05.07.07 Cruise Recap

We boarded a ship, without our children, for fours days.  Four days without cooking, cleaning, waking up in the middle of the night.  Without alarm clocks or bills or e-mail or blogs or cell phones.  Four days with just each other.  And lots of food.

And 2500 Christian music fans.  I and the other artists on board played a lot of music for them.  I played a 45 minute set, two 18 minute sets, and a two song set - that’s it.  A whole week of free cruisin’ in exchange for almost nothing from me.  I feel like I ripped somebody off.  The break for Becky was priceless.

Then we got off in Jamaica.  It’s an impoverished place staying afloat on tourism dollars.  We were hounded from the moment we stepped off the boat until we boarded again.  “Can I braid your hair, pretty lady?” “Come see my shop, mon.” “Almost free!” And of course, “You smoke grass?”

I must look more crack-headish than Brody.  I was offered drugs five times in four hours and Brody was only approached four times.  (Of course, he was holding a baby.) We did our part to prop up the Jamaican economy, leaving quite a few bills behind...in exchange for cheap t-shirts and pencils for the kids.

What else?  Oh yea, we ate dinner with Lisa Whelchel (Blair from The Facts Of Life) every night.  Assigned seats.  I had a crush on her when I was a kid so it was a bit surreal to sit across from her and her family and talk about how she beat Courtney Love out for a spot on the Mickey Mouse Club in the 70’s and how she lost all her wealth in the 90’s and how she and Tutti are huge fans of mine and how she has a poster of me above her bed. 

What??  It could be true.  You don’t know.