Who Be Ye? (A Piratical Name Game)

Ahoy!  It be time for our first piratical game o' the week.  Today, ye'll be discerning your own pirate name, the name of your archenemy, and what your pirate ship be called.  This be a simple task!  All ye needs do is follow the directions below, making your choices as indicated, and then collecting up all your answers to share in the comments so that we may all laugh at you drink your health proper-like.

Your Pirate Name

The (Description) + (Honorific) + (First Name)  (Example: The Dread Pirate Roberts)

Description -- Last letter of your middle name

• A-E -- The Remorseless
• F-J -- The Dread
• K-O -- The Black
• P-T -- The Jolly
• U-Z -- The Horrible

Honorific -- Your Eye Color

• Brown -- Pirate
• Blue -- Commodore
• Black -- Admiral
• Green -- Captain
• Hazel -- Commander
• Grey -- Cabin Boy

First Name

Your first name (or your user name, if you don't share your real name online)

Your Ship's Name

First half -- where you live

• Big city -- The Queen's
• Small town -- The Indefatigable
• Rural area -- The Flying
• Suburbia -- The Royal
• The middle of nowhere at all -- The Bonny

Second half -- your shirt color today

• Red -- Revenge
• Blue -- Dreadnaught
• Green -- Disaster
• Purple -- Delight
• Pink -- Fancy
• Yellow -- Fortune
• Orange -- Satisfaction
• Other -- Pearl

Your Archenemy

(Title) + (Last Name) + who (their crime)

Title -- Your phone's remaining battery life

• Baron -- 100%-80%
• Marquis -- 79%-60%
• Colonel -- 59%-40%
• Captain -- 39%-20%
• Governor -- 19%-1%

Last Name -- The season you were born in

• Spring -- Raymondo
• Summer -- de la Montalbon
• Fall -- Mendoza
• Winter -- Barbossa

Their crime -- your current pet

• a cat -- who kidnapped your sister
• a dog -- who slandered your love interest
• a fish -- who stole your ship
• a rodent -- who started a mutiny against you
• a reptile -- who killed your first mate
• an amphibian -- who threw you in the brig
• a bird -- who stole your parrot
• none -- who keelhauled your best friend

Now, ye put them all together!  

For example, I be the Remorseless Pirate Hamlette, I sail aboard The Royal Fortune, and me archenemy be the Marquis Raymondo, who started a mutiny against me.

Share your results below, and then drink an extra ration of rum (or coffee?) to celebrate!  Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

And don't forget to check out the kick-off post here and enter the giveaway here.

We Love Pirates Week Party -- Kick-off and Tag!

Ahoy there, me hearties!  We Love Pirates Week has begun!

Whenever ye post anything for this party, whether it be your tag answers, a book or movie review, or any other post ye've got planned, add it to this widget here:

   

Here be the official tag, which ye may copy down to your own blog and answer there.  Many thanks to DKoren, who helped me brainstorm the questions.

1.  What are your favorite pirate movies or books?

2.  Who are your favorite fictional pirates?

3.  What do you like best about pirate stories? (Themes, costumes, aesthetic, etc.)

4.  If you were going to play a pirate on the stage or screen, what would your costume look like?

5.  What pirate ship would you like to serve on?

6.  Any favorite sea shanties or pirate songs?

7.  Have you ever participated in International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

8.  Would you like to go sailing on a real tall ship?

9.  Have you ever learned anything about real pirates, or do you tend to stick to the fictional kind?

10.  Why is the rum gone?

I'm hosting a giveaway for this event, so if you be interested in some plunder, see my previous post for ways to enter!

Finally, add any of these buttons to your own posts so other pirates, buccaneers, privateers, or even land-lubbers can join the fun!  And be sure to sail over to other people's posts all week long, as well as checking back here for a couple of games I have planned.

Pirate Loot Giveaway

To kick off We Love Pirates Week in grand style, I'll be giving away EIGHT piratical prizes!  Feast your eyes, me hearties:

This giveaway be open internationally.  If the USPS delivers to your country, you may enter.  Prizes be as follows:

Prize One: The Black Swan (1942) on DVD.  This is a USED copy which plays fine in my DVD player, but I cannot guarantee it will play in yours.  This is my favorite pirate movie, starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara.  If you love old-fashioned swashbucklers, you'll probably like it.  I reviewed it here if you want more info.  I have showed this film to my kids, so yes, I consider it family-friendly.

Prize Two: The Princess and the Pirate (1944) on DVD.  This is also a USED copy which plays fine in my DVD player, but again, I cannot guarantee it will play in yours.  This is a spoof of pirate movies starring Bob Hope and Virginia Mayo.  I haven't reviewed it, but I've watched it.  It's quite funny, if you like Bob Hope's style of humor.  I do, and my husband doesn't, so one of us laughed and the other wasn't tickled.  Please note that, as the picture shows, the case for this DVD has tape on the side, which the used book store put there and not me.  It's also family-friendly.

Prize Three:  A USED paperback copy of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini.  This is the basis for the 1935 Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland movie by the same name that made Flynn a big star.  I have not read this book, so I can't speak to the content level, but it was written in 1922.  This copy does have some wear to the cover, as shown -- slight buckling, with some rubbing on the edges.

Prize Four:  One set of four piratical bookmarks!  I bought these as a printable file from Etsy shop Mirkwood Scribes, printed them myself, and then covered them with contact paper so they won't fall apart if you accidentally drop them overboard.

Prize Five:  One treasure map bookmark which I bought from the Etsy shop A Fine Quotation.  This bookmark is a little thicker than standard because it is printed on vegan 'leather' and stitched to a sturdy backing.

Prize Six:  One sheet of piratical stickers.  The sheet measures 9"x5" -- these are nice, big stickers suitable for scrapbooks, bullet journals, and so on.

Prize Seven:  One booklet of pirate stickers.  There are 19 stickers in this booklet, ranging from 1 1/2" to 3 1/2" long.

Prize Eight:  Two "Pirates of the Caribbean"-scented tealights I ought from Etsy shop Dearly Loved.  They are the standard tea-light size, and fairly strongly scented.  The seller describes this scent as "a mixture of ozone, sea water, seaweed, driftwood, gunpowder, and aged leather."  I'd call that accurate.

If any of these prizes strike your fancy, ye can enter this giveaway using the following widget:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway will end at 11:59pm EST on Friday, February 26, 2021.  I'll be drawing winners on Saturday, February 27, and announcing them here on me blog that day, as well as alerting them by the email provided to the widget.  Use an email address you check often!  If I don't receive a response from a winner by Saturday, February 6, that winner will be disqualified and I'll draw another.

This giveaway is open worldwide to anyone living in any country where the USPS delivers.  I am not responsible for the activities of any postal service -- I will send off your prize in the condition shown above, but it's arrival condition is not something I can control.  To enter, must be 18+ or have parent's permission to provide a mailing address.  Void where prohibited.  Not affiliated with Blogger, Google, Etsy, or any of the shops listed here.  I purchased all these prizes, they were not donated or solicited in any way.  I will use your email and mailing addresses solely for the purpose of this giveaway.  They will not be saved by me to use another way or provided to anyone else.

Once you've entered the giveaway, don't forget to check out the kick-off party post for the tag, and come back throughout the week for games!

Five Years with Alan Ladd

On this day in 2016, I watched Alan Ladd in Whispering Smith (1948) for the first time, and I've been a goner ever since.

Five years is quite a while to be stuck on the same movie star, I think.  It is for me, anyway.

This started as just another "spring fling," where I get all interested in an actor and watch as many of his movies as I can for a few months and then he slides into my pantheon of favorites somewhere along the line.  This happens every few years (and not always in the spring).  It almost never develops into a lasting favoritism -- and never before has a spring crush rocketed up into a top slot in my list of favorites the way Alan Ladd did.  Within six months, he had edged out Hugh Jackman as my second-favorite actor.  It took Hugh Jackman ten years to replace Harrison Ford in that spot.

So, today, I'm celebrating five years of loving Ladd by sharing some of my favorite blog headers that featured him, as well as rounding up links to all of his movies I've reviewed.

I'm not sure I ever used this header, actually.  If I did, it would have been while I was leading my read-along of Shane by Jack Schaefer over on my book blog, The Edge of the Precipice.  That read-along was what sparked my Alan Ladd obsession, indirectly -- I wanted to do a giveaway at the end of it, with the film version of Shane (1953) and two other westerns, one starring each of the Shane stars, Alan Ladd and Van Heflin.  It was easy to pick 3:10 to Yuma (1957) as the Van Heflin western, but I wasn't sure about the other, so I found and watched Whispering Smith (1948), and that was the beginning of everything, like I said.

I didn't use this header for long because I didn't like how the words disappeared in the right-hand side.  But I love this picture.  It's from And Now Tomorrow (1944) and shows the moment when the two leads see each other for the first time.

I had this header up for quite a while.  It's so atmospheric and broody.  I love how it highlights his journey from darkness to light in The Blue Dahlia (1946), all in one quick frame.  

I had this header up for quite a while too.  It's from right around the time where I switched fonts for my headers for this blog.  I really liked the symmetry of this one, and that it shows him kind of chronologically too.

This is one of my favorites.  I created it for the Alan Ladd Blogathon I hosted in 2017, and I had this header up for months and months because I loved it so much.  

This one might be my favorite.  I love the smiles, love the colors, love the variety of poses that all still have a bit of cohesion.  Love that they appear to all be taken at his ranch, Alsulana, which he loved and spent so much happy time at.

This one should look really familiar because I had it up for about a year, and only recently switched it out.  It's a production still for This Gun for Hire (1942), not a shot from the movie, but it was so perfect I couldn't bear to replace it for a long, long time.  In fact, I'm considering putting it back up later this year, cuz I miss it.

This is my current header, which I switched to at the beginning of February because I'm hosting the We Love Pirates party next week and I wanted my header to suit that event.  Alan Ladd never made a pirate movie, but Two Years Before the Mast (1946) does take place aboard a tall ship, and it involves mutiny, so... it works.

Here are all the Alan Ladd movies I have reviewed so far:

And Now Tomorrow (1944)

Appointment with Danger (1950)

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Branded (1950)

Captain Carey, USA (1949)

China (1943)

The Glass Key (1942)

The Great Gatsby (1949)

Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)

Lucky Jordan (1942)

O.S.S. (1946)

The Proud Rebel (1958)

Red Mountain (1951)

Saskatchewan (1954)

Shane (1953)

This Gun for Hire (1942)

Two Years Before the Mast (1946)

Whispering Smith (1948)

I've watched twelve more of his films only once each, and need second viewings of those before I can review them, so I'm not going to run out of Ladd films to review any time soon.  Especially since I have almost 20 more of his films that I haven't even watched at all yet!  So much goodness to look forward to yet.

Alan Ladd has shown up in the header for my book blog a few times too.  First, I had this nice shot of him and Loretta Young that was a promo for their film adaptation of this book.

During my read-along for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I had this fun header up.

This shot from Branded (1950) was my book blog header for a whole summer and into the fall.

A couple years ago, I used this picture of Alan reading to his two youngest children, David and Alana, for my Christmastime blog header.

And this collage of Alan Ladd reading was my header for basically all of 2020.  It's a favorite for me.

A lot of the movies that Alan Ladd starred in were based on books, and I've read several of them, so here are my reviews of those too:

And Now Tomorrow by Rachel Field

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Guns of the Timberlands by Louis L'Amour

Montana Rides by Evan Evans (basis for the film Branded)

Shane by Jack Schaefer

Okay, this post is getting really long, so time to wrap it up.  Here's to you, Alan Ladd!  May the next five years in your company be delightful too.

My Short Story "Run, Run" Now Available!

I've got a new FREE short story available for both Kindle and Nook!  "Run, Run" is a follow-up to my Snow White retelling, One Bad Apple.  As such, it does give away the ending of that book just a little, in that you'll know a lot of characters who survive to the end.  If you're sensitive to spoilers and haven't read One Bad Apple, you might want to save it until you've finished the book.  That kind of goes for the synopsis below, too.

This story retells The Gingerbread Man, and here's the official synopsis:

Levi Dalton, his siblings, and his cousins want to give a nice Christmas present to the uncle who is raising all seven of them. But their plans go awry when someone runs off with their basket of gingerbread! A wild chase through a small town leads to disaster, but an old friend suggests a plan that just might save the day in this short story sequel to One Bad Apple.

You can get "Run, Run" from Amazon here and from Barnes and Noble here, and you can add it to your Goodreads shelves here.

If you're in the mood for something short and sweet, give it a try!  As a bonus, I've included a recipe for gingerbread at the end that's based on real 1800s gingerbread recipes!

Subscribers to my newsletter were able to read this story back in January already.  One of the perks of being a subscriber!  If you want to sign up yourself, you can do that right here.

Would You Really? Tag

This is the official tag for Cordy's Lovely Blog Party, which is going on all through the month of February.  Go here for the original :-)

Would you ever go for a walk in the pouring rain to avoid the company of a gentleman caller? 

Oh, definitely.  I'd do that to avoid the company of a lady caller too, or a salesman, or even just teenagers selling magazine subscriptions.

Would you ever, truly, try your hand at matchmaking? 

NEVER.  Too dangerous.  I try hard not to meddle in the emotional lives of others, but to support them instead.

(All photos are mine from my Instagram account.)

Would you be comfortable wearing glass slippers for a night out at a ball? 

I hate shoes, so... I'm guessing, nope.

Would you ever eat an apple given to you, rather forcibly, by a perfect stranger? 

No, because I'd go out walking in the pouring rain to avoid them as soon as they showed up on my doorstep.

Would you ever pretend to be a man's fiancée who you've never actually met? 

Uh, yeah, so, um, I would like to say no, but if that man was played by, say, Hugh Jackman or Alan Ladd, I really would very possibly be willing to try to pull off a charade like that, so I can't in all honesty say no.

Would you ever dance with a stranger that sang to you in a forest? 

Why not?  I like to dance :-)

Would you ever be the one to propose? 

I asked my husband to ask me out in the first place, so I'm not ruling it out.  I don't really think it matters who pops the question, the man or the woman.  All depends on their individual personalities and the dynamics of that particular relationship.

Would you ever visit the house of a man you refused but is supposedly out of town?

Highly unlikely.  I tend to avoid things and places that remind me of people I don't like.

This was a really fun tag, Cordy!  I had a lot of fun with it :-D  So many original, intriguing questions!

Happy Birthday, Dear Vic

Today would have been actor Vic Morrow's 92nd birthday.  You very likely know by now that he is an actor very dear to my heart.  He's been one of my favorite actors for decades now.

I've reviewed several of Vic's movies over the years, as well as gushed about his character Sergeant Saunders (my favorite fictional character of all time) on the show Combat! (1962-67) over and over.  Today, I'd like to round up the best of those posts and reviews and share them here with you, to celebrate his birthday and pay tribute to an actor I will forever hold dear.

Combat! focuses on a squad of American soldiers battling their way through Normandy after the D-DAY invasion, during World War Two.  It has been my favorite show since I was 14 years old, and I wrote a whole post about why I love it so much.

Although I love all the characters on Combat!, it's Vic Morrow's Sergeant Saunders who holds the highest spot in my heart.  A couple of years ago, I mused in this post about why he is so dear to me.

I once reviewed my absolute favorite episode of Combat!, "The Walking Wounded," which also happens to be the first full episode I ever watched.

I've also reviewed my other favorite C! episode, "The Long Way Home, Parts 1 and 2."  If you've never watched the show, but are curious about it, that's a great one to start with because it really lets every regular character shine, and helps you get to know all of them nicely.  You can watch it on YouTube -- part one is here, and part two is here.  If you're a fan of meaty dramas with amazing character development, solid acting, and plenty of WWII action, definitely give it a whirl.

I shared a list of my ten favorite Combat! episodes a few years ago.

But I don't only love to watch Vic Morrow in Combat! -- I really like a lot of his movies too, and I've reviewed several of them.

Blackboard Jungle (1955) was Vic's first screen role, though he had been acting on stage for quite a while by then.  He turns in a searing performance as a hoodlum bent on destruction.  Plus, he gets to square off against Glenn Ford, who is another favorite of mine.

Until Combat! came along, Vic mostly played bad guys, and his turn in the Barbara Stanwyck Show episode "The Key to the Killer" (1960) is no exception.  But he makes his character not merely vicious and explosive, but gives him a kind of needy, yearning desperation to be better than he is.  I always dig getting to see favorite actors opposite each other, and I love that Vic Morrow and Barbara Stanwyck got a chance to share the screen.

In Posse from Hell (1961), Vic plays yet another bad guy, this time a wild west outlaw facing off against Audie Murphy.  This is only a year before he would begin playing Sgt. Saunders, but it's only a small part, and you can see why he would be hungry for a starring role on the small screen.

The last post I'll share in this little birthday roundup is this fun one I did for a blogathon a few years ago, where I imagined up the perfect cast for a 1950s version of The Avengers. I set it in the year 1956 just so I could cast Vic as a key character.

Vic Morrow was an actor who could take a flat, one-note character and elevate it into someone you can't take your eyes off.  He could turn mean characters tender, and charming characters vicious.  And when he occasionally got to sink his teeth into a really deep, fully rounded character like Saunders, he was breathtaking.

Happy birthday, dear Vic.  Always.