Dance Hosts

There’s an old movie called “Out to Sea”, about a pair of retired gentlemen who are hired to dance with old ladies on a cruise ship. One of them (Jack Lemmon) dances well and the other (Walter Matthau) does not. I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I’ll soon get around to it, having now made the acquaintance of such men, called “dance hosts”.

On Holland America ships , the setting for ballroom dance is a place called the Ocean Bar, a longtime fixture on all HAL ships, located on the 8th floor not too far from my work area. A live 3 or 4 piece band plays, and dancing happens on a circular dance floor about 20 feet in diameter, comfortably fitting about 7 or 8 couples.

Holland America dance hosts are only hired when the cruise is 28 days or longer. The present cruise, from Rio to New York, is 30 days long, so 4 retired gentlemen have been waltzing with single ladies in their 60s, 70s and 80s every night, 4 hours a night, since the cruise started.

I almost didn’t meet these Fred Astaires at all. However, one of them turned up in the piano bar about a week ago after his shift was over. I ran into him again the next day, and he became my first interviewee.

His name is Tomas, a retired Pacific Bell employee, whose dance hosting takes him away from his California home about 3 months a year. 12 years ago he sent videotapes of himself to agencies that provide lecturers, entertainers, dance hosts and other specialized personnel to ships. The tapes showed him dancing cha cha, rhumba, swing, and waltz - - the Basic Four. Since then he’s been pretty steadily employed, with HAL and others, and has been around the world a few times.

Then there’s John, who was a NASA engineer during his main career. He’s a widower, and a few years ago he took a cruise and found himself to be very popular with the ladies in the Ocean Bar. However he observed that the dance hosts were cruising for free, and basking in the ladies’ attention. It looked like a sweet deal, so John took lessons at a studio, which eventually “certified” him and emailed the certification documents to the agencies.

I then spoke with Howard, who’s been a dance host for 15 years. Long ago he retired as a technical support specialist in education. He speaks strongly about the therapeutic power of dance. The elderly in particular, their lives shaken by the loss of a spouse, are soothed, even rescued, by the spiritual and physical discipline, and the joy of moving to music.

My last interviewee was Richard, unquestionably the “Captain of the Team”. He has 8 years experience as a dance host, but a lifetime of experience as a dancing instructor. It goes way back to 1957, with his first work in the Arthur Murray schools.

And it continues right now on the Veendam. He runs afternoon dance classes on sea days, one of which I witnessed. He is a consummate dance instructor, which an eye on every fine point. He offers the classes as part of his basic 30-day arrangement with HAL, and his 3 colleagues come up and help out. It helps keep the morale and fun flowing at night in the Ocean Bar, and many ladies have a most wonderful vacation due to these extra efforts of the dance hosts.

(l to r) Tomas, Richard, John, Howard

Favoritism to any lady is not allowed. The guys must ask a different lady to dance each tune, until the “rotation” has been run through and they’ve covered everybody. On this particular cruise there‘s about 8 “regulars“ in the Ocean Bar, vying for their entitled dances with the guys, and watching like hawks. I’ve been assured that they’ll speak up very quickly to make sure they get their fair share of dancing.

No hanky panky allowed, zero-tolerance, this rule an almost-obvious follow-up to the no-favoritism rule. The dance hosts live two-to-a-cabin, in this case Richard with Tomas and John with Howard. If they’re caught visiting a guest cabin, it’s immediate dismissal, kicked off the ship at the next port.

But there’s no rule against maintaining relationships off the ship, and these guys are in a good position to have friendships with the fair sex, all over the world.

I was hoping to provide useful information for people who might want to follow in these guys’ footsteps, pardon the pun. Alas, there has been a steady reduction in the use of dance hosts, in HAL and other cruise lines. Although a HAL cruise must be 28 days long for dance hosts to be hired, it was only 21 days a few years ago, and 14 days shortly before that. There is less need to cater to ladies to want dance hosts, and those ladies are being pushed to take the longer cruises.

The dancing demographic is shifting, and the Corporate beancounters have been watching carefully. More and more of today’s elderly widows & divorcees are people raised in the early rock era, with The Twist and other non-contact, unstructured dancing. They were not encouraged to learn ballroom dance like the pre-rock era kids, don’t have the slightest idea what a foxtrot is, and don‘t care. More rock tunes are slipping into Ocean Bar repertoire, along with more free-style Do Whatever You Want dancing.

Tomas, John, Howard, and Richard are part of a shrinking profession, and they think it’ll all be over in about 5 years. But they feel very fortunate for the time they’ve had traveling the world in their retirement, gracefully dancing at sea with countless ladies. For them it’s been a helluva ride.

A Drink to Wakeup D Dead

The Caribbean Island of Dominica is pronounced Do-mi-NEEK-a, which I didn’t know until the day before we got there. Prior to that I was accenting the second syllable, as in the “Dominican” Republic, which is a different island, elsewhere in the Caribbean. The proper pronunciation brings to mind that silly Domi-neeka neeka neeka tune from the 60’s, which we sang -- very briefly -- in the piano bar the previous night.

Christopher Columbus & co. were the first Europeans to see this place, during their second voyage in 1493, and they didn’t even bother to stop. Ol’ Chris was an Italian whose voyage was financed by the Queen of Spain, and he came up with the name “Domenica” - Italian for “Sunday” - simply because that was the day he sailed past.

The Italian-sounding name turned out to be inappropriate because neither Italy nor Spain was interested in Dominica. It became a British possession, complete with pounds and shillings and that left-side-of-the-street driving that’s so dangerous to spaced-out American pedestrians like me.

The ship was not scheduled to stay long, a 3PM departure, which was unusually early. Waking up late, and not really getting in gear until 11:30 AM, I couldn’t go very far, for very long. So it was time for another Aimless Walk to Anywhere, hopefully with some interesting local color to be found.

And I certainly found some local color. Only 2 blocks from the ship was a strange-looking building, cinder-block gray with brightly painted yellow and red sheets of plywood attached. It was literally the burned-out shell of an establishment destroyed by fire, with the roof gone and the top scorched by the fire.It was called, quite appropriately, The Ruins. It was quite “Rasta” in flavor, with some loud reggae blaring out onto the street, and dreadlocked personnel inside. I immediately spotted some piano bar patrons, who strongly advised me to try the rum punch. 3 shots of rum in that punch, for a mere $7.

It was a ridiculously cheerful place. Sort of indoors, sort of outdoors. The building, which would have been condemned by any official inspector from America, had a few sheets of corrugated metal serving as a crude partial “roof“. There was also a 10x12 patch of bare ground inside, with a little garden, over which there was no roof at all. The rain could come right in, onto the garden and elsewhere.

No rain today however. The noontime sun, directly overhead at this latitude in April, shined through the big opening, keeping the establishment brightly lit.

In the meantime the rum punch was keeping the patrons brightly lit. It was served in a very tropical-looking “wooden” cylinder, topped with a coconut half-shell with a hole for the straw. I wanted this container for a souvenir, and was directed to a side room called the “spice shop“. In addition to various souvenirs, this side room had many rows of big glass jars, each one of them containing some herb or spice, with a Rasta counterman explaining their various health benefits.

Within an hour I’d consumed two rum punches - 6 shots of rum - and had already gotten very silly. To avoid doing or saying something completely foolish, I left this dangerous place and strolled the waterfront.I went down an old street along the water, glancing around at little residences and shops. I was suddenly taken aback by some strange signs, posted on the fence of a yard, next to a little shack. They were neatly drawn, yet goofy enough to photograph, especially in my altered frame of mind.

At the time there was a tune stuck in my head, an old R&B ditty called “Sixty Minute Man” which I’d just learned, and performed for the first time the previous night. The lyric was a tad risque, in fact the tune was banned from a few radio stations back in 1951. I was blissfully singing this tune, over and over, louder than I might normally sing on a public sidewalk, as I studied and photographed the funny looking signs, and the odd spellings. After a couple of minutes I turned to my right and there was an old Rasta guy standing near the front door of the little shack, staring at me. He was the owner of this funky establishment and the author of the funny signs. And I was the tipsy tourist with the camera, singing the silly song.

The moment was ripe for an inane conversation. He started by asking me if I’d gotten permission to photograph the signs. I said I didn’t know that permission was necessary. Had I known better I would have knocked on his door before pulling out the camera. No he said -- I needed to ask permission from the signs themselves, not from him. What? OK Mr -- what did you say you name was? - RasAlgi? OK -- if I DID ask the signs for “permission”, how would I know if they said yes or no? They don’t talk do they? Oh Yes They Do said RasAlgi, if one is “in tune” with the signs.

He spoke on about saying Please and Thank You with all things, both living and inanimate, prior to using them. This certainly applied to all plants and animals used for food. He got down on one knee and demonstrated by mumbling some Rasta gibberish to a weed growing out of a crack on the sidewalk, encouraging me to do the same.

Probably just to patronize this well-meaning fellow and show respect for his beliefs, maybe to apologize for taking the photos, I got down on one knee also, actually tried to focus on the weed with him. But it really wasn’t a good time to try something like this, with all the rum in my bloodstream, and I just couldn’t persuade myself to talk to the weed. I begged off, promised that I’d try it again at another time when in a more appropriate state of mind. I then got permission to take a photo of him. He posed in front of a large sign that had escaped my attention before, a very professional looking sign. It turned out that sign-painting was his profession, whether on rusty sheets of metal or high-quality surfaces. He was an artist.
After I mentioned the cruise ship and the piano playing, he led me to his front door. Just inside was a number of conga drums of various sizes, and he suggested a future jam session, as if I could stop by sometime with a keyboard. I didn’t find out if he could actually play or not, but I wondered if he asked the conga drums for permission to hit them. Then I imagined myself saying “Excuse me Mr. Piano, would you mind if I played a song on you?” Strangely enough, that does not sound completely crazy to me, maybe RasAlgi is onto someting.

It was getting late, and I didn’t have the time to sit down in his living room and hang out. Before I left we spoke of energy and focus, neither of us being particularly young anymore. He offered me a bottle of his own “RasAlgi’s Herbal Energy Drink - a Drink to Wake Up D Dead.”, as it said on the label. I imagined it being useless junk from a huckster, and I also imagined it being an effective tonic, a well-kept Rasta secret maybe?

He asked for $30, which was way too much for 10 ounces of God-Knows-What. I dickered him down to a price I could live with even if it was a bottle of urine. The payment would compensate for the photos taken, and the entertainment of watching someone seriously talk to a weed.

I took the bottle back to the ship, uncapped it, and was happy to find that it wasn’t urine, and did seem to be some herbal potion. Kinda looked like homemade apple cider. After a sobering nap I went to the Internet to check out the 3 ingredients -- Genseng, Messe Marie, and Bois Bande.

Genseng is pretty common, and highly peddled in the USA. On the other hand, I Googled up “Messe Marie” and found absolutely nothing in the way of an herb or anything consumable.

Most intriguing was “Bois Bande”, and there was a lot of Internet info on it. It was the bark of a tree (Richeria Grandis) unique to Dominica and a few other Caribbean places. One could use the bark itself, or make an extract from it. On closer inspection of RasAlgi’s bottle I found a good-sized piece of bark soaking in the potion.

One source -- the Caribbean Travel Advisor -- said “it is believed that Viagra and its close cousins Levitra and Cialis were synthesized from the chemical properties of Bois Bande…not wanting to let the cat out of the bag, locals are hip to this phenomenon and want to keep it to themselves.”

Another source - a vendor - said “Yeah Mon! We Got The Bark…had to sail south for days to purchase this famed aphrodisiac…virility-enhancing reputation.”

RasAlgi had not mentioned this aspect of his Herbal Energy Drink, but apparently it really IS designed to wake up something that’s dead, or at least dormant, so to speak. I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink. Actually just a teeny sip, just to get an idea what it tasted like. Unpleasant but not horrible. The label said to “take 1 to 2 shots”. Which I will do, when the opportunity pops up to really test this potion. RasAlgi’s phone number is on the bottle. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, mon.

Devil's Island

The French Guiana penal colony collectively called “Devil’s Island” was completely closed down in 1953, after a century of brutal mistreatment of prisoners. This infamous place was immortalized in the mostly fictional story “Papillon”, and even more so in the very un-fictional story of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was unjustly imprisoned here from 1896 to 1904.

Both stories were pretty vague to me until a few days ago, at which point the upcoming visit made us delve into the history and get the facts straight.

Some good info came from Channel 28 on the cabin TV, which I referred to as the Spencer Brown Show in a previous entry. Spencer’s gone, and Lew Snyder took over as Veendam Travel Guide a few weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro. Lew has spent the greater part of his career being the tour guide on buses all over the world. Being the resident travel guide on a cruise ship is fairly new for him, and it’s been a challenge.

Lew is about my age, and he happens to be my next-door neighbor on this ship. He has put a ton of work into his lectures in the Showroom. The Brazilian part of this itinerary, which just ended, consisted of a string of places - 17 ports in 21 days, many of which he’d never visited. Day and night for weeks, doing Internet research on these places, downloading photos for his Power Point presentations. He may never get to re-use these presentations, unless he does this rare Brazilian itinerary again sometime in the future.

On the other hand, his upcoming 5-month Alaskan contract will be a piece of cake. Starting on May 15, he will need presentations for only 4 Alaskan ports. It’ll be just those 4 ports, visited regularly during a string of week-long cruises, until early October. In the meantime Lew is paying his dues and getting very experienced with Power Point.

On channel 28 Lew told the story of Captain Dreyfus, a French Jew convicted of espionage. The political climate in France was nasty at the time, and anti-Semitism played a part. A noteworthy movie “The Life of Emile Zola” describes the heroic efforts of a journalist to get Dreyfus exonerated and released.

On the other hand, the “Papillon” story, based on the so-called autobiography of Henri “Papillon” Charriere, is now largely discredited, despite the fact that the book and the Steve McQueen movie made a ton of money. Charriere did at one point escape from a prison on the French Guiana mainland. This mainland prison plus 3 small offshore prison islands became known as the “Devil’s Island” prison system, creating some confusion. Of the 3 islands, the smallest one is the actual, original Devil’s Island, from which the whole complex takes its name, and Henri “Papillon“ Charriere was never imprisoned there, as he claims in the book.

But Alfred Dreyfus WAS imprisoned at little Devil’s Island, an inhumane, well-documented solitary confinement in a constantly guarded hut. Over the course of a few years the experience almost drove him completely mad, until his deliverance, spearheaded by Emile Zola.

The ship came within viewing distance of the original Devil’s Island, but that’s all. It anchored out in the ocean and sent tender boats out to a different island, called Ile Royale. This annoyed a few passengers, who wanted to see Dreyfus’ hut, which is apparently still standing and restored on Devil’s Island.

But otherwise there’s nothing else over there. It never had any infrastructure to handle large groups of prisoners, and it’s really just a wilderness, quite impenetrable for hoardes of old Holland America folks.

Ile Royale, on the other hand, is quite tourist-friendly. In its day it held far more prisoners than Devil’s Island, and was an administrative center, with far more infrastructure, organization and amenities. Presently it has a little hotel and café, and plenty of open space, walking room, and structures from its time as a prison. It has a very nice view across the water to Devil’s Island, so disappointed folks could at least take a consolation photograph. So it’s a matter of opinion whether we “visited Devil’s Island“ or not.

Ile du Diable as seen from Ile Royale

People were impressed by the absolute beauty of Ile Royale, and the irony of having to view it from behind bars. It must have been pretty nice for the guards however, who lived comfortably there with wives and family.
French Guiana is still French-owned, and therefore so are the 3 offshore islands -- Ile Royale, Ile Saint-Joseph, and of course Ile du Diable. The employees were quite French, but I was able to buy my “Ile du Diable” T-shirt with American dollars.

We enjoyed the various critters on this island. Many monkeys were spotted. Hens and roosters are common all over the world but they’re still fun to look at, and they were running wild all over the place. I got a good shot of a some kind of green lizard, and also a large, weird reddish-colored rodent without a tail, called an agouti. Weird to me anyway. To each other I suppose they were perfectly normal.

This lizard was nice enough to sit down still for a minute so I could get up close

However, this little half-rat half-squirrel was very skittish

yeah I know, not exactly National Geographic

French Guiana and the 3 islands are on the north side of South America. And the final stop in South America. As I write this the ship is in Caribbean waters heading for Barbados. Weatherwise, this will be significantly different from the clouds and rain of the past month, with much sunshine and beaches, and opportunity for everybody to bring a nice tan back to New York.

PIranha Fishing

Hollywood has given the piranha a pretty scary reputation, so I had to try the crew excursion to Lake Maipu, to fish for the nasty critters, maybe dine on them later.

I’ve never had much love for fishing, and this expedition did nothing to change that. Of the 44 people on this tour boat, only 7 managed to hook a piranha, and I am not one of them.

After a long and leisurely cruise up a little Amazon tributary, there was about an hour of fishing. Most of the piranha were caught in the first 20 minutes, with happy cheers from the group.

Then things died down. It seemed like the piranha realized what was going on, and evacuated the area.

I made a 45-minute effort, and my thoughts changed along the way. Something like “Hey this is fun…hey somebody caught a fish…YAY…hey maybe I’m next…hey somebody else caught a fish…yay…maybe I’m in the wrong spot…hey 3 more people caught fish, this is getting annoying…maybe I need a fresh piece of bait…hey nobody’s caught any fish for a while, it’s getting kinda quiet on this boat…running out of time gotta catch a fish gotta catch a fish gotta catch a fish…well no, actually I don’t HAVE to catch a fish…OK I’m done with this crap, when are we going back?”

But it was a pleasant outing, with good weather and interesting scenery.




Failing to hook a live angry piranha, many of us consoled ourselves by purchasing the very dead, mounted, acrylic coated version. There were many vendors alongside the Veendam when we got back, and the $2 mounted piranha were selling like hotcakes.

Veendam docked at Santerem, with an Amazon tour boat nearby

Easter in Icoraci

First -- the 3 musical notes - G then C then E, outlining a cheery C chord. Then -- “and a very good morning ladies and gentleman. This is Cruise Director Chris…” and on he went with his morning announcements, coming through a speaker on my cabin ceiling, waking me up as he frequently does.

On this day his message was lengthy. He painstakingly described, with repetition, the process by which passengers would be transported from ship to shore. The ship was anchored out in open water, in an inlet that was part of the Amazon delta area.

Many passengers had paid for excursions to the large city of Belem and scenic areas near it. But first they had to take “tender boats” from the ship over to the small town of Icoraci, where chartered buses would take them on an hour’s ride inland.

A tender boat is slightly smaller and faster than a lifeboat, with a huge capacity difference -- a tender holds about 75, the life boat holds 150. The tenders are used when the water is too shallow for the ship to dock, and this happens frequently on the present itinerary of small Brazilian places.

Tender rides are fun, but it’s a long process. It takes time for people to get down these makeshift aluminum staircases from the hatchway down to the water and into these boats bobbing up and down, and more time for them to get off at the shore.

Plus the ride itself, which in this case was 20 minutes. Obviously 1200 passengers can’t all leave at the same time, so there’s a complicated system of yellow tickets, purple tickets, numbered tickets etc, prioritizing and organizing everybody, deciding who rides first, etc. Basically, excursion people are first, later on the non-excursion passengers, and lastly, crew.

Many hours would pass before I could get off the ship on this day. Feeling a little creative and antsy, I wandered around with my camera.

Out on the deck, watching the tenders coming and going, I noticed two distinct colors to the water, one brown, one blue. It was as if two bodies of different waters were colliding, without being able to mix. The borders between the blue and brown sections were distinct, and constantly shifting.

Tenders coming going, blue and brown water

Boats are suspended from hooks (called 'davits') seen in the upper left. Hydraulic arms extend the davits out over the water, hydraulic cables do the rest.

Briefly I had the incorrect notion that it was the Amazon colliding with the Atlantic Ocean. Fresh water with salt water. But later the travel guide corrected me, saying it was the Amazon colliding with one of its own tributaries. The Amazon is muddy, the tributary clean. Also, The brown Amazon water is colder, the blue water is warmer, and somehow that keeps the waters from mixing.

Wandering further around the ship I found a rehearsal going on in the Main Showroom. It was a cast show called Street Singing, which they do once per cruise. It features 4 of the ship’s cast, acting as young guys hanging out on a street corner in Bronx or Philadelphia or wherever, doing lots of intricate harmony work, also lots of energetic choreography. The show also spotlights two guys from the orchestra, dressed in street clothes -- a “street sax player” leaning on a lamp post most of the time, and a percussionist doing an amusing and energetic performance on garbage cans and hub caps on the left side of the stage. It’s just these 6 people, performing along with pre-recorded tracks -- I suppose the presence of the rest of the orchestra would ruin the “street” feel of the show.

Young Will Farnham has one of the coolest jobs on the ship, presiding over the sound in the Main Showroom.

In the early afternoon I finally got on a tender, in a torrential downpour which started up in a split second. And after a few minutes, it completely ended in another split second.

It was Easter Sunday, pretty much unnoticed on the ship -- no jelly beans or chocolate bunnies, no egg coloring, no Judy Garland and Fred Astaire on Fifth Avenue, no Easter bonnets, no new suit of clothes from my mom and dad…

...but in the little town of Icoraci, a waterfront stroll took me to an interesting and artsy sculpture of a cross, set up at a scenic spot. It was a permanent fixture, but very appropriate and attractive for this particular day.

Despite the intermittent rain, the waterfront area was pretty active, with many cafes, lots of young people and families enjoying themselves in a reasonably upscale area. I ran into some crew people in one café, had some bad pizza and good beer, kept taking photos.

Obligatory Cute Brazilian waitress photo

Soccer in the sand, Veendam in the distance

On the tender boat ride back, I got a good photo of the typical Holland America demographic.

That night I had a Name That Tune contest to do. I used a number of trick titles like Annie’s Song, The Boxer, Weekend in New England, and Jamaica Farewell. Despite my best efforts, one team clobbered the competition with a near-perfect score. The only thing they missed was the Whiffenpoof Song.

They won coffee mugs with the Veendam logo on it. Whoopee. There was a recent delivery of these mugs, 8 big boxes of them, so we now have over 300 of them to hand out. Seems like a lot, but they go fast with all the trivia contests on the ship.

Back in the cabin by 12:30 AM, a fairly early night. I turned on the cabin TV, checking the movie menu for the next 24 hours. There’s been a pretty regular rotation for the past 5 months, and once again, for about the tenth time in those 5 months, Channel 35 was running “Troy” with Brad Pitt, alternating with Tom Hanks’ “Castaway”.

I love the “Troy” movie. First of all I was quite familiar with the storyline, having read the Greek Mythology stuff back in college. But the moviemakers took small liberties here and there, to tighten up the plot, and made the whole thing very compelling on film. Gods, patriotism, courage, greed, selfishness, love, honor, Immortality, brutal combat with swords and spears, and of course the pesky question What the Hell Am I Fighting For ?

They used a lot of British and Aussie actors. There’s something about the proper King’s English that gives a lofty and important tone to everything said by these ancient Greeks, even the villains, and especially the heroes. It also worked great in “Gladiator” with Russell Crowe and Richard Harris. Yes, yes, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with my gig here on the Veendam. Easter is over, Duke won the NCAA tournament, Tiger is back golfing at the Masters, baseball is underway. The only April Fool joke was an announcement by Cruise Director Chris about bunji jumping from the ship’s funnel….

….and there’s only 27 days left. The end of this 6-month contract is near, and it’s further proof of how time flies, as if there wasn’t enough proof already.

At this point you’re certain that you’ve succeeded, the paranoia dissipates, you feel more relaxed on and off the job. You get a little closer to the handful of people that have really turned out to be friends, and you step back from the others. You evaluate everything -- you see what went well and what didn’t, what was and wasn’t important, what you should do to finish with a flourish, and hopefully -- with this new chunk of experience under your belt, what you could or should be doing next.

Saints and Sambas

After the life raft drills mentioned in my previous entry, many of us were free to visit the large city of Salvador. One tourist brochure referred to the waterfront “old town” as “an intriguing mix of African and European heritage as you walk through Pelourinho district, one of the oldest areas in town”

It could just as accurately be described as a dangerous slum. It’s quite a stretch to call this place “quaint”. Fortunately the ship travel guide didn’t have such delusions, and gave fair warning -- don’t wear jewelry, don’t wear your camera around your neck, don’t put your wallet in your back pocket, avoid carrying purses entirely.

Two of my musician colleagues from Eastern Europe spent all of 20 minutes visiting Salvador. They were immediately frightened and disgusted, and quickly went back to the friendly confines of the Veendam.

I was somewhat more intrepid, or stupid or whatever, trekking through the nastiness to get to the highly-hyped Cathedral of San Francisco. The travel guide said that even a jaded “over-cathedral-ed” traveler should check this one out.

And it WAS ridiculously ornate. The exterior only gave a hint of what was inside. Photography was prohibited, but suffice to say that I never saw so much gold in my life. Every square foot of the interior except the floor was decorated with ornaments covered with gilded gold leaf. After my initial ooh and aahs, the place struck me as obscene, considering the abject poverty right outside. Oh well, Lord enjoy Your Gold, and may the rabble never get their hands on it.

I was able to sneak a few pictures of a rather freaky sideshow in a room adjacent to the cathedral. I’d hate to get trapped in this place overnight. The room, or should I say the “gallery”, was a sort of House of Wax for Saints. Lifesized wax figures of saints, clothed, many of them with rather pained “martyr” expressions on their faces. Eerie and unique.

Yes, the third figure from the right is holding a sword. The guy next to her seems to be dead.

But the highlight of the day was totally unplanned. There was a restaurant a few feet from the Golden Cathedral, the only decent eatery in the area. As I walked past it I heard my name called. Seated just inside the open front doors were 2 couples who were piano bar regulars. I waved and walked in, sat with these 4 people, and then saw a singer-guitarist in a nearby corner. He was playing those exquisite Brazilian chord voicings in samba tempo, singing in Portuguese, a smooth understated baritone.

This guy was the real deal. “Inacio de Bahia“, born and bred in this music, doing it for a living his entire adult life, now 40 years old. At the risk of ignoring my 4 Belgian friends, I was mesmerized by the performance. Finally they left and I stayed around another half-hour, long enough to chat with this wonderful musician for a minute during his break. He was intrigued that I’d be playing piano on a cruise ship. He liked the idea of doing such work himself, but it would be tricky.

Holland America only has two ships in South America each year, with the Veendam presently doing its only focused Brazilian cruise. In his samba-bossnova niche, Inacio would be perfect for the Veendam here and now. I picture him playing on the back deck outdoors on a warm Brazilian evening. “Ah, the music and romance of Brazil.”

Or he could get highly ambitious and try for a Main Showroom gig, with a 45-minute structured show. It would be a gamble, but for what it’s worth I thought he was easily good enough to pull it off, if he really wanted it.

Anyway I have his card, seemingly an outdated one, where he clearly looks younger and thinner. He had no CDs for sale, saying that people purchase his stuff via MP3 downloads now. His recorded music is duet, with piano, and it’s beautiful stuff. Much like legendary “Ipanema” composer Jobim, who was a pianist, and played sparse and delicate melodies over the accompaniment of Brazilian guitar.

American tourists, in recognition of being in Brazil, are asking me to do “Girl from Ipanema” every night, and I oblige them with a pretty decent rendition. I learned the song over 40 years ago, so I ought to play it decently. Especially since it’s a bossa nova, which is pretty easy to play, tempo-wise.

Samba, faster and much more energetic, is another matter. One of Inacio’s tunes was Samba De Uma Nota, a Jobim composition which was given English lyrics and re-titled “One Note Samba” for American consumption. I’ve played the tune, but never particularly well. My project for this week is One Note Samba, hopefully with the grace and beauty that it deserves, hopefully a rendition worthy of a restaurant in Salvador, Brazil.

A whale tail and a Trident.

No High Heels!

Quick now -- what is the very first, and most important, thing to do before you get into a life raft?

(answer) Take your seasickness pills. A crew life raft is enclosed, providing protection from the outside elements. However, 25 people have to crowd into it. The raft will bob up and down like crazy on the ocean, testing the strongest stomach. And Lordy how nasty it would be if somebody got sick to his stomach in that crowded space.

This and other nice tidbits were offered on the morning of March 28 in Salvador, Brazil, as 3 life raft groups, 75 people in all, were given three instructional drills out on the flat open area of the bow. In drill #1, each group of 25 crowded into a raft, as officers gave us tips on how to best deal with the situation if it really happened. The seasickness pills were mentioned quite a few times, as well as “NO HIGH HEELS!!”

Drill #2 had to do with identifying life raft supplies. The raft is initially packed into a large cylinder which looks like an extra-large white plastic garbage can. When the proper rope is pulled, the can opens and the raft inflates.

Also packed into the big white cylinder are 2 paddles, food and water rations for 25 people, flares, a signal-sending device, a raft repair kit just in case someone DID wear high-heel shoes, and a big thermal bag for people pulled out of the cold water.

The third drill was the familiar fire-extinguisher drill. If a crew person spots a fire, he should make a phone call on it immediately. The Fire Team will arrive pretty quickly, but the crew person can be a huge help if he can quickly find and use an extinguisher on a small fire.

The Fire Teams are well-trained, practicing their procedures at least once a week. The alarm goes off, passengers are told to ignore it, while the Fire Teams are told the location of “simulated” fire. The photos below were not taken by me, I would not be allowed in the Fire Team drill area.

Brigitte Bardot

On March 22-23-24 the Veendam visited 3 consecutive ports in Brazil -- Paranagua, Ilhabela, and Buzios. Knowing nothing about any of these places, I went to Channel 28 on the cabin TV to get some info from the “Spencer Brown Show“.

Spencer is the Veendam travel guide, and an excellent one. Thoroughly passionate about travel, thoroughly knowledgeable, thoroughly eloquent, thoroughly a nice guy. The day before the 3 consecutive ports was a sea day, and Spencer gave a 3PM lecture in the Main Showroom, pointing out what each of these 3 ports had to offer.

70 slides were shown, with Spencer commenting on each. Those who missed the presentation in the Showroom could see it over and over again on Channel 28, with the slides filling the TV screen and the Spencer voiceover.

Suddenly there it was, on channel 28. In the slide show of the classy beach resort town of Buzios -- the Brigitte Bardot statue, life-sized and intriguing, with Spencer saying it was commissioned by the loving and appreciative citizens of Buzios.

A strange statue, I thought. Perhaps it was the un-statuelike pose? She was seated, seemingly wearing jeans, on a non-descript slab the size of a suitcase, her right hand oddly placed on her upper thigh. Or perhaps she seemed to me an odd subject for a statue? I couldn’t think of any other statues of sexy actresses.

Whatever the reason, this was a Must See for me. After all, there’s a million beautiful beaches and resorts in the world, but maybe only one Brigitte Bardot statue. After taking a boat over to the main dock, one walks on a scenic pathway just above the beach. 200 yards later, there she is, with a small bunch of tourists gathered around, one by one posing for photos with “Brigitte”.

She looks out on the water, perhaps in the direction of France, perhaps in the direction of Wherever. She’s captured in her prime, a woman once thought to be the most beautiful in the film world.But her stardom was pretty much based on her sex-kitten image, and she was out of movies by her mid-30s. Now at the age of 75, the real Brigitte is just as well-known for her animal rights activism as for her film career.

But in her 1960s heyday, she discovered Buzios, and vacationed there regularly, sometimes with Brazilian boyfriends. She was a key factor in the popularity and commercial growth of Buzios, thus her immortalization in bronze on the waterfront.

The Buzios visit was the last day of this particular cruise. The following morning all passengers disembarked in Rio. A whole new group of passengers was on board by 4PM, about to go on a long and unique cruise.

This last South American cruise is a “re-positioning” cruise that will take 30 days, the ship making its way back north, to reach New York City on April 25. It will then settle in to 4 months of week-long cruises, New York to Bermuda round-trips, for the entire summer.

Rio de Janeiro has a really striking harbor, so I joined the many people lingering on the open decks last night during a an idyllic sailaway. For me it was the beginning of the Return Home, goodbye to Rio and everything “south” -- Chile, Argentina, Antarctica, all the places that made me seek out this contract in the first place.

The Southern Cross, a small and notable constellation of 4 stars that can only be seen in Southern latitudes, (actually pictured on the Australian flag) will now be seen less and less in the next 2 weeks, and then will disappear altogether. Back to the Big Dipper.

Guest Entertainers

It’s always seemed to me that the best job on the ship is that of Guest Entertainer. Reportedly they get paid well, better than me anyway, and they have a ridiculous amount of days off.

The ship must put something different in the Showroom every night of a cruise. The problem is partially solved by a small troupe of young singers and dancers called the “cast”, who stay on the ship for contracts of many months. Typically they have four “prepared shows”, sung and choreographed to taped tracks. The shows are produced by a big company called Stiletto, which rehearses all the performers in Los Angeles. Then the singers and dancers are packaged as troupes and sent off to any one of the 14 Holland America ships.

They can’t be repeating shows during a cruise, so a troupe will perform only four nights per cruise, whether it’s a 7-day cruise or a 20-day cruise. If it’s a 20-day cruise, they get 16 nights off, and other entertainment is needed to cover those 16 days.

And so there are comics, jugglers, singers, instrumental virtuosos, brought to the ship in strategic cities with good airports. On this South American itinerary, there have been many large gaps between cities with good airports. If a guest entertainer boards in Buenos Aires, the most financially feasible thing may be to keep him on the ship a week or more, even if he’s featured only one night.

Or maybe one-and-one-third nights. On a guest entertainer’s featured night he does his 45-minute show at 8PM and 10PM. Then, many nights later, he may participate in 8PM and 10PM “Variety Shows” with two other Guest Entertainers, chipping in a previously unseen 15-minute performance.

I’ve now come to understand that all the idle days on the ship are not necessarily wanted, and may be seen as a necessary inconvenience. Some of these Guest Entertainers don’t particularly like cruising, or may be bored with the itinerary, and would just as soon disembark after their performance is done.

A few years ago I was a little more unsure about my standing in the entertainment pecking order, and would shy away from chatting with a Guest Entertainer, especially when they were chatting with each other in a group.

To be sure, my status is different from theirs in many ways. Technically I’m “crew” and they’re not. When I’m in a public area I’m supposed wear a crew nametag, which they don’t have. On the other hand, I never wear the nametag while on the job. There I’m an entertainer “in costume” as I see it, and the nametag would be silly and inappropriate.

On the Ryndam gig two years ago I struck up a friendship with a comic named Janine. She dropped in on the piano bar on her many off nights, and quickly found out that I played Scrabble. She actually expected it, having met other pianist / Scrabble players elsewhere, and we played quite a few games in the library during her time on the ship. She is very down to earth, which is reflected in her brand of humor both on and off-stage. But when she was “talking shop” with other Guest Entertainers I suddenly felt out of place. After two years of not seeing her, she turned up here on the Veendam a few months ago and it was Scrabble Time all over again.

In all my previous contracts, my cabin was down on B Deck with the other crew. However this ship underwent a renovation last year which made the piano bar a more high-profile place, much more exposed to passenger traffic. And in a stunning recent development, I was assigned a cabin on the 6th Deck, on “Guest Entertainer Row”. A bigger cabin, with a bathtub ( I hear I can sell “bathtub time” to other crew people). Although I’m still crew, the new cabin is an official shift in status, a new Veendam policy.

But policies can differ from one HAL ship to another, from one piano bar situation to another. My next contract, if on a different ship, could send me right back down to B Deck again. So I’ll appreciate this while I have it.

One of my neighbors is a classically trained pianist named Juan Pablo. Cuban, long hair, ridiculously buff body, thick accent, and an exciting 45-minute show. He managed to string two cruises together, so he’s been here two weeks, with at least another week to go. Actually I met him on another contract a while back, but we’ve gotten pretty friendly lately.

This despite his reclusiveness. On his many off-days and off-nights, he hangs out in his cabin, orders room service, practices his electric piano, and goes unseen for days. This may have to do with his difficulty in speaking English . No Scrabble games with Juan Pablo. It also has to do with his seriousness about his craft. For the next few days he’ll be in an uptight “must practice must practice” mode, and will stay that way until his next actual Showroom performance, which won’t be for another few days. He doesn’t know the actual date yet, and this makes him even more neurotic.

After he finally does perform, the pressure is finally off, and he can relax for a few days until his next performance starts creeping up on him, or completely relax if he’s finished his contract.

He can play circles around me, but he’s intrigued by the spontaneous musicmaking in the piano bar every night. And as a pianist, he has an appreciation of what it requires. He certainly doesn’t want my gig, it’s way too many nights of work without a night off. Although the ship has to put something different in the Showroom every night of a cruise, it’ll be the same old Steve in the piano bar every night. A familiar face, hopefully doing things a little differently and unpredictably each time.

Pianobar players have been known to make the Big Switch over to the Showroom. Devise a show, invest in charts for the orchestra, and come up a videotaped performance of oneself in front of a Showroom-sized audience, and sell it. And, as Juan Pablo said, don’t try to be anyone else, no matter how successful Someone Else may be. In my case, do what I do best, and somehow fit it into a Showroom setting.

And don’t try to sell it to Holland America. They’re already quite happy to have me in the piano bar. Which actually makes sense. Why tamper with a good pianoman situation with HAL? This Showroom whim should be pursued elsewhere. Quite an interesting star to reach for. I’ll be delighted if it works out. I could use the extra money, a few more nights off, and whatever buzz comes from playing to 600 people in a Showroom.

Que Es Shamrock?

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, but I only became aware of it the day before, when I saw a flyer taped to the crew bar wall. Basically the flyer said “come on in and get smashed on St. Patrick’s Night. Wear some green if you can find it anywhere.”

This was an abrupt intrusion into the trance that I sometimes walk in around here. The arrival of March should have brought St. Patrick’s Day to mind, but it didn’t. As a 4th -generation Irishman raised in the New York City area, March 17 has always been a fairly big day for me, both as a marker of seasonal change and a cultural event. Typically I would feel it many weeks prior -- the upcoming big parade in Manhattan, Kelly green decorations all around, advertised events in restaurants and pubs all over the metropolitan area…..

….and my annual immersion into Irish music. Despite my shaky “Irish” qualifications, I’ve managed to get a St. Pat’s gig in the NYC area almost every year since 1990. As the gig approached, there would be a flurry of activity as I learned a new Irish tune, or re-learned what I forgot from the previous year, or maybe tweaked the Green Wardrobe.

My qualifications are shaky because, well, I’m not really an Irishman or a serious “Irish musician”. The Real Irish musicians of New York have a ton of repertoire, play it all year long, and would scoff at my meager 2-hour Green Songlist. Which is fine, because I would go nuts if I had to specialize in that genre.

These musicians have brogues and direct connections to the Homeland, which I’ve never known. Although my mother could put on a good Irish brogue if asked, it was done by remembering some dear departed uncle who got off the boat in 1910, and off the planet in 1940. My folks were assimilated New Yawkers, and never went too crazy with the tribal Irish thing, thank goodness.

But I’m Irish enough, or maybe “New York” enough, or maybe simply old enough, to expect, enjoy, and be comforted by March 17 and every cheery thing that comes with it, including the first day of spring a few days later. So today I have a distinct feeling of pretty much having missed, not so much the day itself, but the familiar ritual of its approach.

There were certainly no cardboard leprechauns or shamrocks to be found anywhere on the ship. Also, yesterday the ship was in Montevideo, Uruguay, which is not exactly noted for its big St. Patty’s Parade. The ship will not be visiting Montevideo again, so yesterday I went for one last stroll in the downtown shopping area. And, since I left my Green Wardrobe back home, I kept an eye out for something green or “Irish” I might wear on the job. Quite futile. One chat with a local storeowner resulted in him saying “No Senor. Que es Shamrock” ? I tend to remember sentences like that.

But it didn’t matter, as it turned out. No piano bar patron wore green last night, so I would have felt uncomfortable being the only one. There was one request for Irish tunes, so we had a little singalong of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Danny Boy, Irish Lullaby, Molly Malone, and my favorite, MacNamara’s Band. I skipped the crew bar bash later on, but this morning I heard that the only green worn were some lime-green “Antarctica” sweatshirts.

So the Northern spring is a few days away, and I hear I’ve missed a particularly brutal winter up in the NYC area. Well I hope it comes to a sudden end. In the meantime, seasonality has been pretty distorted on this ship the past few months, with Antarctica one week, 90 degrees in Rio the next, constant changes in latitude. This plus the general fact that seasons are reversed down here, for instance March 21 marks the change from the Southern summer to the Southern autumn.

And in one month all of this will get flipped around as the ship heads north toward the Caribbean, then to New York. I’m at the three-quarter point now of this 6-month contract, with the May 1 end date looming large. I’m looking forward to a Northern spring and summer, something far different than that of the past 4 ½ weird months, a warm season full of Mets baseball, barbeques, Oldies on the radio, and red, white and blue colors.

HALcats

Jodie and the HALcats on the back deck, doing 5PM "Sailaway" set in Paraty, Brazil

Every Holland America ship has a 7-piece orchestra called the “HALcats”, the “HAL” part being the regularly-used acronym for Holland America Line.

The instrumentation is the same from one HAL ship to another -- a pianist, an electric keyboardist, a drummer, a percussionist, a bassist, a sax player, and a guitarist. In “the old days” there was always trumpet and trombone, to complete a the horn section, but those instruments were traded off for the extra keyboard and the percussionist, for a more modern sound. The sax man was retained, forever flexible for rock and jazz, and doubling on flute.

What all seven musicians have in common is that they’re good sight readers.
With the various contract lengths, -- usually 3 to 4 months -- any major port could mean the departure of as many as 4 guys, with their replacements on the stage that very night, immediately fitting in with the band via the written charts. In the 4 months I’ve been here, there’s been 5 different lineups, with personnel changes at least once a month.

Sometimes the HALcats are an “orchestra”, sometimes they’re a “band”. When they’re an orchestra, they’re in the Showroom providing backup for guest entertainers. If, say for instance, a particular guest entertainer is doing an 8PM and 10PM show one night, he and the HALcats will rehearse the show once that afternoon, with the entertainer providing charts for every instrument.

When the HALcats are a “band“, they’re deployed to various parts of the ship, playing dance or ambiance music for a variety of special situations. Tropical-sounding music for poolside in balmy weather, Pop-rocks hits for a sailaway on the back deck, Big Band music for a tuxedo dance event. They also break down into smaller units, quintet down to duo, for jazz performances.

Quite a few are from the USA, but they could be from anywhere in the world. Recently a French-Canadian guitarist got off the ship, replaced that evening by a Chilean guitarist. On the same day, a Ukrainian sax guy left, replaced that evening by an American.

Sometimes they know each other from previous contracts, but just as frequently they’re just meeting for the first time. If two or more know each other from previous HAL work, it’s a reunion of guys involved in a special niche of the music business, and they’re comrades.

Although the pianist is frequently the bandleader, anybody can work his way up to the title by demonstrating leadership. A drummer named Gabe, who was a sideman when I met him on the Amsterdam last year, was bandleader when I met him on the Veendam this year. He finished his Veendam contract a few weeks ago, and the bandleader job was given to a newly arrived pianist.

Being “Bandleader” entitles a person to his own cabin, and the remaining six musicians bunk up, two to a cabin. This would certainly motivate me to become a bandleader as quickly as possible.

There is also a job here for a female singer, who serves as frontperson for the HALcats on those dance and ambiance music assignments. The billing will be “Mary and the HALcats” or “Tootsie and the HALcats” or whatever. In my opinion Holland America has been fumbling around, making some awful decisions in their search for singers that are “youthful” enough to rock out, but ladylike enough not to alienate the older folks. On my previous contracts on other ships I saw HALcats singers -- overwrought Whitney Houston wannabes -- that the passengers hated.

But it’s a sweet job for the qualified girl. She gets her own cabin, and is not involved in the HALcats’ work with the guest entertainers, therefore she gets many days off. Recently a lady named Jodie got on the ship, and she’s the best HALcats singer I’ve seen so far.

Generally the HALcats are pretty young -- the current group runs from young 20s to mid-40s. I’ve met two older ones who seemed to be “lifers”, well into their 40s, experienced bandleaders, who been sailing 10 months a year, for many years. With that kind of consistent service comes some kind of health and retirement plan.

By contrast, most of the younger guys are just trying to save some money with some consistent work, in a day and age where there isn’t much consistent work to be had on land. Save some bucks, see the world a bit, accumulate experience, keep the skills sharp, make a plan. If you can live with the drawbacks of claustrophobia and separation from “back home”, it’s a decent deal, short-term or long-term.

I’ve never heard of a HALcats feud. They play together, go ashore together, dine together, drink together in the crew bar, basically (as Steely Dan once put it) “sharing the things they know and love, with those of their kind”. And in most cases, having the time of their lives.

Pianist-bandleader Anthony (San Diego) and singer Jodie (Australia)

Armando from Chile on guitar

Jennings from Wisconsin on bass


Graham from England on drums

Chris from Denver on percussion

"K V" from Detroit on keyboards

Eric from Georgia on sax and flute

On all HAL ships, HALcats repertoire is standardized with an official HALcats book of rock and pop hits. The singer is expected to fit right in, knowing the lead vocal to the tunes in the book, in the designated key.

"Nothin' you can say can tear me away from My Guy...."