day whatever (4?)

Day 3

Part 1

Sittin at the Miami aiport in the boarding area for my flight to key west and felt like writin’ a little bit. I have no internet and am typing in word, just incase you’re wondering about the unusual amount of capital letters in this post…

So yesterday went as planned. I basically watched tv, practiced, and played a little poker. I gotta tell ya, football is much more tolerable if you mute the tv and have an instrument in your hand. I don’t mind watching football, but the commentators can be so annoying. I also saw some of the bewitched movie with will ferrel and Nicole kidman. I didn’t even know it existed until last night. Did anyone else see this? It was a total chick flick but I didn’t care because will ferrel is just that amazing. I also saw parts of a lord of the rings movie and walk the line.

Well, the lady at the front desk thing just warned me that “they” are famous for not getting luggage to key west with the passengers… awesome. So I’ll just show up without my tux then? That’ll go over well don’t ya think? I sure hope she’s wrong. I guess I’m a little nervous though because I had to go back out through security to get to this concourse, and it was quite a trek, which means my bags probably have a ways to travel too. F.

Well, I see people coming off the plane I’m supposed to board so I’d better wrap it up. Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting things to write about in the next few days. Not sure when I’ll have internet next so this post may be a little dated by the time I get it posted.

Love,
James

Ps –I’m gonna smack all 5 of these chads sitting next to me if they don’t quit being so chaddy. And if I hear Kenny g destroy another Christmas song in this airport, I’m probably gonna puke.

Part 2

Well, I made it to the boat. The plane I took from Miami to key west was a little bigger than my car with no overhead compartments. There was no door or even a curtain between the cabin and the cockpit, so I could see out the front window from where I was sitting. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pilots were younger than me. I was a pretty fun flight because we over a bunch of swamp looking land, then we flew by the nasa launch pads, then finally over the ocean to the keys. It was a beautiful day too. The key west airport was the smallest thing I’ve ever seen. There was one little carousel for the luggage and like one rental car place. I found a taxi to the boat and enjoyed a nice ride through what my driver told me was ‘old key west.’ It was a pretty cool lookin’ neighborhood.

Getting on the ship was relatively easy. Luckily I had luggage with me and the people in charge could tell I was boarding the ship for the first time and directed me where to go. After some paper work the musical director, Will, came down to meet me and show me around. He plays keyboard and is from England. Seems like a nice guy so far… when he was showing me around the boat all I was thinking was, ‘yeah, I’m definitely gonna get lost a few times before I figure this out..’ and I did. As soon as he showed me back to my room, my roommate took me up to this place where I could get some food. He explained to me that the staff was only allowed to eat in this certain restaurant at certain times and that I should bring my food down to the crew mess hall. I found a slice of pizza and basically walked around with it for a good 10 minutes before I figured out where the hell I was. Yeah, so imagine being a guest on the ship and seeing an employee wandering around with a slice of pizza on a plate, looking completely lost. Not only did I feel like a complete idiot, but I was afraid some high ranking officer or whatever was going to see me and ask me what the hell I was doing. I did manage to find my room and just ate my pizza there instead of in the mess hall, probably breaking yet another rule.

So I hadn’t been on the ship for even an hour until we had our first rehearsal. We have two shows tonight, one at 8:30, one at 10:30 and had a quick run through at 3:45. The guys in the band seem cool from the little time I’ve interacted with them. It was a relief to finally get the horn on my face and realize that I’m going to be just fine on this stuff. I’m actually more worried about getting in trouble from breaking some silly rule than I am about screwing up my parts.

Well, I may end up writing a part 3 after the shows tonight, but right now, I gotta go get some food. Some guys from the band just stopped by my room so I’m gonna go try to sit with them while there’s still room. It get’s pretty busy in the crew mess hall from what I hear.

Laters,
James

Day 4

Sheesh. Where to begin? Guess I’ll start with the shows. Basically, they were a lot of fun. We played for an entertainer named Tia Thompson, a comedian, whose name I forget, and a little schtick the cruise director did. The music was pretty straight forward and my parts didn’t go too high (which I guess is kinda my main concern, bein’ a bass trombone player and all…) we played “I Wish” for the walk on and walk off of the comedian and it totally felt like I was in a late night show band. I didn’t have a part, though, so I had to read off the trumpet player’s music, which was luckily just a C treble clef lead sheet. I’m sure I would have been okay if I had had to transpose, just because that’s a tune I already have in my ear, but it was nice to have that added pressure. The only other difficulty I really had on the gig was seeing the MD (musical director). I sit on the end of the horn section so he’s directly down the line to my left and there’s very little room for me to move to a place where I can see him. I think I only missed one cue last night because I was able to pick up on the fact that he was watching the performers on stage, so if I did the same, I’d probably be right.

In the second show, when the comedian was kinda telling the audience about himself, he mentioned that he did his undergrad at Eau Claire. Every ounce of me wanted to scream ‘gooooo blugolds!’ making a complete ass of myself, but I refrained. I want to be myself and have a good time out here, but there’s so many f’n rules and etiquette and crap that I haven’t yet figured out what’s okay and what’s not, so my default is to just keep my head low and not attract any attention.

Now writing from a starbucks in Nassau…Gosh I hope my roommate was right about the boat leaving at 9pm….

So it looks like I get cell service here? Hmm….hopefully I’m not being charged a million dollars a minute. I best figure this out.

Ok, so after the shows I went to the crew bar to hang for a bit. I didn’t stay long cause I had to get up and be at some safety thing at 9 this morning. Safety thing basically consisted of me finding my way to this room I had been shown once, walking into this smokey office where some officer with a really thick accent of some kind made me watch a video. I now know what to do when drunk people fall overboard, which I guess is good because there are a lot of drunk people from what I’ve seen so far. One thing I hate, though, is not being able to understand all the accents. Hopefully it’ll get better the longer I’m here but it sucks to look so confused all the time and ask people to repeat themselves constantly because I couldn’t understand them.


Well, I this post has become waaaaay too long so I’m gonna stop it here. No idea when I’ll get internet again, but I’ll probably have more to say by the time that happens. Miss you all.

Love,
james