Pirate's Life in Los Angeles

Just testing my uploading abilities here. A couple videos of pirate life...

Sea of Darkness 4: Thru the Straits of Dire

                 
By the year 2006, after more than a decade of pirating, i finally had a troupe that was getting some traction in show business, hitting the stages of Los Angeles in an escalating maelstrom of performances. These were often tailored for our specific audience of the moment hence we would come up with plot scenarios whilst driving to gigs, then ad lib the rest during the show, -you can do that sort of thing when you've been working with the same people for a while. These landlocked shows took most of my time, all of my time.
    In the spring of that year, for reasons unfathomable and despite my soberest judgement, i allowed my crew, Revenge From The Sea, to talk me into doing a pirate cruise. 

Brandi: "Hey! You should do a cruise this year!" Bullet: "i'll kill you!"

    Unlike my theatrical troupe, RFTS did their pirating on a ship at sea rather than on some silly stage. i would insist they do a performance on the ship though, just because i thought it was fun and because it was the only time that i could write a script exactly how i wanted, without having to consider anyone else's tastes. 

    Besides writing the script, doing a cruise meant making hundreds of phone calls to organize rehearsals, getting Omen to paint a cool cover for the invitations, writing, printing then snail-mailing the invitations, (we didn't send email invites because we didn't want people forwarding them). We also needed to determine a 'share of plunder' to hand out, then design and create 100 of them. Oh yeah, and there was the money problem. i'd have to pay for rum, mailings, plunder shares and the ship itself. 

    Deciding that sleep and sanity were for wankers, we commenced preparing for the cruise. My irrationally optimistic business strategy for this event was to reserve the ship then mail out the invites and hope enough people bought passage in advance that i could cover the cost of the charter and other expenses. This didn't always work. Sometimes i had to use my rent money to reserve the ship because people didn't pay up in time. They'd show up just before we sailed, cash in hand. There wouldn't be time to count it all, i'd just shove it in my pocket and hope it was enough to cover the check i handed to the ship's captain, telling him, "Please don't deposit this for a few days." The next morning i'd pay rent with apologies to the landlord for being three weeks late, laying out hundreds of dollars in piles of small bills on his desk. He became suspicious once and asked me if i'd robbed a liquor store for the money. i told him, "No, man. i was pirating!"

    Other than a few crossover people, Revenge From The Sea were a very different monster than the landlocked troupe. Most of us never even saw one another except during the few weeks of cruise rehearsals each year so we were an harmonious group, by pirate standards, in that we weren't sick of working together and only a few of us hated each other's guts. 

    Los Angeles is geographically vast and we were scattered throughout it so we never managed a rehearsal where everyone was present at the same time. We practiced in shifts where about half the cast were present and a few valiant performers read multiple parts to cover for those who weren't there. We had two months -rather than the usual three- to make this cruise work. i'd written the script quickly, furiously, and somewhat incompetently. It included foolishly whimsical ideas like trying to rhyme "Caribbean" with "Gonorrhea." My reasoning skills were obviously diminished because, at the time, i really thought that would work.

CROW: "..once a mighty pirate of the Caribbeah, now a pirate of the gonorrhea! That's why i never engage a doxy without my proper wenching hat."

DOXY POX: "But sir, you don't wear a wenching hat."

CROW: "Not on my head, i don't."

  

    The whole script was this level of nonsense. It was crap but i was too exhausted to notice. Wolf quit after the first rehearsal, i should have realized then that something was wrong but i was preoccupied with other things. Wolf had been pirating with me for twelve years, he had a powerful voice that held an audience's attention and kept the other performers in line. The show wouldn't be as good without him in it. He left a note for me that read: "This script is nothing less than FINE." Whenever i didn't like something but was trying to be diplomatic i would describe it as "fine." Wolf calling my script "fine" was the worst insult possible but, again, i was just too busy to think about it. i did a quick rewrite -further weakening the bad script- to accommodate his absence and we continued rehearsals.

       A few things did go well, however. Omen Thistle painted a perfect illustration for the invites. i invented the '69 Splatterer' (patent pending), a new form of squib that shot blood in opposite directions simultaneously. We decided to add an extra hour to the charter so we'd have time to do one last rehearsal before taking off. i rigged a new hanger, from netting and boarding pikes, for the 'Ark of the Kaptaincy' so Olde Nick could command from a dignified position. We switched from Whaler's Dark rum to the more popular, and more expensive, Captain Morgan, fixed our gibbeted skeleton, Jack Bladder, to live up to his name, and Miss Blue revamped the entire Revenge From The Sea website in time for us to promote the cruise on it. 

Omen Thistle (Nikki Carey) painted the cover of our invite to Sea Of Darkness 4… and i spelled 'straits' incorrectly.

    Then, a week before sailing, something almost sank us. Spillit, and myself did a gig where we had to storm a corporate meeting in an office building to sell the CEO on the idea of having a pyrate theme for their upcoming national convention. After a hyper extended Spinal-Tappian search for our client thru the lobbies and back doors of three separate buildings, we boarded an elevator to the top floor. We were to surprise about 60 of the regional directors who had come from all over the country for this meeting.

    Upon emerging, pistols and swords in hand from the elevator, some daft office wench was so startled she hid under her desk and called 911 to tell them that armed terrorists were in the building and there was a hostage situation -because, as everybody knows, terrorists always dress like 17th century buccaneers. (isn't there a law against "piratical-profiling"). We had no idea as we were performing our skit, that the client was downstairs frantically explaining to police that the "armed intruders" were hired performers. 

    Upon our departure we found a lobby full of cops waiting for us.    

    Spillit said: "Sh*t! We'll have to cancel the cruise because they're taking us to Gitmo!" 

    i said: "We're not going to Gitmo, dude. We have pyratical immunity."

    The cops didn't arrest us, they just wanted us to pose for pictures with them. 

    The CEO of the company found out about this the following week when he recieved an angry letter from the Irvine police dept. telling him he should warn people next time he plans to invite pyrates to their corporate meetings. He decided against having a pyrate theme for their convention.

Three days before sailing, Severine phoned me. i always thought of Sev as a knee-jerk contrarian. Her first reaction to anything new was to proclaim it impossible to accomplish or just a bad idea. Thus i took it with a few grains of sea salt when she said: "You know, I was thinking maybe we shouldn't do a performance this time."

    "You don't like the script. Go on, say it! You don't have to beat around the bilge pump with me!"  

    "Honestly," she said. "You've written better shows. Much better. And we haven't had enough time to rehearse anyway." 

    She spoke in a tone of transparent tactfulness but i could tell she hated my script. Well, at least she didn't call it "fine."

Severine. Should i have listened to her? Naaah.

    i considered her advice (only because she was my Most Valuable Pirate). It was true that, even without a show, the voyage itself would be a success because we'd be on a tall ship, out on the water with barrels of rum, cannon firing and musicians playing and wenches dancing in the salty spray. That was what most pirates came for anyway. And we hadn't actually advertised that there would be a show, so we weren't obligated to do it. But, dammit, we'd always done a show on the cruise and people would be expecting one. And i just HAD to do it, i was a pathological performer and had committed to this. There was no going back.

    In the days preceding the voyage my fellow Revengers were all drafted to unpleasant duties like rolling scrolls or chopping coconuts or designing DVD labels until, late in the month of July, by the skin of our few remaining teeth, we managed to launch our fourth Voyage. 

    An anonymous person once said: "The difference between men and boys is the size of their toys." Some people aren't content to play with plastic swords or build model kits of miniature pirate ships, they want a real ship, with cannon and sails, a sea wind to push them onward and cutlasses ringing over a blood splashed deck. And rum, lots of rum. Such people are pirates, and about a hundred of them were gathered at the dock in Long Beach whilst my crew went thru a last minute rehearsal aboard ship. It was the first time we'd all been in the same place at once and only then did i notice how truly awful the show was. 
    Usually a script starts out at about 40 pages and then gets cut down to 20 or less pages during the course of rehearsals so that it doesn't run too long (about 14 minutes is optimal). The one we were performing was 29 pages and there hadn't been time to edit it or to determine which elements would work and which would bomb. So everything was left in. Every. Stupid. Bad Idea. Still, we were going to perform it because, like an addict holding a crack pipe, i just couldn't stop myself.
    My strategy was to wait until an hour into the cruise before starting the performance. Most of the audience would be on their second or third drink by this time hence more receptive to the entertainment. The trouble was that most of the performers would also be a few sheets to the wind by then so i didn't risk waiting any longer than that. 

Drink up! The show'll go down much better.

The Doxy Chix: our soundtrack of the seas.

    Doxy Pox began ringing the ship's bell for attention, then the musicians began a military drum beat and Mr. Spillit was led out in chains to hear the charges against him before his execution. Cassandra speaks out of turn and Crimson Bastard silences her with the line: "Shove a cork in yer blowhole, ye flank-felching mutton strumpet!" 

    The line had been written for Wolf. Bastard delivered it differently than Wolf would have. Not badly, just differently. So something seemed off, right from the beginning (it probably didn't help that the words "flank-felching" dont make any damn sense at all). But things got even more off as we continued. The first bit of banter was Spillit trying to talk his way out of being shot. i'd expected this scene to last a couple minutes but it went on and ploddingly on...

SPILLIT: "Stay yerselves! I may be the new man on this crew, But I do insist I've got the right to a trial!"  

CROW: "Nobody has the right to a trial, Mr. Spillit! Nobody has the right to any rights. Rights are not a right!"  

CRIMSON BASTARD: "Mr. Crow is right!"  

CROW: "Cap ye twig no insurrections fomented by this vain deliverer, this would-be slip gibbeting spawn of a Dover brothel whore who speaketh but to spare himself yer rightful wrath! Heed him not, who would seduce ye by the Devil's own words to the world's far edge and over, into the mouth of Hell itself..."   

DOXY POX: "But sir, it was you who set our course for the Mare Noc---"

CROW: "Dammit, wench! Don't interrupt me when I'm bullshitting the crew! ...Mr Spillit's crimes be of the vilest order since Captain Van Helsing stole my hat!...And my cloak...and my general demeanor and overall characterisation."

CRIMSON BASTARD: "Well Solomon Kane does make the same complaint against you."

CROW: "Must we cut out yet another tongue?"

She wouldn't be Cassandra if she wasn't complaining and fomenting.

     There were a dozen pages of just talk, talk, TALK... Norma Desmond would have hated this crap. Way too much dialogue and not enough bloodletting. What idiot had written this script? Oh, yeah..

    Because no one except the valiant Rillian had their lines well memorized, we drafted Mary Widow to the role of 'Girl Interrupter' and had her carry about a copy of the "unholy scripture," rushing from pyrate to pyrate so they could read their lines -if needed- as the lines came up. Our fiddler, DeAnna, was responsible for 'Accentual Musical Elements,' playing to accompany the performers, much like a film soundtrack. We were so unrehearsed though, she wasn't getting her cues. We were torturing her with all the missing and misdelivered dialogue. 

McAleenan O'Malley (DeAnna): our Musical Martyr.

    The action didn't begin until late in the show, after the audience had suffered yet more talk, and still more talk. Cassandra has been identified as the bringer of the pox which has cursed our ship... 

CROW: "This be the parcel of pubic pestilence which hast infected us! Make a fire! We'll burn her at the mast!"

LOUIE: "Burn her!" 

CRIMSON BASTARD: "Witch! Witch!"

   

    Brandi interferes with this plan, Severine fights Spillit then Brandi fights me. It barely makes any sense at all. This was Brandi's virgin voyage with us so she didn't yet have her bearings on how to avoid hitting the yardarm with her cutlass. Things went wrong. i stopped the show so we could do the fight over again, thinking we might at least get a few good seconds of video out of it. We didn't. It went slightly better but then the squib didn't work. The 69 Splatterer, which i had invented myself and was so proud of, was a FAILURE. It was nigh too much to bear but i pressed on and had Sev cut Brandi's throat over and over until it worked. On the fourth attempt the blood finally shot out properly but it wasn't effective because Brandi was already soaked from the previous three throat cuttings. 

Yet not a drop of blood in her hair...

    i was delirious and unhinged from lack of sleep, i started demanding everyone repeat their lines until the audience was satisfied with their performance. Finally, everyone on the verge of mutiny or tears, we finished the show. 

    In the end my 14 minute skit had gone on for 43 minutes and seven seconds. And my crew probably hated me. At one point, Crimson Bastard had lacerated my finger whilst handing me a dagger, was it intentional? i'm still not sure.

Severine cut Brandi's throat (four times). Thanks, Sev!

    Other than the show, the cruise went fine. The ship was packed to capacity with pyrates. We finished off both barrels of rum and many a strumpet was groped in the twilight as rum-goggles held sway over over her reasoning. The sun was just setting and the band played 'Leave Her' as we drifted into port. 

    As our guests disembarked, each received a "share of plunder," that being a DVD version of 'Sea of Darkness 3' which Wolf had edited together. At least the show had gone well on that one.  Afterward most of us staggered to a tavern on the docks to drink and wench into the late night..

    Upon closing the tavern we commenced the two hour drive back to Hollywood for the wonderful chore of carrying barrels, crates, gibbet cage and skeleton, wooden sign and weapons, and the Kaptain's head, through two security gates and up four flights to my Crow's nest. Spillit and i did the carrying while Mary Widow guarded the vehicle from criminals and parking enforcement. We finished at 4:00 am. They left. i sat on my couch, spent, no longer sober, and quickly comatose.  

    After three hours i was awakened by the telephone and Severine's voice informing me: "We're downstairs. Are you ready?"

    "Ah, sh*t! i'll be right down.." i'd forgotten we had a gig that afternoon. There was no time to shower so i wore mostly the same sweaty, blood stained clothes i'd slept in. If anyone complained i'd tell them today was 'Smell Like a Pirate Day.'

    The hangover kicked in like a rosary of pain, like a sounding iron dropping on my skull. The heathen gods of land and sea (and theatre too, probably) were punishing me for my terrible performance yesterday. i swallowed three asprins with a half bottle of beer, pulled myself together post-sloth and staggered downstairs to meet the others. 

    Sev spoke first: "Gooooood morning!"

    "Please don't be cheerful. It might get you killed..."

    We had to do four shows that day. One of them went really, really well. The other three? Let's just open some rum and drink away that memory...

The lesson to be learned from all of this: If someone, anyone, tells you that your script is "fine," it's best to just scrap the entire damned thing and start over. 

Godspeed.

Much thanks to Golden Image, and Fourth Realm Foto for sharing pictures and video!

Mutiny Magazine #17 Weighs Anchor

My new column in Mutiny Magazine concerns the backstage complications of Pirate Theatre and pirate performers, much like this very blog. Heck, it's even named after this blog... 

Mutiny #17 can be found HERE.

Read Free or Die!

Sea of Darkness 3: Inveiglement, Sophistry, Epiphenomenalism

Concerning Revenge From The Sea's third Voyage and Complications 

overcome to achieve said Venture, viz; the slothful Saboteurs and irrational 

Accords endured by our valiant Crewe in their Pursuit of theatrical 

Grace. With certain Names altered to protect the easily butthurt...

In most cases no single actor can save a show yet any one actor can ruin it. When someone screws up during performance somebody else has to cover for them and a painful truth of theatre is that the one doing the covering is usually perceived by the audience to be the one screwing up. For this reason most troupers are wary of going onstage with anyone they suspect is unprepared, or incompetent. Yet it's a pirate's lot that such situations will occur.. 

Lazarus drew the invite cover for the third cruise.

     In Los Angeles there are plenty of people who want to be movie stars but far fewer who are competent actors, and fewer still who own a proper costume/cutlass/pistol/etc., hence during my early years of pirating, casting a show required lowering the usual theatrical standards and settling for people who were already pirates. 
     i'd never believed that talent or experience mattered as much as reasonable intelligence and a work ethic. To show up at the requisite time and make a good-faith effort to do the work was all i asked. If anyone drank liquor during rehearsals i wouldn't give them some soberer-than-thou rebuke, most pirates drank, as long as they knew their lines and blocking it didn't matter. Lazarus came to rehearsals sober but he would be drunk during performances. i still considered him one of the better performers though because he never complained about things and there were certain lines he could deliver better than anyone else, like the definitions. Whenever any character used an obscure or uber-nautical term that the landlubbers in the audience wouldn't understand, (i.e., Moses Law, Keel-hauling, Rosary of Pain, Marooned, etc.)  Lazarus would follow by defining that term for everybody. But whether he remembered the definitions depended on how much he'd drank, and there was no way to predict that.

Bastard and Wolf.

    In Sea of Darkness 3 my character, Mr. Crow, insists the reason they've all been lost at sea for three years is because the crew's refusal to stop frigging has lost them favor with the Lord. Lazarus stepped forward to define the word "Frigging."

Scripturally, the scene went thus:

CROW: "Faith indeed, if we are to rediscover His graces and hence find the isle we seek, you must all refrain from this incessant, unholy, and nigh constant frigging!"

LAZARUS: "Frigging: That kindly, though solitary, easement of nature commonly practiced by seafaring men particularly on lengthy and arduous voyages when feminine compire is most lacking. Their worn and calloused hands, indeed providing but the barest relief from that incessant and reoccurring swelling which doth afflict and torment them."

But Lazarus had some difficulty with the line:

Here's Lazarus blowing his line at the final rehearsal, 

yet still not nearly the worst actor in the show.

    After Lazarus blew the line four times at our final shipboard rehearsal i tore that page out of the script and pasted just the one line on the side of his tankard. During the show he held it blatantly in view of everyone yet still read the line incorrectly. He didn't break character at all though and the crappy delivery came across so natural it didn't detract from the efficacy of the scene. No one really expected Lazarus to know his lines because he wasn't an actor; just a pirate pretending to be an actor.

Lazarus eventually paid for his lack of preparation.

    Lazarus was worth the trouble he brought because he was a good enough pirate that his acting skills were irrelevant. Not everybody justified the rest of us hauling their weight though. i knew who was good and who wasn't, and scripted the shows so the good pirates got the bigger parts. This caused some grumbling by the incompetents, several of whom quit (as i'd hoped they would), so by the time we did Sea of Darkness 3 there were enough good pirates to carry the show and we were stuck with only a few useless people. A vestigal Idiot Faction.
    Nobody is discouraged by a bad actor who is trying to do better, but the ones who don't even try are a poison to the morale of everybody else.
    Two of this Idiot Faction were blatantly detrimental to the show. Their very presence was dispiriting to the people who were actually working. These wankers had nothing to offer yet felt entitled to be involved simply because they'd been around so long (that is, they were too dense to realize nobody liked them or wanted them around). You probably know their type: lazy, complainers, excuse-makers, takers of frequent cigarette breaks, habitual fomenters of gratuitous interpersonal drama, constantly affronted by irrelevancies, gigantic egos with irrationally high estimations of what they contributed to the shows. Eventually i outright fired these morons but in those days i had to make Faustian deals just so the shows could go on at all.  
    One of the Idiots, Monkeyass, (i'll just use the name the others used when speaking of him) had the line immediately following Lazarus definition of frigging:

MONKEYASS: "Do you mean waxing the bowsprit?"

LOUIE: "I think he means climbing the mast one-handed."

DOXY POX (losing patience with their idiocy): "He means jerking-off!" (she moves her hand bell in an illustrative motion)

CROW (to Doxy): "Measure thy words! Abbreviation is kin to sloth and is the Devil's playground."

WOLF: "Well so is my left hand!"

    i had triaged that line to Monkeyass because i knew that if he blew it (as i expected him to) Louie would be there to immediately deliver his own line and give Doxy her set up. The line could be omitted completely without effecting the scene at all. i didn't think the scene itself was funny though. When the crowd cheered and clapped for Doxy's line i attributed that to their drunkenness and her bawdy delivery. The "dumbing down" of the dialogue from Lazarus lengthy definition to Doxy's quick punchline seemed very obvious and downright uncreative. The joke was almost dependent on the audience being drunk.

Doxy Pox practices her delivery.

   i decided to reverse the concept: Rather than 'dumbing down' the joke we would 'wise it up.' Instead of reiterating an idea in ever simpler terms until the crew finally grasped it, we'd go the opposite direction and restate it in degrees of escalating complexity, finally culminating in a sesquipedalian gallimaufry of six-syllable words forming an overlong sentence our audience would be tortured to comprehend. It wouldn't be gibberish, it would convey a specific and clear idea, the logic would just be difficult to follow. Having established with the "frigging" joke that the crew were simpletons, this reversal of the approach would be unexpected and, hopefully, funny.
    i worked hours on just the one line, an act of pure science: first listing a few dozen five and six-syllable words then struggling to cram as many of them as possible into a single sentence which conveyed a definable thought. Wolf was the only one i trusted could handle the line. i presented him the page of script as a challenge to his thespianic skills. i didn't actually think this would challenge him -he'd been an actor since he was five years old and starred on Broadway at age six- but hoped if i expressed some doubt in his abilities he'd be inspired to excel all the further.  (Yes, i really did read Dale Carnegie and remember some of it)

Al Pacino and B.J. Barie (the future Wolf Dekardson) in 'Author, Author'
That kid could act!
    The Idiot Faction of the cast were impressed by the long words and thought it must require a supremely skilled actor to remember and deliver such dialogue. But i thought the big words by themselves almost substituted for delivery: they just sounded like great acting no matter how you said them (unless you said them incorrectly). i began to apply simpleton-psychology to Bugger and Monkeyass whenever one would screw up during rehearsals: "Dude," i would ask, "If Wolf can memorize that long and inhumanly complicated line why can't you even remember to say 'Aye!' on cue?" Wolf went along with this too, playing up the difficulty of the line to the point where the rest of us were treating him as though the entire show depended on his getting that one thing right. The Idiot Faction would shut up their complaining for a moment but neither would work any harder, they just came up w/ new excuses for their failures. 

Scripturally, the scene went:

WOLF: "Quiet! Now be cautious! We all know Mr. Crow has a dodgy way of speaking so don't let him confuse ye with his quick words."

LOUIE: "Quick words? What do ye mean by that?"

LAZARUS: "Aye! What does that mean?"

     (several others express their lack of understanding..)

WOLF: "I mean don't let him bamboozle ye with his double-talk!"

LOUIE: "I still don't understand."

LAZARUS: "Nor do I."

    (others reiterate that they don't understand either..)

WOLF: "I mean don't let him attempt inveiglement of your perceptions via sophistries appealing to yer subjective predispositions to the point of obfuscation of our collective intentions by exploiting susceptibilities often epiphenomenal to your inebriate dispositions!"

BUGGER: "Oh, I get it!"

LAZARUS: "Why didn't ye just say so?"

RUBY: "Long winded son of a Dutchman..."

       (the rest of the crew express their sudden comprehension as well) 

Here's Wolf getting it ALMOST perfect in the final, shipboard rehearsal.

    i construed Wolf's long line as a balloon being blown up to complete fullness as he delivered the words, the words filling it to nigh bursting, followed by a half-second pause and then: "Oh, I get it!" spoken fast, like a pinprick, bursting that fat balloon in a loud, sudden POP! 
    But Bugger didn't POP the balloon as intended. No, he just let the air out of it steadily, gradually. He didn't quickly proclaim: "Oh, I get it!" Instead he said: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh, I-I-I-I get it..." Rather than the punctuating 'POP!' it was just a slow deflation to nothing followed by the others who had waited for him to finish before they piped in with their own lines. Instead of a gloriously shocking loud noise followed by laughter, Bugger's delivery left us with just an empty balloon, limp and wasted. He may as well have been a deliberate saboteur. 
    Why had i cast this undisciplined moron? Oh yeah, because he had whined and begged to be in the show and -idiot that i was- i pitied him. My bad. My very, very Bad. i learned from this experience that an effective director must be Without Pity for anyone or anything except the show itself. 
    My mission now was to thwart the Idiots so that the competent people could shine. To save the joke somebody else would have to deliver the line. But Bugger wouldn't just forfeit his dialogue to another, better, actor. He was difficult. A Four Star General of the Butt-Hurt Brigade, he would pout and be a bitch about things and slow down the rehearsal process with his bullshit when we were too close to the performance date to waste time dealing with nonsense. i had to be crafty.
    On the very last day of rehearsals, after weeks of insisting the performers not step on one another's lines, i took Doxy Pox aside during a break and told her: "i need you to betray one of your fellow actors."
    "What do you mean?"
    "i want you to step on his line, to actually say it before he does. Quicker, and louder too, than he does. Steal the punch from him before he ruins it."
    "Whose line?" 
    "Bugger's."
    "Hell yes, I'll do it. He sucks and he's an a**hole!"
    i didn't even have to explain which line i was referring to, she knew.
    "Don't do it in this rehearsal though. Wait until the actual performance so he doesn't know it's going to happen."
    "Easy."
    "Thank you," i whispered. "You're saving the show."
    "I know."

    One of the setup lines got blown and other things went wrong but Wolf delivered his line perfectly (people even applauded) and Doxy Pox came in just in time, loud enough to follow it to maximum effect. So the joke worked, mostly, and the show was saved.

    Mary Widow had printed up two documents on parchment paper, one of them affirming that Wolf had, indeed, delivered his line correctly and awesomely "..as witnessed by all of the crew." the other declaring that Wolf had "royaly screwed up and failed" to deliver the line. We intended presenting one or the other to Wolf after the performance to commemorate his success or failure.
    We got about half the crew to sign them, thinking the rest could sign on the ship. But the 'success' paper got misplaced and left ashore. 
    "Damn!" i said, "Wolf won't get his commemorative document."
    "Unless he blows the line," said Mary. "I still have the 'fail' one." So Mary went about the crowded ship, dodging drunken pirate-folk, surreptitiously getting the rest of the crew to sign it. 
    Wolf, of course, delivered the line perfectly, ergo it was with some apologies that we had to present him with a parchment proclaiming his complete and utter failure. 
    Oh well. Sorry, Wolf.

    A few years later that original parchment, the 'success' one which had been left ashore, turned up in a pile of documents betwixt D.B. Cooper's birth certificate and William Kidd's privateering commission. Behold:

To the Sea...

Mutiny Magazine broke the briny on Saturday last, for their Order of Leviathan induction cruise aboard Revenge From The Sea's preferred vessel, the American Pride. Attending were pirates from divers crews and distant ports, all of whom agreed that there are few greater sins against the piratical aesthetic than a carnival cruise ship in the background of an otherwise superlative moment.

(Thanks to Mary Widow for the video and Pirates Charles for the music.)

Days of Low Adventure

From the Revenge archives circa 2006:

Illustration by Martin Abel (Here's his Official Website )

During those unspeakable horrors known to Revengers as "cruise preparations" we were asked to perform at something called the Hollywood Pirates Ball, which would take place at the Key Club, one of my favorite music venues. The Key Club was on Sunset Blvd. at the very site where the famous Gazzari's rock club had stood from the 1960s to sometime in the early 90s. Old Bill Gazzari, the 'Godfather of Rock'  would do radio commercials where he liked to point out that this was "..the same stage where the Doors, Van Halen, and Ratt started!" i'd always wanted to play Gazzari's on a Saturday night and here, at last, was my chance. Never mind that we weren't actually a rock band. Band of musicians, band of pirates; the difference was trifling.

    There was no profit in it for us, only a promise (which remains unkept) that we'd receive a video copy of our performance. We didn't have time to put an act together and there was a certain lack of enthusiasm among the others to do this unpaid gig. In fact, it wasn't until the morning of the event that i exerted my dictatorial influence to get them to do it at all.     

   

   After a long and despairing morning of cruise rehearsals, i asked my core pyrates to stay late. i opened my first beer of the morning and told them: "Let's just take the next hour and pull a show out of our arses and then go and do this thing tonight!" The decision had been made.

    We arrived an hour before stage time and were led thru the crowded club and out a door to the back rooms and out another door and to our dressing room, which was an old tour bus parked in the alley behind the back exit of the building. There were couches and a mirror and a plastic bucket full of ice and beer. Naturally, i wondered if this was the same tour bus "where the Doors, Van Halen, and Ratt" had drank beer before their gigs (it looked old enough). The walls and ceiling and floor were covered in band stickers. It looked like every single band that ever played here had left a sticker. There wasn't a square inch of surface that didn't have a sticker on it. Severine spoke first: "I've got one of our bumper stickers!"

Brandi, Bullet, Severine in the bus.

    She pulled it from her bag. It was a big, lame-arsed oversized rectangle that someone had rush printed for us one night when we were desperate. Black lettering on white, sans even a jolly-roger, that read: "My Chest Was Plundered by Crewe of Revenge." It was embarrassingly clumsy to behold.

    After several minutes scanning for the perfect spot to stick it, she gave up. It was just too damned big, there wasn't enough empty space to stick it on and Sev refused to cover any of the other stickers, "That would be really rude of us," she said.

    "But we're pyrates. It's our privilege to be rude!" 

    "No." she said, and opened a beer. "You guys just really need to make some smaller stickers."
    "Actually, we need to make cooler stickers."

    That was six months ago and we still need cooler stickers.

Key Club.

    We drank and practiced our skit in the space betwixt the bus and the building. The girls had come up with something they wanted to surprise me with, so they wouldn't rehearse in front of me. This irritated me because if their "surprise" happened to suck i, as the director, would be blamed for it. i grilled Brandi to tell me what it was. "No!" she said. "Sev and i worked all week on it, and it's a surprise."

   "You know what?" i said. "You're fired!"

   "Oh, you'll just hire me back again tomorrow."

   "Not this time! There's the plank, take a walk."

    She didn't move.

    Spillit kept interrupting our practice to talk to the groupies who were watching from outside the alley gate. He had been assigned groupie-duty since he was the only single pyrate in the show. Sporadically, we ran thru our half-arsed sword moves.

    "Dude," said Spillit. "You really have to stop firing Brandi all the time."

    "Dude, quit yer bellyaching and go grope a groupie. Or else we can do something bizarre and drastic like rehearse our fight a couple more times so we don't completely suck tonight."     

    He walked toward the gate where a wench in a skirt and biker boots was waving at him. i opened another beer.

Other vaguely piratical acts.

     Louie wasn't performing with us this night. We hadn't even seen him at all since he'd started POTC3. But he had made it out to the Pirates Ball and was hanging with us -if only for the free beer- and when we went to the backstage door he came with us. 

    i entered from stage right a minute before the others and immediately i knew that something was wrong. Most of the time we have to perform a good show and win over the crowd before they cheer for us but this time i just had to walk out onto the stage and they were screaming bloody mad. i hadn't even done anything yet. It didn't make sense.

Brandi, Spillit, Bullet: Live on the Sunset strip. (pic by Tiger Lee)

    Spillit and i had some dialogue but we weren't wearing microphones and the crowd was never quiet enough to hear it, so we gave up and just pantomimed some business which included him throwing a coin toward me as an insult, thus provoking our fight. It went over fantastically. They laughed and then cheered as the swords came out then pressed toward the stage during the fight. The girl's were next and their "surprise" was the addition of breakaway clothes, which they tore off of each other during their catfight. i liked it and so did everyone else, apparently. Brandi and i then did a double-cutlass duel to climax the show and then we were done. The whole thing had lasted about six minutes.

Severine.

Brandi and Sev.

    Louie had followed us out onto the stage and when we took our bows he came right up to the front and bowed alongside the rest of us even though he hadn't actually done anything in the show. That took nerve and i totally respected him for it. What a f**king pirate!

    i noticed my hand had been bloodied during the show but i couldn't locate the cut...

    Back in the tour bus, Spillit asked me: "Did you hear that crowd?"

    "Yes," i said. "But something's wrong. We just can't be that f**king popular."

    "We're not," he said. "Remember what you did on that pyrate cruise? When you planted people in the audience?"

    "You mean quackers? To incite the crowd..."

    "Yeah. I put Adam out there. I told him to get some of his friends and to all scream loud as hell as soon as we came onstage."

    "How many friends did he have?"

    "Only like three, they were just really loud and got everyone else going!"

    "Sh*t! i'm gonna buy him a beer!"

    Some rocker kid stopped me at the bar. "You guys were f**king great! That was the coolest sh*t I ever saw!!"

    "Thanks," i said, and dove into my first rum and coke of the evening. The kid didn't go away.

    "I'm Steven," he said. "I'm writing an article about the Pirates Ball. Can I interview you?"

    The last thing i felt like doing was talking to him but.. "Alright." i said. (we're media whores, have you noticed?) "Just promise me you won't say 'arrrgh'."

    "Why not?"

    "Either promise or i won't talk to you."

    "Okay."

Louie, Brandi, Bullet.

    There was beer in the trailer so we went there. He said he'd arrived just as our show started so he missed the performances before us. i told him what happened, careful to mention only our friends by name, viz: Shelby, Courtney, and the Scarlett Harlott, of course.

  We had been playing up the rock star/pyrate parallels in every interview for the past few months so i encouraged him to use that angle. After we plied him with beer and sent him on his way, Sev asked: "Do you think he'll give us a good write up?" 

    "Of course he will. i told him you'd hack him to death with your cutlass if he said anything bad about us. He's terrified now."

   She laughed. "Damn! I never would have thought of threatening a reporter."

   "Well, you're not the only one who knows how to work the media."

In the interview i'd had to spin some of the difficulties we'd had that night... 

SPUN 

(from Rock City News): 

According to Bullet: "We made a point not to use any of our usual FX. No gunshots, blood splatterings or bottles breaking over heads. We wanted this one to stand on just the sword work alone. Like an acoustic set. Revenge: Unplugged."

UNSPUN 

(what really happened): 

Sev forgot to bring the breakaway bottle, Bullet brought the blood squibs but forgot to fill them before going on stage (he'd been drinking), the venue threatened to sue us if we used gun powder. 

    A few weeks later it was on the newsstands. Spillit called me as soon as he read it. "Accoustic set?" he said. "What kind of bullsh*t did you shovel on that guy?" 

    To which i could only retort: "Dude. If it was in Rock City News, it MUST be true!"

   Well, as you know, the dedicated pirates of Revenge were born and are destined to suffer, and to that end we had to awaken early the next day as Spillit, Louie, and myself were committed to do an appearance in Long Beach. Ah, those wonderful post-pyrating hangovers! 

   i began suffering land-sickness during the ride but a quick stop to lean out the door and things were much less bad. Pyrate Wisdom: Always remove your seatbelt before casting up accounts.

   We stopped for a bottle of rum and drank it in a hurry as we gassed up the car. i began to feel optimistic after a few swigs of the pirate potion. i found my bottle of sunscreen, alcohol based, and squeezed some onto my left hand. Immediately i located my wounds from the previous night.          

    "AAaaaaaagghhh, sh*t!!" 

    There were four small, almost invisible cuts at the base of my fingers. i blamed Brandi for it.        

    "That bitch! She's fired! She's so f**king fired! i'll kill her!" 

    My pirate brothers only mocked my misery.

    Louie: "Oh my god! He fired Brandi!"

    Spillit: "Again? You bastard!"

   And the worst was yet to come...