Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - Everyone & Cruise Ship Love

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Comedian Ashley Ray and Emma discover love on the open sea, find out who really likes shrimp and ask "What would Jesus do?"Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi everyone, I'm Emma Choi and welcome to Everyone and Their Mom, a weekly show from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. This week we're talking about a couple who is living the dream with a comedian and someone whose vibe I can only describe as pink and purple tie-dye. It's Ashley Rae. Welcome back, Ashley. Hello, I'm so happy to be here again. Yay. Yes, you nailed it. Sometimes I just feel like I'm a walking lava lamp. Oh, I love that. That's awesome. Okay. Well, Ashley, today we have to talk about this couple from Seattle who retired and is now living full time on a cruise ship

and maybe living there forever. Yeah, forever. I guess they realized living on this cruise ship for the rest of their lives was cheaper than just like paying a mortgage. Yes, yeah. Well, they quit their jobs, you know, they sold their house. And for the past year, Angeline and Richard Burke have been living on cruise ships. They mostly book inside rooms, so no windows, no drink packages, and no bonus stuff like swimming with the dolphins. What? My shock was at the no drink package. If I'm living on a cruise ship the rest of my life, I better get a crew, like a drink package. I got a drink. Honestly, this is love. You know, I thought I knew what love was, but this is love. They're

living on a cruise ship. They're saving money. They're having fun, you know? If you find another person on this planet who also wants to spend the rest of their life on a cruise ship, like, yeah, you two are meant to be together. It's beautiful. I can't imagine, especially in this, like, COVID world that we have. Like, it's just like it's a petri dish. And they're like, we want to live in it. I know. Well, how do you feel about cruises? It's pretty polarizing. I hate them. I like the whole idea of it to me is like, why would I want to be on a floating?

It seems like a floating fair. Like, why would I want to be on a, you know, like they have like rides on them now and slides. It's too much. We're not supposed to be in the water with all of that. No, this is against God's plan. Putting a skyscraper on a body of water. This is never what any God of any religion would want us to do. This just seems like the kind of thing that God would really get into. To start off, will you introduce yourself to us?

So I am Pastor Amalia Vought, and I'm living in Tucson, Arizona right now. I'm the pastor of Our Savior's Lutheran Church. Okay, Amalia, we have a crazy question, so go with me here. As a woman of the cloth, can I ask you, are cruises against God's plan? Can I ask you, are cruises against God's plan? Well, if you think about it, Noah's Ark was kind of like the original cruise. So, I mean, you might say that very much they're part of God's plan. Yeah, but I guess the difference is instead of two of each animal, it's just like a bunch of drunk people.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. What do you think God would like about a cruise and what he wouldn't like? Well, there definitely are a lot of different kinds of people together encountering each other in new and unexpected ways. So I think in that sense, yes, I think God would be really into all these different kinds of people having random experiences with one another. For sure. And what do we think he'd think about the all-you-can-eat buffet? Is that glutton? Greed? The all-you-can-eat buffet is probably not part of God's plan.

How do we think God feels about a pool on a boat on the ocean? Because that seems like part of Satan's plan to me. I think God would be pretty excited about that. Really? Yeah, like layers of water, which is deeply symbolic for God, of course. Well, the reason we're asking you about cruise ships is because we've been talking about a couple that sold their house to live solely on a cruise ship, and they've been living this way for a year. I mean, we feel like this is true love. Does this, what do you think? Is this like true love to you? Well, I don't know that

it would be for me, but do I think it's true love for them? Yeah. I mean, okay. So you're a pastor. So I assume that you can officiate weddings and think about marriage and, you know, stuff about marriage. Do you give advice to couples as a pastor? I'm actually meeting with a couple tomorrow and we'll be doing the first of three sessions to help them get ready for their wedding. If a couple came to you and told them, told you their plan to live on cruise ships forever and ask for your advice, what would you tell them? I would be asking a lot of questions. Would you advise for them to get the endless drink package?

Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're going to be on the cruise. Well, is it okay if we play a game with you? Yeah, that sounds great. Awesome. Okay, so we want some help thinking about what Jesus would do today if he walked among us, capital H. So specifically, if he walked among us on a cruise. So we're going to play a game called, What Would Jesus Do on a Cruise? Okay.

Awesome. Okay, great. So starting off real easy, is he choosing the fish or the vegetarian entree for dinner? What would Jesus do? Definitely fish. Okay. Go see the onboard magician or see the ABBA cover band? What would Jesus do? Magician and probably like sitting in the back row. Like I could do that so much better. I love that. Okay. Swim with the dolphins or flex and just walk on the water. What's Jesus doing? Swim with dolphins like he's already walked on water so you know this would be a new cruise experience. Absolutely keep it new. Purchase

the drink package or just make his own wine. What would Jesus do? Oh yeah definitely the second one. or just make his own wine? What would Jesus do? Oh yeah, definitely the second one. More economical. And better. Okay, board shorts or Speedo? What's Jesus wearing?

I hope board shorts. I hope so too. Last one. Advising a couple who has decided to live on a cruise full time forever. What's he doing? Lots of deep listening. I guess being on a cruise ship all the time is like being on a really long honeymoon, you know, but I feel like I would miss going to grocery stores and doing normal stuff.

Yeah, like also I would miss like my friends and normal people because you're making a strong choice that for the rest of your life, you want to be surrounded by cruise ship people. I know. Your friends are going to be the kind of people who get on a cruise ship. You're limiting your social circle to just that. Well, tell us about cruise ship people, Ashley. What does cruise ship mean to you? Oh, come on. Cruise ship people, first of all, they love Jimmy Buffett. They're loving Jimmy Buffett, so you got to be loving that 24-7. They love a relaxed, loose linen shirt. You know, Bermuda shorts.

You know, something you can still look nice, but like have fun on the shuffleboard. You know, like you can move. You know, it's not too hot. You know, and I just, I have a stereotype that they love shrimp. They just, they love shrimp. Shrimp cocktail, just plates. And just, I think every cruise probably has like plates and piles of shrimp everywhere. That's just, you know, my take on it. I had to find out if Ashley was right. Do cruise ship people love shrimp as much as Ashley thinks?

Is this Wait Wait's Alonzo Bowden? Hello, how are you? Well, it's great to see you, Alonzo. Is it true that you do stand up on cruises? Yes, I do jazz cruises. Okay, so do jazz cruise people love shrimp as much as regular cruise people? Everyone on a cruise loves to eat. What's the eating landscape on those jazz cruises? What do jazz cruise people like to eat?

It's kind of the same, you know, a similar menu to a regular cruise. So you get up in the morning. Generally, people hit either the buffet or the dining room. Then around noon, the lunch service begins. And it's the same thing. You can go. That's when you have more restaurants open on the ship. Around noon, the lunch service begins, and it's the same thing. That's when you have more restaurants open on the ship, because ships always have a few specialty restaurants.

They'll have a sushi place. They'll have a burger place. They'll have barbecue out by the pool. Every day, it's something different like that. Listen, Emma, it's all about eating. It's about eating and drinking. So it's basically a's all about eating. It's about eating and drinking. So it's basically a floating cornucopia. That's what I'm hearing, right?

Cornucopia of food and drink. Yes. Yes. Well, so this week you learned about this couple who decided to sell their house and live on cruise ships full time basically to save money. What's your take on that? They are. I've heard of this before. Yeah. They're not the first people I've heard do this. So I think there's one ship that is actually a floating retirement home that sailed

around the world. I spoke to a couple and they were cruising around the world. So they would do like a Caribbean cruise. Then they'd get on another ship and go on a south american cruise and they worked their way down i think to antarctica and then they came back up and crossed the atlantic and went down to the bottom of africa like there are ships that are cruising all over the place so as long as you get along, you have to get along well. Because if you don't get along well, that ship gets really small. Well, I mean, yeah, we're curious about what kind of life these people are in for. So what is the most common fabric people are rocking on a cruise?

Are we talking linen? Are we talking a cotton blend? Oh, yeah, you're wearing cotton. You're wearing cotton on occasional occasionally you wear linen um you're wearing cotton after a certain age i'm not sure what age it is you dress to match yeah so i think if they lose one they can oh we we found your partner and they put you back together um what kind of jokes land on cruise ships? Are you doing a lot of regional humor? Joke about what we've left behind.

Listen, we do these cruises in January and February. There's nothing someone from Minnesota likes more on the cruise than their weather report from back home while they're in the Caribbean in late January. Ashley, what's your cruise? Like, what do you do to unwind that the rest of the world would hate as passionately as you hate cruises? I'm a big road trip person. Like, I am from the Midwest. I love driving.

I love a good, like, if you ask me, like, oh, you're going on tour. How do you want to get around? Or if I was retiring, I'd want to be like in an RV bus that I could just drive around, you know, all day, all the time. Like, I would just clear my mind, do a nice like six hour drive, you know, through the Dakotas. And I love that. And anyone, like everyone else I talk to, especially my friends from the East Coast, they're like, that's crazy. That's so disgusting. Like, why would you want to be in a car that long is it like the culture like you love like the the snacks and like yeah oh yes I love everything like like these weird cruise people who probably like love cruise culture I love road trip culture oh

I'm all about it like getting on the road seeing like the weird pull over to see the world's biggest ball of yarn i am like let's pull over let's check out the town let's yeah it's weird that all the biggest blank in the world are on the side of a hideaway you know there's something suspicious about that yeah you you would think i don't know the guinness people the guinness world records people would like have an eye on that they'd be like wow it's so strange how just like it seems like every highway on I-90, just as big things are happening there. Yeah. You know, Guinness Book of World Records

is a cruise I would go on, you know? Like, that is something that I would do. You know, I do think I would do that. If there was, like, some, like, Ripley's Believe It or Not cruise, and it was, like, you know, you're on a cruise with an eight-foot-tall man, that I would do, too. Yeah. You know what I think about a lot? I think a lot, because I used to get those was like, you know, you're on a cruise with an eight foot tall man. Yeah. You know what I think about a lot? I think I used to get those like I used to like stand in the book aisle of Costco and just read the Guinness Book of World Records, you know.

And I think about the guy who can squirt milk out of his eye like 13 feet. Yeah. Like twice a week. You know, how do you how do you find that out about yourself? I know. I do feel like this couple deserves to be in Guinness Book of World Records because I feel like retiring on a cruise ship has to be the most disgusting thing someone could do. Yeah, yeah. Most in love on cruise ship for longest time because everyone fights on a cruise ship. Dear Guinness World Records, we recently learned about a couple we think deserves a Guinness World Records title. They quit their jobs a year ago and live on cruise ships full-time. Is there a record title for the most in love on

cruise ships for the longest time? And if not, can we nominate them? Hi Emma, thanks for reaching out. While we do not currently monitor record titles similar to the most in love on a cruise ship for the longest time, we do monitor the record title for the largest marriage vow renewal ceremony across multiple venues, which is currently held by Princess Cruises. They achieved the record with 1,443 couples participating on three Princess ships. If you would like to apply for a Guinness World Records title, you can do so on our website. Once an application is accepted,

the record claimant will receive a set of guidelines. Thank you for that very beautiful reply to my letter, Guinness Book of World Records. Here's the corniest part of the podcast the credits this show is brought to you by wait wait don't tell me this episode was produced by hayley fager zola ray and nancy seichow with help from lillian king sophie hernandez de mionides and the fourth olsen sister shh they don't want you to know that she exists our supervising producer is jennifer mills and our grateful jurassic park scientist is Mike Danforth.

Once again, Lorna White, thank you so much for helping us sound good and better. We love you, Lorna. Comedian and Wait-Wait panelist Alonzo Bowden, thanks for talking cruise ship comedy with me and letting your huge dog be on the Zoom call. He's mad at you. Thanks to Chapstick for being see-through lipstick.

Chapstick, you know your worth and we love you. Thanks to the Guinness Book of World Records for fielding our questions about record titles and for finding people who shoot milk out of their eyes. I will never forget those images. Thanks to Bill Curtis for his dramatic and beautiful reading. Thanks. Bill Curtis is my best friend.

Pastor Amalia Voughts, thank you for answering my questions about God. Hopefully I'll still be a pastor after the show comes out. Thank you to my co-host and legitimately one of still be a pastor after the show comes out. Thank you to my co-host and legitimately one of my favorite people to talk to, Ashley Rae. Overboard! Come on! Listen to her podcast, TV I Say, with Ashley Rae. Season two, premiering on July 27th. I'm Emma Choi, and you can find me at WaitWaitMPR and gluing my hand to the counter at a Jamba Juice, protesting the fact that they put bananas in like every smoothie.

The flavor is too overpowering! Okay, I'm done. This is NPR.