TIKI CULTURE

There’s Something Kookie In The Kitsch-en!

Kelly Camille Patterson of The Velveteen Lounge Kitsch-en

Kelly Camille Patterson and Paul Spencer whip up some old fashioned fun with a retro ’50s feel

If you’re into retro and Tiki fun stuff, (what am I saying, of course you are, you’re reading this) then you’re probably the kind of kat or kitten who will dig The Velveteen Lounge Kitsch-en. Their Blounge (web-lounge) consists of vintage recipes, original exotic drink recipes, fun pix, and their main vein…The Velveteen Lounge Kitsch-en pod casts.

The pod casts (it’s hard to call these little snippets of ’50s style TV shows something so modern) are funny as heck. They sort of mock the “humorless lifestyle experts who suck the fun out of entertaining, cooking and decorating with their obsessive perfectionism.” They’re fun and kookie and silly, with Patterson perfectly portraying the typical 1950s housewife with a borderline creepiness that accelerates what might be just another “old fashioned cooking show” into something much more entertaining and fun to watch. This seasoned actress seems to know just how to maintain the balance between kitschy and “oh my god, she’s going to kill everyone with a butcher knife”. It’s her eyes. She almost never blinks. I love it.

Kelly doing a TV show.

Paul Spencer of The Velveteen Lounge Kitsch-en

The shows are silly but the drink & chow recipes are real, and look good. They are knockin’ on the door of 20 episodes of this little TV flick, with topics ranging from Jello molds to tips on organizing your next protest march with cocktails. The episodes are nice and short, and always show off their very impressive collection of mid-century albums, art, housewares, books and Tiki stuff. Very kool.

The site has a nice section of exotic cocktails, the recipes of which they have concocted themselves. I haven’t tried them yet, but looking at the recipes I can tell you they look interesting and tasty. They also have a section of actual vintage party food recipes…things like “broiler tuna burgers”…again, you don’t know if this is good or just creepy, but it sure is authentic.

Check out the Blounge at TheVelveteenLoungeKitsch-en.com, or on FaceBook. Here’s one of their episodes that typifies the fun…(good god, those eyes!)

-Tiki Chris P. reporting from the TV room at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar. Aloha, kids!

Coffee at the Diner: Living the Retro Life

Man, it’s been way too long since I parked it in a diner booth. All day long I had a brain pain for a Bamburger and grease rings. So when I hit the door, I grabbed the ole Lady and we swung the Caddy down to Lester’s Diner on 136th Avenue.

Not the least bit disappointed in my grub. A big old Cheeseburger with bacon and fries, rings, slaw and a cup’a Joe. A shake would have topped it off, but it would have broke the bank so I quit early.

Joints like this used to be my hang out, back in the days before I had my own little Tiki Bar, back before the Mai Kai was a short drive away. Diners, all kinds of diners when I swung back in Jersey. Jersey is, after all, the diner capital of the world. You couldn’t swing a bat without hitting a neon sign that said “open 24 hours”. Not so much down here in the land of Mai Tais and Palm trees. There’s one diner in 8 miles, and it shuts down at midnight. Thank God the Tiki bars are open late…

There were a few haunts I made my mark at. The Point Diner in Somers Point, NJ is where I spent many a night and many a paycheck. Coffee and a burger at 2 am? Why the hell not? All my gang hung out there too…in fact, I remember one particularly kool New Year’s Eve that we wound up there around 3 am…and who was there, but this really hot swingin’ chick that I went around with in high school. It was a very groovy meeting, that night. Never forget it.

Then there was the Blue Diamond Diner in Pomona, NJ. This was a 1950’s rail-car style stainless steel masterpiece, with the original guts still intact. They had the old 70’s style jukeboxes filled with stuff from Sinatra and Elvis. And one of my favorite songs to play at a diner, just before leaving, Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny. Yeah, those were the days. 50¢ cup of strong Greek coffee and I was good for hours.

Back when I had my Dinner Theater Company, Stardust Productions, after every show I’d take the cast to a diner and buy them all dinner. We’d wind down and talk about the show, how much fun it was, how to make it better. It was around then I picked up the nickname Mack, after a gangster character I played in a show.

Me during a performance of "The Mysterious Presto" with StarDust Theater. The beautiful blonde is my wife, Colleen

I miss those old diners. I miss the smell of grilled onions in the middle of the night, the taste of good diner coffee and breakfast at 4 am. I miss the feel of those old places, the scratchy records in the jukebox, the neon lights. The diner we hit tonight was good but not quite right. There’s something unhip about a diner that has a 34″ plasma TV mounted on the wall, that plays nothing but commercials. There’s something un-groovy about a CD jukebox that’s filled with riffs by Jenny Lopez and Matchbox-20, but doesn’t have a single Elvis tune. Sure, the burger was good, the java was good, and the company was great…even motoring there in the old Cadillac was fun. But these new joints just don’t have the same feel, the same atmosphere, as those old stainless steel diners held together with apron strings and grease that I grew up with.

-Mack (aka Tiki Chris)