Filed July 25, 2006 at 9:59 pm under Boring Stuff by TJ
I am not quite sure what I was looking for at the time, but I ran acrossed a couple of websites for Chris Gaines. To some, he is a rock star from the 80’s-90’s band “Crush”. To others, he’s just a fictional character from Garth Brooks head. You see, Chris Gaines is a fictional rock singer, created as an alter ego by Garth Brooks. From some of the websites out there, you’d have a hard time believing that Chris Gaines is less than real, because the back story. Some real thought went into creating this alter ego.
If I remember correctly, the album that Chris… Er… I mean Garth… came up with was pretty good, I did like Garth and a few other country “crossover” type country rock singers, and I’m pretty suprised I never broke down and actually bought this album. I may have to see if I can find a copy on half.com. The album is called: Garth Brooks In … The Life of Chris Gaines.Â
The whole concept got me thinking about all the other music stars with alter egos. There are a bunch of them I could think of right off the top of my head: David Bowie as Ziggie Stardust, Paul McCartney as Paul Ramone, Jim Morrison as “The Lizard King” and not directly music related, but Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton or Latka Gravas.
I’ve always been a fan of Andy Kaufman from way back in the Taxi days, and using him as a good example, alter egos are only believable if they have a good back story. Andy Kaufman was always great at the back story, so I’ll use him as an example… Kaufman and his best friend Bob Zmuda wrote their own screenplay which was a biography of Tony Clifton and had been planning on making it into a movie. Tony Clifton could have been a real person with real history, because, no matter if Andy or Bob was playing the Tony character, they had enough of the back story on “Tony” to be able to answer questions, or really be able to comfortably transform into the character. Andy was a great actor, and, as an actor, they can transition into their characters easy enough in front of a camera, but I believe, with a good back story, they can really transition into the character in any situation with little effort.
Back to the origional example, Garth came up with a pretty detailed back story for Chris Gaines as well, enough of a back story to write a movie about it. We’re talking about a real backstory that turns the person into their alter ego, not just an accountant that turns into a Harley Riding weekend warrior for the weekend…
I think with a great imagination to come up with a good back story, you, I or anyone else can come up with a good alter ego, and I am sure that some of the people who come across this blog have a good story to share about their alter egos. Doesn’t matter if it’s an alter ego you use at the bar to pick up chicks/guys, or one you use in non-every day situations, I’d love to hear about them, please feel free to send me an email, or better yet, just leave me a comment with the story.Â
We’ll call it a bit of “research” on my part, as I have a great idea for a short story that, knowing how I procrastinate on these things, will likely never get very far, but I think this could be a pretty fun thing for all of us to talk about, unfortunatly, I don’t have any alter egos myself, so I can’t start the discussions with my alter ego, so tell me about you – who else are you?
Filed July 9, 2006 at 12:22 pm under Pirate Info by TJ
Avast, me hearties! What with that thar openin’ of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, we be thinkin’ it high time to bone up on yer knowledge o’ buccaneers, buried treasure an’ scurvy dogs. So, I’ve seen th’ movie twice now, helpin’ add t’ the’r all-time-record blockbuster weekend (Weekend Estimates: Pirates Opens with $132 Million), an’ will likely be seein’ ‘t again tonight wi’ me lovely buxom beauty, now that she be ou’ o’ th’ hospital. I think ’tis about time fer a sea dog info update.Â
Â
Anatomy of a pirate
The eye patch: Some people think pirates wore eye patches to help their vision adjust quickly from the bright sunlight on deck to the dark underbelly of the ship.
The peg leg: Real-life French pirate Francois LeClerc — he liked to burn villages in the Dominican Republic — is supposed to have had a wooden leg.
The hook: It was quite easy to lose a limb while living the pirate life (see PEG LEG). But no real pirates are known to have worn hooks. Although it would help explain the preponderance of eye patches . . .
The earring: It could have been a way to ease seasickness (by putting pressure on the earlobe), or a way to carry ready cash without taking up pocket space.
The bandana: To keep the sweat out of your eyes.
The three-cornered hat: To keep the sun and rain out of your eyes. Pirates were really quite sensible in their dress.
The parrot: Real-life pirates were probably much too practical to keep exotic pets. Although they would have nothing against taking them on as cargo to sell in port to the highest bidder.
A brief history of piracy
Technically, pirates are nothing more than robbers on water, and they’ve been around since ancient times, hectoring Greek and Roman ships. The highlights:
The corsairs: Pirates in the Mediterranean Sea from the 1400s to the 1700s. There were Muslim corsairs — the most famous were the red-bearded Barbarossa brothers, who operated along Africa’s Barbary Coast — and Christian corsairs. Rather than plunder treasure, they tended to kidnap seagoers and hold them for ransom, or sell them as slaves.
The buccaneers: These are the ones we’ve romanticized. They operated mainly in the Caribbean from around 1680 to 1730 — the “Golden Age of Piracy.” After Christopher Columbus claimed the Americas, the Spanish started mining their new colonies for silver, gold, gems and spices, which were sailed back to Europe in large galleon ships. The Caribbean coast of the Spanish empire became known as the Spanish Main. What self-respecting pirate could resist?
Privateers: Legal pirates who were commissioned by a government to attack enemy ships, and were paid with a share of the plunder. England and the nascent United States commissioned a lot of privateers. There was always an extremely thin line between pirate and privateer.
Modern times: Piracy is still very much alive and well, only now the pirates are armed with machine guns instead of machetes. There are several hundred reported pirate attacks every year, mostly off the coast of Somalia and in Indonesian waters. Pirates usually target merchant ships, but headlines were made late last year when two small boatfuls of pirates, armed with machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade, attacked a cruise ship near Somalia. The cruise ship outran them.
Pirate FAQ
Q: What is a buckler and how do you swash it?
A: To swash means to move about noisily. A buckler is a shield. Therefore, a swashbuckler is somebody who makes a lot of noise in battle, by banging on a shield with a sword.
Q: Who is Roger, and why is he so jolly?
A: The Jolly Roger, the fearsome skull-and-crossbones flag, probably got its name from the French jolie rouge, or pretty red. A pirate ship would fly a red flag to signal that no mercy would be shown in battle. Most ships would simply surrender rather than fight.
Q: Who is Davy Jones?
A: In sailor mythology, he is the devil who presides over the deep. One legend holds that an unscrupulous pub owner named David Jones used to pack inebriated men into his ale locker and ship them off to sea. Or it could be taken from duffy, a West Indian word for ghost, and Jonah, the prophet who spent some time inside a whale. Davy Jones was also one of the Monkees; we have no idea what’s in his locker.
Q: What are pieces of eight?
A: Units of currency based on the silver Spanish dollar coin, which was in worldwide circulation by the end of the 18th century. The coins were frequently cut into eight bits, hence the slang “pieces of eight” (and also “two bits”). A doubloon was a Spanish gold coin.
Q: What is the Flying Dutchman?
A: A ghost ship, doomed to wander the seas forever, with no hope of finding safe haven. The original Flying Dutchman is said to haunt the Cape of Good Hope, and was immortalized in poetry by Sir Walter Scott and in opera by Richard Wagner.
Q: What type of socks do pirates wear?
A: Arrrrrgyle.
Q: What’s a pirate’s favorite city?
A: Arrrrrlington.
Q: What’s a pirate’s favorite animal?
A: The aarrrrrdvaark.
Q: Who is a pirate’s favorite basketball player?
A: Kareem Abdul Jabarrrrr.
Q: How much did the pirate pay for corn on the cob?
A: A buck an ear.
Our favorite real pirates
Blackbeard: Not to be confused with Bluebeard, the fairy-tale pirate, or with Redbeard, the legendary Dallas DJ. Blackbeard (real name Edward Teach) was renowned as the fiercest pirate to sail the seas. He did indeed have a huge black beard, which he liked to decorate with black ribbons — or, in battle, with smoking fuses. He supposedly had 14 wives and 40 children. From a base in North Carolina, Blackbeard worked the Caribbean and the East Coast of America. He was killed in 1718 after a fearsome duel with a British lieutenant.
Sir Henry Morgan: Captain Morgan, as he’s known on the rum bottle, was Jamaica’s most beloved pirate. In the service of Britain, he looted and routed the Spanish throughout the West Indies. He was knighted and named lieutenant governor of Jamaica, although he never really settled down into respectable life. He was given a hero’s burial when he died in 1688.
Jean Lafitte: Known as “The Gentleman Pirate,” Lafitte operated out of New Orleans. He helped defend the city against the British in the War of 1812, which won him a presidential pardon. But as New Orleans grew, Lafitte was pushed out, and resettled his pirate band on Galveston Island. From there, his fate remains a mystery.
Sir Francis Drake: Yes, the legendary British naval hero is considered a pirate — albeit one of the most legitimate and successful ones. Drake served Queen Elizabeth I as a privateer, attacking Spanish ships. In 1580, Drake became the first Englishman to sail around the world, and he brought home one of the greatest booties ever plundered; it would be worth maybe $70 million today. The queen was so pleased she made Drake the mayor of the colony at Plymouth.
Captain William Kidd: He started his career as a British privateer, but then he attacked several ships of the influential East India Trading Company, so Britain declared him a criminal instead. Kidd fled to New York with a chest of treasure which he supposedly buried in the Connecticut River, before he was captured and hanged.
Black Bart: One of the last in the Golden Age of Piracy, Bartholomew Roberts captured more than 400 ships in less than four years. He was killed in 1722, in a barrage of cannon fire from a British naval ship.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read: The “pirate queens,” as they were known, sailed with Calico Jack. Bonny had left her husband to take up with the pirate, and their crew was joined by Read, who was disguised as a man. When Read’s secret came out, she and Bonny became fast friends. When their ship was finally captured by the British in 1720, Bonny and Read fought more ferociously than the men.
Lady Mary Killigrew: A member of the British aristocracy, Lady Killigrew loved to go pirating along the coast of Cornwall. But after a particularly brutal raid, she ran afoul of Queen Elizabeth I, who sentenced her to death, before relenting and pardoning her.
Black Caesar: Some say he was an African king, escaped from a slave ship. Others say he was a slave born on a French plantation in Haiti, who fought for his country’s independence, then turned to piracy. He worked out of the Florida Everglades — great place to hide treasure.
Shawn Fanning: Many consider the founder of the music-sharing Napster a scoundrel of a pirate.
Our favorite pop-culture pirates
Captain Jack Sparrow: Johnny Depp’s Oscar-nominated performance in the first Pirates of the Caribbean is a masterpiece of understated comedy. Oh, those eyes! His mastery of the sword! His flailing limbs and drunken slur! It’s enough to make you forget about that remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Long John Silver: The treacherous, traitorous pirate from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (played by Robert Newton in the 1950 Disney movie) is the basis for many of our pirate stereotypes. He’s missing a leg, he buries treasure, he has a pet parrot. Plus he makes pretty good fried fish, especially if you can get extra crunchies.
Captain Hook: Peter Pan’s one-handed nemesis — his missing appendage was eaten by that ticking crocodile — is a bit of a fop, with a variety of hooks for different occasions. For extra credit: Discuss the evolution of Hook from the J.M. Barrie play and novel, through Disney’s cartoon to Dustin Hoffman’s fey portrayal in the live-action Hook.
Errol Flynn: Starting with his breakthrough role in Captain Blood in 1935, he put the swash in buckle.
The Dread Pirate Roberts: From The Princess Bride novel and movie, this most romantic of pirates dresses all in black, and is reputed to leave no survivors.
The Pirate King: Leader of the band of soft-hearted orphan pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance. The Pirate King’s nemesis is a very model of a modern major general.
The Sea Captain: The beloved Simpsons character, the owner of the Frying Dutchman restaurant, is not openly a pirate, although he has two glass eyes and says “arrrrrr” an awful lot.
Captain Feathersword: This friendly kids’ pirate consorts with The Wiggles. He carries a giant magenta feather for a sword, with which he tickles his victims.
Pittsburgh Pirates: They started playing baseball in 1887 as the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, before switching to the more fearsome name in 1891. Not to be confused with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Oakland Raiders.
Jimmy Buffett: The pirate be lookin’ at 60 this year.
Talk Like a Pirate Day
A few years back, in the middle of a racquetball game, two guys from Oregon — John Baur and Mark Summers — started talking like pirates, and it stuck. They decided to make an annual celebration of it: “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” Sept. 19.
Four years ago, Dave Barry wrote about it, and now people send in photos of themselves, their babies and even their pets dressed up as pirates. They’re posted at www.talklikeapirate.com — along with party tips, a pirate glossary, an English-to-pirate translator, a pirate personality test and more.
So how do you talk like a pirate? The folks at Talk Like a Pirate Day (U.K. edition) offer these general tips:
1. Double up on all your adjectives. Instead of “a big ship,” it’s “a great, grand ship!”
2. Drop all your g’s. “Rowin,’ ” “sailin’ ” and “fightin.’ ”
3. Drop all your v’s. “Ne’er,” “e’er” and “o’er.”
4. Instead of “I am,” say “I be.” Instead of “you are,” say “you be.”
5. Ne’er speak in anythin’ but the present tense!
6. If it be helpin’, start yer sentence wi’ a “Arr, me hearty,” in a deep, throaty voice. Ye’ll find that the rest be comin’ much easier!
Pirate speak: Yo-ho!
The most famous use of “yo-ho” is in a poem in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest/Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” — taken from a legend in which Blackbeard stranded 15 men on an island known as Dead Man’s Chest, with only a bottle of rum and a sword apiece.
The famous pirate song Yo Ho Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me) was written in 1967 for the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean. “We extort, we pilfer, we filch, and sack . . . Maraud and embezzle and even high-jack.” Hmmmm, sounds like corporate raiders.
Pirate yarrrrrns
Some piratical literature for the lads and lassies:
How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long: Young Jeremy Jacob gets to join the crew of Captain Braid Beard. He learns there are upsides to the pirate life (no teeth-brushing!) and downsides (no bedtime stories). David Shannon’s illustrations are a hoot, especially the pirate with two eye patches.
Roger, the Jolly Pirate by Brett Helquist: The tale of a lousy pirate, from the illustrator of the Lemony Snicket books. Roger is simply much too jolly, and must endure the scorn of his shipmates — until he saves the day by baking a cake in a cannon.
The Ballad of the Pirate Queens by Jane Yolen: An unromaticized look at real-life female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, told half in verse, with sumptuous illustrations by David Shannon.
Pirateology: The Pirate Hunter’s Companion: The latest in the popular “Ologies” series of kids’ history books will be released July 11. Pirate history is presented in the guise of a rollicking yarn, complete with lots of flaps, maps, charts and booklets.
Pirate: DK Eyewitness Books brings its in-depth, lushly illustrated style to the study of buccaneers.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson: The mother of all pirate stories. Young Jim Hawkins goes in search of buried treasure, only to be doublecrossed by Long John Silver.
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson: Yes, that’s humorist Dave Barry, and this is a rollicking, goofy prequel to Peter Pan, in which an 8-year-old Peter joins his 14-year-old shipmate, Molly Aster, in a quest to keep magical “starstuff” out of the hands of bad guys.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore by Sid Fleischman: A humorous tale in which young Edmund Amos Peters gets mixed up with pirates and the 1846 Mexican-American War.
Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy by L.A. Meyer: The first in a series of novels about the orphaned 8-year-old Mary, who disguises herself as a boy and joins a ship’s crew, where she battles pirates and growing up.
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes: After a hurricane destroys their home in Jamaica, the five Bas-Thorton children find refuge on a pirate ship, and find they enjoy their horrible new way of life. This 1929 novel has been described as Lord of the Flies, but with refreshing irony.
The 1973 MG Midget is for sale as well…
