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.

Here’s the epsiode transcript:

Hi, and welcome to The Perfect Show. I’m your host, Scot Maupin. I’m what you might call a perfection prospector, sifting through life looking for little things or experiences that could be considered ‘perfect.’ Join me each episode as I examine 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 its 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 sea sick, 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 moreso. She told me the scientific name for it. It’s called Thalassophobia, 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 recognized so many 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 am sitting on Smithville lake in Missouri with Grandpa Maupin, 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 an underwater track at the park, so that one seems borderline, 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 have become large hotel/casinos due to the different state laws on gambling, or the line between United States land and tribal lands where the laws are different as well.  

 

You might even might have to cross from land to water, in the case of the floating casinos on the Mississippi River, where as long as they 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 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 paddlewheel that is completely stationary, you know, stuff like that. 

 

So what makes these riverboats boats, you ask? Well of course it’s water, duh. Most of the riverboat casino’s concrete foundation is taken up with restaurants, shops, movie theaters, and the like, but to go onto the gambling floor in the middle you first have to step across a threshhold. 

 

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 gutter’s 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 autoboatography…nope, and that means I didn’t really have many boats in my past at all. The short boat trip in India I talked about last episode, a couple of ferrys to Rishiri and Rebun 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 ferrys.

 

But then, in 2019, we got the call from the Big Leagues. There 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 defintely 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 could choose which things to hit up. But more even than the nonstop schedule of 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 notice 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 are 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 sea-sickness. 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 sea sick, 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 and found out that I get really sick from the rocking motion I’d feel the same way, too. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. 

For people who have been on a cruise before or just people with enough wherwithal to already 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, and 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. Places 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 sight 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 that meant 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 Kitakyushuu Japan, I did this same thing. At night I would pop in headphones and just go out walking, turning 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 I was curious about, parks or other green spaces that are tucked away between tall buildings, and 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 defintely 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 with 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 t  give their roommate some privacy, but I was always 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 is 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 konk 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 for minimizing the effects of jet-lag on long trips, I discovered, but really the older I get, the less useful of a habit, predisposition, or 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. We were traveling north, too, so I couldn’t blame this one on any timezone shift really. 

 

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 small room together, any lights or noise would affect other people, and I ddin’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  that 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 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 subjet 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 is no shortage of staff on a cruiseship. 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 are 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 lightbulb 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 and 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 2000 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 in and be hit with 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 sometime 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 nighttime 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.

 

Nighttime 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 may be turning, as well. But night? Well of course at night the ship is lit up by artificial light, which would stay consistant 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 didn’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 a part of it with a 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 of 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 cruise 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, so I was less anxious about the rest of the group dynamics or going to this or that activity, becasue 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 uh..‘opportunity’ came up to get a ‘free cruise’ by sitting through a timeshare presentation, we decided as a family it’d be worth it.  

 

We heard the spiel, watched the power point 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 cancelled officially. We were given a chance to reschedule 12-18 months in the future, for a date that also ended up getting bumped and re-rescheduled.

 

And now, over 2 years since we were supposed to leave initially, and 3 years since that time-share 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 3000 people on board. This time we’d head south from San Francisco to a place in Mexico and 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– my daughter was excited because this cruise would have waterslides 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…

 

[FIRST NIGHT TAPE ]

 

I left our cabin and decided to start by going to the upper decks first and then working my way down, criss-crossing the boat as I went.

 

[FIRST NIGHT TAPE CHUNK 2 ] 

 

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 includ  e, 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 disovering 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.

 

Also don’t worry when you hear me talk about 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.

 

[FIRST NIGHT TAPE 3]

 

Then I found a pretty crazy place on the ship that I had walked past a bunch, but never gone into.

[FIRST NIGHT TAPE 4]

 

I gotta 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 wolfman nightclub, 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, and a 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 that shirt, since I had noticed a lot of funny looks, and rightly so, when I was using my other set-up.

 

 [SECOND NIGHT TAPE 1]

 

I started with the 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 some-odd decibels, so it’s safe to hear, but it still may be somewhat alarming. 

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 2]

 

I cut out some of the foghorns, but I think you get the idea. That was happening every few minutes and a few times it really GOT me right in it’s blast zone. That’s an intense noise.

 

So after getting some tape outside, it was time to go in again.

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 3]

 

I adjusted my setup, which meant putting away my big headphones before I went into the club.

 

Again, these are snippets. I was probably in there for 3 or 4 songs that have been cut down to these clips. 

 

I also tried to talk into my mic over the music at certain points so if there’s something I’m trying to say I’ll repeat that when the music isn’t playing.

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 4]

 

Here’s where I talked myself into going down the stairs and sitting next to the dance floor to start with.   

 

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 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 introversion got the better of me.

 

But there was one guy 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 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 up to the dancefloor. Now he wasn’t dancing, but istead 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 again when he finished. It was genuinely impressive. 

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 going to 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 

 

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 served 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/lemonade dispensers were on the 9th floor at the eating area.

 

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.

 

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 vs 10 aunts and uncles of another family, it was wild. 

 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.

 

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. Other people were slipping while they tried to help people up, and a bunch of them were clearly operating deep into their drink packages that 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 and they were working hard to sort through the chaos, separate 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 when my microphone just totally cut out. When i got to a spot i could check my audio i fixed the connection.

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 5]

 

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.

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 6]

 

And, sure enough,two groups did show up, looking to eat one last free pizza, but also talk about the fight…

 

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 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 Darrel, that this was their first cruise, and his story of what happened during those 2:10 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 describes.

 

According to Darrel, 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 guy one challenges Darrel to a dance-off, Darrel says “I don’t dance fight, I just fight fight.” 

 

Now the way Darrel said it to me it didn’t sound like any kind of a challenge at all, but guy one responded “Oh, I do that too.”

 

Darrel said this was the point he felt it was a challenge, so he said “we can go outside on deck 9.” which is really funny to me, thinking of two guys mad enough to fight each other being patient enough to wait for and take separate elevators up seven floors and all that. 

 

Guy one says “or we could just stay right here.” and then 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.

 

Darrel said he didn’t start it, but once it turned physical, he felt obligated to just jump in and be in the middle of it all for his family. That’s what the ‘guilty by association’ thing was referring to.  

 

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. 

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 7]

 

So I think the events 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 a.m. 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.

 

[SECOND NIGHT TAPE 8]

 

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 potahto.

 

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 light up or bounce its 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 peace on the first night, and on the first cruise, but ultimately going out at 3 am 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, so I asked him after and he said that nothing had happened with him or anyone 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 were just like – “there’s literally 5 hours until people start getting off the boats, could you all just chill please?” So yeah, no repercussions. Just a good ol’fashioned slobber-knocker.

 

But a legendary fight like that, especially because it happened on a boat, out at sea, deserves, nay 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. 3 AM Sea Shanty. (take it away)

 

[TRACK – SEA SHANTY, 3AM]

 

And with that, Cruise Ships at 3AM become the next entry into the Perfectorium, the index of perfect things. 

 

You can find it at the show’s website, perfectshowpodcast.com, where you can also see pictures and videos related to each episode. A direct link to the Perfectorium is at perfectshowpodcast.com/perfectorium.

 

Special thanks to Simon Carryer for the banjo tracks in the 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 episode’s webpage.

 

If you’d like to contact the show, you can email PerfectShowShow@gmail.com, and connect on Twitter, Youtube or Instagram to the name @PerfectShowShow.

 

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 are 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 tik tok sea shanty memes way after no one else cares about them with my own Weird Al 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 Scot Maupin, and thanks for listening to The Perfect Show.

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 – https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku

School – https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/Captain_Glouglous_Incredible_Week_Soundtrack/school/

 

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Apple: https://apple.co/3BSoeWu

Spotify: https://sptfy.com/KYF6