Author Archives: Jill Adler

Talisker Slides Aside; Leaves Canyons To Vail Resorts

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If the lease of Canyons Resort to Vail Associates knocked people off their feet, the news this week that Talisker Corporation (Vail’s landlord) is pulling out of Canyons altogether is sending them into the next hemisphere. Flera LLC, a subsidiary of one of Talisker’s major underwriters (the investment-management firm Värde Partners Inc.) has brought in Alvarez & Marsal to sort things out. A&M is one of world’s largest restructuring firms. “This is what they do when companies get into trouble and run,” says Shane Gadbaw, hedge fund entrepreneur and owner of Eagle Point Resort in Beaver, Utah. “It takes serious financial issues for the shareholders to get involved.”

 

Talisker made a play for The Canyons back in 2007 and closed the deal with now-defunct American Skiing Company by 2008. “After the economic slump and two weak ski seasons, the writing was on the wall,” Gadbaw says. “This is like a bankruptcy except they are not trying to get out of their responsability to bondholders. This is a more amicable.”

 

Flera issued a statement Thursday saying, “It is business as usual at Canyons, and our goal is to make this transition as seamless and effective as possible for all of our guests, residents, employees and operators.” So, Talisker is out and Flera now owns the development rights to “four million square feet of real estate at the Canyons Resort, construction of the Canyons golf course, and oversight of the Waldorf Astoria Park City Hotel.” The trouble is Summit County is left wondering who’s actually going to live up to the deal they made for those development rights at Canyons. Talisker had committed to building a golf course, a convention center, a transit plan and affordable housing and the County plans to enforce those requirements.

 

Summit County Manager Bob Jasper told The Park Record that Talisker’s Jack Bistricer personally assured him that “Talisker is solvent and that he still owns 50 percent of the resort. He is just no longer the lead developer.” Possibly. Talisker still owns the Empire Pass development in Deer Valley, the land under Park City Mountain Resort, a restaurant on Main Street and the Tuahaye development between Park City and the town of Kamas.

 

There’s a strong chance that Flera will soon instigate an orderly liquidation of assets. In which case, yet another developer could come in and finish the county’s requirements. The good news is that because the Vail deal occurred first, the transition is a relative sideshow to the resort operations. “We view this is an internal Talisker matter that does not impact our efforts or arrangements at Canyons,” says Vail representative Kelly Ladyga. Talisker will still be Vail’s beneficiary but the money they receive will go to recover for the bondholders.

 

You’re not alone in thinking that the goings-on at Canyons Resort is starting to feel like a soap opera. Tune in next time for As The Ski Area Turns.

 

 

Today I’m grateful my daughter still has her eye

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F*&king Facebook. Leave it to that platform to add guilt to envy and jealousy among its users. It seems like half my FB friends have started preaching gratitude. It was one thing when everyone was bragging about their lives, their children, their accomplishments, their adventures. I can keep up with that. But gratitude? That’s like confession or therapy. That’s not “me”. It should be. I’d like it to be, but I’m just so busy in my head 24/7 that I don’t stop to appreciate the brilliant wildflowers out my window, the full belly, the faint hum of the A/C on a 90-degree day. Well, today, I’m going to start tying to be more grateful. I’m sure none of you really care but for those who know me know this is a big deal. I’m kind of selfish- I take a lot for granted; let’s just say that.

I’ve been accused of being someone who is constantly maximizing their yield. I own that. Therefore, leave it to me to find a reason to be grateful- I’m told more good things will come your way. Perhaps it’s like entering a drawing- you have nothing to lose and you can’t win if you don’t play. What’s a few minutes contemplating your lot in life? I hear that slowing down to breathe is a good thing. Plus, when you really think about it, it’s like that whole “glass is half full” mentality. You know, optimistic peeps see it full; negative peeps see it as half empty. I’m definitely a half full girl.

Enough rambling. Today I’m grateful my daughter still has her eye.

And that she is such an incredible trooper and inspiration. The surgeon said he thought it was going to be much worse but he says she’s going to be fine. We have to watch for infection and for a possibility of her eyeball bulging but it can be fixed by an ocular plastic surgeon if it comes down to it. Now we’re one of those ‘look at the Adlers’ it can happen to anybody examples. Sage has been the model of perfect health – aside from the yearly cold and an ear infection or two, she’s never been hospitalized or given us a scare. That all changed when a neighborhood dog bit in the face on Monday. I blame myself. We have a dog and we never had to worry about those two together so I the conversation about putting her face near a dog’s face never happened.

This ‘other’ dog was always very friendly to her, other kids, other people, other dogs. From conversations with trainers, it was asserting dominance over a pack member. It did not try to kill Sage or rip her to shreds. It was one bite and back away. Still, the whole ordeal was horrifying.

I cleaned the wound, called her health insurance to find out where to take Sage and rushed over to the Park City ER all before you could say, “Help! I need a doctor!”

The ER doc called the three plastic surgeons that have privileges at the hospital and not one of them responded. She confidently offered to sew up Sage herself but this is her face, dammit. I wasn’t going to trust it to someone without YEARS of experience suturing a child’s face. We scooped her up, said ‘Bye’, and rushed down to the ER at Primary Children’s. The doctors there are meticulous and professional. She was seen relatively quickly but we still didn’t get home until 2 a.m. They numbed the area, gave her enough anesthesia to keep her from an awareness of what they were doing, stuffed her stuffing back into her eye and closed up the wound. Sage never cried or fought. Even while she was under, she kept saying repeatedly, ‘Momma, where are you? …Momma, is that you touching my shoulder?…. I love you, Momma.’ My heart was breaking. My beautiful little girl could be horribly disfigured because I took good dogs for granted.

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Two days later her eye is still very swollen but Sage doesn’t complain. She laughs when Ryan jokes about her street cred on the hockey ice now. The doctor told us she will have a small scar that makeup will hide or it could even fade to nothing. Other than looks, she’s the same ol’ Sage and, thankfully (here’s me being grateful again), she’s not afraid of dogs.

She refused to miss a single day of her SpyHop film class and she couldn’t wait to film her scenes as Snow, the white kitten. So I packed her Glow in the Dark Wolverine sunglasses we got at the Macklemore concert last OR and dropped her at school.

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I have to go now. She just walked in prancing to Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble and asked me to dance with her. And I was grateful to have such an awesome kid.

UPDATE: 3/14/2014- You can barely see the scar and the doctor is done with his followups. If she’s bothered at all by the time she’s a teen we can revisit for a revision. But I think the docs at Primary Children’s did an awesome job, don’t you?

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EZ Pet Barrier Saves the Day!

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There are two things I vowed I would never do- I would never let my kid be seen in public without her hair brushed and I would never jail my dog behind metal bars in my car. The hair thing? Right; anyone with a kid knows that’s a battle us mothers lose often. The car thing? I held out as long as I could.
New car + Park City summers + dog = severe frustration.
As I drove my Honda off the lot my joy shifted to one thing- keeping a long-haired, outdoor dog from destroying not only my new-car smell but my new car in general. I love Takoda but no matter how hard I try, he prefers the driver’s seat when I’m not in it. I hate that.
I had my Petmate crate. That was an option but I’m just too lazy to drag it back and forth from the house. Shouting at him to “get back”? Uh, doesn’t work. Therefore, I hunted for one of those barriers that would turn my entire rear into a kennel but they were expensive and I feared those ceiling and floor mounts would damage my little, shiny SUV.
That’s when I spotted the EZ Pet Barrier. Unlike other grates that use disks that wind into your ceiling and floor for stability, the EZ lashes down with bungee cords so long as your seats have headrests, you’re golden.


I pieced together the durable metal tubing and mounted it in less than 15 minutes. The barrier has “arms” that extend, sliding into each other, to adjust for the height and width. Plastic caps keep them from slipping back and a plastic sleeve protects your car and windows from scrapes and smaller dogs attempting to squeeze between the bars.
I didn’t even need tools.


Ken and Joan Beechie were onto something when they decided to build a better barrier. What was on the market was inadequate and expensive, they described. You know what they say about the mother of invention? Necessity encouraged the Washington state inventors to create a similar device that didn’t need to be messed with every time you wanted to move your carseat. The barrier moves with the seats because it’s attached to them and not to the ceiling. I can fold the whole backseat down without ever having to take the grate out of the car.
I’m told the barrier fits most cars, trucks and SUVs but I can only vouch for a Honda CRV. You can even use it behind the driver seat if you don’t mind your dog lounging on the backseat but I choose to keep everything but the back rug free hair, drool, mud, and nail marks.


The barrier is not without its challenges, however. When my pooch really really wants to get past it, he can. He’s figured out that if he struggles between the side window and the arm, the arm slides out of the way. I’m hoping that he’ll get used to being barred so that I don’t have to super glue the metal but there is that solution. My other (small) annoyance is that he’s young and chews. I went through four straps in two weeks.


Thankfully, bungee cords are cheap. I’d rather replace them than, say, my gearshift handle. Plus, once I catch him in the act I can train him to stop. I’ll just hide out on the side of the car and bang on the window the minute I see sniff those ties. As the Beechies showed, think hard enough and you can come up with a solution to any problem. Now, if only I could get them to invent a scream-free brush for morning hair…
$59-79, http://www.ezpetbarrier.com/petbarrier.htm

Glenn Morshower Takes Salt Lake

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I’m here in this room at Broadview in Salt Lake City for three hours. As the seats begin to fill in the small auditorium I’m reminded of college. Oh no, a lecture? But an evening with Glenn Morshower is anything but academic.

The title of the workshop- The Extra Mile- is about breakthrough. It as well as the speaker are organic and entirely honest. He paces right to left like a Baptist preacher calling on the heavens to heal our wounded souls. He encourages us to wear a new set of ears tonight. The 54-year-old actor who’s made a career out of playing service men is now wearing an invisible robe. He has us mesmerized. One by one we become believers.

Glenn has had no specific acting training other than life. His teachings come from paying attention in that life.

He tells us our bodies are trophies and that we need to stop dead-end pursuits and treating our bodies poorly. He raises his fists to smoking- a habit that killed his father. These are hitches in your giddyup he says. Wait a minute, did I stumble into an intervention instead of an audition workshop?

But as Glenn talks it seems strangely connected. Every aspect of our lives is connected. We can’t compartmentalize the bad things we do to ourselves and expect it not to leak into the good things we want to achieve or the people we want to relate to.

I guess if you take the idea that an audition is a meeting the same way as a date or job interview is a meeting then it would make sense to be you rather than a façade of the ‘you’ who ‘acts’ like they’re perfect then goes home and calls their dealer. Do you ‘meet’ your boyfriend’s parents or ‘audition’ for them?, Glenn uses for an example. They should be the same but often an actor treats the audition as something heightened and unnatural. If you don’t get anything else, this is one of the most brilliant nuggets gleaned from tonight, he professes.

Don’t be the actor caught auditioning. Walk in prepared to rock. You’ve already competed with 600 million others, he says; meaning 600 million sperm. We’re already winners because we were born! And so the night begins…..

That’s a Wrap!

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I couldn’t tell you what happened during the last 17 hours of the 48 Hour Film Project because I wasn’t there. I thought initially that I might be but there isn’t one single ounce of me that is the least bit disappointed that we actors wrapped at 11 p.m. Saturday night. No slight on our crew. It was a team building, socially satisfying experience but to make it home for a night in my own bed, waking up without giant rings of stage makeup highlighting my eyes, well, that’s just priceless.

But I can tell about the last 14 hours of my “29-Hour” Film Project. I’m used to late nights so I didn’t look too haggard once I wiped all the black off. The crew set up for the yard sale scene across the street from Andrew’s house and routinely had to shoo away the Saturday shoppers that must regularly troll Herriman. It looked that real.

The sun slowly cast its shadows and fiery tongue. The backs of my legs never knew what hit them. I’m an idiot. We had sunscreen and everyone else seemed to be using it. I was just so caught up in the action. I care now.

Something about the price you pay for art tickled my brain but the pain kept the cliche from resonating. Now when I had to reshoot my scene from the previous night I wouldn’t have to call on past emotional pain. I got to experience real physical pain. Over and over again with EVERY SINGLE TAKE. So when (if) you watch me kneeling in jeans, that tortured sound in my voice is me feeling like someone is twisting my flesh with a hot curling iron. Yes, Folks, you heard me right. We had to reshoot because of the soft focus. The professional in me insisted I stick around to get er done even if it meant waiting six hours for nightfall. The girl in me thought, “Can’t we make what we have work?” I left it up to Andrew. I was there for him and I felt he was there for us. We weren’t slaves. We had a say. So when he made the call to go again I wanted to. Plus, I can be talked into almost anything for a Chinese dinner.

I’m guessing Liz felt the same way when Jarred – her husband and our editor – announced he “couldn’t find Scene 2”. That eventually came to mean we forgot to shoot Scene 2 and Liz, who thought she was just waiting for me for her ride home, now had one more scene to film as well. We had already said goodbye to Bryce, the Joes, Mamun, and Becky. We had no crew left besides Andrew on camera. Jarred and Daniel were downstairs editing and scoring respectively. Liz hoisted the boom and quickly got the hang of the sound equipment for my scene and I slept during hers (it was to be video only). We said our goodbyes to Andrew, Tara, Jarred and Daniel. They had one more day to make a movie. As we loaded up my car, they asked me to text to make sure I made it home safely. That was so cute. It’s like a weekend together made us family. I wish that Jim had stuck around till the end. He’s my acting coach and, to be honest, I was hoping for the opportunity to work with him as peers. I slept while he worked. He left before I woke up. He really didn’t have a reason to stick around so I can’t blame him. Plus, I know he had a hand in making sure all of the actors had a voice in the film so, Thanks, Jim!

The film has been submitted and all 30 shorts from Group A,B, & C will screen this Wednesday and Thursday at the Broadway Cinema at 7 and 9 p.m. (I prefer Brewvies but whatever). I can’t wait to see them all! The winner of the 48-Hr Film Project will be announced the following Wednesday, June 12, during the Best Of screenings. I’m sure you’re all wondering how does ours look? I don’t know. I hope it’s good. I hope it’s great. I’ll let you all judge. Time for bed.

Thanks to everyone involved with Off The Hook Productions. It was fun getting to know everyone even more. May we make many movies together in the future!

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