My Cruising Musing: Day Seven

We spent the last morning of our cruise enjoying breakfast in bed and watching G.I. Joe. The Breakfast was delicious. I had a Spanish omelet and my lovely had French toast. I washed it down with some Columbian coffee and Nicole had a glass of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice. There was also a plate of Hawaiian pineapple and various Mexican fruits. It was as internationally diverse as the staff of the cruise ship. Although my omelet tried to conquer and enslave the fruit but was held off by a joint task force of the coffee and American fruits and as usual, the toast surrendered at the first sign of trouble.
The movie was hilarious but not for the reasons that the film makers intended. First of all, there were so many inaccuracies that it was ridiculous. Duke was played by Channing Tatum of Step It Up Fame. A colossal fail when you think that Duke should never have been played by someone who might, at any moment, break into a dance routine. Dennis Quaid as Admiral Hawk was good casting but Sienna Miller as the Baroness and Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander were laughable. Secondly, the plot was acceptable but poorly executed and there were so many continuity errors that it must have gone straight from the camera to the theater without ever darkening the door of an editing booth.
After breakfast and the debacle known as GI Joe, we went to the sports deck to enter a miniature golf double tournament. There were only nine holes so the idea was for you and your partner to both play and then combine your scores. Nicole and I finished dead last! As a matter of fact we were six shots worse than the next closest team. In our defense it was so incredibly windy that on one hole I putted the ball from the same spot four times. I would putt it and it would travel right up to the lip of the hole before the wind would catch it and blow it back to the wall where I was standing. Several times this happened to both of us on several holes. It was frustrating and funny at the same time.
We then continued our ping pong rivalry. Nicole won. Whatever.
We went back to the screening room and watched Land of the Lost. The movie was cleaned up to be suitable for all audiences and Nicole and I laughed heartily (not so much with the movie as laughing at the sheer stupidity). There was one small issue and this compels me to leave all of the tweens aboard the ship off of my muster list. Towards the end of the movie a balloon animal activity let out and all of the stupid tweens came pouring into the room with their latex menagerie in tow. It wouldn’t have been so bad except they kept talking, whacking each other with their balloons and getting up and down. There were two girls who were especially annoying as they went out into the hallway just outside the entrance to the room and began talking with the Jonas brothers wannabes who had been watching the movie from there. I was a torrent of emotions as I was gleefully laughing at the comical and not so witty banter of Will Ferrell and Danny McBride one moment and seething with anger at the pre-pubescent riffraff that cluttered our room the next.
I blame the parents. Look, I understand the desire to be free of the responsibilities of parenthood occasionally. But if you want to do that then leave the kids with grandparents or neighbors, or at the very least, find some homeless person who needs a place to stay for a week. But whatever you decide to do-DON’T RUIN MY VACATION BY BRINGING YOUR STUPID KIDS AND LETTING THEM RUN ROUGHSHOD ALL OVER THE SHIP. I hope you paid attention when you were car-pooling your kids to swim practice because your entire family is going to have to tread water where you’ll be forced to keep an eye on them.
The last activity of the wonderful week of cruising was a variety show. It started off with the cruise director performing a rousing rendition of Mustang Sally and was immediately followed by Jimmy the Aerialist who hung from a hoop often by one hand and swung over the audience. He was good but hard for me to watch because I kept envisioning him slipping and landing on me-since I decided to sit in the very front row for this show. After Jimmy finished we were treated to the comedy of A.J. Jamal who apparently had a stint on In Living Color although I don’t remember him from the show. He was funny and told some funny jokes. Then came the finale when the ship’s crew gave themselves a pat on the back and forced us to give them a huge round of applause. They made several references to all of the staff members who work for tips and encouraged us to be generous with our gratuities. It was entirely self serving and sealed the fate of the entire crew.
After dinner we walked the length of the ship one last time and retired to our cabin to pack up. I haven’t gone back over my notes to count how many people actually made it on to my life boat and I probably won’t. I do know that there is plenty of room in my life boat as there are very few people who are worthy enough to share this space. There is room for the standby spring breakers but they won’t be getting on my boat since they ditched us for some of their friends. I hope you enjoyed dining with them and I hope you are good swimmers.
All in all it was a great week spent with a great woman and I wouldn’t have done anything different. There would have been a few less people on board, but it would have been very similar. To all of those people who annoyed, bothered or inconvenienced me I want you to know I don’t really hate you and I don’t wish any of you to drown- I wouldn’t shed a tear, but I don’t really want you to die. Please let this be a learning experience for you. Grow from this-learn to be less annoying, learn to be a better person. And if you do, and you appreciate what I’ve done for you, please know that I accept tips.