Week 2 (much belated)

Okay, so here’s the deal: I’ve barely been updating this blog. You know it, and I know it. The problem has been finding a decent enough internet connection during our port days to upload pictures with. It’s been hard, even though on my last boat contract the internet was good enough to upload pictures (slowly) from the boat. But today Piero and I discovered an Asian restaurant in Cozumel, and decided to hang out there and take advantage of their excellent connection, wonderful service, and mediocre Asian fusion food (I, unfortunately, cannot recommend the spicy tuna roll).

So yeah, these pictures are from about a month and a half ago. I’m going to try and accelerate the pace on this blog, and maybe do some updates without pictures, just to keep friends and family at home abreast of what I’ve been up to. Remember, this is a two way street – I’d love nothing more right now than to get e-mail, and hear about how you’ve been doing.

So yeah, when last we left America had a new president, and I hadn’t yet performed on the boat. But we have posters, complete with my old headshot, which looks nothing like me.


Though as Piero pointed out, I look a bit like Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

Our first show was our big “Second City Archive” show, which we do in a 700-seat theatre called the Stardust. It’s huge, with a cool art deco/ vaudeville feel, and we have to wear headset/ Britney Spears microphones when performing.

Our show includes the scene “Hand Sanitizer”, which is a take-off of the “blackout” scene “Soft Serve”. Point is, during the scene Piero and I play machine dispensers aboard the ship – I spit a mouthful of water onto Alice’s hands (aka. hand sanitizer) and Piero spits whipped cream on her hand (aka. soft serve ice cream). This may sound incredibly dumb, but I swear it gets the biggest laugh in our show. After the scene ends and the lights come down, I’m supposed to wipe up the water on the stage in the dark. In our second show Alice ran right into me in the dark, tripped end over end over me, and we both fell to the stage. She was fine, but the back of my head and suit got covered in whipped cream. So I did our final, 10-minute scene, unwittingly covered with whipped cream.


The next day we arrived in Cozumel (a tiny island off the coast of Mexico). We all got off the boat to explore, with Beth (pictured centre) leading the charge.


We were in search of authentic Mexican food, and adventure! Along the way I took some cool pictures of VW cars:



But those paled in comparison to my next discovery... BIMBO!


When I was 15 years old, I visited Mexico alongside my uncle John. Given that John was born in Nova Scotia but raised in Mexico, his knowledge of the local culture meant I didn’t have to learn anything: therefore in Spanish I can only count to six, and barely order a coke. But I remember Bimbo brand sweet bread (or “Conchas), which are amazing! It’s basically a soft cake, with powdered sugar on top. For my nerdier friends, it’s what I always assumed Elven lembras bread tasted like when I read “Lord of the Rings”. I ran into the first convenience store I saw with Bimbo the unfortunately named bear mascot, and bought as many as they had (they go for about $1 US for a package of two).


So we eventually found a place for lunch, which was little more than a stall, but smelled delicious. I got a plate of enchiladas for $4, which looked like nothing but brown goop, but tasted fantastic.

After lunch we walked back to the cruise ship dock and found a bar called Barracudas, where a lot of the cruise ship crew go to hang out and use the (decidedly crappy) internet. Here are some pictures I took of the bar:


And a picture TJ snapped of us swimming:


We had another great snack of guacamole and chips (those real great homemade tortilla chips that you can only get in Mexico and at great Mexican restaurants). If any of you guys back in Toronto can recommend some really good Mexican joints, I’m always interested. Here are a couple more of the pictures I snapped in Cozumel:



Not sure about that Vampire one. So our first week flew by really fast, and we had a great time with Beth and TJ. On our last night Beth took us out for a customary producers dinner, where we were not only allowed but encouraged to order anything we wanted. Here’s Piero “two steaks” Procaccini* saying something that has TJ doubled over with laughter. This picture was also taken moments before Beth went to the bathroom, and we told the waiter it was her birthday partly for free cake, but mostly to draw unwanted attention to her.


* Note. The nickname “Two Steaks” was ironically not bestowed that night, but weeks later as a result of Piero’s Atkins diet (on which he often orders two steaks minus any potatoes on the side).

Here is a picture of me in my suit, sipping on Grand Marnier. I am several martinis in at this point.


So I guess that’s an acceptable amount of photographic evidence of my travels. Our first week was a complete rush, and we were actually thankful that the next week was relatively quiet. But here’s a picture of our last night with Beth and TJ, drinking at my favourite bar on the ship (or collection of bars) Bar City. They have a martini bar, a champagne lounge, and a malt/ whiskey bar. And it all looks like it’s from the 1940’s (or the video game “Bioshock”).


So that was our whole first week, in pictures. That only leaves me with 8 weeks to catch up on. So what I’m going to do is start writing as well about what I’ve been up to recently, while I upload pictures from earlier in the cruise. I’ll be writing about the cruise in both the past and present tense – think of it like an episode of “Lost”. Speaking of, Piero and I have been catching up on recent episodes of ‘Lost’ with Chris, one of the singers on the ship. He’s in the Jean Ann Ryan Company of dancers (usually referred to as the JARs). Really nice cat – looks a lot like a young Willam Defoe.

Recently we’ve been pretty settled into cruise life overall. Last week saw a visit from my aunt Imelda, my uncle Lewie, and their friends Greg and Gertie (all coming to us from Antigonish, Nova Scotia). I’ll have pictures of that visit up soon. Since then we had a stop in Miami where Alice and I went to the mall (she was very excited to visit an Urban Outfitters store). I raided the Barnes & Noble and managed to find some decent comic books: the last two issues of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8”, Ed Brubaker’s “The Man Who Laughs”, and the first volume of “The Walking Dead”, an excellent zombie-survival comic. I also downloaded last Thursday’s episode of “The Daily Show”, with the much-touted Jim Cramer interview. I thought that was excellent, by the way, and wouldn’t be surprised to see Cramer get “Tucker Carlson-ed” and lose his show.

Our shows recently have been going well. We’ve had a sudden influx of spring break crowds on the boat, and they get especially rowdy (though enthusiastic) during our improv shows. This makes it difficult during our Friday night “Family Improv Shows” (which keep getting scheduled at 10:30 – ugh). We did a game last night where audience volunteers come on stage and finish our sentences. In spite of the children in the audience, and the 10 year old volunteer on stage left, our second volunteer (an obviously drunk woman) kept offering inappropriate suggestions (gynecologist, etc). So that’s been challenging, but at least our shows have been well received.

Oh, and speaking of shows I split the seat of my pants during our big show on Monday night. It happened just as the lights were coming down on a scene, so no one in the audience noticed. Luckily (I guess) I’m not in the next 15 minutes of the show, so I ran all the way from the front of the ship to my cabin (back of the ship and up 5 floors), got new pants, took a picture of the ripped ones, changed, and was back in place with about 6 minutes to spare, and the audience never realizing a thing. And no one has let me forget about it since.

In general though we’ve pretty much settled in for the long haul. I keep getting random bouts of homesickness, mostly for seeing people or eating specific foods form back home. I would kill for some Sushi on Bloor, or a decent slice of pizza, or to do a show at The Bad Dog right now. But I’ll have to focus on the now, and see as much of the ports as I can before we take off. After all, we only have 4 more weeks before the Panama Canal...

Cheers everyone. Keep those e-mails coming.