Room service breakfast, even if it isn’t very good, is a wonderful idea when you’re exhausted and sunburned from a day splashing around in the Bahamas. Every night, next to the towel creature on the bed, the room fairies stewards left us a breakfast menu card with dozens of options and instructions saying that if we left it, filled out, on our doorknob, by 2am, then breakfast would magically appear the next morning at the hour of our choosing. We used this magical menu card often. We stuck with scrambled eggs, toast, fruit, and varied breakfast meats, but learned after the first day that they pretty much always gave you ham and bacon, no matter what meat you checked off on the card. No complaints here! Breakfast was also available upstairs at the Lido restaurant, and we tried it one morning, but the full-service area with waffles and sausages stopped serving at 9:30am, and we’re not morning people. We didn’t learn until the second-to-last day that the fancy restaurant offered incredible fancy breakfast (also ending service remarkably early).

On this, the third day of JoCo Cruise Crazy II, we had an early morning Q&A session with the performers. A great touch by the organizers: free coffee and tea available at all the morning events! People lined up to ask questions of the Famous People, who happily answered and joked and bantered amongst themselves for two hours. They chatted about their worst jobs ever, and told some stories about how they decided to leave “real jobs” behind and follow their dreams. Many people asked them how to follow in their footsteps and become huge internet successes, and the answer was, almost unanimously: “work hard at what you love, put good content out there, and then be lucky and hope you find an audience”. Also, Don’t Be A Dick*.

That night’s show featured two performers I’d never heard of – Marian Call and Paul F. Tompkins. I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t taken the time to research either of them prior to the cruise – I’m not a very thorough nerd, I guess. Did I enjoy the concert? Well, I came home with Marian’s double album, and would have come back with even more of her stuff if the gift shop hadn’t been sold out of it. But Marian is so, so incredibly wonderful, that she handed out free download cards to the Sea Monkeys so we could all go to her site and get some of her music, even if we were too poor to buy albums on the high seas. Her concert absolutely blew me away. I was chatting with Dave about how I hoped the show would be good, and then the lights went down and she started her first song, Love and Harmony, and I was hooked. Some of her songs are silly, and some of them will reach inside you and push buttons you didn’t know were there. I cried at Anchorage, and I didn’t even cry when Bambi’s mother died. While I enjoy Marian’s albums very much, I think she’s the sort of performer whose voice really comes alive in a live show. She tours a lot and does very small shows – look her up, ask her to come to your town. You won’t regret it.

Paul F. Tompkins is a comedian – more of a funny storyteller than a stand-up comic – and I giggled a lot at his show. Unfortunately, none of it is currently up on YouTube so I can’t share it with you, and it’s not worth me trying to tell you about it, because I wouldn’t be a tenth as funny as he was.

Believe it or not, this is just half of the awesomeness that took place on Day 3 of this cruise! So much more happened, but this post is already too long for its own good, so I’ll break it up and post the second half in a little while.