If you follow Ambassador to Kinston Bryan Hanks’ social media feed, you know he spent last week on a cruise to the Dominican Republic. If you monitor the police scanner for Amber Cove (the Dominican Republic’s newest cruise port), you’ll know that much like Sam Malone, the natives in the mountains are now writing folk songs about Bryan Hanks.

Accompanying Hanks on this trip was his long-suffering better half, Linda. The world at large owes Linda a debt of gratitude for not only helping Bryan pass his first emissions test in 17 years, but he now routinely wears pants when he leaves the house. But Linda is only one person, and not even she nor maritime law can fully contain Bryan Hanks in international waters.

Hanks loves sports to the point where ESPN has cut him off more than once. To wit, while on the cruise, he somehow found a television on the ship that was carrying the ECU Pirates football game. Whenever ECU executed a successful play (it could happen), Hanks would yell, “GO PIRATES!!”, which in turn would cause alarms on the ship to go off. 

“It was awesome, dude!” Hanks said after posting bail. “I didn’t realize the staff of a cruise ship would be so touchy when it comes to pirates. Crewman, waiters, busboys, and even that evening’s entertainment Charo were packing heat in anticipation of a pirate attack. I haven’t seen that many guns since Ted Nugent took his grandkids trick-or-treating in Rosie O’Donnell’s neighborhood.”

Representatives for Charo would not confirm that the legendary singer/actress/flamenco musician has a Walther PPK pistol attached to the back of her guitar.

In an attempt to capture a selfie with a pod of dolphins swimming next to the ship, Bryan Hanks leaned a little too far backward and fell overboard. It was the astute Charo who was taking a break between sets who saw what happened and tossed a life preserver and rope to a distressed Hanks.

“The dolphins were beating that poor man severely with their tails; it sounded like a family of octopuses playing patty cake,” Charo told the Amber Cove Gazette. “I’m not sure why they were doing it. They were exhibiting a real lack of porpoise. Where’s my drummer? That was gold.”

Once he was back on the ship, Hanks threatened to sue the cruise line due to the staff pretending not to see him fall overboard. There are unconfirmed reports that Hanks’ tirade over a lack of Skittles on the breakfast buffet led to a rift between him and the ship’s staff.

“It’s a large ship with 2,247 guests on board,” said Capt. Merrill Stubbing. “If we make it home with 2,246 passengers, we’re batting close to 1000. Even Hank Aaron didn’t have numbers like that.”

In an effort to avoid litigation, Capt. Stubbing agreed to allow Hanks to steer the ship for one hour.

“I’ve lived most of my life on the water yet I’ve never seen anything like it,” said ship bartender Isaac Washington. “They led Hanks to the helm to let him steer, but after a few hours, he realized they had stationed him at the kid’s wheel, which isn’t hooked up to anything. He protested and was then allowed to steer the ship for 30 minutes. How we ended up in Prague – which is landlocked – is beyond me.”

Upon arriving home, Hanks found a letter from the cruise line in his mailbox.

“They offered him 10,000 bonus points towards a cruise with one of their competitors,” said Bryan Hanks Show cohost Jonathan Massey. “Apparently Carnival is in dire straits and one cruise with Hanks on board might wipe them out for good.”

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