Hasta La Gadget!

Pat Busovicki’s Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Dream almost ended in a nightmare.

One afternoon, after plummeting down its Twister water slide, she says, she found herself trapped in a dangerous undertow. “I couldn’t get out,” remembers the retired librarian from Westlake, Ohio. She says that crew members didn’t assist her, and only after her sister cried for help did another passenger jump into the water and rescue her.

Busovicki, like a small but growing group of consumer advocates and passengers, believes that cruise lines aren’t doing enough to protect their customers. Despite an industry effort to regulate itself, consumer groups are asking the government for tougher rules that would ensure them safer passage.

When Busovicki visited the ship’s doctor, he told her that she’d nearly drowned in the pool. The experience put a damper on the rest of her vacation, and she says that she was disappointed when Carnival didn’t try to make up for the incident.

In an e-mail, Carnival said that it’s “extremely sorry” for what happened to her but insisted that it followed safety procedures similar to those for land-based water slides.

“The safety and well-being of our guests are at the forefront of our mind on all cruises, with making sure that you have a fun and memorable vacation coming a close second,” the company said. Carnival offered her a $100 credit as a “gesture of goodwill.”

A Carnival representative reviewed Busovicki’s claim after she contacted me and said that the firm had handled her case by the book. Not only are its shipboard slides designed with safety in mind, the representative said, but an undertow is unlikely, since the landing trough is a flattened-out, shallow extension of the slide, with at least four team members staffing the area at all times.

“She was treated with care and compassion both from our medical team and our guest services staff, and a full examination of what she reported was conducted,” said Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz. “The guest services team followed up with her several times and had an in-person meeting with her so that she could share her concerns, according to the ship’s notes.”

The cruise industry claims that trips are safe, despite congressional hearings and passenger accounts that have suggested otherwise. In an attempt to preempt government regulation, the industry adopted a “passenger bill of rights” that addressed some of the most common cruise complaints. The document gave customers the right to get off a docked ship if food, water and medical care can’t adequately be provided on board; the right to a full refund for a trip that’s canceled because of mechanical failures; and the right to have full-time, professional emergency medical attention available aboard ocean cruises.

But is the self-imposed bill of rights, which is now more than a year old, enough to ensure cruise passengers’ safety? Some industry watchers are doubtful. “The bill of rights didn’t give passengers any real additional rights,” says Kendall Carver, chairman of the International Cruise Victims Association. “Instead, it was a PR move.”

What are cruise lines trying to avoid? A proposed law called the Cruise Passenger Protection Act. Among other things, the bill would compel cruise lines to offer customers a clear, upfront summary of the restrictive terms and conditions in cruise contracts. It would also give the federal government more authority to protect cruise ship passengers, including investigating complaints such as Busovicki’s. In addition, the proposed law would make all alleged crimes on cruise ships publicly available information. The FBI currently reports only crimes that are no longer under investigation, leaving passengers with the impression that cruises are practically crime-free.

Although the industry’s effort to self-regulate slowed momentum in Congress, it didn’t stall the proposed law entirely. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who’s chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, is trying to incorporate parts of the bill’s language into an upcoming Coast Guard reauthorization bill. That follows a Senate hearing this summer in which passengers testified about the lack of consumer protections.

The Cruise Passenger Protection Act is necessary to “level the playing field” for passengers, according to Edward Bassett Jr., a Boston attorney who specializes in transportation policy. He notes that some of the laws that apply to cruise ships are more than a century old and were passed to encourage shipbuilding rather than consumer protection. “In the past, the courts have liberally construed these statutes in the ship owner’s favor,” he says. “New legislation is needed to give passengers from this country meaningful legal rights which can be enforced here in the United States.”

The cruise industry disagrees. “The Cruise Passenger Protection Act is a solution in search of a problem that punitively singles out the cruise industry, needlessly creates a new federal bureaucracy at taxpayer expense, and will likely increase the cost to consumers in taking a cruise,” says Michael McGarry, a spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association.

Although it can sometimes be a challenge to separate rhetoric from reality on this issue, there are practical takeaways for anyone planning a cruise this fall. Consider an insurance policy with a medical evacuation benefit, so that if you fall ill, you can return to the States quickly. Medical care aboard ships, despite claims to the contrary, is not always up to American standards.

Take a camera and use it to collect evidence if there’s an incident on board. Cruise lines may videotape common areas, but if there’s an incident, they won’t give you the footage, says Jack Hickey, a maritime lawyer based in Miami. “Get the full names, addresses, e-mail addresses and cell numbers of all witnesses.”

For now, government regulators may be powerless to mediate matters such as customer satisfaction, billing issues or itinerary changes, but that isn’t stopping them from trying. The Federal Maritime Commission’s little-known Cruise Passenger Assistance program can contact a cruise line on the passenger’s behalf and facilitate “a discussion” of the problem at 866-448-9546 or by e-mail at complaints@fmc.gov. And, of course, a competent travel agent can help if you have a customer-service problem.

Until the proposed laws are enacted — if indeed they ever are — it’s best to take the same precautions you would on a land-based resort vacation.

After you’ve left a comment here, let’s continue the discussion on my consumer advocacy site or on Twitter, Facebook and Google. I also have a newsletter and you’ll definitely want to order my new, amazingly helpful and subversive book called How to Be the World’s Smartest Traveler (and Save Time, Money, and Hassle). Photo: Shutterstock.

A suspected carjacker was caught on video stealing a vehicle from a Miami hotel on Wednesday and then slamming into cars and people as he made his escape.

Footage from the J.W. Marriott Marquis Hotel shows the suspect, identified by police as Alberto Ruiz, eyeing the Lexus RX 350 before hopping in and ramming into the valets who had been unloading it.

Then, as the video shows, he crashes into more vehicles and hits several of the people trying to stop him — including the car’s owner, who is carrying balloons — before eventually driving off.

“You can see that this individual had no regard for anyone’s life,” Miami Police Officer Rene Pimentel told WSVN. “People were getting wedged, run over, pinned. He could not care less. He just wanted to take off.”

The Miami Herald reports that Ruiz hit seven people. Four victims were taken to an area hospital, one in critical condition.

Ruiz was arrested later in the day at a Miami motel, where police used a stun gun to subdue him, according to the newspaper, which says he has a 22-page arrest history covering more than 30 years.

Local 10 reports that the stolen vehicle was damaged along with four others in the valet area.

“It’s certainly is an aggressive move,” hotel guest Jerry Sokol told CBS Miami. “I’ve never heard of this before. Hopefully, this is an extremely isolated incident and doesn’t change the way we handle valet in the future.”

A long-running Ladies’ Home Journal column that started in 1953, called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?,” features real-life couples and the juicy details of their marital issues.

The columns were split into three parts: a wife’s perspective, her husband’s take and then final judgment by a counselor from the American Institute of Family Relations. AIFR was a successful, but now defunct, center founded in the 1930s by “Dr.” Popenoe. He wasn’t actually a doctor or a psychologist but a eugenicist with an honorary degree. Very often, Popenoe’s counselors found a way to pin problems on the wives, calling them “childish,” “juvenile,” “emotionally immature” and “frigid,” for example.

Early “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” columns, which continue today at Divine Caroline without the sexist overtones, show us how far women’s equality has come — but also how far we have to go. Here are five horrifying pieces of advice from the magazine.

Sylvia and Everett, April 1953
Lesson: Wives “attitudes” and “personalities” are to blame for marital problems.

Sylvia, a “smartly dressed woman” who tried to kill herself, suspected her husband Everett of cheating. The AIFR counselor talked to Sylvia many times and her husband only twice, and in their brief interviews, stated he didn’t “intend to discuss [his] personal behavior” at all — his only purpose was to “help straighten out” his wife, who he’d married because he “felt sorry for her.” Yet the counselor felt “[Sylvia] was indeed the major problem in this marriage.”

Interviews with Sylvia revealed a person whose floundering sense of purpose and clear cry for help (“I was mainly trying to frighten Everett,” she said of her suicide attempt) were ignored. “My husband is a fine, generous man,” Sylvia claimed, but said she worried about his drinking habits.

Yet Sylvia was advised to “change her personality and deeply rooted attitudes” against her husband, the counselor wrote, because she’d “deeply wounded his masculine pride.” Being too “fast” with boys in her past had left the 31-year-old “almost as emotionally immature as a child of four or five … driving her husband out of his home to the corner bar and into the arms of other women.” The counselor found ways to blame Sylvia in every aspect of the couple’s marital woes, from Everett’s drinking to Everett’s probable infidelity, while Everett himself merely “modified” his drinking and philandering.

Lucy and Dan, April 1954
Lesson: The longer you’ve been married, the more you should let domestic violence slide.

Lucy was ready to leave her abusive husband. But according to the counselor, she was “ignoring the practical aspects of her situation.”

“After 19 years … I’ve reached my breaking point,” Lucy said, explaining how she would happily give up a life full of extravagant gifts to escape the violence she was made to endure. She’d even involved the police, securing protection against her husband. In a previous attempt to leave, Dan had tracked down Lucy and her son and “dragged” them back to the family’s home.

Well, “19 years is a good big chunk,” the counselor wrote. “Lucy and Dan were as intertwined as the roots of a tree.” Apparently, Lucy was now chained to her abusive husband because she’d somehow missed her window of escape at the ripe old age of 36. “[Lucy], her child and her elderly aunt were financially dependent… Without Dan, Lucy was marooned” — safety and mental health be damned. Lucy’s husband, a man who didn’t like seeing women in pants, was even excused for considering his son a “rival” because his wife wasn’t paying him enough “badly needed praise, appreciation, admiration [and] love.”

Alice and Ralph, February 1953
Lesson: Wives should be able to read minds.

Alice couldn’t get a word out of her spouse.

“For five days, Ralph hasn’t spoken a word to me,” Alice said. “I ask if he loves me, and he just turns his head. He eats his meals without speaking, without noticing that I’ve specially cooked … his favorite foods.” Ralph complained that Alice was, in fact, driving him “crazy,” so he punished her with the silent treatment.

Considering himself the family’s provider, Ralph said he didn’t “know who to love” when he felt so burdened with responsibility. Sure, he could find a full-time job, but then he’d be “tied to a desk” all day. “I’ve got to have some kind of freedom to feel like a man at all,” he whined.

Far from recommending that Ralph check his male privilege, the counselor chided Alice for her lack of ESP. “In cooking him expensive steaks and smothering him with excessive protestations of love,” it was explained, “she was offering him not the kind of attention he wanted and needed but the kind she wanted herself.” A good wife would have realized she was making nice dinners the family couldn’t quite afford, even though her husband wasn’t using his big boy words to express himself.

Amy and Joe, May 1953
Lesson: If you don’t give your spouse enough attention, he has a fair excuse to cheat on you.

Amy and Joe operated “the biggest and best” tailor and cleaner in town, in Amy’s view. She had a right to brag — Amy was mostly responsible for the success of the small business, according to her husband. After he cheated on her, though, she asked him to leave. “I wasn’t brought up to take infidelity as a light thing,” Amy said.

Amy didn’t “intend to deprive [her] husband of his livelihood” at the shop, so they continued to work together despite her husband’s obvious regret. “Please persuade Amy to take me back,” Joe asked the counselor. “[The other woman] isn’t worth one of Amy’s smiles or even one of Amy’s frowns.” The counselor saw not an independent woman and a man who needed to better communicate how he felt, but a cold-hearted wife and a sad, mistreated husband.

“Of course, she herself was largely responsible for Joe’s infidelity. She practically drove her husband to find in the company of another woman a little of the praise and credit he was not receiving at home,” the counselor wrote. Amy was advised to “adopt a divergent set of values” because she was “just too busy.” Poor Joe “felt like a nobody who didn’t count” while his wife made sure they had enough income to eat.

Patrice and Gid, October 1955
Lesson: Never out-earn your husband.

Patrice, a “slender, attractive” 36-year-old, had a good copywriting job at an advertising agency and was promoted. “My first impulse was to get my husband on the phone so we could share the big excitement,” she explained. But her promotion meant she now earned more than her husband, Gid, made as a salesman.

When the couple married, Gid said he “didn’t mind that [Patrice] had a darn good job.” But he’d thought she also wanted to be a “real” wife. The counselor found Patrice at fault not just because of her career, but “the way she handled her career, her husband [and] her child.” Patrice, the counselor noted, “grew to womanhood hating the unalterable fact that she was doomed to be a female in a man-made world.” Luckily, she got her “true reward” in the end, “when she reduced her career to second place … she became a successful wife and a successful mother.”

Luckily, the AIFR isn’t around anymore to dole out this awful marriage advice. And while misogyny may still be alive and well, at least it’s not being perpetuated so obviously in mainstream women’s magazines.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

LOVE LETTERS ** 1/2 out of ****
THE MONEY SHOT ** 1/2 out of ****

LOVE LETTERS ** 1/2 out of ****
BROOKS ATKINSON THEATRE

Playwright A.R. Gurney is a talent I’ve only recently been able to see performed and I like him more all the time. (A fine revival of his play The Wayside Motor Inn is currently offered by Signature through October 5.) Of his many works, surely the produced most often is Love Letters. It’s disarmingly simple in conceit and execution. Two actors sit on stage and read the letters their characters have sent to each other. The man and the woman are at first a boy and a girl, two kids of privilege thrown together for the girl’s birthday party (presumably in part because their parents know each other), exchanging thank you notes for the gift given and then a thank you note for the thank you note.

That turns into a decades-long exchange of intimacies and friendship, a mashup of Same Time Near and 84 Charing Cross Road. We see her evolve into a committed liberal and committed artist and sometimes just committed full stop. We see him evolve into a decent, more conventional man with a somewhat mysterious romance in the Far East followed by marriage, law and then a political career.

Will their friendship ever slide into love? Will they both find happiness? Can they find happiness without each other? Or is their intimacy possible precisely because it’s played out in love letters?

Gurney has crafted a solid, almost fail-safe entertainment. The letters slide into conversations at certain, brief moments to speed the story along in a reasonable manner. Still, the central pleasure is watching their stories ping pong back and forth letter by funny, challenging, sweet, blunt letter. And letters that get no response prove that silence can be awfully powerful too.

Mia Farrow hasn’t been on Broadway in a run since 1980 (setting aside a benefit performance of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf). She’s up to the modest challenges here and delivers a florid, flighty butterfly of a performance. To me it seemed too melodramatic…until the play itself became a bit melodramatic towards the end and Farrow’s choices proved more justified than I expected. Nonetheless, the various pairings of actors that pepper the show throughout its run are half the pleasure here. Certainly Diana Rigg (opposite Stacy Keach) will offer up a very different take on the part.

Brian Dennehy of course is a rock, a solid counterpoint to Farrow’s work that nicely underplays the ultimate tension between these two very different people united by their epistolary friendship. Director Gregory Mosher has guided them nicely and the result is a satisfying albeit modest evening of theater. Still, there may be more here than first meets the eye (or in this case, the ear). I keep thinking about other combination of actors and what they might do with this work. Maybe the best way to appreciate Love Letters is to see it again.

THE MONEY SHOT ** 1/2 out of ****
MCC THEATER

How churlish to say you went to a comedy, you laughed pretty consistently and yet not rave about the show! And yet, that is the natural response to The Money Shot, a new play by Neil LaBute that takes easy if often amusing potshots at Hollywood and some very dumb actors.

Typically, LaBute has a catchy premise to his plays, often presented with a twist when you realize what is really going on. Here, however, the premise is quite obvious though delayed as if it might shock us. Two actors and their significant others are meeting to discuss a delicate issue. Steve (Fred Weller) and Karen (Elizabeth Reaser) are the movie stars holding desperately on to their level of fame as younger versions of themselves sprout up seemingly everywhere. Karen’s true love is Bev (Callie Thorne), her smart and she knows it girlfriend/lover/partner who is a top film editor. Steve’s wife Missy (Gia Crovatin) is a would-be actress hounded by her far more famous husband over her weight, but, you know, for her own good.

The apparent elephant in the room is what exactly they’ve all come together to discuss: Steve and Karen are filming a major movie and their director wants them to actually have sex during their big sex scene. What specifically are their partners comfortable with? Oddly, the play keeps coy about this simple issue for quite a while, though we assume or somehow sense what is going on and are hardly traumatized by the idea. The tension of debating what is kosher for all four soon raises issues of trust and exactly how stable these relationships truly are. And along the way, you’ll laugh pretty consistently.

Steve and Bev hate each other at first sight. And it doesn’t help that Bev finds it impossible to hear him spout nonsense (like claiming David Crosby was the son of Bing Crosby or wondering if Belgium is part of Europe) without correcting him. At length. Meanwhile, Missy is so hungry she shoves appetizers into her mouth whenever Steve isn’t looking And Karen unleashes some pointed barbs at Bev while acting the vain star with relish a la Dianne Weist in Bullets Over Broadway.

The Money Shot has no problems as such. It’s a simple premise with some good laughs elevated by a very strong cast. The scenic design by Derek McLane offers all sorts of opportunities for clever staging by director Terry Kinney and the other elements follow suit nicely. But Hollywood stars are low hanging fruit when it comes to cheap shots. And these particular Hollywood stars are so dumb it beggars belief. Bev is the sole person with the slightest bit of intelligence and her isolation isn’t played for all the laughs it might be.

Similarly, Steve may be the only male actor in Hollywood who averts his eyes when two women kiss. But the suggestion of his right-wing leanings (he watches FOX News) hardly comes into play until an inevitable rant where Kevin unleashes his real opinions. And of course since Missy seems the ditziest of all, you just know she’ll make some wise observation or prove far more savvy at some key moment by the finale.

Despite its mildly outlandish premise, The Money Shot feels awfully familiar. Happily, LaBute attracted a good cast that makes the most of his work here. Crovatin has the least interesting role but does her game best. Thorne is always good and here plays frustration quite well, though it’s almost impossible to understand what her character is doing with the tiresome Karen in the first place, undercutting any tension over what might become of them. Weller is amusingly indifferent to facts and makes Steve an actual character rather than the caricature he might easily become with a lesser actor in place. And Reaser should join rehearsals late on every show (as she had to do here). Her work is loose and very fun indeed. Karen actually is a caricature, but Reaser makes her a fun one.

The show builds to a silly climax I enjoyed and an unsurprising twist most will see a mile away. To be plain: there’s no money shot in The Money Shot. But so what? Sometimes an evening with nothing more than pleasant foreplay can be quite satisfying.

THEATER OF 2014

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical ***
Rodney King ***
Hard Times ** 1/2
Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead **
I Could Say More *
The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner **
Machinal ***
Outside Mullingar ***
A Man’s A Man * 1/2
The Tribute Artist ** 1/2
Transport **
Prince Igor at the Met **
The Bridges Of Madison County ** 1/2
Kung Fu (at Signature) **
Stage Kiss ***
Satchmo At The Waldorf ***
Antony and Cleopatra at the Public **
All The Way ** 1/2
The Open House (Will Eno at Signature) ** 1/2
Wozzeck (at Met w Deborah Voigt and Thomas Hampson and Simon O’Neill)
Hand To God ***
Tales From Red Vienna **
Appropriate (at Signature) *
Rocky * 1/2
Aladdin ***
Mothers And Sons **
Les Miserables *** 1/2
Breathing Time * 1/2
Cirque Du Soleil’s Amaluna * 1/2
Heathers The Musical * 1/2
Red Velvet, at St. Ann’s Warehouse ***
Broadway By The Year 1940-1964 *** 1/2
A Second Chance **
Guys And Dolls *** 1/2
If/Then * 1/2
The Threepenny Opera * 1/2
A Raisin In The Sun *** 1/2
The Heir Apparent *** 1/2
The Realistic Joneses ***
Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill ***
The Library **
South Pacific ** 1/2
Violet ***
Bullets Over Broadway **
Of Mice And Men **
The World Is Round ***
Your Mother’s Copy Of The Kama Sutra **
Hedwig and the Angry Inch ***
The Cripple Of Inishmaan ***
The Great Immensity * 1/2
Casa Valentina ** 1/2
Act One **
Inventing Mary Martin **
Cabaret ***
An Octoroon *** 1/2
Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging ***
Here Lies Love *** 1/2
6th Annual August Wilson Monologue Competition
Sea Marks * 1/2
A Time-Traveler’s Trip To Niagara * 1/2
Selected Shorts: Neil Gaiman ***
Too Much Sun * 1/2
Broadway By The Year 1965-1989 ***
In The Park **
The Essential Straight & Narrow ** 1/2
Much Ado About Nothing ***
When We Were Young And Unafraid
Savion Glover’s Om **
Broadway By The Year 1990-2014 ***
The Lion ***
Holler If Ya Hear Me * 1/2
The Ambassador Revue ** 1/2
Dubliners: A Quartet ***
The National High School Musical Theater Awards *** 1/2
Wayra — Fuerza Bruta * 1/2
Strictly Dishonorable *** 1/2 out of ****
Between Riverside And Crazy ***
The Wayside Motor Inn ***
Bootycandy ***
Mighty Real ***
This Is Our Youth ***
Rock Bottom * 1/2
Almost Home * 1/2
Rococo Rouge **
Love Letters 1/2
The Money Shot ** 1/2

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Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the founder and CEO of the forthcoming website BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.

Longboarding is cool. Cruising about on those four wheels listening to your favorite tunes without a care in the world, is even cooler. But the longer you board, and the farther away you are from home, the more the chance of running out of juice on your music player or your phone.

Not with the Chargeboard, a longboard with a kinetic charging station. Well now still a prototype but you could help fund their project on Kickstarter next week and perhaps there is a chance to get your hands on one.

So, how does it work?

The two dynamo’s in the in the rear axles generate 6V each, this electricity is then converted back to a 5V current and gets stored in to a powerbox. So when you’ll plug your iphone in the dock your phone gets charged and in the meanwhile you can listen to some of your favorite tracks.

The Chargeboard is the brainchild of Bjorn van den Hout, which comes out as his graduation project at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Bjorn is a fanatic longboarder.