Armchair Anonymous: Cruise Ship
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard and this is Monica Padman. Hi. Hello. Today is cruise ships. Oof. Didn't make me want to.

I'll tell you that. I know. We should have almost called Laura LeBeau as an antidote because she just went on a Viking cruise. And she loved it. At the time of her life. Oh, good. My parents have gone on a couple and they love it. She said she's not going to do any other cruise line, though, after this experience. She said the food was absolutely outrageously good. Yeah, this one, this one you can listen to, I think. You can listen to this one. Oh, no. Yeah, there's stuff. Chemical cauterization. Oh.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But no, well, whatever. There's fluids. I don't know. There's fluids. Yeah. All right. Please enjoy cruise ship stories. Get into your body's vitals with the Vitals app on Apple Watch. Oh, no. My skin goes to talking. I want to feel like I'm alive.

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Hello, Hal. Hello. It's nice to meet you. Is that your lover's blouse behind you or yours? Is it birds or flowers on the sleeves? It is my wife's. We are in my daughter's closet. You guys did the impossible. You got my daughter to clean up her closet. Oh, wow. Just so I can talk to you.

Well, you're welcome, I guess, because that's an impossible task. It is an impossible task, as you probably know that. Yes. How old is your daughter? I have two, just like you. I've got a ninth grader and a seventh grader, so I'm a couple of years ahead of you. Oh, yeah. Things are getting real busy. They are.

Where are you at, Hal? I am in Lloyd Harbor, New York. It's on Long Island. Oh, how far from the city? About 40 miles or so. If you want to go to like Montauk, how long of a trip is that for you? I'm on the North Shore of Long Island. Montauk's on the South and all the way out East. So it's a good hour and a half, two hours from here. That's not bad though. You're two hours from paradise. Exactly.

Although I'd say where we are is pretty Edenic as well. Edenic? I like that. Wow, that's a takeoff on Eden? Yeah. Did you know it, Monica? I don't think I heard it. Edenic. That's a good vocab word. That's going in my arsenal. Okay, so you have a crazy cruise ship story. I do. Can I set the stage a little bit first, please? Oh, you can set the fuck out of the stage, Hal.

All right. This is about 2002. I'm a couple years younger than you, Dax, but basically the same age. I was in law school. It's our second year. And if you know anything about how law school works, after your first year, which is super intense, you try and get an internship in the fall of that year for the following summer.

And so my friends and I, we all got our internships. So this was spring break of our second year of law school. And we're feeling pretty good. We're less stressed. We want to blow it out. So we book a cruise and it's for spring break. So it's on a party cruise line. For me, this is a big deal. I didn't get to go on many vacations growing up. I was on loans. And really quick, if you're on a budget, cruise is nice. Could you get the drink pass at that point? There was no drink. That hurt a lot.

I didn't realize that was going to be a thing until the end of the cruise when you get that bill. I get really sick the week before. It's a couple days before we're supposed to leave, and I don't think I can go. I've got fever. I can't swallow. I've got congestion. I'm just horrible. My buddy describes it. He came over to drop off a sandwich for me so I could eat.

And he said he opened the door and it smelled and felt like death. So it was basically that kind of situation. He immediately drops the sandwich and basically runs out. He goes and calls my other friend. And you know when you have that friend who's kind of like the party guy, the motivator, the guy who's going to get you to go and do something? He was that guy. And he called me up and just gave me some tough love. He's like, you're going. There's no chance you're not. Fix yourself. So I go, I grab some antibiotic and...

And it kicks in about a day and a half later. I'm feeling a little bit better. If you take antibiotic, those labels on it tell you no sun, no alcohol. No cruises, basically. Cruise may be not the best choice, right? But I'm good to go. I'm going.

We get to the cruise. You get on the first day. And if you've taken a cruise, you're going to go up to the top and you're going to watch it disembark. Can I quickly ask, where is it taking off from and where will you be going? We're taking off out of Miami and we're going down to the Caribbean. So we're going to hit like St. Thomas and St. Croix. Classic cruise. On the Carnival Cruise Line. So the classic cruise.

cruise line as well. So we're up on the top and we're watching it leave and we've already got our first boat drinks in our hands. But remember, I'm not supposed to be in the sun. Yeah. And I'm not supposed to have alcohol. And first day, I'm...

out on the deck, drinking alcohol and in the sun. I didn't realize this, but you don't feel the sun on the cruise, right? 'Cause you get all that wind from how fast you're going. So it feels pretty cool even when it's hot. But you see my pigmentation here. I am not somebody who tans easily.

I burned almost immediately, which started to happen. But I realized, I said, all right, I better put some sunblock on. And at this point, I'm in that phase where I've had enough drinks where I think I'm pretty good at everything. So I start putting my sunblock on. I think I've got good coverage. But the next day I wake up and clearly I had just smeared sunblock kind of down the center of my chest.

And now I've got the worst sunburn I've ever had. And I think Wobby Wob has a picture. Let's take a gander at this sunburn. To say you're a lobster is just as spot on as it gets. And it's a really flattering picture, too. It's everything you want. We'll get to where that picture takes place because that's two or three days later. Oh, wow. Okay. I've got a beer in hand again. And at this point, you know that...

First of all, my friends are giving me so much shit. I'm also the guy on the cruise who has this ridiculous sunburn. And so everybody's starting to know me as that guy with the sunburn. It also hurts, right? So I have to kind of shield myself from sun wherever I can. I'm in the shade. But two days later, I'm OK. I'm going out. It hadn't blistered yet. It hadn't started peeling yet because that happened later. But we get to the beach on, I think it was St. Croix at this point. And what?

We're feeling good. We're on the beach drinking a beer. You know, we start chatting up this group of women. We go into the water. This is all going super well. I'm feeling good. I'm in the water. I'm out of the sun, right? It's not hurting anymore. My antibiotic has taken care of everything it needs to take care of. And I'm feeling good.

And I'm talking to this pretty woman. This was long before my wife. And I stubbed my toe. In the water? In the water. Well, a shell. Maybe it's a shell. Maybe it's a piece of coral, something, right? I stubbed my toe. And it hurts, but I try not to think anything of it. And I just keep chatting up this woman. And it starts to hurt some more. What is this? This really hurts. Now I'm kind of walking away from her and my buddy's chatting her up.

And I pick my foot up out of the water, kind of trying to see if there's anything there, holding my toe. And my friend looks at me and says, what's all that black stuff on the bottom of your foot? And I say, I don't know. And then at that point,

pain sets in like I've never felt before. I am writhing around, I'm screaming. Now I'm also scared because I have no idea what this is. So I started trying to get out of the water. Is it a burning pain or like an impact pain? It's a stinging, searing pain. So I go hopping out of the water. And if you've ever tried to get out of the ocean on one foot, it's actually really hard. So now I'm like army crawling up the beach.

My buddy tells me later that one of the girls I was talking to says, oh, does your friend always cry this much? Oh, wow. I get up onto the beach. I'm holding my foot. I'm still kind of screaming about it. And a guy walks by and he looks down at my foot. He said, oh, yeah, you stepped on a sea urchin. So I had kicked a sea urchin and it was crazy.

extremely painful. I don't know if you've ever done that or heard of anybody. Did you just do it? Funny enough, I just in Hawaii got five quills in my heel. They're still there. Just this morning. I'm like, when are these coming out? Yeah. So you found out that you kind of just let them dissolve. Well, my daughters thought you're going to get poisoned and die. And I'm like, no,

There's no way they're letting a snorkel in front of the hotel, not saying they're poisonous. They ran it to the scuba guy. And then he came and gave me vinegar and said, oh, soak your foot in vinegar. That'll help it dissolve. I did that. They didn't dissolve anyway. Sorry. No, no. So I'm with my buddy. He's that overachiever as a doctor and a lawyer. And he was the ER train. So he says, I'll go back with you to the cruise ship and see what they'll do for it. Because the guy that walked by said, I have to get them taken out, which, as you know, is incorrect.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm waiting in the taxi. He's also the person who's going to give you the most shit about anything and loves to tell stories. So he's telling everybody on the beach what happened to me. And then we go to the cruise. They tell me I don't take any of them out. So then I just limp around for the next few hours. So that's sort of the end of sea urchin part. Oh, God. Now there's a third part to this. So I think I'm in the clear. I'm starting to feel good later on. And I'm like, all right, no more mistakes. Nothing's going to happen anymore. I'm sitting at a table in a bar.

Another one of my friends comes over with a couple of girls and they sit down and we're just chit-chatting away. And I lean over to say something to her and I put my hand behind her chair. And now I feel something in my hand. What? And so I pull my hand out and it's covered in splinters and it's bleeding. Oh my God.

It's everywhere. But now I am at a point in this cruise where I can't show any pain. I can't do anything that's going to bring any more attraction. So I kind of just hide it away. But I wasn't fast enough because my friend saw it. And he then goes, jumps up and goes and grabs all my other friends to come and look at me. So that they can then have another laugh at my expense for the rest of the time. Wow.

This was a deck chair that just was scraggly on the back? Yeah, it was just beat up on the back, and I didn't know it, and just bad luck. I hate to be disparaging about Carnival, but let's get those deck chairs oiled and sanded. Yeah, yikes. They probably have over the last 25 years. Yeah, this is like, you don't really like my Ziggy reference because you didn't grow up reading Ziggy. Oh, yeah, I don't know Ziggy. But do you remember Ziggy Hale? Of course. He was the cutest cartoon, and everything that could go wrong to Ziggy did. Aww.

- This is really like Ziggy went on a cruise in a lot of ways. - It was tough. Thankfully, nothing else really happened on the rest of the cruise that was bad, but it was enough that I took shit for the rest of the time. We repeated the cruise the next year.

Thankfully, nothing happened. Well, I'm impressed you win again. Yeah, back on that horse. I would be like, fuck that. Let's just go to one of these islands that we want to be at and just be there. Were there any gals on the boat that really took pity on you and wanted to rescue you? I was going to say, any nurses? Nurses would have been a great meet-cute. No. I'm not that slick. Maybe I could have played it better and played it up a little bit, but I didn't play the pity card very well. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Wow, that's a real shit cruise. And you didn't make out with anyone. Oh, let's not say that. Oh, okay, great. Okay. You still came out on top. Okay. It was still a fun cruise and it was still spring break. You know, things happen. Great, great, great, great. So net win, maybe. Net win. And I'm talking to you guys. Definite positive. And actually, Dax, I thought we weren't going to hear from you guys on this story. And then I heard from Emma. I was in White Lake, Michigan. No. It's the first time I've been to Michigan in maybe 16 years or

What on earth were you doing in White Lake? So I grew up in Highland right next door, bordering White Lake. I didn't know that, but one of my good friends from growing up lives there. We see each other fairly often, but I had not visited him there. Emma reached out when I was actually visiting him for the first time in 16 years. Does he live on the lake? He does not. His in-laws do, though.

Okay. Well, Hale, delightful meeting you. God, did you give your buddies a gift? Truly, there's no better gift than like when one of your buddies can take the beating on everyone else's behalf. Totally. I think if it happened now, I would kind of take it like you do, Dax, and say, oh, this is going to be a story one day. At 24 years old, I wasn't taking it that way. I took it pretty hard during the trip. So if you don't mind, my family's waiting right out there. My older daughter was the one who encouraged me to submit for the prom. So they'd love to get on and meet you guys. Absolutely. Bring them in. Bye.

Hi! Are you the owner of this closet? Yeah, and the computer. It's on. I'm Layla. Hi, Layla. We heard you cleaned just for us. Yeah, that is not something that happens often. Well, it looks great. I mean, it's ready for a photo shoot. Thanks. I just want to say I'm so excited to meet you guys. When I saw this prompt, I was actually outside, and I was re-listening to the beach stories where the guy stepped on the sea urchin, and I was thinking, okay,

Oh, dad's story would be great to go on Armchair Anonymous. And then I looked right then and there was a cruise ship story. Whoa. And so I ran inside. Sim, sim, sim. Very simmy. Really quick, my aunt asked me to give a shout out. So she's my mom's twin.

Oh, identical or fraternal? Identical. So love you, Aunt Tracy. Do you feel like you have two moms? It's weird because I have three cousins from my mom's twin. We look pretty similar and we always joke that we're half siblings. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Double first cousins, half siblings. Whoa. I wish your mom had married an identical twin. Then your cousins would really be your siblings. Yeah, that would be a very interesting experiment.

Well, it's very nice meeting you. Really good luck with ninth grade. Tell your seventh grade sister good luck with seventh grade. Good luck with seventh grade. My favorite year of my life. And say hi to mom. Hi, mom. Well, nice meeting you guys. Nice to meet you guys. Bye. Take care. Bye. Oh, my God. A whole family. That was cute. We love identical twins. Because they're so rare. They're limited edition. I guess everyone loves identical twins, probably. Well...

We're probably not unique in that, right? Okay, comment if you don't like identical twins. Okay, yeah. I can see people being scared by them. Especially if you don't really believe in science and God makes babies kind of a situation. They think they're demons. Yeah, maybe like, how do you explain that? Well, science. If you don't believe in a, right, if you don't believe in that. That is indeed the explanation. In the absence of that explanation, what would you possibly guess? Demons.

Amen. Or this one was so good that God had to make two. Really good, Sven. We are supported by Quince. You know when you look back at photos of yourself in your all-black punk stage in high school or wearing head-to-toe 90s neon and you wonder, what was I thinking? Sometimes trends just don't stand the test of time. If you want an outfit that you're going to feel great about both physically

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Hi. Hi, Luke. Hi, that's right. Can you guys hear me? Oh, wonderful. It's like you're about to land an airplane. That's what I'm going for. Yes, it's working. Tell me why you have this headset. Are you a gamer? I am a gamer, and I am recording this from a job site. I just didn't want to rely on my laptop's audio. We appreciate that greatly. You're going by a pseudonym. Are we allowed to know what state you're in? Yeah, that's totally fine. I'm in Bozeman, Montana. Oh, okay, wonderful.

That's a beautiful place to be. It's gorgeous. We had a blizzard yesterday. Mountains are still full of snow. A blizzard. Full-on blizzard driving home last night. Wow. Wow.

Do you like that? I don't love the snow, but I don't hate it. When it's unexpected is when it's the worst. Right, which I imagine yesterday was unexpected. Absolutely. Do you guys have the same thing we had in Michigan where it's like you have a fake spring and you get excited and then all of a sudden it just fucking turns to winter in May and you're like, fuck this place. That's exactly what yesterday was. Yeah, it was like 75, 80 degrees over the weekend. Oh my God.

Hard snow yesterday. Accidents on my drive home. It was pretty rough. Those climates, they're backstabbers. Yeah, they're tricky. Yeah, they'll fool you. Did you grow up in Montana? I actually grew up in the Seattle area. What?

Oh, okay. So you have a cruise story. That's right. This was for my wife and I's honeymoon. And shortly before the cruise, as newlyweds tend to do, we fooled around a lot. During some of this fooling around, I ended up with a little bit of chafing on my dick. Okay. Just saying. Okay.

Imagine the red burn on your dick. That's what it was. Don't need to sugarcoat it. Yeah, yeah. He was about to say penis, and he's like, no, I'm already talking about chafing. It's dick chafing. That's the way the story's going to go. So fast forward, we're like on day two of the cruise. Can I pause you, Luke? I just want to regale for a second. That brings me back to my youth. Your fecundity rate was so high that you would actually damage the skin. I mean, that's for the youthful. Absolutely. Happy that those days are over.

Long gone for me, for sure. So we're on the cruise. It's day two. It's a day at sea. So there's really not a lot going on. Where's the cruise going to? Is it a Caribbean cruise? We're going to Alaska. Oh, okay. I go to take a shower.

And if you've ever been on a cruise before, the bathrooms are tiny. I mean, you stand in the middle and you can touch all four walls just reaching out. So as you can imagine, the shower is equally tiny. And in the shower, they give you a wand to get to those hard to reach places. Oh, like you can pull it off the wall.

Oh, I see. Right, a shower wand. Well, I'm going to shower, and I'm thinking I want to get myself as clean as possible. I want this wound to heal up as quickly as it can because, you know, I've got to perform on my honeymoon. Yeah, you've got to get back to it. Back in the saddle. I'm cleaning myself up, and...

I have this great idea. I'm going to clean that area specifically. So I pull myself a little tight down there and I spray the wand on it. The water pressure from the wand hits right on this rug burn spot and it

immediately starts gushing blood oh my god you've opened up the wound yeah and it's i mean it's right on a vein i'm talking a little bit of blood i'm talking imagine you're peeing but it is solid red i mean it is just a pressurized bead of red coming out of my dick it's like punctured the vein punctured what wow

God, these penises are so fragile. They can take a beating, but you push them too hard, they will give. Wow. They will give, yes. And I am aghast. I don't know what to do. Honestly, my first thought, embarrassingly, is my wife doesn't need to know about this. She already knows I'm wounded down there. So if I can just get the bleeding to stop...

She doesn't need to know about this. We'll just move on with life. Okay. This is where we're different. We were in line so far, but now I would be so excited to call her in like, holy shit, look at this, you know. And it gets there. Okay, okay. So I go grab a massive wad of toilet paper. I mean, I'm talking 30 sheets at least. And I go to stick it under there.

It turns into a mushy mess of nothing in seconds. Oh my God, this is scary. You're losing some considerable blood here. Exactly. And so now I'm panicked. So now it's time to call the wife in and tell her I'm having an emergency. I'm having an emergency. I call her in. She walks in and it looks like a war zone in there. I mean, there's blood all over the walls. It's everywhere. Oh, man.

She handles it well. She goes and she calls the cruise site nurse team. Oh,

So she calls the nurse team down and this little nurse comes in and same thing. She opens the door. She looks at me and she just has this look of horror when she looks into this bathroom. She gives me a one inch thick stack of that heavy duty gauze that's designed to stop bleeding. She says, put this on there, apply pressure. I'll be right back. I'm going to go get a wheelchair, some more supplies. We'll wheel you down to the infirmary. She's gone maybe just a few minutes. By the time she has come back,

I have bled through this stack of gauze. There's literally blood dripping out the bottom of this stack of gauze. Luke, at any moment, are you considering a tourniquet? Based off the area of the injury, I am trying to avoid that as much as I can. And so she has me throw that away. She hands me a new stack of gauze, tells me to apply pressure again. I've put a shirt on, I'm on the wheelchair, and

And they're wheeling me down to the infirmary. Any pants? Surprisingly, basically no pants. Oh. No, no, no. No pants. Pants. Pants. No pants. Just a towel covering my leg. Oh, okay. But you are covered at least with a towel. But it is awkward. You're going through the halls of this cruise ship. And there's all these people looking at you.

At first glance, they really have no idea what's wrong, but I'm sitting there just freaking the hell out. And you bear legs. There's nothing I would want to see more than that. A man in his t-shirt and no pants on with a towel over his groin. It's a scene. I wish the story ended there. So she wheels me down to the infirmary.

And luckily by this point, I got about three quarters of the way through the second thing of gauze and the bleeding has stopped. The doctor on site is taking a look at this injury. Of course, it's a girl doctor too, but I've got no shame. What am I going to do at this point? But she looks at it and she says, we've got to close this. It could reopen at any point. You're going to be right in the same situation. And so she says, well, I'd like to just use a stitch, but on this part of your body, it's very prone to expansion and contraction.

So we don't want to use a stitch. So what we're going to use is a chemical cauterization. Oh, glue. Not exactly. Chemical cauterization is they apply two inert chemicals to your body.

Chemical A doesn't do anything by itself. Chemical B doesn't do anything by itself. But when they come in contact with each other, it melts your skin back together. Oh, it like cauterizes. It's like a chemical cauterizing. That's what he said. Literally what he said. He said that? Oh. That's the exact phrase he used. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I missed the cauterizing. No, you're good. She lays me back on the table. There's no anesthetic. Oh. And she gives me a rubber stick to bite onto. Oh.

And I would be wondering, is this a disposable or many people bitten down on this rubber stick? I was kind of under the impression that many people have been down on this rubber stick before. It was definitely like in the top shelf of the supplies, you know, like, oh, we need this every day. And so she does that, has me grab my wife's hand and I'm,

I'm telling you guys, I bet my screams are still reverberating through that cruise ship. Oh, wow. I can't begin to describe the amount of pain that having your dick skin burned back together feels like. Oh, my God. Oh, I wish this on no one. Oh, I know. And also, I want to see video of this entire thing from beginning to cauterization. Oh.

I wish it existed. Once it's cauterized, does she say to you, like, don't use this thing for a while? More or less, yeah. She said no sexual activity for a couple weeks. Obviously, it's going to kind of expand on its own every once in a while. There's not a lot you can do about that. Right. Try not to look at any pretty ladies. Yeah, and you're on a cruise. Tell your new wife to keep her clothes on. Luckily, the cruise to Alaska, not a lot of women in bikinis, but still something to concern yourself with. Yeah.

Those bald eagles, though, they can get things moving. Oh, they get you excited, don't they? Yeah, what a sight to see. I thought you were making a euphemism for vagina. Oh, that could also, yeah. I like that euphemism. It healed well. I had no lingering injuries. A little bit of scarring, but you'd have to know what you were looking for.

Wow. You reversed the wife who's had a baby. That's what I was thinking when she had to hold his hand. More just like wife has a baby and then there's a window where wife can't have sex. But in this case, they're like married and then he had an issue and then they're now waiting. And they're newlyweds. They're very horny. 100%. Oh, that's great. What a memorable honeymoon. Yeah, and that's what I always tell people. I've told this story to people over the years. And, you know, if it wasn't exciting, you wouldn't remember it.

Oh, Luke, that's fantastic. What a great story. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope it makes it onto the episode. Oh, it will. Don't you worry. You can bet your scarred dick it will. Awesome. While I still got a second, I'm just going to shout out my good buddy, Casey, who got me into your show and encouraged me to share my story. Oh, Casey, big shout out. Shout out. I'm so glad he did. That's a doozy. That's a good one. That's a keeper. A few weeks ago, he sent the link. He was like, cruise stories. You go.

Well, thank Casey on our behalf. I most certainly will. All right. Take care, Luke. Have a great day. We are supported by Twizzlers. What a fun product. I love Twizzlers. I love a Twizzler in a movie theater. Well, the fun never stops with Twizzlers. It's the candy that lets you stretch out the fun. It's the perfect level of sweet and comes in the fun, chewy twist that everyone knows and loves. Yeah, gnawing on one in a dark movie theater. It's so fun.

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Are you going to leave the room to make this call? Our next call is Monica. Yeah, I'm calling in. Oh, Monica's calling. I have a lot of cruise ship stories. I could have submitted many different things. I've been on so many cruises. I haven't been on a one. You haven't been on a single cruise? I feel like your parents would have loved that. They go now. Well, they do. Hello.

Hi. Don't show me much of this car. I always try to impress Monica. I'm going to go with Chrysler Pacifica. You're wrong. I'm sorry. Fuck. It is a Honda Pilot. Oh.

Okay. Monty had a, did you have a pilot? No, CRV. CRV. So sorry, Monica, that I'm not in like a cushy closet somewhere. I'm actually at my daughter's track meet. Oh God. I hope she doesn't come up to the blocks while we're talking. If you hear like shots, I'm not in some dangerous neighborhood. Oh my God. What's her event? Well, she just finished high jump. Oh,

Oh, I was a high jumper. Is she tall? She is tall for her age. She's only 12. I have a question for you. I was getting a massage recently. This was weird. In the middle of the massage, the massage therapist said, can I ask you something personal? And this was while she was mid-massage. And I said, sure. That's a scary question. I know. And she said, do you like being called Monica? Yeah.

I was like, yeah. And she was like, because my name is Monica and I love it. Every Monica I meet is just so great. And I was like, yeah, it's a great name. It really caught me off guard. And would you have liked that? No.

Yeah, it would have caught me off guard too. I've never had like a nickname or nobody's ever shortened it. No one calls you Monty or Mom? No. Oh, wow. We just had this conversation about nicknames. Monica's many nicknames. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

But I would agree. I'm going to say that Monica's over index in Good Folks. I like all the Monicas I know. Except this one that stops in the middle of a massage. No, I might like her too. Okay. She was nice. Yeah. She has a boundary issue, which I like. Yeah. You love that. Okay. So you have a crazy cruise ship story. I do. So I'll give you just a little bit of background. So I grew up, I was a teen in the mid to late nineties. So I

peak boy band scene and I was a huge fan of the Backstreet Boys. Oh, me too. That was my boy band of choice. I had

I had their posters all over my walls. I bought their CDs on the day that they came out. Did you have a favorite Backstreet Boy? I did. Brian Luttrell. Yeah, Brian was everyone's fave. He was the number one. He was my fave, too. Are you going to see them at the Sphere? You should. Maybe when we get to the end of the story. Uh-oh. Okay. Okay. All right. No, I probably won't be seeing them at the Sphere, but it's going to be an amazing show. Okay.

Are you going to see them, Monica? I don't think so. I'm kind of scared of this year. You should. So anyways, huge fan. Fast forward, the year's 2011. And I'm a newly married woman, working young woman. And I'm scrolling Facebook and I come across this ad from Ticketmaster that they're doing this sweepstakes giveaway. And it's a trip for two, all expenses paid.

on a cruise with the Backstreet Boys. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's like a three-night, four-day cruise to the Bahamas. And you also get to meet the Backstreet Boys. Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. And you still like them in 2011? Yeah. I mean, I wasn't teenage obsessed. No posters anymore. The nostalgia. I was like, oh, yeah, I would go on a Backstreet Boys cruise. Yeah, great. Yeah. So I put my name in and kind of forgot about it because it had been a while. And I get this email from Ticketmaster. And I knew before I even opened the email, I was like, I won that cruise.

I opened the email and yes, I had won and they had like a short turnaround. You had to tell them within 24 hours who was going, the names of the passengers.

flight information, all that. Oh, this is exciting. Yeah, this is very exciting. My first thought is like, I don't think my husband is the right person to take on this. I love my husband, but he's not really the boy band type. And this seems like a girl's trip. He agreed. And so I immediately call one of my childhood best friends, Nicole, and I tell her, Nicole's always game for a good time. And so she was like, yes, let's do it.

She was living out of state at the time. So we meet up in the airport. We fly to Miami. I should say that at this point, I had never been on a cruise before in my life. Nicole had been on a few cruises before. So that was kind of helpful to have her hints and tips. Part of the trip was hotel was included. So we're there the night before the cruise.

And we decide we're going to hit the town. And this is in December. So I live in the Midwest. I'm leaving cold winter temperatures, heading to Miami. I've got tourists written all over my face. I got my spray tan. I packed my little halter dresses. I'm ready for some warm weather. So we hit some bars and...

We go to this daiquiri bar where we get served these daiquiris that are huge, like as big as our heads. We're sitting there enjoying ourselves. And this man comes up to our table, very sharp dressed man with two shots in each hand. Has very strong accent. And I kind of make out that he's one of the owners of the establishment. He's checking to see if we're having a good time and wanted to give us these complimentary shots for our daiquiris. And he just dumps them right in.

Oh, okay. Uh-oh. I'm very scared. He walks

walks away and we're both kind of like, well, that was kind of weird. And so I proceed to take a couple of drinks at the time. And I don't know, maybe Miami is still this way. You can take your drinks in and out of bars. Like you could walk out with an open container. So we decide, okay, we're going to take these daiquiris with us and leave because we were weirded out by that guy. So we leave. And a little while later, Nicole is like, I don't think we should be drinking these. Good, Nicole. Yeah.

So we throw them away, but apparently I must have drank a little more than Nicole had because it hits me very fast.

Pretty sure I had been roofied. No. Oh, my God. So the rest of the evening is kind of from Nicole's relaying the message to me. But she could tell that I was going downhill very quickly. I was slurring. I was falling all over the place. Whoa. So she got me into a cab. This is pre-Uber. We were heading back to the hotel, and I threw up all over in the backseat of the cab. Oh.

And so the cab driver's obviously pissed and wants to kick us out. She doesn't even know where we're at. She pleads with him to keep us in the car and get us to the hotel and agrees to give him a really good tip. So we get back to the hotel and Nicole tells me she basically had to like drag me back to the room. I'm sure the surveillance footage looks like some murder documentary or something, but

She gets me back to the room. She helps shower me up and shower all the puke out of my hair and gets me cleaned up. And the next morning, wake up, feel obviously pretty terrible. And we overslept, nearly missed the ship departure. They're just in time. We get on the ship.

We head to our cabin and we're kind of walking down the halls and everybody's got their doors all decorated with Backstreet Boys stuff. And this is kind of lifting my spirits. I'm shaking off that night before getting in a better mood. And we go to the kickoff party that's going to be on the pool deck. I'm starting to feel better. And I'm like, okay, hair of the dog. I'm going to get another drink. So I get a drink and we're waiting and the Backstreet Boys come out and make their first big appearance. And everybody goes crazy. We have a good time.

Do they perform right away or they're just waving and saying hi? They're just saying hi, basically. Then the ship takes off. And so things are moving, getting started.

And I started to notice that, you know, I can feel the motion. And normally people tell you on cruise ships, oh, you can't even tell you're moving. Well, I could feel the movement. And so I tell Nicole, like, I'm already just not feeling the best. And she was giving me all these pointers, like, let's take some Dramamine. Let's dip on some ginger ale. Let's do this and that. And so I was trying it.

And she said, well, whatever you do, just don't go lay down because as soon as you lay down, you're done. You won't get back up. Oh, God. And I was like, OK. Nicole's a pro at everything. Yeah. The name of this story should be Nicole was right. Oh, no. The next event for the night is the Backstreet Boys are going to be doing this game show thing in one of the theaters.

And so we had to go to this theater and we're walking down the hallway. And I mean, you can just see the hallway moving side to side. Oh, God. This is why I don't want to go on a cruise. People are trying to walk down this hall. And thank God there were these handrails going down the hallway because you had to hold on to these handrails or you would fall over. It was rocking so bad. Oh, my God. It's like Triangle of Sadness. Yeah, it really is. Oh, my God.

For the listener, Monica's getting a little sick right now. Just remembering. And I can totally see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that you're hanging on by a thread already. It was terrible. And so we go into the theater and I'm seeing a lot of women are just getting up and leaving. And I'm seeing women coming back with all these doggy bag, like vomit bags. Oh.

And people are getting sick in this theater. And I can't take it anymore. So I run out of the theater. I run to the bathroom. The bathroom is full of all these women getting sick. I also love there's no men on this cruise. It's just all women. It's true. They should have let the women use the men's bathroom for this cruise. But there were like crew members in the hallway handing out these doggy bags. Oh.

I got sick and I told Nicole, I can't do it. I've got to go back to the room. So I go back to the room and I laid down and Nicole was right. I could not get up. It was like I was just glued to that bed. I was so bummed because that night there was supposed to be like this 80s party. So I was stuck in bed and somehow managed to like get some sleep that night. And then the next morning,

Woke up, felt so much better. And I realized it was because we had docked. We were in the Bahamas. Oh my God. But this was the big day that I got to meet the Backstreet Boys. We went to go watch their soundcheck for a while because one night they did a concert. On shore or on the boat? They did do an appearance on the beach, but the concert was on the boat. So we went to the soundcheck and then got to do the meet and greet, which was...

really fast and I was given strict instructions. Only shake their hands. Do not hug them. Just say hello and take your picture and get off the stage. No kissing. Yeah. And I could just tell when I went up on that stage, the look on Nick Carter's face was

was just like, he was terrified. He was waiting for me to just like pounce on him. Oh, God. I felt so bad. This is what these men endure all the time. Yeah. I got to meet them. That was exciting. And I spent the day on the beach. And then that night, we started to head back to Miami. And it was like, oh,

over again. I just could not wait to get off of this ship. And I'm so glad that the trip was paid for because if I would have paid for this cruise and I was vomiting the whole time. Oh my God. And Nicole was

Did Nicole have a good time? Great time. She sounds like if anyone on this ship might have hooked up with one of the Backstreet Boys, it would have been Nicole. She probably could have because she went to the casino one night when I was like throwing up and she was at the roulette table with one of them. Oh, fun. So that's my terrible slash awesome cruise story.

Listen, A, the story's fantastic, but you're just so funny. Oh, thank you. Can I do a quick shout out? Yes. Okay. Well, obviously, shout out, Nicole. I love you. Yeah, number one. Thank you for being such an amazing friend. And shout out to my husband. Sorry you weren't able to come along for these shenanigans. You mean you're fucking welcome. Yes. You dodged this bullet. Yeah. And shout out to my two sisters. One is an armchairie and one was a huge fan of parenthood. What are their names? Megan and Molly.

Megan and Molly. MMMMM. It was really hard for my grandma. Oh, I fuck up my kids' names all the time and they're drastically different. Wow. Well, I'm sorry that happened, but that was a delight. Yeah, that was so fun. Thank you so much, Monica. Thank you. It was so awesome meeting you guys. Take care. Wish your daughter a victory in this high jump contest. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye.

I love her. I love him. She reminds me so much of my cousins, Mandy and Kelly. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, same kind of storyteller. I wonder nowadays if everyone just goes on cruise ships with Zofran. Like, is Zofran the same as Dramamine? Could you take both? Yeah, I don't know what the mechanism for either of them is, but Zofran should have an actual cruise line. It really should. Yeah, and they should sail into the choppiest waters. Have you seen any footage of these fucking cruises down to Antarctica? No.

None of those have popped up on your Instagram. The water's fucking crashing over the whole front of the boat. They've got like a glass thing where you can, people are falling down and breaking shit. Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah. I also, when we went to Napa, the first thing we did was we went to this winery and it was up a very, very,

Very curvy. Yeah, and you zofraned. I zofraned. And thank God. Because I still felt awful. You did. Even with it. And if I hadn't had it, it would have been like that. Cruz. Oh, my God. It was so funny. Everyone's got barf bags with the Backstreet Boys. Stop.

If you're the Backstreet Boys and you're up there and everyone's just puking. And are they not puking? Right. Oh, boy. All right. Love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song. Oh.

Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. Enjoy. Enjoy.

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This is Nick. And this is Jack. We're best friends, ex-finance guys, and resident 90s experts. And every week on our podcast, The Best Idea Yet, we're bringing you the untold stories behind your favorite products. For instance, can you guess which billion-dollar fashion company went viral thanks to a rhinestone-covered tracksuit? Or which cartoon turned four turtles into a global toy empire by accident? It started as a joke. Last one, which cold beverage was so hated by Starbucks

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