breacanfeile

Ah, no worries, I appreciate the thought! It was the first thing I thought of, too. I've never seen it myself, but I bet it's cool. I think it would be fun to be a professional mermaid!

Hi, I actually contacted Weeki Watchee first, and the guy didn't seem to understand that I just needed help and couldn't afford a $150 mermaid tail. As far as something like CGI goes, I always felt that it looked fake (even Gollum in Lord of the Rings I don't believe is truly interacting with the hobbits); I'm sort of a puppet buff, I guess (Yoda then versus Yoda now? I mean, really!). However, I think I will probably go the spandex route, as I have a lot of extra fabric lying around; it's just going to be a lot more time consuming than I'd like. I've seen some mermaid tails made with snorkel/dive fins inside so you can swim in them. Out here in Hawai'i, there isn't a lot of that kind of costuming talent around, so I wouldn't even know who to ask to donate something like that. So I guess I'll be doing it myself. Thanks, everyone, for your ideas!

Yes, thanks for the ideas, everyone! And I work for free...but I'm aware I'm a dying breed. I live on the Big Island of Hawai'i, which is the problem....hard to get stuff out here cheaply, and not a lot of meterial available. Plus I don't want to hurt the fish with chemicals or anything, which is the real problem. But I do like the idea of the Pringles can/spraypaint....I just have to find a place to have the actress so that the sea waer isn't tainted. And at this moment, since I'm doing my first film as a student, I'm not sure if I'll ever get to California (I already lived on the streets in LA; not an experience I'd like to repeat.) We'll see where this goes. Thanks again, everyone for the ideas!

I should have added, we are incredibly poor. Bad few months for plunder. But thanks for your ideas! I'm trying to do something with shiny fabric that was donated to us, possibly using hangers...but I'm not sure. I just learned costuming, so I don't trust my skills that much.

So how do you make a mermaid tail? I'm trying to do a decent-looking fantasy film (meaning one that I can actually send to Sundance and places like that), but I have to costume a mermaid and I also have a group of pyrates to worry about (especially their boots and swords!). Any advice?

Hi everyone, Just thought I'd mention that I've lived in Hawai'i for a while now, and wanted to open the topic for discussion. If you have any questions about the place, moving here, or just vacationing, let me know! The islands are still full of pirates (the real kind!). It's a beautiful place, but one with a unique culture that it's best to be somewhat familiar with before you go. So- any questions?

Hello again everyone, It's been a long time since I've posted, but I thought I would provide my web address for my pirate trilogy: www.pirateangel.com Sorry I didn't see you all at Pirates in Paradise this year; I was going to be there but money was tight this year. Hope to see you next year when my third novel is availiable; it should be out in the next couple of months.

Yes, it's pretty- but the wind is blowing so hard you can't stand on the beach! However, watching the surfers out the window is always a treat, as I can't even believe they're here on Lake Superior. Then again, what a captain finds a challenge I suppose a surfer does too. Have fun on the North Shore! Where are you going? Palisade? Gooseberry? -Amy Hoff

Yes- blessings to all who went through Charlie, my friends down in Key West! You are all in our prayers- Julie, Finbar, Patti, and Ray. -Amy Hoff

Hi- Just wondering if anyone had seen this movie, and what they thought. It is based on a terrifying true story, and I was thinking about seeing it- but the true story scares me enough! How is it? Worth the seven bucks? -Amy Hoff

I never said heaven on earth, oh no. I've never thought it was that! And the temperatures of the entire summer are reasons I'm moving back to Hilo, Hawai'i in January! 22 degrees in the last two weeks of August is unacceptable even for here! By the way, Hawai'i isn't the paradise it's rumored to be either, but that's a whole different subject! -Amy Hoff "I fight, tis for vengeance! I love to see flow at the stroke of my sabre, the life of my foe I fight for the memory of long-vanished years I only shed blood where another shed tears I come as the lightning comes- red from above O'er the race that I loathe, to the battle I love."

Well, it's better that there are pirates than the usual tourists I see around Canal Park! Actual questions I've had on tour either on the Vista or at Split Rock when I worked there as a guide: When do the whales migrate? Do you ever see dolphins? Where on the lake did the Titanic go down? Since I live on the beach, the big water is only about fifty feet from my front door. And that's how I like it! The San Francisco of the North could use a few pirates. There used to be a group of pirates who lived in the Apostle Islands and would attack ships. Capt Mark on the Vista also told me that there was a flat rock he used to go by (he was the Apostle Islands boat captain), and every year the locals would do something different. Last year, a lady dressed up like a mermaid and was lying on the rock combing her hair! It's strange that my 'accent' sounds to some people like a brogue. I grew up in Hibbing and the outskirts (read: wilderness) behind Eveleth, with Finnish and Scottish grandparents (the Finnish one didn't even speak English until he was 10!) I also remember hating '[Fargo' because I didn't talk like that! 'How to Talk Minnesotan' was better. I lived in Duluth from the age of thirteen until I turned eighteen. You'd think I'd have picked up the accent! Maybe that's what living all over the country has done to my speech. Yes, the drive to Canada is incredible, if only for the cliffs and other such things along the way. There are secrets of the North Shore that even I won't share- but I'll tell you there is a gorgeous black sand beach there. It's very difficult to find, even for me, so there isn't much risk in the telling, but the beaches here are gorgeous. Warning: DO NOT throw popcorn to the gulls! It is actually against the law, and the gulls get used to that method of finding food. So they end up dying over the winter because they never learned how to get anything a human didn't drop on the ground. I worked at Wildlife Rescue of the Florida Keys , and that was the announcement we had to make on the Vista boats because tourists would throw their food in the water. Not that it's good for the water, either, but the main point was that the gulls would become too dependent upon humans feeding them. However, there is nothing like this city- it was featured somewhat in Iron Will, because we had the kind of mixed architecture that could make the same city block look like four different places. The Scottish influence (as they and the French were the first Europeans here, and they got along quite well with the Native Americans) is quite obvious in the stone buildings and churches they built. So I think people should come and take a look- as long as they don't throw popcorn to the gulls, or ask me about the dolphins! -Amy Hoff

I'm Scottish, so I rarely say Uff Da- and I don't have an accent either (seriously- many people in my hometown ask me where I"m from! They think I have a brogue of some kind- that's what studying Scotland will do to you!) So, you know my home port! Ever been to the Anchor? My dad says things were much more interesting back when the visa/passport reqs weren't as stringent, and he used to be the caretaker of a lot of sailors' money. He was a trustworthy guy, and a lot of merchants used to swindle the people from other countries who didn't quite understand the pricing system. There's really nothing like sailing along out on the lake, is there? The harbor's fine as well, but the lake is singularly beautiful, frightening, and unpredictable. I have always thought of the lake as a 'she' for that reason. Anyone interested in reading an article I wrote about Duluth can type 'city immortal amy hoff' into a search engine. I said much more eloquently in that article how I feel about the city than I did in that little topic. -Amy Hoff

Hello all! I thought I'd tell you a bit about my home port, which seems strangely lost back in time, as we still have real sailor's pubs and sailors here- not everything's lost to tourism! Could be our terrifying weather, could be that things take a long time to thaw up here. Duluth, Minnesota, is located at what we call the Nose of the Wolf (Lake Superior looks like a wolf's head on a map). Canal Park, where you can watch the ships come in and out through the canal beneath the Aerial Lift Bridge, has mostly become a tourist mecca. There are still some vestiges of Canal Park's warehouse/whorehouse sailor days (that is now mostly relegated to Superior, WI on the other side of the harbor). For instance, there is a prim little restaurant called Grandma's, which is advertised with the sketch of a rather dour-looking old woman. Grandma was actually the madam of Canal Park's finest whorehouse (they don't usually tell you that). Now you can get a rather expensive burger there, but just remember what the place USED to be! As far as viewing the big ships, you can watch them come in from land, or take a tour of the harbor on the Vista Fleet. There is a particular Captain Mark there who you should sing Roll Your Leg Over to if you see him- I used to be a deckhand on this particular excursion boat, and the captains are mostly the kind of pirates you envision as being captains- lewd and loud! Captain Ed is another good one, but he's usually looking for Monty Python. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get back on the boat and sing Roll Your Leg Over to Capt. Mark, so if you go, tell him who sent you! We often shared lewd songs while we were sitting in the pilot house on a cold day. Capt. Mark also has nearly run into the pier while looking for hot ladies. He has invited attractive girls into the pilot house and asked, "Want to see the captain's little pirate?", reached into his pocket, and pulled out a tiny pirate figurine. Great senses of humor, and there's nothing like cruising along beside a 1000-foot ore boat! In Superior, however, is the jewel of this amazing little port of call. It's called the Anchor Bar, where you can get the town's best hamburgers for $2. The place is the kind of pirate bar you could see Quint from Jaws frequenting- dark, with nautical stuff jammed everywhere within it (including a giant pretzel hanging from the ceiling, old scuba gear, dead fish, and who knows what else). The servers are all tattooed and pierced, friendly, and enough to make a pirate feel right at home! The adventure and grandeur of this place is evident to this day, in the sailors who come into the port from around the world, all the way back to the Voyageurs and the Scots who first made Duluth home. The architecture here is enough to keep bringing me home! Besides, Lake Superior is the true test of any sailor- as I was told when I lived in Hawai'i- 'man, if you can sail there, you can sail ANYWHERE'. So that's my little plug for my hometown. A lot of other ports of call are overrun and over-touristy (like my former home, Key West). If you want a taste of what things were like 100-200 years ago, Duluth, Minnesota is the best place I can think of. Besides, the water's generally very clean (though cold), and the beach I live on is the best I've seen outside Hawai'i. Let me know if you're going to be in my area, and perhaps I'll take you out for a drink at the Anchor or some similarly seedy bar up here in the last place in the US to live out the sailor's dream. -Amy Hoff

Aloha- In the books I've published, the main character is a French and Scottish noble, Captain Angelique NicDonald d'Autevielle. Her father believes women should be trained in combat, as during the time period, many Scottish and Irish women were trained to fight as a matter of course. It's a long, drawn-out list of reasons, but it was planted in her mind at a very young age that women could fight. There are many reasons; women were not as subservient or one-sided as history would have you think! -Amy Hoff