The Buzz
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Pirates - and Talk Like A Pirate Day - in media and commerce

Pirates, Pirates, Pirates!

2010 buzz:

Dozens of fans jumped on e-mail in early February to tell us that one of the characters in the popular CBS series NCIS mentioned having attended a Talk Like A Pirate Day Party (in Masquerade, originally aired Feb. 1, 2010).

Fan Sarah L. reports "I have just taken down my new 2010 Simpsons Fun Calendar, to add in Talk Like a Pirate Day, and found it is already printed on the calendar! Hooray!"

Eric Swirsky spotted a reference to ITLAPD on a Nantucket Nectars bottlecap liner!

 

2009 buzz:

 

2008 buzz

(check the TLAPD08 page and the Pirate Guys' interviews and appearances for more news. We get fan mail, too!)

We don't hear of most of these till after the fact, so this list will grow once the Webwench has a chance to sit down and do some serious Googling, but here's what we've heard about so far:

Print media (and associated blogs):

Broadcast:

Web mentions are here.

2007 buzz

 

We're everywhere: International Talk Like A Pirate Day has truly entered the mass media lexicon. Practically every media reference to the 2007 "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie mentioned the holiday, numerous museums around the US referred to TLAPD as part of a rash of pirate exhibits, we're informally affiliated with pirate festivals all over the world, and we get new Google Alerts to TLAPD references in the news weekly. Here are just a few of the latest media hits:

A fan reports that in a Sept. 18 concert at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Jimmy Buffett acknowledged "Talk Like A Pirate Day" several times, followed by a few, "Arrrghs!"

On the Sept. 19 Today Show, Our Close Personal Friend (And Pulitzer Prize-Winner) Dave Barry, appearing to talk about his new book, Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far).got host Al Roker to talk like a pirate. Later in the day, on NPR's Talk of the Nation, he and host Neal Conan talked like pirates for a bit, too. We can always count on Dave.

Craig Ferguson opened his Sept. 19 Late Late Show by announcing it was a great day for America - because it was Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Fox & Friends (on Fox News) opened their Sept. 19 broadcast with a mention of "National Talk Like a Pirate Day" complete with a voice over doing an "Arrr Mates!"

Our musical mate Tom Smith, who penned the Official TLAPD Song, got blogged by his hometown paper, the Ann Arbor News...

Reuters News Service featurized th' day on News Of the Weird, and their reporter did it all pirate-like, by cribbin' straight from this site an' making it look like he talked to us.

PC Magazine provided a list of "10 Mighty Pirate Gadgets" for technogeeks in honor of TLAPD.

The Cartoon Network once again celebrated with a day of pirate-themed cartoons.

The History Channel rebroadcast pirate specials for TLAPD.

Photographer Mary Schwalm offers some great photos from the Salem Pirate Faire.

One-Minute How-To features the Pirate Guys demonstrating how to ... Talk Like A Pirate!

HoboTrashCan features a long interview with the Pirate Guys and Mad Sally

Florida's Emerald Coast publication features an article by the Pirate Guys on incorporating pirattitude into the classroom.

Let the cartooning begin: Doug Savage checks in with his third-annual TLAPD series at Savage Chickens. Because what could be better than pirate chickens?

The Baltimore Department of Public Works sends out a calendar with its recycling and garbage pickup schedule; this year, it lists Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Spotted on "Jeopardy," May 25, 2007: Alex Trebec: "You'll be talking like one of these when this international holiday comes around every September 19th!" Contestant: "What is a pirate?"

The September, 2007 issue of Reader's Digest features Talk Like A Pirate Day (on p. 53). Says Ol' Chumbucket, "When you've made Readers Digest, that's about as mainstream as it gets!"

Media

2006 buzz

Rumors and reports of Sept. 19 activities. are pourin' in! If you have any, or run across an article, Web site, blog or broadcast that mentions Talk Like A Pirate Day - let us know!

The big news for 2006:

Ol' Chumbucket and Mad Sally, the Lusty Wench, appeared on the season premiere of ABC's Wife Swap on Sept. 18

Ol' Chumbucket is beside himself with word-geeky glee: He was invited to serve as guest "editor" for theTalk Like A Pirate week edition of A Word A Day. Subscribers can expect pirate vocabulary-builders in their e-mail boxes all week...

Live interviews

Both Amazon.com and CafePress.com are featuring Talk Like A Pirate Day in their September promotional mailings! Arrrrrr!

Long John Silver's restaurant chain once again observes Talk Like A Pirate Day. Get a free pirate hat with yer meal on the 19th and visit their Web site for pirate fun.

Pirates on TV: PinchyLobster, a new media-related site, has rounded up a list of all the pirate-related TV programming they can find in the days leading up to Sept. 19 - including the ABC Wench Swap episode!. Check out their list (warning: dark text on a black background may be hard to read; try highlighting the page to see what it says)

Blog like a pirate

Liz Schier, the Pirate Guys' editor at Penguin New American Library, is the winner of the 2006 Hotties of Publishing award sponsored by the GalleyCat blog. We knew that all along!

News with pirattitude

(Thanks to Google Alerts fer keepin' us on top o' the news! Here's just a sample:)

August:

The Scottish press caught on to the Official Ship's Chaplain:

The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC): Columnist, mystery writer and sometimes country lawyer J. D. "Dusty" Rhodes examines the pirate phenomenon

A brand-new Webcomic, "A Pirate's Life For Me," makes its debut on Sept. 19th, naturally!

July-September: With the release of Disney's second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the reviewers and pundits who've just figured out that, hey, pirates are cool couldn't seem to help mentioning our favorite holiday. Check these reviews:

  • Alberquerque (NM) Tribune ("The "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise is just a portion of this perfect cultural storm, the best of which is International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19), one of the most brilliant phenomena in forever.")
  • The Oregonian "Here, on the deceptively peaceful banks of the Willamette, pirates roam among us all year long. Some pursue gold. Others slam back grog with 18th-century gusto. Still others belt out sea chanteys in nightclubs or on street corners. Where you or I might say, "Have a nice day," they're likely to bellow, "Fair winds, and thanks fer yer foine pirattitude!"
  • Film Australia: " Speaking as a previous owner and bathtub mariner of the Playmobil pirate ship and accessories, I can tell you that there’s a certain dilated escapism that comes with all things pirate-ised; a fond response that adventure on the high seas and its related skulduggery elicits in people. And it’s not just me: notably, check www.talklikeapirate.com for latest updates on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, purchase a book on ‘Pirattitude’, or (worryingly) play Buccaneer Bachelor. But despite this, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was, in some ways, a curio as much as it was a box office event... "
  • Dallas (Tex.) Morning News/WFAA.com
  • Palm Springs (Calif.) Desert Sun
  • Atlanta (Ga.) Creative Loafing
  • Lawrence (Kans.)Journal/ LJWorld
  • The Fort Worth Star Telegram
  • Senior Journal
  • CreativeLoafing.Com (Atlanta, GA)
  • Louisville Courier-Journal
  • Pirate Guys interviews related to the Dead Man's Chest opening:
    • NPR's Weekend America
    • The Satellite Sisters
    • Chicago Tribune
    • USA Today
    • Portland Oregonian
    • Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
    • KVAL TV , Portland, Oregon
    • Riverside Press Enterprise, Riverside California
    • Journal Newspapers, North Seattle
    • Bluefield (W. Virginia) Daily Telegraph
    • Potomac Daily News, Virginia
    • Eugene Weekly, Eugene Oregon
    • Santa Barbara News Press, California
    • CBC Radio, Vancouver, British Columbia

Other media mentions:

July: Blogged by Geoffrey Chaucer! (the Webwench's No. 1 favorite blog).

Burlington Free Press columnist Chris Bohjalian pays tribute to TLAPD while writing about his town's Kids Pirate Festival.

Spot On, a European teen magazine published in Germany, featured our Web site in its July issue in a big feature on the popularity of pirattitude.

March 2006: Mastercard's on-line magazine, Priceless, ran a nice feature on our favorite pirate store, 826 Valencia in San Francisco, with links to International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

News media: Need more information? Visit our Press Room

Fan mail for Talk Like A Pirate Day
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