Tropical Storm may squash weekend plans in Cocoa Beach

If you follow me on Twitter or The Retro Tiki Lounge on Facebook, you’ve probably heard we’ve been planning a trip to the Space Coast, Cocoa Beach for this weekend. It’s been an up-and-down/on-and-off-and-back-on-again krazy kind of plan. We were originally going to swing up to Orlando (with a stop in Cocoa) on a work/trip, but the work part got canceled. We managed to rescue the Cocoa Beach part of the trip, but several events in the last week (flat tire, sudden influx of rescue puppies and kittens, dates moved on paying gigs with the little lady, etc etc) have severely screwed things up.

As of yesterday, we were all set up for a cruise up to Cocao today. Then this goofy Tropical storm, which is all the way down in the Caribbean, decided to fling itself into a big mess of rain clouds and shot some rain all the way up the East Coast of Florida. So as of now, 10:30 am on Friday, here in Fort Lauderdale is a big soggy wreck of a day, and our sources north tell us Cocoa Beach isn’t much different.

One thing you should know about Florida: The best stuff to do is outdoors. Even the Tiki Bars are all either open-air, on the water (Like Islamorada) or have great tropical gardens (like the Mai Kai). So zipping around in the rain is maximum dullsville.

Cocoa Beach is full of kool old ’50s motels and Tiki-ness. It’s like you can’t get drunk and fall over without hitting a Tiki. There are great Tiki Carvers up there, and lots of fun beachy stuff. And the plan was to take lots of pix and post a report on this seaside Tiki lovers’ getaway. But I’m afraid this TS-Bonnie is going to squash the plans on this foray into vintage-meets-neo tiki culture. It’s no fun driving three hours on I-95 in buckets of rain, even in the sleek little Cruiser with the aquatreds, especially if it’s to spend most of the time sitting in the motel room waiting for the rain to stop. So, we’ll see how it plays out today. If Bonnie bows out by tonight, we’ll swing up tomorrow instead of today. If not, this weekend will be a great time to catch up on some writing.

More to come…

Later Gators.

-Tiki Chris, soaking wet and not packed yet, reporting from under the overhang of the lanai at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar. Tiki Lounge Talk, The Tiki Culture Blog for Hep Kats and Swingin’ Kittens.

Getz/Gilberto - The Girl from Ipanema

Getz-Gilberto, 1964, one of my all-time favorite Jazz albums

96 Weeks on the Billboard charts, Getz/Gilberto reached the number 2 spot in 1964 - beat out only by The Beatles. Dig it.

This is the album that sealed the deal for Bossa Nova as a permanent form of Jazz. Featuring two of the original creators (and most well-known cats) of the Bossa Nova movement, Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, this album is without doubt one of the most incredible representations of mid-century jazz at its finest.

Every song on this platter is fantastic, but the stand-outs are the ones which have stood the test of time: Corcovado, Desafinado, O Grande Amor, and of course The Girl From Ipanema, by Jobim’s account influenced by a hot young Brazilian chick named Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto who used to stroll by the beach-side bar where he hung out.

If you want proof this album is boss, it won the 1965 Grammy Awards for Best Album of the Year, Best Jazz Instrumental Album - Individual or Group and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. “The Girl from Ipanema”, released as a shortened version for 45 RPM won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. Dig this: It was the first time a jazz platter took Album of the Year.

Astrud Gilberto

Astrud Gilberto, João’s wife at the time had come along as an interpreter. She’d never sung professionally before this recording. The story goes Joåo liked her voice and asked her to fill in for him on a rehearsal. The rest is history.

The music on this album is equally enjoyable at your Tiki bar or mod-50’s corner bar, sitting by the pool with a Caipirinha or relaxing in the den on a rainy day. It’s available for download and on CD…but of course to really dig it retro-style, you’ve got to spin the vinyl.

Stan Getz

My take: I first heard this album’s version of The Girl from Ipanema when I was around twelve years old. Getz’s sax playing blew me away. His style is so smooth, so delicate…so much different from the strength of Coleman Hawkins or the insane vitality of John Coltrane, I couldn’t help but get hip to it. When I started playing sax a year or so later, one of the first songs I learned was TGFI, by playing along with the record. Later it would become one of my ’signature songs’ that I played at almost every gig, and in two of my murder mysteries with Stardust Productions. Of course I play it in my own style, but I did borrow a couple of Stan’s riffs

-Tiki Chris, AKA Zoot the Saxman swinging from Tiki Lounge Talk’s bandstand.
Tiki Lounge Talk - The Tiki Culture & Swingin’ Retro Blog for Hep Kats and Krazy Kittens

One last funny thing…my last name is Pinto, and my great grandfather’s last name was Gilberti…small world, huh?

Retro Lovers: Futurama is Back, Baby!

Finally after almost seven years off the air as a series, FUTURAMA is back on Comedy Central.

If you dig Futurama you probably already know that the new series will premier with a one-hour special on Thursday, June 24 at 10:00 p.m. From the Official Futurama Site: “After a devastating spaceship crash, the Professor attempts to resuscitate the crew with his birth machine. Later, Leela and Zapp Brannigan find themselves stranded on an Eden-like planet.”

For you retro kats & kitties who aren’t hip to this fantabulous show, knock your peepers to this: Futurama (The name taken from the General Motors exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair) is a krazy mix of mid-20th century sci-fi, current-day tech and the world of tomorrow, tomorrow being the year 3000 (or so). The plot is simple: Fry, a bumbling but sort of lovable (most of the time) pizza delivery boy (man) accidentally (sort of) gets cryogenically frozen on New Year’s Eve as the world is about to turn the date to 2000. After 1000 years he’s thawed, welcomed by a goofy scientist who yells “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!” (sound familiar?) He meets a sexy cyclops, a partying robot and eventually his great great (etc.) grand nephew Professor Farnsworth, (who is a mad scientist six or seven times Fry’s age), who just happens to own an inter-planetary delivery company. There’s a lot more, but you’ll have to watch the show for that.

What’s really groovy is that Mat Groening’s (Yes, The Simpsons guy) idea of the far-out future is far-out indeed, filled with 1950s-style sci-fi monsters, aliens, spaceships, and educational films. The hovercars all have fins and chrome, most of the sound effects are made with a Theremin or are lifted from Star Trek TOS, and the TV sets look like floor-model Zeniths that would have been in your grandmother’s pad.

So check it out. It’s as clever as The Simpsons with the added value of that retro flair.

AIRS: Thursday, June 24, 10pm on Comedy Central

-Tiki Chris reporting from in front of the 65″ RetroVision,  with an Atomic Cocktail in hand.

Memories from Hukilau 2010, Fort Lauderdale

There’s nothing like getting a bunch of swingin’ kats and kittens together with island music, vintage threads and lots of rum. Well kids, let me tell you, his year’s Hukilau didn’t disappoint. From tattooed chicks in short skirts and flower leis to guys wearing palm tree shirts and short-brimmed fedoras, the eclectic crowd that swamped Fort Lauderdale was more fun than a barrel of fez-wearing monkeys.

That's me, Tiki Chris with three of my best girls - Colleen, Shannon & Molly

If you’ve been to an event like this (or to this one) you know how much fun can be packed into a couple of rum-drenched days. If you haven’t then you should definitely plan to. Our presence at the event was truncated due to a busy work schedule, but we still had a fantastic time on Friday night, Saturday and Saturday night. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking forward to the Hukilau!

The Hukilau in Fort Lauderdale is this weekend, and I must say that us kats and kittens at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar have been looking forward to this since we left last year’s shindig. This year, we’ll be hitting the Mai Kai for dinner and show with a couple of friends who’ve never seen it…in fact, even though they’ve lived down here in the land of palm trees and Mojitos for years, they’ve never been to the Mai Kai at all. Krazy, huh?

Bahia Cabana, site of the Hukilau

That brings up a point. It amazes me just how little most people know about our little Tiki and Retro culture, even though if you look hard enough, it’s everywhere. The Hukilau is one of the largest Tiki events in the galaxy, and brings in a lot of business to Fort Lauderdale. Yet most of the people I’ve yapped about it to have never even heard of it. Hell, I didn’t find out about it until just a few years ago, and I love this stuff! Maybe it’s best kept as a best kept secret, huh?

As for this  weekend, we’ll be attending the Friday night party and we’ll be at Bahia Cabana during the day on Saturday; we’ll be watching the premier of the Tikimentary ‘In Search of the Lost Paradise’; we’re going to the Wreck Bar for the Mermaid Show and will hit the Mai Kai in the evening. (Note to burglars: We have a very large dog, an cop-wired alarm and a next door neighbor with a shotgun and a coke habbit).

So as far as Tiki Lounge Talk posts go, not sure how things are going to play out in the next couple of days, so you might not hear from me until Sunday. That of course depends on the level of intoxication achieved at The Hukilau, catch my drift? Groovy. And for those swingers going to the big party - see you there kids…just like last year, I’ll be the guy in the Hawaiian shirt!

-Tiki Chris Pinto, reporting from the lanai next to the pool.