Intro & how #JoCoVirtual differs from real cruises — Angela Brett's poetry show on JoCo Cruise 2021
Channel: Angela Brett
Date: 2021-04-25

After ten years of going on JoCo Cruise without arranging my own shadow events for fear of missing out on other events, on JoCo Virtual Cruise 2021, I finally did a poetry show. I started by informing people I’d be recording (as was required by the JoCo Shadow Cruise rules) and telling them to shut off their cameras if they didn’t want to appear on YouTube. It turns out that even though there were people who left their cameras on, they don’t show up in the recording, though they do when I share my screen later. I open the show with a poem about how this cruise differs from the actual-ship ones. Here are the words:

No constraints of a suitcase and carry-on bag
we didn’t take jets, but we still have the lag
It’s 9p.m., by the way, here in Wien; 
I’m all out of sun, but I’ll still share my screen
and I can have notes right in front of my eyes!
but I assure you I’ve totes got this all memorised.
We don’t have our name tags, but we still show our names
We don’t have a game room, but we’re still playing games.
We don’t have Sorrento’s, that bastion of light
for eating bad pizza late into the night
No port stops, no F-stops, no F’ing disembarkation
No taco bar, icecream, or omelette station
No hugs, drunk-or-boat (the game of deciding whether your instability is due to alcohol, or the ship's movement), real-time jams, or warm bread, (this is a reference to the song and literal dance made about the warm bread available on one of the ships we were on — bread which was cold by the time they'd finished the hoopla and got it to the table. Adam Sakellarides wrote a song about it: https://adamsakellarides.bandcamp.com/track/warm-bread)
just all of our pets and our own comfy bed
No room service, muster drill, beetloaf or braids
No cabins, but still cabin fever in spades
No free-to-play video gaming arcade
Just final day video fancy pants parade.
No need to split into red and gold teams; (when we had the whole boat to yourselves but only just less than half of us could fit in the theatre, each main show happened twice, and half of us would eat dinner while the other half watched the show)
Just bananadog split and Egype shared memes! (these are memes from the Sail Away: Not party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtM2NvwNYlg)
And just like the real ship, it’s choose-your-own normal
Every day pyjama day? Every night formal?
It’s bring-your-own googly eyes, cut-your-own bangs
make your tiaras, towel animals, wang-wangs
While some have done shots of Moderna or Pfizer
The rest have their own vats of hand sanitiser
Some have the money they would have been spending
Some have the cruise they’d long dreamed of attending

The weirdest thing about this year though,
is that I’m finally doing a poetry show!
Is that a good thing? Or bad? I don’t know.
But it’s already started, so sit back, let’s go!

The full show is at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ-l6mr1dW0gVK9y3KGCNuwUADufNqmNk