{"id":95271,"date":"2026-07-12T22:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=95271"},"modified":"2026-07-12T22:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:47:06","slug":"cruising-on-sea-and-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2026\/07\/12\/cruising-on-sea-and-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruising on Sea and Land"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We already told you about the <strong><em>Atlantis<\/em><\/strong> cruise that was banned from Turkish ports \u2013 much to the ire of <strong>Miss Patti LuPone<\/strong>, who has never been one to go quietly into that good night.&nbsp; Due to the scheduling snafu, the ship added stops in Cairo and Crete.&nbsp; Alas, even that was not smooth sailing.&nbsp; Cruisers woke up to this notice: \u201cEarly this morning, we were informed that <em>Scarlet Lady <\/em>has been denied entry into Egyptian waters, and, as a result will no longer be able to call into Alexandria today.&nbsp; I know how much this visit meant to so many of you.&nbsp; We successfully sailed a similar itinerary last year without issue.\u201d&nbsp; Our very own <strong>Todrick Hall <\/strong>was on board and was not amused \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re stranded in the middle of the ocean,\u201d he said, as if he was on the <em>Costa Concordia<\/em>!&nbsp; We\u2019re told that the cruise continued to Crete, where I assume the Greeks were far more accommodating.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Parliament House <\/em><\/strong>in Orlando, Florida was a legendary complex known for accommodating gents of all ethnicities since 1975.&nbsp; Like many other things, Parliament was a casualty of Covid and shuttered in November of 2020.&nbsp; Since then, there have been numerous announcements of a new location, a grand reopening, a new chapter.&nbsp; This is another one of those stories.&nbsp; The new <em>Parliament House <\/em>will allegedly open at 29 South Orange Avenue in Orlando \u2013 less than two miles away from the classic location on Orange Blossom Trail.&nbsp; This venue was formerly a comedy club, and while many things happened at the original location, laughter was rarely one of them (except when my play <strong><em>Hollywood Uncovered<\/em><\/strong> ran there in 2002).&nbsp; More details are slated to be announced \u201csoon\u201d \u2013 a date I don\u2019t have on my calendar.&nbsp; But we do know that the new location will not be a hotel\/resort \u2013 it will simply be a nightclub.&nbsp; The owners cited the <em>Pulse Nightclub <\/em>massacre and said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to make it very special again and give them, hopefully, what the community wants and makes them feel safe again.\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes things come back.&nbsp; And then there\u2019s the <strong><em>DataLounge <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 a somewhat notorious gossip website that started about a year after I began writing this column (things that make you go hmm).&nbsp; It\u2019s been so many years since I\u2019ve heard anyone mention it, I just assumed it went the way of the <strong><em>Big Wheel <\/em><\/strong>and <strong>Perez Hilton<\/strong>.&nbsp; So color me <strong>Barbra <\/strong>when the site announced an imminent closing next month.&nbsp; This inevitably brings up that philosophical question \u2013 if a website nobody goes to suddenly shuts down, has anything actually even happened?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We already told you about the Atlantis cruise that was banned from Turkish ports \u2013 much to the ire of Miss Patti LuPone, who has never been one to go quietly into that good night.&nbsp; Due to the scheduling snafu, the ship added stops in Cairo and Crete.&nbsp; Alas, even that was not smooth sailing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95272,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95271\/revisions\/95272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}