Hills, Buses, and Pirates - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 4

Apologies for the blurry picture (there was no getting closer to this sign as it was directly over the surface of the pool - where such a warning would be too late come to think of it) but such are the ways in which Disney recognizes Roger Rabbit now.

Our day in Halifax was not at all as relaxing as our day in St. John. You could call it a whirlwind tour, in fact, though maybe a rapidly-up-and-downhill tour would be more accurate. The "Halifax Highlights from Land and Sea" tour we took was highly recommended.  I personally didn't like it all that much, especially since the bus never stopped anywhere so we could get out and walk around/explore/take pictures/use the restrooms.  The boat just went up and down the harbor (nothing we couldn't see from the boardwalk) and the guide told almost exactly the same stories as the bus' guide. When all was said and done, we only had about an hour and a half to explore Halifax on our own!

The tour bus guide did tell us something very useful, and that was the fact that Halifax has a wonderful boardwalk with many nice little attractions along the way, and that the pathway would take us right back to the ship. So let's focus on the positive here. For example, Beavertails!



Oh my actual God, Beavertails are incredible. I like fried dough, but sadly it doesn't like me. This was different. To call this wonderful treat "fried dough" is an insult. It's hard to describe; imagine a Krispy Kreme doughnut glazed with maple sugar but better. Tragically, the only places in the United States they appear to be available are all in Colorado for some reason. But if you are ever lucky enough to have the opportunity to try one, do it.



Subtle, but this is another reason why Halifax is nice. Hell, even the Starling were nicer!



Now when we got back on the boat, it was Pirate Night. What that meant, it turned out, was that piratey activities were going on all night, building up to the big epic deck party. As I mentioned before, this was a little less than as impressive than we'd been led to expect, but it did end with these cool fireworks shot off the boat:



Now, as I was explaining the pirate deck party to a friend afterwards, she misheard me when I mentioned the part where Mickey ziplines down from one end of the boat to another and they shoot fireworks off the boat. After a bit of confused conversation, it turned out she was imagining something closer to this:



And perhaps this wondrous mental image, that had me on the floor, is as good a note to end on. Bon Voyage, Mickey, and may you and your beautiful boat have fair winds and following seas and King Triton being in a friendly type mood and all that.

-----

Seascape of the Day!

Here's an impressionistic, and almost psychedelic, sunset:

Fog and Poutine - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 3

^^ Just my humble opinion, but if you need to be told this, maybe you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a boat...  (EDIT: Just noticed the hilarious ..."Please..."  As in, "Please don't climb over this giant barrier and fall off the boat and kill yourself!  It would make all of us very upset, you know!")

Today, I'm going to discuss the first of our two ports of call, St. John, New Brunswick.  According to the official Disney Cruise Line description, "Infused with a profound history, Saint John is Canada's oldest incorporated city. Having welcomed immigrants from Eastern Europe and the UK onto its shores for centuries, it claims the country's oldest museum and farmer's market, as well as a critical role in the events leading up to World War II. Because it's seated on the Bay of Fundy and divided by the St. John River, the city is home to a unique, sometimes treacherous phenomenon called Reversing Waterfalls. During high tide, the prevailing river current reverses itself against the normal flow of water, creating rapids or falls.

"Compared to inland locations, the climate of Saint John is moderate, with plenty of romantic fog billowing into the city throughout the year. Take a walk along the waterfront to enjoy the cloud kiss (EDIT: A-HA-hahahaha!!!  Oh, Disney.) as the salt air revives your senses. Later visit one of the many museums dedicated to the city's heritage, shop in the boutiques and art galleries, and savor a lunch of fresh seafood. Saint John offers a relaxing day that sweeps you back in time and refreshes your spirit."

So... about that "romantic fog:"



This was our very first view of St. John pulling in.  I think I can see land in all that fog, maybe, if I squint?

In each port-of-call, we had eight hours total in port.  We had about six hours to explore each city.  When you are dropped off at a city and given only six hours to explore, sadly, you do not have a lot of time to find things to do there that you wouldn't be able to do at home.  After all is said and done, my family absolutely wants to return to the Canadian Maritime Provinces and spend more time there. Everyone was genuinely nice and friendly to us silly tourists.  At St, John we were greeted at the terminal by folks handing out little gifts like pins and roses.

From what I understand, the most beautiful parts of New Brunswick are quite a ways away from St. John, and there was simply no time to visit the Hopewell Rocks or undersea (usually) caves.  But the short bus tour of the city we took (called "St. John Highlights") brought us to one fantastic natural phenomenon: the Reversing Waterfalls.



The tides are indeed crazy in New Brunswick, and this particular stretch of river is prone to especially violent tides.



A speedboat tour of the 'falls. I'd imagine this would be fun for about a minute and a half.



Cormorants resting after surfing the rapids.

After the waterfalls, we headed up to the Carleton Martello Tower, a historic sight that, having been built on the top of a hill, gives you a lovely view of the enrite city and harbor.

On a sunny day, that is. As for the day we visited, well...



Yeah.

Now, to be fair, this wasn't anyone's fault and it wasn't anything anyone could have helped. Still, I am a New Englander, and therefore I am defined as an animal that complains about the weather.

After the tour bus dropped up off near the ship, we walked up to a very nice pub run by very friendly people and tried some of this stuff:



This here, next to the relatively mundane fried fish, is Poutine, something we couldn't leave Canada without trying and I'm glad we took the opportunity to do so when we did. It's french fries, gravy, and cheese curds. It is, to say the least, different.

After this, we headed to the big indoor market and explored that for a while (I got a bunch of Christmas shopping done).  Then we leisurely walked back to the ship. I got to take a short nap before heading up to see what the schedule called the "Rockin' Deck Party" or something and do a few watercolor sketches.

The people at the St. John cruise terminal made a bigger deal of our departure than Disney did. The deck party was just a gang of entertainment staff dancing to the theme music from Disney Channel series; once again, all the focus was directed in and away from the far more interesting things happening around the boat itself.  Because meanwhile, the cruise terminal people saw us off by waving giant Mickey hands and with bagpipers and a general feeling of being honored that Disney Cruise Lines visited their city.

Overall, I really loved our relaxing day at St. John. Top it off with the best live show of the entire trip ("Villains Tonight"), a good dinner at Lumier's, and a 3D screening of "The Avengers" and you have my favorite day of the whole voyage.

-----

Sketch of the Day!

My impression of the Reversing Waterfalls:

"Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!" - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 2

In today's post, I'll be talking about the food and entertainment we experienced during our Disney Cruise.

First, a brief explanation of how dinners work on Disney Cruises.  When you get your Key to the World Card (room key/on-board charge card/thing that gets you back on the boat/tiny but vitally important item that an OCD sufferer must check over and over to make sure it's on their person), it will have one of three codes that explain your dining schedule.  We had the coveted APLAP, which meant we were eating at Animator's Palate the first night, Parrot Cay the second night, and Lumier's the third night, then cycling through Animator's and Parrot again for the last two nights.  Since the last two nights each had unique menus, we had an entirely different experience for each dinner during the voyage.

All that said, you will always be eating with the same group of people at your table and you will always have the same wait staff.  This is a terrific idea that actually works out, as your wait staff gets to know you during the voyage.  They are extra sympathetic to any special dietary needs you may have (for example, they reviewed the next night's menu with one of our dining companions to discuss what would be safe for her to eat), and will input such information to a profile accessible by all food areas by inputting your room number.  Our wait staff and dining companions were all very nice.

Now the food Disney serves you on the cruise is... decent.  In general, they focus on dinner, and the food during our other meals was pretty lackluster.  We liked all the appetizers, and all the deserts were very nice.  The main courses were, again, decent.  Nothing especially stands out, but I should note that the seafood was just frightening.



We only had one "signature cocktail" since the one from the first day (a pina colada/daiquiri combination I dubbed Brain Freeze in a Souvenir Glass) was so blah.  We never even invested in what dad and I excitedly referred to before the cruise as the "every hour is happy hour" mug since the beer on tap selection was so abysmal. The smartest thing we did was opt to pack out own wine, which Disney is remarkably lenient about.

Without question, the best gastronomic experiences on the boat were the Art of Entertaining cooking classes, which came with a free sample of the demonstrated dish and an accompanying wine, and a wine tasting we bought $15.00 tickets for on a whim.  It ended with a glass of the sparkling wine pictured above, which is normally only available at Disney theme parks, etc. to the tune of $15.00 a glass!



Now as far as the individual restaurants go, Animator's Palate is by a wide margin the most fascinating, but not for the food.  Here, you get dinner and a show.  And up until the very finale, it turns out the show is more subtly presented than I ever would have expected given what I'd heard.  It's one of many aspects of the Disney Magic I wish I'd been less cryptic about, because nobody else at my table noticed what was happening until I told them to stop chatting and pay attention for half a minute.  Heck, the only people in the entire restaurant who seemed to be keyed into what was happening around them was a group of small children at the table next to ours who absolutely lost their minds over it -- much to the annoyance of their parents who wanted them to just sit down and shut up and eat.

So here's the concept of Animator's Palate.  You enter a restaurant that is almost entirely monochrome aside from giant "magical paintbrushes". The walls are covered in line art of various Disney characters, ranging from the famous to the obscure to the "I can't believe they're even acknowledging them!?"



The ambient music is all instrumental versions of signature songs from Disney Animated Canon films. As each song plays, the artwork of the characters from the film starts to change through a pretty impressive special effect, and, in the words of one of the excited children from the neighboring table, the paintings "REALLY b'come REEEEEEAAL!!!"



(The effect is more impressive in person, I promise. Also, obligatory: animation does not work that way!  Though I suppose CAP Technician's Palate or Animator's Tombow Mono Pencil doesn't have the same ring to it.)

So this is really cool and it sucks that most of the people in the middle of it are just there to eat and don't give a crap about the changing scenery.  It feels as though this restaurant would be much happier in one of the theme parks, where the show would be the main attraction.

The finale happens right before dessert and consists of a montage of mood-whiplashy clips from almost every film in the Canon shown on screens throughout the now-darkened restaurant.  It's then that most of the diners realized anything special was going on.  After the montage, this happens:



This is as good a time to mention, since I don't think I have already, that anytime Mickey Mouse showed up in person (?), everyone completely lost their sh*t.  Which doesn't sound too weird given that it was a Disney ship.  But I don't think I have emphasized the demographics of our cruise enough: this was a school week and there were by FAR more parties consisting only of adults than there were parties of families with young children on this cruise.  Hmm...  Also, most of the people on the boat had taken several cruises on this same boat (we met a person who'd cruised on the Magic eighteen times before), and had presumably seen all this before.  I knew Disney fans could get frighteningly loyal but...?

Costumed characters were the main attraction for most of the deck parties, so let's segway into those.  The most surprising thing for me was, given that some deck parties were built up as major events, they were all really short!  The characters only put in a few minutes appearance in each party from my reckoning, and once they left there was no real incentive to stick around.  I'm guessing this has to do with the fact that these ships, and their traditional scheduled events, started in much hotter climates.  They never bothered to modify them for the cold north Atlantic.



Hell, it's even still Pirates IN The Caribbean even though... they aren't.  Now on the ship this was one of two much-hyped shows, so we were expecting something huge and elaborate and unforgettable.  What we got was less impressive, and not really even all that fun.  Extenuating circumstances are partially to blame here; we'd literally just eaten a big huge dinner, we'd had a hectic day of racing through hilly uneven terrain in Halifax, and I was exhausted.  This was the only time I wasn't happy with our wait staff; I felt as though they were pressuring me into dancing and partying during our dinner and it really felt like everyone was giving me a hard time since I wasn't as into it as I would have been if I wasn't about to puke and/or flat-out snow crash any second.  I'm guessing this event usually happens on a sea day when there's a lot less going on, and therefore plays very differently.

Anyway, the deck party itself is another twenty minutes of random costumed characters dancing around to very not-piratey music.  We arrived just in time to not miss the highlights of the show: Mickey ziplines down from one of the ship's funnels to school all the other pirates and starts a fireworks show at sea.  The fireworks are launched right off one side of the boat, apparently, and are pretty cool to see - if you happen to be standing in exactly the right place when they go off.  They aren't the most elaborate pyrotechnics Disney has ever done, but they are awesome because you are on a boat.



And frankly, the "it's awesome because we're doing it on a boat" assessment can go for most of the live stage shows as well.  The Walt Disney Theater is an impressive piece of work, to be sure, with trap doors and moving sets and other, crazier stuff.  We lucked out and saw each night's performance.  "Adventures Away" was at once informative and hopelessly cheesy.  It has to be seen to be believed, but it was a good introduction to our entertainment staff and some of the performers.  I missed the beginning of "Twice Charmed" but saw enough to come to the slow realization that -and I am not even kidding here- I was basically seeing a stage show version of "Cinderella 3".  One night was given over to a premier of "Finding Nemo" in 3D.

The most hyped of all the shows, the one that everyone assured us was the best of the lot, the one that had won multiple awards we were told, was "Disney Dreams", the final live show of the cruise.  It's the show pictured above.

Now, call it a lack of whimsy on my part, but I'm not sure what the big deal was here.  I am not even sure how to describe it.  We open on what can only be described as a 21-year-old preteen girl sitting in her room full of Disney toys.  She wishes on a star for "Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!"  (Yeah, I don't know either.)  In flies Peter Pan to bring her on a magical adventure so that she won't grow up into a skeptical adult and will forever stay a faithful child with a wonderful imagination!  (*sigh...*)  And what does this wonderful imagination dream about?  Why, random Disney characters wandering in, singing songs from their films, and leaving!  Of course! 

Needless to say, given what we've seen Disney do with limited space and resources in the park shows, we were less than impressed.  There were a lot of technical problems during our show (the houselights right above us kept fading in and out in random scenes, and certain on-stage effects just flat-out failed to work), and that did not help our opinion one bit.

But then...

Oh, but then...

In the middle of the week, in the middle of all the other sappy saccharine stage shows, they had an unheralded, underhyped show with the title "Villains Tonight!"  We expected absolutely nothing at all from this show and, go figure, it turned out to be the best of the lot!  Heck, it might be my favorite experience on the ship as a whole!  I think it's because the villains are the only "face" characters who are allowed -and even encouraged- to be (gently) rude and sarcastic.  This resulted in a screamingly funny show!  It's seriously one of the most surprising and unexpectedly un-Disneyish things I've ever sen Disney do, and all the other live shows couldn't help but look hopelessly square after this one.

Man, reliving this magical voyage is exhausting.  Next week, I'll talk about our port adventures.

-----

Seascape of the Day!

My Little Cruise Ship: Canada is Magic! - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 1

The Disney Magic is the oldest ship in the Disney Cruise Line fleet.  Built in 1998, she's been sailing the seas since 2000.  This past summer, she made her way to New York City.  As my family are Disney Vacation Club members, we received a special email offer for Disney's first excursions up to the Canadian Maritimes from New York City.

Since we've always been curious about Disney Cruise Lines, this was too good an offer to pass up.  We opted for the September 12-17 cruise, which happened to be the final date for this particular itinerary before the ship sailed down to Texas for her winter schedule.

What follows is an honest assessment of the cruise as experienced by me and my family (but mostly me; it's my blog after all).  Overall, we were all very happy to finally satisfy our curiosity about cruising with Disney after so many years.  We met a lot of very nice and interesting people and had a lot of unique experiences.  I'll assure my Canadian readers right away that we loved St. John and Halifax and dearly wish we'd had more time to explore them further (though you'll have to wait until next week for specifics).  And we did have fun.  We did!

But overall, our reaction to our first Disney Cruise ever was and is... mixed. Over the years, the Disney Cruise Line has essentially been built up in such a way that we essentially expected the Magic to be a Disney Theme Park at sea. The Magic is very definitely not that, but she isn't a conventional cruise either.

Now, if you've been reading my blog practically from the beginning, your prize is that you've made me very happy.  You have no idea.  But more immediately relevantly, you recall that I went on a cruise on the Norwegian Spirit some years ago.  As it happens, that is the only other cruise I've ever been on. 

And reading my trip report again, I feel as though I did it a disservice.  Because given the choice between taking another cruise on the Spirit or another cruise on the Magic, I will opt for the Spirit, hands down, no contest, no second thoughts.  And since I know some of you are blown away by this because you've never been on a Disney cruise and have heard just how incredible and breathtaking and incredibly awesome they are all these years, let me tell you why.

In two words: time and space.



Upon entering the terminal before boarding the Disney ship, you are given a schedule of the day's events.  When you look at the schedule, it will appear as though you will have loads of free time.  Well, simply put, and especially if this is your first cruise with Disney and you don't want to miss anything important, you won't.  It sounds unbelievable from here, but it's true.  As the song goes, there is always something happening and it's usually quite loud.  You won't have any quiet time for yourself unless you actively seek it out.  Hell, I only got about forty minutes of pool time!

See, events are scheduled every fifteen minutes rather than, say, on the hour.  This means the schedule is crammed with activities every waking moment and that you will have to make some tough decisions.  (Or, to be honest, not so tough.  For example, "Brave" in Disney-approved 3D easily beats the crap out of Songs Your Mom Likes Dance Party and Publicly Out Yourself As a Huge Disney Nerd Trivia Night.  Anyway, I already attended the latter.  Three times.  And won twice.  My prize is a nifty pin lanyard and also that I am a grown-ass adult who watches a ton of Disney movies.  Eh, at least I was among my people for five days.)

As I said, since this was our first cruise with Disney, we felt obligated to see all the major shows and attend all the special events.  As it turns out, most people attend the deck/atrium parties and stage shows anyway.  Deck parties never run against the stage shows, and the stage shows are each performed twice a night.

Now here comes the biggest wrench in the system.  As I said, my only other cruise experience was on Norwegian and they've got a signature system called Freestyle Dining.  You get to eat on the ship wherever you want and whenever you want.  Nearly every other cruise company does not do allow you to do this.  I am willing to bet that this kind of system works much better on ships where dinner is your only big scheduled commitment every night.

Disney schedules you at a different restaurant every night, and for every night of your trip, you will either be eating at around six or around eight and watching the main stage show at around six or around eight.  Given that we were three adults who had a hard time adjusting to such a schedule (eat that much food at eight and all you will want to do afterwards is sit up and digest for a while and then sleep), I can't even imagine how families with small children handle this.

The good thing is that there are a ton of child-only events.  We saw very few children at all during this voyage since they were busy having fun on their own -- but also because this was a school week and there were only maybe ten-fifteen families with children on the boat.  In any case, the children's programs might be the single most outstanding feature of Disney Cruise Lines.



On to the issue of space.  This is the "Grand Atrium" of the Disney Magic.  The photographer I randomly caught here gives you a sense of scale.  From here. it looks pretty big and roomy, doesn't it?  Well... 



Here's the same atrium, full of people.  I naturally focused on the grand gathering of characters here, but the crowd of people in the corners hopefully gives you an idea of just how congested this area could get.

As an aside, character greetings were especially badly thought-out.  The major ones took place in the atrium, in front of the stairs leading to the entrance to Lumier's, one of the three major restaurants (see the doors Goofy is standing in front of there), and the line snaked down a very thin-feeling major corridor.

Overall, the Dream felt very "small", which sounds absurd in writing, given that she's actually longer (though perhaps skinnier) than the Spirit.  In any case, the atrium, the corridors, our stateroom, and even the pool deck felt really claustrophobic at times.

As far as our stateroom, we got a veranda on deck eight and I thank the gods old and new that we did since this is apparently the largest standard room available.  The good news is that the room has two smaller bathrooms instead of one large one; one contains a toilet and sink and the other contains a shower and sink.  It also has thick curtains to separate the room in half, allowing -ehhh- *some* privacy.  The bad news is that the room is small.  Like the boat as a whole it feels long but not wide.  There's barely enough room to maneuver around the large main bed.  Pure hell when two people are trying to retrieve things from the same end of the room.  Supposedly this room could sleep five grown adults but I cannot even imagine how this would be possible without nightly fistfights breaking out, as space is even more at a premium in the rooms I saw where all five beds were deployed.

As for the pool deck, well, mentioning it brings up one of my big issues with the Magic, and the most likely reason why it was so large but felt so small.  Have a look:



Note the "cages" around the entire pool area, the giant television screen, and especially the position of the deck chairs.  All of the attention on this boat, ALL of it, is centered inward, away from the ocean.  Disney basically wants you to forget you are on a ship at all.

This is my strangest and most lasting memory of the entire cruise.  For me, looking out at the endless sky and deep sea is part of the appeal of being on a cruise, and my father and I can stare out at the water for hours.  We loved how the Spirit had many quiet places where you could sit indoors out of the wind, yet still have an almost uninterrupted panoramic view of the whole ocean.  The Disney Magic had nothing like that.  It isn't like there weren't any windows at all, but they were all either small, blocked by bars and fences, or filthy.  All three pool decks were almost entirely encased in plexiglass and thick metal bars.  I get the safety issue on a boat that usually has lots of children on it, but it felt really excessive.



My favorite moment that exemplified this issue happened on the morning we pulled into Halifax.  Mom was enchanted by the lighthouses and islands, so when we headed to Lumier's for breakfast, I asked if we could sit at one of the many empty tables by the (small and filthy as seen above) windows.  I had to request this of three servers before we finally met one who got it, and we did get our window seat.  But not before we were asked, "Wouldn't you rather sit where you can see the Princesses?"

On that note, I'm going to pause.  Next post, I'll discuss the food and entertainment on board the Magic.

-----

Seascape of the Day!

If I learned anything from the two cruises I've ever taken, it's that I love doing seascapes more than landscapes.  No idea why, but here's the first one I managed to squeeze in time for.

Links of Interest - Disney Cruise Recovery Edition!

Well, I just got back from my family's very first Disney Cruise Line experience.  It'll take a while to sort through everything and get the trip report accomplished.  So until then, have a good old Links of Interest post!

* - First off, new "Hobbit" trailer!  New "Hobbit" trailer!  New "Hobbit" trailer!!!

* - Oh dear lord, this XKCD strip...  Don't miss the zoomable version.

* - My Year of Flops takes on the biggest flop of the year and attempts to parse the thinking behind the truly insane "Oogieloves' Big Balloon Adventure".

* - Speaking of insane ideas for movies, Warner Bros. (*sigh*) is going to make yet another attempt (*sigh*) at a Looney Tunes movie (*sigh*...  Believe me, I'd like to be optimistic for this. But after years of "Space Jam", "Baby Looney Tunes", "Loonatics Unleashed", "Back in Action", those recent weird Flash and CGI cartoons, and other, worse things, I'm pretty much conditioned to anticipate any officially sanctioned new thing involving these characters with dread.)

* - If you happen to be at Walt Disney World on the week of October 1, don't miss the special events being held to celebrate Epcot's 30'th anniversary.

* - Passport to Dreams Old and New shares the strange history of the segment of WDW's Magic Kingdom now known as Storybook Circus, observations on it's current incarnation, as well as where the look of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" might have come from.

* - Holy crap, "Saving Mr. Banks" is actually happening!  With Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, yet!

* - Geek Dad reviews the "Chuck Jones' Mouse Chronicles" DVD collection.

* - TetZoo informs us that iguanas may have a far more complicated social life than you'd think.  (Yes, I squeed at the fraternal behaviors.)

* - Emily Willoughby met a Green Heron and pondered the implications of heron necks.

* - Comics Alliance brought attention to concept artist Ashley Stoddard, who in turn came up with an alternate version of "Willow" that would have been fascinating.

* - Tor.com shared another inspirational seasonal art gallery, this one, naturally, themed to autumn (some NSFW images).

* - I'm starting to put together my four-part(!?!) Disney Cruise trip report.  Here's the beginning of a much more cynical (but hilarious) take on one of the newer boats by TeevTee at Parkeology.

* - I finally got to see "Brave" recently.  I was going to write a full review but Lili Loofbourow's essay, "Just Another Princess Movie" expresses my feelings more eloquently than I ever could (my review would have just been, "Y'all are high!  'Brave' is great!" over and over.)  It is by far the most intelligent reaction to the film I've seen.  (Spoilers galore!)

* - Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy has just launched into his own Disney sequel marathon.  Given his hilarious take on "Belle's Magical World" (oh my God, the whole bit about Crane the writing paper), we are in for a hell of a ride.  I wish him Godspeed, and good luck!

* - If you're a "Brave Little Toaster" fan, you're going to want to see the film's director Jerry Rees' extensive website, filled with memorabilia and information.   Rees also recently hosted an open Q+A with fans.  (LOL at the people who thought Toaster was male...)

* -  And finally, The Rotoscopers/Animation Addicts posted their incredible interview with Don Bluth, in which he talks about his work on "Sleeping Beauty", his surprising new career as a teacher and theater director, and gets downright philosophical about art.  Definitely a must-listen!

-----

Sketch of the day!