Featuring: Tyler Browder, Jessica Castro, John Clower, Stephen Clower, Paul LeMaire, RJ Regenold, Katie Reynolds, Nicole Taylor, and Lauren Wick
Written: March, 2003-October, 2004
Background: After the failure of London, Lauren Wick and I tried rekindling that literal liveliness with a story taking place on the ever-popular senior cruise. I began writing this shortly after returning home from our orchestra cruise to Cozamel in early March of 2003. I knew Lauren was planning on going with the rest of the "in-crowd" on the senior cruise in May, so I asked her to help me write this wonderful fable.
As was the case with so many of my stories, this was another one that started off fairly well, but was never completed. So when i pulled up all of my unfinished works in the summer of 2004, i decided to finish this masterpiece, and Man was I glad I did.
Note: This is the first and only story to feature Katie Reynolds.
Notice the running gag where Nicole is continuously mentioned but only speaks once.
Paul and Leigh broke up two months after I started this story, hence the deportation to Belize.
Be ware of my Italian innuendoes.
Most of the foreign names have some relevance to their respective countries.
Carlos Mesa became president of Bolivia in 2003.
Alvaro Uribe became the president of Columbia in 2002.
Enrique Olaya Hererra was part of the Colombian liberal administration that held power from 1930 to 1938.
Natsagiyn Bagabandi, chairman of the People's Revolutionary Party of Mongolia, was elected president back in 1997.
Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj was head of Bagabandi's opposing party, the Motherland Democratic Coalition, and became prime minister of Mongolia in June of 2004.
Thabo Mbeki had been the deputy president under Nelson Mandela's administration in South Africa from 1994 to 1999 and also served as leader of the African National Congress. After Mandela's retirement in 1999, Mbeki was elected to the presidency in a land-slide victory.
Anders Fogh Hasmussen is the right-wing prime minister of Denmark, elected back in 2001.
Tassos Papadopoulos is the president of Cyprus. So in fact, RJ guessed his nationality correctly.
Foki Nanna is a take on Kofi Annan, who has been the Secretary General of the United Nations since 1997.
Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the first secretary of the Communist Party and served as the head of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964.
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was elected as the secretary of the Communist party in 1985 and served as the executive president of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991.
Mohammad Khatami, a former moderate Muslim cleric, won the Iranian presidency with 70% of the popular vote in May of 1997 and again in June of 2001 with 77% of the vote.
Yasir Arafat was the head of the Palestinian state from 1997 to his death a month after I finished this story in November, 2004.
Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir has been the military dictator in The Sudan since a coup in 1989 in which he deposed Hassan el-Turabi.
Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist by trade, succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad, who'd ruled with an iron fist since a military coup in 1970, following his death in June of 2000, as the "president" of Syria.
The song sung soundly by Paul, RJ, Lauren, and myself was the 1960 hit, "Up On the Roof" by The Drifters.
Clyde McPhatter was lead singer of the first configuration of the Drifters from 1953 to 1954.
"Pablo ElAlcalde" translates to "Paul LeMaire" in English...Well French.
All of the fencing slang I used during the brief fight to the death with Paul can be found at http://www.msu.edu/user/emerson1/diction.html
As if writing Leigh out of the story weren't enough, Paul had to go and get another girlfriend on September 27, 2004, while I was still writing the story, and then break up with her on October 27, shortly after I'd completed it. Stupid Paul.
Katie said "perky" a total of 130 times.
Bolivar is actually a mountain in western Venezuela.
Lauren and Nicole's addiction to espresso is a vague reference to The Last Stand.
Stephen's "make way for Willie" shout was taken from episode 100 of the Simpsons, "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song," in which Groundskeeper Willie lands on Superintendent Chalmers.
Read the story!