look alive, people

Recently my bf and I went on a cruise, and while overall it was a great time, one thing marred the experience (well, other than the virtually-unrestricted smoking on the ship - bleh), an unfortunate counterweight to the crew members' efforts to give us the time of our lives with their exemplary, friendly service: our fellow passengers. If you ever want to see a dispiriting slice of middle America, take a cruise; few situations offer quite the same opportunity for seeing the human drama unfold in the shape of so many obese, rude and classless people. The thing that really got me - even more so than the woman who parked two deck chairs directly in front of us and blocked our view of the ocean, despite the fact that had she moved a few yards over, she would have been blocking no one, then gave me a look that dared me to call her on it (I took the high road and left it to karma to get her) - was the complete and utter lack of response these grade-A losers gave the live performances. It was as if they thought they were still at home, sacked out in front of the TV with a bag of chips, for all the effort they put into acknowledging that they were watching ACTUAL LIVE PERFORMERS who are largely fueled by energy and enthusiasm from the audience. Not only were too many of our fellow cruisers lackluster during each show, at the end I'd look around to see people just staring at the stage and not clapping even a little bit. I could tell from their attitudes that the problem wasn't that they hated the show and therefore didn't want to reward it (plus, wouldn't they have just walked out during it if it was so bad that it deserved not a single clap?) - it was just that they were so lazy and clueless and/or spoiled that they didn't want to make the effort. "Oh, no more noise is coming from up there - looks like the TV's broken, let's go eat." COME ON!!! The people on stage were trying so hard to give the audience members a good time on their vacations, and many in the audience couldn't be bothered to lift a finger, or they were so dumb that they didn't realize that when someone works that hard to entertain you, unless they truly suck, you clap (and even if they do truly suck, the polite thing is to clap very, very softly). And trust me, these performers did not suck. Sure, there's an element of cheesiness to a lot of the entertainment on cruise ships, but hey, you're on a cruise - that sort of goes with the territory. You don't go on a cruise and expect to see some indie band on stage (nor would that have been these audiences's cup of tea). This was high-quality mainstream entertainment. At the end of the cruise, my hands hurt from clapping twice as loudly in an effort to make up for the useless lumps around me. I'm sure they showed much more enthusiasm at the midnight buffet.