"At Sea"

9/23/07
12:35am
At Sea, Seattle to Vancouver

This will be my blog which I will update as I am able so that any who desire can keep up to speed on what I’m doing while I’m at sea. (“At Sea” is still such a strange term..when I wrote down my location as “at sea” I had a momentary flash of…not fear but almost claustrophobia. I got over it quickly though.

There is so much to say. This place is amazing. On many occasions today and tonight I just looked around at the people I was with and the place we were all at and just wondered to myself how the hell I got so lucky. I am ecstatic, excited, a little nervous about kicking rehearsals into high gear, but overall just giddy at the thought of being on this ship. I think I will explain the following things:

-The ship itself: my room, ship layout, special attributes on board.
-My/Second City personnel’s privileges
-The people I’m working with and are on the boat with me
-The show itself

1. The ship.
The ship is large. It has 13 decks. The first four are crew decks and the rest are passenger decks. All four of SC’s rooms are on deck 10. Currently and for the next week or so I will be in my own room – a double bedroom all to myself. The roomis about the width of three twin-sized mattresses (two on each side and the space of one in between). There is a small tv, a mini-fridge, a closet, a bathroom with a shower, a few mirrors, a nightstand, and a pull-down bed on the wall for a third guest. It’s actually pretty spacious…I doubt I will feel cramped living with another person here.
There are 14 restaurants on board. The free ones are a grill, a buffet, 3 traditional restaurants that offer only a few selections on the menu but they switch every day, a texmex place, a café, an itallian place, and maybe another. There is a steakhouse with all you can eat for $20, all you can each sushi is $15, there’s a Teppanyaki room (where they guy comes to your table and like cuts shit up and cooks it right there for you) for some amount of money probably $20, and a French cuisine place for $15.
Here’s an example of my (free) dinner tonight: Caesar salad. Grilled Tillapia with a cream sauce. Roasted potatoes, cauliflower in a light cheese sauce, and some prime rib. For dessert I had chocolate cake, some of my friend’s berry crepe and a chocolate ice cream cone. One thing: soda, most juices and alcohol cost extra so I had water.
The theatre is humongous…it seats about 1100. It’s state of the art with lots of technical things I’m not myself yet aware of but there are balconies we can access from backstage and perform in, plush seats that are super comfy, a rotating les-miz stage (which I know in the past has been lampooned)..and prob a lot more. There is weird, mostly over-the-top and slightly cheesy artwork everywhere but sometimes it’s very nice. There’s a casino that I’m not allowed to gamble in that has a pretty good assortment of slots and tables. There is a library. At the top-front of the ship there’s a pool, two waterslides and probably about 7 small hot tubs scattered about. There is a workout facility and a spa that has another hot tub, a massage tub, pool, sauna and steam room. There is also a basketball/volleyball/soccer court and an outdoor jogging route on the top deck. There is a video game arcade that I haven’t checked out yet but I’m sure I will in a day or two. An internet café is right downstairs from me. There are 13 bars and/or lounges that I can go to for a drink or to catch some music. Basically it’s a floating palace and I feel much like a prince on board.

2. Privileges. I have free room service if I’m too lazy to walk 50 feet to the restaurants. Maids clean my room every day and second city refunds the tips I need to give for that. I mentioned it before but most restaurants are free. I am technically a crew member with guest privileges so I can use the crew only areas to get around which are often faster and more efficient. The workout facilities and spa area are free for me. I pay 1/4th the price of internet that regular passengers pay (however I still pay $6/hr. and it’s slow I’m told.) Most well drinks and common bottles of wine and beer are half off. Laundry is free. However apparently there is going to be a change very soon that will make me considered a passenger and not a crew member, so the crew only areas may become off-limits and it will be difficult to make friends with the crew. We are not sure about this yet so I’ll update but for now in the interim I pretty much get the best of both Crew/Passenger worlds.

3. People I'm with.

Literally almost everything people say is a bit…we love and support each other but mostly we just rag on each other and top each other. For me this mostly means I giggle a lot, fall for some of their jokes because I’m so gullible and every once in awhile pull out a good comeback/topper. These are the most hilarious people in the world and I have to struggle not to laugh constantly when I’m around them. It’s so refreshing to have a real posse like this…and they feel like equals which is really the best part. Even though my nicknames are “22” and “first job!!” I do feel like they respect me and think of me as an equal.

4. The show itself
My job on board is to perform a 50 minute sketch review twice per cruise, a 45 minute improv set twice per cruise, and help teach at least 2 improv workshops a cruise. For this I get paid very well (I won’t put it here but if you’re curious enough you can ask) and almost all of it goes straight to the savings…my monthly expenses are looking to be about $400, absolute total counting all booze I’ll buy during that time. But anyway. The show itself…I’m mostly a music director but I’m also a bit of a sound designer – I run a mixer during the sketch show with pre-recorded music on my iPod for scene changes and sound effects on their CD player as needed. Often it is hectic…playing piano while I’m fading out a piano cue or anything. But it’s great. The show is simple: there is only one song which itself is a gigantic bitch to learn cause it’s an improv song so words are confusing and it’s really also like 8 small songs in one…it’s called Dream Song 2. But yeah basically once I learned that the rest of the whole show seems smoothe sailing to me.

5. Immediate plans.
I’m super tired so I’m gonna sleep, but this is good for now I hope I get this onto the internet soon! I am going to Vancouver, then Port Victoria, then Seattle, San Francisco on the 27th and finally LA sailing south to Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Zihoantnegro and back which is the main trip I will be doing for at least 85% of the time.

I will talk to you in the future! Let me know how you guys are as things come up. But yes…know that I am ecstatic about my new job and I could see myself doing it for quite some time. Peace!!