S.S. Poseidon

Having worked on cruise ships for over three years, I thoroughly enjoyed Poseidon. Here was a movie with no spiritual references, no terrorist references, and a blast from the past in terms of a main dining room with a stage and a casino upstairs. Carnival has no such thing. Carnival ships have two dining rooms in the rear of the ship, sometimes with classical or jazz music as entertainment. Most of the time guests don't want a distraction from their conversation. I liked seeing a Dirty Dancing kind of room with dinner tables, drink service, dancing, and gambling all in the same venue. It is homey. You can wander around, mingle, talk, drink, gamble, and then eat a nice meal. Why is it Carnival doesn't offer such a venue? Carnival ships are compartmentalized, kind of like life. Disco, jazz lounge, piano bar, etc. I really like the plurality of the big open ballroom. It was traditional. It felt like the old Poseidon, and that felt good. A marble blast from the past. There were real emotions. There were real single parent families. There was a gay man. It wasn't like some corporate structure was trying to get you to "do something." Your behavior was not so overly-studied that you had to follow some pre-thought agenda for making money. You just hung out and tried to have a good time. I don't see that on Carnival ships. Maybe only the rich do this. In my experience they certainly have more experience in this arena. Early in life the wealthy frequent cocktail parties, dinner dances, and the like. I used not to like them, because I was always the guy in the band. You were making money, but all that social interaction was in a crystal ball, and the daughters and wives of those rich men were off limits to musicians. It hurt. It hurt a lot. I grew to resent "society," "debs," and "social class." To me it did and still does represent the economic and social oppression prevalent in the history of the American South. That is why I left the Carolinas for the Midwest when looking for a college to pursue my doctorate. I have never been as enlightened. There was not nearly as much "old money" sitting around trying to boss me around. There were in fact the open arms of creativity that embraced a transplanted Southerner ripe on pursuing a music career. They openly offered the knowledge they had and supported me in the process. Not in the South. RJ Reynolds. Big cigarettes. Big money. "Pick some tobacco, boy!" That is your destiny in the South. Poseidon felt plural, a big melting pot of generation and races, kicking it with humanity. Once when Clinton was in office, multi-culturalism was at the fore front of American society. Racism was receding and people seemed to be getting along better. Along comes the Arabs. They fucking hate everything. "Down with America, kill, murder, rape, pillage." Gun toting cloth heads screaming about Allah and the Prophet Muhammad. Savages. Barbarians. I say dig up a nuke and plop it right down in the middle of it all. We did it in World War ll, because the Japanese brazenly bombed our vacation state of beautiful Hawaii. It took us a while to get back at them, but we did with a little ingenuity. You would think we could do it again. I guess back then we just said screw civilians and just bombed the whole cities. What's the difference? What of our values is different now than it was in World War ll. Aggression is aggression. Civilians are civilians. Oh..... Oil.