Eugene Weekly : Books : 07.20.06

Davy Jones Reads This Book

With Pirattitude, the rum is never gone.

BY DAN HOYT

Avast! So you want to be a pirate, do ye? Thanks to Keira and Johnny, so does everyone else. Well, according to the masters of "Talk Like a Pirate Day," Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers and John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur, you don't even need a ship with black sails, an eye patch, a parrot that squawks "Shiver me timbers!" or a peg leg to do it. Their new book, Pirattitude, is a silly humor book with a message: Be free, or walk the plank, ye scurvy dog.

"We don't pretend to know everything. In fact, we don't pretend to know anything," Baur says. "We stumbled into the whole pirate thing, and we want people to celebrate their inner pirate and find it in their everyday life. This isn't about how to go back in time to 1692. This is about how, in 2006, you can add a little swagger to your life. Lord knows we have fun with it!"

Though Baur and Summers have been celebrating "Talk Like a Pirate Day" on their own since 1995, the fad didn't go national until 2002 when a column by Miami Herald writer Dave Barry instilled the day (September 19) into the hearts of pirates around the world. Since then, the landlubbers have been on CNN, nationally syndicated radio programs and more.

Even with all this fame, Baur and Summers didn't let the achievement of writing a book go to their heads. "We wanted to write a humor book and be smart asses," says Baur. "And it states that being a pirate doesn't require an eye patch, a blousey shirt or boots up to your knees. Pirates were the most free people on Earth, and that's what people don't get enough of in their life today."

Baur and Summers will be appearing at the Pirates' Ball, 4 pm Sunday, July 30 at Books Without Borders, 199 W. 8th Ave. Costumes encouraged.