Royal Ca-reepy-an Inter-nasty-cal

"Wham bam, thank you ma'am." was how an unnamed bandmate of mine described his visit to the "Pussy House" in Jamaica. I too had been asked by the locals if I was interested but for one reason or another I never got around to visiting the local prostitution institution. I wonder why.

I'm a poop-fessional muse-ick-sion!

My face has finally gotten used to playing several hours a day and I have the scars on my lips to prove it. Today was the first hard endurance test that I felt I actually passed. We did a total of 3 run-throughs of one of the theater production shows, a big band set on the promenade, and a series of fanfares introducing the ship officers, all while sweating my ass off in a tuxedo. The last theater set just finished about 30 minutes ago and I'm exhausted, but my lips lasted decently well all the way through to the end. I didn't whiff anything really obviously and I nailed my little two bar solo! My goal for next week is to actually play everything in tune and make it all sound good.

I have a theory that being a professional musician makes it difficult for a person to grow up. I turned around in the middle of the last theater set to see the musical director, who is in his 40's, killing zombies on his iphone and getting overly frustrated about a particularly tough zombie. This is the same musical director who joins right in when the rest of the band is talking about fucking Dom's (guitar player) mom. The word is she's a looker...or a hooker? I don't know anymore, I've lost track. On their own, everyone in the band is pretty cool, but their collective brand of humor is pretty fratty. This makes work a little boring, but at least the theater set has a couple of my favorite Ray Charles songs in it.

Tomorrow The Coasters are coming to play some of their old 50's hits. I think most of the original Coasters members are gone/dead, but at least one of these guys was directly involved with the original crew, whether or not he was a founding member.
Tomorrow is Cozumel, Mexico again and I'm pumped to eat some delicious food. YUUMMMM! It's time for bed. The Lord of the Rings will be my bed time story. Nighty night y'all!

Royal Ca-ramped, I Am

Happy Thanksgiving! The other Americans and I are currently chilling at a bar in Mexico enjoying the sun (or in my case, the shade). For lunch we went to a restaurant called La Choza and had some margaritas and fajitas. DELICIOUS. Today we were supposed have a run through of the other production show "Music In Pictures," which is sort of an amalgamation of music from movies set to dancing, but the DAT machine that sinks the metronome and music was malfunctioning, so they had to cancel the whole thing and move it to tomorrow. This left us with plenty of time to explore Cozumel and relax.

I wrote this entry on the 13th, and am far too lazy to look it over and see if parts of it don't make sense anymore.

My room is small. If I wasn’t so prepared for this fact, I might have been pretty upset by the size of my cabin, but luckily I had been made aware of the danger beforehand. As I write, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is playing in the background of my laptop (still playing, not playing again), which is hanging off the edge of my desk/nightstand. In general, everything in the room is almost big enough.

“Put it down Bella. We mustn’t touch what isn’t ours.”

                        -Severus Snape

All my stuff just barely, perfectly, snuggly fits in the space I have, but the bathroom is pretty difficult to navigate. The bathroom isn’t separated into a toilet zone, shower zone, and sink zone. It’s all made of linoleum because the whole joint gets wet during a shower, despite the curtain. This is especially true when, like this morning, the showerhead falls off its clasp and goes frolicking around the whole bathroom.

“How much is this?”

“5 galleons!”

“How much for me?”

“5 galleons!”

“I’m your brother!”

“…10 Galleons!”

                        -The Weasley Brothers

I am still in the process of finding a spot on the ship that is quiet and more comfortable than my room for working on the blog and, of course, the next Weeping Willards album. Tomorrow we’ll be arriving in Cozumel, Mexico, our first port after New Orleans. I’ll be back many, many more times before the end of my contract, so I’m in no hurry to fully explore the place and buy souvenirs. However, I would love to take all suggestions on what kind of souvenirs I should start collecting from the places I visit once I settle into the rhythm of things.

I really wanted not to venture too far from the topic of the blog, but I just have to tell you how work was today (besides training, which is boring.) When I came back from a training session at 6:45, there was a note and piece of music taped to my cabin door. The note said, “Please meet me backstage in your tux at 7:30 sharp…we need to learn a fanfare for Capt. Cocktail”

So I put on my tux and went backstage to listen to the end of a Motown show. At the end, Steven, the other trumpet player, quickly taught me the harmony line for a fanfare, which sounded much like the Olympic fanfare that would introduce the captain. We went to the promenade, which is the main, central street where the majority of the shops, bars and restaurants are, and took our places next to a bridge that crosses over the center, above the guests’ heads. We walked out to a huge crowd and played the fanfare to one side, then to the other, and walked off. Theoden would have felt properly introduced. Just saying…

My New Jamaican Love

Yesterday we docked in Jamaica for the day and since my training ended early enough, I got off the boat and explored with my friend Iggy. We ended up in a fancy jewelry store in the port area looking at watches that cost more than we make in several months. They had watches that were made of actual pieces of metal from the Titanic and with moon dust brought back to Earth by Buzz Aldren. You could barely tell the time on the moon dust watches, but they were beautiful and cost $30,000.
Later we went off into the real Falmouth area, outside of the fenced off touristy place. People were yelling from every direction trying to get us to buy their cheap bracelets and carved statues and things. I said no, thank you to most of them and one lady said I was a good boy for actually responding (most crew members just ignore the locals). After wandering around a bit longer, I ran into the same lady again, whose name turned out to be Shauntel. She took me back to her booth and tried to get me to buy some of her junk. I gave in and bought a Jamaica shirt because it was cheaper than the ones in the port. She was so happy she gave me a hug, kiss and free bracelet. As Dom, the guitar player put it, "you just met your future ex-wife."

In other news, we just had a crew drill today. They rang the emergency 7 short, 1 long bell to signal us to gather at our muster stations and prepare to lower the life boats. After standing around in the blazing Grand Cayman sun for an hour, we got into the boats and lowered them down into the water that I swear had too much blue food coloring in it. Seriously, its the bluest water you could ever imagine. Our boat leader, who is the Hungarian casino manager and looks like a goon from a James Bond movie, drove the boat around in circles for a half hour before we final went back to the ship and they raised us out of the water. The whole thing took about 2 hours and prevented us from having time to get off the boat and explore Grand Cayman. Oh well...we'll be back next week.

I Bought A Fancy Watch

Last night was both the opening night of the theater production “Rhythm and Rhyme” and the crew sale in the promenade shops, so I had some champagne and Jack. Needless to say I bought a fancy watch. They are adjusting the wristband right now and I can pick it up after 6PM. I hope I like it.

The Nation of What's That?

11/14: The Nation of What’s That?

Ship life so far is a little confusing at times. I find myself nodding and smiling a bit more, and understanding what is happening a bit less than I would like. Among the crew, English is very rarely the first language. As much as I enjoy talking to people from all over the world about what their lives are like back home, I do miss the conversational finesse that is possible when talking to Americans. I miss it especially when I need real information about something and can’t get a clear answer out of anybody.

The food in the cafeteria isn’t the pile of cat vomit that I thought it would be. It’s not Kyushu but I can imagine eating there every day and not losing my mind. Rolls and butter are yummies in my tummies. Below is a shot of some dancers in the staff mess. (Never mind, it was taking forever to upload and time is money...literally in this case)  They are mostly Americans and all knew each other before getting on board. I’ll be accompanying their productions in later weeks once they have rehearsed them.

“Oh to be young and to feel love’s keen sting.”

                        -Albus Dumbledore

Even though the first two weeks are supposed to be crazy busy, I keep having tons of free time to wander around and I keep ending up back at the cafeteria which doesn’t even have a card swiping system. I just walk in and eat all the food I want. Any bets on how long it will take me to gain the seaman 15?

As I write, I am sitting by myself in the staff and officers’ bar watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The bar has a bunch of nice leather couches, a couple big flat screens and a pool table. Not bad at all. I’m not sure why I have a higher rank than the general crew, and am allowed in here, but I’m sure not complaining. I can go wherever I want on the ship and used some of my free time to finally take the hike all the way up to the top deck. I’ll post some pictures of that excursion later. Here is the staff and officers’ bar(Nope):

Since it will take me about 12 minutes to walk back to the other side of the ship, I’m now off to rehearse for tonight’s headlining act, which is something called ‘“Chucky” & David Morgan.’ Hmm

Just arrived in New Orleans

I just sat next to someone on the plane who I think was a lady of the evening. She was dressed fairly flamboyantly and was counting a strange amount of cash on her pull down tray.
I was afraid it was all a hoax when my name wasn't on the greeter's list at the airport. The greeter was missing a fair number of teeth and smelled close to death. They were also missing my envelope of information at the hotel desk, but luckily my reservation was still on file and I got my meal vouchers.
My roommate at the hotel is a delightfully friendly Serbian guy named igor. He told me all about how royal Caribbean has a habit of transferring its employees from ship to ship with little or no warning. I hope this isn't the case for musicians!
The shuttle leaves for the boat at 10am tomorrow. Igor says there's a huge party at 3 once all the new guests have arrived and everyone is required to dance. We embark at 4pm. Zoinks!!

Last Day In Ithaca

I decided the best way to keep everyone updated on my Caribbean adventures was to make a blog. So, after much fruitless deliberation on how best to incorporate any of the key words of my adventure (ship, cruise, caribbean, etc...) and/or self descriptors (Jesse, Willard, etc...), into a pun-ful blog title, here it is.

To start off, I guess I'll explain what my job on the ship will be to the best of my knowledge and we'll see how this description changes as my tenure progresses. I was hired as trumpet 2 of 2 in a 9 piece band that additionally consists of 2 trombones, a tenor sax, bass, piano, guitar and drums. Traditionally, in a big band that has 4 trumpet parts, the 2nd trumpet part contains all of the improvised solos, where the 1st part (the lead trumpet) contains all the high notes. I'm hoping this isn't as much the case in this band because improvising is to me, as swimming is to Samwise Gamgee. As I understand it, this is not the only musical group on the ship, but our particular roles include playing jazz sets to large audiences and in the lounges as well as accompanying the theatrical productions. This should add up to 4 or 5 hours of playing per day 6 or 7 days a week. I have been told that the band director isn't a fan of rehearsals, which is just berries for me because it means more free time at ports. I am the only new member of the band coming in right now. I can only imagine that the band has somewhat fast personnel turnover, so I'm hoping they take to new people quickly and nicely. Each cruise is on week long and stops in Cozumel Mexico, Falmouth Jamaica and George Town Grand Cayman, before returning to New Orleans. 

For those that don't know, the cruise line I'm working for is Royal Caribbean and the ship I am assigned to is The Voyager of the Seas. The ship holds about 3000 passengers, has 10 pools, 14 bars, clubs and lounges, has a rock climbing wall, ice skating rink, mini golf course, and, of course, a big-ass casino. It is  1,020 ft long, 157.5 ft tall, 138,000 tons heavy and can cruise at 22 knots. I know that I will have a roommate, but I don't yet know anything about him besides that he is in the band too. 

Well, I've got my trumpet and tux packed, 2 seasons of Mad Men, courtesy of Danny and I'm ready to head out. My flight out of Ithaca leaves at 1:51 PM tomorrow and I will arrive in New Orleans at around 8PM where I will be greeted by a Royal Caribbean dude and escorted to my hotel to enjoy a fine per diem-ed meal. I board the ship the next morning and begin what sounds like extensive safety training. I imagine I will be on the band stand by Sunday evening. 

Sorry for rambling on so much. I think all future posts will be shorter and (hopefully) more interesting. I tried not to make it flow like a stream of consciousness, but now my brain is feeling like a river of unconsciousness.  Please feel free and encouraged to comment on my posts because I am sensing some amount of loneliness in my future. Goodnight, friends. 

-Jesse