Welcome to Inkville

Kon-suming Passions

Fans and Friends Descend on Portland for Northwest Tiki Kon 2010

Photos by Jennifer Ragan-Fore

This article appeared this week in the summer issue of Tiki Magazine. I've really enjoyed my acquaintance with Portland's Team Tiki, and was really pleased I had a chance to document their summer 2010 adventures... even if the vagaries of a quarterly publishing schedule did mean that the article about the 2010 Kon came out after the 2011 Kon was completed. Whoops.

I have to admit I absolutely love writing for Tiki Magazine. It's not my best-paying gig (seriously, how could it be?), but there's just something about wiritng about one's passions, and about people one finds fascinating (and who seem genuinely grateful for the coverage), that makes it worthwhile. Getting to attend these events gratis ain't too shabby, neither. Mahalo, Tiki Magazine! Mahalo, TikiKon ohana!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lights, like the music, are low. The food is greasy and filling. And the company can’t be beat. It’s the perfect environment to nurse a Sunday morning hangover.

Scott McGerik looks up from the kalua pork, macaroni salad, and other assorted Hawaiian delicacies sharing room on his brunch plate with mainland fare like scrambled eggs and fruit. “It’s a shame how few people appreciate something like this,” he pronounces, gesturing with his knife at a glowing red lantern.

McGerik, a computer programmer visiting the northwest from Minnesota, is clad in an aloha shirt and a turquoise lei. He’s seated next to his similarly-attired wife Kat, a nurse and massage therapist, in a comfortable curving booth at the back of The Alibi Bar and Restaurant, a Portland, Oregon tiki bar dating back to the 1940s. The McGeriks have traveled to the Northwest to celebrate with like-minded tiki fanatics at Northwest Tiki Kon VIII, with the incredible theme of “Atomic Tiki.”

You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three

The 2010 Kon officially kicked off the night before, with an evening of food, follies, and friends at Tony Starlight's Supper Club. With handcrafted items for sale by tropikitschy vendors, the Kon offered a sort of tropical-themed Etsy in the club’s entryway.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

Last week Inkville took its show on the road to sunny San Diego, the city playing host to the 2010 American Marketing Assocation's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

I took in some great (and not so great) presentations and talks.  Here are some highlights.

Alicia Nestle, assistant director for new media at Nazareth College, presented "20 Tips for Powerful Story-Driven Branding & Communications." Besides the fact that I am a professional storyteller, I also liked this presentation because its Letterman "Top 10 List" style  provided a lot of practical ideas one could implement immediately.

In what appears to be a possibly disturbing trend at this symposium both of the years I have attended, Nestle was joined in her presentation by a representative of the media firm that partnered with Nazareth. Many of the presentations involved one person from the academic side plus one corporate partner, in fact. If schools want to partner with outside third parties, sure, go for it. We do here at Oregon. But I'll admit it does give me pause in considering whether a presentation might be discounted by the AMA planners simply because the academic side presenter planned to fly solo.

Most of the conference sessions surrounding social and new media suggest to me that the University of Oregon is already at the forefront in this arena. We aren't doing everything we could, of course, but we're doing what we reasonably can, given that social media isn't at the tippy-top of any UO staffer's job description (to my knowledge, at least).

Gratifyingly, the location-based services presentation by Joe Hice of North Carolina State (who presented sans corporate partner) even used my UO Foursquare online materials as a demonstration of schools on the cutting edge of this particular medium. (By the way, NC State's social media plan is amazing, and include some cool ideas for QR codes, in particular.)

I was in awe of Purdue's "Makers, All" campaign as presented by Teri Thompson, that university's vice president for marketing. The campaign is simple and elegant, and offers return to a core branded identity while maximizing use of a mascot that might be confusing or awkward in the 21st century. But really, how could a presentation called "From Gatorade to Lady Gaga" fail to disappoint, especially when its presenter charges onto stage in a triumphant pop music opener?

Summer Vacation: Getting Animated

This blog post is horribly overdue, I'll admit. The First lady of Inkville had a work conference in Los Angeles back in August, and I tagged along. Besides visiting to Disneyland, eating Brazilian food, and  hitting numerous tiki locales, I flew solo for one day and visited the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where I saw two fantastic museum exhibitions, both of which were ending that very day.

The AMPAS Ray Harryhausen exhibition was an incredible collection of photographs, film clips, and, most excitingly, scale models. Many non-geeks are sadly unaware of Harryhausen and his legacy. The man was a genius of stop motion animation, animating fantasy sequences in films like Mighty Joe Young, The Seven Voyages of Sinbad, and, most excitingly for this 7th grade Greek Mythology fanatic, the original Clash of the Titans.

 

Photography wasn't allowed in the galleries, and a dude behind a desk was glowering at me a bit, so I hope you'll forgive these grainy, through-the-lucite iPhone photos, one of the models for Perseus and the Pegasus, the other of the monstrous Kraken. Seeing these models up close reminded me of the amazing level of fear and anticipation Harryhausen inspired in my middle school self with his Medusa sequence, and how the CGI effects of the recent Clash remake fail to deliver in terms of visceral fright... even with the requisite mental adjustment to account for nostalgia.

The second exhibition was even more amazing, and the real reason I mastered aggro Los Angeles traffic to make the commute to AMPAS. The exhibition featured materials and ephemera from the career of Chuck Jones, the amazing director of a number of your favorite Looney Tunes shorts from midcentury ("What's Opera, Doc?," anyone? "One Froggy Evening"?), including animation cells, cartoon scripts, personal correspondence, video clips, and even the man's Oscar statuette.

  

Chuck Jones was a bit (okay, a lot) of a personal hero of mine in the 80s and early 90s. I read the man's autobiography, as well as several other tomes on animation history. I watched Looney Tunes incessantly. I still think that the two-part Elmer Fudd hunting series cartoons Jones directed stand as some of the best-timed and funniest animated films in the medium.

Again, no photos were allowed, so I grabbed these images of the Internet. In fact, security was so tight at this thing, I halfway expected to see Foghorn Leghorn with a baseball bat whacking weasels on the head. When a couple of confused museum-goers confusedly attempted to stray into the AMPAS screening theatre, they were escorted back out again, quite definitively. A far cry from laid-back Oregon.

Amazing exhibitions, amazing trip. That's all, folks!

Summer Vacation: Tiki Travelogue

A couple of weeks ago, the First Lady of Inkville attended a work conference in her professional capacity. I tagged along to Los Angeles in a decidedly un-professional capacity. Still addled on the rum-soaked fumes of the Northwest TikiKon earlier this month, I decided to cram as much Polynesian pop as possible into my visit, with one goal in mind: Tiki pilgrimage.

And what Los Angeles Tiki travel would be complete without a visit to the Enchanted Tiki Room in Disneyland? The entirety of the Adventureland portion of the park is pretty Tiki-tastic, but the Tiki room (complete with its delicious and overpriced pineapple Dole whip) remains the Genesis moment for many Tikiphiles' obsession, including that of your intrepid guide.

Spoiler alert: those Tikis totally come to life.

After working up a sweat escaping the Haunted Mansion and whining about the insertion of Johnny Depp mannequins into the original Pirates of the Caribbean, we adjourned to downtown L.A. to quench our thirst at the Trader Vic's:

Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant

Dealing as it does with Eugene's Marché restaurant, this is a little companion piece to my article "Salve, Sfizio." Both appeared in Eugene Weekly's summer Chow! Guide. And, dealing as it does with our charming First Lady and a visit to the White House, this seemed an appropriate post for the 4th of July weekend. Happy Independence Day!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The term “pro bono” more likely conjures images of legal briefs and power suits than it does freshly-sliced rhubarb or the stark whites of a professional chef. But Stephanie Pearl Kimmel, founding chef and owner of Eugene’s Marché, will be cooking and consulting for free in the coming months as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools initiative. 

As one foot soldier in an army of white-clad chefs invited to Washington, D.C., last weekend, Kimmel and her cohort got their marching orders on the White House lawn, directly from the First Lady. 

The Chefs Move to Schools project is part of the wider “Let’s Move!” initiative to combat childhood obesity, and ultimately to strengthen the federal Child Nutrition program that feeds kids in schools.

“A third of our schoolchildren [in the U.S.] are overweight or obese,” says Kimmel, who cites the “lost creativity, lost contributions and eventually just the medical costs” of that sorry state as major problems for the nation, down the line.

Continue reading "Beyond the Walls of the Restaurant" at Eugene Weekly.

Orgeat in Oregon

Thatch Tiki Bar weaves a tasty cocktail in Portland

Photos by Jennifer Ragan-Fore

You know, when it comes down to it, this is really what it's all about. This article ran in the Summer 2010 issue of Tiki Magazine. There are more lucrative freelance opportunities out there, sure. But what beats writing about one's passion? And what can I say? It is a true honor to see my byline in a publication just a few pages away from that of Tiki-riffic author and critic James Teitelbaum, and both Blair Reynolds and Robert Voltz were responsive and engaging interview subjects.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It might be easy to overlook the unassuming exterior of Thatch Tiki Bar, nestled as it is among row shops and the craftsman-style homes of Portland’s trendy northeast side. But a number of mature live palm trees line a parking lot across the street, even here in the soggy northwest. Consider it a promising omen from the gods.

Besides, isn’t that what the Polynesian Pop lifestyle is all about… savage passions and animal instincts, tucked away under cover of a civilized urban veneer? Thatch’s husband-and-wife owners Robert and Theresa Voltz understand, and have even employed the Tiki bar tradition of creating a sort of entryway grotto separating the “real world” from Thatch’s friendly, cave-like confines: to enter, bargoers must cross a short bridge over a shallow pool ornamented with giant shells and Maori-style weaponry. That’s right: just a few feet from the traffic of Northeast Broadway lies a moat.

Entering the tidily cluttered 1400-square foot space, visitors are greeted by a midcentury modern Mecca: the ironwood bar is accentuated by cheerful orange chairs--“all genuine Herman Miller,” Voltz says proudly--and booths that hail from a Denny’s. The décor is fabulously tropikitschy, as may be expected, with velvet paintings by the Pander Brothers, one even featuring pop culture patron saint Michael Jackson.

Better Read than Dead: Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans

Inkville's "mostly New Orleans, much of the time" coverage continues with this installment. And by the way, the images after the jump sort of stray into NSFW territory. And definitely stray into "Ewww" territory.

The book pitch I have been kicking around for a few years now centers on ghost stories of old New Orleans. So what better research item than, well, Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans, Jeanne deLavigne's 1946 treatise on supernatural hauntings throughout the French Quarter and other NOLA neighborhoods?

The book is sadly out of print and going for around $125 online, so I'm indebted to the University of Oregon's interlibrary loan program, and to the libraries of the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham Young University.

Here's a photo of deLavigne, which she has signed as a gift for another favorite New Orleans author, Robert Tallant. Seem slike a nice older lady, doesn't she? You'd never expect she was a macabre freak.

deLavigne was part of the early-to-mid-20th century New Orleans artistic and literary renaissance as fueled by the Works Progress Administration, a contemporary of Lyle Saxon and a sort of spiritual inheritor of George Washington Cable. I haven't read an awful lot about this period of NOLA history, but on the surface, some of the relationships, artistic output, and activist bent of the whole thing seem reminiscent of the Irish Literary Revival's Yeats/Synge/Lady Gregory complex across the pond, just a few decades later.  It's temptingly easy, in fact, to cast deLavigne as a sort of Southern Lady Gregory, gathering the spooky tales of the common American.

The Strange Tale of Bobbie the Wonder Dog

During a recent and rare sunny springtime day in the northwest, the residents of Inkville, human and canine alike, road tripped to Silverton, Oregon, an hour south of Portland, to pay their respects at the memorial devoted to Bobbie the Wonder Dog:

   

Silverton is a cool little town, with a lot going for it. Besides the requisite antique shops and the fact that the town sports the nation's first transgender mayor, Silverton also offers the amazing natural beauty of Oregon's lush Willamette Valley. Dig:

 

I can tell you from personal experience that border collies grow very nervous while crossing this covered footbridge. Pfft. Dogs. No appreciation for charm.

But wait, there's more! Speaking of collies, Bobbie the Wonder Dog and his family took a little Oregon-to-Indiana road trip in 1923 to visit relatives. Silverton's interpretive materials note that, weirdly, Bobbie traveled on the car's running board(!). Unsurprisingly considering this undignified mode of transport, Bobbie somehow disappeared in transit. The family returned to Oregon, sad and dogless.

Amazingly, stunningly, heroically, Bobbie showed up six months later on his owners' doorstep in Silverton, beat half to hell and wearing a strange collar. That's right: Bobbie the collie walked and navigated 2,800 miles out of his devotion to his humans.

Treme Flow Chart

Continuing what is evidently Inkville's new focus on wall-to-wall Treme coverage... Okay, is two episodes in too early for Treme fan art?

I made this flow chart and submitted it to GraphJam. Thus far, no response. Like other stuff I've done in a humorous (or is that "humorous"?) vein, you kind of have to be in love with the same things I am, to find this funny. And we all know that making arcane references to newly-premiered cable programming is the secret to good comedy, right?

Okay, here's the source material, the opening credits of Treme, featuring John Boutté wailin' on vocals:

Nevah be de' same, eh, cher? How's ya mama and 'em?

The Old Rugged Cross

I had been waiting for last night's premiere of HBO's new series Treme for months. An ongoing program that takes place in perhaps my favorite city in the world, bolstered by the usual deft characterization and commitment to world-building endemic of HBO shows like Deadwood and The Sopranos is too good to pass up.

Watching the series, even just the first episode, felt like coming home. Seeing the dive bars and grimy row homes, and even the Tower Records on North Peters, on television give me that weird little thrill one gets while seeing an accustomed haunt on the local news.

Whether the series is any good remains to be seen. HBO's programming is notoriously slow to start, and Treme's rambling, shambling, 80-minute opening episode is no exception, doling out juuuuust enough characterization for each of the principals to barely keep the viewer engaged. The music was slammin', of course, and the naturalistic writing and acting, de rigeur for HBO, more than make up for the plodding pacing.

It's difficult to watch John Goodman play a character and let the man simply inhabit it; he's always just so John Goodman-y. But I couldn't help grinning and nodding along as Goodman's character lit into a British journalist dismissive (or ignorant?) of New Orleans and what it stands for in the American imagination. Wendell Pierce's performance was reliably droll and understated, and his character's consistent shortchanging of his cabbies was not only duly funny, it was a compelling and simple symbol for the dire straits in which New Orleanians (not to mention musicians in general) found (and find) themselves. And Steve Zahn... well, maybe he'll grow on me.

The true crime behind Treme, the real sadness behind it, is that enough of the city is still in wreckage in real life that the film crew was even able to identify neighborhoods that could pass for the devastation of late 2005. Our trip there in 2008 revealed plenty of ruined homes, three years after their destruction.

Amusingly, with this summer's welcome return of True Blood, HBO will now have two series taking place in Louisiana. And did I mention that 2011's big-budget Green Lantern movie is filming in New Orleans, as well? I just hope the entire state of Louisiana isn't so trendy and gentrified that we're too priced out of it to, well, head down and move into a gentrified neighborhood, provided we someday, hopefully, relocate there.

Until then, I'm trusting Treme to present a nuanced, heartwarming, heartbreaking portrayal of the Big Easy, and to laissez les bons temps (et les mauvais temps) rouler. This opening episode of Treme ends with a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral, but only with the downbeat half that leads to the cemetery, the portion set to a funerary dirge. By forgoing the second, upbeat, from-the-cemetery portion of the jazz funeral, the portion traditionally set to hot jazz, the series indicates its characters are at their nadir, three months after Katrina has ravaged them. The central tension of the series, a tension to which I'm looking forward, will be in watching these characters rebuild themselves, and the city they love.