Being overly blunt has never won me friends, but I just can’t put this delicately – Pyrate Daze has the most idiotic celebrity guest list imaginable for a pirate festival of any sort. Sure, it has some of the usual suspects (Jamaica Rose, Cascabel, a large helping of Pirates of the Caribbean B-listers, and others), but the lion’s share of the guest list is comprised of folks that have nothing… remotely… to do… with… PIRATES. Consider: [read more »]

I’m right crabby today – there are several things in the pirate world right now that boggle my mind and annoy my delicate sensitivities. My grumbles spawn from the goings-on of several different pirate events and crews, and seem to be too numerous to list without going mad. But I’d offer these three highlights for consideration: [read more »]

Avast: Pirate Chic Returns – BlackBook.

There’s a right way to do pirate fashion, and there’s a wrong way. Wanna guess which one Vivienne Westwood chose? The wrong way – definitely the wrong way. But now that I think on it, most ways I’ve seen on the runways have been the wrong way. Jean Paul Gaultier back in 2007 had a mixed bag, and Gwen Stefani with her Rich Girl video struck several high points, but most of the stuff out there has been sorely misguided – and that goes double for mens’ wear. Why, oh why does no one design awesome modern clothing for the heterosexual, non-demented guy pirate? The answer, of course, is that straight, sane guy pirates pay no attention to fashion whatsoever, and buy most of their modern clothing at yard sales and side-show gift shops.

A few more highlights: [read more »]

www.norcalpiratefestival.com

Mid-June has come and gone, and it was my great pleasure to attend the Northern California Pirate Festival in Vallejo. Having attended this festival each of its three years, I’d love to say that I’ve witnessed it grow into something fantastic, but in this rare case no growth was necessary – never have I seen an event so much hit the ground running as this. The 2009 season proved every bit as worthy an event as its two predecessors as the waterfront park was again converted into a full-on pirate festival for two days during Fathers’ Day weekend. [read more »]

Since the very beginning of Bilgemunky.com, I’ve mostly ignored any news regarding modern pirates. I freely admit that my love of historical pirates is selective – frock coats good, rape bad. Rum, flintlocks, cutlasses, ships, pirate hats all good, actual cold-blooded murder or torture bad. Of course, being as the 1700’s were harsh times, and you could easily make the case that pirates of the day were in many ways no better or worse than the very governments they fought against, and that sailing merchants often created an environment so cruel that it left their crew little choice but to go on the account - this only further enables the easy glamorization of historical (and fictional) old-timey pirates. [read more »]

Unlike previous after-action reports, I don’t need to provide you with full details as to how PyrateCon and PyrateWeek went – you can read about them on my earlier posts from onsite. But, it does seem worthwhile to offer a few final thoughts. Both events have enjoyed (meaning suffered) their share of political BS – some of it perhaps justified, some of it perhaps less so. For me – and I imagine for most readers – none of it adds up to squat. All that matters to me as an attendee is whether these events are worth my time and money to attend. That’s not to say wronged parties shouldn’t seek justice, just that it’s not my concern to sort it all out. [read more »]

There’s a whole lot of gossip floating around the web right now about PyrateCon. Most of it consists of either vague allegations based on “inside information” or long winded tirades that have little to do with anything the general public needs or wants to know.

Since returning from PyrateCon 08 I’ve been torn between whether I should publicly share my thoughts, or quietly “wait and see” what occurs on its own. But I get asked, and then asked again what my thoughts are on PyrateCon, and so I think it’s time to just throw some things out there. So here are some facts. No inside information, just the publicly available truth: [read more »]

OK, so in my daily search for pirate news I’m stumbling across several stories I just don’t care about. Therefore, I won’t post them. If you really, really want to read every story about pirates, do your own Google search. It’s not hard.

What you won’t read here: [read more »]

I just returned from the St. Louis Pirate Festival – my third year in attendance (and being as it’s their third year having the festival, I’d call that a pretty good track record on my part.) [read more »]

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