Serndipity on the seas

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 3rd, 2008


Aaaaahhh! That’s better!

This is the view from the Male Half’s porthole. That’s not a euphemism. The Male Half embarked on his first cruise last week. He jetted into a balmy San Juan, sailed to St. Thomas (pictured above), then chugged out across the Caribbean for Aruba, doing one show on evening number one (The Welcome Aboard Show!) and another on Christmas night (The 11:15 Adult Comedy Show!).


That’s the Adventure of the Seas, on the right, resting in Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St. Thomas. It’s parked next to a Celebrity cruiseliner, and, out of the frame, to the extreme left, is yet another liner from the MSC line. It’s quite impressive to see all three lined up end to end.

Since it was his first ever cruise, (and first time ever performing on a cruise), and since the specs for such a show are so specific and narrow (and rather different from what a regular club comic is accustomed to), TMHOTS admits to some nervousness leading up to that first set.

“I only had to do fifteen. But it had to be freakishly clean, at least according to what the agency told me and according to all the advice I had gotten,” says he. “So, you can imagine my relief when, after being onstage for only about two minutes, I discovered that my high school history teacher was in the second row.”

On the ocean somewhere between San Juan, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas, in the second row of the Lyric Theater, onboard the Adventure of the Seas (capacity 3,840), during the Welcome Aboard Show, was Arlene Rubin, aka “Ms. Rubin,” The Male Half’s tenth grade American History and homeroom teacher at Pennsauken High School.

The audience, predictably, absolutely flipped out– “They saw that I was astounded. Who wouldn’t be? And they were thrilled to have been in on the coincidence. It went a long way toward making my first cruise set an interesting and entertaining one– over and above the material– and they really went goofy when I asked her what she’s doing these days, she said, ‘I’m the principal!'””

They caught up on the past three decades with a round of Manhattans in the Schooner Bar afterwards. Life is strange.

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