Mod Movie Monday: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968

Hang on to your hats kids, we’re goin’ on a wild ride! It’s

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968

There are few movies that can compare in the combination of craziness, zaniness, modness and madness as this one. Between the comedy of Dick Van Dyke, the beauty of Sally Anne Howes and the original story by Ian Flemming (of James Bond fame) it’s no surprise this flick has remained a favorite for over 40 years.

But let’s not try to fool anyone…the real star of this movie was, of course, the car. A true-bred race car, born to win until a fatal accident retired him to a peaceful life slowly withering away in a field, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would be rediscovered, and reborn - by Caractacus Potts, a somewhat oddball inventor who seemed to be able to make mechanical wonders out of bits of junk. The ultimate in recycling and restoration came when he brought Chitty back to life, using spare parts from toasters, boilers, and even a boat. And what an amazing cat Caractacus was - a mechanic, machinist, welder, brass-wright, boat-wright, carpenter and inventor all in one!

Of course we’re led to believe he didn’t actually build it all by himself…especially the wings and flotation built into the car…there’s a little bit of magic in that car, just a little.

Depending on where you look, you’ll find that there were anywhere from four to six full-size models of this car built for the movie, with at least one being fully-operational. There’s been a lot of conjecture over the years as to what happened to them all…lost, hiding in barns has always been a favorite of mine. But they all seem to be accounted for…apparently one lives somewhere down here in Florida, so I may even get to see it in person one day.

For someone who has had a hand in restoring (or at least fixing up) old cars since I was a kid, this movie really hits home. More than the fact that it’s a kool little car that can fly, more than the fact that it’s magical. There’s another story here, one that most people don’t care much about…it’s a story about taking something that was once magnificent, and that has since fallen from grace; about taking that wondrous piece of machinery and bringing it back to life, giving it a new chance to delight and be adored. I’ve had the good fortune to do that with a couple of cars, some vintage toys, and even an antique clarinet. I’m doing it now with my 1953 Chevy Belair, although not nearly as quickly (or with as much talent) as Caractacus Potts.

Since this is really a kid’s movie, I’d have to go with some sweet snacks and drinks to go along with it. For drinks, I’m thinking along the lines of chocolate milk…maybe a Nutty Irishman, or Chocolate Martini. For snacks, break out the hard candies, chocolates and cakes. Some good old-fashioned Hershey’s chocolate bars and Brach’s hard candies should do the trick. Oh, and don’t for get the Maloxx.

-Tiki Chris Pinto, Live from The Tiki Blog

Mike Hammer…They Don’t Build Tough Guy Detectives Like This Anymore

I am sitting at the Tiki Bar on the lanai, sipping a Jack and Ginger and enjoying the cool South Florida evening breeze. This is my favorite time of year, when it’s warm and sunny by day and crisp at night. It’s evenings like this when I remember the old days, before I moved to Florida; how it’s icy cold and dark and gray and morbid in the North East, how everything is dead up there and everything is green and lush and full of life here. It’s evenings like this when I like to crack open a Mike Hammer novel, and remember the past.

When I read Mike Hammer, it takes me back to that other time, that other place. That dark, rough time in the city, when the nights were full of alluring dames and cheap booze and the weight of my .45 kept dragging me down, reminding me that there were big, tough wiseguys that needed a lesson in respect, beat into them the right way, with a crowbar. That other time, long ago; that dark, evil time in the rain-soaked, soot-streaked city.

Phillip Marlow was tough. Sam Spade knew his way around a .38. Even Sonny Crocket could pull a trigger on an Uzi without blinking an eye. But in the tough guy department, none of them came close to Mike Hammer.

I’m not talking about the watered-down-for-TV Mike Hammer, played by Darrin McGavin in the ’50s and Stacey Keach in the ’80s. I’m talking about the real Mike Hammer, the borderline-psychopath detective dreamed up by Mickey Spillane in the late 1940’s through the ’50s, the .45 automatic-toting ex-army special forces operative who learned how to track and maim and kill in the jungles of World War II, the big tough street mug with a fist of ice cold steel and a soft spot in his heart for the dames. That Mike Hammer.

If you’ve read Spillane, you know what I’m getting at. If you haven’t, you should, on the double. Just the fact that you’ve read this far clues me in that you’re gonna like it something big.

Of all the great (and not so great but nevertheless popular) detective stories that came out of the last 80 or so years, from Marlow to Veronica Mars, from Ellery Queen to Tony Rome, from James Bond to Batman, only one really stands out as something darker, something almost horrifying…the original down and dirty streetwise gumshoe, the hardcore dime-store private eye who did things his own way and got away with it, his way. Many copied his style down the line, but they never hit on the real difference, the one thing that made Hammer stand a couple of blocks away from all the rest.

You see, Mike Hammer was a murderer.

Sure, he had a private dick’s ticket, a little card stamped by the State of New York that gave him the legal right to carry a heater and arrest bad guys. But to Hammer, it was nothing more than a ‘get out of jail free’ card. A convenience when it came to court time. A slip of paper that gave him the right clean up his beloved city, to wipe up the back alleys and dimly-lit tap rooms with the faces of the city’s scum, and then to go a step further…because he’d been around the block few times, and he knew the score…arresting the bad guys didn’t do nuts. They’d get off; sure as hell they’d get sent up for a short stretch and be back on the streets mugging and robbing and beating up dames and little guys for spending cash and kicks. Jail wasn’t enough for this filth. They needed to be punished.

The small-time hoods got off easy with a beating they’d remember for life. A couple of cracked ribs, a broken jaw and brain damage usually did the trick with Horse-pushers and lowlife pimps, two-bit gamblers and croocked politicians. But for the killers…well, that was another story. An eye for an eye. If they lived as killers they needed to die as killers, by an equally evil and screwed-up killer. Mike was the self-appointed jailer, judge, jury…and executioner. And he always found a way to make his story stick, make it legit…one way or another, he would kill, he would need to kill; he would justify it as ridding the world of evil and he’d get away clean.

Don’t believe me? Think I’ve gone off the deep end? Set your peepers on this little bit of insight, taken from the first few pages of One Lonely Night, the fourth book in the Mike Hammer series. Published in 1951, the story gives an inner view of Hammer’s mind, the way he thinks, and what he thinks about the world he’s been forced into. To me, these few paragraphs sum up his character, the whole series, and the darker side of life in “the good old days”. It’s what made me really appreciate Mike Hammer when I first read I, The Jury at age 12. It makes me appreciate all the Hammer novels for what they are: The real diary of a madman.

(talking about a judge who wanted to throw the book at him, but could not) “…I was a licensed investigator who knocked off somebody who needed knocking off bad and he couldn’t get to me. So I was a murderer by definition and all the law could do was shake its finger at definitions.”…”maybe he thought I should have stayed there and called the cops when the bastard had a rod in his hand and it was pointing at my gut…” “He had to take me back five years to a time he knew of only second hand and tell me how it took a war to show me the power of the gun and the obscene pleasure that was brutality and force, the spicy sweetness of murder sanctified by law. That was me.” “…There in the muck and slime of the jungle, there in the stink that hung over the beaches rising from the bodies of the dead, there in the half-light of too many dusks and dawns laced together with the crisscrossed patterns of bullets, I had gotten a taste of death and found it palatable to the extent I could never again eat the fruits of a normal civilization.”…”I was a killer. I was a murderer, legalized. I had no reason for living. Yeah, he said that!”*

Mix that insanity in a shaker with a Colt .45 Combat Commander and an insatiable appetite for serving justice. Throw in a couple of ice cubes and a busty brunette secretary named Velda. Pour it in a tall chilled glass, frosty with the blood of a hundred hoodlums and garnish it with a peel of the city at night, and you’ve got a Mike Hammer Manhattan.

There are 13 books in the Mike Hammer series, plus the TV scripts and screen plays. But with the passing of Spillane a few years ago flew any chance of ever hearing Mike’s voice say anything new again. Others may try, some may come close. But no one can dole out the imagery or lay down the style that Mickey gave to his fantastically flawed unsung hero, Mike Hammer.

(Read the books, start from the beginning with I, The Jury and follow Mike all the way through to Black Alley. If you dig reading about real mid-century American culture through the eyes of an author who was writing these books at the time, as the present, you’ll absolutely enjoy Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.)

-Original Content by Christopher Pinto for Tiki Lounge Talk.
*Passages from “One Lonely Night” written by Mickey Spillane, ©1951, 1979, used for informational/educational purposes only.

A kool frame riffs millennium verbs (A picture says a thousand words, hipster style)

The saying goes, “A picture says a thousand words’. In hipster talk that translates roughly into “A kool frame riffs millennium verbs,” or in some circles “A swingin’ snapshot lays down a kat’s score hipper and with more jazz than some ramblin’ gin-weary monologue spread around like a tome, ya dig?”

Case in point: The picture laid out before you kats is of my bookshelf, to my left as I type at this souped-up typewriter. I was just playing around with the interwebs when I shot my peepers over, and realized that everything on this part of the shelf, with very few exceptions, is 4o years old or older. Some of these gadgets I’ve had for years. Some of them I’ve had almost all my life.

What’s really crazy is everything you see in this photo has a story. Some stories I remember vividly, as if they happened yesterday. Some are a little fuzzy, getting lost in time. But every time I glance over, I get a memory…Memories of places I used to hit that are gone forever. Memories of that far off land of childhood. Memories of things I loved to do. And memories of people I loved who are no longer around.

I’m really digging this pic. I think what I’ll do, just for kicks, is give you kats and kittens a little story - from memory - that goes along with one of the items on the shelf. Every now and then I’ll re-post the photo and give you a new story.

Let’s start with the big red car.

What you see here is a 1933-1936 Cadillac LaSalle Sedan, made of pressed steel by the Wyandotte toy company. It measures around 13″ long, and originally came with solid rubber tires and a matching, teardrop-shaped camper trailer. The design was an idealized, Art Deco version of the real car, and was very modern for its time.

In the 1970’s, my parents were antique dealers. Often my father would get up at five or six AM to hit yard sales and flea markets, looking for some kool stuff to buy and sell. One spring Saturday morning when I was around seven, my dad went out early to the yard sales, and came back while I was still asleep. He woke me up and brought me into the kitchen, where this crazy-looking toy car, big as an elephant, was sitting on the table. It was painted black, and had all kinds of little smiling faces and sayings on it… Mostly Happy New Year, 1939 I think…and little painted balloons and confetti. The paint was in pretty sad shape, and the tires were missing. I immediately fell in love with the big car, and my Dad said if I wanted, he’d repaint it for me and put some wheels on it. Of course, I said, and he got to work.

He stripped the old paint off and painted it the original Fire Engine Red. Then he made some wheels (I think out of radio parts and rubber tubing) and put it all back together. Man, was it beautiful.

I loved that car, and took damned good care of it for the last 33+ years. It’s always had a place of honor on a shelf or table, and now resides where I spend a lot of my time when I’m not out at the Tiki Bar, so I can look at it a lot. My father passed on to the promise land in 2002, which makes little things like this even more special to me. It’s amazing I still remember that day, and how happy we both were over this piece of steel. It makes me happy all over again every time I see it. (a little side note: The palm tree sticking up behind the car…my father made that for me, and the car, when we moved down to Florida in 2000. he seemed to think the car needed a palm tree, now that it was parked in the tropics.)

- Tiki Chris, reporting live from The Tiki Blog

Retro Night at SNL? Saturday Night Live with Jon Hamm and Michael Bublé

The last time Jon Hamm was on SNL they managed to work in a couple of very kool retro skits, including one with a couple of his co-stars from Mad Men. Tonight, Hamm hosts while old-time crooner Michael Bublé swings in as musical guest. I can only conclude that there is a method to this Madmenness; if the writers don’t take advantage of this combo with some swingin’ retro skits, I’ll boycott SNL for ever. (Here is the Mad Men skit from the NBC site. Sorry about the commercial, but that’s how they make their money)…

SNL has actually been doing some pretty groovy retro skits in the last couple of years. Bill Hader’s impression of Vincent Price is priceless, and January Jones’ skit where she played Grace Kelly in Rear Window was a riot. It’s nice to see these kids still know the value of the greats that came before them, long ago in the good old days.

-Zoot Jackson, playin’ it kool at the retro blog, baby!

The Mermaids Swim Again…Wreck Bar, Yankee Clipper, Fort Lauderdale

After an extensive remodeling, the Sheraton Yankee Clipper in Fort Lauderdale is open and the Wreck Bar is in full swing! (I haven’t been there yet, but I hear it’s been preserved as original). Well I’ll know for sure tonight, because a bunch of Tiki friends and I will be swinging by tonight to watch the Mermaids swim again!

When Sheraton announced plans to remodel the old Yankee Clipper (and give it the dumb, dull, corporate, generic name “Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel”) everyone thought that would be the end of the historic Wreck Bar. Well, from what I hear someone had enough brains to keep it intact.

The Wreck Bar at the Yankee Clipper

The Wreck Bar features windows that look out into the pool, giving patrons a view of the swimmers. Underwater dancing Mermaids have been a popular attraction for years, and our favorite Mermaid, Medusirena, will be headlining the swim tonight.

If you’re in the Fort Lauderdale area come on by and join us for a Mai Tai. Show starts at 6:30!

-Mermaids at the Wreck Bar, Tiki Chris @ Tiki Lounge Talk, the Tiki Blog for hip swingers and Tikiphiles.