in int’l waters w/john mayer, a big spender from texas + the spirit of sir herbert read

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 2 of 10

“Mini­vans are con­fused, be­cause they’re def­i­nite­ly not mini.”
—Milk Sur­face, re­spond­ing to PART 1
 

There are a LOT of art his­to­ry books in a class­room at Amer­i­can Riv­er Col­lege, where I teach Graph­ic De­sign His­to­ry. This is com­mon at a lot of schools, like, piles show up and just sit there. For years.

And this is where I start­ed look­ing for MOR Mod­ern Art history.
 

some art his­to­ry please, ex­tra dry
Go­ing thru the stacks, I was look­ing for a start­ing point – be­yond Meg­gs’ 13 – and found a dog-eared copy of Her­bert Read’s Con­cise His­to­ry of Mod­ern Paint­ing (1959).

And I fell in love with the fad­ed, en­graved colour re­pro­duc­tions of the art. 

(Some­thing I thought to repli­cate in the game – as pe­ri­od movies would of­ten do – but de­cid­ed against it. Mod­ern Art SHOULD be seen in a mu­se­um, and should be as vi­brant as if it were just paint­ed by Fauves).

So I tried to bor­row it and was told too many books go miss­ing here, no you can­not.

So I or­dered a well-worn used copy for 3 bucks online.

(And no­ticed a few months lat­er, the copy THEY had was MISS­ING. Some­one did ac­tu­al­ly swipe it.)

Next chal­lenge: Ac­tu­al­ly find time to sit down and read it. 

Drudg­ing, feels-like-it-was-as­signed-as-home­work en­nui set in.

(And this was be­fore I learned to skim aca­d­e­m­ic texts as part of the MAEd or eas­i­ly turn off my OCD – a ma­jor fuck­ing cul­prit. So my own brain was re­al­ly work­ing against me here.)
 

ı’m on a boat
I think if you re­al­ly want to get some painful read­ing done, go to the DMV and wait in line. Or have jury duty. Or vis­it a clin­ic with a long line. 

In my case, I end­ed up on a Car­ni­val cruise.

With John May­er and a bunch of bands I nev­er heard of. 

It was part of this thing called May­er­craft Car­ri­er 2: Even Crafter (the SEC­OND cruise in a se­ries of ap­par­ent­ly MANY John May­er cruis­es) and it came with an overnight­ed box of (I think) lam­i­nat­ed lan­yard things, a jour­nal to write in and a tshirt or mil­i­tary-themed dog tag of some sort with a re­al­ly rough vec­tor draw­ing of JOHN MAY­ER on everything.

And the cruise was un­der­sold, so my wife won free tick­ets A FEW DAYS BEFORE. 

And we’re STILL not sure how this all hap­pened – it was just a phone call that we didn’t take se­ri­ous­ly – but some­bud­dy de­cid­ed THAT WEEK we need­ed take a free boat ride to Cabo San Lucas. 

Dad??

It’s March 2009 and I’m teach­ing at two schools – with mas­sive class prep – my wife has a rare brain dis­or­der (not di­ag­nosed yet), we haven’t had a real va­ca­tion since 2004 and most of our mon­ey had gone to wa­t­ev­er bank scams were in place to (al­leged­ly) save our house. 

But here’s a free Spring Break cruise star­ing us in the face. And less than 100 bucks in our bank account.
 

“There are [423] miles to [San Pe­dro], we have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cig­a­rettes, it’s dark and we’re wear­ing sunglasses.”
—El­wood Blues, adapt­ed
 

That’s how I re­mem­ber it. Stress, to­tal chaos, last minute throw­ing things in a bag, nour­ish­ment was a cup of re­al­ly hor­ri­ble Cir­cle K cof­fee and a very ear­ly morn­ing dri­ve to El Lay on two hours of sleep. 

And then us show­ing up about an hour be­fore the ship was sched­uled to leave and try­ing to fig­ure out the park­ing sit­u­a­tion in San Pe­dro. And we parked at a me­ter on a side street next to the boats where the me­ter ran for weeks. The cruise was NOT hap­py with our late ar­rival, but we did make it on board.

And con­trary to leg­end, there are NOT crowds with stream­ers for your send off as they’d show on The Love Boat. Whole dock had a ‘seen bet­ter days’ feel. 

We were on board. And we slept un­til 11 p.m.

Woke up in the mid­dle of the ocean.
 

ocean­ic surrealism
My only ex­pe­ri­ence with cruis­es was wat I’d see on The Love Boat, a few of my fam­i­ly mem­bers who used to take them twice a year and BRAG about them the rest of the year, and Tina Fey once re­mark­ing on a talk show that cruise ships are some of the tack­i­est things one should only ex­pe­ri­ence once in a lifetime.

On­board the in­te­ri­ors were some IN­SANE over the top time warped kitsch post-mod­ern mixed with some re­al­ly Bucka­roo Ban­zai al­most pre-Mi­ley Cyrus Bangerz era aes­thet­ic – I re­mem­ber colour­ful leop­ard skin ma­gen­ta-n-pas­tel art deco 1990s dec­o­rate every­thing you see with a mis­match­ing melee of taste­less thingz that just did NOT go to­geth­er AT ALL cov­er­ing EVERY SUR­FACE where there was a SURFACE.

And it was cold. Dif­fi­cult to stay on deck for too long and if you wan­dered up to the high­est lev­el, not wear­ing a par­ka was just plain dumb.
 

 

We found our­selves sur­round­ed by ‘the reg­u­lars’ who take cruis­es; best way to nice­ly de­scribe them would be: Tacky fly­over state pas­sen­gers + re­tirees and peo­ple who cro­chet ma­son jars out of kits pur­chased on HGTV or something. 

(I’m be­ing nice here. I’m re­al­ly trying.)

And they were mixed with a bunch of John May­er fans and spring break­ers who also won free tick­ets, dog tags, tees, hats, jour­nals and the plas­tic lanyards. 

The col­lege stu­dents made things in­ter­est­ing and I couldn’t even imag­ine ever be­ing on a nor­mal cruise with­out them.
 

“There’s a pool, kind of. It’s more like a big slosh­ing kid­die pool, and if you get in it, you feel like you are tak­ing a bath with strangers.”
—Tina Fey, My Hon­ey­moon, or a Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again Either
 

The food was free and un­re­mark­able – all you could eat cafe­te­ria food ser­vice qual­i­ty buf­fet items – but if you want­ed any­thing to drink, that’s where mon­ey came in. And we had none.

We were naïve­ly hop­ing to hit an ATM, which for some rea­son I don’t re­mem­ber – was not some­thing we were able to use while on board. And cred­it cards, hell, those were tak­en away from us the year be­fore.

Like, I re­mem­ber spend­ing most of the cruise try­ing to get ac­cess to mon­ey, any mon­ey.

So we sold our comped John May­er show tick­ets to an old­er John May­er fan from Texas who hand­ed us a crisp, fresh Ben Franklin. And I’m pret­ty sure he care­ful­ly made sure the over­head spot­lights (every­thing had its own spot­light) hit the bill dra­mat­i­cal­ly as he ex­pert­ly flipped it out of his three acre mon­ey clip.

In our world, 100 bucks bought us some lim­it­ed cell phone use – and lat­er, lunch in Cabo at an awe­some dive a few blocks be­hind Sam­my Hagar’s place – so we made a few phone calls to peo­ple who didn’t kno we were on the ocean.

Like: My mom. 

Like: It hap­pened so fast, we kin­da didn’t tell ANY­ONE we were ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing a cruise. 

Like: We could die out here in In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ters and no one would kno where we even were. 

Imag­ine: If the boat we were on – the new­ly chris­tened Car­ni­val Splen­dor – ship’s reg­istry prob­a­bly in some war zone coun­try that map mak­ers stopped in­clud­ing decades ago – were at­tacked by pi­rates, or maybe we just don’t have enough lifeboats, and in the mid­dle of wa­t­ev­er dis­as­ter is play­ing out, we’re un­able to use our cell to call any­one be­cause we can’t af­ford the fees, or maybe the ship it­self just ran­dom­ly breaks down in the mid­dle of the ocean. 

Imag­ine that.
 

“The Car­ni­val Splen­dor was 200 miles south of San Diego when an en­gine room fire cut its pow­er ear­ly Mon­day … The 3,299 pas­sen­gers and 1,167 crew mem­bers were not hurt and the fire was put out, but the 952-foot ship had no air con­di­tion­ing, hot wa­ter or tele­phone ser­vice. Aux­il­iary pow­er al­lowed toi­lets and cold run­ning wa­ter to be re­stored Mon­day night.”
—Huff­in­g­ton Post, Car­ni­val Splen­dor Fire, 9 No­vem­ber 2010
 

Yeah. We were on THAT ship, but a year ear­li­er, March 2009. 

I re­mem­ber the same week Co­nan launched his new show on TBS, he did a whole joke about OUR BOAT sink­ing in the fuck­ing ocean.
 

But!

One of the things I remember’d to bring on this trip: That Con­cise His­to­ry of Mod­ern Paint­ing – the used copy showed up in the mail THE DAY BE­FORE we left and I hap­haz­ard­ly threw it in my bag (not lug­gage, bags. We were fuck­ing us­ing bags.).

And out of sheer boredom – 

a jam ses­sion on the last evening with Guster (who I fell in love with im­me­di­ate­ly) and May­er play­ing a bunch of Zep­pelin clas­sics AND a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with a jew­el­ry store own­er in Cabo (who was giv­ing away free bot­tles of ar­ti­fi­cial vanil­la ex­tract) was the ab­solute best part of the en­tire trip – 

I spent qui­et evenings sit­ting out­side the closed cafetera sec­tion read­ing Sir Her­bert Read’s il­lu­mi­nat­ing Mod­ern Art primer from stem to stern. 

And I start­ed to sketch an en­tire al­ter­nate Mod­ern Art His­to­ry in my John Fuck­ing May­er journal.

With he­roes (Mod­erns)
and vil­lains (Tra­di­tion­al­ists) –

who were about to be­come part of the ab­stract, fic­tion­al back­sto­ry for
THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923.
 

And!

I was still in far in over my head with all of this. Which I still didn’t quite re­al­ize just yet.
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 3   • • •

· · ·  back to  PART 1

(Smol epi­logue here: Af­ter the cruise and on our way home – we dis­cov­ered our ATM was can­celed by our bank cause they saw us at­tempt to use it in Mex­i­co and you know, could be fraud. Thank you there bank, that re­al­ly made the how the fuck are we go­ing to get home now ex­cur­sion even mor exciting.)
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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