Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: The Dark Clan "Goths on a Boat" ::
[WARNING: This post contains many photos AND embedded video! Therefore, it may take a moment to completely load. Also, I want to let it be known right up front that I LOST MY FUCKING CAMERA while on this trip (one of about four people in our group to do this), so I did not take any of these pics or video. These are all thanks to many of the people that I met on the trip who were kind enough to either e-mail pictures directly or put up links of the forum. Thanks, guys!]
Well, I'm back! I'm still alive! Hooray! I don't know if anybody reading this is actually THAT excited about it, but I do so like to pretend things. Right now I'm pretending you're all a bunch of cybernetic humming birds, also.
Now that your initial reverie over my glorious return to posting has abated, I'm sure I know what comes next: Just where the heck did I GO? I will tell you, but be forewarned: many of you shall become jealous. So irrevocably jealous in fact, that you shall thus begin hating me and cease communicating with me all together.
Okay? Okay.
I spent a week on a fabulous cruise of the western Caribbean. But it doesn't stop there! This wasn't just ANY cruise. You see, of the three thousand passengers on board the Carnival Cruiseship Liberty, two hundred and thirty of them were GOTHS, myself included. Some of you are scratching your heads right about now, I get that. You see, once a year a travel agency puts together a Goth Cruise event at sea! What makes this sunny cruise so goth and special, you ask? Well, see, only the people who book through this travel agency, All Genre Travel, are part of the Goth Cruise, so even though we share a boat with over two thousand "NORMAL" people, we have private, closed off events those "OTHER" people cannot attend! Events such as a costume party, concerts, dance clubs, Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, and so much more! That's right, suck it old people and screaming babies!
See, the thing most people don't realize about us goths is that we're mostly VERY NICE PEOPLE. Amazing, isn't it that the folks walking around in leather and buckles with tattoos all over them would be NICE, I know. As you can also imagine, the goth cruise group is pretty easy to pick out from the "normal" people, plus we had all of our private group events, so we got to spend time with the same, albeit fairly large, group of people. We sort of developed an "us versus them" mentality when it came to the "regular" cruise patrons, and subsequently a camaraderie that I know for someone like me who is relatively fearful of crowds and unknown people, was rare and super cool (I know for a fact that I was not the only one in our group with this social-phobia problem). Hey, here are some photos of the ultra cool people I met from all over the world on this cruise:
If you think these people are snappy dressers NOW, you should have seen them at the costume party! Oops, sorry, that's actually MASQUERADE BALL. The difference? Well, a masquerade ball is... classier? Um. Well, a costume party people would wear more like rubber masks and things, but at a masquerade the masks are venetian style usually (and for our crowd, goggles). Take a gander at some of the wicked threads !
Yep, some people really rocked the party with their fantastic outfits at this event! Oh, and there was a costume contest and here are THA WINNAHS:
The fellow on the right looked so much more badass with his mask UP, but ah well, what're you gonna do? I was unfortunately one of the many men who had no idea WHAT sort of thing to wear to this and therefore opted for a suit, top hat, and mask, much like many others.
But what makes this cruise particularly goth other than its patrons? How about the concerts? This particular cruise had FIVE concerts by goth bands, each lasting an average of ninety minutes. Those bands were:
Prognosis. I don't have a photo of them, unfortunately. I didn't know them going into their show. They were gothic-industrial type-ish. All synth musics with shrieked vocals. Not exactly my cup o' tea, what with the screaming lyrics and all, but the MUSIC was quite good.
Panzer AG.
You may recognize the front man to Panzer as the front man to Combichrist. Panzer AG was much more by was of lyrics than Combichrist, though. I would suggest trying out "Machine Gun Go-Go" if you want to know what type of stuffs they perform. They really rocked the staged, too!
Funker Vogt.
These three German guys are pretty much legends in German electronic musics, they are. They're probably MOST famous for their "Hero trilogy": "Tragic Hero", "Fallen Hero", and "Arising Hero." Look those songs up, yo! They certainly got the crowd excited!
The Cruxshadows.
The Cruxshadows.... well, they put on one heck of a FANTASTIC SHOW. Seriously, lights and back up dancers and the singer coming down into the audience to sing from standing on tables and such... quite a treat! In case you still don't get it, why, here is some video footage from the ACTUAL SHOW ON THE BOAT!
Wasn't that wondrous? Granted, that wasn't ME shooting this video, but a giant theater with only two hundred and thirty people in it makes for a VERY intimate show, and we were all allowed and encouraged to crowd the foot of the stage (Cruxshadows even invited us all ON STAGE at the end of the show to dance!). I know, I never have embedded a video on here before (this is due to the capriciousness of YouTube hosting the file), but I felt this occasion was special and y'all should get a taste.... there will be actually more videos to come in this post on account of the super-specialness of it all!
The final, headlining show: COVENANT.
Granted, their show was not as huge a production as the Cruxshadows, but they are so totally wicked that you cannot even comprehend it. These three Swedish fellows being on the goth cruise is part of what sold it to me. I knew I would never get another chance to see them, and boy howdy, did I want to. They performed all of their big songs like "Bullet," "We Stand Alone," "Like Tears in Rain," "Dead Stars," "The Men," and "Ritual Noise." The singer totally worked the crowd. Heck, here's a sample, again, of ACTUAL CONCERT FOOTAGE from my vacation.
This was their last song of the night, the famous "Call the Ships to Port"! Oh and you can see me in this video... TWICE actually, in the audience pans. My face is mostly all blurry, though. Now you have a "Where's Waldo" project you can work on!
Do you know what makes all of this EXTRA awesome? The fact that you are sharing a boat with the famous bands and get to hang out with them from time to time! One of the actual events on the goth cruise is an autograph session where they give FREE CDs and sign them, pose for photo and video with you and more. Heck, everyone got their obligatory hug from the singer of The Cruxshadows, Rogue. Yes, that man is a hugger. Many of them turned up in our dance club nights and even DJed!! There was one time a small group of us ate breakfast with two of the guys from Covenant! I, uh, kind of sat there like a crash test dummy trying not to fanboy all over them. Did I mention the celebrity guests we had singing right with us during GOTHARAOKE? Yes, us goths had a few sessions of goths-only karaoke where we were joined by the both of the back up singers from The Cruxshadows and Rogue, the lead singer, sang with us every day! We had one clever man cue up "American Pie" only to sing the WEIRD AL YANKOVIC VERSION, "The Saga Begins," and Rogue ran up there to sing with him so fast it was spectacular! "O a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away...." Unfortunately, I couldn't find any footage of THAT instance, but here's Rogue doing what he does best: singing Bon Jovi.
He is TOTALLY milking this. All in good fun, though.
Okay, so OTHER than all of this goth greatness, there was also NORMAL cruise stuff to be done! Such as visiting exotic places!
Stop number one: Jamaica. All I can say about Jamaica is: DO NOT GO THERE. This may sound like crazy talk, but allow me to elaborate. Jamaica's residents appear to survive as vampires, sucking the life and drive out of tourists who visit there. I was traversing the ship pier, on my way to the island to hit a beach, maybe some shops, when I was passed by some other people from the goth group heading back to the boat. It was still awful early, so I turned to them and the said "DON'T GO!!" Oh, how I wish I had taken their advice! The minute I passed out of the protected docking area where they check cruise passenger IDs, I was besieged by locals looking to shove their unwanted goods and services upon my person, and these people do NOT take 'no' for an answer. They follow you down the street. Oh yes, even a large person such as myself. It was LITERALLY every twenty paces a new solicitor: Need a taxi? Need a taxi? Buy a CD? Want jewelry? WANT SOME DRUGS? Need a taxi? Braid your hair? Taxi? NO, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE! When I FINALLY made it to the beach, you had to PAY to get in! Fuck that shit! I wasn't going to pay to be on a beach where it was likely I was going to be bothered every five minutes to buy something. I was followed back to the docking area by a man playing a guitar who wanted my money. I imagine Jamaica is really nice if you stay at one of those closed-in all inclusive resorts where the locals can't come at you like that, but if you're looking for a casual tourist walking tour, STAY AWAY.
Stop number two: Costa Maya, Mexico. We were supposed to stop on Grand Cayman island, but there was a tropical storm or something, so we could not. I was greatly looking forward to a tour of Grand Cayman which included a stop in a place called Hell, from which I was going to mail the greatest post cards ever to all of my friends, but alas. However, disappointing it was to miss Grand Cayman, Costa Maya was utterly fantastic. After the debacle that was Jamaica, I was pleasantly surprised by this stop. They have a perfect little tourist oasis set up off the ship's pier where there are pubs, restaurants, and a variety of shops... all right off the ocean! Ah, the ocean. The ocean at this port was PERFECT. Okay, so I should confess about the beach first. The beach at Costa Maya is not sand. It is something like volcanic rock, like this:
That rock IS NOT PLEASANT to walk on barefoot, but if you bring cabana shoes or flip flops, you're good to get out there. Once you get yourself in that ocean, boy howdy. It was the perfect temperature and the perfect amount of rolling waves... so relaxing!
I went snorkeling out there for a bit. It was heavenly. I later bought some Tequila from a shop that gives out FREE SAMPLES. No places like THAT in America!
Third and final stop: Cozumel, Mexico. For this port I purchased an extra "shore excursion" package. This is something that is optional to your vacation and costs more to do, if you want to do it. There are real ancient Mayan ruins here, so I thought it was too good to pass the opportunity. There are shore excursions available ONLY to goth cruise people, so I opted to take one of those. We had some super short Mayan-descended Mexicans give us a walking tour of the ruins. They were really cool because they took us off the beaten path to where they knew we could get the best angle for photos and such. Here are some of those sweet pics:
It was really awe inspiring to be RIGHT THERE with those ancient buildings of Tulum. I touched a structure when no one was looking because I'm naughty.
All in all, this was probably the BEST vacation I ever had. I got to hang out with cool people, listen to cool music, go to cool places, and do cool things! Seriously, everyone was SO NICE! The Goth Cruise package can get rather expensive due the all the special bands and whatnot, but there is one every year (usually September-October-ish), so start saving your nickels now and maybe I'll see you on Goth Cruise 2012 (yes, I'm already thinking about going again.... but even I cannot afford to go as soon as 2011). Things will be little different on future cruises as I'm told they are moving from Carnival to Norwegian Cruise Lines, and have also decided to have no more than three bands in order to keep prices down. Thanks, All Genre Travel, for one memorable vacation!
William the Bloody (travelling matt)
