(A lady raises her pinky.)
Day 5 (Part 1)
Friday. September 16, 2010
AT SEA
The best part of mornings on-board a cruise ship is waking up to the scent, sight, and sound of your ship at sea. The Pacific Ocean has a myriad of blues in her pallet, all of them are mesmerizing and crushable. For real. If the Pacific Ocean were a lady, I would totally marry her.
The worst part of mornings on-board a cruise ship are the breakfasts. It’s as though they were prepared by contestants on Top Chef who were given the challenge to “make as many things as possible using only white flour and remember – no fresh ingredients!”
By the episode’s end, my tummy loses. Bacon that remarkably resembles fried leather shoes, eggs that looked like they came from a chicken’s leukemia ward, fruit salads that seemed so depressed you’d think they should be sprinkled with Prozac, not sugar – and since I couldn’t bring myself to eat any of these aforementioned items, I was left with the option of pancakes covered in waffle cupcakes, drizzled in biscuits with a dash of bagel. One bite of this, and coffee became my only morning meal.
"I just feel like I'm never gonna accomplish anything that matters."
There are so many invalids on-board, trudging slowly, hunched over stainless-steel canes or walkers, oxygen tanks everywhere underfoot – you can easily forget you’re on a luxury liner, not a retirement home. The greatest danger is not that the ship will sink, but that you’ll get run-over by a Rascal Scooter.
Faces of Death: Cruise Ship Edition
By lunchtime I was ravenous – the coffee that became my only breakfast was, in turn, making a meal of my stomach lining. By Day 5, I decided to try lunch in the main dining room. Up till then, most of my days were off-ship so I could eat from vendors at the ports. I was curious to see if formal lunch was as good as the formal dinners.
It wasn’t. I ordered a salad in which each separate ingredient somehow tasted like water. Put them all together and you get, well, a whole lot of water, but with texture. Despite this disappointment, there was a singular joy in my lunchtime: it was the first meal there where I didn’t have to hear the staff singing “Happy Birthday” to someone. Yay, God!
Directions: Imagine Mr. Brother living another day, as always, with music playing. Whether it’s one of his trusty iPods, or his home stereo, or working the soundtracks section of Amoeba Music Hollywood, Mr. Brother is eating, sonically, with the mouths of his ears.
To simulate this experience, as you read the below story of a day lived, you will be given certain music clips to play. These are inserted to provide you with the same tunes Job was hearing as he was doing what you’ll be reading.
To simulate this experience, as you read the below story of a day lived, you will be given certain music clips to play. These are inserted to provide you with the same tunes Job was hearing as he was doing what you’ll be reading.
For example, while he was writing the above directions, he was listening to this:
The other day, while I was counting my number collection, I was interrupted by a knock on my front door. As is customary in my country, I went to see who it was. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be none other than myself.
“Oh!” I said with a start, “How did you get out there?”
“You mean,” I said with a sly grin, “How did you get out here.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” I retorted.
“But not what you meant,” I corrected.
I slammed the door in my face and went back to my numbers. I don’t have to take that kind of snarkiness, you know – not even from myself.
Hours later I was eating some broccoli that the Lord My God made, when a second knock came – this time at the back door. Worried that I was up to my own tricks and hoping to avoid another awkward confrontation with myself, I peaked out the kitchen window to see who it was.
“You mean,” I said with a sly grin, “How did you get out here.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” I retorted.
“But not what you meant,” I corrected.
I slammed the door in my face and went back to my numbers. I don’t have to take that kind of snarkiness, you know – not even from myself.
Hours later I was eating some broccoli that the Lord My God made, when a second knock came – this time at the back door. Worried that I was up to my own tricks and hoping to avoid another awkward confrontation with myself, I peaked out the kitchen window to see who it was.
"Ho ho ho! Who needs a pancreas?"
It’s only December 9, and already my body is exhausted from all the sugar and booze it’s ingested. I know, oh my readers, why Santa is a fat man. Santa, in fact, is probably suffering with diabetes. It would explain last year when, as he was trying to stuff the life-sized, life-like Annette Funicello robot I had asked for into my San Francisco 49ers stocking (a last-minute purchase at Target – it was either that or a Hannah Montana stocking that had a glue-gun scar); Santa was working his magic but, in-between “ho ho ho” he was mumbling about polyuria, polydipsia and polyphagia in a manner not so jolly.
That last sentence was epic. Somewhere, the ghost of Proust just got a boner. Can I say boner on the Amoeblog? I’m not well.
My boyfriend, Corey, and I just hosted our annual Christmas party. I was in charge of the food. I went for a “dip” theme. That is, rather than merely offer chips & salsa or chips & guacamole, our dips included:
• Pumpkin pie & fresh whipped cream dip, served with cinnamon/sugar pita chips
• NY Cheesecake dip, served with thick graham crackers
• Chocolate fudge dip, served with fresh & dried fruit
• Peanut butter / mustard / honey dip, served with pretzels
• Red wine dip, served with Pfeffernüsse
Our pal Kamran also contributed queso & tortilla chips, because some of the guests were Texan, and I guess their tradition demands queso at every gathering, otherwise they… secede or something.
They say it’s my birthday. Happy birthday to me.
You’re like me, right? I mean, you HATE the song “Happy Birthday to You” as much as me. That saccharine dirge that well-wishers croak as they lug out some lit-on-fire, tacky cake smeared with artificially-colored vegetable shortening? It’s the sonic equivalent to that inedible frosting; coating your orifice with a greasy slime, leaving you wondering why you ever tell people when you were born. And then you remember why. Because they pay for dinner.
But that song! Most foul! And you know that it’s copyrighted, right? Someone actually owns that sucker. Warner/Chappell Music, specifically. The company bought the company who owned it (The Summy Company) in 1990 for $15 million dollars.
If I had $15 million dollars, I’d buy the world a piñata, and inside I’d stuff it with hope and love, and when it was busted open it would heal the planet.
Anyway, royalties have to be paid to Warner Music if you want to use that song. It’s why you rarely hear it, in its entirety, in films and TV.
"Happy checks sent to me...!"
I wish everyone had to pay to sing the song. Yeah, you heard me right. I wish every joker who decided to sing that song to me on October 22 had to pay the $10,000 price-tag. And yes, they would still have to pay for my dinner.
Lots of fun, famous peeps share this birthday with me:
Annette Funicello, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme & William IX, Duke of Aquitaine!
Now, because it’s my birthday, I can do whatever I want, no questions asked. I can throw every single 6th grader into a volcano, sew the elderly together into one, great, old-person lei, and chop down every Ikea store in the world to make materials for trees – I could do any of these things and more, since it’s my birthday, and that's the law. Yet, I choose to spend it here, with you, my Amoeblog family.
