"In all my years of school I never once got a grade below 80!" The speaker was a gold buttoned blue blazer type with a Midwestern accent. I don't know his name, but for convenience will call him Thurston Blowhard III. "We made sure that all our children excelled in school too."
"Education is so inportant!" one of Thurston's admirers interjected.
"Our eldest got all As in every single class from kindergarten on," Thurston continued. "Seven top universities competed to give him full scholarships."
"He's so lucky to have such good parents," another admirer swooned.
"I'm sorry sir, but I couldn't help but overhear and I absolutely had to come over and shake the hand of such a superior human being. My name is Philipp and I am a complete spaz as a parent and my children seem fated to become spazes as well."
I made the last bit up, but the rest is sadly true. I would like to be less reticent about speaking to strangers, but I couldn't pull it off, so I swallowed the last of my beer quickly and left the Chart Room to go and vomit over the side. Ok, I made that bit up too, but I did leave the Chart Room quickly.
The Queen Mary II has eleven (count 'em) bars and lounges. Three are my favorites, but visiting them requires a strategy. It turned out that the otherwise serene and genteel Chart Room was about to host a trivia quiz which attracted Thurstons like French fries attract seagulls. I next went to the Golden Lion, a brilliant English pub, but was confronted by a pianist who had a disorder which compelled him to belt out Elvis Presley covers. I then retreated to number three: the Commodore Club. It sits high above the bow, just under the bridge, and offers a hypnotic view of the ocean sliding by beneath as if on an infinite shimmering blue conveyer belt. The Commodore tries for a more sophisticated vibe with white leather, light trance music and an astonishing martini menu, although any pretensions evaporated when the Russian waitress smashed a huge flower vase and burst into a fit of giggles.
The moral of the story is that the daily entertainment program merits study as much for what to attend as for where to avoid.
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