Star Seeker

Today I helped judge the Star Seeker Talent Show.

First: there are 5 contestants. The first one was a man, probably 35 and very tall and beefy from Washington State. He sang a country song with a lot of commitment, light dancing and gentle air humping. He also showed us his butt and shook it around for it. The chorus of the song was “How you like me now!” about a woman who turned him down in high school, or a woman friend of Toby Keith or whatever. Our friend was married.

Second: came David Gratz or something. He was doing standup comedy and was from Las Vegas. When he came on stage he said “by trade I am a jeweler, but today I am trying standup comedy” to which someone in the audience said “well, you’re standing up!” He had 5 pieces of 8x11 white paper in his hand, fanned out. When he finished a joke, he’d throw the paper on the floor. Here are some highlights, here is his first joke: “I have a blonde wife who committed suicide.” Hold for laughs, no laughs. “on the note she left it said ‘I will never do it again.’ Go figure.” Hold for laughs, no laughs, dispose of paper. Another hilarious joke, “well, I said I am from Israel, and people say we’re not so smart—“ really? “the Arabs throw rocks at us and we bomb their houses. Then they just have more rocks to throw at us.” Hold for laughs, no laughs, throw paper. “I’m a blond and I have fair skin, where I’m from people call me a son of a bitch.” Uh, in Israel? What? Hold for laughs, no laughs throw paper. “And my mom she is blonde too, she is a cocker spaniel.” HFL, NL, TP. “My mom who is blonde sometimes calls me a son of a bitch. Go figure.” HFL, NL, TP. There were a bunch of other jokes that didn’t make any sense, except for “I was playing slots and a guy came up to me and said ‘which machine’s spitting out the most money.’ I said, ‘the ATM machine.’” HFL, LAUGHS, TP. However, this is the edited version. His included where he lives and the exact way the guy talked, which had a lot of “dude” and “hey man” and “yes, well, I do know where you can find a machine that will be giving you some money” and etc.

His final joke: “my current wife is so obese” current wife? Talking about obese people? On a cruise ship? “that when we have sex, I need the GPS.” HFL, get actual boos, TP. Go figure.

Then a 155 year old woman got up on stage, named Gert, and told about 5 or so jokes. Some old standards, but very well worded. I saw her earlier in the cruise when she got the time for the open mike wrong. The open mike was about 45 minutes and features 2 jokes, one that we couldn’t hear because the person didn’t know how to use the microphone, i.e. “hold by mouth.” A ½ hour later, the lounge singer gets up and sings to songs he plays on his keyboard. This lounge singer is a salty old guy with very few high notes and a good sense of humor who plays a little rough and loves Macs (he thumped me on the back about ‘it’s okay if you have a pc’ and he didn’t leave brusies, which is a surprise). Gert walked up pushing her wheel chair with her husband a few feet behind her and demanded what was happening and where is the comedy. As in like 3 feet from the singer. Singer just said “well, there must be a mistake.” Gert was pissed.

Anyway, Gert charmed the audience at 4 p.m. in the lounge and told many dirty jokes. Her first big laugh was saying “go figure!” and mocking that other guy. Later, she said “are there any kids in the audience?” and there was one, so she said “get ‘em out!” like a battleaxe. She won the contest. But when the cruise director announced “and the winner is…drumroll please!...GERT!” We all looked at Gert and clapped and David got on stage to collect his award with a huge smile. Everyone was confused. The cruise director said “uh…is there something I don’t know” and then David realized his mistake and sat down. Oh dear Lord.

Now the best was before the show, a puffy man with a crazy nose and a fanny pack asked if he could sit next to me. I said no, I was saving the seat for Heather. He asked if Heather could just sit on his lap. He also asked if he could sit on Heather’s lap. It was uncomfortable. After the show, he stood around staring at Heather and I. We made eye contact, he said “what did you think about the standup” and I thought he wanted to taunt him with me for telling “my wife’s so fat” jokes with quintuple the exposition and far too realistic. Heather said “he’s right behind you” to the guy, because David was right there. The guy said “yeah, what do you think.” David was his step brother. So we said he was great. The guy was very insistant about whether or not he should keep going and pursuing it. We said, “uh…sure. Yeah.” Then David stepped up and proceeded to talk to us.

Highlights:
He made excuses for why people inevitably would vote for an old lady. He said he saw her 10 years ago in a club in LA, so she’d been doing this a long time so no wonder. He was working with his microphone only a few times and was practicing with his “mic work” in his room. He also spit on Heather and apologized for it. He only did standup one other time 8 years ago, so this was pretty much his first time. All of that material was ORIGINAL. His friend also interrupted to say he had to go back to his stateroom to “put medicine on my lips. My lips are killing me.” He also told us that, yes, they booed the GPS joke but that originally he had said “a hairy GPS” but the standup on board made him take it out. He talked for a long time about a hairy GPS and how the standup on board ruined the joke because it was going to be too crude but the old lady got to be dirty so that’s not really fair. He probably said “hairy GPS” 5 times. He did have all of the jokes memorized, the paper was just in case. So we encouraged him. Naturally.