Let Down Your Hair
The Magic hadn't left Galveston and I was in the grip of an apoplectic wig-out. The instant the boat opened for business, everyone was herded and bossed around by the voice of the still-disembodied cruise director and every corporeal form who wore a Carnival uniform, running around and into each other pants-crapping mad in an effort to get good seats for the mandatory Save Your Own Life training. At this point, I didn't feel like I was on vacation. I felt like I was starting boot camp, or going to the movies.
The training, which versed passengers on the finer points of putting on their lifejackets, replete with demonstrations from members of the Magic staff, was, mercifully, brief. Upon release, we all continued our vacations at our own leisure. At that point for me, my ideal of leisure would have taken the form of a twenty-four hour prescription narcotic-induced nap, which, no doubt, would have been interrupted by images of a mammoth hamburger, hovering like a UFO just out of my reach, and the hunger pangs that attend them.
My next recollection is of my wife and I meeting up with my family on the Carnival's Lido Deck, where most of the heavy-duty eating, drinking, partying, and nudity allowable within Maritime Law took place. The brain-boiling hurly-burly had ceased, thankfully, and I could focus my full attention on finding burgers.
My stride having regained its confidence, I approached a Carnival employee like a roguish Wild West sheriff demanding the whereabouts of hamburgers. My informant told me that hamburgers weren't available, but that the buffet would be in full swing soon and until then, I could visit Pizza Pirate. Chagrined but slightly, I quickly decided that pizza was not only a valiant second choice but also a damned sight better than Little League nachos. Point me to the Pizza Pirate, good man.
Over the course of the week, I became a late night fixture at the Pizza Pirate, something like its bedraggled, slightly brain-addled drunk regular. The Pirate's menu boasted five or six different pies, but really, its pepperoni was the only one worth writing home about, which makes sense: pepperoni's popularity overwhelmed the others, and its demand ensured its perfection. It must have been Night Four when, during one of my late-night peregrinations to the Pirate, the pizza guy, upon seeing the hat, cocked an eyebrow and so slightly smirked out "Pepperoni?" I'd become a celebrity, at least according to one contemporary definition: a person who has achieved fame in spite of dubious merit. I'd become like one of the Kardashians, Princess Kate, or even Pippa Middleton to the pizza guy, simply because of my nightly binges. I felt some merit in that; after all, the Guinness Book of World Records features a number of eating categories the last I checked, and one of those categories might be very well be "Number of Pizzas Consumed During a Week-Long Cruise." Because the book has standards, there's no category for "Girls' Names Decided Upon During a Giggling Fit." According to one more or less estimable source, my feat could be deemed meritorious. My feat does carry a healthy dose of shame, however, and that's not befitting a Kardashian-league celebrity at all.
The Pizza Pirate's eats weren't the best on the ship (that honor goes to the Fig, Date, and Raisin cake I had for dessert in the ship's dining hall), but they were the most reliable. The Pirate was open twenty-hours, for one, so I could eat like I eat at home. I sampled four of the offerings, and most of them were worth little more than a nibble (some passengers must have felt the same way: one of the favorite pastimes aboard the Magic appeared to be dropping pizza on the Lido Deck floor.) The pepperoni, not nearly exemplary, came out the same way most of the time nonetheless. Some were a little undercooked, others were a little overcooked (which I prefer - I wish they'd burnt more of them), but most came out of the oven with a crust that was crispy from end-to-end, pepperoni with a glistening greasy sheen, and cheese bespeckled with little brown bubbles. The sauce was this side of Italian flavored ketchup, which the chefs ladled on judiciously.
Otherwise, food was a disappointingly hit-or-proposition proposition. The prospect of eating myself retarded on a floating buffet for a week was one of the few about which I harbored little skepticism. The skepticism set in soon enough, as soon I slid into the roast pork. The Magic's chefs have a knack for food presentation such that if you don't like it, you feel like something's wrong with you, so either the pork, delectable-looking on the carving block with a chef sharpening his knife behind it, the steel singing with every stroke, really did taste like a shirt straight out of the dryer, or there was something wrong with my mouth.
Maybe the pork was a fluke. Maybe the food would be spectacular during the rest of our voyage. Everyone I'd spoken to who'd been on a cruise praised the quality of the food to the High Heavens, citing it as a highlight of the trip. I'm certain more than one veteran cruiser has said the food is "to die for." Breakfast the following morning confirmed that the pork was no fluke. Maybe there's something wrong with the veterans' mouths.
I usually skip breakfast because a container of yogurt topped with Grape Nuts isn't enough to get me out of bed; also, at that hour, I'm not functional enough to cook a breakfast that satisfies me; the possibility of my hand winding up in the deep fryer is a distinct one. But, figuring that the ship would have a full breakfast spread, I got up earlier than usual. About the size of the spread, I was right: there were several different breakfast stations, including "Omelets Your Way." I wasn't in the mood for an omelet prepared anyone's way, which was good, because the line extended to the putt-putt golf course. I took my place at the back of one of the two "Breakfast Grill" lines.
The Breakfast Grill featured variety so staggering I couldn't get my head around it at that hour; still, most of it didn't interest me, i.e. cantaloupe. It was still too early for me to contend with cantaloupe. As it turned out, I was interested in only three items: potatoes, sausage, and bacon. I'd wanted eggs, but I didn't bother because they looked like insulation material.
My wife and I seated ourselves near my family, who never passes on breakfast. I'd forgotten coffee, The Most Important Meal of the Day, so I immediately got up to pour myself some. My cup was so full that with every step I took, coffee hot enough to bore a hole in the Carnival Magic's hull splashed onto the floor and onto my hand. I managed to get back to my seat without blistering myself, and when I set my cup down, coffee splashed onto the table, too.
Now fully set, I started digging in. I should have dug more deeply into bed. The potatoes were, in a word, boiled, the sausages puzzled more than they did anything else (there were several varieties of those, too, but, in the interest of playing it safe, I chose "red"), and eating the bacon was like playing a game of Barrel of Greasy Monkeys: I'd pick up one piece, and five more were stuck to it. Worst of all, the coffee tasted like the kind you drink at the office. I would have to make due with coffee you drink at the office for a week.
I quickly discovered that food aboard the Magic was strictly "Let Down Your Hair Night" at the nuthouse fare. After two less than stellar meals, meals of the type only the most famished would risk death over, it was clear that my goal of eating myself into a coma was shot to shit. With that epiphany, I'd also disabused myself of the notion that I was going to sink my teeth into a burger the size of P-Funk's Mothership. I would no longer run around the ship like a fruitcake frothing all over the first staff member I could find asking if the burgers were ready. By then, I'd lost my zeal for burgers.
The only explanation that serves for all this is that the cruise director said "Starve them."
The Magic hadn't left Galveston and I was in the grip of an apoplectic wig-out. The instant the boat opened for business, everyone was herded and bossed around by the voice of the still-disembodied cruise director and every corporeal form who wore a Carnival uniform, running around and into each other pants-crapping mad in an effort to get good seats for the mandatory Save Your Own Life training. At this point, I didn't feel like I was on vacation. I felt like I was starting boot camp, or going to the movies.
The training, which versed passengers on the finer points of putting on their lifejackets, replete with demonstrations from members of the Magic staff, was, mercifully, brief. Upon release, we all continued our vacations at our own leisure. At that point for me, my ideal of leisure would have taken the form of a twenty-four hour prescription narcotic-induced nap, which, no doubt, would have been interrupted by images of a mammoth hamburger, hovering like a UFO just out of my reach, and the hunger pangs that attend them.
My next recollection is of my wife and I meeting up with my family on the Carnival's Lido Deck, where most of the heavy-duty eating, drinking, partying, and nudity allowable within Maritime Law took place. The brain-boiling hurly-burly had ceased, thankfully, and I could focus my full attention on finding burgers.
My stride having regained its confidence, I approached a Carnival employee like a roguish Wild West sheriff demanding the whereabouts of hamburgers. My informant told me that hamburgers weren't available, but that the buffet would be in full swing soon and until then, I could visit Pizza Pirate. Chagrined but slightly, I quickly decided that pizza was not only a valiant second choice but also a damned sight better than Little League nachos. Point me to the Pizza Pirate, good man.
Over the course of the week, I became a late night fixture at the Pizza Pirate, something like its bedraggled, slightly brain-addled drunk regular. The Pirate's menu boasted five or six different pies, but really, its pepperoni was the only one worth writing home about, which makes sense: pepperoni's popularity overwhelmed the others, and its demand ensured its perfection. It must have been Night Four when, during one of my late-night peregrinations to the Pirate, the pizza guy, upon seeing the hat, cocked an eyebrow and so slightly smirked out "Pepperoni?" I'd become a celebrity, at least according to one contemporary definition: a person who has achieved fame in spite of dubious merit. I'd become like one of the Kardashians, Princess Kate, or even Pippa Middleton to the pizza guy, simply because of my nightly binges. I felt some merit in that; after all, the Guinness Book of World Records features a number of eating categories the last I checked, and one of those categories might be very well be "Number of Pizzas Consumed During a Week-Long Cruise." Because the book has standards, there's no category for "Girls' Names Decided Upon During a Giggling Fit." According to one more or less estimable source, my feat could be deemed meritorious. My feat does carry a healthy dose of shame, however, and that's not befitting a Kardashian-league celebrity at all.
The Pizza Pirate's eats weren't the best on the ship (that honor goes to the Fig, Date, and Raisin cake I had for dessert in the ship's dining hall), but they were the most reliable. The Pirate was open twenty-hours, for one, so I could eat like I eat at home. I sampled four of the offerings, and most of them were worth little more than a nibble (some passengers must have felt the same way: one of the favorite pastimes aboard the Magic appeared to be dropping pizza on the Lido Deck floor.) The pepperoni, not nearly exemplary, came out the same way most of the time nonetheless. Some were a little undercooked, others were a little overcooked (which I prefer - I wish they'd burnt more of them), but most came out of the oven with a crust that was crispy from end-to-end, pepperoni with a glistening greasy sheen, and cheese bespeckled with little brown bubbles. The sauce was this side of Italian flavored ketchup, which the chefs ladled on judiciously.
Otherwise, food was a disappointingly hit-or-proposition proposition. The prospect of eating myself retarded on a floating buffet for a week was one of the few about which I harbored little skepticism. The skepticism set in soon enough, as soon I slid into the roast pork. The Magic's chefs have a knack for food presentation such that if you don't like it, you feel like something's wrong with you, so either the pork, delectable-looking on the carving block with a chef sharpening his knife behind it, the steel singing with every stroke, really did taste like a shirt straight out of the dryer, or there was something wrong with my mouth.
Maybe the pork was a fluke. Maybe the food would be spectacular during the rest of our voyage. Everyone I'd spoken to who'd been on a cruise praised the quality of the food to the High Heavens, citing it as a highlight of the trip. I'm certain more than one veteran cruiser has said the food is "to die for." Breakfast the following morning confirmed that the pork was no fluke. Maybe there's something wrong with the veterans' mouths.
I usually skip breakfast because a container of yogurt topped with Grape Nuts isn't enough to get me out of bed; also, at that hour, I'm not functional enough to cook a breakfast that satisfies me; the possibility of my hand winding up in the deep fryer is a distinct one. But, figuring that the ship would have a full breakfast spread, I got up earlier than usual. About the size of the spread, I was right: there were several different breakfast stations, including "Omelets Your Way." I wasn't in the mood for an omelet prepared anyone's way, which was good, because the line extended to the putt-putt golf course. I took my place at the back of one of the two "Breakfast Grill" lines.
The Breakfast Grill featured variety so staggering I couldn't get my head around it at that hour; still, most of it didn't interest me, i.e. cantaloupe. It was still too early for me to contend with cantaloupe. As it turned out, I was interested in only three items: potatoes, sausage, and bacon. I'd wanted eggs, but I didn't bother because they looked like insulation material.
My wife and I seated ourselves near my family, who never passes on breakfast. I'd forgotten coffee, The Most Important Meal of the Day, so I immediately got up to pour myself some. My cup was so full that with every step I took, coffee hot enough to bore a hole in the Carnival Magic's hull splashed onto the floor and onto my hand. I managed to get back to my seat without blistering myself, and when I set my cup down, coffee splashed onto the table, too.
Now fully set, I started digging in. I should have dug more deeply into bed. The potatoes were, in a word, boiled, the sausages puzzled more than they did anything else (there were several varieties of those, too, but, in the interest of playing it safe, I chose "red"), and eating the bacon was like playing a game of Barrel of Greasy Monkeys: I'd pick up one piece, and five more were stuck to it. Worst of all, the coffee tasted like the kind you drink at the office. I would have to make due with coffee you drink at the office for a week.
I quickly discovered that food aboard the Magic was strictly "Let Down Your Hair Night" at the nuthouse fare. After two less than stellar meals, meals of the type only the most famished would risk death over, it was clear that my goal of eating myself into a coma was shot to shit. With that epiphany, I'd also disabused myself of the notion that I was going to sink my teeth into a burger the size of P-Funk's Mothership. I would no longer run around the ship like a fruitcake frothing all over the first staff member I could find asking if the burgers were ready. By then, I'd lost my zeal for burgers.
The only explanation that serves for all this is that the cruise director said "Starve them."
No comments:
Post a Comment