The Love Boat, Martha's Vineyard

They are showing season one of The Love Boat on the crew channel. We have two channels only for crew, one plays a movie over and over all day, one plays one episode of one tv show over and over all day. This is why we are all addicted to House, which means we are all hypochondriacs and know about LPs and if anyone has any ailment, we think it is necrotic bowel, cancer, or some bizarre allergy we need a team of doctors to figure out. I may have said this already, but I can’t remember, because I can’t remember anything.

Anyway, to watch the Love Boat, which is a Princess ship that ports out of Los Angeles and goes to Mazatlan and Encinadas, is very very hilarious for someone who works on one. I.e., for everyone who is watching it. The crew cabins on the tv show are absurdly giant, bigger than the passenger cabins, the passenger cabins are so monsterous, I’ve never even actually seen one that big. The room steward isn’t constantly working and all of the people are young and hot. Everyone is American and the cruise director takes detailed, sincere interest in the personal lives of people on board. Classico. Classico classico classico. The hallways are giant, and we watch it like this: “no WAY that would happen.” Also, all of the women are tiny and hot and don’t need bras. This week, we have a large group of mentally handicapped adults and a family of people that wear turbans (this is how dead my word recall is). This means, at breakfast I heard a woman say “my back hurts, I mean my back hurts, my back hurts. It hurts. I hurt my back” about 30 times. O Love Boat! O Aaron Spelling! O the genius of marketing!

We went into Martha’s Vineyard again, finally (we are 2-6—they keep canceling it due to bad waves). It was crisp and beautiful and the leaves are turning and it smells like fall. We smelled a wood fire and went on the hunt for beer, because a beer in the afternoon on a crisp day is the reason we have civilization. We tooled around and came across a place that had gold lettering and was by a store called, this is not a joke, “Backdoor Donuts.” There was no one outside, so I thought “meh, let’s go somewhere else.” Then a very cape cod yachtie looking couple grabbed one of our party by the neck and led him into the restaurant. He said “this place is good! The menu is great! You’ll go here!” and his wife said “hahaha.” There were peanuts on the floor, so we entered. Then we went “eh, I don’t know…” but were already sitting down. The guy still held the member of our party by the neck and gave him a speech. The speech ended very positively for us, because it turned out they were the parents of the owner and treated all of us to a round of brewed on premesis amber ale. This was a coup. A delightful, delightful afternoon, with wood oven pizza.

There is some weird fascination in Martha’s Vineyard with Black Dog. There is a black lab in profile wearing a red collar with a kind of like thing on him—a bell? Something? It is all over Martha’s Vineyard. We went into the store fired by Amber Ale, so we didn’t really figure out the deal. Still. There is some kind of a deal.