Allee Willis Blog

09Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Museum O’ Kitsch – Felt Coaster Love Type

09Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Museum O’ Kitsch – Felt Coaster Love Type

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It’s always a good sign of kitsch when right off the bat the packaging describes the product wrong. On the top of the package it very clearly states that I will be getting one Felt Coaster Love Type. But a few inches lower it clearly says that I will be unwrapping two Felt CoasterS Love Type. Perhaps the designer of the label was too excited at the hearts leaping out of the coffee cup to go for accuracy in the product description.

The back of the package states “Please do not put IT near the fire”. Does that count for both its, as in two coasters, and in that case shouldn’t it be “them”?

On the back of the package there are several warnings the user of the Felt Coaster Love Type must heed. Especially important is “Please don’t wash it in the hand”. Which of the hands should i not be washing it in?

The directions also clearly instruct not to use your Love coaster as a hot plate. At least I think that’s what this means:

Then there’s this somewhat distressing warning:

Is the Felt Coaster Love Type full of nickle, lead or battery acid or something? I’m not sure I want anything like that in the vicinity of anything hot OR human.

I do love the look of these things. Nice bold letters looking like they would in a nice heavy letter sweater.

The letters are actually the best feature of the Felt Coaster Love Type though their specialness isn’t even mentioned on the label. All the letters pop out.

I can’t imagine the purpose of the pop out letters. You certainly can’t balance a glass on one of them though they probably could handle the last bite of toast.

There’s a couple more things that are outstanding about the Felt Coaster Love Type. The leaping heart coffee cup and slice of cake are sitting on two different size coasters yet there are only two 4″ square coasters in the package.

The red “coaster” that the cake is sitting on isn’t even rectangular, which means that two of the “coasters” couldn’t be stuck together to make one larger “place mat”, not to mention that the package contains two different colored “coasters” so they could never be combined to make the larger one the cake’ sitting on. It’s nutty in the first place that a piece of cake on a plate would have to sit on top of a coaster. And even if this were an optical illusion and this were, in fact, a coaster, the plate that would fit on it could only be 3″ round, which means that the piece of cake is only about a tablespoon big. And even if it’s a little teacake I don’t like eating off of doll dinnerware.

The Felt Coaster Love Type was produced in China for Daiso, Japan. I will faithfully follow the instructions and promise to never use it “for purposes other than originally intended”.

08Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bowling Bag Coin Purse and Matching Bowling Everything

08Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bowling Bag Coin Purse and Matching Bowling Everything

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Bowling is easily the sport that has rained down hardest on Pop Culture in terms of artifacts emulating its shape, spirit and efforts to capitalize on the good clean brand of social interaction the sport promotes. Though I go a little farther than the normal person in terms of their love of the sport. I should clarify that it’s not actually the sport itself I love so much as the accouterments associated with it. You name it and there’s some bowling derived interpretation of it. I have bowling can openers, decanters, tables, lamps, brushes, floors, shirts, shoes, dishes, cups, glasses, trophies and then some. Sometimes I even turn the trophies into door handles.

I’m sipping decaf from a bowling ball cup right now.

I clean my clothes with a bowling pin brush.

I work by the light of this bowling pin lamp.

Sometimes the lamp sits on one of four bowling tables I got from the famous Hollywood Star Lanes when they closed their doors in Hollywood in the late 90s. I use them as desks.

I have bowling balls planted in my garden.

I even have a bowling ball carved into my kitchen floor.

Yesterday I extracted coins from my bowling ball coin purse and bought these bowling shoes.

When I got home I popped open a bottle of Bubble Up. I had a choice of two bowling pin bottle openers.

Alas, my bowling bag coin purse is not going to be opened for any more bowling memorabilia for a while. As I’m a totally self-financed artist, my pennies need to be pinched for all the projects I’m working on. That would be depressing but when it all comes down to it my favorite place to be anyway is home. If I’m bored I can always go bowling in the sand.

05Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – LUCKY Medical Van

05Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – LUCKY Medical Van

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When it comes to naming your company I’m always fascinated when people come up with the most seemingly inappropriate names possible. I can think of a lot of things I’d be calling myself if I were being transported in this Medical Transportation vehicle but I doubt one of them would be “lucky”. This is the last place you would be if you were, in fact, “lucky”. Maybe the name has great psychological impact as the patient steps or is wheeled in through the doors. And I’m certainly not one to diminish the power of positive thinking. But I think I would want the driver or any personnel on board to be a little more connected to the reality of the medical situation. “Lucky” enough to hitch a ride, yes! “Lucky” to be in the van, no.

04Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – You Are What You Drive

04Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – You Are What You Drive

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I’ve long said that everything about and around a person is a vehicle for self-expression. I mean the way you dress, how you decorate your living space, your hair, the plaster frog family on your front lawn, everything in your personal, physical and virtual environments is a canvas on and through which you show the world who you are. The driveway at The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com is packed with cars, campers and trucks that scream the personality of the person behind the wheel. Here are but a few examples of some such “I Am” vehicles. Click any of them for more info.

Were I to drive a truck it would most certainly look something like this:

If I were taking a summer road trip, here’s what I’d be steering:

Were I of that persuasion and super friendly with God I’d be pullin this down the highway:

If I were a butcher I might drive this. Then again, as far as “chick magnets” goes, this is the ultimate cock car:

If you were Angelyne you’d be tooling around the streets of LA in this living monument to cheesedom in stardom car. If you were lucky enough to be friends with Angeline you’d be tooling around with her.

If you like peas this vehicle is for you:

If you don’t like vegetables perhaps you like fruit:

Harry And David made a whole business of fruit. Here’s what they commissioned to have made in 1960:

If you’re a crafter, this muffler car might be more your speed:

If you’re really bad at directions this 1940’s coupe is for you:

Here’s a nice Sunday car:

If you need a tuneup or your teeth cleaned you might want to stop here:

And, of course, if you don’t want to take the highway you can always fly.

03Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Owl String Painting

03Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Owl String Painting

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In the 1960’s and 70’s when string paintings were at the peak of their popularity more string owls lived on wallpapered and wood paneled walls inside houses than real ones lived outside. I never took the craft up. The strings in the crowded areas reminded me of tiny spider legs. The nails were tiny and unless you hit them dead on the black velvet would twist around the shaft and pucker everywhere. Then the string, or in this case yarn, had to be pulled completely taunt or you’d have a sagging bird. All those crisscrossing strings gave me Vertigo, especially when it got to places like around the eyes where there were so many of them it was like a spider convention at The Sheraton. This was way too precise of a task for a free-form, spontaneous artist such as myself. I felt the same way about Spirographs.

As ubiquitous as they were there were way too many little spider leg lines for me and you had to adhere too strictly to the rules.

Whether fashioned out of string, metal or ceramic the owl is one of the most iconic birds in art. Although I collect string owl paintings I prefer my owls in more solid form. I have owl cups, …

… an owl radio,…

… an outdoor metal owl…

… and a zillion other forms of owls. I even have more owl string art.

I think my black velvet owl string painting is one of the best looking around, bare bones and to the point.

The disadvantage of owning a string art owl is that keeping him clean is nasty business. Black velvet is hard enough to keep clean without 12,000 little worms stretched across it. The next time you see string art at someone’s house take a good look. The little nails are like barbecue pits around which families of dust balls gather. So, no barbecues at my place, no owls on the wall, just a nice string painting, wrapped back in plastic, going back to nest in a rack in my garage until the next time I need a good look at the First National Bird Of Kitsch.

02Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1968 Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars Book and Saturday Night with Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder, 2010

02Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1968 Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars Book and Saturday Night with Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder, 2010

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My life would have never been the same without Soul music. Growing up in Detroit, my teenage years were spent on the far right of the AM radio dial, down where the black stations were. I had no idea I would eventually become a hit songwriter especially because I never learned (to this day) how to play an instrument. Call it a limitation but I’m someone who believes in finding power in limitations. I learned everything I know from the Soul Stars in this book. Published in 1968 by Right On! magazine, a division of Tiger Beat, Right On! was THE commercial rag of blended Pop Soul, music that rippled with unbridled joy of freedom and self-expression, exuding confidence and spontaneity that sprung from a Black Is Beautiful social consciousness. Listening to THAT music was all music training I needed.

Here’s Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars as of 1968:

I know the names are small but squint to read them because they changed music forever and most of the records they made sound as contemporary today as the day they were mixed.

I loved every record the Supremes made though I loved the earliest ones the most.

The original version of “I Heard It through the Grapevine” by Gladys Knight and the Pimps slayed me. In 1973, “Midnight Train to Georgia” became and remains my single favorite background vocals record ever recorded.

Marvin Gaye’s songs recorded by the time Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars came out, especially “Wonderful One”, “Ain’t That Peculiar” and “I’ll be Doggone”, were my favorites. When he released his version of “I Heard It through the Grapevine” I think it became one of the greatest records ever made.

Merry Clayton was the believable female voice on The Rolling Stones ‘Gimme Shelter’. I got a promo copy of her solo LP in the early 70s when I was working at Columbia Records and played it constantly until I used it as a hat brim for an outfit that really screamed for an albeit impromtu hat.

The highest form of Godliness in Soul, Aretha’s ‘Soul ’69’ is still one of my favorite LPs ever.

I was very depressed when I graduated college having to leave all my friends at the University of Wisconsin. The only thing that kept me somewhat calm and optimistic on the long drive back to Detroit was hearing “Oh Happy Day” over and over again on the radio.

For as great as 1968 was in producing Super-Soul Stars it was still too early to include the group that honestly and for real changed my life, Earth Wind & Fire. In 1978 they gave me my first hit single, “September”, and in ’79 my first hit album, “I Am”, on which I co-wrote every song but two. Here’s they are in 1975:

Larry Dunn, keyboardist extraordinare, had the most awesome Afro of anyone in the group.

Though they too had spectacular Afros I hadn’t even heard of The Emotions when Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars came out in ’68. But years later they joined Earth Wind & Fire to sing my second hit, “Boogie Wonderland”.

Last Saturday night I went to The Waterfront Concert Theater in Marina Del Rey to see Elements of Fire, an EWF tribute led by Larry and Sheldon Reynolds, who joined the group as guitarist in the late 80’s and filled in for co-founder/lead singer and my favorite singer of all time, Maurice White, when he left the group. I bumped into Larry as I was walking in.

Once inside I met up with one of my favorite friends and funniest persons alive, Luenell, who was introducing the band.

If one just judges the music and love affair between performers onstage and the audience, the evening was spectacular. I spent two exquisite hours enjoying some of my favorite music on earth, several songs of which were mine. I was surrounded by friends from back in the day. But that’s where the party ended. Once the evening was in the hands of The Waterfront “Concert Theater” it was a 3, no, 23 ring, circus of errors.

As a purveyor of kitsch and aforesaid strong believer in rolling with limitations if you can’t do anything to change them, these are the moments I must take a breath and remember I’m blessed. Rather than chasing down the manager to strangle him/her I just squint and look at the evening as a massive wheel of brie spilling off a way-too-small buffet table and know I will remember it as a stand out in the annals (or anals depending on how hard you’re squinting) of Kitsch.

The screw-ups started a full week before I even got to The Waterfront “Concert Theater” when I tried to buy tickets over the phone and talked to a chain of robots, none of whom could help me other than tell me that dinner was served during the show. I would’ve bought tickets online but after five minutes of searching the site for a link to the box office there was no link to tickets for the band I wanted to see. I finally bypassed the club and got tickets through the tour manager. But even with them printed out in hand you still had to stand in line to pick up the real tickets which were the identical printed sheets of paper. Which would have been slightly more tolerable if the air conditioning had been working.

Soaked like a mop, I went to the bathroom to freshen up. I know this place is called The Waterfront because it sits on the harbor. I just wish they would’ve confined the standing bodies of water to outside. Nothing short of a few sticks of dynamite could’ve unplugged this:

I moved on to sink number two but unless I had brought my bathing suit and spent the night sitting on the bathroom counter dipping my toes to try and cool down from the malfunctioning air conditioning I still was left with no place to wash my hands.

I included the following photo because it’s important for you to see the primo condition vintage 1950’s rayon shirt I have on. Covered with starbursts, it’s one of the best Atomic Age shirts I own. I only wear it on special occasions when I know I want to feel good.

Little did I know as I swept past the Waterfront’s beautifully finished bathroom walls…

… and well-attended to wastebasket…

… what would happen the second I got to my seat in the “VIP” section, three bridge tables plopped in the middle of the one and only narrow aisle that led to the stage and at least 20 other people who would need a waitress or a bathroom throughout the night. Though we were in slightly better shape than hundreds of other sardines smashed together in a room with only one exit. I finnnnnaly stepped over enough bodies to crumble into my seat and a waitress dumps a bottle of beer and a full whiskey sour on my beautiful, special, rare and beloved Atomic shirt. Ice cubes dribbled down my back coating both sides of the garment with sticky goo and deposited yet another body of standing water in my chair, the kind that has ass indentations carved into the wood so any liquid just sits there. Despite not being enough to soak up the mess on me, my chair, the floor, the people next to me and my once beautiful but now permanently spotted leather bag the waitress returned with six towels, a blessing as she only brought one thin paper napkin when she finally delivered our meal, the one and ONLY item on the “full dinner” menu the robots had told me was available, a Styrofoam plate with a tiny pile of bagged salad, an unidentifiable mound of squishy stuff that was probably going for Jumbalaya and “Chicken Strips”, 4 tiny frozen Costco chicken legs. As Luenell said when she got on stage, “Don’t be tellin’ a black woman you got chicken strips and then bring her no chicken legs dripping with sauce so now her lipstick’s smeared all over her face and she got to get up on stage. That’s dangerous.”

After about a half an hour I adjusted to the fact that I was stuck in a beer and whiskey soaked outfit in a club with little to no air conditioning and no sink to clean any of it or me off. The music was SO good – “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Reasons”, “Serpentine Fire”, “Can’t Hide Love”, “I Can’t Let Go”, “In The Stone”, “Getaway” “Fantasy”, “That’s the Way of the World” and on and on. I even got used to having my chair shoved in my back every time anyone needed to get by. Of the hundreds of times it happened that night thankfully one time it was by this guy in the blue shirt:

He had many hits by the time he made it into Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars in 1968.

Ultimately, I think covering a sweat soaked body with an outfit made of beer and whiskey made Stevie’s medley of “Shining Star” and “Superstition” even better for me. Despite the constant efforts of The Waterfront Concert Jail I Mean Theater to do otherwise, it was the kind of night where you couldn’t help feeling like a Soul Star when you left.

(For more of me, EWF & Luenell on an evening that was far better managed, see the opening party for my social network, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at AWMOK.com, last September 21st, the date that’s in the opening line of the song, “Do you remember the 21st night of September…”. Larry Dunn and founding EWF member Verdine White, greatest bass player who ever lived, played for anyone who wanted to sing kariokee of “September”. Though there are no drinks being spilled, no germ infested bathrooms, lots of food, air conditioning and folks who worked there who actually got past the first grade, it’s still fantastic viewing material for anyone who likes me, Earth, Wind & Fire, Luenell or Super-Soul Stars in general.)

Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B12TPKuVcSY

“September”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKXU2o6NVT8

“Boogie Wonderland”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj1tzW4kyMg

29Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s “Sponge Cloth”

29Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s “Sponge Cloth”

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Long before Mr. Clean and Magic Sponge promised fewer steps and happy housewives came Harwood’s Sponge Cloth, one of many modern miracle kitchen products offered for the first time in history in the post-war Atomic Age to ladies of the kitchen. As chemicals developed for warfare or space travel like Teflon were trickling down to pots and pans, linoleum floors and kitchen counters, the Sponge Cloth promised to be a “Sponge and Dishcloth in One!” that “Cleans and Dries in One Stroke!” “Wet•squeeze•use” and for 35¢ lives were changed because now there was more time to run into the next room and enjoy the revolution happening in the living room, television.

I’m always completely intrigued by people who develop a supposedly revolutionary product and then come up with a name like “Sponge Cloth”. Like a wad of mud sliding down the wall of creativity until it hits zero. Smash! A direct hit on the head of the mundane.

I’m sure it’s true that “Millions of Satisfied Users” lost muscle mass because of the minimal arm movement involved in operating the Sponge Cloth.

I just hope it cleaned better than it aged:

The photo actually makes the Sponge Cloth look like a normal scouring pad but in reality it looks much more like stale matzoh or a piece of insulation than it does either a sponge or a cloth.

I always love when a product refers to itself as “amazing” and promises HUNDREDS of uses or, in the case of the Sponge Cloth, “a Hundred Uses” on the nose.

Does that mean that the Sponge Cloth can be used 100 times or are there 100 different ways to use it? If the latter, The Harwood Company of Farmingdale, New Jersey could have gotten a little more imaginative on the big three than ‘wash’, ‘wipe dry’ and ‘polish’. But, then again, it’s the Sponge Cloth. Same guy working on the art direction as the name.

As much as I disparage the Sponge Cloth, if it really was a cloth that cleaned and dried in one stroke I wish I had found a case of them instead of just one. And didn’t wait 60 years to use them.

28Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste

28Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste

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I love Japanese convenience products born out of blended east and west needs and Pop Culture, especially ones by way of Vietnam as this toilet product is. In this case, not only are the translations awkward but the product is too. You affix these strips that look somewhere between oversized sanitary pads and shoe inserts on the rim of your toilet seat and then peel them off after you remove your “bottom”, only to use them again the next time you rest on the porcelain throne. Apparently, this saves you the trouble of washing the toilet seat or worrying that you’re going to be sitting on someone else’s nasty stuff. I, personally, would still be concerned as I don’t want to be bending over the facilities trying to flick up the end of some reusable Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste. And what does that name mean anyway?

Are the pads/shoe inserts that are looking more and more like strips of sticky fly paper a toilet seat cover or are they paste? I don’t know that I want to be hovering over the bowl to come to a final decision. Besides, the full name of the product appears to be Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern. This would take an entire day of sitting on the toilet to try and figure out and I have a feeling that more solid fact would end up in the toilet than in my head.

One of my favorite things about this product is the slogan that equates a toilet with life itself.

I haven’t really found that there’s that direct of a relationship between the two.

“Unlike a conventional toilet seat, installation and removal is very easy.”

Well, uh, yeah, a toilet seat is an actual part with some weight and mechanics involved ensuring functionality and stability whereas the Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern is just two confusing strips of paper that forces one to make contact with the actual toilet seat while assuming that perhaps the person whose “bottom” occupied it before you did not have the benefit of owning their own Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern. This is not where I would want to be placing my hands to retrieve my fly strips.

For cleaning, just rinse with warm water. However, to most efficiently dry your seat covers one must find a “spin-drier” as opposed to using “a drying machine”.

What is a drying machine? A microwave? I don’t know about you but I don’t want anything I just pulled off my toilet anywhere near where I tweak my food.

It also says that if you choose natural drying you must keep the strips in the shade, paying attention “not to allow dust on the backside”.

It seems to me that the whole point of the strips in the first place is “not to allow dust on the backside”.

Further instructions for correct usage of Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern prove just as confusing as the name of the product itself. “Do not use clippers since use of such items results in traces on the absorption surfaces”.

I would be constipated by the time I really figured out what that meant.

And then there’s this: “be careful when washing or drying the sheets with the absorption surfaces facing each other that they do not permanently adhere together”.

Am I supposed to get inside the spin-dryer with the strips in order to prevent this?

All in all though I’m happy to own the Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern as it goes very nicely with what’s hugging my toilet right now, the “Warm Cover Of Toilet Bowl”, another toilet sensation from the Orient.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Margaret Lewis, for your generous contribution of one Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com!

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

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Other than the fact that it’s packaged in a 750ml bottle, the standard size vessel for champagne, the stretch to connect product with name is so thin and precarious here as to induce the medical condition known as Kitschago. As a writer, it’s painful to see so many plays on words in trying to make elements as disparate as popcorn and classical music seem connected. As a kitsch lover, however, it’s ecstasy. Let’s see, how many ways can we thwack the creative brain with a lead pipe and make this popcorn/ Beethoven connection work? The label, Château de Musica, implores the popcorn ingestee to “HANDEL with care”. I don’t understand what care it takes to eat “Le grand Pops” but if one does apparently HANDEL it wrong the bottler, RACH MANINOFF, guarantees “your money BACH”.

Unfortunately, the LISZT price isn’t stamped on the bottle. And I don’t know enough about classical music to know if Albert Elovitz has anything to do with the art form but somehow the military managed to get in on the wordplay as Distilled by credit goes to KERNEL Albert Elovitz.

Thankfully, the bottom of the bottle remains pun free.

I cringe when people send me really cheesy song lyrics to critique, so pun filled at times I find it necessary to tell them that connecting together a bunch of plays on words isn’t an original concept and rarely works unless something else so unique is tossed into the mix. In this case, it’s thankfully not a crappy song I have before me but a champagne bottle, vintage 1986, filled with popcorn. It may not be musical but it’s definitely what I would stock in the bar to serve with the cheese wheel at my next party.

And while we’re on the subject of Beethoven’s Fifth…

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

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I’m not sure which kitsch factor I enjoy most about this made in Japan Portable Banana Keeper, the fact that it’s pierced with hearts because it loves bananas so much,…

…or that you can wear it as a necklace,…

…or that the little latches that keep your banana secure are so hard to pop open it will only last for two or three reloadings,…

…or that my cat loves it…

…or that there’s a special one for green bananas…,

…so special, in fact, that it’s called a Banana Case…

…as opposed to its yellow big brother,…

…The Banana Keeper,…

…and is scientifically designed with tiny holes instead of large hearts…

…to ripen your fruit quicker despite the fact that few people I know would walk around with their banana around their neck for days while they waited for it to ripen.

Or maybe it’s simply the fact that all bananas aren’t created equal and some don’t fit into their new home.

Whatever the case may be, I love plastic convenience products from Japan. And I don’t really care if the Banana Keeper/ Banana Case works or lasts at all as long as it continues to make my cat happy.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Margaret Lewis, for your generous contribution of one Banana Case and two Banana Keepers to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com!