazing waffle cookies in the Netherlands that I wish I had bought a bag of! They give them to you when you order a cappuccino or coffee. And you put them over the cup so the waffle warms up. YUM!

We also went shopping in the City Center and ate at a cozy pub. I had the best salad of my life: A giant hockey-puck disc of warm goat cheese, drizzled with balsamic and honey, and accompanied by bits of roasted walnuts. Oh, and there was a little bit of lettuce to make it seem like it was a salad. It was perfection!

I also got to see a roadside marionette oom-pah-pah show that had giant wooden clogs you could stand in. This was great!

My biggest impression of Rotterdam was: It has the most civilized public transportation I have ever experienced. The subway employees are helpful and friendly, the trains are clean and clearly marked, and even the platforms had large clocks with accurate waiting times for the next train. NY, Chicago, Boston, take heed. The Dutch got it right.