08Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Abbey Rents Bedpan Ashtray

08Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Abbey Rents Bedpan Ashtray

.

I can think of a lot of things to rent from Abbey Rents but I prefer them to be more in the mode of party supplies than bedpans.

I’m not too big on being sick to begin with.

I’ve been on crutches a few times and still keep a spare pair in the basement. Here was the last time I had them out when I had a torn meniscus in my knee last summer.

I don’t always dress that nice when I’m on crutches but I’m always lucky enough to have friends who do volunteer nurse duty, as was the case with Nancye Ferguson who agreed to match nurses caps and masks with me. I was high enough from those drugs she was dispensing that I didn’t need to worry about snuffing anything out in my bedpan ashtray.

If I think about going one step further and ever end up having to deal with a wheelchair I would soup one up the same way I’ve done with other things on wheels, like this golf cart I customized for a Cars video back in the day. It went from this…

… to this:

While I was writing The Color Purple I was racing back and forth between LA and New York so much and not finding a doctor who could figure out why my leg was hurting. It got so bad I actually switched from crutches to a walker. Believing it’s best to share one’s problems with one’s friends, I threw a party to show off my new mode of transportation.

Ultimately, I’d rather be getting around via golf cart then crutches or walker any day, but should I ever need to up my inventory of sick room devices I will most surely call Abby Rents.

 

31Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Out with Lily Tomlin and RuPaul!

31Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Out with Lily Tomlin and RuPaul!

Me and Lily are planning our trip to Detroit in April to see the first high school production of my musical, The Color Purple, at her high school, Cass, and my conducting the glee club and marching band at my high school, Mumford. We’re also going to be taking a lot of meetings to figure out something to do in Detroit together permanently.

Then out for stupendous fried chicken, yams, greens, mac & cheese, peach cobbler and brownie gooey cake at MP’s Soul Food in North Hollywood with RuPaul, Tom Star and Ben Bove:

Life is exceptionally sweet!

30Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Mini’s Rockin’ Rocket 88

30Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Mini’s Rockin’ Rocket 88

 

In addition to my classic cars, a 1955 Studebaker Commander. nd a ’55 DeSoto Fireflyte…

I also have a more common Beetle and Mini. Both of my classic cars have been up on blocks and serving as planters for years until mommy saves enough pennies to restore them. So it’s my more normal cars that cart me around on a daily basis. But I’ve never really been a fan of something that looks exactly like something else, especially if it’s as ubiquitous as a car. So soonafter I got both of them in 2004 – I’ve been a Beetle owner since they came out in 1999, this being my 3rd and final one – I looked around for every aftermarket piece of chrome I could find as both come as nude as cars can come. As a consequence, both vehicles are now abnormally overloaded. The Beetle, for example, has features like a grill and eyelashes…

…fancy shoes,…

… quite a fetching gas cap…

… and color-coordinated interior parts.

The Mini has custom seats,…

… blinged initials,…

…a custom steering wheel and gauges anywhere they would fit despite me not knowing what any of them do,…

…and now, a 1950’s Oldsmobile Rocket 88 hood ornament to make it even prettier!

I’ve collected old car parts for decades. I used to make furniture out of them:

When I realized that it just took up too much space building these things, I stopped. That was in 1988. But the voluminous amount of boxes full of door handles, hood ornaments, badges, and anything else used to decorate cars still fill my storage garage. Somehow it felt only natural to bring this baby out of the box and into the open-air.

This feat was accomplished by Mark Tomorsky, my art fabricator and Soup To Nuts stage partner.

Thank you, Mark, for desecrating my hood so that the Mini (and my hair) now have wings to fly!

 

26Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – As Generic As It Gets

26Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – As Generic As It Gets

When it comes to kitsch, there’s always an excellent chance of it thriving in a 99¢ store. Even more so when it’s a penny less:

Once it’s one cent less than the kitsch standard, there’s a guaranteed level of cuckoo-ness going on in many of the specially made products that suck up shelf space like muscles on a reef at these places. There’s so much wrong about this particular product that makes it makes my eyeballs spin.  First, I always love when essential information about the capabilities of the product are hidden once the product is inserted in its plastic packaging.

Also nice when the product name itself is covered once the product is secure in the package.

Even better is when the product in use is illustrated and there’s no clear connection between the graphic and the product.  I don’t know what this leather-like attache case and accesories are supposed to show about the prowess of contact cement.  Was the entire set fabricated using it?

Even better is the implication of the second “use”: gluing together an entire dining room set!

The directions on the back stress  to always avoid “cintact” with eyes.

As far as the rest of the jumble in the directions, I thought I was buying contact cement and not plaster…

The uses of plaster and contact cement are quite different. And I didn’t know that there was a materials such as “wood leather” or “cotton yamed”.  And I’m always wild about a misplaced comma as in “same or, various substances”. All of which leads me to conclude that this kitsch find couldn’t be more of this if it tried:

25Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Insane Architectural Detail!

25Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Insane Architectural Detail!

No one loves vintage architecture more than me, especially 1930’s through 1970’s modern. But sometimes I drive through the city of Los Angeles and my eyeballs literally cross in ecstasy when I see stunning architectural details of an entirely different ilk such as the Greek themed hunk in the photo above. I have no idea who first mounted a fake column on a building in efforts to make otherwise bland boxes of stucco into things more grand, but I can’t thank them enough for feeding this kitsch lover a massive dose of what they love best every time I pass by one of their buildings. The idea of splitting a column in half and gluing it on in attempts to make it look like the column is supporting something and to add stature and beauty to these edifices took quite the mind to create. Here’s another example just down the block from the last Grecian temple:

The Valley, where all these beauties featured today come from, abounds with such cut-in-half Grecian style:

And then there’s this approach:

Just throw everything on the lawn and cover what was once an incredible 1930’s Deco bungalow with that hideous kind of stucco that takes off layers of skin should you come in contact with it. But if you’re going for that, there was never a more noble champion of Greek comedy/tragedy than the now-debunked House of Davids right smack dab in the middle of Hollywood:

Let’s take a closer look:

Sadly, owner Norwood Young disassembled his collection and closed the doors of Youngwood Court, as it was officially named, a few months ago. The good news is that one of the Davids made it my way as a birthday present from aKitschionado Mark Blackwell a couple of months ago:

So now, even Willis Wonderland has a touch of Greece to liven it up.

23Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cake Sponges

23Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cake Sponges

I don’t know about you but anytime I’ve tried to use a sponge made out of this kind of super-aerated foam I may as well be dragging a Kleenex over what I’m trying to clean. In other words, this never would have made it home with me had  the three sponges that comprise it arranged into anything other than a piece of cake. Although it’s a little generous to call sponge #3, the strawberry, a sponge:

Barely over in inch high, it would be more appropriate to call it an all-too-tiny piece of foam that your cat or child could choke on.

I will say that the frosting sides of the two pieces of cake are more practical than the cake portion itself. Although the form underneath doesn’t give it much support, at least there’s a shot of scraping something off a surface if one positions their cake right.

As tempting as the sponge is to eat, it comes with ample warning:

I just noticed when reading the label that this is actually called the “Shortcake sponge”. I don’t know about you, but any shortcake I’ve eaten has a more biscuit-like texture. This is a stone cold plain ol’ slice of vanilla cake with strawberry frosting.

The slices are made by one of my favorite companies for these kind of products that at once make sense and don’t make sense. Made in China but produced for Japan by Daiso.


Some of my other favorite essential Daiso products include the sauna jacket…

…the apple comb…

… the Mayonnaise Case…

… the portable banana keeper…

… and the Love coasters.

The designers at Daiso must’ve been so excited about the impracticability of the tiny pop-out letters of the Love  coaster that they decided to go for it again with that stupid strawberry.

But God love them for the kitsch they create like the good-enough-to-eat-but-not-good-enough-to-clean-your-dishes cake sponge.



15Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – “Groovin'” Away With Booker T.

15Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – “Groovin'” Away With Booker T.

No new kitsch posts today as I woke up bright and early to finesse a melody and finish a lyric before engineer Supremo, Jared Lee Gosselin, and soul legend, Booker T., walk through the portals of Willis Wonderland in less than an hour.  We started a killer song, title as yet undetermined, on Friday. All I need to do is hear Booker hit the keys of a B-3 and melodies start dancin in my head.

I could NOT believe that I was singin’ with Booker T again! It had been almost 30 years since we wrote together. That was before I started carrying a camera around so no photos of us together. Though here’s what I looked like at the time for some context:

Our new song has a “Green Onions” vibe to it.

And it definitely has the insane soulfulness of “Groovin”:

So, back tomorrow with more kitsch. As for today, it’s SOUL all the way!

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.

 

09Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – All Aboard THE WIENERMOBILE!!! – Part 2

09Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – All Aboard THE WIENERMOBILE!!! – Part 2

If you’re just jumping aboard The Wienermobile, please exit through the rear and check out Part 1 of my adventure with Susan Olsen,a.k.a. Cindy Brady, and Charles Phoenix, without which Part 2 lacks context. Wagging the tail without the (hot) dog as it were.

Now, assuming you’ve fully digested part 1, join us aboard the Wienermobile as we head east from the Brady Bunch house…

…to another iconic wiener in  the neighborhood, Larry’s.

The Wienermobile ate up quite a lot of real estate in this four- table parking lot eatery.

So we turned the vehicular wiener towards another vintage hot dog-related gem a few blocks away:

Isn’t this where you would go if you were a hot dog?

We knew Chili John’s has very early hours but we jumped out anyway, praying the chili palace still might be open:

If you haven’t been to this place, spit out your food and head there now. It’s as authentic as the day it was born in 1941:

The counter is (perfectly and beautifully) makes up the entire restaurant.

You can see the handpainted mural that runs the length of the restaurant better in this shot with Charles:

Up close it’s apparent that the artist, Mr. Chili John himself, captured each and every crevice of the exploding Vesuvius terrain as possible. Perhaps this was to illustrate the constant lava-like flow of chili that runs through his namesake establishment daily.

While we were there, there was an incredible photo opp for The Wienermobile:

With hot dogs and chili under our belts, it was time to move on to burgers. Very few food symbols are as iconic as The Wienermobile, but surely the Big Boy at Bob’s a few blocks away on Riverside has an equal place on the mountaintop.

The sheer magnitude of these two sculptural icons together was overwhelming for kitsch lovers such as ourselves.

So we took lots of photos:

But, alas, the sun was starting to set and there was one place we knew we had to hit while The Wienermobile was still under our control:

The Circus Liquor neon clown, on Burbank Blvd. just west of Chili John’s, has been in countless movies and tv shows, not to mention I’ve dropped coin in there every time I need a bottle of anything, just so I can visit the clown.

The height of the Wienermobile was an INSANELY perfect fit. If only the clown were permanently mounted on top of it.

With the evening approaching fast we headed back to Willis Wonderland,…

…already upset that our Wienermobile afternoon would soon be but a memory, albeit one grilled into our braincells forever.

When we dislodged from The Wienermobile we got some parting gifts:

Some Wienermobile whistles, some of which were glow-in-the-dark, a plush toy Wienermobile, as well as this larger plastic one:

It was like we had all been dropped out of a time capsule. I’m someone who likes to have a good time but once I’m done with an activity I gotta clear the house and get back to work. But it was as if we all knew that when we separated we would somehow have to settle back into reality, hopefully just little bitty pieces at a time, that’s how strong the magnetic pull of the Wienermobile was for all of us. So was only natural we sat down to a hot dog dinner to extend the wiener coma we were all in.

The dogs were cooked, as I said in part 1, on my newly acquired 1958 golf ball barbecue:

It was comforting to have such statuary in the yard, softening the blow of the departed Wienermobile as it disappeared into the night.

Thank you, Hot Doggers Traci and Yoli. You drove the Wienermobile like it was a delicate little Smart Car and put up with three drooling adults for longer than anyone deserves to be in ecstasy.

And thank you, Mark Blackwell, for documenting the trip, and I mean Trip.

Susan, Charles and myself are forever grateful to have such a childhood and adult dream fulfilled, especially one that provided such insanely magnificent photo opps.

And we are grateful for the joy of celebrating a junk food that was a building block of nutrition throughout most of our lifetimes. Truth be told, although it has killed me, the foolishness of subsisting exclusively on such foodstuffs is starting to be rectified in my old age. But even Martha Stewart enjoys munching on a good wiener every now and then.

The Wienermobile experience was pretty heavy.

But alas, all things must end.

We love you, Wienermobile. Until we meet again…

04Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – How One Year Ended and the Next Began

04Jan 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – How One Year Ended and the Next Began

The entertainment portion of the holidays started out on Christmas Eve day at Michael McDonald‘s and me using my iphone for photos. This is a no-no if you’re expecting recognizable lifeforms when you flip the setting so you can see what you’re shooting. The shots come out like those portraits made out of of macaroni and rice. Not the best look for the holidays but here I am with the excessively pixelated Michael and Prudence Fenton:

Jai Rodriguez was also there (and also grainy):

Then we shot across town for a Christmas Eve barbeque at Luenell‘s, pictured here with me, Prudence and Constance Tillotson. At that point my Canon Elf took over so all’s clear from here on:

The next day, Christmas, it was off to Liz Heller and John Manulis’, who I forgot to take a photo with.  Their place is THE food fest spot of the holidays. Here I am after sampling four different varieties of mac ‘n cheese with Prudence and Ed Begley Jr.:

Lynne Scott was also there,…

…as was Nancy Moonves:

Bob Garrett and Storm Lee weren’t there but were at Julie McDonald‘s, who I also forgot to shoot a photo with, the next day for her Boxing Day party. Our outfits worked so great for Christmas we dragged them into the next day with the boys:

For most of the two following days I locked myself inside and worked on my new live show. I emerged on the 29th to have dinner at Street with Tony Selznick, Storm and Prudence:

Another day of intense writing the next day and then this meeting with Richard Dorton, Rita Maye Bland, and Storm, all of whom are working on the live show.

And then it was New Years Eve. Every year for the last eight years I’ve gone to Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s party, a reliably fantastic gathering of folks in one of the greatest modern houses in the city. High up on stilts with one of those mindblowing arial views of LA like you’re looking at it out of an airplane. Here I am with Nancye, Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin, comedy legends I died with joy meeting for the first time:

I was as excited about my Jeremy Scott Adidas’ as I was about meeting Paula and Dick:

The shoes were way too big for me but I will never sacrifice style for practicality. So I stuffed the toes with fuzzy balls and let the wings do the talking.

I also had never met comedy superstar artist/producer Sid Krofft before. Here we are with Beverly D’Angelo and Prudence:

Diva Zappa and her tutu provided lots of New Year’s cheer. At one point she wore it as a hat.

Ian Buchanan is a fellow regular partier at Nancye and Jim’s,…

…as is Antonio Hendricks,…:

…and Richard and Candy Clark:

And then it was 2012. I started out the new year where you can usually find me if I’m not at home, Susan Feniger‘s Street:

…where Storm and I had a hangover fix of champagne and donuts:

And then it was off to Gail Zappa‘s, whose birthday it is on New Years Day, and who has had a party ever since I insisted she do so five years ago after never having a birthday party before:

This is another one of those parties that now happens like clockwork in a fantastically crazy house with great friends, food and a bagpipe player:

Michael DesBarres and Storm were there,…:

as was Jeff Stein,…:

…Nancye and Michael Patrick King,…:

…Jared Lee Gosselin, who I intend to do a lot of musical damage with this year,…:

Dweezil Zappa, one of Bubbles the artist‘s earliest patrons,…:

…Pamela DesBarres and Jimmy Intveld,…:

…Loree Rodkin,…:

…Peter Asher,…:

…Sally Kellerman and Beverly,…:

…Ian and Buck Henry,…:

…Gail, who was of course at her own party, and Eric Idle.:

Eric’s feet were looking mighty sharp:

As were mine, Charles Phoenix‘s and a token one of Prudence’s:

Here’s our top portions. Notice how much New Year’s food is stuck to my teeth:

In addition to the spotted teeth, I should call attention to the fact that I know that most of my poses and camera angles are identical. At festivities such as these, the last thing you wanna do is to continually ask someone to take a photo for you. So I’ve just learned to stretch my arm as long as possible and hit the button myself. I’m happy to do this as long as I have good friends to aim at. Which is what I hope 2012 is filled with. And clean teeth, of course.