Ship for Brains by Brian David Bruns

Author:Brian David Bruns [Bruns, Brian David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vacation, Caribbean, Humour, expose, humor, cruise ships, Travel
ISBN: 9780985663537
Goodreads: 18432507
Publisher: World Waters
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2

The next day Conquest was at sea all day, which needless to say presented a glorious opportunity for an art auction. In fact, we had a whopping three sea days every cruise. This was orders of magnitude better than the Widow Maker. Still, I based my expectations upon what I knew, and anticipated the auction would have all the same chaos of Majesty, but on a huge scale. Was it chaotic? No. Huge? Oh, yes.

First of all, the art auction was in a huge lounge at the stern of the ship that was ours all day. With no worries of being booted in favor of karaoke, the amount of artwork displayed was astounding. The six-member Filipino cover band had been hired in its entirety for the labor, and they hauled countless art carts as smoothly and in sync as if they were, well, a band. They knew exactly where to place exactly which work of art, as they unleashed every work of art for every auction. Setting up the auction took hours.

While the band played on, Bill and I were free to go over our strategy for the day. Though tagged by guests and appearing random, artwork was by no means taken to the auction block arbitrarily. During the preview, the Filipinos brought tagged artwork up to the stage, but it was then my responsibility to filter and place them in appropriate groupings to maximize our sales strategies. Sometimes I clumped style, sometimes I clumped artists. Other times I had to execute a subtle segue to get guests away from Jean-Claude Picot and towards Peter Max.

The preview alone was huge. A full hour was allocated for the droves of guests arriving for the auction. Bill dripped art facts on the microphone, while a line of passengers extended out the door. Another half-dozen employees had arrived to process the guests; handing out bidder cards, sticky notes, and tickets for free champagne. I noted that Conquest had a whopping four checkout computers.

Just as I thought the inflow of tagged artwork would flood over me, Bill began the auction. Easily two hundred guests were in the lounge, and half again as many remained on the periphery to watch the excitement. And exciting it was: the energy in the room was intoxicating.

Bill started the auction with a huge work of art: the Tomasz Rut painting. While it was undeniably the work of a master artist, alas, a painting of a nude woman bathing her privates was not to everyone’s taste. When Bill opened the bidding at $42,000, sticker shock rippled through the lounge. Bill waited a moment in silence, then calmly motioned for the work to be taken off the block, mumbling about ‘the interested party said he may not make it to the first auction’.

Behind the stage, I worked with two Filipinos affectionately dubbed Wax On and Wax Off. Despite having worked with the Filipinos for months, Bill had only deigned to learn the name of the singer, who acted as sergeant. I was too busy to learn anything new and was happy to let function label the men.

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