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Pirate Fest, June 2012 - Put-in-Bay, OH
Epilogue: The summing up including a brief review of the event; Thanks to the photographers and links to their albums; Further info on the Sos Boss collective and The dregs of the photographs including some nice ones of people I didn't use, some that wouldn't fit, some that stand alone, some that I liked but didn't add anything to the flow of the normal narrative and some random ones.
Photo: Jim Shipley
Photo: Mom and dad
There are people who like to put things in order and people who don't. I've usually been one who does. Put-in-Bay has long been my second favorite event, after the Key West pirate events. However, this year really tipped the scale. It's not just that the event is a lot of fun (it is) or that there is a lot of reenactor involvement (there is) or that the environment proves highly conducive to playing pirate (it does.) No, it is all those things plus the fact that you are always quite close to the action whether staying in a hotel or at the encampment.
Plus there's Asian girl bands who leap out of golf carts to snap a photo, friendly drunken people who can't tell a pirate from a pilgrim, bars featuring a bunch of Bastard Bearded Irishmen, restaurants on the water and a city representative who takes excellent care of us.
So here's to the 2012 Put-in-Bay event - may it become bigger and better as more of my fellow reenactors discover what a fun time is to be had during the annual Pirate Fest. Cheers!
As always, I must take a moment to thank the photographers who took the time to capture moments, post them where they could be seen and borrowed and gave me permission to use them.
Sos Boss  Photo: Sos Boss |
Lisa Dousharm  Photo: Mission |
These photographs are linked to the photographer's albums. Most are on Facebook, so you will have to be friends with them to actually see their albums. | Marci Kroska  Photo: Mission |
Jim Shipley  Photo: DB Couper |
Mission  Photo: Michael Colosimo |
Clint Beach Photo: Mission |
Mary Diamond  Photo: Mission |
Michael Colosimo  Photo: Mission |
Tammi Bienek  Photo: Mission |
Photo: Sos Boss
On Saturday morning, I was running around the camp chatting with folks and this is when I learned a little more about the Sos Boss collective from Carla. I had planned to stick this in Chapter 3, but it was already running long and I decided to save it for the Epilogue.
As it happens, Carla and Dave are married and Becci is a good friend of Carla's. She and Carla met somewhere - she told me where and I've completely forgotten - and found that they got along famously. Carla said Becci was 'the fun one' who brings Carla out to events. She said that she would just as happy to work on projects at home. Carla also explained the joke that I didn't understand about the Hard Hat photo from the May 2012 Columbus Pirate Weekend. (I'm not giving you the link this time. Go find it for yourself. Nyah.) She said she thought the sign was funny given that everyone was wearing soft hats and so she got everyone to pose in front of it. Then Michael C. came along and changed the sign so that it read as it does in the May Columbus Journal. (Somehow this still does not bring the humorous nature of this joke home for me.)
Photo: Michael Colosimo
Now it's time for some of the leftover photographs. We'll start off with some neat ones of some of the folks who were there. The ones you find below are just photos I liked of various pirates. The one at left, however is of Richard Brentar who appears in several places throughout this Journal despite the fact that I knew almost nothing about him until I started writing this Epilogue. Michael Colosimo was friends with him and said good things about him and that was enough for your author.
I have since done a little due diligence and discovered that Richard is a singer. According to a page called Soundclick, he says he is "a folk musician, playing the traditional/contemporary folk music of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Canada, America, and Australia. I play the harp, guitar, pennywhistle, recorders, bodhran, percussion, and I sing as well." Although I have always thought pennywhistle was a funny name for an instrument, bodhran is even better. Bode-ran? Bohd-ran? Bod-ha-ran? (This could go on for days.)
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Tammi at the contest |
 Photo: Lisa Dousharm Jim at the pirate bar |
 Photo: M.A. d'Dogge Michael at the battle |
 Photo: Sos Boss Matt on the account |
 Photo: Jim Shipley Thomas at sea |
One last bit of serious sort of stuff and we'll move on to the usual fare for the Epilogue page. Michael Colosimo decided to go and visit the Perry's Victory and International Peace Monument, which is something no one else in our group of pirates have done as far as I know. (I may now learn differently, but you'll never read it here.) He took several pictures which I post here for your education, even though I didn't actually see any of these things. Feel educated anyhow.
 Photo: Michael Colosimo The Perry's Monument Park |
 Photo: Michael Colosimo A Painting of Perry's Victory |
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Perry's Monument Statue |
Photo: Lisa Dousharm
The crew meet the Captain
Morgan Advertising personalities
With Put-in-Bay containing so many bars and so many people who want to go to the so many bars, there's a lot of after-hours activity in bars. As I mentioned previously, your author has foresworn all alcohol for 2012. I also knew this event was going to be the litmus test for that promise. I am happy to say I managed to make it through without touching a drop.
Curiously, it really didn't make all that much difference to the amount of fun I had. It did make quite a bit of difference to how much I recalled about what happened in the evenings, however. Overall, it seemed like a good experience to me.
Since there were so many of us there this year, people wound up in different bars. There were several photos of things going on in such establishments. Although I wasn't always there, this has never stopped me from commenting on what happened, often relying on my imagination to explain things. I feel this makes for a better Journal. (Actually, it mostly makes for a longer Journal, but I can't resist commenting on photos.)
Photo: Sos Boss
You are all familiar with the Three Olive girls because I was there and got a cape out of the deal, so it occupied a good bit of space in Chapter 2. However, other members of the crew ran into other Alcohol Advertising Personalities and naturally took photos of this. I definitely don't want to miss the opportunity to give free advertising to those distilleries.
Above you see Billie, Matt and Tammi with Captain Morgan and his assistant, Miss Captain Morgan Black. (Actually, I don't know what her official title is, but that's what it says on her T-shirt, so we'll call her that. M.A. d'Dogge, Mary Diamond and Lisa/Cheeky also met him and all agreed that he was a swell fellow.
The Sos Boss collective and Richard Brentar met the rep from Kraken rum, whom you see at right. Now I don't mean to be critical or anything, but what the heck? Captain Morgan is a well known character and Miss Black... well! Then there were the sets of Three Olive triplets who were... well! But this guy in a moldy diving costume? All I can say is that that boy better be giving away some serious free samples.
Jim Shipley hung around quite a bit with Thomas Alleman and Ed Rembert during the weekend - you'll recall the mystery-shrouded Saturday night time spent with the pirate-friendly boat people. (What happened? Inquiring minds want to know! Well, OK, they don't want to know all that much, but they kind of want to know... maybe a little.) Among their trips were one to some place that had a swing mounted over a sand pit as you see below. Thomas claims he was drawing a pirate treasure map in the sand in that photo below center right. He told me the thing he was working on was an arrow for 'North', but it sure looks a heckuva lot like some sort of Star Trek insignia to this author.
 Photo: Michael Colosimo They have great 2-for-1 deals! (Comment - Lisa Dousharm) |
 Photo: Jim Shipley Careful, Thomas... you'll spill your beer! |
 Photo: Jim Shipley Boldly drawing where no drunk has drawn before. |
 Photo: Mission Let got to a really hopping bar and play cards! |
Photo: Lisa Dousharm
Photo: Mary Diamond
There was a quite a bit of licking going on this weekend. I believe it all started when M.A. d'Dogge and Lisa decided it would be somehow funny to lick one of the Olive Girls. (No, I still don't think that makes any sense at all.) This seemed to inspire them to ever greater licking heights as you will notice in the surrounding photographs.
You will also notice that most of the licking seems to involve the two who started this disturbing trend. I'm not sure why this is, but my current theory is that it is because we sweated all weekend long, losing lots of precious salt and they were trying to regain their saline balance. My cat does the same thing to me when I come home all sweaty from running in the morning.
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Ew! Hair ball. |
 Photo: Marci Kroska Thomas licking Lisa licking Thomas licking Lisa... |
 Photo: Michael Colosimo They're all nuts! |
Speaking of out-of-the-ordinary behavior, let's talk about ghosts. Regular readers know that I think that ghosts are a bunch of hokum invented to shift the blame for things to which most people prefer not to take personal responsibility. However I did find some rather curious photos in the mix that I thought I'd post here for you to judge. (And I don't mean stupid orb photos which are reproduced by people who are even more gullible than the ghost believers and prefer to ignore the laws of physics - specifically the ones regarding light reflection off dust.)
 Photo: Mission Mary's freestanding apparition |
 Photo: Sos Boss Dan's Possession |
 Photo: Borrowed Who can you call? |
There were several other photos that don't fit into such neat categories as some of the others, so I'm just going to do my best to group them, throw them out there and let you decide whether it was worth your time reading the captions or not. (Hint: probably not.)
 Photo: Mission "Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals." -Napoleon |
 Photo: Sos Boss Apparently someone thinks the surgeon's tools are too grim and gruesome, so they decided to add some cheerful decorations to them. |
 Photo: Mission's Camera Shannon, Michael, Lob and I getting roped in to the truly last reciprocal photo. Michael and I gave in and said "Arrr!" (Horrible.) |
 Photo: Mission If you don't like how they drive, stay off the sidewalk |
 Photo: Mission The Amphibicar returns! (Regular readers will recall it from 2010.) |
 Photo: Mission "So we were coming up fast on shore and the captain says 'Don't go left!' and all I heard was the '...go left!' part and.... |
 Photo: Sos Boss Pirates flouting the laws of the land... |
 Photo: Mission ...the laws of decency and the... |
 Photo: Michael C. ...laws of nature. |
This brings us to our last subject for this event: Shannon. As you can see in the photo below left, Shannon thinks he's pretty smart. However, he may not be as smart as he thinks. He came to your ship's surgeon claiming to have been bitten by a spider and wanted treatment. (They all do this any time they get the most minor of boo-boos. One of these times I should have a mustard plaster ready for one of them. That will put an end to all this whining about boo-boos.)
Shannon showed me one of his fingers, which was quite swollen and, if it were actually a spider bite, would probably have needed a mustard plaster to bring it to a blister and thus form 'laudable pus.' However, your ship's surgeon wasn't born yesterday and he decided that is was actually a sign of the plague. So I pretended concern and then went to the captain of the Mercury... uh, wait, we don't have a captain, do we?
Er, I warned the crew that Shannon was infected with the plague. So we all took off in the ship when he wasn't looking and left him behind in Put-in-Bay. He was sad at first (below right) and then he realized he and Richard were going to be the only two pirates left on the island and all the drunken, pirate-adoring coeds would divide their attention between the two them. So maybe Shannon actually is pretty smart. Except, of course, he's probably going to die of the plague. Which is not so smart. The End.
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Does Shannon know something we don't? |
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Shannon's spider bite |
 Photo: Michael Colosimo Shannon left behind |