In this issue:  1. Erik goes to Las Vegas Nevada! And as usual comes up with a doozie!
                    2. Captain Deep gets Totally Eclipsed!
                    3. We welcome aboard Pirate Girl!

Easy Come, Easy Go!

“One step forward, two steps back…”  At least that’s how the story goes in the life of The Whaleshark.  As some of you know, this past week was the “Last Man Standing” party at Tommy Rocker’s place in Las Vegas.  We couldn’t wait for this one.  No matter what, it was going to be fun.  Some of you also heard parts of the goings on of my trip.  It was great.  It really sucked.  It was great again. Huh?  Well let’s start from the beginning.
            Tuesday 8:00 am.  I get my ass out of bed.  The house is a mess; I have a million things to take care of; I have to pack; My plane leaves in a couple of hours.  I throw my life into a couple small bags and quite uneventfully I’m once again in the air bound for LA.  Remarkably nothing goes wrong.  I’m moving a bit slow thanks to a few of those little bottles they have on the plane, but other than that, I land in bed by 11:30.
            Wednesday 8:00 am.  Our car isn’t big enough to carry all the things I need for Vegas plus all of my mainland music equipment so we have to drive to San Francisco to drop off a PA and some speakers etc and drive back to LA so we can have a relaxing day before we get to hit the highway for Vegas.  Well, it seems Pirate Girl and I miscalculated the exact amount of time it would take by about 4-8 hours or so and we wind up on the road until 4:00 am.  The first time we were pulled over the officer was very nice.  Just wound up with a fix it ticket for a license plate that wasn’t put on.  Somewhere around 3:15 I was delirious but getting closer when I saw the sign for Hollywood boulevard.  I leaned over and suggested we pick up a hooker (so she could drive us the rest of the way).  That second time we were pulled over the officer was also very nice.  He could tell by our expressions that we just wanted to get home.  After a quick crew change we were back underway.  An den?  Safe at home at last our driving was done. 
            Thursday 11:00 am.  Now this is our day off.  But before we can get to the “off” part we have press kits to mail, CDs to ship, phone calls to make, and radio stations to get our new cd out to.  Now it’s 5:00 pm and we’re finished the work part of our day off.  Time to enjoy our day off.  Right after the laundry and packing for the road trip to Vegas.  After dinner we have the rest of the day to enjoy… It’s now 11:30pm.
            Friday 8:00 am.  God we shouldn’t have celebrated our night off that much.  With heads a-pounding we put the last of the stuff in the car and we’re off.  We’re looking at pulling into town at about 2:00 pm with a couple of hours to spare before I go on stage.  Flash forward.  It’s now 3:00 pm; we’re 90 miles west of Las Vegas, and have been in the same spot on the highway for the last hour and a half thanks to a big accident on the highway.  Now I start to stress.  I give Tommy Rocker a call and tell him what’s happening and thank God Tommy was calm.  In true Hawaiian fashion he just tells me I’ll be playing when I get there and not to worry.  Somehow the traffic starts to move and we’re now driving 100 plus and make it to Tommy’s at 4:30. I jump out of the car, plug in my guitar and it’s show time. 
            Friday 4:30 pm.  Everything’s behind me now as I start to play.  It’s great to see a bunch of familiar faces in the crowd.  There are Whaleshark fans from California, South Dakota, Boston, Nebraska, and more places that escape me at the moment.  (Sorry if I forgot you).  It feels like I’m home when I break into “Erik’s bad luck” and everybody in front of me sings all the words and if I’d have closed my eyes I would swear I was back in Lahaina.  This part of the day was great and kept getting better.  My show was followed by one of my favorites, Sunny Jim White.  It was a pleasure for me to finally meet Sunny Jim as I’ve been ripping off all of his songs for the last couple of years.  Well it turns out Sunny Jim is a hell of a nice guy and I highly recommend checking out his site and buying some stuff www.sunnyjim.com Tell him I sent you!
     For the grand finale, Tommy Rocker takes the stage with his band and guests Mike Utley and Robert Greenidge of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.  I got the privilege of singing with those guys (even though I boned the intro timing of Brown Eyed Girl. Jesus!).  What can I say, I play it different?  We got lots of names for our guest book, sold a bunch of CDs, and got pictures with everybody. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 3:30 but what a great night!
            Saturday 8:00 am.  It’s up early, off to breakfast, then back to the pool for a nap and maybe a ride in the Jacuzzi.  Well that was the plan.  First we wanted to get back to the car to get all of our stuff out that we were too tired to get out the night before.  “Uh why is there a trash bag taped to the window?”  “Uh, where IS the window?”  That’s right my fearless readers.  Of all the cars in that goddamn parking lot, someone shattered the window and took… well they took everything.  Two cameras, one digital video camera, two of my back packs to include all of my clothes, my check book, my plane tickets back to Maui all my board shorts, and my sexy-stud-guy black aloha shirts, Tatiana’s backpack which held licenses, credit cards, more plane tickets, government tax refund check, all of our “Whaleshark” business paperwork, my sign up list with all of my new Whaleshark fans, and the god damn worst of all thing… the pictures of the “Last Man Standing” party!  (Wait I forgot one more thing you people with my first record will appreciate, they got another batch of Jimmy B records.  Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!)  I was tempted to just throw myself out the window of that parking garage but I was on the first floor so I didn’t think that would necessarily accomplish anything.  Lucky Barney Fife the security guy was there to tell me he thought he scared them off. “Yes” I told him, “ You scared him off or his sticky bastard thieving hands were full!”  To make it up to us, the hotel was going to make our days better by “logging this incident in our report”.  I hate to sound cynical, (and we should know better living in a tourist town ourselves), but isn’t the whole freaking city of Las Vegas under video surveillance? Let me answer that for you before you interject. no
            It’s now 11:30 and we’re on the phone trying to get the window replaced as we have to drive to San Francisco the next morning and I sure as hell am not driving 10 hours with the windows rolled down.  (Technically they were rolled up but there was no glass.)  If any one other than Jimmy Buffett were playing that afternoon we’d have packed it up and gone home. Screw Las Vegas!  Uh oh, I feel a song coming on…  And keep in mind; I’m still in the same clothes I put on in LA.  Oh yeah, I was a tulip.  Our day cheered up after a few cocktails (never did get that nap) and we found ourselves outside the MGM for the pre-concert party with Tommy Rocker’s band.  You have just got to love the parrotheads!  Tommy and his band were awesome as usual and I got the chance to get up on that stage and totally redeem myself with another stab at “Brown Eyed Girl”.  (You only F@#K that up once in front of a big crowd! Trust me!)  After I was done it was really nice to see and talk to a lot of people I haven’t seen since they were in Maui.  As long as you have a story I’ll remember you.  For example, “Erik, remember us?  We were the people who kept dancing at the Whale’s Tale when they told us not to and then I fell down the stairs on the way out and knocked the sign over”.  See? I’ll remember someone like that.
            After I was finished the Pirate Girl herself gets up on the stage for the illustrious hula contest in which the winner gets to dance ON stage with Jimmy during the main concert.  And of course who wins?  The Pirate Girl Tatiana.  What a blast.  Like Tommy Rocker said, she was the only one up there actually doing the hula.  Living in Maui does in fact lend itself to some advantages in the hula department.  Now as someone who has bought at least 28 Jimmy Buffett CDs (some more than once), seen Jimmy Buffett play from the nose-bleed section countless times, and pretty much based my life around a few select Jimmy Buffett songs; getting backstage (let alone on stage) is a fairly big deal.  Well the two of us got back there and sure as shit Tatiana was up there doing the hula on the big screen.  Only the Pirate Girl would pull that off.  Of course our friends were ten rows back saying, “Oh shit, that’s Tatiana!  She better get off stage or they’re going to throw her out!”  What a crack up.  Of course if you reaaaaaaally looked hard you could see yours truly stage right in the dark dank corner throwing beach balls back into the crowd.  Just doing my part.  That was a pretty awesome moment for Tatiana and the girl deserves it.  She works really hard behind the scenes to keep me playing (and to keep me alive).
            Sunday 8:00 am.  I wake up after 2 hours of sleep, feeling like I just got rolled by the mob after a week of chemo therapy to treat my malaria.  I kneeled down in the shower and prayed the drunks prayer we have all prayed at least once before. “Dear God, I swear.  If you just get me out of this this one time, I promise…  I will never ever drink again… and this time I really mean it…”  After that short prayer we were back on the road for another 12 hours.  We hit the bed in San Fran at about 11:30 pm so tired I couldn’t sleep. Instead I just wound up rolling around for the next couple of hours.
            Monday 5:00am.  It’s a shower and back in the car for a ride to the airport.  As security is going through my bags it occurs to me that I have no idea who packed my stuff up that Friday night at Tommy Rocker’s.  I sweat as I wait for the guard to pull out the handgun and haul me away in cuffs as I feebly try to explain that it isn’t my gun.  By the grace of God there is no gun in the case and in another two hours we are nestled on the plane and whisked away to home sweet home Lahaina.  THE END…
            Oh but The Stories Get Longer!  We land and get our bags and we start to walk out to the truck but where is the key pray tell?  In some god damn criminals pocket in Las Vegas! That’s where it is!  Just call a key service and get one made right?  Sure, but luckily I bought a new ford ranger that has a computer chip in the key and only 3 guys on the whole island have the device and if they’re available it’s about $125 and oh Christ, I can’t even finish this story.  I have to be on stage in a couple of hours…
Page 2

Total Eclipse by Deep Banana

         The Whaleshark and Capt Deep Banana

     Ahoy Landlubbers! I’m back in the saddle again.  Whale watch season is coming to an end as we head into May and there’s still whale watch boats trying to milk it for everything it’s worth.  They guarantee that you will see the beautiful humpback whale by giving you a free pass to come out on the boat again if you don’t see a whale. I’ve been doing this for many years and I still can’t figure out how that works if you’re on the last whale watch of the season.  Those activity agents are good! They can sell people swampland in Iraq. You will notice that the Whaleshark and myself are always referring to the activity agents. We have a special fondness for them. They are good at what they do (if you want to buy a used car without tires),and they are always looking for that opportunity for the quick buck. One of those once in a lifetime opportunities came up a few years back on July 11 1991.
     There was going to be a solar eclipse at 7:10 am that morning and Hawaii was on the line of totality. The sun was going to be completely blacked out for several minutes at a point just south of Maui. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Every seat on every boat in Hawaii was sold out weeks in advance. Every hotel room was booked up. I knew of local people that actually rented out rooms in their own homes for about $500 a night, and they were actually getting it. It seemed as if everybody in the world wanted to be in Hawaii for THE GREAT TOTAL ECLIPSE !!!  There really was a lot of HUBBUB going on in Lahaina. It was actually approaching the magnitude of Halloween. As fate would have it, there was a dashing young Captain (that’d be me) that was about to embark on one of the most interesting charters he had ever been on. Mother nature, the weather, and Maritime law would all come into play, and what a learning experience it would be.
     This Captain’s story actually begins a few weeks prior to the date of the total eclipse. The operations manager of the boat he was in charge of came to him and told him that he would be driving the total eclipse cruise south to the line of totality. The vessel would be the good old boat Coral See. The trip was sold out. He would be hauling 140 passengers, 1 musician, 1 chef, 6 deck hands and himself for a total body count of 149. The company would check-in the passengers at 1:00 Am and the Coral See would depart at 2:00AM. There would be live music, a breakfast and lunch spread, and funny little glasses that would allow you to look at the sun, and as a climax during the eclipse we would all hold hands and sing Kumbahyah and call to the dolphins. Wow! Captain Deep was really looking forward to this. Just imagine, 140 religious Griswalds. The first thing the captain asked was ”How do I get there?“ Nobody knew where the line of totality was. Captain Deep thought that if these people were going to pay $150 to go on this trip he better give them a total eclipse! The next couple of days were spent calling the observatory to get the Latitude and Longitude of the line of totality and planning the course. Not that it made any difference because all the Coral See was equipped with was a compass. Captain Deep figured that he better look like he knew what he was doing. This trip should go off without a hitch with 140 happy campers. As July 11th approached the Coral See was prepared and ready to go. The plan was in place.
     On July the 10th Captain Deep tried to sleep during the day knowing that he would be driving all morning long and into the afternoon but his excitement of the forth-coming trip would not allow him to sleep. At about 9:00 PM he got out of bed and put on his best Captains uniform, which consisted of T-shirt, old shorts and thong slippers, and went down to the local pub. After a couple of Morgan and cokes he was down to the harbor at about 12:30 AM to check the engines and board the passengers. When Captain Deep got down to the boat the line was already getting pretty lengthy. My God, the people were already singing religious songs and holding hands. As the Coral See crew boarded the passengers you could smell breakfast cooking behind the galley and hear the musician tuning his guitar. The sky was dark blue and there were a million stars out. It was really shaping up to be a perfect day for such an event. At 2:00AM Capt. Deep had his crew cast off the lines and he eased the old Coral See out of the slip. As the boat idled through the Lahaina Harbor the excitement was growing including the crews. The Coral See was making a turn to the left to get out of the harbor when one of the crew ran up to the helm station and hit the button to blow the boat horn. The button turned out to be the port engine kill switch. The boat kept turning to the left and Capt. Deep almost put the Coral See on the break wall before he figured out what had happened and got the boat straightened out. OH WELL! No harm no foul. The Coral See continued out of the channel. Capt. Deep took the vessel about a mile off shore and made another left hand turn to a southerly direction. The tiny ship was on its way.
     The first thirty minutes went pretty smooth. It was flat as a pancake out in the deep briny blue. The passengers were eating their first round of food and singing songs, which was about to make Capt. Deep throw-up his Captain Morgans. From the pilot house you could see the stern light of the vessel Alaskan about a mile a head, a 50ft dive boat which was heading to the same place. That made navigating pretty easy. Just follow the Alaskan. The Coral See was moving along at a pretty good clip of about 10 knots and all the systems looked pretty good when all of a sudden Capt. Deep realized that he could no longer see the stern light of the vessel Alaskan. Where the heck did it go? The Coral See moved ahead and deep finally saw the first of many rainsqualls that would hit the vessel that day. With the wind picking up and the rain starting to fall like buckets the boat was now less than a comfortable ride. She had an open deck with just an awning on top. The rain was flowing across the deck and the guitar player got shocked.  All 140 passengers were down below and there was standing room only, and then it started to get really ugly. The boat started rolling back and forth with the seas and Deep couldn’t see more than 100 yds ahead. He posted a lookout on the bow and held his last known compass course of 120 degrees. All of a sudden the crew on the bow started jumping up and down and screaming that they were about to hit Molokini Crater. Deep still couldn’t see it until he looked straight up and saw the lighthouse. OOPS! All stop, back out of the crater and go around it. Now where was that total eclipse again? By this time, the passengers were starting to throw-up their breakfasts and Deep noted that it did not smell as good the second time around. The Coral See still had about 1 1/2 hours to go to the line of totality and Deep was having fun now. Holding the 120-degree course would put them right at the mark.
     The boat continued onward and by about 5:30 AM you could see a hint of light in the air. That’s all you could see through all the fog and rain. At least the light was friendly. None of the passengers were happy and there were grumblings about people wanting their money back. The guitar player was vomiting at this point and the only people eating this huge spread was the boat crew, at least until the chef threw-up. Deep finally reached the line of totality at about 6:45 AM. He stopped the boat and drifted which was probably the wrong thing to do as it started bobbing like a cork and passenger comfort went from a 1 to a -5 on the scale. The passengers were informed that the eclipse would be in about 10 minutes. The funny looking glasses were handed out. Deep wished he had a picture of the sick passengers with the funny looking glasses in the fog and rain. Quite a sight. You could not see a thing much less a total eclipse. There they were, all the passengers staring at a blank sky. Capt. Deep was trying to figure his course home. You’ve got to hand it to most of the passengers. They were pretty good sports. At the time of the eclipse they started a count down just like New Years. For $150 bucks people will do anything. It very slowly started to get slightly dark then it became light again. The whole thing took about a minute. Can we go home now?
     Capt. Deep turned the boat around on the opposite course and full speed ahead. He was pretty sure that all of his passengers hated him by now, but they were way too sick to mutiny. The Coral See plugged along at full speed and about an hour towards Lahaina the unthinkable happened. One of the male passengers went up to the pilothouse and demanded their money back from Capt. Deep. He told him that if he had a complaint to call the office when they got back to the dock. Well that didn’t fly with the passenger and what happened next astounded the world. The passenger pushed CAPTAIN Deep! Then the passenger took a swing at me, er I mean him,  but he missed because he was too drunk. That’s all it took. Capt. Deep called for his crew and they all jumped on the guy. They tied him up with zip ties like a hog in a pen. The next course of action was to call the Coast Guard and report the incident. The Coast Guard at Maalaea Harbor instructed Deep to drop him off at their station. Right turn Clyde! The ride to Maalaea Harbor took about 30 minutes and put Deep off schedule but if that is what they wanted that’s what they were going to get.  Besides it’s fun to have an idiot passenger arrested. Upon arrival on the dock at Maalaea, 2 Coast Guard seaman boarded the Coral See. The only words that were exchanged were “Hello Capt. Deep, Where is the gentleman. We’ll take it from here.” The seaman took the idiot off the boat and accidentally banged his head along the way. All the passengers cheered. It was the most enjoyable part of their day. Make no mistake about it. The Captain of a boat is the ultimate law at sea and this was proven on that day. The idiot gentleman was charged with a felony, just as if he had interfered with an aircraft.
     The sun came out for the last hour of the ride back to Lahaina, and the seas flattened out. The passengers were laughing and drinking. There were no longer religious songs being sung. The musician was playing rock and roll and the crew made $200 dollars in tips. Captain Deep went home to bed and said his prayers.
Until next month, sweet dreams.         Capt Deep
E-mail Deep at  deep_banana@excite.com

 
On the Spread of TSSS
(Three Shot Story Syndrome)

by Pirate Girl

     Today’s subject is the alarming rate of the spread of TSS-S. (Three-Shot-Story Syndrome) (And you thought SARS was a problem). I dedicate my research and findings to two outstanding pirates, Troy and Jim, from good ole Modesto, Ca.  The transformation from average Joe and girl next door to full-blown TSS-S is subtle. First, unsuspecting victims become pirate-heads. I’ll start with some facts. According to the official guide to swashbuckling, there are two ways of becoming a pirate. (I will only quote one, as the second I found uninteresting).
     1) Buy a ship, hire a crew, swab the decks, and set sail for barges carrying treasure. However, this method is just so expensive that only the richest of the aristocracy have ever been able to successfully carry this plan out. Besides, most of you also have real jobs, when would you have the time?  So let’s face reality. You don't have a boat. But if you think that it would instill fear into people if you raised the jolly roger flag from your car antenna and at red lights yelled "If ye does not give up peacefully there will be no quarter!"  Then more power to you. As long as after that you don’t proceed with the car-jacking. Hmmm... you don't have a plank for people to walk either.  Will the hood do?
     2) The next logical thing would be to give in to the calling and become a pirate-head.  Hell, we’ve all seen stranger things happen at JBs concerts! Most Whaleshark fans already display the classic traits of being a true pirate-head, which invariably leads to coming down with TSS-S (Three-Shot-Story Syndrome) just hours later (You know who you are). After conducting some scientific research and close subject observation, it seems that the most common precipitating factor of TSS-S happens to be the listening to The Whaleshark’s track # 2 “Three-shot-story", from the world renown “Tales From The Whaleshark.” A sweet, seemingly innocent tale. (Since this is not a song review, and if I have lost you, then you’d better get yourself a copy of “Tales From The Whaleshark” and catch up to us. Once again, Welcome ye aboard, pirate.
 Here are the official, medically concurred, by-the-book signs and symptoms of TSS-S:
Laughing out loud, then jumping off of something (As in off of stages at the MGM grand or Tommy Rocker’s –you know who you are)
Laughing out loud, then passing out --cold. (Minutes later coming to, and ordering annuda Three-shot-story.)
Pillaging and plundering (reaching across to other people’s ordeourves, harassing waitresses)
Burying of treasure (camouflaging your beer when you go to the bathroom)
Cartography (writing directions down for the cab driver back to your hotel room, just in case)
Singing of sea shanties (You can’t remember your daughter’s birthday, but you can recite ALL 20 of  The Whaleshark’s songs by heart)
You maintain a proper pirate beard (you haven’t shaved since you left home to come to the show; ladies, this better NOT apply to you—but if you need help, the pirate fashion article is on another issue)
Vocabulary changes (which one of ye told me that my hat–which was stolen in Vegas- “shore was purty”. Also seen, is chronic terets after seeing how huge of a bar tab you’ve rung up by ordering “three-shot-stories.”) 
Swinging from chandeliers (or trying to keep your cousin Chandler from swinging into others) 
Drinking rum (duh)
Swashbuckling
 
      Secondary symptoms include (and I suffer from this one)
     Chronic incessant quoting or famous real/or legendary pirates, such as the Dread Pirate Roberts (my favorite, from The Princess Bride)… Inigo Montoya: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you." Dread Pirate Roberts: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."  Being a pirate-head comes also with knowing when to deliver the appropriate quote.…"Thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? "  And of course, if you begin to inconceivably annoy me: “ You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means”  And: “As you wish.”  (Bear in mind that these have impact only if you’ve seen the movie, meaningless if you haven’t.) 
     Moving on to more secondary signs and symptoms of TSS-S: I, er, I mean, those suffering from TSS-S seem to have a clear understanding and good knowledge of swords, often accompanied by the belief that everyone else needs to be educated on the subject.
• The Stage Saber—It won’t make deep cuts, but will leave a helluva bruise.
• Cutlass--Best used by Pirate Girls. (Hence the “lass” at the end. My educated guess is that it must be Irish in origin)
• Broad Sword--Best used by Women Knights. (Hence the “broad” title)
• Rapier--Best used by Man in Black, Musketeer. (Most likely while fighting on the pier)
     Treatment for TSS-S.  The only known treatment for TSS-S is skipping over track #2 to Track #3 on “Tales From The Whaleshark” and simultaneously cutting off the rum supply. Providing fresh air is usually of benefit.  But not to worry, matie! Many Whaleshark fans are just “carriers” of the TSS-S virus and although they may experience occasional relapses, they lead normal, productive lives. How would you know if you are just a “carrier?” Well, if ye plunder in ye spare time, ye acts villainous and ye are wanted by authorities after four or more Whaleshark shows, ye may indeed be a carrier.  But be proud to be a true pirate-head, as we surely have the strongest of strong wills, the cleverest of clever brains, and a hearty constitution… As we take our swords (those little drink stirrers) and go forth to fight the legendary Sir Rossis Of Liver.
 
A very wise pirate once said: “We takes what we wants and we wants what we takes!”
This axiom describes the duties of a pirate. You must terrorize the high seas, amass wealth, bury it, and repeat until ye have a suitable reputation. A pirate’s life is the life of fame, fortune, and the bounty that those two former items bring with them.”

Enter the Pirate Girl Contest here!