Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 6

Cozumel!

We descended upon Cozumel early, along with the rest of the ship.  Cozumel was the shortest of the three excursions; we had to cram beach-going, eating, and shopping, among the more notable activities, into several hours.  Being stranded in Conzumel was a more promising prospect than being stranded in Honduras, and decidedly more so than being stranded at sea aboard the Magic, a prospect that must have been in the back of every passenger's mind.

They know how to feed a guy in Conzumel, for one.  The passengers were treated to a nice spread, gratis, at the resort, to which we were all bussed en masse.  The food was expertly prepared, and gave stiff competition to the Magic's  Mongolian Wok and burritos for the week's best lunch.  All drinks were also on the house.  My wife enjoyed a piña colada that she said was suitable for all ages.  Evidently, Cozumel hadn't learned the practice of nickel and diming its visitors, one the Magic elevated to a high art.

Photo opportunities were rare for the duration of our trip.  There wasn't much to take pictures of on the ship, and the best opportunity in Honduras was $15 nachos.  I was starting to worry.  Cozumel's shops put my fears to rest.

Throughout the trip, my wife and I had managed our money well.  Our most extravagant expenses before reaching Cozumel were a carton of Kools, a couple of cups of good coffee, and the occasional tip to Magic staff members.  One gentleman, upon receiving $5 for bringing us sandwiches early in the morning, called his children back home.  We took leave of our senses in Cozumel.

If you walk around long enough in Cozumel, it's inevitable that you're going to trip on a sombrero.  I did, and then I put it on my head.  Everyone in my family with a camera began snapping pictures of me like they were Japanese tourists.  My mom's picture was my Facebook profile picture for a week.  She captioned the photo, "We brought this home with us," which was no mean feat.  Sneaking back fruits, vegetables, and animals carries stiff enough penalties.  I can't imagine what awaits a mother who brings back her son from Mexico in a sombrero.

The subject of most of my photos was the amusing signs in the shops of Cozumel.  Some were amusing merely by dint of misspelling, while others were more ominous.  One sign read, "We have surveillance cameras for security reasons."  This sign appeared most prominently beneath the shelves of vanilla, and was sternly phrased enough to put any notions of my shoving a bottle of the stuff down my pants to rest, yet no less amusing than the other signs.

Back on the ship, due back in Galveston within a day and a half, my wife and I decided that the rest of the trip should be as relaxed and free of fuss as possible.  The only things left to do were to get in the hot tub and smoke the nice Cuban cigar we picked up in Cozumel.  My parents wanted to eat in the dining room again, but we declined because we'd learned by Day 3 that the food there was largely not worth getting dressed up for, with the exception of dessert.  The fig, date, and cinnamon cake is one of the few things I'll dress up for.

Later that night, we settled in to check out Asian Led Zeppelin when I spotted the karaoke binder.  As big as Lincoln's tombstone, surely there was something in it I had to perform.  I was spoiled for choice.  There was greater selection than there was at the buffet.  I'd performed "Under My Wheels" by Alice Cooper in the shower to the point at which I'd practically perfected it.

Check It Out - It's Dr. Love!

Great tune that it, the Coop's was still too Brill Building for what I was cooking up.  I needed a song that would make a more definitive statement.  I'd been subject to the manifold forms the cruise director took (by then, in the flesh by the waterslides even), fat kids, bad food, nudity I didn't ask to see, and the nachos of Honduras for close to a week now.  The cruise was almost over, and it was time for me to have some fun my way.  To accomplish this, I'd need something more crude than Alice Cooper, and "Calling Dr. Love" is probably the crudest song in the catalog of the World's Crudest Band.  

The DJ had to be dealt with, and my hat would feature prominently; aside from that, the performance details were vague, at best.  I'd established my M. O. the moment I saw the binder:  to do as much as I could get away with before I got kicked off the stage.  The song's lyrics alone poised me for greatness.

I stopped just shy of summoning up my own blood.  The DJ, hired at the behest of the cruise director, was not allowed a word in edgewise and was unnerved from the moment I stepped foot on that Magic karaoke stage.  I gyrated every part of my body, including the seven pounds of pizza weight I'd put on since the beginning of the trip.  I shoved the mic in peoples' faces and they all liked it, except the DJ, and I didn't like him, either.  I utilized the mic stand for the solo portion of the song because it was part of the song.  I extemporized many of the lyrics, mostly "yeah yeah yeahs" that weren't featured in the original.  I swung the mic, which didn't get me kicked off so I should have done more of it.  That didn't matter - by the time the song ended, I was the baddest motherfucker on the whole goddamned ship.

Some dude with a mullet informed me of my newfound status the next afternoon.  He asked me if I was going to perform Dr. Love again that night, as conditioned, I got defensive.  He extended the olive branch when he said that he appreciated how I'd incorporated my hat in the act.  The tension left my shoulders, and I started planning my next performance.  Nothing but my rendition of Beth as a drunk Peter Criss falling off a barstool would do.

I'm not sure how many people stopped me with cries of "Hey, Dr. Love!" before we debarked the next day, but I'm certain that one guy in a hat that said "Shit Just Got Real" rolled down his window to yell "Hey, Dr. Love!" at me on the freeway headed  back home.  I decided to leave them all wondering in favor of spending the night with my wife.  We found some room in a hot tub above the fray of the Lido Deck, and let ourselves succumb to the effects of a fine cigar, all obligations on land and at sea vanishing in exhalations regarded by some as dispatches from on high.  

Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 5

Honduras!  Belize!  

Honduras?

As it turns out, Day 2, in few ways pleasant, proved instructive.  I'd decided that I'd eat exclusively at the Pirate if that's what it took, and that I'd take Klonopin in the middle of the afternoon because the doctor, daffy, to be sure, yet perceptive, must have seen run-ins on the High Seas coming; heck, everyone else, even high school seniors, was tippling, so I would too.  To steal a cliche about maintaining an even keel, the duration of the trip would be smooth sailing, more or less, yet still with notable exceptions.  Day 3 came and went without recollection save playing putt putt golf, so my plan worked.

Actually, it occurs to me just now that one of the ship's defining events took place on Day 3; as such, I'd be remiss if I did not mention it (my plan worked that well.)  The cruise director, who'd be damned if he was going to let Honduras upstage him, planned a dance party that took place on the Lido Deck.  We were on the periphery of it, but why we were present at all escapes me; surely we were there for a reason other than the cruise director's dance party.  I'm speculating that my wife and I had just gotten out of the hot tub, only to wind up at the Cruise Director's Dance Party of the Damned (Attendance Mandatory.)

Paris Hilton would have fled into the arms of her mother and father upon seeing this spectacle; me, I sat and smoked cigarettes, utterly transfixed by it.  The tangle of bodies was such that it looked like one big undulating, tan mass, a frat mixer in which the punch was spiked with PCP and a moonlit voodoo rite that was Fun For All if there had been questioning about the affair later all rolled up.  At one point, the cruise director offered cold, hard cash to the partier who showed off his or her most lasciviousness dance moves.  That was when I met the acquaintance of a gentleman I'd encounter twice more before going back home.  Seated at a barstool, he turned to me and said, "They're workin' it!"  I agreed insofar that you had to call it something for brevity's sake.  I'll say this:  the prize winner's moves must have really been something, and that Paris Hilton had more moral rectitude than I did for fifteen minutes.  What did I care?  I was ripped on 'ludes.

Honduras?

On Day 4, we arrived at the first of our three destinations, Honduras.  I confess to knowing little about Honduras before our trip, other than the most vague suspicions of political unrest, American citizens mysteriously disappearing, and blood sacrifice.  "Honduras:  Vacation Destination" would have been among the last I would have imagined.  I did imagine myself heading a junta a la Woody Allen in Bananas, an idea that my wife looked upon with strong disfavor.

Having spent a few hours there, I can say that Honduras has a ways to go before it can be considered a bona fide tourist destination; however, I'll add that it's already a bona fide tourist trap where you'll pay fifteen American dollars for nachos with runny cheese and bits of meat (your choice of beef, chicken, or shrimp) you'll get sick of picking out.  I can also say that the phrase  "Don't worry - it's safe" means "Death is a strong probability" or "Your hat will be stolen" in Honduras, depending on the context.  In Honduras' favor, I can say that beach-going there is a lot like beach-going in Galveston, only with a Third World clean-up crew picking up everyone's Bud Light cans, Doritos bags, cigarette butts, and spent lighters.

If one sprung for a Honduran snorkeling excursion, one began that excursion from a pier constructed to look weathered, and, by the looks of things, did so at his unsupervised peril.  My mom paid for three, but we all declined due to time constraints (the cruise director wanted us back aboard the ship so we could watch him on TV), the excursion's being misrepresented, and by my desire not to drown.  It turns out that no one in our party wanted to jump off a rusty looking pier.

The water in Honduras looked like we'd washed our dishes in it. I wanted to a get a closer look at the waters the dolphins and snorkelers shared, so I took a walk down to the pier.  There, I saw a gentleman in a Tommy Bahama t-shirt.  The shirt had a slogan that read "Life is One Long Weekend."  Judging by his t-shirt, I guessed that the gentleman was a retiree or independently wealthy.  He's an older gentleman who, nevertheless, looks to be in good health.  Blessed with time, money to blow, and vigor, what was he doing in Honduras?  Maybe he was living the life of the narrator of Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, a man whose biggest problems are torn flip-flops, pop-tops, and hangovers of such ferocity that he has a hard time piecing together the events of the past evening.  All of those problems are easily remedied for the narrator and the bon vivant in the Tommy Bahama t-shirt. Their hangovers are cured with margaritas, and their flip-flops can be replaced without too much hassle.  The clean-up crew has seen to the pop-tops, so Tommy Bahama can continue his endless bender without the risk of tetanus.

Both gentlemen seem to have adopted the slogan "Life's a Beach," or some variant of it.  Indeed, both lead the charmed life of the eternal beach bum, the life of enviable insouciance free from concern over the bills, the boss, the consequences of drinking too much, or applying sunscreen.  If you're like me, you've wondered how they finance their devil-make-care lifestyle.

I also saw the elderly woman whose likeness is the spitting image of Maxine's, the greeting card character best known for her grouchy musings on aging.  I'd seen her once before, in the ship's dining room.  Someone had smashed one of those paper crowns on her head, and Maxine's face indicated that she didn't like that thing on her head one bit.  In Honduras, however, she was really living it up.  It turned out that my initial impression of her couldn't have been more wrong.  One night before bed, my wife and I turned on the TV, and there was Maxine, older than the Tenth Commandment, shaking her rump right in everyone's faces, and why not?  Hallmark must have compensated her quite handsomely, so handsomely that she could live on the ship in her own special suite.

Belize!

Everyone in our party had full run of the ship the day it anchored at Belize.  We took a pass on that excursion because the destination was a forty-five minute boat ride away.  The Lido Deck was deserted.  It was the most glorious afternoon I spent on the ship.

I'd had my fill of questionable pork, and since all the chubby kids  were off picking on  foreigners (secretly, I'd prayed that they'd all be kidnapped and forced to clean beaches), I took my place in line at the Mongolian Wok.  The Tell Us How To Make Your Burrito line was shorter than usual, too, so I enjoyed a lunch of stir-fried noodles and a burrito that afternoon.

We had the pools and waterslides to ourselves that afternoon, too.  I figured that if I couldn't go snorkeling, I'd slide down the Twister, a waterslide whose name I should have paid more heed to.  I slipped in and shot down the slide like Jerry Lewis in a tear gas chamber.  I agreed that the experience was much more efficient and pleasant than embarking the ship.

I'd looked forward to the expedition to Belize most, and with everyone gone, I was having the time of my life.  I ate like a heathen, and I enjoyed my afternoon nap without interruption from the hubbub on the Lido Deck or announcements from the cruise director.  For a few hours, I enjoyed the vacation I wanted.

Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 4

All For Fun!

Around lunchtime on Day 2, the Magic still hadn't reached its first destination.  I hadn't had my first hamburger yet, but I had dined in the dining hall the night prior, which required me to squeeze into my suit.  I ate prime rib.  The au jus, a concoction that smothered everything from prime rib to pork chops, had been spiked with cheap wine and was thick enough to plug holes in the ship should it spring a leak.

My wife asked if I'd felt the boat rocking.  I hadn't, probably because of the sheer number of sleep aids my daffy doctor prescribed.  I know now that that's why I felt like I'd been been beaten with pillow cases full of soap.  I was sore, and my mood was foul.  If I'd exercised any sense, I would've put on the bathrobe provided by the ship, called room service, turned the TV on, and crawled back in bed.  I can't really fault myself for that.  By Day 2, most of rest of the ship had gone nuts.  Thankfully, my wife kept her head, and ministered to mine for too much of the trip.

A swarm, which included my wife and me, had descended upon the Lido Deck.  We'd elected to skip breakfast with its Barrel of Greasy Monkeys in favor of sleeping in, and I was still reeling from the effects of the several sleep medications I took the night before.

We were greeted with the unmistakable, relentless thud of party music, Rihanna indistinguishable from Katy Perry indistinguishable from Miley Cyrus indistinguishable from Robin Thicke.  It felt like the cruise director was trying to beat the fun into me if that's what it took per his duty and vow.  Without the slightest embellishment, I can say that the music on the Lido Deck was louder than any I've heard at any concert I've ever attended.  I'm surprised that the older passengers afflicted with osteoporosis weren't pummeled into dust and swept up by a member of the Magic's put-upon cleaning crew.  I saw one of the members of the crew on the Lido Deck every day.  She looked to be of Eastern European origin, and unceasingly dour.  Every day, she stood behind what looked to be a Swiffer-type contraption, pushing piles of food and other, unidentifiable detritus into oblivion for, if what I heard is correct, more-or-less the same salary as that of a Korean putting Air Jordans together.  I wouldn't be smiling much either, and I don't want to hear another complaint from an old person about loud rock music ever again, either.  

Avoiding human contact was out of the question, so I took my friend's good advice and watched other people.  I saw many balding middle-aged of no mean girth, many of them covered with blankets of hair so thick my wife wondered aloud whether they were wearing hair shirts.  To me, it looked like they'd been cleaning their air conditioner ducts, and were jumping in the pools to clean off.  Bands of unattended teenagers roamed in packs not like wild dogs, but like gangs of witless, mouthy Nickelodeon characters.  Women well-past menopause and just getting there lounged in beach recliners, baking like devil's food cakes.  A gentleman who looked like he put up his face for collateral at the track and his horse keeled over on the backstretch.  Most everyone, including me, was on something.

To take it all in was quite an effort.  I needed a cup of coffee whether it tasted like fertilizer or not just so I could stand in line to get something to eat.  The Mongolian Wok looked promising.  The line stretched all the way back to the water slides, but I took my chances.  I stood just behind a group of junior high kids off their ADD medication.  Their parents weren't around because they abandoned their children in favor of cocktails served in hollowed-out coconut shells that looked like Mr. Potato Head filled with alcohol.

I didn't know what the junior high kids were doing, but it didn't look like they were in line for food.  I asked their leader, a chubby seventh-grader with a haircut his dad gave him, what the hell they were up to, which sparked a tête-à-tête that I ended by leaving the line.  Our needless confrontation (truly, I wasn't spoiling for a fight) sent my head spinning.  I had flashbacks to my days as a high school English teacher.  I was reminded anew that teaching is yet another vocation I'm not cut out for.  

My dust-up with the brat in the Mongolian Wok line left me feeling especially vulnerable.  It could have been that I wasn't yet cut out for a cruise, either.  There were too many people vying for the same things at the same time, with the unremitting thud muscling in, too.  I staggered to the hamburger line in utter defeat.  It didn't surprise me that the hamburger, outfitted just the way I like it though it was, tasted like a school lunch.  Day 2 would be one to reckon with.

Shortly after finishing lunch, we met up with my family near the Lido Deck's main pool. Everybody wanted to get a closer look at the action several stories up.  I was almost completely unwound, but for the good of the whole, I dragged myself up several flights of stairs to check out the amusements we'd not yet seen, stamping and cursing most of the way.  

I didn't give a damn about waterslides, putt-putt golf, or the giant bucket that, when   filled, would tip over and douse all below with a brick of cold water.  None of that  constituted any fun for me.  My nerves shot and several stories closer to the sun, nothing was fun.  I couldn't conceive how any of it could be fun for anyone.  How could long lines for food be fun?  How was getting pummeled by cold water and bad music fun?  Aching legs and muscles were no fun either, but by the looks of things, most of the passengers, of age or not, drank the pain away.  I'd forbidden myself of that luxury.

The next thing I knew, we were back in our suite.  The walls closing in around me, all I could do was crawl into bed, crumple myself up in a ball, and cry.  Not only was I not having fun, I was also an ingrate.  My parents paid good money for my wife and me to go on this cruise, and this is how I showed my gratitude.  My wife needed this vacation desperately, and her husband was crumpled up in bed crying.  Aside from my wife and my family, at that moment, I didn't care for anyone on that ship.  They could have all the fun that was expected of them while I hid out in our room.  My wife stroked my head as I told her I was sorry for being no fun, but that the expectation for me to have any was just too great.    A guy could find a hoot and a holler anywhere on the Magic, regardless of whether he was looking for them.  No mention of kindness was to be found in the travel literature.

A guy can't even buy a pair of pants on dry land anymore without fun being forced onto him.  You go to the mall and the pants store is playing music nobody truly likes unless they're too fucked out of their skull to know any better.  It's not just the pants store that sells the ones with what looks to be a float from a Chinese New Year's parade on the pockets, either.  You can't buy a pair of Levi's without this  nonconsensual assault on your consciousness rubbing up against you, either.  

It looked like life aboard the Magic was shaping up to be one long week of buying pants, and the dining hall wouldn't be open for dinner for another several hours.  I suspected that maybe I didn't know what fun is, maybe fun is overrated, and that I just don't like fun anymore before I popped a Klonopin.  

Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 3

Set the Controls For the Heart of Fun!

You could say that I was "lost at sea," "trapped at sea," or you could use any other Maritime cliche for an existential crisis at your disposal to characterize my predicament.  None of them would be quite true.  My wife and I enjoyed the most restful sleep we'd experienced in months.  The room was so dark that the Hamburger Mothership could've been floating in front of my face and I'd have neither known nor cared.  There were snorkeling expeditions lined up.  I'd always wanted to snorkel.  Snorkeling would be exciting.  There were water slides, the putt-putt golf course, slot machines, and extravagant Maritime theatrical productions.  Yes indeed, the Carnival Magic put the merry time in Maritime, to use a cliche about fun on a boat.  

After our first meal, my wife and I went back to the room and turned on the TV.  Every other channel was dedicated to the Magic.  One channel displayed the ship's coordinates.  Another informed cruisers of the fun to be had sniffing out duty-free bargains in the Magic's shops.  The ship seemed insatiably starved for attention.  We agreed that that was really weird.

While flipping through channels, we caught our first glimpse of the cruise director.  If recollection serves, there were at least two channels devoted to him.  He looks about what he sounds like, meaning that he fancies tight shirts and trousers.  He's young looking, maybe too young looking for the lofty position of Fun Manager for a 4000-capacity ship.  He talks as much on television as he does on intercoms, and he loves the camera.  He's the ship's biggest celebrity, bigger than the captain, from whom we heard not a word the entire trip, which, when I think about it, is comforting.  Seeing the cruise director on TV didn't make me like him any more.

To be fair, the cruise director was the spokesperson for most of the ship's affairs, many of which were of a practical nature.  He told us how to put on life jackets, how to order room service, and how track down lost luggage.  The last of those proved to be useful to us.  I'd packed a suit for the express purpose of putting it on to eat in the dining hall, and it hadn't been delivered by the promised time of 6 PM the day we set sail.  As instructed, we went to Guest Services and, sure enough, the suit had been stowed away in lost and found.  The desk clerk handed it to me like rats had been mating in it, and she was really friendly about it.

I don't know who would have been in charge of disseminating information if the ship had run out of food and gas or into a iceberg in the middle of the Caribbean.  I like to think that he and the captain would have fought for control over the intercom, the cruise director arguing that he'd established a unique trust with the passengers, the captain arguing that he's the captain and that he's been waiting since the ship set sail for any opportunity to throw the cruise director overboard, if for no other reason than peace and quiet.  Maybe their tussle would have been captured by the intercom for all the passengers to hear.  That would have been fun the cruise director didn't plan.

I'm not sure whether the cruise director dreamed up Carnival Magic's slogan; if so, he's as licentious as I am.  The channel that displayed the ship's coordinates had the slogan sprayed all over the top of the screen:  Fun For All, and All For Fun.

It's been a week-and-a-half since we've returned, and I'm sitting here unsure of the slogan's meaning.  Does "Fun For All" mean that Carnival is responsible for providing the fun as fashioned by the cruise director?  Does "All For Fun," place responsibilities on the passenger?  Does "Fun For All" make it incumbent on him to have fun because if he doesn't, the cruise director's plans fall apart and nobody has fun?  What if the slogan had been "Fun For All, Or All For Fun?"  Unless you knew the slogan before booking the trip (What sensible person would go on a trip that bears a slogan like that?), or you were willing to jump ship and swim to something you think is fun, it doesn't matter.  Three things that are certain right now is that I'm having fun at the cruise director's expense, the cruise director didn't plan on a passenger having fun a week-and-a-half later with the cute little slogan he cooked up, and that the cruise director is a weasel for many reasons, including that slogan.

Fun For All!

Throughout, I've mentioned some of the activities the cruise director had in store for us.    There were plenty more, of which I'll name but a few:  hot tubs, slot machines, swimming pools, room service, and oceans of booze.  Duty-free cigarettes, too, which are still for fun for me a week-and-a-half later.  I can't leave out Asian Led Zeppelin.  There were probably plenty more that were staring me right in the face the whole time.  Sadly, for me, eating wasn't a high-priority fun activity for the cruise director.  He wanted to be able to squeeze into his trousers.

There was more variety of fun than there was of sausages for breakfast, so much that no one could possibly take advantage of it all unless he booked consecutive cruises for the rest of the year, and maybe even then.  My wife and I enjoyed the hot tubs, pools, and late-night room service, and I really enjoyed sinking into the cushy casino chairs and listening to Asian Led Zeppelin.

I also enjoyed long, mid-afternoon Klonopin naps.  I hope the cruise director doesn't get wind of that, lest he shake his finger at me and accuse me of shirking my duties to him and, by extension, my fellow passengers.  He planned loud activities on the Lido Deck during those hours, and that's how I thanked him, by conking out on prescription drugs.  Didn't I hear his morning announcements?  Don't I believe in bounding out of bed before sunrise, taking methamphetamine, and squeezing into my Speedo before the bacon hits the buffet?  I wouldn't mind the accusations so much; in fact, I'd welcome them if I they weren't in his voice.  Watching him shake his finger and get mad at me would be fun, though.  So would telling him what I believe in.

Fun For All and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on The Carnival Magic. Part 2

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."

Fun For All, and All For Fun, or Life is One Long Week on the Carnival Magic. Part 1

Welcome Aboard, It's Fun!

The night before my wife and I took off for our week-long cruise to the Caribbean, I was talking to a friend on the phone.  When I told him we were going, he offered two pieces of advice:  people watch and act like an Ugly American.  To his well-meaning advice, I responded that I wasn't out to write a piece of investigative journalism and that people were the last thing I wanted to see for a week, but not to worry because I planned to spend the first twenty four hours at sea eating hamburgers and that I'd packed every shirt with a fish on it I own plus my trusty floppy hat, which, when I put it on, would be a dead giveaway that I was there to order food in my rockiest English and pick up enough tacky knick-knacks that we'd have to throw our underwear and medications overboard to make room for them.  We've been back for over a week now, and during that time, I've arrived at the conclusion that my friend has either been on a cruise he never told me about, or possesses preternatural  powers of prescience.

On Sunday morning, my wife and I were up early awaiting a call from my parents, with whom we were to rendezvous at a Whataburger just before the 59/45 interchange.  In a gesture of tremendous generosity, my mom paid for our tickets.  I believe she did so because she thought we were in sore need of some time abroad.  To be sure, there was a bit of damp and drizzle in our souls, but still, and speaking just for myself, I hadn't quite reached the point where I was knocking peoples' hats off in the grocery store.  I wasn't quite convinced that a cruise would serve as that panacea (although I did look forward to a snorkeling excursion in Belize), but both of us sure needed to get the hell out of Houston for a while.

The ship was due to set sail from Galveston at 4 PM sharp; by 10 AM, I was outfitted in my nearly threadbare "Beat Kansas" t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and the hat, as prepared for an all-night burger crawl on the Caribbean as anyone could be.  By noon I was up to the brim of my stupid-looking hat with vexations (my wife, on the other hand, bears up things like unpacked suntan lotion with remarkable grace and cool.)  Embarkation ended at 3, our rendezvous had been delayed at least a good hour, and the members of our party, eight strong, began the procession to the Whatburger restrooms while I waited outside, drinking a bottle of water, smoking cigarettes, and talking to my aunt (whose ticket my parents also ponied up for) and dad.  The prospect of watching the ship and its merrymaking passengers take off without us loomed large.

Naturally, my fears, like most, were chimera engaging in giggly chicanery. Even from the shadows of downtown Houston, and despite touch and go southbound traffic (I think somebody's cap blew off his head), Galveston's still a stone's throw from a sissy away.  We made it with time to spare.  Unfortunately, that bottle of water I drank at the Whataburger managed to make it all the way down.  No restroom in sight, genuine panic overtook me, the type that causes folks to pee in their pants for reasons real or putative.  My mom, no-nonsense during these types of crises, told me what any loving mother to a piss-silly son would:  get out of sight and go.  There was no other way; besides, as a seasoned cruise veteran, I can all but swear on the Holy Bible when I say that I was not the first guy to relieve himself all over the Carnival Magic's parking lot.

Also from the perspective of a seasoned cruiser:  I cannot make any claims about dark arts, whether real or merely titular, although my wife, a redoubtable woman, saw an act levitation from the wings of the ship's theater, which Elvis Costello could probably pack, and maybe even Molly Hatchet.  That should give you an idea of the vessel's girth.  I'm certain that if we'd been on the lookout for it on the way there, we'd have seen it from ten miles away.  Imagine a floating mall.  Presto, you might be on it!

We'd been on the move since early that morning, and we weren't close to settling in for naps or burgers.  Carnival Cruise took every reasonable measure to ensure against treachery on the Caribbean Sea, and we were subjected to each of them, along with the other 4000-odd cruisers.  Two shirts with fish on them, a goofy hat, two lighters, six pack of cigarettes, four books, and a cellphone several models behind the latest and especially useless at sea evidently represented no threat to Carnival, so we were permitted to pass.  We walked a good quarter mile, maybe more, navigating a few twists and turns before we reached the ship's foyer, located on the third floor.  It's too easy to characterize our path to the ship as a long intestinal tract.  Believe me, it was easier to think of it that way.

We were welcomed first by a blast of cold air.  After close to six hours of packing loose ends,  driving, walking, being frisked, walking some more, and a depositing enough pee in the parking lot to float a Carnival Cruise lifeboat, I was now no longer on the lookout specifically for a double bacon cheeseburger.  Movie nachos, the kind with the runny, pulsating-yellow cheese and stale chips would have done by that point, and I expected someone to hand me a paper basket spilling with them and put a lei around my head at the entrance.  Impossible, because we were next welcomed by the voice of the cruise director. The cruise director made lots of things impossible.

I wanted nothing more than nachos and to deposit our carry-on luggage onto the floor of our suite, but first, the cruise director commandeered the ship's intercom to instruct us to report to a site which we didn't know the whereabouts of (Someone Ina A Carnival Uniform:  "Do you know where your site is?"  Me:  "LIKE HELL I DO!") for mandatory safety training, aka, Instructions For Putting On a Life Preserver.  Not fifteen minutes on the ship and I hated the cruise director already.

For one, he was born to take to the intercom and make announcements so loud my ears rang.  For another, his voice was of a quality anyone would be hard-pressed not to call "fruity."  I hated him and I hated taking instructions from him in that dribbly, Robin Leach accent of his.  I hated his lack of regard for my peace, quiet, and comfort.  He was on that intercom all day announcing each of the hundreds of activities he'd planned for us, and I hated most of those, too.  I hated him before I'd even set eyes on him, but that would happen soon enough.  It turns out that our cabin's television had a channel devoted entirely to him.  The cruise director turned out to be an impossible presence to elude from the moment we stepped foot on the ship to the moment I was giving it the finger out the car window on the way back home.  The cruise director is a greasy little weasel, a weasel who makes a living planning activities that are no fun on land and less fun at sea, a weasel addicted to the sound of his own voice, the rush of histrionic personal displays, and methamphetamines.  He's also Australian, I don't care that he said that hails from Great Britain.  He has to be Australian.  The British are too polite to beat this guy up, and this guy's been beat up a lot, at land and at sea, by cruisers, staff, and Australians alike.

You think I'm being rough on the cruise director.  Spend a week at sea with him.  If you don't throw him overboard, you're a worse person than I am.