Security Training

Our shows were slightly weird last night. Scenes ran long, I found good moments to do some serious thinking which was unfortunately the same time I was supposed to say a line. Upon saying a correct line which I have said approximately 3000 times before, I got convinced I made a mistake and got totally paralyzed and stared googlie eyed at my partner, when I am supposed to be squealing and jumping up and down. This is because someone drew a 9mm in the middle of a lecture and pointed it at a crew member.

We had ISPS training yesterday. This is security training. Now, most boring corporate training is boring and pointless and doesn’t apply to you. When we got in the boring room with boring PowerPoint on a screen, the very British officer running the training played some YouTube clips, one that was from “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” and featured a dingy cute blond from the south insisting that France is not a country and Europe IS a country and that she has never even heard of the country Hungary. The fifth grader was appalled.

We signed in right next to replicas of a time bomb, and several replicas of explosive plastique. Interesting. We sat in the back with a bunch of cooks and room stewards and random people from the crew. The officer started the training and said, modestly, shyly “Oh, Second City’s here, well, I’ll try to improvise myself.” Then we proceeded to have a torture session for obsessive, overdramatic, sensitive people with too much time on their hands who also like to make jokes. We were trained on both the reality of an attack, what would happen in the event of a terrorist attack and why we are a likely delicious target for terrorism. The security officer showed a hilarious PowerPoint presentation that he clearly made himself, because it had too many animations and featured sound effects. Which sound effects? Oh, gunshots, ricochet sounds, and my favorite, a bomb explosion. When we got to the slide explaining 9/11, the slide swept left with a huge bomb sound and showed 2 photos of the twin towers, side by side. We also saw several al-Jezeera images and were explained how terrorist cells work and why they would bomb a ship. This was totally terrifying and also hilarious, because one of the al-Jezeera images was Osama spinning the earth on one finger. He would always ask us if we were okay. I did not say “I would like to be sick.”

Then he showed us all sorts of photos of mangled bodies and blown up ships and the idea that there was a pirate attack attempt on the Norwegian Star (my first contract) and a bomb threat on the Norwegian Spirit (my second contract), so that was awesome. The Star now enters Mexican waters with the assistance of a gunship escort. The PowerPoint would say “gory photo coming up” and then we’d have a person sans arms head or legs. So that was delightful and completely terrifying.

The security manager also told us “this is what it will be like if a terrorist comes on board” and from his music stand that he was using as a podium, he pulled a completely realistic looking 9mm and pointed it at someone in the room. Ever had that happen? Well it’s totally terrifying and takes several days to recover from.

random fun thing:

someone told me this with all wide-eyed sincerity:
“I like guys who are tall, older than me and with a nice set of teeth.”