I love the summer. Great weather, everything slows down a little, so it's nice to momentarily pause from the everyday grind of life to take a chance to smell the roses and the dogs that piss on them.

My friend George Hamm and I had coinciding weekends off from gigs, so we decided to maximize the potential of our time off and take a cruise to Canada. What a great idea. Instead of our typical drunken meanderings throughout the Old Port, we'd jump on a boat for an overnight, and eat, drink, and be merry. A little gambling too.

That's right about where the fun decided to stop. My slanderous ways will not permit me to mention the name of this particular floating dumpster, so use your imagination, if you have one. God knows I don't, after all, I thought this was a good idea.

First off, there was nobody there in my age group. Nobody. It was a collection of older folks not looking to forget about life; it appeared that they already had. My perceptive, jaded ways sensed that they just needed an excuse to gamble away the money that their failed children were about to ask for. No keeping it in the family here, let's give it to an antique slot machine that fails to pay out.

On the other hand, there was a gaggle of eighteen year olds. The girls looked at me like I was the good-looking substitute teacher that just showed up. It appeared promising at first, but reason stepped in, and they opted to frolic with their backward baseball cap wearing, belching, and cursing young scholars. Rats, foiled again.

Not one to let a good time go to waste, George and I hit the casino. Let me interject here. I've been to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwoods, and a few others. The procedure there is to take care of the gamblers. Drinks flow freely while you piss away your future. Not the case here. Not only do the slots not pay out, you have to get up and get your own full price mug of suds. Big turnoff for me. I bailed out early, decided to go to the cabin and devise a new plan. It's a good thing I wasn't going to draw out a plan on flow charts, the room wasn't big enough to accommodate a Post-It note. The kicker of this is that we paid for an upgraded cabin. This was the nice cabin. Apparently you haven't experienced a real cruise until you cram yourself into a bathroom stall-sized 'cabin' with no windows, and you are required to sleep on a bed about the size of a carton of cigarettes. Realizing that I am not able to accomplish that task, I made an executive decision to get as drunk as I could, so that I could just stagger back to my cabin and fall on my bed. (Or miss, which is probably what happened.) My instincts were telling me that George probably shared these sentiments with yours drooly.

I wandered up to the lounge to see what was going on up there. A band was playing, and they were good, to my surprise. They finished the song, thanked the audience, and introduced the next item on the impressive itinerary, the dance mix. Fuck me.

Immediately I was bum rushed, covering my head as an endless barrage of walkers and canes slowly headed for the door, only pausing to make necessary personal adjustments.

The dance floor filled with the baseball caps and belly shirts, and all I could think to myself was that these were the people Whitney Houston was singing about all those years ago. Obviously, marrying Bobby Brown wasn't the only mistake she made. If the children are our future, we as a race, are screwed. Anyone who is emotionally taken by "Bootylicious" should consider opening a book. This perversion of humanity only increased my appetite for more hooch.

Once the lounge decided to cease and desist with the moronic medley, they stopped serving the drinks George and I were enjoying, as well. Alas, the joyous stumble back to solitary confinement with my compadre, who has a penchant for clearing a room with his unhygienic emissions. It doesn't get any better than this folks.

I rose early in my gas chamber, realizing why they thoroughly searched everybody upon arrival, because at this point I was praying for someone to shoot me. Based upon my actions, I'm sure many folks shared these feelings with me. If they had a pin to pull, I'm sure a grenade would have been tossed my way post haste. Whatever.

The ride back was even worse; we decided that sustenance was in order, so we decided to hit the gala buffet. Funny, that's not how I would have described it. It was busy, and our host sat us at a table with four nice folks we've never seen in our life. I was far too stuck in a fog of floating cervezas to be upset, but I felt bad for these kind, God-fearing folks we had to sit with. I am not the most personable and polite chap while I'm at a buffet, and in this instance, I also happened to be rather aromatic. I suspect George was too, but I wasn't able to detect that, the noose I had tied around my neck was cutting off my sense of smell, among other pertinent senses.

It was the biggest sigh of relief as we finally saw land. In just a few minutes we would be in a car, and on the way home. Let's not forget customs though. We got off the boat, and proceeded to wait in line for an hour while customs officers drilled the elderly for possible contraband. Boy, was that necessary.

I have a problem of wearing my mindset on my face, and the customs officer sensed my dismay, and decided I was a possible threat. He rifled us for info. We told him we were comedians, and he ripped apart my bag, searching for drugs. Apparently, he wasn't aware where stand comics sit in the income bracket. I can't even afford drugs. And based upon my experience, I sure as hell wouldn't be bringing them OFF the boat! They would have been hard at work in my system trying to ease the pain that had been instilled upon me for the past twenty-three hours.

As I said before, if the children are our future, we're in for a rather unsettling ride. If I am your future, allow me to apologize in advance. Love doesn't conquer all, a hearty dose of cynicism does. You could say that I didn't make the most of my situation, but believe me I did. That's how I handle occasions such as that. A lame revue consisting of college dropouts clad in sequined dresses and suits getting standing ovations for a ridiculously awful rendition of "God bless America" is not my idea of fun. There wasn't a dry eye in the room, including mine, it was just that I was crying because they had locked the doors and I couldn't jump off this floating barge of mediocrity.

How was Canada you ask? I don't know. I slept through it. Whoops.