Are You Kamphey Approved?

The work? do I care about the work?  Oh yeah , it’s great work.  I’m sorry I haven’t said much about it while writing this series.  I’ll get to it, don’t worry.  I’m working in live theater. What’s better than live theater? well except for life, there’s nothing much.  I like my little videos but those are like candy,  the meat and potatoes has always been live theater for me.

Enough about me, give me a question or a comment. Let me know what you want to know. I can answer it or I can get someone else who works on the largest cruise ship in the world to answer it for you.  Want to know what the Captain eats for breakfast? I’ll find out.  Want to know who unplugs the toilets when they get clogged? I’ll find out.  Want to know why someone would work 10 hours a day 7 days a week for 6 to 8 months?  I’ll find out.

Keep it tuned for updates on all those questions.  They’ll be answered in one form or another.

We only dated for a month before I left the ship.  We’ve talked by email every single day I had access to email since I went on vacation.  I’m writing this post the friday before I return to the ship.  I hope to continue writing this blog while I’m on the ship for my 2nd contract.  It’s been fun to recount the tales and get to a final point.  I did leave some bits out but I hope I got all the good ones out.

So it might be possible to find love on a cruise ship. It’s not exactly the Love Boat but it’s not that far off.  It’s exactly what you make of it.  A lot of fellow workers have very different views about ships. Some love it, some leave it.  There are plenty of other couples who have found each other on ships.   I really don’t know if this will last but it’s lasting right now.  It’s going on right this minute.  I can’t stop thinking about this girl and can’t wait to see her this Sunday.

It’s a full month that we have together. The production cast is changing and I have about a regular 10-14 hour of work each day.  My new job is killing me. It’s starting to get too much and I keep dropping the ball on so many things.

This girl keeps me balanced. She says I’m doing as best of a job as I can. She sees each and every time the phone rings. She knows what I go through and that I try to please everyone which doesn’t please anyone.  It gets rough but we talk all the time.

Everyone starts kidding me that I’m going out with Sluki.  They don’t even know that her name is Madoka.  Nobody knows that she has a sister who’s married to an American guy and they live in Spokane.

It’s quite amazing really.  I never thought I could like someone like this. She’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. She wants to please me all the time.  She’s kind and wants to make me coffee in the morning.  I can’t get enough of this.  She’ll go and do all of the weird things I want to in ports.

In all my 6 months on the ship, I had wanted to go play mini golf in Cozumel.  I tell her about this and she asks if we’ll go next Cozumel.  Of course we will. I wanted to go all this time and finally someone wants to go.  Of course it’s awesome. They give us a walkie talkie to order drinks at any hole.  The guy is an American who came to Cozumel to scuba dive and wanted a reason to stay so he built a mini-golf course.

I’ve never gone star gazing on the pool deck at night, but this girl wants to. It’s quite amazing.  The girl is amazing, not the stars. There were no stars, too much light pollution.

Two weeks after taking this promotion, it’s not going as bad as it will soon but I’m tired.  I’m getting whipped at work and just plain tired. I end up in my room a lot more than usual. Most times I will go out to the back deck just to see what’s going on but I don’t really feel like it anymore.

So one night I’m in my room listening to Flogging Molly, trying to remember that I’m here to have fun and this work ain’t so bad.  It’s working. I do a little jig.  My roommate is laughing and we’re having a good time.  A knock on the door.  It’s SLUKI!  Oh yeah, she’s friends with my roommate. So she comes in and hangs out for a bit.  I drink a little more and then a little more.

She says she’s tired. But we get to talking. I come out of left field with “you broke my heart.”  Sort of kidding.  And then out of the ball park she retorts with “No, you broke my heart.”  What?  Are you serious?

She says we have to talk. Uh oh, like serious talk.  So I walk back to her room with her.  She asks me who that girl was I was skating with.  I couldn’t tell her I was skating with that girl because I wanted to date her friend.  I couldn’t tell her that the girl was really flaky and didn’t like  me.  I was like “oh, that’s a friend.”

The talking goes on and on.  This girl is really nice. She’s got a real personality.  She says I can stay.  Really?  Gosh I’ve never gotten invited to stay before.  So I do. For the next month.  Until I leave the ship.

The week after the Tom Joyner Charter the Head Stage staff leaves, It’s the end of his contract.  He’ll be back in about 8 week. I have 6 weeks left in my contract.  So what happens? I’m the only one who wants to be Head Stage Staff so I get the promotion.  I’m excited.

All of that excitement quickly evaporates.  I’m horrible at this job.  The main job is to write a schedule each day for the 6 other stage staff that work there. Somehow each and every day there is at least one mistake in my schedule. It must have been me but I feel like I’m also being pushed and pulled in ways I just can’t be.  The first week I’m head stage staff we are short a person so I have to make sure we are covered and I end up taking on extra duties.

It just goes horrible week after week. I get a phone for the whole duration of this and it rings every time I try to take a nap, which is exactly what the last head stage staff told me would happen. This is great.

The Tom Joyner Charter is crazy.  So this guy, Tom Joyner, is a radio host who had, back in the day, a morning show in Chicago and an afternoon show in Dallas.  He would do the morning show then fly to Dallas to do the afternoon show.  He did this 5 days a week for years.  Of course he ended up with the nickname, the hardest working man in radio.

Now he doesn’t have to do that with the wonderful technology we have now.  He of course ends up doing a radio show, and hosts lives concerts and puts together a yearly cruise.   He still works very very very hard and talks a lot.

This group rents out the entire ship for an entire week.  They bring their own bands in to all of the venues. No production shows, no ice shows, no musicians for the entire week.  What we do instead is set up these major bands, and run set up in between acts.

There is entertainment everywhere on the ship anyways but this week it’s about five times more intense.  These are majors acts.  In the Arcadia Theater where I am working we had The Vagina Monologues with Vanessa Williams, And then the next day Chaka Khan, and then two days later Frankie Beverly, Maze, The Stylistics and the last day we had a fashion show with Erikah Badu’s mom, and the last night we had a comedy show with Dominique, Adele Givens, Bruce Bruce, and Mark Curry (yes, Hanging with Mr. Cooper).

But of course Vanessa Williams doesn’t perform,  Chaka Khan is still short,  Frankie Beverly is really old but still hip, the Stylistics were boring and I wasn’t listening to Mark Curry for very long.  I was talking to someone’s mom in the back stage area about the fact that I haven’t had a date while on this ship.  She took my name and email address and said she’s pray for me.

I’m still trying to get a date and end up having more luck with newer people than people who have been around as long as I have.  It’s been 4 months and I seem to be a saltier fellow than I once was.  I feel like I know a lot about the ports and the people who are still around.

People have come and gone.  Some have stayed. I still say hi to everyone I see that I first came on the ship. Especially the people who helped me out.  But also the newbies that we shared our first two weeks of training.

I meet this columbian girl who’s amazingly hot.  We hit it off and I keep seeing her on the back deck smoking.  I’m always there drinking coffee so we get to talking.  We make plans to go into Cozumel if something else falls through for her and best of all we’ll go get lunch tomorrow.   But we make plans to meet up after she gets off work that night. It couldn’t have gone better…

So that night I go to the back deck to get a drink and she’s not there. I wait and wait and wait and get pissed off, and piss drunk. She ends up coming there but with a friend.  I’m pissed but I get even more pissed when she tells me that she has to work tomorrow afternoon and can’t go out.  Oh great so she’s that not into me I get it.

A couple days later I’m talking to a bar waitress who’s from Peru. I make plans to meet her on the back deck.  I go back there and there she is But with the columbian one. Oh no!  Well maybe this will work out.  It doesn’t really, In trying to still go out with the columbian I try to entertain the peruvian girl.  I end up making plans to go ice skating with the peruvian girl.  But I really like the Columbian one. Oh well maybe I can make a good  impression on her friend and you know, girls talk.  So I go with the flow.

Well the day after that I’m in the ice rink and I’m talking to the japanese skater.  I ask if she wants to watch a movie, she says she has Sister Act.  Being the flaming hetero I am I of course love Sister Act so we go back to her cabin to watch it.  I’ve seen this movie at least 10 times and I talk with her about it.  I try to make a move on her but she doesn’t want any of it. Alright, I’ll back off.  So go a little slower, I ask if she’s been out in St. Thomas.  She asks if I can show her around St. Thomas.  Of course I can for a lady.

The next morning I get off of work and have a good chunk of the day to go out in St. Thomas. I’m feeling fine and ready when I call the girl. She doesn’t answer.  Oh, maybe she’s in the shower. I call again a few minutes later. No answer. I call a few minutes after that. I keep calling. Oh maybe she is in the mess, I might have been late getting out of work and she just ran to the mess.  So I call and then I go to the mess. While at the mess I have a bit to eat but don’t see her anywhere. Okay this is getting aggravating.  2nd time I’ve been stood up in two days.

Oh great. So to make a long story just a little shorter I ran into Sluki and find out that she left a message, somewhere, that said that she couldn’t go out in St. Thomas because she’s going to a birthday party on the beach for one of the other skaters, and she’s not into that kind of relationship.  Oh! got it.  So I guess I’ll check her off of my list.

On to the horrible date with the peruvian that I really don’t want to be with. I figure this girl is alright. She’s tiny and excited about skating.  I’m like okay.  So that Saturday night we go skating. Who’s there? The japanese skater. Uh Oh.  Well it’s not that bad, she said she didn’t want a  relationship so it can’t be that bad.  It’s not.  I don’t have a great time with the peruvian though. She’s flaky and ends up having a lot of drama with the columbian girl. They get into a fight over the fact that the Peruvian’s not a great friend or something. IT’s all baby mama drama and I’m not into that.

That particular week ends with me not being any further along than I was to begin with.  I might have ruined having some great friends.

After the back wax and the talent show I think I’m a minor celebrity. But what I come to realize, is that nobody really cares.

The casts in both the Ice Show and the Production shows change within the next two months. Those take up most of the time.  I’m in the theater so I don’t really have to deal much with the cast change in the Ice Show.  It’s so far behind me but I tell the guys that I can help out if they need any help but they either don’t or they don’t ask me.  Either way I stay far far away.

The new Ice Cast is about 90% russian.  There are only two that aren’t russian. One guy from Canada and one girl from Japan.  The cast has a lot of people who have done shows and even have been on this ship before.  The Japanese girl is new to ships and Ice shows. She used to be a competitive ice skater in Japan and this is her first foray into entertainment. She needs a lot of work.  There was a japanese girl in the last cast called Yuki.  And this Japanese girl is a lot slower. I know it’s mean but it happens we end up calling her Sluki.

Two of the stage staff, one of them my roommate, become really good friends with her so I end up seeing her a lot more often than coicidence.

The back wax was around April. The talent show took place a month after that.  Every two weeks we get a guest entertainment act that performs two shows two nights. One Thursday when they first get on the ship and then they still till the next Tuesday and they do another night of shows for a 2nd set of passengers.  It works out that each act is only on for a week but they perform for two cruises.  It’s a way to cut costs, you know.

So the week of the talent show we have this great act, John Joseph and Johnny B.  They are a comedy/music duo who sing songs and have little sketches. Their act is like a smokey Atlantic City bar act but it’s put on the big stage and really are absolutely hilarious.  I can’t even repeat their jokes because they do them so well and in such a serious way that repeating them wouldn’t live up to the comedy they are.

I’m doing this comedy routine for the talent show and in another brilliant streak of idiocy my boss thinks we can put these two guys in a balcony and they’ll heckle the acts.  So we get the microphones.  Only my boss, myself and the guys I work with know about them.

Three other acts go up before I do.  A girl and a guitar.  A dancer and a juggler/aerialist.  This juggler guy balances on a big ball and juggles, he also climbs a silk rope and twists in it and does all these tricks that are absolutely amazing. The whole time I’m watching I’m thinking oh god… I’m going to suck. I also get the idea that I’ll say “he can juggle three balls but just try to juggle three kids, two jobs and a nagging wife.”  But I err on the side of taste and don’t ever say that joke.

On to the show.  We start off my act by playing the back wax video. It’s a little odd I know. but it’s two minutes of good performance art.  It revs the audience into a frenzy. To my amazement it actually works.  I walk out into the spot light and already I’m breaking.  So here goes my act as best as I can remember, at least the good jokes and I take out the terrible tangents that the heckling took me to and I gotta take out the jokes that wouldn’t make any sense unless you were there.

Wow, that was me. When I first got on this ship I felt lazy and fat of course that all changed when I saw the first passengers.

I was really new and getting all of the nautical terms was pretty difficult.  I was asked to get the compass, I almost got fired when they found me at 3am up on the bridge trying to take theirs.

I was talking to a girl in a bar (side note: this is when the cruise director bust out laughing in the front row.  I hadn’t gotten to the punch line yet.  So I say something)
What?  Why are you laughing already? I talk to girls, I swear.
(from the Balcony: What girls?  Your mom?)
NO, Your Mom!

So I was talking to this girl in the bar when I found out that she lived just above the propeller.  so I just had to ask.  Do you like it in the aft?

Does anyone else think it was odd when they showed the tv show Oz on the crew channel?  Yeah, It just reminds us that we live in a place that’s a lot like prison. but did you actually watch the show?  It makes prison life look a lot better than ship life.  They can play basketball every day.  They get good television, and those showers are roomy. They fit, like what 8 to 10 soapy guys?  Of course the only down side is when you drop the soap you get screwed in the ass.  The only time we get screwed here is when we get paid.

Is anyone else enjoying the extra security?  I’m first in line when it comes to those pat downs.  I got farther with the security guard than I ever have on a first date.  At least they use protection, the blue gloves.  But one of them broke last week, I think the guy got me pregnant.

I get the back wax.  But who and where?  So the story goes, One of the techs starts dating a Steiner, a girl who works in the spa onboard.  Over plenty of beer one night on the back deck she agrees to wax my back even though they don’t do it onboard in the spa.  How much? She’ll do it for free.  Where? I don’t know.  I think we can do it in a cabin.  But the cabin would be too small for the amount of people who have heard about this and want to witness it.  Another tech says we should do it on stage. The main stage… in Arcadia Theater!

A month later, we finally have a night that nearly everyone involved is off of work by midnight.  So midnight we plan to meet in the theater.  But wait, Where’s the girl that will doing the waxing?  Did someone tell her?  Yeah I think… she’s a no show… until she gets off of work.  Apparently her boyfriend didn’t tell her until he called her up at midnight and asked why she wasn’t in the theater.  She said, “what?”

It all got worked out. She was on her way and a microwave was en route as well.  The stage was lit up with a table set up center stage.  The cruise director showed up excited.  He grabbed a microphone and MC’ed the whole thing.  An audience materialized of about thirty people.  Mostly the blackshirts, the techs in the theater and friends.

How did it go?  Oh my god, it hurt so badly.  I moaned and groaned and shrieked the whole way through.  I thought she ripped my nipple off even though she was no where near it.