I hate to interrupt the Fall of the Republic, but I can top Steyn’s Sammy Cahn story. As a high-school student, sailing from Honolulu (where I attended my first two years of high school) to port in Los Angeles, I became at age 15 the de facto cocktail-lounge pianist aboard the SS Lurline. As I was playing one afternoon, an older guy listened for a while, then came up to me and said, “Hey kid, you’re terrific, you oughta come to Hollywood. I’ll get you on the Carson show, you can work with me . . .”

Needless to say, my Marine Corps–officer dad took a dim view of that, and so my career in Hollywood had to wait another 35 years. The guy, of course was Sammy Cahn (or at least he said he was), whom I then saw once more, briefly, in the Time and Life Building cafeteria shortly before he died (I didn’t think to say anything about our long-ago meeting). Later, in L.A., I told this story to Sammy’s widow, Tita, and she said, “That totally sounds like Sammy.”

So, Mark — what do you say to the idea that, on the next NR cruise, you and I work up a program of classic American songs? I hear you’re a heck of a baritone . . .

– Michael Walsh is the author of Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works and the editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism. His new thriller, Black Widow, will be published in September.