Eden 5 - Feel the Performance!

Eden 5 - Feel the Performance! from macpara on Vimeo.

THE "GO TO HELL" POLO

As the temperature is reaching higher figures, it's time to get yourself some new Polo Piques.

The Go To Hell polo's are a great summer staple combine it with your colored chino's or with a white jeans.

Love 'em or hate 'em, "go-to-hell" is a cornerstone of the Ivy American style. The first embroidered clothes, where pants designed with whales. In 1976, prominent author and dandy Tom Wolfe coined the term “go-to-hell” in an Esquire article about country club communities and the preps that inhabit them.  Wolfe explained that the pants were prevalent throughout these regions, as men paired them with their traditional navy blazers and OCBD’s making the pants nearly impossible to miss.  Around the same time that Wolfe came out with his article larger menswear companies such as Brooks Brothers, J. Press, and Ralph Lauren began producing their versions of the pants, making the pants a cornerstone in any traddy summer wardrobe. (polo's from below to top - Gant, Carhartt, Tommy Hilfiger)

Etsy love.

Well we asked for Spring and it's here in all it's rainy splendour! Stef and I are both feeling under the weather today, probably from the stress of our past week and the lack of sleep, but hopefully the sun will soon shine and we will be back at it! For now we will leave you with some of our favorite finds on Etsy! Happy Tuesday!

This is such a great print!

Such a pretty blue enamelware set by Finel

How pretty is this dress from Shop Exile (one of our favorite vintage shops on Etsy)?

This past week we got to order some retro wallpaper for a super exciting project and although we didn't pick this one in the end, it definitely caught our eye!

one//two

This Ipod-ready vintage Arvin radio is picture perfect!

Macon County Line (1974) & Return to Macon County (1975)

          Max Baer Jr. enjoyed a minor acting career until landing the role of Jethro on the hit 1962-1971 sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Alas, typecasting rendered Baer virtually unemployable once the show ended. Undaunted, he moved behind the camera to produce low-budget movies, the second of which was Macon County Line. The lurid potboiler earned huge profits on the drive-in circuit and opened the door for Baer to become a director of Southern-fried pictures including the respectable-ish Ode to Billy Joe(1978). The reason it’s worth dwelling on behind-the-scenes data is that Macon County Line is an underwhelming cinematic experience—therefore, the fact that it had an impact lends the picture a small measure of significance.

          In any event, the film—cowritten by Baer and Richard Compton (who also directed)—is a straightforward bummer narrative about mistaken identity. In 1954 Louisiana, two young brothers, Chris and Wayne Dixon (played by real-life siblings Alan and Jesse Vint), travel the countryside, getting laid and getting into trouble before commencing military service. Meanwhile, a pair of psychotic drifters roams the same terrain. Caught in the middle is small-town cop Reed Morgan (Baer). The drifters kill Reed’s wife, but Reed mistakenly believes the Dixon brothers are responsible. Tragedy ensues. The first hour of Macon County Line is disjointed and dull, lurching from playful scenes of Chris courting cute hitchhiker Carol (Joan Blackman) to grim scenes of the drifters committing crimes. There’s also a peculiar subplot in which Reed educates his young son (Leif Garrett) about the finer points of being a proper Southern racist. The whole thing leads up to a pointless twist ending that Baer and Compton stage like a vignette from a horror movie. Presumably, the combination of a gotcha climax and pandering redneck stereotypes made an impression on audiences, hence the box-office haul, but it’s hard to categorize Macon County Line as anything but a pop-culture aberration.

         Nonetheless, the picture inspired a quasi-sequel, Return to Macon County, which features an all-new cast and all-new characters, although the storyline is basically just a retread of the previous movie. (Compton returned as director, and he wrote the second movie solo, but Baer was not involved with the follow-up.) This time, the horndog young heroes are Bo and Harley, played by a pre-fame Nick Nolte and Don Johnson. The story takes place in 1958, and it revolves around Bo and Harley traveling the country to enter drag races. As in the previous picture, the boys hook up with a pretty girl (Robin Mattson) and invoke the ire of a crazed cop (Robert Viharo). Despite the charisma of the male leads, Return to Macon County is drab and sluggish. The story takes forever to get moving, and relies even more heavily on contrived circumstances than its predecessor. It doesn’t help that Nolte outclasses every other actor in the movie—with his bearish build and rascally intensity, he’s a potent image of youthful rebellion even when’s playing trite scenes and spewing vapid dialogue. It’s no surprise, then, that Nolte rose to major stardom with his very next project, the epic miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). Just like it’s no surprise there wasn’t a third entry in the Macon County franchise.

Macon County Line: FUNKY
Return to Macon County: LAME

Epic flying on a frozen lake

LET'S MAKE A PARTY TODAY

C2C with 3 Peaks T/R + Skyline #276 for Doreen

Despite the 100 degree temperatures in Palm Springs this last week end, a lot of hikers climbed Skyline.  Here are two trip reports

http://mtsanjacinto.info/viewtopic.php?t=4112    C2C with 3 Peaks

http://mtsanjacinto.info/viewtopic.php?t=4114    Doreen

Doreen

 

 

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Please visit my website
http://www.hiking4health.com

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

          Crafted by two of New York’s most celebrated wits—and based on an idea by a lesser light from the same stratosphere—The Heartbreak Kid represents satire so cutting the movie borders on outright tragedy. The film tells the story of a young Jewish guy who marries a simple girl, experiences buyer’s remorse, meets a beautiful shiksa while on his honeymoon, and gets a quickie divorce so he can pursue his Gentile dream girl. To describe the lead character as unsympathetic would be a gross understatement—Lenny Cantrow’s sole redeeming quality is a deranged sort of relentless positivity.

          Based on a story by humorist Bruce Jay Friedman and written for the screen by Neil Simon—who mostly avoids his signature one-liners, opting instead for closely observed character-driven comedy—The Heartbreak Kid was directed by Elaine May. After achieving fame as part of a comedy duo with Mike Nichols in the ’60s, May embarked on an eclectic film career. She wrote, directed, and co-starred in the dark comedy A New Leaf (1971), which was the subject of battles between May and the studio during postproduction, then took on this project as director only. While May’s world-class comic instincts are evident in the timing of jokes and the generally understated tone of the acting, it’s easy to envision another director taking the same material to greater heights of hilarity.

          Or not.

          You see, the problem is that The Heartbreak Kid tells such a fundamentally cruel story that it’s hard to really “enjoy” the movie, even when the comedy gets into a groove. Much of the film comprises Lenny (Charles Grodin) abandoning or lying to his wife, Lila (Jeannie Berlin), so he can make time with Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), a bored rich girl who uses her sexual power for amusement. In other words, it’s the tale of a rotten guy dumping a nice girl for a bitch. The piece is redeemed, to some degree, by the skill of the performers, each of whom is perfectly cast. Grodin, a master at deadpan line deliveries, is all too believable as a middle-class schmuck with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Berlin (incidentally, May’s daughter) bravely humiliates herself to make sight gags work, amply earning the Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress that she received for this movie. Shepherd, at the time a former model appearing in only her second movie, does most of her work just by showing up and looking unattainably beautiful, but one can see glimmers of the skilled comedienne she eventually became.

          The film’s other recipient of Oscar love, Best Supporting Actor nominee Eddie Albert, excels in his role as Kelly’s father, because his showdown scenes with Lenny are among the picture’s best—watching Albert slowly rise from simmering anger to boiling rage is pure pleasure. In fact, there’s so much good stuff in The Heartbreak Kid that it becomes a laudable movie by default, even though the central character is a putz of the first order. Inexplicably, the Farrelly Brothers remade The Heartbreak Kid in 2007 with Ben Stiller in the Grodin role, only to discover the story hadn’t lost its ability to infuriate. The remake flopped.

The Heartbreak Kid: GROOVY

Kitchen love.

Well, good news! We survived our crazy weekend and don't worry we will share the exciting details with you all very soon! Everything went so well and we're a little sad that it's over, but we are thrilled to have a little bit of a breather this week and catch up on things. 

Ok enough about us, let's get to the point here and today that is beautiful colorful kitchens! If there was only  one single room in our homes that we were allowed to have color we would chose our kitchens! Take a peek at some of our favorite kitchens on the web right now.

The yellow tiles in this kitchen make it look like the happiest place on Earth!

Kitchen Love. So perfect!

These cabinets are to die for! They are perfect and neutral, but imagine all of the colorful dishes you could load them with!

Love this vintage kitchen. The colors, those drawers and that light!

The Walker residence is pretty unbelievable, and this kitchen is proof!

Turbulent Paragliding

Moro, Steck & Griffith assaulted and threatened by Sherpas on Everest

They were threatened with death -  This was posted on Summitpost News

http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB3/everest-fight-care-to-speculate-t64940.html   --  Forum post

http://www.explorersweb.com/offsite/?source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.montagna.tv%2Fcms%2F%3Fp%3D47029&lang=it    --   The full report

http://www.planetmountain.com/english/News/shownews1.lasso?l=2&keyid=40822

 

 

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Please visit my website
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Vanishing Point (1971)

          Although I’ve never really grooved to this particular counterculture artifact, as many friends who dig the same cinematic era have, all it takes to explain the appeal of Vanishing Point is to describe the close parallel between the film’s minimalistic storyline and prevailing early-’70s social concerns. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a drifter who makes his living delivering cars across long distances. After accepting a job to ferry a hot rod from Denver to San Francisco, Kowalski jacks himself up on speed and blasts down open highways with legions of cops in pursuit. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, blind radio DJ going by the handle “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little) narrates Kowalski’s journey for his listeners, framing the driver’s ride as a principled fight against the Establishment. The sympathetic reading of this material, of course, is that Kowalski just wants to be free, man, so when society tries to trap him with laws and rules and speed limits, he strikes a rebellious blow on behalf of rugged independence. And if you can’t anticipate how a story comprising these elements will end, then you haven’t seen too many counterculture flicks—as the song goes, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

          Viewed as historically relevant symbolism, Vanishing Point is interesting, because it presents a lone-wolf protagonist whose existence comprises nothing but early-’70s signifiers: He’s an alienated Vietnam vet, he self-medicates with illegal drugs, and he’s determined to force a confrontation with what he perceives to be the oppressive forces of law and order. Heavy shit, no question. It seems safe to say that writers Guillermo Cain, Barry Hall, and Malcolm Hart—as well as director Richard C. Sarafian—deliberately infused their story with of-the-moment dimensions.

          But very much like another existentialist road movie of the same vintage, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Vanishing Point plays an iffy game by using ciphers instead of fully realized characters. For instance, certain conventional narrative elements, such as backstory and well-articulated motivation, are largely absent from Vanishing Point. So, even though Vanishing Point provides ample fodder for post-movie interpretation games, the actual onscreen events are repetitive and superficial. It doesn’t help that Newman, who enjoyed a very brief run as a leading man in movies and television, is a bland persona. (Conversely, Little exudes casual-cool charisma and delivers his on-air monologues with smooth style.) It also says a lot that many Vanishing Point fans dig the movie because they’re entranced by the Dodge Challenger muscle car that Newman drives in the movie. After all, the Challenger has the film’s most fully rendered characterization—especially compared to the cringe-worthy portrayals of two gay hitchhikers whom the hero encounters.

Vanishing Point: FUNKY

Lockheed-Martin "Skunk Works" P791 LTA ACLS dynmicpara

Salvage-1 (1979)

          Featuring one of the loopier premises in the history of primetime drama, this feature-length pilot movie launched a short-lived series, which has since become a minor cult favorite among sci-fi fans. Beloved TV icon Andy Griffith stars in the movie as a junkyard owner who builds his own private spaceship for a trip to the moon, where he plans to salvage abandoned NASA equipment and sell it to the highest bidder. Once the concept went to series, Griffth reprised his role, with his character piloting the spaceship for missions to remote locations around the globe; in the first regular episode, the goal was to retrieve monkeys for a zoo and to explore the possibility of bringing back an iceberg for a California community suffering from drought. Not hard to see why the series got canceled. Still, two things make the Salvage-1 pilot movie charming—Griffith’s affable persona and the lightness of the storytelling. Written by Mike Lloyd Ross, whose character development and dialogue are as clunky as his narrative concepts are wild, Salvage-1introduces Harry Broderick (Griffith) as an expert in repurposing junk—he buys a World War I biplane for a song, then guts the vehicle and sells parts to various buyers, making a $14,000 profit in the course of a morning’s work.

          Harry’s gotten hip to the multimillion-dollar value of tech that NASA left on the moon, and he’s identified an aeronautics expert with a theory that might facilitate inexpensive space travel. Harry hires the expert, ex-astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins), who in turn enlists the aid of fuel specialist Melanie Slozar (Trish Stewart). Together with Harry’s regular employees—including a pair of former NASA ground-control techs—Harry cobbles together a spaceship called the Vulture. Meanwhile, uptight FBI agent Jack Klinger (Richard Jaeckel) sniffs around Harry’s junkyard because he senses something strange is happening. Salvage-1is predicated on an inordinate number of convenient plot twists, and Ross’ script is so upbeat that there’s never any real tension, but Salvage-1 is fun to watch simply because it’s such a lark. Even the laughably bad special effects featured during the Vulture’s moon shot aren’t enough to diffuse the good vibes. This is pure gee-whiz escapism, and the saving grace of the piece is that it never pretends to have meaning or substance. So, yes, the acting is hokey and the story is borderline stupid, but who cares? Fun is fun.

Salvage-1: GROOVY

Tracsails Kitebuggy & Kiteland

Upcoming Meetup Hikes on Skyline and c2c on April 28

The Coachella Meetup Hikers have two hikes starting at 2.00 am and 5.45 am on Sunday

http://www.meetup.com/Hiking-Coachella-Valley/events/114434202/

http://www.meetup.com/Hiking-Coachella-Valley/    April Hikes

 

http://hikinjim.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-skyline-trail.html

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Please visit my website
http://www.hiking4health.com

Spring is in the air!

Well as we told you on Monday, this week has been one of our busiest and most exciting and we can hardly wait to share with you next week as to what we've been up to! Until then, we will leave you with some beautiful photos we've come across this past week! Have a good weekend!

Love everything about this!

This watermelon almost looks too good to eat! 

How adorable is she? Good cropped top, good bun and great smile!

photo found here, original source unknown.

How amazing is this green unit? Incredible!

Photo found here, original source here.

We love the pop of orange and green against all of the white. Everything looks so clean and fresh!

Photo found here.

This is such an amazing outfit. I love everything about it!

Photo found here

That’s the Way of the World (1975)

          A behind-the-scenes story about the music business starring Harvey Keitel as a principled record producer, That’s the Way of the World isn’t a great film by any measure, but it vividly evokes a specific era, and it addresses meaningful themes related to the eternal conflict between art and commerce. Plus, the movie’s got great jams courtesy of R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire, the members of which portray an ersatz act called the Group—EWF lays down smooth grooves including “Reasons,” “Shining Star,” and “That’s the Way of the World.” Keitel plays Coleman Buckmaster (one of the best character names ever, just sayin’), a successful producer known for creating imaginative arrangements. When we meet Coleman, he’s deep into sessions with the Group, a black ensemble making densely atmospheric tracks. Coleman considers the Group artistically important, but his backers don’t dig the sound. Execs order Coleman to set the Group aside and work on a single by an all-white vocal group called the Pages, whose style is so square they make the Carpenters seem hip by comparison. (In a great flourish, the leader of the Pages is played by Bert Parks, who spent years serenading Miss America during televised beauty contests.) Coleman agrees to cut the vocal act’s record, planning to get the job done quickly so he can return to the Group, but things get complicated when Coleman starts romancing Pages singer Velour (Cynthia Bostick).

          Although this set-up has plenty of dramatic potential, writer Robert Lipsyte and director/producer Sig Shore devote more energy to capturing details than to generating narrative momentum. As such, there’s lots of great stuff depicting the flow of recording sessions and the unethical practices of the record business. In one memorable scene, an executive says it takes “payola, layola, viola, and drugola” to get a song on the radio; elsewhere, Coleman speaks for artists throughout history by asking an anxious financier, “Do you want it good or do you want it now?” Shore, who produced the Superfly movies, doesn’t break any new ground with this, his directorial debut—his work falls somewhere between perfunctory and underwhelming. As for Keitel, among the most quixotic actors in Hollywood history, he delivers one of his patented non-performances. He’s mildly charming in some moments and fiery in a few others, but mostly he’s so internalized that many nuances fail to register. Still, these are relatively minor complaints given how interesting That’s the Way of the World is from start to finish. Sure, there’s a kitsch factor (Keitel roller-skates!), but the picture is hard to beat as a travelogue through a world seldom seen by outside eyes.

That’s the Way of the World: GROOVY

ESQUIRE & GANT BLOGGER EVENT

Yesterday I joined a "Dinner with Esquire & Gant", with some fellow bloggers like Ajanaku, Our Bubble and Selectionneurs. The Gant Haarlem Store was turned into a Brooklyn style restaurant. The food was served by De Jongens Haarlem, a local restaurant. Along with the food we tasted some great local beers called Jopen beer. But that wasn't all the challenge is to make 4 different sets and the winner will win a trip to Stockholm for an exclusive interview with Christopher Bastin, Gant's Head of Design.

May the best win!!

Ozone Enzo 4.del

Ozone Enzo 4.del from Jan Jystad on Vimeo.

Our favorite place.

Yup, that's right guys, we went to Seaflower again! It's just so dreamy that we couldn't help but go back! We have been there numerous times in the past (you can read our previous blog posts here and here.) Seaflower is a beautiful resort filled with the prettiest beach huts located on the island Koh Phangan in the gulf of Thailand and it's safe to say that it's our favorite place in the world.

Just take a look at all of these lush, brightly colored, tropical plants! Can you blame us for coming back time after time? ;)

Isn't that scenery absolutely breath-taking? Photos don't even do it's beauty justice!

Everyday at 6:00pm after a day in the sun we would get showered off and changed into comfy sun dresses and head down to the beach bar where we would watch the sunset while drinking a pretty cocktail. Also, the name of the beach bar is Heaven which seriously couldn't be a more fitting name.

Our time in Bangkok is always so hectic so when we get away from the city we try to take some time to just relax and unwind, so we spent a quite a bit of time hanging out on the porch of our hut. We spent afternoons reading in our hammock, painting our nails, listening to music and snacking on chips and beer, ha. It doesn't get much better than that!

Oh yeah, we also spent a lot of time eating. Banana nutella pancakes with a side of extra crispy bacon for breakfast is probably the best thing ever. Mmm...

Psst... guess what? We got matching tattoos!!!

Koh Phangan and Seaflower hold a lot of meaning for us so we wanted to get something that represented our time there so we decided to get heaven/paradise tattooed in Thai writing (which coincidentally also happens to be the name of the dreamy beach bar at Seaflower!) We also went to the coolest tattoo place that looked like a little tree house to get them done - they did the tattoos naturally just using bamboo rather than a tattoo gun and needle! It was a fun and unique experience but I'm not gonna lie, it still hurt! Ha. 

It was the Thai New Year while we were in Koh Phangan so we celebrated Songkran which is basically a giant water fight in the streets. We got the cutest water guns possible (hello tweety bird!) and went out with a bunch of friends and had the greatest day walking through the town spraying everybody, haha! It might sound kind of crazy, but it is actually so much fun because literally everybody in Thailand participates so everyone is walking around absolutely drenched. Since the temperature is always so hot out there, it is actually quite refreshing. :)

Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and begin the loooong journey home. It's always so hard to leave but we take comfort in the fact that we will be back again someday. (Hopefully soon!)

Until next time Seaflower...

 XO, Stef & Erin