24Nov 2013

Me, “The D”, and The Wizard of Oz!

24Nov 2013

Me, “The D”, and The Wizard of Oz!

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So I’m donning my ruby red slippers and jetting to Detroit to ride high atop the NBC-WDIV Wizard of Oz float in the Thanksgiving Day Parade (!!!) and to do 10 more sing-alongs for “The D”.

If you haven’t seen photos from the last 40, yes FOURTY, sing-alongs we did in Detroit in September, capturing thousands and thousands of people singing and cavorting on “The D”, check out these beautiful people NOW!

This time we’re going back and filming everyone from hundreds of Motown-born bass and guitar players – all playing at once for one THUNDEROUS “D” sound! – to Roller Derby skaters, bakers, rabbis, pom pom girls, carpenters and canines– yes, they sing too! Here, in fact, is a Miniature Pinscher soloing with me at one of the September sing-alongs:

If you happen to be in Detroit this Saturday, the 30th, please join us at an open-to-the-public sing-along at 11 AM with the All About Animals Rescue at Bob Maxie Ford, 1833 Jefferson Ave. and you can sing along with the dogs too!

So please wish me, my 12 person crew, 7 video cameras, 11 still cameras, 1 helicopter camera, 8 suitcases I’m taking for a 6 day shoot, 11 scarves and 13 beanies I’m packing in my sparkly ruby red carry-on so I don’t die of hypothermia on the float good luck as we STOMP UP THE SPIRIT in the Motor City once again!

By the way, the irony of me riding on the Wizard of Oz float has not escaped me or anyone who knows me well. I am the ONLY person in the WORLD who has never seen the movie.

Last but certainly not least, as “The D” has grown into something far more MASSIVE than I ever dreamed, your DONATIONS would be most appreciated. This is a song/record/music video/feature-length documentary about the triumph of human spirit as exhibited by the people of Detroit who never stop smiling, never look back, and who aren’t waiting for the government or any bankruptcy crap to reimagine their city. The sheer chutzpah, imagination, and belief of self there is truly INSPIRATIONAL. It’s a story for everyone, not just Detroit.

12Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Trip O’ The Day – Koffee Klatch In Monterey

12Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Trip O’ The Day – Koffee Klatch In Monterey

A few weeks ago, on the dawn of Hanukah, me, Snappy P a.k.a. Prudence Fenton, and Wendy Goldman-Rohm hopped into the mustache van and headed north to Snappy’s family pad in Monterey. We stopped at my favorite place on earth, The Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, for a little Christmas shopping on the way.

We also bumped into a friend, Isabell Freed, who stopped at the inn for some french fries and pie on her way back down to LA:

Once we got to Monterey we stopped at Whole Foods for supplies, including these lemons. Yes, I said lemons.

All being writers, we treated our stay as a 5-day writing retreat.

Monterey is very quiet, condusive to this type of activity. Though the view out of the window next to us was very inviting I stayed glued to my computer.

A lot of friends stopped by to say hello:

Although beautiful, it was really cold.

Lots of great food was cooked.

It was, after all, Hanukah:

Wendy and Prudence attended to all the culinary duties:

I oggled..:

…and ate:

Wendy’s apple pancakes were KILLER:

Our friend, Sally Rosenthal, drove down to meet us from Palo Alto just in time to sample them:

Sometimes we ate out. The soup at Cassanova was especially good:

Every day started out with a walk:

Notice that I’m not in any of those photos. I prefer my exercise to take place in a nice easy chair in front of a TV.  Though I did manage to venture out once:

I only had to walk about 100 feet from the house to get a great shot of the golf course it sits on:

Every day included a lot of writing.  I had to finish my Wienermobile post as well as two songs and a new outline for my live show slated for May 8 and 9:

On the last night we hit Carmel Beach as the sun was setting.

Snappy, Wendy and Sally, of course, went for another walk.

I stayed in the car and photographed the sunset…


…and worked.

All in all, Monterey yielded a most restful and productive few days. But alas, it was time to wrap up the latkes, jump into the mustache van and head back to LA for the holidays.

 

05Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Insane Pencil Cases

05Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Insane Pencil Cases

If I thought Indonesia could slam it out of the park as far as they shot this kitsch-krested pencil case every time they turned out another product I’d sign up for the mystery package monthly home delivery! Man, this thing is truly insane. Big, ratty cabbage patch-reminiscent heads with little tuffs of madness as limbs…

…and what looks like laundry lint for hair.

And how about that nose?!  Eyes don’t seem very important to this pencil case.

Lucky for me, there were three of these tucked into the bin at Dollar Tree.

Apparently, 2/3s of the litter are elephants:

Although they only got half as much lace around the collar as their sock muffin sister, they got much fancier fabric for cuffs, or should I say arms.

I never would have pegged these pouches as pencil cases.

Although there’s a nice supply of shredded paper inside keeping the little girls/boys/unidentifiable lifeforms nice and plump,…

…the cases aren’t quite long enough to get a whole pencil in should you be starting with a brand new just-sharpened-once one.  It’s an excellent sign in a kitsch world when what the purpose of an object hasn’t been taken into account in its design.


So girl/boy/unidentifiable lifeform, smile for the camera, though not necessarily the pencil case!

01Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Pussy Portrait

01Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Pussy Portrait

I’ve had this thing so long I don’t even remember where I got it from. A petite 6″ x 9″ x 3.5″, d hard plastic goldleaf textured frame surrounds the fluffiest kitty on the planet. I especially love her little forlorn mouth and seafoam blue eyes.

The sad little floral bouquet burrowed in her fur also kills me.

The pussy’s frame almost looks like it’s made out of plaster,…

… but it’s this puffed up thin plastic that cracks like dry twigs in a forest if you even stare too hard at it.

Such a happy pussy!

 

28Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Sunbathing Frogs Salt & Pepper Shakers

28Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Sunbathing Frogs Salt & Pepper Shakers

I know that in most of the rest of the US having an umbrella barely pricks the surface of the smoldering heat that’s gripping it like a rabid python. If you live in one of those places you probably don’t want to hear that here in LA, outside of a couple 100° days, it’s been a pretty water park of a summer.

Frogs are more suited for heat infused weather then I am. I would happily volunteer to be a guinea pig whenever they invent air conditioning chips that can be inserted into your body.  But until then I’ll just have to pray the sun behaves in LA and look for shade when a super hot ray pokes through, just like these happy little frogs.

04Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 4th of July BBQ Recipes

04Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 4th of July BBQ Recipes

One of the best things about the 4th of July is the food one consumes as a means of celebration, and normally my Independence Day spread looks like the above. I would be eating that or any of the following recipes were I not on a plane flying back from a wedding in Kenosha and munching on a can of Pringles as we speak.

So I’m going to pretend my mouth is chewing something other than dried potato wafers as I tell you what would be on the grill at Willis Wonderland today were I home instead of packed in next to a snoring pork of a passenger on American somewhere over Nebraska. First there’s my favorite recipe of all, Bacon Wrapped Hamburger Hot Dog Turtles. Thank you, k2dtw, for submitting this beauty to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch!  Just jam three weenies through a hamburger, whack the appropriate weenie limbs for feet, shave the tail, wrap the torso with bacon and throw the reptile on the grill for perfect BBQ sealife.

Although not as pretty of a design as the carnivore turtle, the Original Bacon Explosion packs more pound-for-pound bacon punch. There’s a documented-better-than-a-crime-scene recipe for this charred-looks-like-something-else too here.

Even better, the Original Bacon Explosion comes with its own Bacon Explosion Pig-Porter!!

I would love, of course, if I was the one who turned you on to the Bacon Explosion but its fame is well-established:

For a BBQ treat slightly more obscure, how about an Ultimate Meat Lover’s BBQ Pizza?

And for dessert, how bout a flag cake? I’d go with donut holes for the white part.

Actually, I’d rather serve an ice cream cone Uncle Sam.

Any cake with color correct food coloring is also fine…

…as well as marshmallow studded kabobs:

For optimum eating pleasure, serve all of the above on appropriate BBQ dinnerware. Don’t even ask me how many pieces of this pattern I have.

Happy 4th, happy BBQ and happy listening should you be lucky enough to own this:

I shall be chewing along pretending I’m not on a plane sitting next to a man whose hairy legs are protruding from his khaki shorts making it impossible for me to enjoy my (BBQ sauce-less) Pringles.

 

03Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Wisconsin Cow Udder Cup

03Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Wisconsin Cow Udder Cup

As you read this, I’m boiling away in Kenosha, Wisconsin where I’m attending two friends’ wedding. Getting up at 4:30 AM to make the plane here didn’t make me the happiest of campers but at least I had the foresight to sip my barely-morning joe out of this udderly fantastic souvenir Wisconsin cup in attempts to enter the proper dairy state state of mind.

I have very fond feelings for Wisconsin as not only did I attend four stupendous years of college in Madison, but I returned there last September for my conducting debut.

If I had an inch to spare in my suitcase, always packed as if a natural disaster could hit at any moment and I could sustain myself for weeks despite the fact that I may only be gone for three days, I might have brought my Wisconsin cup.  But this is a brat and beer state and udders don’t exactly spew the latter.

Besides, the coffee at the Best Western, THE hotel in town, has been lukewarm every time I’ve  tried it, so it’s not worthy of swimming on top of the milking spouts. But speaking of swimming, the coffee machine is located in the lobby and that overlooks the pool, or should I say poo.

If it were winter, it would be nice to sit with a nice cup of coffee and ponder the meaning of ‘gister otel gues on y’.  But it’s summer, it’s hot and humid, and a steaming cup of the stuff is not what me-who-would-rather-have-air-conditioning-chips-inserted-into-her-body-than-sweat needs. Which means I’m just fine without my udder cup here in

30Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Wisconsin Badger Droppings Candy

30Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Wisconsin Badger Droppings Candy

I do like when a state maximizes the amount of merchandise that can be culled from any of that state’s icons, in this case the badger, that animal into which a human is stuffed as a mascot, which then runs around the University of Wisconsin football field whipping the fans of the UW Badgers into a frenzy. The concept of eating badger droppings, however, is an entirely different matter as it’s not often I’m attracted to food that tastes like shit. But I must say these chocolate covered sunflower seeds are quite a tasty surprise.

I don’t even like sunflower seeds and when I eat chocolate I like it to be more than a 16th of an inch thick.

But these droppings are quite habit forming and I’ve had at least  three forest’s full of badger contents in the last few hours. Which makes perfect sense as I’m about to depart tomorrow for a wedding in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The closest I’ve ever been to a badger before inserting its droppings in my mouth was when I attended the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s. Here I am with one of my sorority sisters, Judy Kittay, and a papier-mâché Bucky Badger I made for some event we were having at the sorority house.

Here’s a more recent photo of the actual Bucky:

This was taken last year when I went back to my alma mater to conduct the marching band playing a medley of my greatest hits at the Homecoming football game against Minnesota.

I certainly hope that the food at the wedding will be slightly more substantial than badger droppings. But just in case I don’t fill up, I’ve brought them along.

 

21Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Woodpecker Toothpick Dispenser

21Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Woodpecker Toothpick Dispenser

Growing up, this woodpecker was in my life and kitchen constantly. I can’t imagine anyone in the 1950’s or 60’s not making the same statement so ubiquitous was this little plastic bird with the incredibly sharp I-poked-holes-in-my-fingers-so-many-times-don’t-ask tongue.

He was also a big staple at the voluminous amounts of delicatessens that paved the streets of my hometown, Detroit. I guess it was a way of making sure that kids, eager to shove his head into his tree branch of toothpicks, kept their teeth clean after they chomped down on the sugar-spiked goodies our mom’s thought was so good for us back in the day.

But this woodpecker doesn’t feast on just any toothpick. It’s gotta be the old-style flat, contoured toothpicks as the round ones, far better for picking your teeth, are just too fat to fit in his snakelike tongue.

The packaging is as good as the woodpecker himself.

Who wouldn’t want to stick something in their mouth that was clean and handy?

The woodpecker only does one thing. He bobs his head up and down. But in case that’s too complex to figure out there are also handy directions.

I have a big day today. A lunch date and two recording sessions. It’s not the most attractive thing to be walking around with junk in your choppers so say hello to my little friend who will be waiting in the car to make sure I remain “clean and handy” throughout the day.