I’ll swashbuckle my way to fortune
Fearing none except the sea
Though I am but a businessman
It’s a pirate’s life for me

I rode astern on Monday morn
Across the seven seas
Down to the accounting office
And said “Yar, listen thee:

I need the budget data for the 2005 software development project
And be quick about it, Lee”
He looked at me and said “but sir,
That won’t be ready for a week”

I had no choice, Lee should have known
(That scurvy-ridden tweed,
He walked the plank from floor 13)
Pirates don’t concede

My ship is but an Altima
I once sailed her cross country
I’m worried about the gas prices
But they’re sure not stopping me

Perhaps you wonder why
A pirate (yours truly)
Has found himself working
In this corporate bureaucracy

And not slashing, shouting, sailing
And drinking merrily
With my crew of buccaneers
Plundering carefree

Well, the reason I’m not pirating
As these very words I speak
Is because of a slight complication:
I forgot where me treasure be

So if perchance you come across
My chest full of booty
You can call me during regular office hours
At (918) 242-5793

The year is 2023 and giant alien robots rule the earth. After being forced into early retirement from professional basketball by a family tragedy, Johnny “Hook” Conami (Vin Diesel) decides to follow his life-long dream of becoming an interstellar space pirate. When a deep space mission goes wrong, Hook finds himself in the clutches of his robotic overlords. They force Hook to return to the court and play on their team, and when he finds out that his father (Sean Connery) is still alive, Hook must confront him to find out what really happened to his family. After falling in love with the android queen, EK4-12 (Jennifer Lopez), Hook must face The King (Ben Affleck) in an epic game of one-on-one streetball with the fate of the universe and true love on the line.

“One of the best films of all time!” – Ryan Sucher, Showtime

“My advice: Go with someone who knows CPR!” – Joel Siegel

“One of the best sci-fi films ever! Extraordinary! A true classic that’s not to be missed! Vin Diesel is ecstatically superb.” – Shawn Edwards, Fox TV

Skiing. It frees me. Plummeting down those icy slopes at near-mach speeds somehow allows me to forget about all the troubles of life and simply be. All that matters is the texture of the snow and the friction between it and my skis. Left, right. Down I go. Turning only occasionally to slow myself. This is what I was put here to do. I am one with the mountain. Anything and everything is superficial when contrasted with the pure nonthinking bliss of something so simple as getting to the bottom. Why? I have no idea. Nevertheless, I love it.

That last question hangs for a moment in my head, a slash of red against the black void of thoughtlessness within which I usually reside. Distant sensations slide across my mind: scratchy sweater tickling my skin, a cold wind freezing tears and raising goosebumps on my arms, excited voices and the buzz of the snow makers and the soft whoosh-whooshing sound of metal edges on fresh powder—all inconsequential as I race myself to the ski lift. I arrive at the rope barriers to find no prize waiting for me, no crowd of cheering fans. Just a long line of babbling strangers and a lift chair ride between me and the top.

The line is slow, but eventually I make it to the front. The light turns green. I push off of the gate and wait for my chair to approach. The edge of the unpadded seat thwacks against the back of my knees, forcing me to a hard sit as I grumble under my breath at the lift attendant. I pull the lap bar down and tuck my poles snugly under my leg as the chair begins to rise into the air. My thoughts wander through time as I make the long ascent.

I’m five again, and it is my first day skiing anywhere besides my own backyard. I’m with my family and ready to test out my brand new Christmas-present skis. My mom has decked me out with the hippest in late-80’s winter apparel: a bright purple-and-green snowsuit, multicolored knit hat (complete with flaps to cover my ears) and over-sized wool mittens. I hit the bunny slope and, after some initial troubles with the tow lift, am sliding down with relative ease. My dad is teaching me to snowplow and after a few runs I am able to do it on my own. The air is cold, and before long I find myself back at home sipping hot chocolate, but not before signing up for weekly ski-wee lessons.

I’ve always looked back on those lessons with disgust. They were only really helpful for the first year or two, until I found my sense of balance and began to conquer the trails on my own. They were a substitute for daycare, really. Somewhere for me to stay while my dad skied the big stuff.

The year is 1999, and I am thirteen. I glance again at my watch and wonder when yet another painfully boring lesson will be over, how long it will be until I can ditch those unskilled brats with whom I have the misfortune of sharing an instructor and get back to skiing the fun trails. “That’s it for today’s lesson, guys. Have fun skiing.” I bolt for the metal gate that marks the entrance to the ski lift. The lines are oddly short today, and I suddenly find myself staring at an ant-sized Salt Lake City more than a mile below me, searching for the small hotel room I share with my father. My hair whips in the breeze as I fly down the slopes, cutting through trees and flying over jumps.

I am snapped back to the present by pole number 117, onto which someone has slapped a sticker that assures me “mean people suck, nice people blow.” Conditions are good today: not too much wind, still-fluffy powder from yesterday’s snowfall, temperatures warm enough for a mere three layers. A flock of sparrows flies overhead, looking like little black pieces of paper floating against the gray and blue sky.

Rewind to last year. I’m at Blue Mountain – a small but local ski resort – with two of my good friends. We’re about to ski the unfortunately small terrain park. Todd goes first, skipping the first jump to get more speed for the second, then popping into the air and touching the tips of his skis. I start down, pushing with my skis to get going faster, faster, then suddenly up the steep incline and sailing through the air over the flat tabletop, grabbing my bindings as I go. I land with a satisfying thump on the downhill slope and keep going, sliding across the top of a mailbox rail and launching myself into space again at the second jump. I meet Todd at the lift and we talk while waiting for Igor to arrive.

The minutes tick past and still he hasn’t shown up. Finally, we see him slowly skating his way towards us. Apparently, Igor had attempted a back flip on the big jump and landed face first in the snow. The whole ride up the lift he was asking strange questions and acting confused. We thought he was just joking around, but it turns out he had received a minor concussion from the fall.

I’ve been lucky enough to not have been seriously injured in all my years of skiing (if you don’t count one high speed meeting of elbow and tree and a few twisted ankles here and there), even though I tend to ski somewhat dangerously, oftentimes leaving the designated trails in favor of woods or jumping down rocks or cliffs that no sane man would go near. I feel that a large part of the exhilaration comes from the knowledge that one tiny slip-up is all that it would take to put me in a bad place.

A sign telling me to “prepare to unload” whizzes by as the lift I’ve been riding nears its destination. I raise the lift bar, grip my poles tightly, and elevate my ski tips so that they don’t catch the ground.

As I push myself from the cold, hard plastic of the chair, I get the feeling that I am just about the happiest person on earth. Gravity pulls me down the small lift hill. I pause for a moment to adjust my gloves and admire the view, then make my way over to the seeming drop to oblivion (which bears the appropriate name “Outer Limits”). Again, I pause, eyes scanning for the best route. I see a middle-aged woman lose her balance. Her arms flail and before she knows it she is laying face down thirty feet below her skis. She was not meant for this trail.

I smile to myself as I move over the edge.

“What did you do at school today, Timmy?”

Mom always asks that stupid question. Sometimes Dad will ask it first, but he has work so he’s not home yet. I think Mom said she was gonna make tuna casserole for dinner tonight. Yuck. Well, it’s ok once you take all the peas out. Billy told me today that one time he stuck two peas so far up his nose that he couldn’t get them out, and when he told his mom she made him go to the doctor’s so he could get them out. Billy is one of my best friends, except for the time when we dumped jello in Emily Nelson’s backpack. I got in trouble for it because he told the teacher that it was all my idea. But we’re friends again now.

I brought my new Green Ranger to school today. It’s pretty much the coolest one, except maybe the white one. It comes with a sword and gun and everything. Miss Willington took it away when I was playing with it under my desk during math. She always sees stuff like that. I was worried all day but she gave it back to me before we went home. At recess Greg found a frog, so we chased the girls around with it for awhile until Ms. Green made us stop. Freddie says that Ms. Green is a werewolf because she has all these little black hairs on her chin, but I think he’s making it up.

There was a spelling test today. I knew most of the words but Kyle kept trying to cheat off me so I handed mine in fast before I could check over it. Mom got mad at me last time I did bad on a spelling test, she thinks I could be really smart if I tried more in school, but I don’t think it’s worth it. I want to be a roller coaster designer when I grow up anyways, and they don’t need to spell much.

For lunch we had hot dogs. They were green like usual, which is gross because I normally like hot dogs. I wish my mom would pack me lunch like Billy’s mom always does. Billy gave this first-grader an Indian burn today. It was pretty funny because his arm turned all red and you could tell he was trying not to cry, but then he did anyways when we told him that his arm was going to stay red forever.

I had to go to the nurse’s office when I accidentally shut my finger in the door and it started bleeding. It hurt real bad, but I pretended like it didn’t so no one would make fun of me. I hate the nurse’s office. It always smells weird and Mrs. Feeny isn’t very nice. This one time Kyle told me something really mean that she did to him, but I can’t tell it because I pinky swore that I wouldn’t.

Tommy is usually the school bully, but he was wearing a cast on his leg today so he was nicer than usual. He wouldn’t tell anyone how it happened but I heard that he got in a fight with a gorilla at the zoo. Tommy is always coming to school with bruises and stuff, but they just make him look scarier. One time he had a black eye and when the teacher asked him what happened he started crying. I think I was the only person who saw, but then he looked up at me and gave me a real mean look so I ran away. Since he was being nice for a change I signed his cast and drew a cat on it. When I was six I broke my arm and had to wear a cast for a long time, so I know how it feels. They didn’t have any blue ones, which is my favorite color, so I had to get boring old white instead. I remember we played volleyball in gym class when I had my cast and Mr. Tolatta wouldn’t let me play but I wanted to because I knew I’d be able to hit the ball really far with my cast.

Greg told this really funny joke at lunch today and it made Jenny squirt milk out of her nose. The joke was about three people at the top of a cliff and a watch and some stuff. Greg knows lots of funny jokes. This one time he brought these cards with pictures of naked ladies on them to school and got in really bad trouble and had to go to Principal Sophworth’s office. They called his mom and she was really mad. I don’t really like going over to Greg’s house because his mom always looks sick and walks around really fast and doesn’t make us snacks. Greg told me once that his mom was a zombie and that’s why she looks like that and gets a lot of nosebleeds, and that since he’s half person and half zombie that he has to eat brains sometimes.

On the bus ride home Billy sat with me and we played with his Sonic the Hedgehog toys. He’s always Knuckles, but I got to be Super Sonic today so it was ok. Us two and that weird girl named Melissa are the last people on the bus, so we always move all the way to the back where the fourth-graders sit after everyone else gets let off. Today Billy went so high when we hit that big bump near his house that his head hit the ceiling. The bus driver yelled at him like she always does. I wish I could be a grown up so that I could yell at people and get away with it. Billy got let off and then after we drove down the road a little I could see my house. My mom was standing in the yard watering the garden, and when I got off she hugged me and asked “what did you do at school today, Timmy?”