Broken Hearted

Cruise #19-This cruise was full of adjustments. With Ben and Jenn gone I have had to get used to the new styles of the new techs. They are both named Scott. The lighting Scott is the Senior Tech and has a much different way of doing things from Ben. He wants to do things at the strangest times. For example, this cruise he decided to organize the stage left locker after our weekly meeting on Embark day. This is a problem because it is one of our busiest days of the cruise. There is very little time for dinner and he wanted to organize the locker during our dinner time. I didn't eat dinner until midnight mess. which is basically pizza and sandwiches. I was on port manning this cruise. I switched with Sasa the back lounge tech. It was good timing though because with cast change over I have been able to do some much needed maintenance. I bondoed and painted a hole that my stage hands had made several weeks ago. because of cast change there hasn't been enough time for the paint to dry. Also, it is good because now I won't be on port manning during Christmas. In addition to all that, this was my last port manning. I am now free to do what I want from here until the end of my contract.

The fly-ons for this cruise were Anthony Acosta, Karen Grainger and Paul Lyons. Marcus Monroe was scheduled to be here but due to the blizzards in the northeast he wasn't able to fly out of New York. Anthony Acosta has been on many times and I have heard his routine so many times I could almost repeat back to him. This was Karen's last cruise with us for a while. She is booked elsewhere until April. She has been absolutely lovely to work with. It has been a pleasure knowing her both on and off the stage. Her last night she hung out in the crew bar with us. She bought rounds for the musicians and the techs. We were even able to convince her to come to the disco that night. Paul Lyons was a really bad comedian. I mean really bad. Since Marcus was unable to come for his show the band played a set with the two production singers.

We started Christmas show this week. We had a rehearsal and matinee show on Generations night. It was a train wreck. It is worse than some shows I did in high school. It starts with a medley of not so Christmas songs while the dancers perform the simple choreography. It involves the song "Cool Jerk" to give you an idea. After this we bring children up on stage. They do the "running man" to another Christmas song that you have never heard of. After this, our genius of a cruise director reads a Christmas story that he made up involving all the dancers names. It loosely parallels "Twas the night before Christmas". Finally, after you have suffered through that Santa Clause comes and the show is over. We then, wait around while all the kids take their pictures with Santa. Just to entertain myself, I was trying to make the dancers laugh while they were sitting on stage during the kids and story portion. I pretended to cry while the kids were on stage. At one point, I stormed off as my emotions got to be too much for me. I came back with a box of Kleenex and offered it to the dancers as I continued to fake cry. I had a couple of them biting their cheeks.

I didn't get off in any ports due to my port manningness.

Talk to you soon,

Chris

Picture #1-Karen and I after her last show on the Miracle.

Picture #2-Karen as Barbara Streisand.

Picture #3-Karen as Cher.

Picture #4-Karen as Shenade O'Connor.

Picture #5-We have just recently recieved Laser Tag as an activity for the guests. We decided to test it out as a crew activity. After work one night we set it out and played for several hours. Greg had the genius idea to play Blazer Tag. So, we grabbed our best sport coats and got in the ring. This picture is before we played. From L to R: Me, Nichola(dance captain), Sam(keyboard player) and Greg(sax).