Allee Willis Blog » Bathroom

29Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – No Credit Scarlett Johansson “Bath Towel”

29Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – No Credit Scarlett Johansson “Bath Towel”

Unmistakably Scarlett Johansson yet no mention of Scarlett anywhere and therefore no royalties for starlet Scarlett. Also, according to the name of the product, unmistakendly a bath towel, yet no towel in sight.

Perhaps a powder mitt with something that looks like ruffled panties glued on top…

… with an elastic underware cuff. But no bath towel.

You would think the text on the back of the package might explain the mystery of the “bath towel”….Perhaps…if you’re the kind of person who enjoys walking around endlessly in a maze.

If the black lines on the mitt, a mysterious design choice, prevent you from absorbing all of the text, here it is in somewhat plain English:

The product is made from mixed natural plant fiber,cotton and wool imported from Korea by adopting high–tech, which covers four categories and more then 80 varieties at high-level,medium and low-level,the products are mainly exported to over 20 countries and regious such as EU, South America and the Middle East etc Our company enjoys good reputation due to excellent quality complete varieties and high output. Bathing towel with particular weaving structure can completely clear away dirt and sweat, accelcrate cells metabolism,make skin smooth and tender.

I, for one, am looking forward to accelcrating in the regious I’m living in. And if anyone knows how to say “Loofah” in Chinese, please tell the Tianho Commodity Factory of China that’s what this thing is.

I practically broke my fingers typing the address of the website on the label into my computer to see what other exciting products dollarbest.com had to offer. Appropriately and accurately enough it goes here, nowhere:

I love the blue geyser spewing out of Scarlett Johansson’s head.

I hope everyone who purchased a “Bath Towel” enjoys rubbing themselves down with Scarlett and I hope Scarlett at least got a free case of them.

09Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Apple Comb

09Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Apple Comb

In terms of junking up ordinary items in extraordinary ways I can usually depend on products that come in packaging with horrendously poor translations, as is often the case with my favorite foreign company of insane accessories, Daiso Japan. Among other things, I would say that this is clearly a comb despite labeling that claims otherwise.

And despite it being an Apple Comb or even an Apple Hair Brush, a couple of cherries have snuck in. So wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to call it a Fruit Comb or Fruit Hair Brush?

There are several wonderful things about the warning on the back of the Fruit I mean Apple Comb:

It’s pretty clear to me that a comb is meant to be used on hair and only an idiot, perhaps someone who thought this was a hair brush, would be in need of an instruction like “do not use if any symptoms such as scratch, boil, eczema and swolleness occur.” I don’t like to think of such extrusions when I’m stroking my locks. As for “Do not directly apply wax and essence on the brush”, I have no idea what essence is and, as I said, I don’t see a brush anywhere in this package. And, regardless of whether this is a brush or comb, I would not want it to cause “damages on my skin”, especially “when got dirty”. The text on the front must have been written by the same translator:

“We are going to return our customers favor with better products.Intelligent choice! Practical choice! We believe your best choice.”I think the best choice would have been to also put the design on the back of the comb as you never know which way a person is going to hold their comb and/or hairbrush.

But no matter how you hold your comb, choose your fruit, part your hair, or struggle to make sense of the packaging, the Apple Fruit Comb Hair Brush is one pretty l’il thing!

01Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – MACHO Sport Scent

01Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – MACHO Sport Scent

This is the kind of product I love finding in dollar stores. So generically named it’s pathetic, a label that’s crooked and not quite centered and a product that looks more like mouthwash than after shave. Not that I have any use for MACHO Sports Scent but I feel an obligation as Minister of Kitsch to pick these things up when I see them.

I love the description on the back:

If I were the manufacturer I don’t think I’d be encouraging anyone to use this as “invigorating refreshment”. And, “Specially formulated with a classic masculine scent” could go either way… masculine after the gym, masculine after sex, masculine pre-sex… Exactly masculine when?

I did muster up the stuff take a whiff of MACHO. Thankfully, it doesn’t smell like sweat, which is what I was most expecting a “sport scent” to smell like. It does, however, smell like it’s been sitting around in a bathroom cabinet since the 1960s. Which is exactly what a kitsch lover wants from a brilliant dollar store toiletry product such as MACHO.

19Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Band-Aid Sheer Strips and Knee Op Progress

19Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Band-Aid Sheer Strips and Knee Op Progress

I’m happy to report that I’m making a swift recovery from surgery to repair a torn meniscus in my left knee yesterday. I still have all the festive bandages on that were my medical souvenirs, but within a week or so all will be removed and I can scale back to the dainty little strips that normally cover cuts and scrapes.

Back in the 1950’s when this Band-Aid box cranked off the assembly line, it was important to be stylish at all times, even when dressing gushing wounds. This box made going to get a bandage in the bathroom a very cheerful and almost glamorous journey.

Even the packaging of the individual bandages made it look like having a cut was some reason to celebrate. If only that artwork were on the bandages themselves…

Band-Aid boxes were great back in the day, made out of that pristine white metal that always made you feel like a starched white nurses uniform was hanging in the room. Not the thin, ratty cardboard wrappers that surround such products these days, the old stock was meant to aesthetically comfort anyone who had the need or bleed to dip inside, happy families made even happier that a Band-Aid was currently in use amongst them.

Made, of course, by Johnson & Johnson, Band-Aids have always ultimately won my heart. I still experiment with other brands as one of the most thrilling things in the world to me is standing in the medicine aisle of a big drug emporium and trying to find sizes and shapes I don’t have so that I’m prepared for any foreign object or circumstance that may befall a body part. But when I need a sure-fire hit it’s always J&J.

At present, the bandages on my knee are substantially larger than any contained in this box of sheer strips:

The good news is that I have excellent nurses on hand to swap out the ice packs over my bandages every half hour: Nurse Charles Phoenix, who came bearing a hand brace wrist corsage for my sprained wrist (yes, two injuries!)…

… 24 hour nurse Prudence Fenton…

… and nurse Niblet who’s about to nibble my wrist corsage:

And excellent news is I’m told that in just a few days I’ll be back (gently) hopping around and all I’ll need are a few tiny Band-Aid sheer strips!

06Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Etiquette “A Sick Bag”

06Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Etiquette “A Sick Bag”

If you weren’t nauseous before you grabbed for this “A sick bag” or “Sac a vomis” you would be after taking a look at everything going on on the packaging.

I love that “A sick bag” is also referred to as ‘the etiquette bag’ as it “will help by quickly solidifying your vomit and quenching the odor”. Now THAT’s etiquette!

I always like when a creative slogan like “help when you’re feeling sick and want to throw up” is employed:

That sudden feeling of wanting to share your contents with the sidewalk can happen anywhere, on all kinds of transport:

I can’t imagine many people would need instructions about how to use the “A sick bag” but easily understandable ones are included nonetheless:

In case you don’t read Japanese, helpful illustrations for how to open your A sick bag, heave into it and seal it up are also included:

I don’t know about you, but if I had an unexpected, unsightly regurgitation the last thing I’d want to do is carry it around all day until I got home. And what’s up with the “non-burnable trash”? Are we saving it for something?

The conflict of “1” and “batches” is making me slightly nauseous:

I guess Arabic speaking peoples also have a propensity for “vomis”:

Ahh, I think I will save my coin and just use a plastic bag should the occasion “arise”.

29Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ambush Spray Cologne

29Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ambush Spray Cologne

More than anything, the one thing that accompanied me every single day of my four college years at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960’s was a spritz of Ambush Spray Cologne. I should have bought stock in Dana, the company that made it, for as many bottles of it as I went through. The male equivalent was called Canoe. Sometimes girls wore that too but I was so attached to the scent and the shade of pink and hard rubbery shape and feel of the bottle I never made it past Ambush.

Here’s what I looked like when I first started wearing it at the tail end of high school:

For as laquered as my hair was it might appear that I may have coated that with Ambush too, but that was all about Aquanet. My Aquanet hairspray kept my hair helmet so firm I never had to worry about it getting crushed when the amount of Ambush I sprayed on myself put me in many situations like this back in college:

Thank you, Ambush, for making me smell good then and for that astounding pink bottle still lighting up my eyes today.

16Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage “Little John” Toilet Ashtray

16Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage “Little John” Toilet Ashtray

I’m not sure how toilet ashtrays became so ubiquitous in the novelty ashtray department but they did. I guess because they’re a natural place to set butts and the basic design offers so many opportunities for storage – the bowl for ashes and the tank for smokables, though I stick everything in there from Post-its notes to paperclips. The back of the tank has a hole to hang it on the wall. I always like my toilets at eye level.

Having been made in the 1950’s it’s amazing that any of the little sticker remains.

In pristine form the sticker would read, “Little John, A Cigarette Set – To complete your bathroom and add to your comfort”. I’m not sure how this size toilet bowl adds to one’s comfort but I’m willing to go with it.

If I ever were to get a new toilet I would want it to be the perfect 50’s pink that the Little John is. Though it would take an earthquake knocking my current toilet off its base to make that happen as it was installed when the house was built in 1937 and it ain’t going anywhere.

In conclusion, my cat Nibbles struck a toilet pose next to the toilet ashtray. I couldn’t have directed it better myself.

26Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Too Small Poodle Toilet Paper Cover

26Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Too Small Poodle Toilet Paper Cover

I always love handmade crafts, especially these Knit-Wit kind of animals, usually poodles, that are more often than not made to fit over either liquor bottles or toilet paper. This one with the wayward tongue was made to fit over toilet paper but the crafter either ran out of yarn or was sneaking nips from the bottle as they only equipped the canine with a mini skirt, not enough to even pull over a full roll.

And here’s how she looks over a liquor bottle:

Here she is with a roll of toilet paper fully inserted:

Here’s a normal size roll of toilet paper and the much used roll of toilet paper that was able to fit inside the poodle.

Obviously, this poodle cannot efficiently to do her duty covering either of the objects she was meant to serve. All of which would be a total drag if she weren’t so damn cute. She can just sit here with her googly eyes and do a half-ass job and I still love her.

29Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Soap Tunes” Musical Hand Soap and the ASCAP Love Fest

29Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Soap Tunes” Musical Hand Soap and the ASCAP Love Fest

soap-tunes_3400

The concept of this “Foaming Musical Hand Soap for Kids!” is really crazy. Theoretically kids can “wash & learn” at the same time. But the biggest thing they’re going to learn is that the quality of the speaker in this thing is so poor that the only one who could possibly hear the music clearly is an insect who somehow slipped through one of the speaker holes and got trapped in the goo, forced to listen to the nearly inaudible and annoying little gremlin voice singing something about washing around your face and continuously spelling S-O–A.–P.

Honestly, you have to hover so close to the bottle to hear anything that all most kids are going to get is a big squirt of soap in their mouths. In this case, it’s berry scented so perhaps there’s some nutritional value to it.

Not having kids perhaps this isn’t as novel of product as I think it is. What’s really novel these days though is having a hit in the music industry. I have a big fat hit right now, “Jungle Animal” by Pomplamoose and Allee Willis, but we made and released it independently so relatively few coins will accompany the constant viewing of the song on YouTube or listening to it on itunes or playing the game on my site. This is because I “washed my hands” of the music industry long ago.

I was much happier making music on my own so total creative control stayed with me and whoever I wrote with. The practice of getting songs on the radio often felt too “dirty” for my tastes, not to mention I thought most people in the industry were deaf, dumb and blind to the Internet throughout much of the 90’s, during which time had they not been so arrogant and clueless they would’ve had a chance to help define the medium and figure out how to derive income from it as the public more and more obtained their music for free. No one should ever turn their back on technology.

This was a big topic of discussion last night as I attended the ASCAP Love Fest, an annual party thrown to celebrate the ASCAP songwriters, of which I’m not one – I’m BMI – but have been lucky enough to be included in on the festivities every year as I write with so many ASCAP writers and love a lot of the people who work there.

I had an incredible time at the party because I go so far back with so many people there. The first person I bumped into was the first singer who ever heard a song of mine. In 1972, Bette Midler came to my apartment in Manhattan to hear the first two songs I ever wrote, “Childstar” and “Ain’t No Man Worth It”. She actually rehearsed both of them for her show but it wasn’t until years later with a song called “One More Round” that I finally got on one of her albums. I totally associate my first baby steps into show business with Bette. She was the first big global star that came out of my first show biz clique and that made it very exciting for all the rest of us as we struggled along to fame.

I know that photo’s a little blurry but I liked it better than this one:

Here I am with Allan Rich, Jason Gould and Marsha Malamet.

I go as far back with Allan and Marsha as I do Bette. By night I was the hat check girl at Catch a Rising Star which, along with the Improv, was the biggest comedy club in NY. By day, I slapped posters on telephone poles for the acts at Reno Sweeney, the most popular cabaret at the time. Allan sang at both clubs and Marsha played piano. When I moved to LA in 1976 I left my hat checking gig to Marsha. A few years later when Allan finally moved to LA he got his big break when he sold a pair of shoes to Barry Manilow, who we all knew from when he played for Bette, and slipped him a cassette with some of his songs on it.

Here I am with Holly Palmer, aka Cheesecake of Bubbles & Cheesecake, and Jon Lind, who I co-wrote “Boogie Wonderland” with.

I’m very proud of my technique of being able to take a photo with three people in it without having to ask someone I don’t know to take the photo. It works a little better with two people in it though as I can hold my arms a little lower:

Stephen Bishop and I both had an excellent run of hits in the 80’s. Every time we went to a big songwriting event they seated us at the same table because we were always the sharpest dressers.

Having seen so many old friends I’m really glad that before I left the house I smacked the top of my Soap Tunes – not because I got to hear the annoying, barely audible song again but to make sure I was clean and smelling nice. The part about using the soap is true but the part about smelling nice isn’t. As many people as I hugged last night I was completely aware that I smelled like a car air freshener the whole time. Thank God they all knew me for decades and know that a) I can write a good song and b) I’m capable of not smelling like a fruit orchard.

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!