Tag Archives: Caribbean

February 26, 2013 · 2:13 pm

MONKEYS ON A BOAT 2013

I recently returned from spending a week in a giant hotel that floated around the Caribbean. The floating hotel was filled with awesome performers, friends, fans, and employees who wanted to aggressively sell me booze every waking moment.

All of this awesomeness was because of Jonathan Coulton’s JoCoCruiseCrazy.

Everything about the cruise was great. The other performers, the attendees (they self-identify as Sea Monkeys), and all of the events both official and unofficial. Even the things that weren’t necessarily great were amusing. (The staff really did want to sell you more stuff at all times. I’m surprised they don’t have staff members with mini-bars in each individual bathroom stall. It would be efficient.)

I did a brand new show on the mainstage that went really well. It was a light comedy show about all of my flaws as a human being. Stylistically, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster made out of parts of stand-up comedy, storytelling, theater, and drinking beer with friends. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of comedy performance, but this particular beast is the kind of show I want to be doing, so the warm reception was very gratifying. Hopefully, I’ll be doing more performances of the show and eventually recording it.

I also got to record an episode of my podcast Obsessed with my pals Molly Lewis, Mike Phirman, and Wil Wheaton. They were hilarious, insightful, and all-around perfect guests for the podcast, so go check out the beer and pro-tools episode and rate the hell out of the podcast on iTunes.

The kind Sea Monkeys also bought up all the copies of my book and comedy album that I brought on the boat. I performed a live riff with Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. I played a starship simulator video game called Artemis live on stage. I danced to the mad DJ skillz of David Rees and John Hodgman. I decided Paul (of Paul and Storm) could use some interpretive dance (aka mime humping) during his rockin’ karaoke version of “Wanted Dead Or Alive.” I accidentally walked past the door to my stateroom while entirely sober and the steward pointed and laughed for a full thirty seconds. My lovely wife, Sara, did an amazing job helping the shows run smoothly backstage. Sara and I also had a nice romantic moment when we were terrified by the infamous hanging monkey towel animal.

MonekyofDoom

I could go on and on about the cruise, but strangely the event that gave me the most perspective happened on the way home. (For more on the cruise itself, I suggest watching Greg Benson’s hilarious videos, reading Jonathan’s wrap up or Sea Monkey Alice’s blog post.)

The Sea Monkeys have a kind habit of applauding the performers when they enter the ship’s dining room. When Sara and I walked down the aisle of our packed plane home, two Sea Monkeys quietly, lightly applauded. We had a brief chat about accepting our transition back into the real world.

“We want to yell the thing, but we can’t,” said the Sea Monkeys. The thing was an ongoing joke to yell “SEX PARTY!” during performances. Definitely not the thing to yell on a crowded plane.

But it was a lovely moment to share. The mood on the cruise is very supportive and intense like we’re all members of a kindness cult.

Strangely, the man I sat next to on the plane turned out to actually be a member of a cult.

He was very friendly and not wearing robes or waving a dagger or anything. Let’s say his name was Ed. He was probably in his 50s, he smiled a lot, and told me he owned a feed mill in Amsterdam. He didn’t make any jokes about milling pot for animals. I didn’t either.

After the normal small talk, he told me that he had been in Orlando for a week to learn about approaching the world with kindness.

“That’s nice,” I thought. “I’ve been on a floating hotel doing a comedy/music convention that spent a lot of time celebrating kindness. Maybe I should have an open mind.”

Then he gave me a card for Avatar, the Compassion Project. I looked up Avatar. It’s been described as Scientology-Lite. It was founded by a guy who got sued by the Church of Scientology for ripping off their materials, so he went rogue. To review, this organization was formed by a man who was too morally bankrupt to be a Scientologist.

Ed told me the program had taught him to mill feed for animals in a manner that exposed rabbits to their inner happiness. I am not making this up. Ed wanted me to read a passage from his new Avatar book. It had blown his mind.

Around the same time, a child in the seat in front of us started yelling about how to spell Mickey Mouse. The child insisted that there is no “e.” That it’s spelled M-I-C-K-Y. (Much like Scottish Whisky has no e, so she must be a fan of single malt Scottish cartoon mice.) The child decided to prove she was right by repeatedly yelling “KY!”

I tried to focus on the passage in an effort to be friendly toward the smiling man who believed a bastardized version of Scientology can make bunnies reach their full potential. I was pretty sure I would think the passage was manipulative bullshit, but I might as well be friendly.

This was the greatly paraphrased gist of the passage:

Any text that spreads the message of kindness (like this one) is holy. Anyone who speaks against a holy message is a monster. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with what this book says about kindness is a horrible, evil person.

I finished reading and said, “Okay.”

Ed smiled and said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

The child screamed, “KY!”

“That passage changed my life,” Ed said.

“Huh,” I answered.

“KY!”

I decided the best form of kindness I could show Ed and myself was to not go on a rant about how awful and disturbing I found his life changing passage.

Instead, I turned and chatted with Sara for a few minutes. Ed got lost in his book again. The child still screamed “KY!” long after her parents had agreed, “Yeah, sure, that’s how you spell Mickey. Please stop screaming KY.”

A lot of the performers and the Sea Monkeys had spent a week on JoCoCruiseCrazy pushing themselves to try new things. New songs, new jokes, new games, new drinks, new people, new experiences, new and inappropriate times and places to yell “SEX PARTY!”

There was a significant amount of discussion that people felt safe to try new things during the cruise because there was an almost surreal level of support, encouragement, and kindness.

Real, simple kindness. Like, “Hey, you should try karaoke. All we ask is that you try hard and have fun and we will applaud. We won’t lie to you and tell you you’re great if you’re not, but we sure as hell won’t laugh at you or throw things.”

If there is a passage about karaoke in the Avatar books I’m sure it’s vile and manipulative stuff teaching the important lesson that ONLY AVATAR CAN SHOW YOU THE WAY TO TRUE KARAOKE AND ONLY IF YOU PAY US A LOT OF MONEY AND HARSHLY JUDGE ALL WHO QUESTION THE ONE TRUE KARAOKE.

And I have a horrible feeling that the ONE TRUE AVATAR KARAOKE SONG is probably “Free Bird.”

In short, I’m very happy to have gone to my own week long seminar on kindness. One that happened organically and honestly without an agenda. One that happened simply because people felt safe to say, “Hey, is it cool if I try something new?”

And the only response they got from the rest of the Sea Monkeys was a resounding, “Yes!”

Usually followed by a resounding “SEX PARTY!”

Thanks, friends.

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March 5, 2012 · 11:05 am

MONKEYS ON A BOAT 2012

I recently returned from being a performer on JoCoCruiseCrazy II–a big floating music/comedy cruise.

In contrast to my musings and predictions here, I now believe the boat is powered by slightly drunk people having fun. Luckily, all the Sea Monkeys (this is the name the JoCo Cruise-Goers have given themselves) were having fun constantly and even managed to have fun backwards when the ship needed to reverse out of a port.

What follows is a collection of words, images, and sometimes links to moving images about my experiences on Drunk-Fun-Cruise 2012. Some statements are true, some are blatant lies.

THE ENTERTAINMENT

All of the performers on the boat were talented and lovely people–with the exception of John Hodgman who spent the entire cruise swilling his “youth serum” (full pitchers of an unholy rum-malort cocktail) and screaming at the staff that they weren’t doing enough to defend the virtue of the Oxford Comma.

We had a formal night. People wore fake mustaches and little fezzes. All this boat-moving fun was in honor of Paul F.Tompkins–a kind and funny man, yes, but also a man who has accused me of being a murderer on more than one occasion. However as the old adage goes–“the smart phone camera does not lie!” It’s clear from the photo below which giant blurry head is a-plottin’ to kill some people.

MURDER

I did a performance of my geek comedy stand-up/storytelling show Joseph Scrimshaw and The Comedy of Doom. I wrote an audience interactive bit called Star Trek: Oregon Trail. To my delight and surprise, my totally unplanned audience volunteer was Wil Wheaton. What followed was funny, but also surprisingly sexy. Do you choose to go on an away mission from this blog and watch the video?

Star Trek: Oregon Trail with Joseph Scrimshaw and Wil Wheaton

A link to the full video of my show is at the bottom of this post. As you can tell, the majority of Sea Monkeys are cyborgs who have cameras embedded in their foreheads and can upload stuff to youtube by touching a computer thing on the side of their head like they were Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back. (Google image Lobot if you have to, then laugh and laugh.)

I was also honored to play the role of Ed McMahon to Paul and Storm’s two-headed Johnny Carson in this podcast recorded with a live (at least 25% hungover) audience during JoCoCruiseCrazy.

THE CRUISE ITSELF

Being on a cruise is pretty awesome. As you can see from this photo, it’s like spending a week trapped in a generic desktop theme.

That said, cruises are weird. They remind me of the old commercials for Grey Poupon.

Yes, you’re classy. BUT COME ON, YOU’RE MUSTARD AND WE ALL KNOW IT. STOP TRYING SO HARD!

The cruise ship staff does odd and sometimes terrifying things as if to constantly remind you, “this ain’t just mustard, son, this is motherfucking Grey Poupon floating on the sea!”

For example, the stewards make what they claim to be “animal sculptures” out of your towels. As you can see from the photo below, this is not an animal. This is a disturbing baby thing the stewards made after getting high and watching David Lynch’s Eraserhead seventeen times in a row.

THE HORROR

In an effort to make sure the whole ship doesn’t get sick at once and pile into the infirmary like it was Groucho’s stateroom, little Purell hand sanitizer squirting units are set up along the walls roughly every inch or so.

Because these stations are everywhere, you constantly see people rubbing their hands together as though everyone is a super villain planning to hijack the boat and sail it to their volcano fortress.

THE OTHERS

There were around 550 Sea Monkeys on the cruise and another 1000 or so normal cruise-goers. While many of the normal cruise-goers were perfectly nice and charming people, at least half of them seemed to be on the cruise to meet a stereotype quota. Basically, they were angry old people who forced me to reconsider my preconceived notion that “douchebag” is a word only used to describe young people.

Here are a few of my favorite overheard quotes:

“I’ll tell you this right now: if water gets in here, we’re going to sink.”

“I need a colonoscopy.”

“It’s about respect. Let’s go get some ashes for Ash Wednesday. They got ’em at the piano bar.”

“Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!”

This last quote was said by the window on the Lido Deck that serves cheeseburgers and hot dogs to old men who feel the taco bar is too ethnic. There had been a back up in service because my commie pink-o wife ordered a veggie burger. All of the old men behind us were greatly agitated by this. As we walked away, as if to assert their manliness, four or five them began shouting “cheeseburger!”  It was like they were doing a thoroughly American reenactment of the Monty Python Spam sketch.

SHORE DAYS

I got off the boat when we stopped at Aruba and Curacao. Both interesting exotic places. For example, when you get off the boat in Aruba one of the first things you see is a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Little Caesar’s Pizza RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER.

I have honestly never seen that in real America.

To be fair, there are many interesting excursions to be had by cruise-goers who, you know, plan. (One friend went to an ostrich farm and learned the secret dance of the angry and/or horny ostrich.) But no matter how exotic these cruise destinations are, when you get off the boat you are usually presented with a “Little America” shopping district full of gifts for the whole family. Like this:

On Aruba, there was a movie theater playing The Phantom Menace in 3D. My wife and I debated going to see it. We thought it would be a fun way to drive geeks mad.

“What did you do with the precious few hours you had on a beautiful island off the coast of South America?”

“We sat in a dark theater for two hours watching Episode One in 3D.”

Unfortunately, as we approached the box office window we saw it was roped off with police tape. I decided to simply believe that Episode One was against the law in Aruba and we sat on a beach drinking beer instead.

SEA MONKEYS

The attendees of JoCoCruiseCrazy are supportive intelligent audiences and very fun people. They took it upon themselves to set up random “unofficial” events. I was invited to join an impromptu drawing circle.

My useless liberal arts degree is actually in the useless field of visual art, so it was great fun to sit under the stars and uselessly sketch the Sea Monkeys. Here’s a sketch of the gentleman who filmed me making filthy Star Trek jokes with Wil Wheaton:

THE MORAL OF THE CRUISE

Everyone involved with the cruise–performers, Sea Monkeys, the terrifying towel twisting stewards–are all truly wonderful. The event is special. As in, it is actually NOT NORMAL. It’s part cruise, part concert, part floating geek convention, part ukulele heavy band camp, and all awesome. If you actually read through this entire blog and enjoyed it even slightly, you would enjoy this cruise and you should go here to sign up for announcements about JoCoCruiseCrazy 2013.

If you didn’t have to Google image Lobot, you should sign up twice. If you didn’t have to Google image Lobot OR look up the Groucho’s stateroom reference, you’re probably the kind of person who would enjoy spending a little under an hour of your life watching a video of me saying jokes into a microphone. You will also be rewarded with a special appearance by the very funny Paul and Storm playing Dumbledore and Tom Bombadil if you make it through the whole thing!

Joseph Scrimshaw and The Comedy of Doom performed on JoCoCruiseCrazy II

Cheers, friends.

 

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February 8, 2012 · 4:31 pm

MURDER CRUISE 2012

On February 19th, 2012, a boat will leave Fort Lauderdale and sail out into the Caribbean Sea carrying with it the attendees of MURDER CRUISE 2012.

There are several inaccuracies in that sentence, so I will preemptively push my glasses up and correct myself.

Technically, it’s not a boat. It’s a ship. But come on, boat sounds more romantic. Also, it doesn’t sail. It moves under some other power than blowing. Nuclear reactors? Coal shoveling? Perhaps a flux-capacitor? I think it might be a combination of turbines and will power. It’s unknowable without looking it up on wikipedia.

And, no, it’s not actually called MURDER CRUISE 2012. That was a joke started by Paul F. Tompkins on the twitters. It’s actually called JoCoCruiseCrazy II. It’s a big floating geek concert/comedy festival hosted by Jonathan Coulton.

If you’re not sure who Jonathan Coulton is, it’s possible this is the first page you’ve looked at on the internets since 2003. All you really need to know is this: Jonathan Coulton is a nice man who sings songs and makes money doing it. After singing songs and making money on land for a while, he looked around and said, “What if I sang songs and made money in the middle of the Caribbean Sea?” And he did and it worked out, so now he’s doing it again.

The cruise is packed with talented entertainers and I’m honored to be doing a performance on this will-and-turbine-powered geek boat.

Right here and right now, I’m going to make seven predictions about what will happen on JoCoMurderCrazyCruise II and we’ll see how accurate they are.

PREDICTION NUMBER ONE:

There will be a MURDER. Not a sad real life murder involving consequences and human feelings, but a light, festive, Agatha Christie murder where some jackass no one likes gets drowned in a chocolate fountain when the lights go out on the Lido Deck and a bunch of colorful suspects with easy-to-remember names happen to be in the same room.

PREDICTION NUMBER TWO:

We will not sink. Though we will be attacked by a Kraken.

The Kraken will be easily defeated. A Kraken is basically a bully who lives in the sea. We will confront the Kraken about what is missing in his life that he has to attack a boat. He’ll say, “It’s not a boat, it’s a ship.” And we’ll say, “Don’t be pedantic, Kraken.” And we’ll make some quick and funny “It Gets Better, Kraken” parody videos and he’ll go away.

PREDICTION NUMBER THREE:

There is a possibility the owners of the cruise line will charge me extra if I look at the sea too often.

PREDICTION NUMBER FOUR:

I will probably get full-on old man cranky about the use of the word “squee.”

There will be a lot of excitement on the boat and people will want a short, emphatic word to express that emotion. I’m all for that. The emotion, the expression. Just not the word choice.

When I hear the word “squee,” I picture a panel from a Star Wars comic book in which R2-D2 is farting. Big, block letters shooting from the little astromech droid’s backside.

So while I might enjoy the comedy of John Hodgman or the music of Paul and Storm or the stories of Wil Wheaton or the reasonably priced rum drinks at a pirate ship bar on a small island in the Bahamas, I can’t squee.

For me, it’s a matter of respect. I can’t bring myself to say, “I’m enjoying John Roderick’s song. I think I’ll use my mouth to fart like a robot.”

Perhaps this opinion will lead me to be the man that is drowned in the chocolate fountain.

PREDICTION NUMBER FIVE:

I will foolishly attempt to define geek culture to an old woman from Arkansas.

The people on the cruise who are there for Jonathan Coulton and friends call themselves Sea Monkeys. Sea Monkeys are a fun, friendly, and inviting group of people.

There will be many people on the boat who are not Sea Monkeys. They will be confused and alarmed by all the excited people running around singing songs and saying “squee.”

They won’t even know that “squee” sounds like you’re imitating a Star Wars robot farting in a comic book. They think comic books still cost a dime and mostly feature Superman beating up nazis.

At least one of these people will gaze at me across the gaping cultural chasm and say, “Hey, you want to leap across the gorge and explain this to me?”

And I will try. And I will fail.

I will say words like “twitter” and “ukulele” and “bonhomie” and phrases like “no, we don’t all wear glasses, some of us have contacts” and “no, nerd isn’t really a negative term as we’ve made an effort to culturally appropriate the word and celebrate its positive aspects.”

And the perfectly nice woman from across the chasm will say things like “what?” and “huh?” and “so you’re all just getting together to sing songs about the Star Tracks?”

And I’ll use the word “filk” and she’ll think I’m swearing at her.

And I will go drown myself in the chocolate fountain.

PREDICTION NUMBER SIX

Even though my name is Scrimshaw, I will fail to hunt and kill a whale, then carve a picture into its bones. I will drown my sorrows in whiskey and this will make my ancestors proud.

PREDICTION NUMBER SEVEN

The cruise will be awesome. I will grossly overuse the word “awesome” and it will make me seem like a big hypocrite about the farting robot word.

After the cruise, I’ll do my best to let you know exactly how inaccurate my predictions were. Until then, I’m off to pack some shorts that I will not wear for fear of blinding my fellow Sea Monkeys with the pale white glow sticks that are my legs.

Cheers!

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