Acrobats and Isopods

The Acrobats

We had an improv rehearsal last night at 10:45. We were on stage, doing improv-ish things, and the Chinese acrobats were in front of the stage, in between the audience and the stage, doing Chinese acrobat things. If someone told me that, I would think “oh, okay, so those Chinese people were doing cartwheels.” No. In a tiny like 5 foot wide stretch of carpet, literally the aisle, they would, say, do a handstand for like a minute without moving or wavering, then maybe, oh, do the splits while in the handstand, then maybe, oh, do the splits in the handstand then pick up one hand and just kinda, you know, be like that for a while. Or maybe, oh, spin a giant Chinese umbrella on a toe, then balance the umbrella on the rim of them umbrella and walk along the rim of it. And maybe, oh, one Chinese guy would do a handstand on the edge of the stage for like 30 seconds and maybe, oh, then to a handstand on the hands of another guy, which are stretched over guy #1’s head, so you have 2 guys stacked vertically. If they fall for any reason from this, say, because it is insane or we are on a ship that moves, they will land comfortably on the edge of a stage (wood) a carpeted floor (concrete, carpet) or a chair in the audience (vaguely padded edges). One of them is a contortionist, like for real, which raises all sorts of questions, including, “oh okay, you just did an insane stretch for a while where you kinda bent your spine in half, and somehow you stood up and frowned and rubbed one tricep, like ‘oh, that was really hard on my one tricep.’” Unfortunately, they do not speak enough English to talk to fully and/or to say stuff besides “yes.” The only Chinese I know is “thank you” and Chinese nicknames for grandma and grandpa. I can also sing the sped-up tune of beginning of the Chinese national anthem because I got a joke lighter in college. Somehow I want their story and to learn "americans are wimps" in Chinese. The one who catches jars on his neck is 20 and has been catching jars on his neck for 5 years solid or something. Fascinating.

We continue to chat with the magician on board, which is fascinating, and my favorite thing he said was “oh, I can’t wear my glasses with my short purple jacket. There is just too much going on.”

I also found out from the standup on board, second hand and not as part of his jokes, that when pugs get too excited, their eyes pop out. Like this is a common problem with the breed. And by pop out, apparently that means like: fall all the way out of their head and dangle around. This was not as interesting to said standup as a bunch of gay jokes he was trying out.

Our “steering problems” from yesterday turned out to be “one of the motors died.” Instead of going about 30 mph, we are going like 12 mph. One 30 foot wide giant underwater metal fan (called an isopod) is pushing 3,000 people. This means we are not going to Acapulco as per usual and are seeing some new Mexican ports. The official line is “these ports are interesting!” and the line amongst the crew is “the first one is shit.”

We have 45 Germans on board as part of a tour group. I know the receptionist, who is a sweetheart trash talker and German and just thought “oh no my Germans, my Germans, my Germans” as soon as they made the announcement. She has been around a while and said “oh it could be much worse, it could be an explosion” which apparently happened on one of the ships last year. Apparently some crazy things have happened, like one time when a boat pulled away and they forgot to pull up the anchor, so they burned through all this fuel and went really slowly and couldn’t figure out why. Once they almost hit a whale, but swerved to miss it, so the whole boat listed to a terrifying amount. The first announcement was “we listed” and the second one, from the captain was “we swerved to miss a whale.” Classico.