Yaaarrrrrrrrgh!

Scene I:
A street corner in Minneapolis about 8:00 AM in late August. A hobo walks down the street toward me. The first thing I notice is the smile gaping in his soiled visage. Not the usual glazed smile of the inebriated and insane, but a real genuine, hearty, roguish smile paired with a set of glinting baby blues. Curving over the top of the smile is a thick mustache that manages to be bushy and yet at the same time curl up rakishly at the corners---reminiscent, perhaps, of more muscular incarnation of the famed whiskers of Dalí. This singular lip-mane is matched by a lustrous black mullet that falls in Jacobean fashion, cascading abundantly down both sides of the shoulders. This man is wearing a dirty loose-fitting, red shirt, tucked into a pair of close-fitting black jeans that cover the tops of a pair of scuffed patent-leather loafers with gold-colored accents.

Scene II:
A flashback. Two weeks ago I sit on a couch with my brother, visiting from New York. He shows me the website of a band called dark dark dark. I wonder if it's an allusion to Milton or Eliot. Or if Eliot is alluding to Milton. My brother clicks on a demo song and the eerie sounds of a squeeze box begin to emanate from the computer, punctuated at regular intervals with percussion that sounds oddly like breaking glass. (Apparently this band was playing in Mpls the night we got back from Nauvoo, but we didn't go.)

Conclusion:
It must be time for me to list my top five pirate songs. I am not picking actual authentic pirate tunes (that would be too obscure). Instead, these are pirate-related songs found floating around in today's cultural flotsam. Here are my picks of the top five:

1) Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, based on Coleridge's poem of the same title is first because it has the distinction of being the rocking-est song on the list, and also the one with the most and longest face-melting guitar solos. Also the best use of an electric guitar to imitate the creaking of the decks on board ship.

2) The Decemberists' Mariner's Revenge. A Poe-esque tale of revenge and filial devotion set to a pirate-y tune performed mainly on accordion and tambourine.

3) Disney's Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) from Peter Pan. "You'll love the life of a thief, you'll relish the life of a crook. / There isn't a boy who won't enjoy a-working for Captain Hook."

4) Henry H. Russel's, Ocean Wave is the tune set to Hannah Cornaby's 'Who's on the Lord's Side?' in the current LDS Hymnal. Russel apparently wrote a lot of swashbucklin' type tunes, judging by their titles.

5) They Might Be Giants' With the Dark is not musically very buccaneer-like. However, it makes the list because it has this line: "I'm growing tired of all my nautical dreams / I'm growing tired of all my nautical themes / bustin' my pirate hump / rocking my peg leg stump / my mind naturally turns / to taxidermy, to taxidermy, yeah!"

What be yer picks, me hearties?

Pirates: Buccaneers or Gentlemen of Fortune?

As I said in my Peter Pan review, Hook is a great pirate. But not to be outdone by Hook, Captain Jack Sparrow is also a great pirate.

Perhaps the two aren't well compared, though. They're two very different kinds of pirates. Captain Jack is a scalliwag, a rapscallion, a low-life who gets along by pure wit and canniness, a rogue and a rum hound. Hook, on the other hand, is a gentlemanly fop. He plays the harpsichord, he enjoys poetry, he is obsessed with the ideal form, he has a cultivated appreciation for the finer things. With the soliary exception of Smee, he isolates himself from the uncouth brutes that crew the Jolly Roger. He waxes melancholy, philosophical, weary of life. A poor misunderstood soul. Not Jack. His first appearance on the screen shows him riding into port on the mast of a rickety old dinghy so dilapidated that it doesn't even make it to shore without sinking. But he sails it triumphantly, as though it were the finest vessel on water. He revels in infamy. Jack may be the worst pirate you have ever heard of, but you have heard of him.

Who is the better pirate? I can't say. But the third Pirates movie is coming May 25th.



But speaking of Pirates and Hook, does it seem at the end of the first Pirates movie that Will Turner is trying to bring back the Hook-style pirate dress? He doesn't have the bright colors, but he's got the ridiculously big feather, the longish hair, and the wispy mustache.

Of course, everyone's first thought is that he's the fourth musketeer, D'artagnan's tag-along little brother, Pierre. But then again maybe Disney is tipping its hat to its first great pirate. Although, Hook's mustache has a bit more Dali in it than does Turner's.

I am Cinematographicus: Peter Pan (1953)

I am Cinematographicus. I review movies for We might be windmills. This is my first time to essay a review.Recently, we watched Disney's Peter Pan again for the first time in many years. Based on J.M. Barrie's much-imitated play, Disney's version is mostly good. Of course, there is the inexcusable racism. Though not as bad as Song of the South (1946), racist portrayals of Native Americans and one stereotypical portrayal of an Italian pirate made me cringe. But the music is well-done, the story moves at a good clip, and there are some great characters: Hook, Smee, and the Crocodile, most notably.

And, about the Indians, I know it's a fantasy, but the Indians seem really out of place in Neverland. I mean, come on, the place is an island. Mermaids, yes. Pirates, yes. Fairies, okay. Lost boys, whatever. But Indians? Especially since Disney paints them as plains Indians (tipis?), what the heck are they doing on an what appears to be a tropical Island?

Interesting thing is, Peter Pan himself isn't really that great of a character. The movie might be named for Pan, but he isn't the protagonist, Wendy is. The story is about Wendy's initial recoiling from and later reconciliation with the idea of adulthood. And Pan isn't even the most compelling character in Neverland. That has to be Hook. I mean, come on, the guy is an incorrigible fop while at the same time being a ruthless buccaneer. That's a hard combo to pull off. But he does it, and with good form. Like Milton's Satan, he is the villain that steals the show. Both Pan and Hook are narcissistic egomaniacs, but Pan comes off like a arrogant brat at times, while Hook self-consciously and endearingly revels in his self-absorbed foppery.

An interesting complication is the muted sexual rivalry between Wendy and Tiger-lily, between Wendy and Tinkerbell and then between Wendy and the mermaids. Perhaps it is this constant unjustified female fawning on Pan that makes him seem like a brat sometimes. Hook is right. He crows like a rooster, but flies away like a "cowardly sparrow."

Pan's voice is, with sad irony, supplied by Bobby Driscoll, a child star that (like Macaulay Caulkin and unlike Drew Barrymore) never really made the transition into an adult acting career. After Peter-Pan, Disney terminated his 5-year contract two years early due to severe acne. As Driscoll's childhood acting career sharply declined, he turned to drugs. He died at the age of 31 of hepatitis and a heart attack in an abandoned tenement in Greenwich village. His body, found by two playing children, went unidentified and was buried in a mass grave on Hart Island, also known as Potter's Field. It was only later that he was identified, through fingerprints taken before burial.

The movie sports the voice talent of the incomparable Bill Thompson as Smee, but who is probably best known for his work as the voice of Droopy Dog. An interesting feature is that Disney preserved Barrie's original casting which called for Mr. Darling and Hook to be played by the same actor, by casting the same voice, that of Hans Conried.

The movie has been called anti-climactic, with Hook's defeat just kind of a fizzling out rather than a blaze of glory. But perhaps this was intentional. What better way for childhood to defeat the foppishness and over-seriousness of adulthood than to make adulthood a laughing stock? Hook's agonizing shout, "I'm a codfish," and the ridiculing laugh of the children is far more appropriate a climax than had Peter run him through.

This is a great story, and pretty decent movie version of it. One of Disney's classics for sure.