Are You Woo Woo Too?

Originally published in The Comic’s Log.

I’m not a big woo woo guy. I’m not even a woo guy. I’m a science guy. A fact guy. I believe in math and black holes, and that boats float if they displace enough water, even though I can’t explain any of those words. I don’t believe in astrology or miracles or gluten allergies.

But every so often something happens that makes me want to rethink things.

Your new debark date to February 8th, 2023. Please confirm receipt of this email.

I was getting kicked off the boat.

I read the email on my morning lap from bow to stern and back again. The night before I performed my first two shows aboard the Norwegian Dawn and I was still riding the waves of laughter from a theater full of people.

Until I’d checked my inbox.

The email was unexpected. And with no further explanation, there was nothing I could do except wonder why. I climbed the stairs up two decks, to the Grand Atrium on deck 7, where I would find Florin, the ship’s Romanian barista, waiting with an espresso and a joke. 

He found out I was a comedian the morning after my first night onboard. 

“You are comedian?”

“Yes.” Don’t ask me to tell you a joke.

“Tell me a joke!”

I sigh, which is terrible way to start a joke. “I’m half Italian, so I only speak with one hand.” I hold up my left hand and make the Italian gesture. You know the one, pinched fingers, curled palm.

He chuckles.

I continue. “The other half’s German, so I hold that arm down.”

He pauses, perhaps to parse the joke or translate to Romanian and back. A moment passes, and his linguistic roundtrip returns without a laugh.

“Germans are also known for a gesture,” I explain.

“Okay.” He frowns.

“Popular around World War Two?”

“Okay.”

“You know, the Nazi salute?” I look around before demonstrating a little half salute, tucking my elbow close to my body so I don’t get thrown in the brig or worse, cancelled.

“Okay. I go make your espresso.”

Nothing saps a comedian’s confidence in a joke than having to explain it, but I save my ego by chalking it up to English being his fourth language. 

Each morning afterward, Florin had a new joke for me that was a particular blend of hack and racist—the kind that start with “what’s the difference between a black man and an extra large pizza?” and end with me courtesy laughing and calling security.

I was too polite to tell him the jokes weren’t funny. And I was too afraid of what he’d do to my coffee if I told him the they were only allowed in whites-only country clubs. But I needed my espresso, and on this boat, he was the only dealer.

Today’s joke: “What do you call a Mexican who lost his car? Carlos. Car-los. Get it?”

I got it. 

I asked if there were any jokes about Romanians.

“No. We steal everyone else’s. We are gypsies! Get it?”

“Good one.” It was not a good one.

I took my espresso and continued my walk around the boat, stopping at one of my favorite perches against a guardrail overlooking the ocean to respond to the email and, depending on how I felt afterward, hurl myself overboard. 

Received! Did they give a reason for the schedule change? 

What did I want to say?

What the hell happened?! Was it something I said? Or did? Did they not like my jokes? Or my suit? Or my face? I told one joke about fixing my school’s computers in fifth grade because I did the best Indian accent. And the emcee (and my boss onboard) was Indian and, I got the sense, didn’t have a sense of humor. Did she get me fired? 

There weren’t a lot of other things that could have gotten me kicked off the boat, and I didn’t remember doing any of them.

The welcome packets for Guest Entertainers—guest ents in cruise parlance—don’t list many rules. Drinking is okay, we just can’t get drunk in public. Drugs aren’t allowed and if we’re suspected of using them they can administer a test at random. But after learning from one of the comedy bookers that they’d only ever tested one comic for drugs, and it was very obvious he needed to be tested, I didn’t get the impression this was a huge issue.

The only thing they really frown on is not having sex with passengers. 

Like they really don’t want us doing that. So much so that it’s on every other page of the handbook. 

You can drink, but don’t be drunk. Because you might have sex with a passenger. Don’t get high. But if you do, don’t have sex with a passenger. You should never be in a passenger’s stateroom, but if you happen to get lost and find yourself in one with a passenger do not under any circumstances have sex with them.

I told one of the comics on an earlier cruise that I couldn’t imagine anyone ever breaking that rule.

“Oh they break that rule alright. Some of these women are On. The. Prowl.”

“Not for me. I talk about being married in my act.”

“Oh that don’t stop them.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You know what the worst part about a threesome is?”

This took a turn. “That it’s just a fantasy?”

“The hardest thing about a threesome is that you’ll always be with a 9 and a 6, and the six’ll wear you out.”

“We lead different lives.”

I don’t do drugs. So that wasn’t it. I wasn’t publicly drunk. I mean, I’d had a few drinks each night, but I always drank the second one in my cabin. And not with a 9 or a 6.

What the heck did I do wrong?

I was proud to work on a Norwegian boat. Compared to other cruise lines, the food was better, the cabins were nicer, and the pay was much better.

Before Norwegian I’d worked on Carnival cruises. They specialize in shorter party cruises. Lots of couples, lots of booze, and lots of scooters. This was Norwegian. Lots of gray hair, lots of sunburns, and lots of scooters. The average age on Carnival was between 45-65. The average age on this boat was somewhere between 65 and dead. But I was having a decent time, and as far as I could tell, the audience enjoyed my shows. 

After each show I parked myself by the theater exit to thank the audience for coming.

At least that’s what I tell people in my newsletter.

The real reason? To receive their praise.

Sure, they could come all the way back to the greenroom if they wanted to tell me I made them laugh so hard they decided to add their estranged daughter with all the piercings and who votes for Democrats back in their will, but being in the way and staring at them as they try to leave the theater is more convenient.

Last night, as the audience filed out of the theater—whose capacity was 1200, which is unrelated to the story but is just a flex on my part—I could tell they enjoyed themselves. Most of them even smiled at me when they asked “which way to the casino?”

So when I got the email from my agent, I felt a mix of emotions. On the one hand, I was relieved. I had been on the boat—or ship, as one disgruntled passenger would later inform me—for four days and had already finished my books and grown tired with the food [but definitely not the pay].

But on the other hand, it felt like a kick in the nuts from some unknown foot. In fact, that was the hardest part: not knowing where this was coming from. I was supposed to be on for another 19 days, performing 4 more shows. But now I had seven days and only one more show to perform, which left a lot of time to speculate, to fill in the blanks looking for a reason why my tour was cut short.

I kept trying to remember Seneca’s line about not suffering imagined troubles. “There are more things…likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

It was tempting to try to understand something I didn’t have enough information to understand. Was I not funny? Was I too dirty for the clean show? Too clean for the dirty show? Was it the political joke? Or the one where I say the word anal? But going down any of those roads would have led to a dead end.

For all I knew, they didn’t need a comedian on the next cruise and wanted to give more stage time to the magician, Levitating Liev. Or maybe they wanted a specific comedian…or maybe based on the next cruise’s demographics they wanted a black comedian, or a woman, or a black woman, or…

All I could do was move laugh and move forward. 

First, the laugh: I told Wiff I was coming home early.

She asked why.

I’m not sure. But I doubt any of the reasons start with “Anthony was so funny that…”

Then I moved on. I got back to my cabin and sent an email to my other agent, the guy who books commercials. Hey, turns out I’m going to be available February 9-19 after all. 

Three days later, I got a request to tape an audition, which I did while docked in Grand Cayman.

Two days later, the Friday after I got home, I did a Zoom callback.

The following Tuesday I got another email. This time with much better news:

You booked it. Your shoot date is February 16th, 2023.
Please confirm receipt of this email.