July 13, 2011

SEADAY enroute to COZUMEL

Woke up feeling much better today. It’s amazing how your outlook improves on proper sleep. I haven’t really made any connections with Cruise Guests this cruise, but then I’ve been sick most of it. It is actually the 14th now, so I will have to write these past two days out before I forget everything. They have been packed days.

As I said, I was feeling better, (this will be in past tense since it is now early morning on the 15th), and the day started off well. Two events of the day stick out in my mind. Bingo and another karaoke night.

The plan is we make commission of bingo sales. By sales, I mean the sale of hard cards and bingo machines. These are fully automated. I like to call them the ultimate in Cruise Bingo. They are preloaded with 30 cards per game. We play four games at each session, and the games take place in the large theatre, the Opal. That means that there are 120 chances to win bingo with the machine. They are large, clumsy and very smooth, plastic handheld devices that display the bingo cards in rotation. This machine will automatically mark the numbers, and all you have to do is hold the machine in one hand, and your drink in the other…that is seriously all you do. This is confusing for some people. They question me all the time:

“What buttons do I push?”

“None”

“So what do I do?”

“Hold it”

“And I push a button to change the game cards?”

“No."

“This sounds complicated…I’ll take the hard card that gives me six chances and I have to follow along and push the numbers out.”

“Yes Ma’am/Sir”

Along with the machines we were offering, for a certain amount, a plush, stuffed seal called Ringo the Bingo Seal. If you bought him you could bring him back to the rest of the games and get three free chances at the jackpot bingo, which is a rolling jackpot that grows through the cruise and is always the last game played. On the red colored card.

“Can I play that on the green card?”

“Only if you want to lose Ma’am/Sir…”

Well the money made from the Ringo sales is supposed to go all to us, but it was proving impossible to sell them. No one wanted a blue, plush, stuffed seal laying across five blocks with the letters B-I-N-G-O and wearing a crown. Hence, we had bags of them.

So there we were setting up for the game, over one hundred machines, all the cards, the desks, the Point of Sale wireless devices, the printers for receipts, etc. TT, our Turkish Cruise Staff member, playfully hurls a bag of blue, plush, stuffed Ringos at my the back of my head. I jump up and he starts running. Naturally, I took off after him. I can move fast when I want to, and though he had a head start I quickly caught up with him as we tore across the mezzanine level of the theatre, rounding the arc towards the stage. At the last minute, he takes a sharp left, down the stairs to the main level. I hurl the bag of blue, plush, stuffed Ringos, peg him in the back of the head…and realize I am heading straight towards a groin level wood wall at full speed.

With a loud, incoherent yelp of anticipatory pain I manage to lift myself enough in the air to merely impale my upper thigh and brush the….ummm…cojones, It was enough at full speed. With my mouth in a silent “O” of agony I crumpled to the floor.

I could hear nothing but the crashing of the ocean waves….no, that was not waves, just waves of laughter from the team members who had witnessed the whole thing.
For the reminder of the hour as Hettie called the bingo balls, and various winners yelled “BINGO!”, the team took great pleasure and derived vast amounts of humor out of watching me limp slowly, up and down stairs, up and down the ramps, mic in hand, to verify the winners or run errands.

Up next was the Dreamworks Parade….and dancing on the Promenade. No ice. No rest. Just numbing pain and a beautifully Technicolor bruise on my upper thigh and….
And so the day went along. Event after event…until another round of karaoke.

No contest this time, just plain old karaoke, with alcohol. Let me tell you a bit about the previous night’s karaoke. The stand out, though there are many to choose from, had to be the young man who I swear was the page 6 of the Ralph Lauren Spring Catalog. He was Prep personified. Blue and white seersucker jacket, green and white striped button down oxford shirt, emerald green golf slacks, and blue and green canvas LL Bean boaters. Blond hair, of course…with a prep wave in the front, nonchalantly tossed with his fingers.
What did he sing, I hear you ask? Nothing but Hip Hop! Badly. His name matched his outfit…Clifton. He coup de grace was singing Beyonce’s “All the Single Ladies”! Badly.
This boy was so white, he made me look like a ‘homey”. I felt positively from the ‘hood.
No, he did not appear this evening, but I had made friends with a black couple that night and we had shared more than one laugh at the white boys singing Hip Hop, and they knew I was hosting it again, so they showed up. I am SO glad they did. They were witnesses to an event that almost beggars description.

As a whole, the singers were much better than the previous night. About half way through the evening, after I had already seen my friends sitting in the back row of the On-Air Bar, where the karaoke takes place, I call up a gentleman in the rotation. A man in his late twenties walks up, impressively tailored in a grey suit, tie, white shirt, perfectly polished brown shoes and slicked back black hair. He appears to be a Mediterranean, or Latin ethnicity. I ask where he is from.

“Brooklyn”

“And what are you going to sing for us tonight?” (I am expecting some cabaret standard, or Sinatra, something smooth and jazzy).

“Celine Dion’s ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’”

My eyebrows go up. Interesting. Only an accomplished singer will try to belt that one out. Meatloaf songs are not easy. I am expecting great things from this guy. “Impressive. A Power Ballad. Hit it!” I say, as I walk away to the first strains of the music. I head off towards the DJ booth to the left of the stage and I hear an astonishing sound where a lyric and tune should be. It is unlike anything I have ever heard before. More like a squawk than anything else. I turn quickly around, thinking “he must be joking around”. No. Sadly, no. He is intently watching the words on the screen and emoting.

I look around the packed room. In unison, all 100-odd people have their jaws on the table in stunned disbelief. He continues to sing in a fashion that can best be described as the poor penguin’s attempts in the movie “Happy Feet”. You may not have seen this movie. The plot of the story is that all penguins have a song that comes from the heart, except for this one penguin who has no voice, but an astonishing range of metal bending tones. This will give you some idea, though a faint one of what lay in store.

He starts to really get into it now as the Power Ballad builds it power. I realize that this is one of the longest songs in the pop repertoire, only equaled or surpassed by the inimitable “American Pie”. In desperation I have high-tailed it to the back of the room, hiding behind a pillar, but right in front of the couple I had met the previous night. They sit in stunned disbelief. I am crying with laughter. Normally, when someone hits a bad note, I smile and clench my butt cheeks together. They are working now as though I were in a gym. Tone after crunching tone comes through the speaker. Squeeze after squeeze my cheeks work like a male Kliegl exercise.

People are groaning, but beginning to laugh. They can’t help it. Onward, he perseveres. I take a sip of my water to mask my features…and he goes for a high note…of some other song apparently, because this note was nowhere to be found in Meatloaf’s score. Choking, I cough and begin to laugh harder. I can’t even look at him. Everyone is laughing now. Crescendo after crescendo, note after note, I am crying I am laughing so hard.

Do you remember the film, “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? Where Cameron Diaz’s character is in the karaoke bar and singing so badly that eventually she gets the crowd on her side and they cheer her on? It is a moment echoed in the phenomenon of William Han, from the first season of American Idol. Someone who is so unutterably and unabashedly bad, that you can’t help but root for them.

The same thing happens here. The laughs of derision become cheers and laughter of support. We are now to the penultimate moment, the Power of the Power Ballad, the Big Finish. Again, one wonders what song he is singing, and how the human throat is capable of producing this quality and range of sounds. I think of Simon Cowell, and how he would have wept for the chance to hear this singer and throw his caustic sarcasm at his feet.
I can no longer breathe.

There are small puppies in Cozumel, a port we have yet to reach, that are crying out in answer to the frequencies he emits.

The song comes to its quiet end…and the room erupts in applause and cheers. He has finished.

Gasping, I make my way back to the stage. Yes, we have been laughing at him, so I feel it is incumbent upon me to make a statement.

“Ladies and Gentleman”, I say, “there is nothing braver a person can do, not fighting for your country, not braving bullets, than to stand on a stage, under the lights, microphone in hand in front of people you don’t know…and sing.”

Loud applause and cheers.

“Sir, you have proven your bravery….and you never need to do it again. Please.”

CURTAIN.

The video of this memorable performance is on the video tab.