Max Werdenigg of Edelwiser skis, based in Austria, has come to Aspen during an epic winter to convince the world that highly engineered, custom skis are the future of the biz. "Basically," he said at the Zele Community Table, "it was born at the kitchen table. We were working with Reinhard Fishcher about the dynamic movements on skiing. He thought about carved turns. The snowboard things came along with efficient turns and he said that’s it. He cut snowboard in half so it was two skis with one edge per ski. Our most popular model is still the Swing 162 that goes back to that ski. My mother really liked his idea of skiing and his skis so they worked together."
"As easy as the nubile Ms. Bleiler is on the eyes no matter what she’s wearing," writes Post blogger Mitch Mulhall in a comment, "she looks so much better with her clothes off than on. In the January, 2008 issue of Ski, the venerable bibliographer of skiing Warren Miller himself wrote an essay in which he attributes the waning of skiing’s popularity to pants that hang like a soggy diaper between a person’s knees and, dare I say it, helmets.... Any chance the youth of today will one day lament the absence of silver-studded, hip-hugging, baggy pants? Not publicly. That would be tantamount to embracing the white polyester leisure suit or the halter neck dress of the late 1970s."
The Con Man has had it up to here with anything and everything about the X Games except our homegrown star Gretchen Bleiler. "Aspen is so cool and hip that it would be outrageously uncool and bodaciously unhip to admit that I really hate the X Games," he blogs. "To say so makes me feel like a traitor to my home base—and worse—because I find myself (again) in the position of insisting Aspen is not nearly so cool as it thinks.... The only thing worse than driving by the X Games is actually going to them. Because they are made-for-TV, the experience of attending the Games will make you hate them forever. You stand around freezing, with sight lines that render you all but blind in those moments when you are not besieged by sponsors giving away worthless crap."
When I was younger, I can remember my Mom telling me that I had nice eyebrows. She told me that they were nicely shaped and when I inquired about plucking them, she informed me that it wasn’t necessary for my eyebrows. “They have such a nice shape to them. They’re evenly distributed.” I’m sure she said this because her eyebrows are thinner than mine. Regardless of that fact, I felt assured, cocky even.
“Never Compromise, because that’s all you get”-states Janis as her alter ego Janis Joplin bursts on to stage with “Piece of My heart”. So goes the opening of the phenomenally talented “Love, Janis” presentation by Theatre Aspen. I caught the toe-tapping/hand-clapping performance last night at Rio Grande Park in Aspen.
There are perhaps three or four dozen ways to slice the salami in Aspen. Income. Car. Home. Job. Curb appeal. Snob appeal. Leather. And so forth. But for my money nothing slices and dices like what plastic surgery has done to our town.
Think about it. We make jokes about face lifts and boob jobs and bottled-up blondes and whatever other physical altercations this particular market might bear. But the jokes skim off the surface like an old wrinkle shrink-wrapped for good. And we miss the point that plastic surgery has brought us all together.
