Allee Willis Blog

25Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Fashionable Turkey Hat

25Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Fashionable Turkey Hat

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! May you have much turkey, tofurkey or whatever else you choose to stuff yourself with today!

24Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Turkey Gravy Boat and Salt & Pepper Shakers

24Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Turkey Gravy Boat and Salt & Pepper Shakers

One of the main reasons I love Thanksgiving is that I get to pull out all my holiday themed dinnerware. Not that I cook or that my house is the one everyone comes over to but the turkey accessories in plain view still keep me psychologically tweaked for the season.

The gravy boat is missing its spoon but it doesn’t diminish the beauty of the lifelike bird:

The SA&P’s look like tiny hens.

All three items serve an important purpose, to assist in the taste of food, as opposed to this beautiful, lifelike yet useless inflatable turkey that sits in the center of the table every Thanksgiving as well.

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The top also doesn’t also pop off the inflatable bird so you can fill it with tasty turkey gravy like the ceramic bird is purposed for.

I hope the nasal cavities of anyone prepping their turkeys or any of its fixin’s today are filled with the same gravylicious smell that my overactive imagination is filling mine with right now as I gazed at my ceramic birds.

21Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mahalia Jackson Cooks Soul Cookbook

21Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mahalia Jackson Cooks Soul Cookbook

As Thanksgiving week is upon us I will never forget the trauma of being invited to Luther Vandross’s Thanksgiving Day dinner and having to leave before the smothered turkey was ready, only to arrive at my next destination and having a plate of salmon plopped in front of me. NEVER put a fish in front of a Thanksgiving guest unless you warn them first if you ever want to see them again! In that particular case, I developed a sudden headache and left just as quinoa and tofu were about to hit my plate and headed back across town where the table was flooded with the best holiday soul food fixins my stomach ever had the pleasure of ingesting. I bring up this story not just because I’ve learned to make sure the menu is Thanksgiving appropriate before I accept an invitation but because Luther and I often discussed the fact that Mahalia Jackson had a cookbook and how great it would be to make a total Mahalia Jackson meal.

In 1972, cousin Bennie thought so too.

Unfortunately, the only turkey in Mahalia’s cookbook is for pot pie. But many other festive recipes abound.

All the photographs are fantastic, none of the actual food itself but, rather, of Mahalia performing cooking tasks in excellent outfits.

We even learn how to turn the oven on…

… and open the oven door.

The excellence of Mahalia’s bouffant is clearly evident in the photo above. As such, I wish Mahalia’s head was lit better in this photo so it didn’t look like it was part of the kitchen cabinet:

Mahalia also offers some kitchen tips, though I’m not sure how much I would trust the cook who’s concerned about either of these while cooking:

I have a lot of work to do today. Otherwise I might spend it trying to find the perfect recipe to make for the person who force fed me salmon one Thanksgiving. Maybe this…

14Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Seriously Kitschy Birthday Gifts

14Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Seriously Kitschy Birthday Gifts

I wasn’t going to do anything for my birthday this year. Too overworked and no extra coinage to throw around. But word leaked out and spread and all of a sudden these people, most of whom I’ve spent every birthday and momentous occasion with for umpteen years, showed up at my house:

Bottom row (L-R): Diva Zappa, Lisa Loeb, me, Prudence Fenton and Michael Patrick King.
Middle row (L-R): Jane Wagner, Lesley Ann Warren, Bob Garrett, Lily Tomlin, Pamela Des Barres, Karen Levitas, Gai Gherardi, Gail Zappa, Nancye Ferguson, Stan Zimmerman and Jim Burns. Top row (L-R): Ben Bove, RuPaul, Tom Trujillo, Roey Herschovitz, Jimmy Quill, Charles Phoenix, Sonny Ruscha Bjornson, Mark Blackwell and Jack Nesbit.

Though all of my friends may not practice kitsch like the religion I do, their lives and occupations are consumed with pop culture and they all bring unique individual style and vision to everything they do. None of us are color-in-the-lines people. Which means that when it comes to birthday presents, it’s fantasyland overload as their sensibilities collide with mine in harmonious gift wrapped chaos! For example, here I am with perennially great gift givers Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burns:

Jim is looking very happy because the video game he stars in, Call Of Duty Black Ops, was released the day before and set the opening day record for ANY type of entertainment,Is he is grossing $320,000,000 by the time he reached my house. Maybe that’s why they got me 14 gifts. Though Nancye and Jim are always reliable for a smorgasbord of age-inappropriate-unless-you-happen-to-be-me offerings like this magnificent 1950’s mother of pearl poodle pocket mirror/pill box:

… and this convenient land line phone ear piece for my iPhone:

They also gave me this wonderfully famous Enid Collins owl box purse…

…and this fantastic 50’s fold up wallet with plastic coin holder inside like the Good Humor ice cream man used to wear on his belt to give people change:

They also threw in this 1960’s Wilma Flintstone bathing cap.

Here I am with Pamela Des Barres, the world’s most famous groupie, and Diva and Gail Zappa, who came straight to my place from the airport after being honored at a Frank Zappa festival in London.

Pamela is a fabulous writer and also travels a lot for her work. Which is lucky for me and the rest of her friends as she hits thrift shops wherever she goes and picks up stuff for us all year round. She makes these finds for pennies and stacks them up so she can arrive like Santa Claus on any given occasion. These “On The Wagon’ coaster and snack trays she gave me are just about my favorite bar accessory ever!

I love when snacks are referred to as ‘Tid Bits’, especially when what is normally a single word is broken up into two separate words as stamped into the belly of the wagon.

This nightshirt could be the heaviest gift of the evening. It’s hard to see all the 1960’s pop culture graphics and slogans in this photo and I’m not sure who the characters on it are but there were more than a few vintage clotheshorses at the party, certainly including myself, and we all agree that Pamela’s $2 purchase would easily go for $500 in the right store.

Then there’s this early 60’s Make-Up Mask that you pull over your bouffant to protect the Max Factor from rubbing off your face when you pull your angora sweater over it:

Pamela graciously modeled it for us throughout the evening.

Her excellent gift giving instincts have definitely rubbed off on the other Des Barres in attendance, Michael, who reliably gives me fantastic African swag.

At one point there was a girl’s conference in the bedroom. Here I am with (L-R) Lily Tomlin,Prudence Fenton, and Jane Wagner:

Prudence not only cooked an incredible dinner for everyone but made the excellent “Crackerature” portrait of me that’s between our heads in the photo above.

Lily and Jane gave me the most ridiculous-in-the-best-kitsch-sense-of-the-word-ridiculous gift of the night:

He’s only about 3″ high, his little arms are made out of bobby pins and his body is some kind of overcooked Sculpy or baking soda concoction. The card that accompanied him was just as kitschy.

The Diller is Phyllis Diller, which adds a few pounds on the kitsch scale for this gift. The note Jane and Lily wrote me make the cheese wheel even weightier:

Joining Lily and I here is Stan Zimmerman. We all grew up in Detroit.

Stan added a little class to my gifts with this 1950’s signed Sasha Brastoff ashtray.

Here’s Lily and I with RuPaul. Both of them have added greatly to the kitsch cache of my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist, as they are the #1 and #2 collectors of her art, each owning over 20 pieces.

Michael Patrick King, seen here with Pamela Des Barres’ lovely feet, brought me some of my most Americanized presents.

He brought my gifts back from Dubai when he was there filming Sex and the City II. First, this green shopping bag featuring a carefree Michelle Obama:

And then this brain-numbing Muslim Barbie shoulder bag:

I got one more bag, actually a Kitsch Emergency Kit, from Karen Levitas.

It’s nice when your friends give you a healthy snack of sardines to enjoy while you read cheesy poetry from the 70’s:

Here I am with Mark Blackwell, who’s also a November 10th birthday baby, and Sonny Ruscha Bjornson, Lisa Loeb and Roey Hershkovitz:

Lisa and Roey gave me some quality reading material:

Maybe I will learn to make beautiful cakes like this one on page 110:

But when it comes to baking, there’s only one Supreme Master and I’m pictured with him here:

Just a few days before my party Charles Phoenix was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal with his signature “Cherpumple” cake, one of which he baked for me.

A Cherpumple is three Sara Lee cherry, pumpkin and apple pies stuffed inside three Betty Crocker cakes and frosted as one happy stack of sugary ecstasy:

Here’s my friend, Lesley Ann Warren, indulging in some. Perennially skinny and always eating healthy, she hit the Cherpumple as an extreme gesture of kitsch on my birthday.

Lesley was my first friend when I moved to Hollywood in 1976. She was also the first person ever to sing one of my songs on TV when she did the third song I ever wrote, “Childstar”, on Johnny Carson.

Some people went back for seconds of Cherpumple. Each plate weighs 2 lbs.

Gai Gherardi and Rhonda Saboff shared their Cherpumple:

They gave me an excellent pair of glasses from LA Eyeworks, which Gai co-owns and where I’ve bought all of my eye coverings for the last three decades.

When RuPaul arrived he brought me another birthday cake.

It was delicious but everyone had already gorged on too much Cherpumple.

Which means that everyone went home in sugar shock, the condition they’ve had much practice existing in as they’ve all been over to my house a trillion times before.

I didn’t have far to go as my bed was only feet away from the remains of the Cherpumple. I went to sleep with my crown on and had sugar sweet dreams anticipating a very good year to come indeed!

More party photos can be seen here.

10Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Birthday To Me Special Effects Ultimate Volcano Cake!

10Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Birthday To Me Special Effects Ultimate Volcano Cake!

volcano-cake1

Yes, my birthday’s today and were I’m not so lazy and overworked that would mean it’s time for me to make one of my signature spewing fire and lava volcano birthday cakes. Ranging from a foot to four feet wide and anywhere up to 25 pounds and two feet tall, these overdosing towers of junk have accompanied me rounding the bend to another year ever since I first saw a commercial for The Special Effects Cookbook in 1992.

The real recipe calls for a nicely constructed “lifelike” looking volcano, but I’m an artist and into Kitsch so it should be no surprise that my cakes are hulking, unrecognizable lifeforms wayyyyy out of the realm of what the cookbook author had in mind.

My version is made of up to 10 layers of anything I want – vanilla, chocolate and cherry cake, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, Rice Krispy treats and any other foodstuffs appropriate for celebration, surrounded by Jell-O or whipped cream and accented with Snickers, mini marshmallows, sprinkles, multicolored frosting and flaming sugar cubes-soaked-in-almond-extract torches, all of from which spews lava made from eggs, water and dry ice. In the 17 years of cooking/sculpting/drilling these things, even the most vegan amongst us ends up with their fingers plugged into this heart attack mound of sugar stuff. The cake is big enough that guests can easily locate a germ-free area in which to do their excavation. Here’s my Birthday ’94 Volcano before it blew:

And here’s the first Volcano cake I ever made in 1993:

See it erupting!:

Here’s me making a second 1993 lava spewing dragon cake in case my first volcano was too small to feed all my guests. A drill is one of my most necessary kitchen utensils.

Here’s my Volcano Birthday cake, 1997. Rather than stack four cakes on top of each other and risk an avalanche, or whatever it would be called if a volcano tipped over, I erected a mountain range.

Top view:

I won’t be baking any Volcanos this year because my friend, Charles Phoenix, is baking me one of his signature Cherpumples, three pies stuffed into three cake and presented as one. A most happy birthday to me!!

08Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschlicious Riverside, CA.

08Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschlicious Riverside, CA.

Last weekend I drove to Riverside to see a performance of The Color Purple, the musical I co-wrote. I tend to pick and choose the performances of the show I see based on how good the thrifts shops and vintage architecture is in the cities it’s playing in.

Riverside is only a little over an hour east of LA and has at least two blocks of nothing but thrift shops so that being a target city was pretty obvious. Besides, it gave me a chance to go to one of my favorite barbecue joints on the planet:

It’s always a good sign when your favorite joint is pushing your show as hard as the deep-fried turkeys and hams.

I discovered Gram’s Mission Bar-B-Que Palace, at the time in its original location two blocks west of where it is now, the first time I ever went to Riverside in the late 1980’s. Paul Rubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, and I took my van for a weekend thrift shop extravaganza. We stayed overnight at the famous Mission Inn, an architecturally historic hotel where Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their honeymoon, and then, starting in Riverside, we hit every significant thrift shop between there and LA. My bed at The Mission Inn was directly under an astronomically huge stained-glass window of Jesus Christ. I woke up about 8 am. with Jesus’s light raining down on my body, which now itself looked like a stained glass Jesus. This felt somewhat blasphemous as a Jew so I ran to a open window across the room to get some air and there, rising like a miracle before me directly across the street, was a big ass barbecue smoker with plumes of rib greased smoke billowing out of it. I can’t even tell you how fast we bolted down there.

The only thing better than the ribs, fried chicken, catfish, meatloaf, yams, greens, mac ‘n cheese and cobbler we inhaled was the bridge table next to us that was covered with an extra long shag fake fur chessboard and foot tall handcarved chess pieces. I know I have a rib grease stained photo of it somewhere but all I can put my hands on right now is a photo of the cover of the menu.

All categories of chewables featured on the cover are excellent at Gram’s. By now, after all these years of coming here, I think I’ve only missed one thing on the menu:

Back to this trip, I left Gram’s stuffed like the pig that used to be attached to the ear and hit the thrifts. This spectacular 1950’s pushbutton ashtray was one of my more significant finds, especially as it was only $16 and I already own the matching desk fan and calendar.

Here’s Riverside on the ashtray:

For $1 I also got this incredible 1950’s beer and parfait glass.

Fish were a very popular design motif in the 1950’s.

Thank God, a few other things from the 1950’s abound in Riverside like these incredible vintage neon signs:

This sign isn’t neon but beautiful and 50’s nonetheless:

The matching restaurant is even better:

Thank God it was dark by the time I got back to the theater…

… because I parked just across the street and changed in the back of my van. I like having a van because not only does it accommodate any size of thrift shop purchase but it’s a portable dressing room as well. This would not have been the case had I been driving this vehicle that whizzed past me on my way back to the theater:

All in all, my day was fantastic. The show, the food, the sights, the thrift finds, all fantastic. So what’s not to love about a day trip to Riverside? Especially when everything but a Pigs Ear awaits me.

07Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mr. Peanut Bank And Friends

07Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Mr. Peanut Bank And Friends

Although I’m not a massive fan of actual peanuts, I’ve always loved classic 1950’s plastic Mr. Peanut memorabilia. I love how the plastic glows with depth from the richness of the classic 50’s colors he came in, in this case perfect baby blue.

I also love the sound of coins dropping into Mr. Peanut’s all too small empty plastic gut.

The only other Mr. Peanut memorabilia I collect is also made of plastic. I have this cup in pink, yellow, red and the bank mate, baby blue.

I also have Mr. Peanut salt and pepper shakers. I love them for their diminutive stature compared to the bank and cup, but they stay too close to traditional peanut color and I like things that break more out-of-the-box.

I love Mr. Peanut’s stance. He’s so casual.

I especially like his little thin legs and rolled down socks.

And he always looks so self-assured.

For all these reasons I like having Mr. Peanut and his multiple selves around my kitschen.

31Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Halloween Terrarium Candy Bowl

31Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Halloween Terrarium Candy Bowl

The only thing green this vintage 1970’s terrarium has ever been home to is if some candy happens to come in a green wrapper. It’s never housed any plants, little rock gardens or anything else that one might find in a planter but, rather, has been a big, fat bowl of sweets its whole life. One might assume this only happens around Halloween but this candy bowl may as well be cemented to the floor as you enter my dining room for as popular a piece as it is.

No one has ever accused my house as being a haven for the health conscious. Candy abounds as sugar charged brains fit the mindset of Atomic design, not to mention a house that was built to be a party house year-round as mine was when it was built in 1937 as the party house for MGM. But one thing I can tell you about candy, unless a doctor has given you a skull and crossbones prescription for no sugar, even the staunchest vegan can’t pass up this candy bowl without dipping their hand in.

It doesn’t even look full in this photo but it can hold up to 25 pounds of candy with the lid on. I can’t take a photo of it overbrimming now as everything has been dumped out of it and put in little bags all ready to hand out for Halloween. I don’t dare leave the terrarium out on my porch as I can’t risk that some clown, avatar, angel or cowboy has a developed enough design aesthetic to know that the terrarium is the real treat and not the candy and takes that home instead.

Happy sugarcoated, caramel filled Halloween!

18Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Judging CANstruction

18Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Judging CANstruction

I’ve always been intrigued with label design, especially when appearing on cans, as the designer has to take the roundness into consideration as well as the inescapable fact that only a portion of the design is going to be seen at any one time. But then imagine having to stack the cans so they become something else. The label still needs to retain its power but must also give power to whatever structure you’re using it to make. This weekend I had the honor of judging and announcing the winners at the Los Angeles Canstruction awards, a design contest that takes place in over 100 cities where designers compete using canned food as the building blocks to make a variety of giant objects. After the contest, all of the food is donated to local food banks, so the quality of the meal provided in each structure is a very important criteria in judging its worth.

At first glance it might look like someone just plopped a bunch of cans on top of each other, but the four categories each object is judged on speak to the intricacies of building such a design. There’s also a winner in each individual category.

1) STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY – This is a killer category because all structures must be self-supporting. You can’t use 2×4’s or anything over half inch plywood to support the cans. The only materials permissible are quarter inch or less foam core or plywood, cardboard, Masonite or plexiglass, and those can only be used for leveling or balancing and not for load-bearing. As far as attaching things to each other, you can only use Velcro, clear and double sided tape, rubber bands, fish wire, wire, plastic ties and magnets, none of which can be visible. And absolutely no glue is allowed. So these things are really feats of engineering.

The winner in Structural Integrity category was “Cancave/ CANvex”, built by HMC Architects and Buro Happold Engineers. This structure used none of the aforementioned items to hold it together but rather, each row of cans was supported by the weight of the next to hold together.

The wave, however, was a little light on nutritional variety. It consisted solely of cans of Dole pineapple.

2) BEST MEAL went to “Not So Hungry Hungry Hippo” by RTKL Associates.

The hippo included lights and had the most appetizing collection of food: whole peeled tomatoes, cut green beans, mixed vegetables, ravioli, tuna, lychee jelly and Pringles.

3) BEST USE OF LABELS – The most creative use of graphically strong labels went to “CANucopia” by Perkins & Will.

It’s hard to see from the angle of that photo but brown cans of crushed tomatoes formed the shape of a cornucopia that food including my favorite, pork ‘n beans, spilled out of.

4) JUROR’S FAVORITE – This award went to the canstruction that best combined all of the above categories. The winner was “Can-on, Picture a World without Hunger” by Gensler and Arup, a giant Canon camera built out of black beans, peas, green beans and tomatoes. This design was really intricate. As I rely so much upon my Canon Elph to capture the images I feature every day here in Kitsch O’ The Day, I can tell you they got every little feature on the camera.

The structure also integrated technology. Two screens featured a live streaming video of people looking at it as well as a presentation of images of people who will benefit from the food donations.

I don’t have that many vintage cans of food in my Kitsch collection. Of the few that I have, I’m most attached to my canned ham and my can of Popeye’s Spinach.

I had two cans of Popeye’s but used one in 1988 in my motorized art piece I built to match my song sung by Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, “What I Done to Deserve This?”.

This piece is over 9 feet long and weighs close to 400 pounds. That’s because of all of this on the back:

You can actually see it moving here. You can see a nice close-up of the spinach can here. You can see everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the art and music of “What I Done to Deserve This?” here. But this post is about cans of food, not motorized pieces that I only have really crappy photos of. And it’s certainly about cans of food that held up better than the Popeye’s can I still have.

I have to assume that it’s the spinach itself that seeped through the tin and attacked the label. When you pick the can up it’s packed so tight the lids are convex at both ends. I know that’s not the way the spinach originally came when it was made back in the 1960s or 70s as I found this photo on the web of someone who actually measured how much spinach Popeye was packing. A full third of it was liquid.

I’m confidant that the food making up the Canstruction entries was all nice and fresh and not the kind that could blow the roof off of your house.

14Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Lombardino’s Restaurant in Madison, WI. – In With The Old and Out With The New

14Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Lombardino’s Restaurant in Madison, WI. – In With The Old and Out With The New

. lombardos-day2

Other than I didn’t have a car so my world was very small when I went to college at the University of Wisconsin in the late 60’s, I don’t know how I missed Lombardino’s. Built in 1954, not a lick of this old-school Italian kitsch fest has changed since. Which is a real feat as the restaurant was bought in 2000 and a very fancy chef brought in. So although the ante’s been upped on the food, not a mosaic tile, not a twist of wrought iron, not even a cheesy slogan has been updated. This is a rarity in this day and age where new owners feel compelled to modernize and squeeze the last drop of soul out of their purchases. Here now is a brief tour through Lombardino’s, where I ate right after I conducted the marching band at the Homecoming football game last weekend.

First of all, there’s the Lombardino’s sign painted on the side of the building. The restaurant is on one of those corners, University and Highland, that you pass all the time if you drive in Madison. The sign is a good 40 feet long and not a dab of paint has ever been applied to restore it. This is something that most people can’t keep their hands off of but it’s something that aKitschionados, collectors and architectural historians in general praise. Let things age with dignity, just like a human being who doesn’t pump themselves full of Botox, silicone or anything else that eventually cosmetically alters them into a Stepford wife.

The sign connects to an equally long wall made up of multicolored 1 inch mosaic tiles, the same colors as in the mural so, all in all, a perfect color palette, albeit a little too dark to see well in my photos.

Ceramic reliefs of figures I don’t know to be particularly Italian but I could be so wrong about pepper the tile wall leading to the entrance of the restaurant.

Here are some close ups:

It’s always a beautiful thing when someone keeps their fat fingers off trying to restore something historic, a move that can only make the actual value plummet, and they choose instead to just leave it to age naturally. In this case, the ceramic relief fell off but you still get the spirit of the party-going figure who once attended the side of the building.

As you swing around the corner to get to the front door, which I unfortunately forgot to photograph, you get a hint of the wrought iron craziness that goes on inside.

I also forgot to take an overview shot of the restaurant when I walked in. Duh… But I was still euphoric from standing up in front of 82,000 people and a uniformed-to-the-nines 300+ piece marching band and conduct them playing my songs, all of this without knowing how to read music. So these brain lapses are to be expected. But I knew I was in the right place to celebrate when I saw this slogan on the overhang entrance to the bar:

Tipping the camera down a little bit you can see that the wrought iron entrance is made up of a lot of grapes and Christmas lights. It’s always an excellent sign when Christmas lights are left up all year round.

Once through the portals, there are two walls worth of astounding mosaic and larger tile work.

The ones made up of one-inch mosaic tiles are my favorites. Mr. Lombardino obviously loved his women.

The scenes made up of larger tiles are pretty great too. I especially love the miniature pizza boy standing at the side of the table next to the actual diner who’s cooling his head with his Bloody Mary:

The ceramic reliefs continue inside as do lots of little shuttered windows with wrought iron balconies. It’s always an excellent sign of kitsch when window treatments exist where there are no real windows and balconies exist only to have wine bottles hang out and peer at the guests.

I’m assuming this big tile relief, at least 8 feet long, is some famous building in Rome but world traveler that I’m not, I can’t be sure:

Another earmark of kitsch is when artwork such as this is backlit with Christmas lights and used as a bulletin board with guests at the Last Supper looking down upon it.

I’m pretty sure that this is on a wall leading to the bathroom:

The two larger tiles make sense in the scheme of things but I’m always partial when ashtrays are haphazardly stuck in to enhance the design.

I forgot to take my usual close up photos of the seriously good food but thankfully I have this photo of who I ate it with there:

From L-R, Mark Blackwell, who traveled to Madison with me to shoot my conducting debut, Jon Sorenson, from the University of Wisconsin Foundation who came up with the idea of me conducting in the first place and had the good taste to choose Lombardino’s for dinner, me, Comm Arts Chair Prof. Susan Zaeske, Professor Mary Louise “Lou” Roberts, and David Bedri. We ate like the pigs that this kind of decor demands.

I appreciated Lombardino’s even more because I started off my Madison trip as I have the three other times I’ve been back since I graduated, by going to see my old dorm, Carroll Hall, a stone cold classic Atomic Age building I moved into my freshman year. Both the interior and exterior left a lasting architectural impression on me that continues to this day. Carroll Hall was a stunningly modern Mid Century building with a beyond to die for lobby. I still have the brochure that made me choose it as a place to live:

Though the building itself was a little too rectangular for my tastes, the steelcase windows and turquoise metal plates that matched the blue of Lake Mendota made me so swoon every time I rounded the corner to see it:

To my horror, here’s what it looks like now:

Yikes! What are people thinking to just slop right over the gorgeous puppy?! Whatever material they used was so cheap you can still see the lines of the metal rods that held the turquoise plates in place. And then you go and paint it brown?! So it will disappear into the lake, not drawing attention to itself like some geeky coed? At least the blasphemers were bold enough to make it striped but shades of beige don’t really help much. And it’s really cheap paint, the kind that gets sucked into whatever material it’s painted over and even 100 coats will never give it any presence. Which is exactly what the owners of Lombardino’s didn’t do. Which is exactly why the first place I’m going to eat whenever I hit Madison again is Lombardino’s!