{"id":5512,"date":"2013-05-13T22:47:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T04:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=5512"},"modified":"2013-05-14T08:06:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T14:06:01","slug":"the-cruise-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2013\/05\/13\/the-cruise-report\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cruise Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As I sit here writing, my house is gently rocking on the waves.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s how it feels, which is what a week on a cruise ship will do to you.\u00a0 I once worked a five-week standup comedy gig on a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, and when I walked ashore, I wanted to get back on the ship so the sidewalk would stop swaying under my feet.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it\u2019s good to be home.\u00a0 The cruise was a blast (more on that shortly) and Chareva and I certainly enjoyed taking a break from parenthood and hanging out with other adults, but I really miss the girls when I\u2019m gone for more than a few days \u2013 which is the reason I stopped doing comedy on cruise ships in the first place.\u00a0 (When you call home and find out your daughter has been crying and asking when Daddy’s coming back, it sort of takes the fun out of the job.)<\/p>\n

Before I get to the cruise report, I want to give a shout-out and a big thanks to The Older Brother for once again taking over the Fat Head chair while I was gone.\u00a0 I enjoyed reading his posts and your comments.\u00a0 He turns 56 on Thursday, so wish him a good one and 56 more.<\/p>\n

The Sixth Annual Low-Carb Cruise festivities began on Saturday night with the pre-cruise dinner and roast at the Doubletree hotel in Houston.\u00a0 This was Chareva\u2019s third low-carb cruise and my fourth, so running into so many people we\u2019ve gotten to know over the years felt very much like a class reunion.\u00a0 I also enjoyed meeting people I \u201cknow\u201d (Dr. Jay Wortman, Jonathan Bailor, Rocky Angelucci) but have never previously met in person.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t checked the audio and video on the roast yet.\u00a0 If all is well, I\u2019ll upload it later.\u00a0 This year\u2019s group was significantly smaller than last year\u2019s, so there was less of that comedy-club-crowd energy in the room, but it was still fun.<\/p>\n

We set sail on Sunday, which means we met our dinner-table companions for the week that night.\u00a0 The gentleman in the upper left and the woman in the lower right are a married couple from Finland.\u00a0 The cruise was a total surprise to her.\u00a0 She only knew they were visiting New York City (which they did) until they boarded a plane for Houston instead of heading home.<\/p>\n

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He developed an interest in diet when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was told nothing could be done about it besides taking medication.\u00a0 Guess what?\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t take medication now.\u00a0 He avoids grains and eats plenty of meat, eggs, seafood, butter and vegetables.\u00a0 (Amy Dungan and her family were also at our table, but ate at the buffet on several nights because the kids \u2013 not surprisingly \u2013 weren\u2019t especially interested in having dinner with a bunch of us old fogies.)<\/p>\n

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I have no idea what Chareva was saying to amuse our friend from Finland in this picture.\u00a0 She may have been describing how she plans to kill her first chicken.<\/p>\n

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Monday and Tuesday were at-sea days, so that\u2019s when we attended lectures by the speakers.\u00a0 All the speeches were recorded and will be available online later, so I won\u2019t bother trying to describe them.\u00a0 The only disappointment was that Robb Wolf had to cancel because his mother became very ill shortly before the cruise.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the lectures as always, but the real appeal of the low-carb cruise for me is the socializing.<\/p>\n

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The extremely tall man on the left in the picture above is Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt from Sweden.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t already read his Diet Doctor blog<\/a>, you should.\u00a0 To the right is Dr. Jay Wortman, the driving force behind the excellent documentary My Big Fat Diet.<\/a> The adorable child with the huge blue eyes is Dr. Wortman\u2019s daughter Isabel, who quickly became a celebrity on the cruise.\u00a0 She\u2019s articulate, extremely bright, and perhaps the most even-tempered three-year-old I\u2019ve ever met.\u00a0 She happily sat through all the lectures and the two-hour dinners with adults … never complained, never whined, just kept herself amused the whole time.\u00a0 Dr. Wortman attributes her good nature to a high-fat \/whole foods diet, and I\u2019m sure that figures into it, but I suspect the fact that he\u2019s a patient and doting father plays a part as well.<\/p>\n

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The happy couple above is Jonathan Bailor, author of The Smarter Science of Slim<\/a>, and his lovely wife Angela.\u00a0 Based on our email exchanges, I already suspected Jonathan is blessed with a great sense of humor, and I was right.\u00a0 He\u2019s quick-witted and fun to be around.<\/p>\n

As on previous cruises, our group mostly hung around the piano bar at night.<\/p>\n

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Now, when you hear \u201cpiano bar,\u201d you probably imagine a nice, quiet place to enjoy a drink and some conversation, right?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Someone at Carnival seems to believe that if you\u2019re not in your room, you want to be subjected to loud music.\u00a0 Every single bar on the Carnival Magic has a loud guitar player, loud piano player, a DJ, or a band.\u00a0 We all crowded into an area of the piano bar that extends out into the hallway, as far from the (not especially talented) piano player\/singer as we could get, only to find that Carnival also had speakers in the ceiling above us \u2013 just to make sure we wouldn\u2019t miss Hotel California<\/em> played on a piano.<\/p>\n

I went to the bar and explained that we were all sitting way over there<\/em> specifically to avoid the noise.\u00a0 I had to talk to two different people, but finally got them to shut off the speakers above us.\u00a0 That meant we could talk without actually yelling into each other’s ears. Fortunately, we\u2019ll be on a different ship next year \u2013 perhaps one run by a cruise director with the good sense to provide at least one lounge where people can talk without shouting at each other.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, we docked at an island off the coast of Honduras and attended a wedding.\u00a0 Yup, a wedding.\u00a0 On last year\u2019s cruise, two of our British friends, Chris and Ailsa, became engaged.\u00a0 (She was genuinely shocked when he popped the question at dinner.)\u00a0 They were officially married in a civil ceremony in England just before this year\u2019s cruise, but had the \u201ccelebration wedding\u201d on Wednesday at a beach resort.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m sure you recognize the guy with Chareva in the photo above.\u00a0 Since last year\u2019s cruise, Jimmy has lost close to 80 pounds while putting on 16 pounds of muscle, which means he\u2019s dropped nearly 100 pounds of fat.\u00a0 He looks like a new man.<\/p>\n

After the wedding brunch, a large group of us went zip-lining in the jungle.\u00a0 That\u2019s the bride and groom in the second picture below with Chareva and me, about to have an interesting wedding day.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019ve never been zip-lining, here\u2019s how it works:\u00a0 the guides strap you into gear that looks like it belongs in a bondage flick.\u00a0 Then you hike up to a platform suspended high above the jungle.\u00a0 Then the guides clip the bondage gear onto cables above your head.\u00a0 Then you ignore every instinct for self-preservation bred into you by millions of years of evolution and jump off the platform.\u00a0 Then you trust the bondage gear to hold your weight while you slide ridiculously fast down the cable to another platform that\u2019s suspended from a tree by cables and sways when you stand on it.\u00a0 This is, you understand, intended to be fun.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m afraid of heights but went zip-lining anyway because Chareva told me I was going zip-lining anyway.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t actually afraid I\u2019d fall and die.\u00a0 People go zip-lining all the time and live to tell about it.\u00a0 I was mostly concerned that I\u2019d go zipping off a platform and end up treating the rest of the wedding party to my third Scream Like A Girl<\/em> incident.\u00a0 (You can read about my first two Scream Like A Girl incidents here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

My nerves were jumping and my palms were sweating, but I knew I couldn\u2019t back out when I saw this:\u00a0 Mary-Clare, who happens to be sixty-seven years old, went zipping out there with no apparent fear.\u00a0 (She zipped solo a few times before the guides decided to start accompanying her.)<\/p>\n

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We zipped down 12 lines altogether, and I actually started to enjoy myself after the first four.\u00a0 That\u2019s because it took me four trips down the lines to figure out how to stop turning in the air and ending up zipping backwards.\u00a0 There I am, afraid of heights to begin with, sailing high above the jungle at what feels like 60 mph, facing the platform I just left, having no idea where the next platform is or when I\u2019m scheduled to collide with it, just hoping and trusting that the guide responsible for catching me isn’t about to make what baseball scorers call \u201can unforced error\u201d \u2026 or merely thinking to himself, \u201cI wonder what would happen if I let one of these funny-looking foreigners crash into the tree?\u201d<\/p>\n

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On Thursday, the ship was docked at Belize City.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen it before and had no desire to see it again, so we stayed on the ship and mostly hung around with other low-carb cruisers.\u00a0 On Friday, Chareva and I wandered into Cozumel, where she bought souvenirs for the girls while I pretended to be interested in the souvenirs she bought for the girls.\u00a0 (I\u2019m not an enthusiastic shopper, to put it mildly.)<\/p>\n

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Jimmy Moore and I continued our cruise tradition of singing Elvira <\/em>in the karaoke bar one night, and on another night we added Margaritaville <\/em>to our repertoire.\u00a0 That was pretty much it for karaoke.\u00a0 The Carnival Magic, unlike other ships we\u2019ve been on, tends to have karaoke at odd times \u2013 like during dinner.<\/p>\n

Saturday was another at-sea day.\u00a0 Robb Wolf was scheduled to speak, but since he had to cancel, we had two Q&A sessions with the speakers instead of one.\u00a0 As always, I was impressed by the both the questions and the answers.\u00a0 People in this group read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts, and ask sophisticated questions.<\/p>\n

Before the last night\u2019s dinner, there was a cocktail party for our group.\u00a0 The pictures below are from the party.<\/p>\n

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The woman with Chareva and me above is Laurie Rosen, one of the friends we look forward to seeing every year, even though she says \u201caboot\u201d instead of \u201cabout.\u201d\u00a0 (Those wacky Canadians all seem to do that.)<\/p>\n

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The gentleman with me above is Rocky Angelucci, author of the excellent book Don\u2019t Die Early<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s me with Dr. Jay Wortman, Dr. Dwight Lundell, and some goofball behind us.<\/p>\n

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For the record, the hat wasn’t my idea.<\/p>\n

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The woman farthest to the right is Dietitian Cassie, one of the speakers for the week, and probably one of the few dietitians in the country who tells her clients to skip the grains and eat plenty of good quality fat.<\/p>\n

After the party, we had our last dinner on board, then headed up to the piano bar for a last evening hanging out with old and new friends.\u00a0 Speaking of which, one new friend deserves special mention — because by the end of the week, we\u2019d concluded she may be Chareva\u2019s separated-at-birth, long-lost sister.<\/p>\n

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Denise Cripps (both pictures above) and Chareva were born three days apart.\u00a0 They\u2019re both bright, pretty, dark-curly-haired, talented women who had the good sense to marry old guys they met while working temp jobs.\u00a0 (Both old guys also couldn\u2019t believe their luck and were therefore slow to pick up on hints of romantic interest.)\u00a0 They\u2019ve both worked as substitute teachers.\u00a0 They have the same laugh.\u00a0 They share many of the same interests.\u00a0 As they were sitting together in the piano bar one night, chatting like BFFs, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt looked at them and said, \u201cYou two are like \u2026uh \u2026 not triplets.\u00a0 The other word.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwins?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, twins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denise was also responsible for the perhaps the best line of the cruise.\u00a0 I\u2019m a night-owl and Chareva isn\u2019t, so on some nights she went to sleep while I continued socializing with our fellow cruisers.\u00a0 Denise and I ended up leaving the piano bar together late one night and walked to the elevators, where we ran into a handful of people from our group.\u00a0 They told us they were on their way to some other late-night activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we\u2019re heading off to bed,\u201d Denise answered.<\/p>\n

And just as it struck me how that reply could be interpreted, she whirled around and said, \u201cNot together!\u201d<\/p>\n

Good times.<\/p>\n

Hope to see you all on next year\u2019s cruise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I sit here writing, my house is gently rocking on the waves.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s how it feels, which is what a week on a cruise ship will do… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5512"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5519,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5512\/revisions\/5519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}