Garcia Media Life

I’m no financial expert which, I presume, is why I’m not a wealthy man. But I’m not an idiot either and I’m telling you right now- this Facebook IPO stuff is an unmitigated disaster that is becoming more and more of an embarrassment by the second.

Let’s start out with the basics. Facebook early this week was valued as a $100 billion company. That’s more than Disney, Visa or McDonald’s. As Washington Post financial writer, Dominic Basulto, puts it- at least McDonald’s sells burgers. What’s Facebook got? What does Facebook make? It makes ads that no one pays any attention to. Ask General Motors. They pulled their Facebook ads just a couple of days ahead of the IPO because it was like throwing money into a large black hole.

We’ve been down this road before in the late 1990’s when the Dot.Com bubble burst. Now it’s the social media bubble that’s bursting. Facebook stock was offered initially at $38 a share. It’s trading at $31 this afternoon, but the day is young- there’s plenty more room for it to fall even further. Your average Facebook employee is about $2 million richer this week. But the poor people who got suckered into buying Facebook stock on Monday have already suffered a 20% loss on their investment—an amazing achievement over just two short days.

Some analysts say in order to justify the share price at which Facebook was being offered the company would have to make more than a 40% profit over each of the next three years. That’s a tall order for any company that actually makes things, much less one that is essentially a large data collection service that can’t quite figure out what do with all its data.

I won’t even go into the speculation about the things Facebook must do to make the kind of money it has to pile up to avoid becoming a penny stock. Maybe selling our personal data? Maybe overwhelming its real estate on your computer with ad after ad after ad? Maybe breaking down and finally charging for the service?

And then there’s Facebook’s growth potential. What growth? It has already saturated the world. A half a billion users are already on it. There’s no way to go but down.

I have a friend who counsels adolescents. He tells me the big social media trend among the nation’s youth is getting the hell off Facebook. Presuming the universal adolescent appeal of “coolness,” Facebook is about the least cool thing in the universe. Their grandmothers are on it, for Christ’s sake. And their teachers. And if they can ever find jobs- their damn bosses will be on Facebook asking to friend them so they can check and see if there are any pictures of them projectile vomiting in an alley after an all-night kegger.

But there’s more. Much, much more. Here are some headlines from Marketwatch.com today so we can all revel in the base greediness and irrational exuberance of the great Facebook IPO.

Facebook Stock Dubbed “Falling Knife”

Why IPO Fizzled

How Facebook Threatens the U.S. Economy

Embarrassment Over Facebook

Here’s an absolute brilliant analysis of all of this by Martketwatch.com’s David Wiedner:

It’s as if Mark Zuckerberg is having the ultimate nerd’s revenge: He’s humiliating all of us and taking our money in the process…

There were few regular people who made fortunes on Facebook. Its private placement and exclusive club made certain that Zuckerberg and his backers decided who would get rich and when….

At the end of a Facebook session, we feel an anticlimax. We hope for contact and more often than not get silence. We exploit our own privacy to our friends, advertisers, strangers. We rarely, if ever, make that connection that’s worth the investment of putting so much of ourselves out there…

In the end, it’s clear Facebook’s was the rare initial public offering in the markets that catered to that same kind of person, an exclusive sort of investor: the sucker.

In 2010, the movie “The Social Network,” told the story of the Harvard nerd who hit it big with his Facebook concept. There’s a sequel ahead that’s sure to be a hit with all those people Mark Zuckerberg has taken for a ride for all these years.   And it will be called “The Fall of Mark Zuckerberg: Avenging the Revenge of the Nerds.”

Harper Gets Beaned (Jonathan Newton/Washington Post)

According to a number of sportswriters, it’s ok for a pitcher to bean a batter for the sake of sending a message, all in keeping with the storied traditions of baseball. Interestingly, many actual athletes, from hall-of-famers to managers, seem to think you might need an actual reason.

It was the first inning of the nationally televised game Sunday between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Washington Nationals and all-star Philly Pitcher, Cole Hamels, drilled young 19-year-old phenom, Bryce Harper, in the back with a 93 mph pitch. Harper handled his “welcome to the big leagues” moment with great aplomb. Advanced to third base on a hit where most players would have stopped at 2nd. And then as Hamels threw to first base to check the runner, the Kid took off and stole home- a rather spectacular event that rarely happens in the game.

Hamels committed the cardinal sin of admitting publicly he purposely threw at Harper and was promptly suspended by the league for five games, at an estimated cost to his pocketbook of about $400,000. Hamels told reporters he was just being “old school.”

Sports Illustrated columnist, Jason Turbow thinks this was a swell thing to do:

This is the Code at its deepest and most ingrained levels. It is the confluence of ability and pride and hype and the concept that all men must earn their stripes. It is the old guard welcoming the new — player and team alike — with an unmistakable challenge: Welcome to the big time. Let’s see if you can hack it.

Fox Sports analyst, Ken Rosenthal, also thinks it was a really cool, “old school” macho act:

Players tend to take care of these things themselves, and Harper sent his own message on Sunday night, stealing home. That is exactly the way the game should be played, the way it used to be played, the way it was played when Frank Robinson would get knocked down and get up and hit a home run.

Funny, but real men- baseball men, that is- beg to differ with these tough-guy sportswriters who have more experience with cushy offices, lap-tops and press room buffet tables than actual combat in the field of battle.

Cal Ripken, the former Baltimore Oriole hall-of-famer, points out that, no- what Hamels did was not old-school. The unwritten rules of baseball as understood by most normal people is that you hit a batter when he’s been a jerk and Harper had not violated any of the unspoken rules of the game.

Usually there’s a spark for why you do it. Somebody bunts when you’re up eight runs, or you’re stealing third base when you’re up 10 or 11 runs in the seventh inning. There are real reasons on how you play the game, and embarrass the game. That’s old school. But just to come up and drill somebody for no reason, I don’t remember that being old school.

Detroit Tigers manager, Jim Leyland, whose picture could well be in the dictionary next to the term “old school,” also disagrees with our sportswriter gladiators and thinks Major League Baseball was way too lenient in its five-day suspension of Hamels.

I know he’s a very good pitcher and a very talented guy but when you come out and admit it like that. … You know, that ball could have missed and hit him in the head or something else, I mean, when you come out and admit that I think five games is way too light, is my personal opinion.

There’s an important distinction to make here. There are many ways for a pitcher to send a message to a batter. Usually, he throws what is commonly referred to as “chin music.” A nice, high fastball, so close to the hitter that he sprawls to the ground in self-defense. This has been the more common approach in recent times.

It’s interesting that those who thought Hamels was justified in his particular welcome of Harper to the big leagues, say he threw an innocent pitch to his backside where there is plenty of “padding.” Others called it a pitch to the “small of the back.”

Those who think Hamel was being a jerk point out that’s pretty much where the kidneys and the spine reside.

The point, in my mind anyway, is that while it is cool for a pitcher to claim his territory by throwing close to a batter to back him off the plate- launching a hard-ball at 90 mph at a guy 60 feet away with the intention of hitting him is no act of bravery. It’s actually pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s not hard to do.

National’s pitcher, Jordan Zimmermann, hit Hamels in the legs as the pitcher squared to bunt a couple of innings later and I actually think a brush-back pitch would have accomplished the same, but at least Zimmermann had the good sense to not admit he was throwing at anyone, and more importantly, he was not the instigator.

But in regard to the guy who started it all, Cole Hamels- National’s General Manager, Mike Rizzo, has it about right, in my opinion. Only slightly paraphrasing- throwing hard balls at people for no particular reason, is kind of a chicken-shit thing to do.

Anyone who says the public has lost its sense of wonder about science and space and technology was proved wrong Tuesday.

People were perched on roof tops, stopped at bridges, gathered at parks and monuments- all eyes trained to the sky. School children screamed with delight as the big 747 lumbered at low altitude with the workhorse space shuttle, Discovery attached, pockmarked over 39 trips to space and now headed toward its final resting place. It was an oddly electric moment that came seemingly out of nowhere.

And here we are either paused or stalled or seemingly disinterested anymore in scientific and engineering achievement. The shuttle fly-over seemed sadly symbolic; not only the official end of the space shuttle program, but the death of the Big Idea.

Where are the leaders who think big thoughts? Where are the men and women who dare to dream, to change our world, to look at our planet, our solar system, our universe and see possibility and discovery?

It seems a narrow world these days- a world of accountants with green eye-shades who spend their days counting dollars and make their living killing dreams. It seems to be a world of timid leaders who think of the future in terms of weeks and months instead of decades and generations.

Next year will mark a half a century that we lost the President who sent us on a mission to the moon. Imagine a legacy founded on a dream that would extend that long into the future.

I was in 2nd grade at St. Rita’s elementary school when a nun with a scared and worried face rushed into our classroom. And we sat at our desks, praying the rosary, grown-ups and kids, hoping against hope that it couldn’t possibly be true that the young President had been shot and was now fighting for his life in a hospital in Dallas, Texas. I know the romance of JFK and Camelot has long been shattered but it wasn’t all just illusion. There were big dreams and big ideas that died along with that man.

I am reminded of those beautiful lyrics from Paul Simon, one of the poets of this aging generation of mine:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune

It would be nice someday to sing the American tune again with a sense of joy and wonder instead of our current dirge of sobering sadness and never ending limitation. Never ending possibility is so much more inspiring for the human heart.

The team formerly known as the Florida Marlins used to have a big apathy problem. Now they’re known as the Miami Marlins and they’ve traded their issues of fan indifference and poor attendance for another problem- fan hatred.

When he isn’t issuing homophobic slurs, revealing he gets drunk after every game, or decorating the clubhouse with sex dolls, Marlin’s Manager, Ozzie Guillen, is working overtime to anger entire cities. When your team is based in Miami and you build a new stadium with public funds pretty much in the middle of little Havana, probably the last thing you want to do is give an interview in which you tell Time magazine you love Fidel Castro. But that’s exactly where he went.

Can you even imagine heading up the Marlin’s public relations office right now? Guillen has been suspended for five games, has held a tear-drenched news conference and has done everything but flog himself in the town square- but it changes nothing. Damage done. And the anti-Fidel/anti-Guillen protests continue outside the Marlin’s beautiful new stadium.

I have been thinking of hypothetical examples that would compare to the sheer tone-deafness of Guillen’s remarks. Here are some sample headlines:

Detroit Tigers Manager Lashes Out at American Auto Industry- Praises Japanese Car Manufacturers

Cardinals Manager Insults Augustus Busch, Reveals Hatred for Beer, Calls St. Louis Arch an Eyesore

Texas Rangers Manager Disses Davey Crocket- Claims Loss at Alamo No Big Deal

Philadelphia Phillies Skipper Bans Hoagies and Cheese Steak Sandwiches from Clubhouse- Declares Cheese-Wiz Nutritionally Toxic

You catch my drift.

I’m thinking Guillen does not make it to next week.

He has, however, added tremendous value to a certain baseball that I have displayed in a collection in my apartment. Back when he was a utility infielder for the Atlanta Braves more than a decade ago, Guillen was tossing ball with Chipper Jones at Turner Field before the game. My then 7-year-old son, Charlie, and I happened to be sitting in some box seats next to the field. Bless his heart, Ozzie tossed Charlie the ball and I had him autograph it.

And it wasn’t his only good deed that day. He tossed lots of kids balls, even handed one youngster a souvenir bat. I always admired him for the kindness he showered on those kids that day. I feel sorry for the guy, really, I do. But he has only himself to blame for his thoroughly bizarre, self-inflicted wound.

My genetic male predisposition toward sports-oriented isolationism was rewarded handsomely over the weekend.

It started Thursday, actually, when the girlfriend took a trip to New York to visit family and friends. Suki, the dog, of course, needed her walks and attention so I took Friday off to take care of the friendly little canine over the weekend. So not only was this the perfect opportunity for a man-cave weekend- but a three-day man-cave weekend- with a Thursday night bonus.

Perhaps you looked up at the night sky recently when a rare alignment of Saturn, Venus and a crescent moon provided an unusual opportunity to revel in the mysteries of the universe and our home solar system. Well, that’s what my man-cave weekend was like. Instead of planets, there was the incredibly rare alignment of the start of the baseball season, the end of hockey’s regular season and the Masters golf tournament.

But not only were my favorite teams playing and available for viewing- they were also…winning. Opening day on Thursday at Wrigley field, featured a thrilling come-from-behind win by the Washington Nationals. Thursday night, the Washington Capitals completed their improbable return for the fifth straight year to the Stanley Cup playoffs with a tense win over Florida while the Buffalo Sabres were losing, clinching the Caps post-season appearance.

The Masters, of course, started on Thursday and so between those three events, Man-Cave weekend got off to a raucous start. Friday was all Masters, but then it all repeated Saturday as the Nationals notched another come-from-behind win over the Cubs in the afternoon and in the evening, the Caps stunned the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. After the hockey it was off to Saturday’s Masters highlights.

The Nationals finally lost a game on Sunday, but, really, who cares—it was Sunday at The Masters. Some people celebrate Easter Sunday by making an appearance at church, hiding Easter eggs for small children or generally contemplating and celebrating the changing of the seasons and the irrevocable end to Winter darkness.

I, however, was reveling in the Church of Golf at the Cathedral of St. Augusta watching mortal men battle the twin challenges of one of the most beautiful and diabolical golf courses ever designed and their own frayed nerves.

I watched in hushed amazement as South African Louis Oosthuizen holed a double eagle at Augusta’s 575 yard par-5 second hole. I’ve never seen anything like it before and never will again in my lifetime. The guy hits the green on his second shot and the ball literally takes a sharp, right turn and travels 60 feet at the perfect angle and velocity to just drop gingerly into the cup in one, final, slow, glorious rotation.

Do you know how ridiculous that was? That one golfer, with one shot, picks up three strokes at the final round of the Masters on Sunday? There have only been 4 double-eagles in Masters history- and I believe this was the only one of them that was ever televised.

The playoff ending that ultimately crowned Bubba Watson Masters champion was wonderful too. Even though I don’t particularly follow them, I capped off my magical weekend watching the Texas Rangers on ESPN Sunday night baseball- for no particular reason except I could.

I think it was Saturday night (not sure- the whole weekend was one large blur) I talked to Millie in New York. I believe she asked me if I missed her and, of course, I said, I missed her tremendously. She knew better. “You’re having the friggin’ time of your life, aren’t you? Nationals, Caps, golf. You can watch whatever you want, eat whatever you want- no interruptions. You have walked the dog haven’t you?”

I had. Honest. Only takes 15 or 20 minutes. In fact, if it weren’t for Suki’s two daily walks, I seriously doubt I would have seen the light of day. I hear the weather was great this weekend. Except for a few short ventures to the great outdoors- I would not have known because- as he intended- when God created light- he purposely made sure hardly any of it would seep into the man-cave.

Well, I did not win the mega-millions lotto. But my office pool did hit a $2 combo and my share is 15 cents, though the whole thing is in dispute. Some people put in a dollar, others, like me, put in $2, and one person put in $5. I’m pretty sure my share should be more like 30 cents.

But these problems pale in comparison to the warfare that’s broken out in a Baltimore suburb where a woman who bought winning lotto tickets on behalf of her co-workers at a McDonald’s now says they don’t get any of it because she went out and bought the ticket separately on her own. But from the same Seven-Eleven. Good luck with that, lady. I believe your life has just gotten a little more complicated than it was 72 hours ago, back when you didn’t have to worry about hiring large, burly men to protect your life.

Now that I know I didn’t win the big one, I have had to shelve my plans to buy an island. The research I conducted along the way revealed that they range in price from $50 thousand to $40 million. The problem with the $50 thousand one is that it’s in Fiji, which, of course, is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a one acre plot with an ocean view (actually it can’t help but have an ocean view, it’s kind of surrounded). But visiting it, is pricey unless you can get work in Fiji itself. It’s about $6 thousand to fly there round-trip, so ten visits alone would cost more than the entire island.

I was also going to eat lobster every day but did find the local Harris Teeter sells a fine export from Chile- langostinos- kind of like miniature lobster tails. I figure if I really want to, I could have those once a week.

I was also going to figure out which continent to visit first between Asia and Europe. I have decided, for the time being, to remain in North America. Over in Pentagon Row, the restaurant section of Pentagon City, there’s a quaint village-like atmosphere which seems reminiscent of the Denmark exhibit at Epcot Center at Disney World. I am going to walk there and check it out.

Finally, after much consideration and a conversation with my accountant, I have decided I want my 30 cents distributed in 26 equal annual payments. This will ensure I will remain cautious and disciplined with the money and not spend the entire cash reward in an impulsive manner.

I have also decided to try and keep my job, if they’ll have me. Based on my checkered career, the odds on that are slightly better than winning the lottery. But I must say, the ‘ol workplace is looking much, much better than it did, say, last Friday- a few hours before the drawing.

Someone please explain to me why everybody plays the lottery when it reaches half a billion dollars- but no one really cares when it’s, say, at $70 million.

So you’re going about your life and if you’re a regular, normal, ‘ol person and you’ve got just enough for rent or a mortgage, groceries, cable TV, and maybe a vacation or two if you’re lucky- how much difference is there really between $600 million and “just” $70 million?

Are you kidding? I’d consider $10K to be a gift from heaven. Hell, most people would be thrilled to find a $5 bill on the street.

The psychology in connection to all this is rather interesting. Suddenly, co-workers who get along just great, but who are now pooling their money together to buy a couple dozen tickets, start thinking like lawyers and certified public accountants. “Well, if Jane Doe put in $5 but Mary Jane only put in $2, clearly, Jane’s share of the mega-million lottery would be 2 and half times as much- an extra $60 million for a mere $3 more in initial investment- Hey that’s not fair!”

My girlfriend, who actually borrowed $5 from me to buy a handful of tickets, insisted that if lightening strikes at our particular Seven-Eleven in Pentagon City, she should get a larger share because her family is bigger. I disagreed somewhat vehemently to this approach. Don’t make me hire a lawyer, honey.

Then there’s all the math that’s being thrown out there. You could buy $170 million worth of lottery tickets, for example, and in picking every possible number, you would be guaranteed to win nearly $300 million after taxes. Except it would take you 28 years to actually mark all 170 million game tickets. I saw this in two different newspaper articles…in the same paper! And it was not helpful.

And the time people spend thinking about things like:

“Well am I going to take it all in one lump sum or split it up into 26 annual payments?”
“Which continent will I visit first, Europe or Asia?”
“I wonder how much an island costs?”
“This means I could eat lobster every single day.”
“I would give almost all, half, some, a little bit to charity.”

There will, of course, be millions of very, very disappointed people this weekend. The TV news guy will be announcing that a collection of 20 workers at a plastics factory in Medford, Oregon managed to win it all and we’ll all be going- “Medford, friggin’, Oregon??? Figures. Stuff like this never happens here in River City, dammit.”

And then the next day all 20 employees from Medford, Oregon will be sitting there at the press conference with the gigantic cardboard check behind them, flashing those toothy grins we all want to wipe off their faces.

There will be the story of the one incredibly cheap, thrifty worker who decided not to join his colleagues in shelling out a few bucks and misses out on the whole thing. Most of them will leave their jobs at the plastics factory in a matter of hours, except for one really wholesome, goodie-two-shoes guy who doesn’t want to be changed by the whole experience and decides he’ll stay at the factory.

Five years later will come the newspaper articles that report all 20 workers from the plastics factory in Medford, Oregon managed to go broke.

So good luck to you all. If the winner happens to be a friend or a family member, I remind you now that a mere 1/600th of your winnings will be more than enough to take care of me and my progeny for the rest of our lives and we will be extremely appreciative and will certainly have a place for you in our hearts until the end of time, ‘ol buddy, ‘ol pal.

I have noticed that my life has been increasingly taken over by various television series and I suspect I am not alone in this. After an 18-month hiatus, Mad Men returned Sunday night- but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

First, a tremendous amount of catching up occurred over this past winter and fall. The discovery of every single episode of Mad Men on Netflix was the epiphany. Watching them back-to-back-to-back like that was great fun. Then as you start closing in on the last couple of episodes- a strange sort of depression sets in- like- “Oh my God- what are we going to do now- no Don, no Betty, no Peggy- until…when?”

For Mad Men fans it would be a year and a half of contractual complications with the cast. They made it up to us with a 2-hour season debut Sunday that reminded me all over again how I got addicted to the series in the first place. I am not interested in writing an analysis of the show- but perhaps the most important take-away is that the actress’ name is Jessica Pare, she’s French Canadian and her version of Zou Bisou Bisou is being released on I-tunes today. Ahem- as I was saying- Mad Men was the mere tip of the iceberg.

Game of Thrones filled the Mad Men void for an entertaining couple of weeks but, alas, ended all too soon and led directly to an addiction to Spartacus which was fascinating in its explicit violence and sexuality but also quite sad after learning that the actor who played Spartacus (Andy Whitfield) died after the last season succumbing to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the young age of 39.

Downton Abbey’s first season soon came to the rescue for a good month’s worth of viewing. Season two did not seem to be available anywhere for free so I felt the need to make a contribution to PBS and had the thing mailed to me.

Homeland, Alcatraz, Smash and Touch have also been extremely helpful in filling the between-seasons voids of Dexter, Weeds and True Blood.

Sometimes, these series all run together in my mind and I can’t remember which character was on what show but this is not a big concern to me during waking hours.

My dreams, however, are extremely odd; gladiator-vampires riding shape-shifters, rushing to the rescue of French-Canadian versions of Marilyn Monroe who is fleeing crazed terrorist Broadway actresses who sell weed on the side to British servants who are investigating the serial killings of escaped convicts from the early 1960’s.

If you followed that at all- welcome to my sick but thoroughly entertaining world.

Clockwise: Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Pokeman Cards, Hula Hoops

I first broached this topic a little more than a month ago in a post entitled Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow: Celebrating the Art of the Passing Fad. I did not expect they would have faded this far in just a few short weeks.

Here’s what happened to Jeremy Lin: the New York Knicks stopped winning. As soon as their injured superstars came back into the line-up, they went on a steep losing streak. Their coach got fired. The Lin phenomena ended abruptly. Poor kid not only had to deal with the harshness of the New York media spotlight, but, as a point guard, the quarterback of the Knick offense had to figure out how to divvy up the ball to keep all those superstar egos from having tizzy fits, lest they not get all their shots at glory. The Knicks are a mess. Lin deserves to be on a better team with less baggage and a media market with lower expectations.

Here’s what happened to Tim Tebow: Peyton Manning. The future hall-of-fame quarterback has decided he wants to go to Denver following his post-neck-injury release by the Indianapolis Colts. It didn’t take the mania long to focus on a new darling in the mile-high city.

Denver Post columnist, Woody Paige, pronounced it in his first sentence this afternoon:

Tebowmania ends. Manningmania begins.

And Paige concludes:

There is much to digest and assess in a short time, but the Broncos beat out all the spurned suitors and helped Manning find a new home. Tebow must find a new home of his own.
Tim Te-bye.
But mania goes on in Denver.
It has a new name attached.
Manningmania.
Manningmadness. Peytonpassion. Horsepower.

Ah, already trying to coin the new phrase for the latest fad in Denver. And it’s been less than 12 hours since the Manning news broke.

Easy and obvious lesson, if you ask me. No one ever lives up to the hype. It’s not humanly possible. Take note, Mr. Manning.

Gas Prices

Yeah, they’re high and going higher.  It’s been an inescapable trend over the last several years.  Gas prices are low when the economy is reeling.  They are high when economic conditions improve.  Both sides always try to bash the party holding the White House about costly gas prices and both come up with solutions or blame that are just plain silly. 

Really want to have an effect on gas prices?  Convince one billion Chinese to stop buying cars and filling them with gas. 

Collegiate Snobbery

Rick Santorum has been getting a lot of flack from Democrats and Republicans alike for saying this:

President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college.  What a snob. There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.

Foolish or crazy as a fox?   It may yet resonate with conservative blue-collar voters in Michigan.  And I’ll bet a lot of anti-Obama voters didn’t even hear the college part as much as they heard the “Obama is a snob” part, which some suggest is the GOP version of class warfare.  It may well work- in a primary.  The overall problem with this strategy, of course, is that there’s polling that finds 93% of Americans think it’s a pretty good idea to send your kids to college.

Looking Forward to that Cruise Ship Vacation

First there was the Costa Concordia incident, in which an Italian sea captain trying to show off, came too close to shore, grounded his ship and killed more than 30 passengers and then literally tried to catch a cab and run off into the good night. 

Now you have its sister ship, the Costa Allegra, adrift in the Indian Ocean.  And as if it’s not bad enough that a generator fire knocked out the engines, the radio communications and then the air conditioning, it was adrift in “Pirate Infested Waters.”   I’m not afraid to admit I hate infestations of any kind, but particularly pirate infestations.

In between the two incidents, there were several outbreaks on a number of cruise ships of the Norwalk Virus.

So….if you don’t get killed by a show-off captain, manage to avoid spending three days with a raging fever and massive intestinal distress, and escape marauding pirates in the Indian Ocean- it should be a wonderful vacation experience for all!

My memories of a cruise ship vacation were primarily the tiny, little cabins and the huge bill at the end.  In between, you eat like a depraved Roman Emperor, consuming indescribably large amounts of food in a celebration of decadent gluttony accented with pretty little ice sculptures gently melting on a buffet table of death.