Allee Willis Blog » Holidays

13Jun 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s TV Dinner Fathers Day Card

13Jun 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s TV Dinner Fathers Day Card

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The front of this card looks conservative enough that you wouldn’t know it was sold in the decade when greeting cards went bonkers and beatniks and sputniks and all other kinds of alternative living spaces and lifestyles expressed themselves via them. But when he opened it up Dad would have seen that this card was very much of its era given that the choice that the saccharine sweet angel tot offers her dad inside is one between TV dinners.

Dad’s choices most likely would have been Swanson’s chicken and turkey or beef, all with vegetables swimming in a butter sea.

Here I am with my father Father’s Day, 1957, whipping back to shore to get ready for dinner.

My mom cooked that night but I’m pretty sure my dad would have chosen the Salisbury Steak with gravy, whipped potatoes, peas in seasoned sauce and peach cake cobbler. After dinner, I’m pretty sure I used the aluminum tray to organize my marbles into teams for some sport I made up to play with my dad on his big day.

31May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Have A Blast” This Memorial Day Bottle Opener

31May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Have A Blast” This Memorial Day Bottle Opener

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Here’s hoping that everyone is having a blast this Memorial Day! I hope that includes popping lots of bottles with a similar vintage bottle opener as well as eating lots of hot dogs.

If it had a pointy metal end the hot dog’s hair gel/ketchup would look a lot like the ‘Have A Blast” cap popper.

The ‘Have A Blast’ even has a baby brother:

Obviously the more popular of the two, the baby’s message is almost completely blasted off.

If you had either one of these openers right now you could pop the cap on something cold and celebrate the holiday by whipping up some Festive Hot Dog Soufflé from The New Hot Dog Cookbook, a 1968-updated-in-’83 tome of wiener recipes.

Or if that doesn’t sit right on your taste buds perhaps you could “make your wieners Wynders”. Trust me, this is worth watching:

If you don’t want to drop coin on buying a Wynder’s Wiener maybe you’d like to spend this holiday tooling your own:

However you spend your holiday I hope you’re doing what you want to do and don’t forget to:

09May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch’ O The Day – Mr. Mother’s Day Cup & Saucer Sculpture

09May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch’ O The Day – Mr. Mother’s Day Cup & Saucer Sculpture

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I love, love, love crafts projects, especially when they go awry, and this coffee cup with saucer collar is one of my favorites. That it says “Happy Mother’s Day” despite its unmistakable portraiture of a mustached, bow-tied man is just the tip of the kitsch iceberg! The glitter is gooped on with an overabundance of still visible glue. Mom is decidedly not dishwasher friendly. Precision was not on the side of the hand that shaped the facial features, all of which are made of felt with excessively crooked edges. And the glitter on the handle nose makes it grossly uncomfortable to pick up, not that you would want to anyway as the saucer, should you be imbibing your Mother’s Day joe with Dad or any other human being, blocks your vision when tilted toward mouth.

I can only hope there’s an equally as lovely Father’s Day cup with mom’s face on it sitting somewhere on this Mother’s Day.

03Apr 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – In My Easter Bonnet

03Apr 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – In My Easter Bonnet

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Once again I don the Easter bonnet I made to go to my friend April Winchell’s mother’s house Easter, 1998 where she had a smorgasbord of international foods, the unrecognizable contents of which were festooned with name tags stuck into the dishes on popsicle sticks, an excellent sign if one likes a side of Kitsch with their holidays.

This was the first Easter bonnet I ever wore, modeled with the Sears Easter Bunny in Detroit in 1952. It was storebought and wasn’t very Eastery. I vowed to have more festive haberdashery after that.

My current chapeau is made of foamcore, eggs, chicks, peeps, bunnies, roosters, shredded cellophane, bagels and about 10 pounds of hot melt glue. It has held up remarkably well over the years .

There were recipes for “Eggs In Exciting Ways” from a vintage cookbook under the brim.

I’m wearing the hat now and having a very Happy Easter. I hope you are too.

30Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Passover Matzoh Sweeper

30Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Passover Matzoh Sweeper

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Passover means Seder, Seder means matzoh and matzoh means crumbs. But fear not, the Matzah Sweeper is here, a convenient crumb caddy made from plastic that could not have cost the manufacturer much gelt because it’s so clunky to use. After having decimated at least half a box of matzoh trying to get my favorite unleavened bread topping, peanut butter and jelly, spread evenly across it there were enough crumbs to make it look like my kitchen table was covered with snow. But despite the fact that it says “press here”…

… after five minutes of trying to pry it open pressing everywhere imaginable I gave up trying to crack the Matzah Sweeper open to dump the crumbs. I finally used it, full of crumbs, as a percussion shaker on a song I was working on yesterday. The trade-off worked out nicely.

One of my favorite things from a Kitsch perspective about matzoh is that there’s no clear correct spelling of the name. Sometimes it’s matzo, sometimes it’s matzoh and for the Rite Lite company of Brooklyn, New York it’s apparently ‘matzah’.

And now, an extra Passover bonus! Please enjoy The Temptations circa 1968 singing a Fiddler on the Roof medley. The visual quality of this clip is beyond chaluscious (sp? Yiddish for ‘atrocious’) but to hear this score sung this way will add a little pinch o’ soul to the matzo brei and gefilte fish and ensure you stay in the groove this Passover season.

29Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – Happy Passover! Manischewitz Presents “The Jewish Cowboy” record

29Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – Happy Passover! Manischewitz Presents “The Jewish Cowboy” record

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Manischewitz is the premier manufacturer of kosher foods. I can’t tell you how many boxes of their matzo or those squared off bottles of wine sat upon seder tables of my youth but one Manischewitz product I never saw before is this special edition single released in 1958. I never even knew there were Jewish cowboys let alone that Harold Stern was one of them.

Stern regales us with almost 9 minutes of chatter about being a Jewish cowboy and the joys of Manischewitz.

Many famous songwriters have been Jewish, among them the very founders of Pop music like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein, but who knew about “Avram”?!

This record is fascinating for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was put out by a big legitimate company yet it’s just a demo, not an officially recorded record.

I personally usually love demos, what the songwriter records as their idea of the song, better than the actual records made of them. But back in the day, very few people who couldn’t afford to go the full record route copped to the fact that what they were putting out was the demo. Here they didn’t even spring for a back label.

Who knew that Centerville, Texas was such a hotbed of religious passion?

I always liked Peanut butter and jelly on my matzo. Perhaps I’ll crack open a box and spread a little of that on now, fill my Swinger Glass with grape wine and lie back and enjoy all the fruits of Manischewitz and The Jewish Cowboy’s labor.

14Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Valentines Day! Say It With Hamm’s, 1970’s Style

14Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Happy Valentines Day! Say It With Hamm’s, 1970’s Style

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Not quite sure why no chair was provided for the female of the species as by the time this photo was taken for this vintage Hamm’s beer sign in the late ’70’s feminism had surely raised its voice loud enough to demand equality in seating arrangements. At least they’ve got a few beers to tip back this Valentine’s Day so her muscles won’t cramp in that position. Maybe one of her gifts to him is a pedicure. In addition to candy and flowers I hope one of his gifts to her is a nice, comfortable chair.

31Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage 1999 to 2000 Double-Sided New Year’s Glasses

31Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage 1999 to 2000 Double-Sided New Year’s Glasses

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Featuring two sides, one to toast the year about to end and the other to toast the new year once it arrives, these glasses were made to usher in the new millennium in 2000. I don’t usually collect glassware this new but these are so odd and New Yearsish as to become Kitsch.

Happy last day of 2009 and I’ll see you on the other side!

30Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1930’s New Year’s Eve Noisemaker

30Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1930’s New Year’s Eve Noisemaker

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Battered and rusty, this vintage 30’s noisemaker still exhibits signs of life with a great hardwood-ball-against-tin sound that I still use as percussion on a lot of my songs. I suspect that the artist who did the graphic didn’t know a lot about music though as this is quite a peculiar figuration for a jazz combo. Sans piano and bass, there’s but a guitarist and drummer accompanying the three-piece horn section, the middle horn of which looks more like the end of a hookah than the trombone it probably should have been. I also love the little muscle man with the A-bomb afro hovering under the band, stylistically completely inconsistent with the rest of the figures. All of which means this noisemaker firmly hacks a deep notch in the belt of Kitsch.

25Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Season’s Best” 45 From Dinah Shore

25Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Season’s Best” 45 From Dinah Shore

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“Seasons best” from Dinah Shore, Chevrolet and me! Dinah warbled “See the USA in your Chevrolet” throughout the Atomic Age when the auto maker sponsored The Dinah Shore Show from 1956–63. The jingle became her best known song and kept her working steady so she could afford lots of Christmas and Hanukkah presents.

Though Dinah was a nice Jewish girl there’s nary a Hanukah song in sight on this promo 45 that was handed out by GM dealers, in this case Price-Roche Motors of Petaluma, California. The disk features “Silent Night”, “Jingle Bells”, “The Coventry Carol” and “You Meet The Nicest People“.

Dinah ended all of her shows by throwing a big “MWAH!” kiss directly to camera, prompting Frank Sinatra to say “Dinah blows the best kisses.” In her tradition, and I’d like to think with Frank’s approval, I’m blowing you all a big “MWAH!” this Christmas Day!