Last night I went to see this performance-art flotilla on a pier in Manhattan, and it was so disappointing I forgot to turn on the flash. Given the scale of the whole operation (seven handmade junk ships sailing down the Hudson from Troy, NY to the Deitch Gallery in Queens) and the involvement of an OBIE-winning director I was really looking forward to some sort of flashy, Vegasesque spectacle with guns and swordfights and guys swinging from ship to ship over the gaping mouths of robotic (or at least puppet) sharks. Instead all I got was a lot of boring talk. The boats were at least kind of interesting, but the crew looked like a bunch of roustabouts who each harbored a secret grudge at being passed over in the casting for their middle school's production of Penzance. It's cute when a 10-year-old paints on a beard, puts on a striped shirt, and makes up stories about how "these ships have sailed the Switchback Seas fer a hundr'd yeers, arrgh arrgh" in a bad accent, but far less so when a 20-something-year-old man grows a real beard to do exactly the same thing. The really unforgivable part came when they passed around the hat and asked for change and Metrocards. Edward Teach you guys are not. See below for another shitty, out-of-focus shot of the ships.AVI DAVIS