Machete is a story of deceit and revenge. Like all fo Rodriguez’s work, it is highly stylized and promises to be one hell of a flick. There’s sure to be plenty of blood, guns, knives, violence and laughs. And web sources say that Lindsay Lohan will be mostly naked onscreen, which is A-ok with me.

Plus…
DIG THIS CAST!

Danny Trejo
Robert De Niro
Jessica Alba
Steven Seagal
Michelle Rodriguez
Jeff Fahey
Cheech Marin
Don Johnson
Lindsay Lohan

Yes, I’m not kidding. De Niro in a film with Steven Seagal and Cheech Marin. And Don Johnson. And Lindsay Lohan. And Jessica Alba. And…ok, you get my point.

For you retro style fans, get ready to bask in the orangy faded glow of low-budget funk-era cinema. Taking his cues from movies like Dual, Vanishing Point and Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! Rodriguez will certainly not disappoint with this period-style flick.

It’s times like these I wish I still had my 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic with the wire caps, dual spotlights, diamond-plate fender skirts and ’49 Packard hood ornament. That low-slung beaut would have been perfect to cruise up to the theater in for this flick.

Here’s the Trailer for Machete, opening this weekend:

And here’s the official site: http://www.vivamachete.com/

-Tiki “Mack the Knife” Chris reporting from the arsenal in the shed behind the Tiki Bar.
Tiki Lounge Talk, the fun Tiki Talk Blog for kats & kittens who dig cocktails and retro groovyness.

The Blue Hawaiian

An easy drink to make, this Tiki Cocktail looks kool, tastes great and is very refreshing on hot sandy beach.

1 oz silver rum
 (or kick it up with an ounce of Sailor Jerry or Bacardi 151)
1 oz blue curacao
2 oz pineapple juice
1 oz cream of coconut (Coco Loco)
Cherry
Fresh Pineapple
Orchid

Shake the rum, curacao, pineapple juice and cream of coconut well in shaker with ice and strain into a clear hurricane glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish it up with a sword full of cherries and pineapple, and top it off with the orchid. If you don’t have an orchid, don’t sweat it. Just put one of those little plastic mermaids on the side of the glass.

You can also go a step further and do the more popular frozen variety by adding a cup of crushed ice and blending. Vodka is often substituted for rum in the Frozen Blue Hawaiian, thanks to the efforts of Smirnoff’s marketing department. But who ever heard of Hawaiians drinking blue vodka? Wait…I don’t think Hawaiians originally had rum either. C’est la vie, baby.

-Tiki Chris reporting from behind the bar at Tiki Lounge Talk, the swingin’ tiki blog for tikiphiles and retro-lovin’ hep kats.

I currently have a 1953 Chevy in my garage. Have had it for 20 years.

This bat-winged beauty was marketed toward big business presidents and tycoons. It cost more than a Cadillac.

There are few cars more elegant, beautiful and powerful as the 1963 Pontiac. Always wanted one. This commercial makes me want one even more!

For fans of the “little” Fords…I love how they point out “no dog leg”. That’s a reference to the wrap-around windshields popular on GM models (esp Cadillac) through the early 1960’s.

Ah, one of my favorite all-time rides, the 1958 Cadillac. We had one (already vintage) when I was a kid. I will have one again someday.

An here’s some old print ads from ’50s and ’60s magazines (click on each to enlarge):

Hope you kids dug this little trip down memory lane to the days when cars were made of steel and chrome and horsepower meant everything. My my how times have changed. Sorry kids, but after looking at ads like this, how could anyone ever get excited about a Honda Accord? bleh.

-Tiki Chris reporting from the showroom floor of the Imperial dealership down the block from Tiki Lounge Talk.

]]> http://tikiloungetalk.com/2010/08/26/1950s-car-commercialsthe-dont-make-em-like-they-used-to/feed/ http://tikiloungetalk.com/2010/08/23/go-west-for-mod-movie-monday-rio-bravo-1959/ http://tikiloungetalk.com/2010/08/23/go-west-for-mod-movie-monday-rio-bravo-1959/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:27:50 +0000 "Tiki Chris" Pinto http://tikiloungetalk.com/?p=3362 Ask anyone who digs old movies and old westerns about this flick, and the response will be something around the same as if you ask them if they are hip to Miles or Bird…oh, yeahhhhh!

Rio Bravo, 1959

Dean Martin

is a good old-fashioned cowboy movie with a little twist: The cast. Here you have John Wayne leading Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson,Ward Bond and Walter Brennan (plus Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez for comic relief). Wow. Add to that some really good writing, some intense scenes where predicting the outcome is almost impossible, and plenty of evil bad guys and you’ve got the makings of a classic flick. Even the side romance between the 51-year-old Wayne and 26-year-old Dickinson are believable and fun.

The story is a somewhat typical cowboy job: Wayne, the Sheriff, is trying to keep his dusty frontier town together while fighting against a cattle baron who, as all cattle barons in old westerns tend to be, is an evil, murdering SOB. His brother murders a cowpoke in a saloon in cold blood and is locked up by the Sheriff. Cattle baron brother sends bad guys to get him out. Wayne is helped only by the recovering drunk Dude (Martin), an aging deputy with a bad leg (Brennan), a very young gunslinger (Nelson), a somewhat crazy chick (Dickinson) and a Mexican hotel owner with a funny way of talking. Oh, and Wayne totes a Winchester Saddle Ring Carbine everywhere he goes. Kookie.

By the way, you get a free song too, a duet with Dino and Ricky Nelson. Whoever thought they’d sing together?

Food & Booze: Whisky. Just Whisky. Or Beer. This is what cowboys drink in the movies. No one really eats anything so why not try an easy chili recipe. There’s this thing out there called Wick Fowler’s “2-Alarm Chili Kit”. It won the 1967 Texas Chili Cook-off and has everything in it you need to make a really good chili except beef, beans and stewed tomatoes. Just follow the directions and you can’t miss. I first used this stuff back in 1987 to make Chili for a Halloween party while watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, a really bad movie that had the cannibalistic characters making - you guessed it - chili, with human meat. Funny, huh? Here’s the trailer for Rio Bravo…

-Tiki Chris P. reporting from the Last Chance Saloon, in an oasis somewhere in the middle of cowboy-days Florida

It’s a drag when someone breaks into a museum, busts up a display and steals a $550,000 gold piece of history, probably to melt down and sell for booze, gas and grass. But when it happens to be a gold bar from a 300+ year-old Spanish wreck in Key West, Florida, well that’s a whole other story.

According to this article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, two thieves entered the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, broke the thick acrylic case surrounding the real gold bar and made off with it in the night. The bar was on display in a special enclosure that allowed people to lift and hold the bar, so we could feel the weight and history of it. (I held this bar myself a couple of years ago while on a KW trip). The gold bar was salvaged from the wreck of the Santa Margarita, a Spanish ship that went down off the Keys during a hurricane in 1622. The bar was recovered in 1980 and has been on display for more than 20 years.

Then along came two pirates. I call them pirates because A) these kats didn’t knock over a gas station, they went after treasure, treasure from a Spanish ship that sailed during the heyday of pirates. GOLD treasure. If two real pirates came back to life as zombies, they couldn’t have planned this better. B) It happened in Key West, where a very high percentage of the year-round population claims to either be pirates themselves, or descended from real pirates (or pirate hunters). C) They did it right under everyone’s noses, didn’t care about the security cameras or the alarm, and just took what they came for. And D) because I will bet you any amount of doubloons that there was rum involved.

It is a drag for the museum. Even though they have hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of these bars, it’s still not cool to steal from a place that makes it so much fun for the public to enjoy.

Unless, of course, you’re a pirate.

These guys might be crack-head scumbags. They might be lowlife petty thieves who made a run for the big time. Or they might have had it up to their necks with all the wealth being in the hands of the few while the majority of the world is sweating to make a buck. Who knows. I know one thing: I kinda hope they’re more the Jack Sparrow type of pirates…and I kinda hope they get away with it. At least until the Coast Guard finds their pirate ship and blows it out of the water.

-Tiki Chris reporting from Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, in the cavern under the waterfall on Pirate Island.

According to the official website, Tiki Oasis is “a family produced event by Otto and Baby Doe von Stroheim of Tiki News Magazine…the Tiki Oasis is the Tiki community’s annual reunion! Guests have the opportunity to honor historic sites and celebrate all aspects of Tiki Style. We are proud to celebrate our 10th Anniversary Tiki Oasis event!

Crown Plaza Hotel, site of Tiki Oasissis

This kat will not be traveling the 3000 miles this year…I dumped all my dough on The Hukilau in Fort Lauderdale But I’ll be keeping an eye on the posts of some of my pals who will be there, including Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid (who will be performing), the kool kats at Fez-O-Rama and the kids at Vintage Roadside. And believe me, I will be with you in spirit (that spirit being dark rum!)

Wishing everyone at Tiki-O a great, swingin’ time! Have a Mai Tai for me…and feel free to post comments or photos here or at The Retro Tiki Lounge on Facebook!

Aloha and Mahalos, Tiki Chris reporting from the travel desk at Tiki Lounge Talk.

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

from 1974 is NOT a sequel to The Valley of the Dolls. In fact, other than some shared costumes and Manson-style murders, there’s nothing to do with Valley of the Dolls. But hey, everyone was juiced up on acid in 1970 so who cares, right? Diggit.

I’m not even going to try to explain the plot of this movie beyond four hot, mod chicks in a rock band decide to head out to LA to make it big, and everything goes nuts from there. The girls get naked a lot. There’s ’60s-style lipstick lesbian sex. Kool cars. Drugs. Music by the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Crazy swingin’ Hollywood parties. Styles, decor and music that will send you far out, baby. It’s the scene. It’s also funny (intentionally) and has some wacky, out-there scenes (especially the ending) that writer Roger Ebert (yeah, the thumbs guy) and director Russ Meyer cooked up on-set. (Funny note: Russ Meyer didn’t know the film was getting an X rating, which is pretty much equivalent to an NC-17 today. He said if he’d known it he would have added a lot more sex and nudity to the film).

Dinner & Cocktails: There’s actually a drink called LSD, which I think is fitting for this flick:

0.5 oz  Banana Liqueur
0.5  oz Vodka
1 wedge  Lemon
1 sprinkle  Sugar
0.25 oz  Sambuca

Pour banana liqueur and vodka into shot glass. Place lemon wedge over shot glass. Sprinkle with sugar and add float of Sambuca.

Sounds kinda disgusting, but who knows. Maybe it’s better if you do the real LSD first. As for food…anti-establishment all the way! You have to fight the man…the chef..man…and go against the grain of society to make your own voice heard, baby…put a hot dog on a hamburger bun…eat your steak with your hands…radical ideas like that. You know where I’m comin’ from, brothers and sisters. Lay down that groovy flower power. Or something.

Anyway while you’re enjoying your hippiefest I’ll be at the Tiki Bar having a Zombie. Later kids!

-Tiki Chris P, like, sitting in the center of the cosmos, listening to sitar tunes and watching the pretty swirly colors of the tropical flowers.

Tiki Lounge Talk features a new Mod Movie Monday every week. Check it out, kats  & kittens!

I made this one up, but I’m sure I’m not the first to mix these ingredients together. I call it a Sweet Caroline. It’s got a nice sweet taste, with citrus kick. Kind of like this girl named Caroline I used to know.

1 oz Midori
1 oz Amaretto
1 oz Sour Mix
Fill with Orange Juice

Pour over ice in a large glass and stir. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Pretty simple, very tasty! The sugars seem to make the booze hit your head faster than you’d think, so be careful with this one, kids.

-Tiki Chris reporting from under the table at Tiki Lounge Talk

The Cotton Club, 1984

Sometimes the Mod Movie Mondays don’t come until Tuesday. Most of the time they’re not really Mod, but it sounds good in the title. This week we have a retro-tastic movie that captured the 1920s in a way they could only do in the 1980s. From Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Evens, here’s

The Cotton Club

from 1984 starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nick Cage, Maurice Hines, Lonette McKee, Lawrence (Larry) Fishburn and Fred Gwin.

Wow! With a cast and management like that, plus a $42 million buck budget at the time, there’s no way this movie couldn’t be one of the best, most entertaining, most award-winning and amazing flicks of all time, right? Right?

Well..er..

Ok, back in 1984 the movie got panned pretty bad. People expected a lot more from the guys who brought you “The Godfather”. Well kids, this flick was plagued with problems from the start, including money troubles and an actual murder. But 26 years later no one really remembers much of that. What we remember was a movie that looked incredible, with hot flappers and Richard Gere actually playing the coronet. We remember a movie that took Duke Ellington’s music and recreated it with some of the best jazz session musicians available at the time, some playing antique instruments to get the right sound. We remember Herman Munster playing a gangster, and not one but TWO 80’s montages. And, of course, in true mid-80’s fashion, there was a music video (Ill Wind) inserted neatly into the middle of the flick. And yet not one note of the score was played on a DX-7.

What I’m getting at is The Cotton Club is really a damned good movie, not matter what the critics at the time had to say (dig this: Time Mag has the original 1984 review posted online! See it here).

Why you should watch this movie: Beautiful sets, incredible music, terrific dance sequences. Fantastic characters drawn from Lena Horne, George Raft, Bix Beiderbeck, The Nicholas Brothers and pretty much every gangster from New York to Chicago. Gregory Hines tap dancing with his brother, Maurice. Bob Hoskins trying not to look like his character from Roger Rabbit. Diane Lane looking hot as hell. Pretty good Cab Calloway impersonator. Wacky Hollywood ending which lets you in on the big secret…which is don’t take this movie too seriously. It ain’t the freakin’ Godfather.

Dinner and Drinks: For dinner, why not choose from the Cotton Club’s menu? As for drinks, if you can get your hands on some bathtub gin, go for it. If not, I’d say Manhattans and champagne cocktails are in order all around.

My Take: As a young swinger just starting to learn jazz clarinet and sax, and just recently discovering the great riffs of the masters such as Ellington and Calloway, hearing this music in stereo and seeing performers play it and dance to it on the silver screen was a really big deal for me. This movie combined all the things I liked: Hot Jazz, hot flappers, gangsters, classic cars and big-brimmed hats. I learned all the songs on the album and could play all the solos by age 15. It was one of the first movies we recorded off HBO using our new-fangled video tape recording machine (The one with the top loading tapes and the remote with the wire on it), and I watched it over and over again. I dressed like the gangsters (including the hat) and incorporated their style into my first writings. Yeah, that’s right kats, even back then I was into the scene, into the retro thing long before it was labeled ‘Retro”. Dig? Yeah man, that’s a solid five.

-Zoot Jackson filling in for Tiki Chris, reporting from a smokey basement speakeasy somewhere in Harlem.

Catch a new Mod Movie Monday every week (sometimes even on Monday) here at Tiki Lounge Talk, the hepcats’ joint for jumpin’ and jivin’.

The Singapore Sling

Even the name of this bright red cocktail evokes the essence of exotic, taking you to mysterious, far-away places without leaving your bar stool. Developed at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore around the turn of the century, a modified version of the original is still served there today.

Here’s the old fashioned version of the recipe, from back in the days when sophisticated cocktails meant sophisticated ingredients:

2 oz gin
3/4 oz Cherry Heering
2 tsp Benedictine
2 tsp Cointreau
2 oz pineapple juice
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
2 dashes pomegranate grenadine
1 dash Angostura bitters
Soda water
Maraschino cherry
Pineapple wedge
Orange wheel

Throw together everything except the soda and garnish in a shaker. (If you’re not sure which ingredients are the garnish, please put down the shaker and ask an adult to supervise.) Shake it up,and strain into a hurricane or highball glass with a few rocks of ice. Top it off with a splash soda water. Garnish with a cherry, a pineapple slice, and orange skewered on one of those little plastic pirate swords.

The Raffels Hotel in Singapore, Birthplace of the Singapore Sling

This less interesting but still very groovy tasting alternative is much more popular today, and a hell of a lot easier to concoct. Generally if you order a sling today, you’ll get a nice red gin drink. It’s good stuff.

1 dash  Cherry Liqueur
4 oz  Club Soda
1 oz  Gin
0.5 oz  Grenadine
0  cracked Ice
0  cubes Ice
2 oz  bottled Sour mix

Toss everything into the shaker except the soda and ice cubes and shake, shake, shake Senora. Strain over the rocks in a hurricane glass and ad the soda. Then garnish as above. Make sure you use the pirate sword or it’s not a sling. A little plastic monkey or mermaid on the side of the glass is an added bonus.

Speaking of Mermaids…

Mermaids at the Wreck Bar Tonight, 6:15pm, Fort Lauderdale Yankee Clipper Hotel

Mermaids at the Wreck Bar, Yankee Clipper

We’ll be sipping Singapore Slings at the Wreck Bar tonight as we watch the enchanting Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid and her pod of sea lovelies swimming it up in the hotel pool. It’s always fun to watch the mermaids do their underwater antics. If you’re Fort Lauderdale, stop on by!

-Tiki Chris Pinto reporting from behind the bar at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, in the kool little corner of my lanai.