Page 95 - MN

95
Yo Ho Ho, Another Life at Sea
As I said before, a guy came up to me after a show at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. I can't remember who I was opening for, maybe Neil Sedaka, but this guy asked, "Have you ever worked cruise ships?"
I told him I'd never thought about it, and four weeks later I boarded a Holland America ship. As always, I was clueless and not big on research so I had no idea what to wear or how to do shows on cruise ships. My dressiest outfit was a brown corduroy suit (it might've been the only one ever made) and boat shoes. Hey, it was a boat!
I had three shows to do, so I tried to split up my material so the last show would be the best. Leave them laughing, right? Nope. On ships, your first show has to work if you want anyone to come back for the next one. I remember David DeHaveland was the cruise director and he was a very elegant Englishman. By the time I got to the third show at the end of the cruise, I knew he was not impressed. Then he saw my suit and said something like, "You're going to wear that?"
I had no choice.
He introduced me kind of apologetically and I did my best stuff and killed. When I walked off stage he looked at me with new eyes and I knew I'd saved the job.
I worked the old Holland America ships, the Veendam and Vollendam, and all I remember is the authorities wouldn't let them into Bermuda because they smoked too much and dirtied up the pristine yachts in the harbor. Those ships were sold soon after and new ones came in. But there were major positives to the job. I'd been working a lot of corporate conventions and while the money was excellent I'd come to hate them with a passion. The setups were just awful for me. Usually they were dinners, with people sitting at round tables. This mean that half the room had their backs to me. Also, my needs were simple. I needed two