Dad loves good, old pirating

There's nothing like some good old fashioned pirating to make you feel good about the summer.

I loved "Pirates of the Caribbean." So did the rest of my family, although I practically had to make them walk the gang plank to get them to go see it. Joni and the girls wanted to see "Legally Blonde 2." But in the end, they agreed to go see the pirate movie. As it turned out, they loved it.

Of course, I enjoyed the movie. It included some scenes right out of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disney World. It's my favorite ride at the Florida theme park. There's nothing like a little looting and plundering to make you feel good about the world.

I've always been fascinated by pirates. As a boy, I imagined sailing the high seas with such salty characters. I'm convinced that a little swashbuckling is good for the soul.

The great thing about the movie is that even the bad guys seemed halfway decent if you weren't squeamish about decaying teeth, skeletons and bad hair days. Most hair dressers would be horrified by the scraggly hair of these pirates.

But I couldn't have been happier. I envy Johnny Depp who got to play the mischievous pirate, Capt. Jack Sparrow.

He skipped through his lines with almost childish enthusiasm. Who can blame him?

"There's pirating to be done," I constantly tell the kids, reciting a line from another pirate movie.

So far, I haven't unearthed any buried treasure. But I'll survive.

Our dog, Cassie, hasn't found any treasure either although she keeps wanting to bring her dirty rawhide bone inside. She has clean ones in the house, but they're not quite as appealing to her. She must be a pirate dog.

There's something about being a pretend pirate -- being able to thumb your nose at authority without really causing any serious calamity -- that's down right fun.

OK, the climate doesn't hurt any. "Pirates of Alaska" wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. There's something to be said for blue skies, sandy beaches and those pirate-friendly bottles of rum.

Joni says I'm too clean to be a pirate. But it's not the lack of hygiene that has me smiling. It's the chance for a good choreographed sword fight.

Blackbeard would have appreciated this movie. Historians say he made himself look devilish in the thick of fighting by sticking long, lighted matches under his hat, framing his face in fire. He would have been an instant hit in Hollywood.

Like any respectable pirate, Blackbeard knew the importance of group dynamics. He wrote in his journal that confusion and plotting developed if his men were sober, but things went fine whenever his crew had enough rum.

You've got to hand it to Disney. They've managed to get an entire movie plot out of a theme park ride.

And the managers of the mouse kingdom don't plan to stop there. They're already touting a new movie based on the theme park's haunted mansion attraction.

Where will it stop? Horror of horrors, we could wind up with a "It's a Small World After All" movie where the squeaky-clean characters constantly break into the title song leaving us screaming to be pirated away to some swashbuckler's island where everyone sings off key and the Jolly Roger flies proudly in the breeze.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.