13 Cruise Ship; 3 A.M.

In this episode we examine what happens at sea in the middle of the night, culminating in a crazy night in a Frankenstein-themed nightclub. Join Scot on a discussion of boats, water, staying up all night, and then join him aboard a ship in the middle water and in the middle of the night for this topic.

 

Check out all pics, videos, and transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://perfectshowpodcast.com/13-cruise-ship-3am/

 

Music from this episode by:

 

Simon Carryer - https://www.simoncarryer.com/

 

Bastereon - https://www.fiverr.com/bastereon

 

Brrrrravo - https://www.fiverr.com/brrrrravo

 

kgrapofficial - https://www.fiverr.com/kgrapofficial

 

dawnshire - https://www.fiverr.com/dawnshire

 

desparee - https://www.fiverr.com/desparee

 

rito_shopify - https://www.fiverr.com/rito_shopify

 

Aandy Valentine - https://www.fiverr.com/aandyvalentine

 

From the Free Music Archive and used under a Creative Commons License:

 

Komiku - "School" - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/Captain_Glouglous_Incredible_Week_Soundtrack/school/

 

AI-Generated Transcript:

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hi and welcome to the Perfect Show. I'm your host, scott Moppen, and what you might call a perfection prospector, sifting through life looking for little things or experiences that can be considered perfect. Join me each episode as I present one topic that I'm presenting as a little nugget of perfection. I've always been a very land-based human. I grew up in Kansas where, from the right vantage point, you can see oceans of land, with waves of crops blowing in the wind Really the only form of ocean I knew growing up. Other people tell me that looking out over the water makes them feel at ease and gives them a calm sense of peace or serenity, but I've never really felt that. To me, oceans are the home of monsters who can all breathe where I can't, which is not really the calmest or most peaceful thought. That's why it's strange that I'd want to make an episode about basically surrounding myself with nothing but water on the biggest boat I could ever imagine and about finding perfection on that ship in the middle of the night. I think being surrounded by water affects people differently. Some people find peace out in the open water, others the water gives them a different energy and brings chaos. But, like getting seasick, you don't really know how you'll react until it's too late to do much about it. I talked with a friend recently who told me about having this feeling, but even more so she told me the scientific name for it it's called the Lassophobia and it's the intense fear of large bodies of water. I don't think I'm at that level at all, but it was interesting to hear her talk about her intense feelings around water, because I recognize so much that I have, just on a smaller scale. So I said I didn't like water, and that's true. But boats are a different thing. I like a boat, though I haven't really been on that many In my earliest memories of any boat at all. I'm sitting on Smithville Lake in Missouri with Grandpa Moppen, and maybe Grandma or Dad were there too. But fishing was one of my grandpa's passions and he shared it with my sister and me from a very young age. I'm not sure how many other boats I had even gone on, and what gets included under the classification of boat. The Kansas City area has a couple of examples that I don't know if I should really count. At Worlds of Fun, the big theme park in the area, I rode on a mock riverboat that was really just being pulled along on an underwater track at the park so that one seems borderline. Probably shouldn't count it, but what feels completely out of the question are Kansas City's riverboat casinos. Now, to me gambling always seems to have the oddest hoops to jump that make it go from completely illegal, go to prison crime, to 100% A-OK, super profitable business. To go from a place where it's not allowed to one where it is, you may have to cross a state line, like in Lake Tahoe, where the California side of the state line just has hotels, but across the street on the Nevada side they've become large hotel casinos due to the different state laws on gambling. Or the line between the United States land and tribal lands, where the laws are different as well. You might even have to cross from land to water in the case of the floating casinos on the Mississippi River where, as long as there are businesses on the water, the laws are different than they are on land. So these boats sail up and down the river, fulfilling that requirement regularly. But the riverboats in Kansas City are, well, they're different. For one, they are large complexes the size of shopping malls and you might wonder how well a riverboat could float in water, being that size. But don't worry, these riverboats aren't surrounded by water at all, but rather by enormous parking lots locking them in acres of concrete on all sides. Now, it might be hard to conjure up the image of a riverboat, considering the description I've just given you, but a few of them have put forth a nominal amount of effort to remind you that they are in fact boats A lit up display, smokestack, maybe a neon paddle wheel that is completely stationary you know stuff like that. So what makes these riverboats boats, you ask. I mean, why are they even called riverboats? Well, of course it's water. Most of the riverboats casino concrete foundation is taken up with restaurants, shops, movie theaters and the like. But to go on to the gambling floor in the middle you have to first step across the threshold, a small one foot gap bridged by a textured metal plate, beneath which runs a one foot wide stream of water that has been diverted out of the nearby Missouri River and then, after flowing under the metal plate, eventually flows back out to the Missouri River once more. And that's the magic that does it in KC. Walk across a rain gutters worth of water and now you're on a boat, which always felt so weird to me, so I don't count those really in the list of boats I've ridden. I guess that would be my auto boat dog right, no, and that means I don't really have that many boats in my past at all. The short boat trip in India I talked about last episode, a couple of ferries to Bershiri and Reibu and islands in Japan when I lived there and a short one in Seattle, but until a few years ago that was really it for me and boats, fishing with my grandpa, a bunch of non boats and some ferries. But then, in 2019, we got the call from the big leagues. It was a family trip being planned by people higher up in the tree than us, and we were invited to go on a cruise with a large group of relatives, something I had definitely never even thought of doing before and before I knew it, we were booked and packing for a big trip on the biggest boat I could imagine. We'd be departing from Seattle, washington, and then sailing north to see glaciers in Alaska, where I'd never been before, then back to Seattle, making a few stops in between. Now, this ship, the cruise ship, really was like a floating city. The ridiculous premise of a shopping mall slash casino being a boat because someone ran a hose through it was the fake version, but that idea was the reality of a cruise ship. The ship we would be sailing on, the Diamond Princess, had 13 decks, held 2600 passengers and another 1100 crew members and, like any cruise ship, it had to be designed with the goal of keeping over 2000 people entertained or at least occupied all day long, day after day. On a ship, they can't leave. So there was a lot to do Things starting all over all the time. You just looked at what was happening when and you could choose which things to hit up. But more even than the non-stop scheduled events, I was fascinated by just the fundamental differences that being on a ship brought. The first surprising discovery on board the ship, one that I didn't even know to expect at all, was the way the boat moved. At first you noticed some minor rocking back and forth while it leaves the port, but when the ship reaches open water it really picks up steam and the minor rocking becomes much more intense. The whole ship moves with the waves, but because it's so big, the time it takes to rock back and forth makes it feel like whatever ground you're on is either rising or falling slowly. I'd probably have a more poetic description if I'd been on ships all my life, but walking down a hall was almost like walking across one of those plank and rope bridges where as you walk you make the thing bounce and by the middle you're dealing with the whole bridge just rippling up and down in a wave. People were having a hard time with the rocking and more than a few of our family party just stayed in their cabin and tried to deal with their seasickness. The surprising part to me, mr Land, guy. Well, I was just fine Better than fine, actually. On my first trip where I could get seasick, I discovered that the rocking up and down and sort of moving floor feeling was something, well, something that I really enjoyed. It was like being on a slow motion trampoline, or maybe like the best parts of being tipsy, without any of the cost, calories or other negative parts of drinking. I get why people don't like it and I had never rolled those dice before, but if, when I did, I had found that I get really sick from the rocking motion, I'd feel the same way too. I didn't, so I didn't. For people who have been on a cruise before, or just people with enough wear with all to actually know what one's like, please bear with me, I was not in that camp prior to this. So the ship has shops, shows, places to eat, swimming pools, a gym, a casino and even a hospital jail in morgue in case something goes drastically wrong while you're cruising. It was huge, I'll be honest. It was also very overwhelming initially. I am not an extrovert. Often, and I'm also not particularly a swim in the sun or dance the night away type. There were people everywhere, and I'm not really a fan of that either. But the boat is huge and while there were crowded spots that were easy to find and often located by whatever popular activity, party or event was being put on right then, I was able to find some quiet spots too. It was away from the main throng of passengers and places to really appreciate what I was experiencing there. On especially windy or cold days, which on a trip north to Alaska was most of them, I could find some space up on the observation deck and also look out on a site I never really get to see, being surrounded by water to the horizon in every direction. On one of these walkabouts I was lucky enough to see a couple of whales swimming alongside the boat, and on another I caught a lazy otter cruising in our wake who looked like it was enjoying a nice breakfast made up of yummy things that the enormous engines were stirring up below. And this was how I sort of got acclimated to cruising on my first few days. I would hang with people for as long as I had the energy for it, and then I would find ways to slip away from any action to recharge on my own Most of the time I'd been exploring the vast boat. This ship had 13 floors or decks, each one the size of the cruise ship, and it had been built out extensively to make use of all that space. Back when I first moved to Kita, kyushu, japan, I did this same thing At night. I would pop in headphones and just go out walking, going down streets or alleys I hadn't been down before gradually making a mental map of my surroundings as I went A few walkabouts around a new area, and I tended to get a much better sense of the space and get my bearings enough to explore much more intentionally later. Doing this, I found nooks and crannies that were interesting to me, different businesses and restaurants off the beaten path that I was curious about, parks or other green spaces that are tucked away between tall buildings, and I even made friends with stray animals on occasion, and the same tactic worked pretty well on the boat too. There weren't any stray animals there, of course, but everything else went pretty much the same as in a city. It definitely helped me feel like I knew where things were on the boat in short order, where to sneak away when I needed to, and also gave me a mental list of what things were available to see or use, and I thought this worked really well for the first few days. Then, as can sometimes slash often happen, my weirdness got in the way. I've always been a night owl. I would stay up late as a child reading with a flashlight. Once I got a TV in my room, that turned into staying up late while watching what few broadcast TV stations we got on the rabbit ears and enjoying their latest of late night offerings while laying on the carpet and drawing pictures in front of the screen. I would stay up until 2, 3, 4am on school nights and then short change myself on sleep. Not a great plan for middle school and high school, but it didn't seem to matter. I was a night owl, awake all alone while everyone else was asleep, and I liked it. In college, staying up late started to have social advantages. I could schedule my own classes and gravitated towards ones that started later when possible, and then I would just leave my dorm room door propped open. When I was up late doing stuff. Other students would come in and hang out on their way back from a night out, maybe, or taking a break from an all night cram session before a big test, possibly someone dropping by to give their roommate some privacy. But I was usually up and ready to talk, watch a movie or listen to music. The older I get, the less attractive being a night owl has become. After college I moved to Japan and worked in public schools which very much have their own set schedules and are not open to an assistant teacher setting separate hours. I mean, I assume I didn't ask, and I have found that in professional life the need for all-nighters goes down sharply from my college days. Or maybe I've just gotten better at not procrastinating as much. But that night owl skill trait, characteristic. Whatever it is, it does still come in handy sometimes. Having a baby immediately throws you into a stretch of months where time has no meaning. It's wake up time when there's crying, it's sleeping time when there is napping, it's everything else time somewhere in between. But being able to be alert in the middle of the night or conk out for a few hours mid-morning made me a pretty good new baby wrangler. Staying up all night before a flight and then sleeping on the plane is also good for minimizing the effects of jet lag on long trips, I discovered. But really the older I get, the less useful of a habit, predispositioned or a quirk it seems to be. That's why I didn't find it helpful when I started feeling completely awake in the middle of the night on the cruise ship. At home I can go to another room and turn lights on or do things without disturbing anyone's sleep, but on the cruise my family was all in the same room together. Any lights or noise would affect other people and I didn't want to just sit there fully awake in the windowless cabin for hours. So I found myself quietly getting dressed in the dark and heading out to explore in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep Well, not everyone actually. I found a few people still in the nightclub, one of the last places on the ship to shut down Literally a few like three people, and it looked like it was closing up soon. Walking out around the usually crowded spots, it felt a little like a ghost town. Everything was empty. These places that were never empty during the day because they were always full of people or getting set up to be full of people At night, those spaces and places were all abandoned, patiently waiting for the morning so they could fill back up, but in the meantime they just sat there open, curiously empty and quiet. Well, if you heard my last episode, you know I like to paint. When I have the time and a bit of inspiration, I like to sit and make watercolor paintings, but on a boat with thousands of people freely roaming at all times, there are rarely any chances to sit down and find a subject that's not going to shift or change or be different in some way over an hour or two. But now, in the still of the night, there were large chunks of time to paint spaces that were normally filled with people, and I made a mental note to take advantage of these opportunities. Later I noticed another thing about the middle of the night too. There's no shortage of staff on a cruise ship. There are tons of people on board who are there working. During the day, we would see all the hospitality professionals, entertainers and staff that you're meant to see, but at night, while they slept, an entirely new crew emerged. People I never saw during the day came out and started going over and checking everything on the ship, resetting each piece for the morning, as well as doing maintenance, which must always be needed, but I never saw it happen during the day when changing a light bulb or doing HVAC work might be unsightly and get in the way of guests, but once the cruisers had gone to sleep at night they popped out like a pit crew for a race car repaired, replaced and reset everything before the morning. I was completely fascinated by this. It's as if a shark had gone to sleep and these little cleaner fish were out in force picking out anything that didn't belong there, missing no detail. I walked a bit more and found another wonderful night-only feature. When I went to the end of the ship where the dining rooms were in the pre-dawn hours of early morning I discovered that there were whole sections of the boat that smelled like fresh bacon, because they shared some airway with the kitchen where the cooks were preparing breakfast items for some 2,000 people. I know I've talked about how smells get me before. This was another one. I would walk outside and smell the saltwater air, but to come inside and be hit with the warmth and the unexpected smell of fresh bacon is just pretty spectacular. I gotta say this first night I had been walking with just my headphones and exploring every nook of the ship. I could think of that I hadn't checked out for hours on end. Then I came back some time pre-dawn and slipped into bed for a little shut-eye before everyone got up. I had just planned to leave the room for a bit and not wake anyone else up, but instead discovered my favorite aspect of the cruise being up on the ship in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. It really felt like during these hours this ship meant for thousands was really just my personal exploration zone and that I was seeing a secret side to the ship that other people never got to experience. I think I sort of shifted my plans then, making sure to nap during the day to make up for being awake during the night. After the first night I did this, I also planned my little night time adventures a bit more intentionally. Knowing now what the empty ship held, I was able to pack a bag with my watercolor things and over the next few days, usually at 3 or so after the final things to do on the ship ended, I would slip out of my room. I started my nights by wandering around the ship looking for a good subject to paint. I picked a spot on the top deck next to one of the swimming pools and set up facing a now closed bar and tile mural that I would never have gotten a clean view of during the daytime. Night time painting had another benefit I hadn't thought of when I planned it, and that's the light Painting in sunlight. During the day, the light changes over time, especially over a couple of hours, especially, especially on a rocking ship that's sailing and maybe turning as well, but night, well, of course, at night the ship is lit up by artificial light, which would stay consistent throughout my painting and make the process just that much easier. So there, in my windbreaker, and probably listening to some film score through my headphones, I sat and spent the next 2-3 hours on what felt like an abandoned ghost ship and loved every second of it. I could even leave my painting stuff spread out there on the table and walk around, maybe grab a bite to eat or drink, and then come back and pick up where I left off, something I would have never considered doing when everyone was up and about, both because I don't just want to leave my stuff unattended, but also because when the decks and pool get crowded it feels rude to take up a table that I'm not actively using. I repeated the process the next night, setting up in the main lobby that is usually a bustling and busy thoroughfare, and painting part of it, with the spiral staircase, bar piano and bronze globe in the background. It was during this painting that I really saw the crew come out like elves and expose some of the hidden workings on the ship opening panels that I didn't know opened, sliding pipes out into the hallway and working on electric wires through subtle conduits that I had just considered decorative elements. It was like I had snuck into a place I wasn't allowed to be, but no one was kicking me out, so I could quietly stay out of the way and just watch it all happen. It became my nightly routine. I don't need to bore you with each night's painting or exploring, but on the ship or really in any new or unfamiliar place, I generally like to have some time to get my bearings, to not have to be on for anyone else and to explore. These middle of the night crew sessions gave me the perfect dose of all three. It not only made my nights better, but with that bit of regular self-care, I was a more pleasant person to be around. All the rest of the time too. The stuff that was initially so overwhelming became much easier to navigate. I had done my bit while everyone was asleep, so I was less anxious about the rest of the group dynamics or going to this or that activity, because I had checked the most important activity off my list already, so I was easy to do whatever. It was really my favorite part of the cruise and some of my fondest memories from the ship. That's why later that year, when the opportunity came up to get a free cruise by sitting through a time-shared presentation, we decided as a family it'd be worth it. We heard the spiel, watch the PowerPoint presentation, got our free cruise voucher and then scheduled our next cruise for March 28, 2020. Now some of the keen date heads out there may have noticed something odd about that timing and then remembered that March of 2020 was when the entire US, as well as the rest of the world, was shutting down and trying to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. So one week before we were supposed to depart, the cruise got canceled officially. We were given a chance to reschedule 12 to 18 months in the future for a date that also ended up getting bumped and re-rescheduled. And now, over two years since we were supposed to leave initially and three years since that time-shared PowerPoint, we finally found ourselves once again getting ready to go on a cruise. Different cruise line, different route, slightly smaller boat this was the carnival miracle, and it holds about 500 fewer passengers and 150 fewer staff, but there's still some 3,000 people on board. This time we'd head south, from San Francisco to a place in Mexico and then back again, and this time it would just be the immediate family. My wife was excited to just relax and look out over the ocean. She's a California person, so she doesn't understand my fear of the monsters underneath the water. Uh, my daughter was excited because this cruise would have water slides on it, and I was, of course, excited to see what this ship would be like in the middle of the night, when everyone was sleeping, and so so it's a little after three in the morning and I've decided to get up and explore during my favorite time on a cruise ship. So let's go see what we find, shall we? I left our cabin and decided to start by going to the upper decks first and then working my way down, crisscrossing the boat as I went.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Deck nine.

Speaker 2: 25:32

I'm assuming it'll be cold. I mean, let's see if we can get up one more flight and go up to 10.

Speaker 1: 25:41

You know what?

Speaker 2: 25:43

Not only is there more work to take the stairs. I don't get. The front of the elevator dings for the show, so for the show, for the show. I will take the elevator up one flight. Normally, of course, I would absolutely take the stairs, but for the show.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Deck 10.

Speaker 2: 26:06

That's what we're looking for. Looks like I could go outside right here. Okay well now I'm up on deck 10. I've got a good view from up here, got a wind noise too. Whoa, whoa. This is a fine. There's a little shower here next to the water slide that you're supposed to shower off in before or after you hop in, and I'm using it with the glass half circle around it as a real windshield right now so I could actually talk. But I can't hang out here all day. I'm going to head out and let's see what else we got. We're on 11, heading out and exploring. Here we go. Now. A lot of what I got outside ended up being heavy wind noise, which got louder the higher I went, and me commenting like wow, can you believe all the wind over and over, which normally I'd try to figure out a way to include? But there's some big noise stuff later that I'm going to have to ask you to buy in on, so I'm trying not to ask too much of you until then. After discovering that outside would mostly just produce wind noise, I ditched my jacket back in the room and got these much quieter snippets from inside, starting with the large theater at the front of the ship. And also don't worry when you hear me talking about the painting. I know I surprised you with having to listen to me paint last episode and I promise I'm not going down that road again. Well, not so soon anyway. So don't freak out when I refer to that plan. That's not what's going to end up happening. So now I'm in the large theater, the large amphitheater at the front of the ship. This is where they do all the stage performances. We saw a singing dancing show here earlier and they have, like, actually a pretty amazing stage, that that goes up and down on hydraulics, and it was pretty surprising. Every time a new part would lift or fall I was like whoa, that part moves too. Okay, all right, now let's keep exploring and see what will be fine. So two and three are the main spots where, like, there's a lot of stuff across the boat. Parts four through eight are almost completely state rooms, which means rooms where people are staying in and back with the shops. Now, oh, I definitely look like I'm doing something. I got my reflection in a mirror just there and I definitely look like I'm making a podcast, that's for sure. I've got big old headphones on and a microphone in front of my face as I just wander a ship in the middle of the night. All right, deck three Well, three is just a higher view of the Phantom. Right, the Phantom is the name of the big theater at the front. Now I'm definitely feeling the swaying up here as I walk. I have the inclination to kind of swerve left and right as the boat shifts with me, because I haven't had anything to drink, so I know everything I'm feeling is boat. This big theater starts on the second deck but extends up to the third deck and fourth deck as well, with balconies. All right, so I'm going to go back to the elevators here and take these back down To what? Three or two.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Maybe two is where I should go.

Speaker 2: 30:14

That wouldn't be bad right. Hop down to two from here.

Speaker 1: 30:18

Back to two.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I was saying maybe tomorrow I get out a little bit earlier. If I get out a little bit earlier I might run into some fun people, and fun people can be fun on mic, so that could be a fun little bit. How about if I save fun a few more times? Oh, it's a 4 am brain, you know, doesn't know a lot of adjectives at its disposal, but maybe I think about what. Oh, do I want to paint the insides of theater, the big theater here? Well, it's empty. That could be cool. Or what if I sit at the front and turn and paint the back of it? That might be the move. Oh, hello Stevie. What do we got here? A bunch of chandeliers.

Speaker 1: 31:21

How many how many is this?

Speaker 2: 31:24

12 chandeliers. All right, ship, Settle down. You don't got to flex so hard on me. That's crazy. Then I found a pretty crazy place on the ship that I had walked past a bunch but never gone into. No, I've never been in Dr Frankenstein's life. What is this?

Speaker 1: 31:45

place, oh what.

Speaker 2: 31:50

Oh, no, that's fun. No, this is a little nightclub. Then there are steps down to a dance floor. To that is fun. What a giant Dr. No, a giant Frankenstein monster on the wall. Okay, how tall is that? Geez, I'm going to go down and see it. Oh, there are some giant panels from Frankenstein comics on the wall. These are old EC comics I know of. So if I head downstairs Dr Frankenstein's lab, to the dance floor, I come up on Frankenstein. Hey, big guy, that guy is 11 or 12 feet tall. I am coming up to his belly button, maybe. And then is there a way out down here, is it just? This is the depths of the nightclub. I think this is the depths. I think if you want to get out of the nightclub, you've got to climb those stairs again. Oh it's going to come in and then drop down into the nightclub.

Speaker 1: 32:55

And then head back up Fascinating.

Speaker 2: 33:02

I think I will try and come out here when there's people and just see what this is like, maybe not holding a microphone. I think that might alter the atmosphere I could observe. Okay, cool. So, pretty uneventful. But I mean, that's the whole point right, trying to get out when it's uneventful and seeing the ship that way, because literally every other time in every other space on the ship, you're not going to have that. So coming out again tomorrow, maybe meet some fun people along the way, I got to say a Frankenstein themed nightclub. I was not expecting that. It made me hope that other cruise ships had coordinating ones, so like an invisible man nightclub, a wolf man nightclub, a mummy nightclub, all the classic universal monsters, which after I returned I knew I shouldn't, but I looked up anyway and yeah, that's not a thing. Sorry, there's a werewolf club in London that Yelpers say is closed now, dracula club in St Moritz, switzerland, but not the interconnected monster nightclub universe I was hoping for. The next night I switched to a lavalier mic that I clipped to my shirt and then tucked the recorder away in a hot pink fanny pack I wore under the shirt, since I had noticed a lot of funny looks, and rightly so. When I was using my other setup I started up in the corner, tucked that under my shirt and set out on the ship. Alright, it's about 1.30 am and I'm headed out, for this is the last night on the ship, and so I kind of wanted to run into people, or just you know see what I could get into. I started outside first again this evening, so remember earlier when I said I needed to save my loud noise points for later. Well, this is later Now. Mind you, I've already worked on the audio here and dropped what's about to happen by some 40 odd decibels. So it's fine to hear, but it still may be somewhat alarming. The windy deck may just be nothing but wind. We'll see, okay.

Speaker 1: 35:49

Let's try out here. I see people walking.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Let's see, that is right there. I walked up right as it hit and I was right in the blast radius. Oh my gosh, Well if I was tired at all before I am fully awake now.

Speaker 1: 36:23

Oh my gosh, that's a. Okay, that does its job. It is foggy, fair enough, oh right.

Speaker 2: 36:40

I don't know that I need to be up here that much. I'm going to get hit with that horn every few minutes. I want to walk back the other way, but I'm scared of that horn.

Speaker 1: 36:54

I'm on the other side of it right now and I'm not mad about that, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:03

That's way more doable back here.

Speaker 1: 37:06

Whew.

Speaker 2: 37:08

Oh man, I cut out most of the fog horns, but I think you get the idea that was happening every few minutes and a few times it really got me right in its blast zone and that is an intense noise. So after getting some tape outside, it was time to go in again. Alright, let's go from 9 down to 2 or 3. There we go, there we go. Start on 3, yeah, because I ultimately want to check out the night club and that's on 2. And we can do that Now. If I want to go in conspicuous, I just take my headphones off, put them in my backpack and I'm walking with the same setup.

Speaker 1: 37:51

Go through it.

Speaker 2: 37:53

A little different. I lost my audio there for a second. Sorry, I think one of my connectors is a little sus. Let's try heading down to 2. This may be the time I check out Frankenstein's lab. Okay well, I ducked in for a second. I would say it's maybe lightly crowded. That's cool. Some people enjoying the last night on board Having fun time, drinking and dancing Sounds good. I'll try to be a little social and we go sit in the night club, which is going to turn my mic volume way down, but I'll leave it running just because why not?

Speaker 1: 38:50

Just in case I don't mind going through all this tape. Hey, that's 2. Here we are Got an eliminated. There you go. I got away y'all. I got away Before I go in here.

Speaker 2: 39:07

I'll do a little bit of adjustment on my setup here. I adjusted my setup, which mainly meant putting away my big headphones before I went into the club. Again, these are snippets. I was probably in there for three or four songs that have been cut down to these clips. I also tried to talk into my mic over the music at certain points, but it's pretty unintelligible. If there's something I'm trying to say, I'll repeat that when the music isn't playing. Okay, I'm wired now. I turned it way down. Let's go into the night club and drink a lemonade. I'll stay here as long as I got this drink. I guess here's where I talked myself into going down the stairs and sitting next to the dance floor to start with. You know what? Why not? If I'm gonna do it, go all the way. So, yeah, I tried to get myself to dance a bunch of times, tried to talk myself into it and be like okay, next song I'll go out there. I'm not a never dancer, I'm a rare dancer. But this night, in front of a room full of strangers, my intro version got the better, but there was one guy out there who didn't seem to have that problem. I mean, there were a lot of people out just dancing, but I'm talking about someone else who was mainly sitting on the sidelines, like me, and I'm gonna call this guy Mr Big Fun. So Mr Big Fun was sitting over at a table with his group and he seemed like he was having a great time. But every so often, when the vibe in the club would dip too low, mr Big Fun got up from his seat and strode out onto the dance floor. Now he wasn't dancing, but instead Mr Big Fun paraded around in a large arc all around the dance floor and hyped everyone up, group by group. Then he would come back off the dance floor and each time it was popping and the energy was strong. When he finished, it was genuinely impressive. I think our lemonade is done at a crunch of the ice. Oh, I'm almost out of ice. That was only my last excuse. I commented on my recording, which is hard to hear, but I got to the end of my lemonade and then getting to the end of the ice was what made me decide to pop upstairs for a quick refill. Now the next bit I'm gonna play in real time, no cuts. So I'll talk over it a little. It starts with me climbing the nightclub stairs heading up to deck 9 for more lemonade.

Speaker 1: 41:53

Alright, whoo Alright, hold on.

Speaker 2: 42:02

That's a trip.

Speaker 1: 42:04

Let's get a little more lemonade and then come back, shall we. I don't mind that.

Speaker 2: 42:21

That is not my scene. That is very much not my scene, but I'm okay. I cannot force myself to dance, it seems. I get one in alcohol Deck 9.

Speaker 1: 42:35

I'm not working with that tonight, so, alright, let's see Back here.

Speaker 2: 42:46

So let me explain the drink situation a little bit. Here On the boat. They offer drink packages one for alcohol, a different one for sodas, with per day or per trip prices. So of course the nightclub serves drinks. But If you're like me and you didn't pay for a package, the choices were water, iced tea or lemonade. That was all free, but the iced tea slash lemonade dispensers were on the ninth floor at the eating area.

Speaker 1: 43:24

Alright, refreshed lemonade.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Head back down to the lab. Now I'm doing this in real time because I'm only gone from the club for 2 minutes and 10 seconds total, but during that time everything changes. You'll hear the walkie-talkie of a security guard who catches the same elevator as me. Listen.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Come on, come on, come on, come on, Alright, go ahead, that's it. That's it. Hold me high. Good, right, perfect, go on, continue.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Some sort of a security thing happening.

Speaker 1: 44:12

Oh my gosh, I stepped out of the fight.

Speaker 2: 44:21

I returned to a full-on, all-out brawl on the dance floor. I'm talking 20 people, at least 10 aunts and uncles of one family versus 10 aunts and uncles of another family. It was wild.

Speaker 1: 44:35

That's sort of a big fight.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Some of the people were trying to get at other people, some of them were trying to hold back those people and some people were just trying to get out of the way.

Speaker 1: 44:45

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 44:51

The problem was that everyone was falling down all over the dance floor at the same time. It looked like some full drinks had hit the ground, covering the area with tons of liquid which people were slipping and falling in. I left for like two seconds. Other people were slipping while they tried to help people up and a bunch of them were clearly operating deep into their drink packages at night and, oh yeah, the whole thing was on a ship that was literally moving up and down the whole time. The security guard who rushed in from my elevator was one of 10 guards who had piled into the club to join the one guard who was there before the fight and they were working hard to sort through the chaos separating fighting parties and get everyone out of the nightclub. It was a lot of this kind of audio and then, because I wasn't wearing my headphones to monitor the audio, I didn't notice with my microphone just totally cut out. When I got to a spot I could check my audio. I fixed the connection, so I went back up to the only place food was still available and waited to see if anyone else from the nightclub would come up too. Alright, I started a new one. Let's go see if we can find some pizza. That was man that fall corn is still prominent, even inside a lot of the corn. Man that fall corn is still prominent, even inside, way back here. Hi can I do pepperoni pizza? Awesome, thank you. And sure enough, two groups did show up looking to eat one last free pizza. But also talk about the fight.

Speaker 1: 46:37

Wait, did you all happen down there? Well, all I know is that I can only start a trip around people, and if I'm directed by association. I'm gonna have to start a trip around people.

Speaker 2: 46:49

The guilty tripper speaking now is none other than Mr Big Fun himself. He sat down at one table and tried to get the other group to sit with him, except they were a solid trio and were more deep in their own conversation, but I wasn't so. Guy looking to talk meet guy wanting to listen. I turned off my mic for reasons I'll explain later, but I had a great talk with him and his girlfriend. I found out Mr Big Fun's real name was Darryl, that this was their first cruise and his story of what happened during those two minutes and ten seconds. I was gone because Mr Big Fun was, of course, at the center of it all and yeah, it could be subjective and not completely how it happened, but I love this version so I'm going to choose to believe it happened exactly as Mr Big Fun described. According to Darryl, on one of his hype walks, a guy who was big into dancing from the other family stopped him and challenged him to a dance-off. I kid you not, that is where this starts, okay, so one guy challenges Darryl to a dance-off. Darryl says I don't dance, fight, I just fight, fight. Now, the way Darryl said it to me didn't sound like any kind of a challenge at all. But guy one responded oh, I do that too. Darryl said this was the point where it felt like it was a challenge. So he said oh, we can go outside on deck nine, which is really funny to me, thinking of two guys mad enough to fight each other being patient enough to go upstairs and wait to take separate elevators up seven more floors and all that. Guy one says or we could just stay right here. And I guess that's when things got physical. It was a one-on-one thing, but since everyone was with a bunch of people, it quickly became a bench clearing brawl. Darryl says he didn't start it, but once it turned physical he felt obligated to jump in and be in the middle of it all for his family. That's what the guilty-by-association thing was referring to earlier. So then, after all that, I hooked my recorder, mic and headphones back up to talk about it, and you can hear me trying to process my thoughts in this montage. Hi there, checking back in. Oh boy, that was a big. That was an interesting night. I didn't want to record, but I'll tell you why. So I ended up sitting down getting pizza at about three. It's about 4.45 now, and the past hour and 45 minutes I have been catching up with a couple people, a little bit more information about what I missed when I went up for a root limit, but people felt like they had to start getting physical again. And then a little bit of that turns into a lot of that when people come in to jump in and help other people in their groups and a little thing turns into a physical thing turns into a big thing real quick. So, but I met up with a couple of people, talked to them. They were good people, had a good conversation, I think Just one of those cases where alcohol didn't help things and then neither does people feeling like they can't take a step back Drunk too. I don't know Really really kind of fun to get to know someone and sit and hang with them. I didn't think I was going to be hanging with anyone tonight, but I was going to be off by myself and maybe do a painting. I don't know about the painting anymore, or sort of. I think I sort of changed when all that popped off, but everybody went to bed, it looks like after kind of winding down and decompressing. The reason I didn't roll tape with those guys was well, just, I mean, everybody had a little bit to drink. I don't think it's really fair to stick a microphone in someone's face when they're not exactly sober, Especially if you don't spring it on them after a big night like tonight.

Speaker 1: 51:26

But the night club's kind of neat. I would have liked to come back here. It's all good.

Speaker 2: 51:42

I guess I was here for the most eventful part. I'm going to have a story to tell, but yeah, I didn't feel like interviewing people when they didn't drink and didn't have an emotional situation. I don't need to take advantage of that. I did want to talk and just hang out and find out what happened, because I'm human, that's curiosity, right.

Speaker 1: 52:07

But yeah, okay Wow.

Speaker 2: 52:18

Well, that was, that was an unexpected turn of events. I'll say that For sure, that was an unexpected turn of events.

Speaker 1: 52:32

And.

Speaker 2: 52:37

I mean I was trying to think when the last time I'd been in a nightclub was before all that popped off. It's got to have been. I mean, it had to have been probably the last time I was on a cruise and the nightclub that I showed up the first night that I kind of like went out exploring late and found like three people in it. That was probably the last time I was in a nightclub until this time. And I don't know, I figured I'm, I figured that being on a cruise and having everything kind of be free or taken care of already, I was like, oh, maybe that means people don't get into it in like nightclub situations. And then, of course, just to put an exclamation point on how wrong that is, I see the most dramatic example of me being wrong. In real time I am seeing more like early people who I classify as early risers now, people who look like they're getting up at five, not staying up to five. That makes sense. I don't know what to do with this tape. Honestly, I don't know what to do with this episode anymore. It definitely is not what I was imagining it would most likely be, and yeah. I don't know what to do. So I think the events of that last night really did alter the trajectory of this episode. It was all about how calm and quiet the ship can be in the middle of the night, and just well. That's not what my tape really showed, but the early am cruise walkers were telling me that morning was inevitable. So I took one last lap around the boat on my way back to the room. A lot of natural noise that happens out here. This is really the noise I've never come upon. All these ship noises are not in my daily Well, I mean, except that one. Obviously I have fog horns at my house just for fun, but besides that all the other ship noises are just the stuff I don't have around. So it's kind of nice to be able to come out and record and experience it all here at all through the microphone. Okay, headed back in.

Speaker 1: 55:21

Okay, it's been a good trip. It's been pretty successful.

Speaker 2: 55:30

Strangely, maybe cruising is a decent compromise for me between a normal vacation and staying at home, Because I do get to kind of feel like I'm at home. But this is one of those places. I think the second cruise I felt similar to the first and sort of my feeling on the way out is I would do it again. Yeah this has been good, okay. Well, I'm at my room now. Beyond this door are a couple sleeping people, so I'm going to say goodbye as well. That was a little bit loud. Okay, talk to you later. Bye, wait, that sounds like I'm on the phone. Okay, signing off? No, that sounds like I'm on it. Okay, well, that's it, bye. There were subtle differences between my two cruise experiences. For instance, no bacon smells on my cruise this time and no hockey sized fights on the first cruise Potato, potato. I was half hoping that the giant Frankenstein would come to life as a huge robot bouncer just grabbing the fighters and holding them apart from each other. But it didn't do any of that. It didn't do anything, not even a light up or a bounce at shoulders or anything. I mean, if I go to all the trouble of making a 12 foot tall Frankenstein, I feel like bouncing shoulders are like bare minimum. But yeah, I had gone out expecting a peaceful, quiet night and got the complete opposite. But this is all about having experiences, and that was my experience this time. I mean, I still went out and found that solitary piece on the first night and on the first cruise, but ultimately, going out at 3am is about being open to whatever is going to happen that wouldn't during the day, and sometimes I guess that means nightclub fights. It's all a part of it, really. Oh, and I contacted Mr Big Fun after the cruise to find out one more thing. See, I knew security was escorting people down to their cabins because Mr Big Fun and his girlfriend told me they got escorted down but then waited until security left and snuck back out to get pizza, and I was curious if anyone had gotten in any real trouble from the brawl, like if there were any land cops waiting for them as they got off the boat. I mean, this was a real concern for Mr Big Fun while we were eating pizza. So I asked him after and he said that nothing had happened with him or anyone else in his party that he knew about. It sounds like the situation was like a teacher on the last day of school, when kids are acting up and they're just like there's literally five hours until people start getting off the boats. Could you all just chill please? So yeah, no repercussions. It seems Just a good old fashioned slobber knocker, but a legendary fight like that, especially because it happened on a boat out at sea, deserves they demands to have a suitable song made for it, and I'm nothing if not a slave to tradition. So here to forever commemorate the crazy night we had, I present the cruise ship 3am Sea Shanty. Take it away. There once was a ship that put to sea. It held my daughter, my wife and me from Frisco down to Mexico. Oh, blow that big horn blow. We made it through nights one to four, night five's the last we'd be aboard. But things happened on the dance floor while Foghorns outside blow, in a night club themed like Frankenstein with a statue of him 12 feet high. A dance off turned into a fight and that's what stopped the show.

Speaker 1: 59:50

Cruise in at 3am completely surrounded by sea. Again had in too much luck a engine and things are bound to blow.

Speaker 2: 59:59

I left it with the music playing, I came back to a Patrick's ways and some push and shove in misbehaving. The fight was on the go. The peaceful dancers here before now, ants and uncles, spent on war till ten guards pushed them out the door while they said no, no, no.

Speaker 1: 1:00:20

And then the lame part of the fight, when they sort out who's wrong and who's right. Listened to everyone for half the night, then let everybody go A wild brawl in the early morning.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

new legend had just been born, and we'll announce it with the horn, the kind you blow in Fogh.

Speaker 1: 1:00:40

Cruise in at 3am, completely surrounded by sea again had in too much luck a engine and things are bound to blow Cruise in at 3am, completely surrounded by sea again had in too much luck a engine, and things are bound to blow.

Speaker 2: 1:01:25

Special thanks to Simon Carrier for the banjo tracks in this episode, like this one and on the Sea Shanty. You can find his contact info, as well as the links for all the musical artists, in the show notes and on the episodes webpage. If you'd like to contact the show, you can email perfectshowshowcom and connect on Twitter, youtube or Instagram to the name Perfect Show Show. This episode was recorded and mixed at Morena Studios in Oakland, california. As you may have noticed, I don't keep to a set schedule with these, so subscribe if you'd like to get every episode and if you're enjoying these and want to drop us a rating or review, please do. It's the easiest way to support the show and I haven't seen any new ones in a while. And remember, I'm not a singer and I'm not a teenager, I'm a dad. So doing TikTok sea shanty memes way after no one else cares about them, with my own weird owl lyrics is completely on brand. I'll have you know and I don't feel a bit of shame for my actions here. Anyway, until next time, I'm Scott Moppin, and thanks for listening to the Perfect Show.