[Poopdeck] Poopdeck Issue No. 59

[John Ol' Chumbucket Baur]

The Poopdeck

The Official Online Talk Like a Pirate Day Newslatter
Published When the Fancy Strikes
Ol' Chumbucket, Editor
Sept. 26, 2008 Issue No. 59 or Thereabouts

www.talklikeapirate.com

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One Week SINCE Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008

358 Days Until International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2009!


Wow. What a weekend!

One of the questions we get asked by a lot is, "Did you ever expect  
Talk Like a Pirate Day to become as big as it has?" And our answer is,  
"There's no way anyone could have foreseen this. It was just a joke  
shared by a few friends, that's grown into a joke shared by a few  
million friends all around the world."

And oce again, millions of you all over the planet, from the South Pole  
to Portland, Oregon, from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Tupelo, Mississippi,  
New Zealand to New York were talking dressing, partying and generally  
just carrying on like pirates all weekend long. Thank you all. We are  
in awe of you.

See for yourself! You can visit our Web site at  
http://talklikeapirate.com/tlapd08.html. It's an amazing list of  
events, parties, media and and mayhem you got yourself up to over the  
Talk Like a Pirate Day weekend. And don't forget to look at our Flicker  
photo page (go to http://talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html and scroll  
down, the Flicker link is on the left, below the Poopdeck and the  
CafePress links.)

For now, we'd like to bring you a couple of the favorite things we've  
heard of, some of the highlights, and what we were up to.

* The New York Times crossword puzzle on Sept. 19, 2008, featured the  
following answers – 31 across, "talklikeapirateday" and 8 down,  
"shivermetimbers." THAT is a big deal to a puzzle junkie like me.

* As you know, we were in Philadelphia performing at The Franklin  
Institute museum on the day. The museum is hosting National  
Geographic's "Real Pirates" exhibition, and if you get the chance to  
see it as it travels around the country – DO NOT MISS IT! It's a  
terrific exhibit about the life and times of pirates, using hundreds of  
artifacts (including a big chest o' piece of eight) brought up from the  
wreck of the Whydah. We'll try to keep track of its movements and keep  
you informed. All we know right now is that this winter it moves to  
Chicago. So all you Windy City pirates, get ready for a treat!

* While in Philly, we visited Gazela, an authentic tall ship from over  
a century ago. The crew treated us to a tour of the ship, a couple of  
beers, and allowed me to scamper up the rigging. Okay, scamper is the  
wrong word. But I definitely climbed until my legs gave out. I guess  
I'm not as young as I used to be. In fact, I'm not sure I was EVER as  
young as I used to be. The next day I could barely walk. But it was a  
great view up there.

* Our performances at the museum went well – audiences were happy, the  
people who hired us were happy, so we were happy. And Philadelphia is a  
great city. But boy, were we glad to get home!

* Keith Olbermann talked like a pirate during his Sept. 19 Countdown.

* MSNBC's Will Geist at ZeitGeist celebrated by naming the five  
greatest pirates of all time. (No, neither of us made the list, but we  
were so happy he paid attention to the holiday that we decided not to  
complain.)

* The Wiggles – yes I said the Wiggles! – the  
immensely-popular-though-who-knows-why kid's TV show out of Australia  
(and home of the infamous Captain Feathersword), promoted TLAPD in its  
fan club newsletter.

* Our Web site took more than 5 million hits on the day alone. The  
spike put us at No. 5 on Alxis.com's list of movers and shakers, right  
between Lehman Bros. and CNBC. Google added pirate as one of its  
official languages. Blogs and Web sites and radio shows all over  
featured pirate talk. Online games such as World of Warcraft had pirate  
features, and of course at Pirates of the Burning Sea (where we are  
actual characters!) there was plenty of celebrating.

Really, I could go on all day. Rather than that, let me just urge you  
to visit the Web site (http://talklikeapirate.com/tlapd08.html) and  
scroll through the incredible variety of filibuster festivities. And  
don't miss the pictures posted over at Flicker.

Let me finish with two stories stories from Philadelphia – one kind of  
odd and the other that really made our day – our weekend and maybe even  
our year!

The odd one is reported by Cap'n Slappy: A young man approached athe  
table where we were signing copies of our book, "The Pirate Life:  
Unleashing Your Inner Buccaneer," and asked, "Wasn't Cap'n Slappy  
originally played by Mark Summers?" Apparently he meant the host of  
TV's Doubldare Kids Game Show, "Marc Summers." A  confused exchange  
that followed:

"I'm Mark Summers."
"Yes, but not the original Mark Summers. Didn't he play the original  
Cap'n Slappy?"
"I'm the original Cap'n Slappy."
"But wasn't that Mark Summers?"

It took a team of translators to remedy that conversational bottomless  
pit. That bit of misinformation was up on Wikipedia a while back and it  
took the Web Wench days to eventually convince the Wiki editors to  
remove it. Because if someone wrote it, it must be true. Right?

And here's perhaps our favorite single moment of the weekend:

Saturday, Sept. 20, we were sitting in the cafeteria area of the museum  
waiting to go on for our last show. About ten minutes before show time,  
a guy walked by with his wife, glanced over, then did a double take.  
"Oh my gosh!" he said. "I don't believe it! I ... Oh my gosh!" He was  
excited. This continued for a minute, then he came over and introduced  
himself. He's Aaron, a middle school English teacher at a private  
school in Maryland. And not only had he been teaching about pirates the  
first couple of weeks at school – he'd been teaching about US! Me and  
Cap'n Slappy! The whole school had taken a day earlier in the week to  
do pirate presentations, comedy, art, you name it. And he had studied  
our youtube video of me and Slappy and my son Young Chumpail singing  
the song, "I'm A Pirate," which Slappy wrote. His students had learned  
the song to perform for the pirate day.

Aaron took out his camera and pulled up a video, explaining that he  
wanted to make sure the class was ready to perform so he had assigned  
them to "do two things at once." The video showed his class playing  
basketball, racing up and down the court, shooting rebounding and  
defending – while singing "I'm A Pirate!" It was incredible. Wonderful.  
Just – I'm not sure what word I want is, happy-making. Something like  
that. Just amazing.

Thank you Aaron for sharing that with us. He's trying to figure out how  
to get it off his camera and into the e-mail so I can share it with all  
of you. Because – "Wow!" That was incredible. (The Web Wench urgently  
wants me to remind all our readers and fans – and presumably those  
groups overlap – that we are NOT going to post videos, anyone's videos,  
on our site, because we simply don't have the space, but we will post  
links to any vids YOU want to post on your own. Assuming, of course,  
that they're piratey.)

Anyway, enough of that. Slappy and I are always awestruck by the  
incredible reception Talk Like a Pirate Day has received from the  
world. For Slappy and meself, plus Mad Sally, Jezebel the Web Wench and  
everyone else associated with Team Pirate, thank you from the bottom of  
our black hearts. Thank you.

Ol' Chumbucket, editor