Sentimental Sandwich

Hi Everyone - Thought I would share with you some excerpts I took from emails from Steve:

2/4/10
Last night an elderly Turkish lady, with her Americanized daughter, sat immediately to my right in the piano bar. The elderly lady wanted me to do "Sentimental Journey"

However, this lady apparently hadn't eaten for a while, and "unconsciously" had food on her mind. In her thick Turkish accent she asked me to play "Sentimental Sandwich"

She didn't know she had said this...not for a few seconds anyway.......

I sat there with a quizzical look on my face for a moment. She seemed serious about her request, so I politely asked if she possibly meant Sentimental Journey rather than Sentimental Sandwich.

At this point it dawned on her what she had said, and she and her daughter, and the other six people sitting around the piano, had a very good laugh.

Trying to milk this as much as possible I proceeded to sing

Gonna make -- a Sentimental Sandwich

Gonna set my heart at ease

Gonna eat a Sentimental Sandwich

Lots of ham and lots of cheese

Got the bread, I got the salt 'n pepper

Got the ketchup, the mustard too

If you want a Sentimental Sandwich

I'll make another one for you

Lettuce --- lots 'n lots of leaves of

lettuce -- baby I believe in

lettuce -- countin' every.......

This is about as far as I got, at which point I broke down and stopped playing. The remaining hour of the night was chock-full of sandwich jokes from everybody. This lady took it all in stride, and I think she'll be back tonight. But that song will never be the same again to me.

Hoping to "renew old memories" with you all in the near future.

_____________________________________________________________________
From Steve's 2/10/10 email:

Tonight is the last night of the "Sentimental Sandwich" cruise, and I've printed up some singalong copies of a completed version -- to be sung to the sweet old Turkish lady who started all this -- pictured on the right in the attached photo)

Gonna make a Sentimental Sandwich

Loaded up with cheddar cheese

Gonna make a Sentimental Sandwich

To renew my calories

Got the ham, I got the salt and pepper

Got the mayo, the mustard too

If you want a Sentimental Sandwich

I'll make another one for you

Lettuce -- lots and lots of leaves of lettuce

Most important thing is lettuce

Spinach and some cabbage and

Romaine too -- scooby dooby doo

Gonna have Sentimental Sandwich

With a coke and a bowl of fries

Gonna make a Sentimental sandwich

Sentimental Paradise

Wonderful Wonderful

On July 7, 2007 ( 7-7-7) -- a Swiss-based organization called “New7Wonders ” made their long-awaited announcement of the SEVEN NEW WONDERS OF THE WORLD. This list was the result of popular global vote, and from what I’ve read so far, the vote was skewed by certain highly enthusiastic city and regional populations, most notably the Catholic citizens of Rio de Janeiro, who went on a manic religious campaign to collect as many votes as possible for the Christ the Redeemer statue.

Reading this story I was reminded of the problems of trying to select the “best” Major League Baseball players to participate in the annual All-Star game. At certain times in baseball history it was entirely by fan vote. In 1957 the baseball fans of Cincinnati “stuffed the ballot box” -- and elected their beloved (but mostly mediocre) Cincinnati Reds players to comprise almost the entire starting line-up of the National League All-Star team.

The Commissioner of Baseball was annoyed. Legendary great players like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were relegated to being substitutes on the All Star team, and other great players were left off the team entirely. Clearly the fans could not be trusted to do the right thing. By Executive Order, the Commissioner of Baseball pushed aside the obviously faulty voting rules, and personally placed Mays and Aaron as starters in the 1957 game.

The fans were further punished in the following decade, reduced to minimal influence in the voting, as sportswriters, managers, coaches, and the players themselves got involved in the voting. Eventually the fans were let in again to a certain extent, and the present system is nicely tweaked and balanced, and everybody seems to be happy with it. And perhaps the New7Wonders people could have learned something from it. Officially naming the Seven New Wonders of the World is pretty epic stuff, you can’t change it next year.

The Egyptian pyramids are the only surviving thing from the Seven ANCIENT Wonders of the World, and happily they got enough votes to make the new list. Also making the new list were the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum in Rome….

…and the Christ the Redeemer statue, the unquestioned icon of Rio, a 130-foot structure standing on top of 2300-foot Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro harbor. Among the things that DIDN’T make the list (placed in the #8 to #20 category) were the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, the Acropolis in Greece, and the Eiffel Tower. The argument could go on all day, but there is a general uneasy feeling that the Christ Statue didn’t quite deserve to make the list.

No matter. One should see a big icon when one gets the chance, especially if it’s been declared one of the Seven New Wonders of the World. So I paid $48 to be part of a crew excursion to The Statue, and also a drive-by of Ipanema Beach, where that tall and tan and young and lovely girl drove Jobim nuts 50 years ago.

We piled into a chartered bus on the dock, and wound up an hour early for our 1PM train. The area was crowded with others waiting to ride the train, milling about, buying souvenirs -- little Christ Redeemer Statues in particular -- also posing for idiotic pictures with the Brazilian flag.
The 1PM train ride up the mountain ride took about a half-hour, and it provided a wonderful view of Rio de Janeiro. Arriving at the Statue area, another 70 or 80 steps up the pedestal finally puts one at the base of the statue, in a throng of camera-happy tourists. It was a gorgeous day, and the view of the harbor was exhilarating.
The Christ the Redeemer Statue was finished in 1931 after 9 years. It had to be an ordeal getting the materials up to the top of Corcovado mountain, so maybe it really is a Wonder. The outer covering is soapstone, an insulator which completely protected the statue from a direct lightning hit 2 years ago.

There was little time to hang around, and within an hour we were back down from the mountain, on the bus driving along Ipanema beach. Having been told that Brazil boasts the most beautiful women on the planet, I craned my neck, and saw the beautiful, the not-so-beautiful, and the downright ugly, the Best and Worst of Bikinis. As I see proven constantly on this ship, many people have no idea how bad they look in a skimpy bathing suit.

It’s been said that the great majority of New Yorkers have never bothered to visit the Statue of Liberty. It’s a tad difficult to do, involving a trip to lower Manhattan, a ferry ride and some cash. I went there once when I was ten years old, taken there by an adult. Forty years later was my second visit, as an adult, taking a ten-year old kid. Without the adult-kid dynamic, maybe I never would have gone there at all.

And perhaps it is the same in Rio, where residents maybe never take the train ride up that mountain. But tourists will always visit iconic things, egged on by books, TV, and hype machines like the New7Wonders. And for me there’s no escaping being a simple tourist, camera hanging from my neck, intrigued by foreign currency, foreign storefronts with signs in foreign languages, foreign license plates, and foreign statues on foreign mountains.

Back Under the Radar

This is my first entry since the “Censorship” incident, which now goes back 8 weeks to December 29. It was on that day that I’d gotten a call from the “Events Manager” - the person I directly answer to. This lady had received a call from the Hotel Director of the ship. The “HD” is a 4-stripe officer, of which there are only four on the ship, the others being the Chief Officer, the Chief Engineer, and the Captain himself. Spock, Scotty, and Kirk, for all you Trekkies.

No “Beam me up Scotty” however. It was “Vaporize that blog entry Steve”. The entry was apparently discovered through a regularly conducted search for recent internet articles using the word “Veendam”.

The entry, which I had posted only the day before, was pretty exuberant. Having been quarantined in my cabin on December 24-25 with gastrointestinal (“GI” as they say around here) symptoms, I was happy and free to roam on the afternoon of December 27 in the little Argentine town of Ushuaia, way down at the tip of South America.

The ill-fated blog entry described a mid-afternoon alcohol-fueled gathering of crew people at a Irish pub in Ushuaia. Yes, an IRISH pub, complete with Guinness stout and shepherd’s pie, seemingly in the most unlikely locale possible.

The blog entry also made reference to the ailment which had put me out of action for 60 hours, myself in addition to many other people, both passengers and crew. There was a numerical stat (“12%“ - referring to the amount of sick people on the ship) which I’d learned from an officer friend, supposedly “inside info“, and this is the key point that prompted the Hotel Director‘s action, and justified his intrusion….and very possibly put me on their radar for further intrusion.

To wit: shortly after deleting the offensive blog entry, I found some interesting material in my mailbox located in the Cruise Director’s office-- 3 pages of “Rules and Regulations on Blogs and Websites“ of Holland America Employees.

These Guidelines told me not to be disrespectful to Holland America employees, methods, management, guests, even competitors. Huge gray area -- really now, what do you mean by disrespectful? Furthermore, anything questionable should be discussed with some “manager” person before posting. Yeah right, as if that manager person would give me creative freedom.

All this angst over a blog with less than 15 readers. Holland America doesn’t know it’s only 15 readers, for all they know it’s 15,000 readers, thus their fear of blog criticism. There’s already many people out there - passengers - putting their comments on Cruise Critic.com and other such sites. That can’t be stopped -- all the more reason to squash criticism from employees.

So private it will be, with whatever crazy thing I feel like saying….. nice place to vent, play “journalist”, entertain, and be entertained.

ms Veendam in Antarctica

Karaoke vs. Piano Man

Joke: What do you call a pallbearer in Oklahoma?
Answer: A Karaoke

Today was a last-day-of-the-cruise, and with that came the passenger talent show, staged at 3PM in the Main Showroom. It’s usually pretty well-attended, by the curious and the bored, and especially those giving moral support to performing friends.

As a rule, the singing performances are Karaoke-accompanied. Anybody needing help from a real musician has to specially request it. And so I’m occasionally asked to help out, usually with people who have gotten used to my accompaniment in the piano bar.

There are certain Karaoke nights on the ship, up on Deck 12 in a disco-like room called the Crow’s Nest. I’ve frequently lost a portion of my audience to these Karaoke events, perhaps a microcosm of what happens on land. Some people like both styles, they sing with me and then go participate in the Karaoke upstairs.

Experienced Karaoke singers settle into certain predictable songs -- they know what the key and arrangement will be for, say, “New York New York” or “Crazy” or “Living on a Prayer” or whatever, and they have probably shaped their performance by first singing along with the original recording.

However, Karaoke is very unforgiving to the inexperienced. There have been many who have done fine with me, only to fall on their face in Karaoke. This of course is because I can make instant adjustments of key and tempo and other idiosyncrasies of the singer. Most recently a fellow named Philippe knocked ‘em dead in the piano bar with his version of “16 Tons”, and then had a miserable time of it in the Crow’s Nest.

I’ve always been prejudiced against Karaoke, and especially the “Karaoke-meisters” who run the show, in bars and lounges, bumping real musicians out of a gig. It’s a very old complaint after all this time, along with the similar complaint against DJs. So Lord Give Me Patience to Accept the Things I Can’t Change. And if the truth be known, a Karaoke track can crank out more effective rock or country accompaniment then a guy at a piano.

In today’s show was a an 81-year-old lady with a marvelous voice, and a very engaging stage manner, walking around from table to table as she performed “Cabaret”. She’s done it a few times in the piano bar over the past few weeks, and it brings down the house. She was the last scheduled singer in today’s show.

The tune requires much change of tempo, stops and starts, and a freely sung section which required that an accompanist LISTEN and respond moment by moment. No Karaoke machine will do that. This lady got a huge applause, as she has all through the cruise. In recent years she had retreated from live performance. She’s been in her glory the past two weeks, which never would have happened if her only option was Karaoke. It’s been a satisfying situation for this pianoman, one more reason to love the job and the life.

Top 25 Piano Bar Tunes

(Disclaimer -- this list only applies to this ship at this time -- will not work too well on -- for instance -- a Carnival ship, where audiences are younger)

“Leaving on a Jet Plane” -- just be patient, wait out the long verse, then watch them all jump in at “So kiss me and smile for me….”

“Hey Goodlooking” -- jump into to it fast after some other uptempo tune -- you sing the opening two words, everybody comes in with “Watcha got cookin’ “

“Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” -- feed them the 2nd verse words - “Pardon the way that I stare etc” -- then watch the payoff later on

“Good Night Irene” -- dopey waltz #1

“Personality” -- almost didn’t make the list because it takes a little too long to get to the catchy chorus. But any drunkard can shout out the word “Personality” on cue here, which is a beautiful thing

“Blueberry Hill” -- the piano intro produces instant recognition, and everybody is there for “I found my thrill”

“Runaway” -- the “wah wah wah wah wahn-der” part is out-of-tune, spirited, pretty damn funny, and priceless

“That’s Amore” -- dopey waltz #2

“I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” -- yes folks, life is beautiful, love is beautiful, 3-part harmony is beautiful, and a little alcohol is kinda nice too.

“King of the Road” -- they ain’t got no cigarettes, and they’re proud of it

“Happy Wanderer” -- newest addition to the list -- I should have jumped on that “Valderee ha ha ha” thing a long time ago

“High Hopes” -- some confusion about the ant and the ram and the dam and the plant, but it all works out in the chorus

“You Make Me Feel So Young” -- nice first set tune, grabs their interest, and they just love saying that word “individual” at the end of the first verse. Kudos to Sammy Cahn.

“Jamaica Farewell” -- nautical lyrics work great out here, and this one is the best -- the “sad to say etc” chorus is irresistible

“Que Sera Sera” -- dopey waltz #3, second only to”Delilah”

“Delilah” -- not dopey at all actually, just a wonderfully singable tune with instrumental trumpet parts that are also singable, somehow. Save this tune for the peak of a crazy night

“I Saw Her Standing There” -- has the same kind of high-note wacky moment as “Runaway”

“Bye Bye Love” -- people need some help with the lyric, for instance “happiness” then “loneliness” then “sweet caress” then “emptiness”, and they’ll listen closely, as I do my imitation of a teleprompter. Someone suggested I get an actual digital read-out teleprompter “follow the bouncing ball etc” etc, might be a good idea.

“All I Have to Do is Dream” -- like the other Everly Brothers tune above, people need a little help with the verse lyrics. The “I can make you mine……Gee Whiz” part is the catchiest

“You’ll Never Walk Alone” -- late night alcohol-fueled optimism

“Catch a Falling Star” -- very easily sung ditty, falls softly on the ears, nice first set tune

“Putting on the Ritz” -- hopefully some of them have seen “Young Frankenstein” (thank you Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle)

“All My Loving” -- I gave up trying to do two verses in a row, like on the record. I bet McCartney himself gave up too. People just want to jump in with “All My Loving….”

“My Way” -- a philosophic tune which justifies many dumb decisions in one’s life

“Those Were the Days” -- to be done at the end of a crazy night, a climactic type of thing. Absolutely great if done at the right time, pretty lame if done at the wrong time.

Let The Good Times Roll

Tomorrow is a big “turnaround” day -- having reached Rio after (for most passengers) starting in Chile 18 days ago, now the Veendam takes on 1200 new passengers and does the 18 day opposite-direction version of the same voyage. 1200 people off, 1200 on, luggage, luggage, and more luggage, a very busy day for the “hotel” part of the ship.

I pushed myself out of bed this morning and went to the backstage area of the main showroom. There I stood with all the musicians, plus room attendants, bar staff, casino dealers, salon staff, hotel staff, officers, etc etc ….. all set to march out on to the stage to the tune of “Anchors Aweigh”.

The Cruise Director was out at the front of the stage with a microphone, announcing the various crew as they marched in, with hundreds of passengers cheering us on, clapping hand in time to the tune. Finally all 200 of us were on the stage, a rousing farewell display, standing in many rows, covering so much of the stage that you’d the think the stage would collapse under the weight.

The passengers, having just heard a half-hour disembarkation briefing from the Cruise Director, and then this crazy crew parade, was now primed for some well-staged sentiment.

“Love in any language,
Straight from the heart
Pulls us all together, never apart
And once we learn to speak it
All the world will hear
Love in any language
Fluently spoken here”

This the slow, catchy chorus lyric, sung by (supposedly) the whole 200 of us, after an introductory solo verse by one of ship singers. In the final chorus we all do a loping 2-step, left-to-right, right-to-left. This tune, originally by Sandi Patti, is performed in this way on all Holland America ships on the last cruise day, and guarantees warmth and fuzziness.

The Cruise Director prefaces this tune by saying that over 60 nationalities are represented in the Veendam crew, and we all get along harmoniously, and wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world got along so well? There are about a thousand rebuttals to this simplistic idea, but suffice to say that fighting among crew people results in immediate and permanent dismissal from Holland America’s employ.

So tonight is the last party among the “piano bar gang” that has developed in my little corner of the ship. 18 consecutive days is a lot of time for people to have a lot of fun together in a piano bar. Friendships form, and in some cases they actually continue, with small reunions on future cruises.

Thus far I have yet to see a piano bar patron re-appear on a later ship gig. And so the many many faces and personalities fade in memory, to one extent or another. The people from the longest cruises (for instance the people who got on in San Diego and did 35 days) are the ones you remember the most.

And after this long stretch of fun nights, Pianoman Steve might get a little tinge of sadness that these particular people -- in this happy little time and place -- will soon be gone. You’re happy about the 18-day party, but aware that it will never be repeated. There’s a Portugese word - “saudade” (pronounced sow-DODGE-ay) which describes this odd sad-happy-resigned feeling. Not happy enough for good ol’ nostalgia, not nearly sad enough for grief -- I’ve felt this at the end of some cruises.

Oh well. Onward to the next group, the next unique cross-section of people thrown together by chance and by their love of a good singalong, trying to have the time of their lives.