Yo-ho-ho and a stick of gum

Pirates are getting younger these days. I'm in New York for the Bryant Park Book Festival and, in helping spread the word for Edgar & Ellen's "High Wire", I've given out "Master of Mischief" stickers to many of the original mischief-makers of the high seas.

It's a good 15 days before Halloween--so the fact that the pirates look to be 11-year-olds with plastic cutlasses does nothing to dissuade me from thinking they're on shore leave from the bounding main.

Marketers alert! Start thinking pieces-of-eight, parrots, jolly rogers, walkable planks, eye-patches...we're entering a pirate period.