Cruise #2 or the Children's Cruise Aid

This one was a 5-day run from Miami, with stops in Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.

It's the Christmas Cruise, and that means we've got 600 kids on board. Nowhere was this more clear than the first improv show, where the aisles were packed with 6-10 year-old children, spilling right out onto the stage. You want a good way to avoid the F-Bomb? Try sticking the studio audience from Romper Room and Zoom in your peripheral vision.

The improv shows were good. We're starting to get the hang of the 18-and-over show. It's interesting that this has been hard for us, but it does make sense. Part of the basic experience of any improvisor is adapting to the whole "play to the top of your intelligence" mindset. The challenge in these shows has been to take "Dildo" or "Prostitute Factory" as a suggestion, but not to ditch it completely upon starting the scene. We've just got to find the smart choice inside any suggestion, while still honoring the suggestion itself.

On the sketch front, we had a perfectly bizarre experience at the Crew Christmas Show. The door gift for everyone who came was a laser pointer. A laser pointer? Why not just give them a bullhorn with a button that makes it shout "Show us your boobs". That would have honestly been less annoying. If I want lasers pointed into my eyes, I'll pay $20 by the Sbarros in the mall and get Lasik surgery. On top of that, the last thing they wanted was to hear us do witty, verbal comedy it was along the lines of the country-western bar from the Blues Brothers, which gave me a nice Amanda Tate flashback. It wasn't the audiences fault, by any means. It was just the wrong material for the gig. What can you do?

That was Christmas Eve, which I capped off by drinking a glass of Champagne on the deck of my luxury cruise ship and reading "The Road to Wigan Pier". That popping sound you heard was irony blowing its ACL. It was definitely a bummer night for all of us, as everybody had a little wistful thought about the fact that they were so far away from their family.

Christmas was better. We did the Christmas show for the passengers, who were in much more of a mood to sit down and watch a show, and the sketch show went over pretty well. Kevin's girlfriend, Carissa, got us all Maracas in Cozumel, and Jen, Sam and I went to an amazing little restaurant. If it weren't for the three billion flies in the place, it would have been perfect.

The workshop, though, was phenomenal. We had 50 people turn out. I ran it, but had to split the crowd up with Eileen, or we wouldn't have been able to get through everything.

We did get out to Grand Cayman as well. The water looked beautiful, and I'm chomping at the bit to get this cast off and get in and swim. I'm getting tired of reading on the sand.