A pirate I was meant to be!

En Garde! Touche!

Oh, that is so cliche.

So, one of the most normal things I did in Korea was watch "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" at Yawoori, our downtown cinema last Wednesday. With the lights dimmed and the sound blaring gloriously in English, I almost forgot I was in Korea. (You don't notice the Korean subtitles after a while..) Of course, after the movie, I had to fight my way through the droning Korean masses, and the illusion was shattered.

Now, I love pirates. I enjoyed the terror of reading "Treasure Island" as a child. I grew up playing Monkey Island. I even wrote a killer paper on "The Discourse of Piracy" in which I deconstructed pirate culture using Foucault and Derrida and other convoluted theorists.

I love Betsy's endless string of pirate jokes.

"What's a pirates favorite food?"

"B...arrr...beque" etc.

I love pirate insult sword fighting and pirate songs. When someone says to you: "You're as repulsive as a monkey in a negligee!", what bliss is there in quickly retorting: "I look that much like your fiancee?" I love talking like a pirate on "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." (remember - Sept 19!)

So I quite naturally embraced Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of the undead pirates from the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

So what was this one like? The consensus seems to be that it was written for someone with Attention Deficit Disorder: the plot changes every five minutes. After a while it doesn't matter who they are fighting, you just sit back and watch the pretty graphics and wait for the next punchline from Jack Sparrow. (Remember when Elizabeth says: "There will come a moment when you will have a chance to do the right thing." Sparrow responds: "I love those moment. I love to wave at them as they pass by.") But the script writers were remarkably inept, considering how much money and material they had at their disposal. Perhaps they just got a little carried away. (More fighting! More monsters! More twists in the plot!)

But was a soothing two and a half hours all the same. All the escapism I could wish for.

Hey, it was Pirates. There was no way it was going to be bad.