In view of the fact that I’m racing around my hotel room throwing things in my suitcases – impossible for me to travel with just one – trying not to muss or crush my most most Fluffy of wardrobe…

… I must do abridged version of my Fluff report today, as if I stop to compose in my usual festidious, over-stimulated style of reportage I will not only miss my plane but my upcoming live show will end at intermission as I won’t have finished writing it. I have  several drafts complete but I’m pretty sure I’ve written the Nicholas Nickleby twelve hour version and the task of taking out a cleaver and chopping it down still remains. With only 3 weeks to go, completing this mission, not to mention finishing the set, the prizes, the souvenirs, the food, and all the other things that go into any event Allee Willis, I realize that I must put my time into scriptwriting as opposed to going over the 700 or so photots that aKitschionado Mark Blackwell, or Daddy as I call him, took as he followed me around through the weekend of shenanigans.

But three aKitschionados made it into the Boston Globe again today with a very cute photo:.

And I will show you Susan and I announcing this year’s Pharaoh of Fluff winner, Brian whose last name I unfortunately don’t know but can vouch that he’s a nice guy and a very good dancer as he boogied to his version of my “September”, which all contestants were required to change the lyrics of to an homage about Fluff.

And here I am with aKitschinados Rusty and  Scarlett (I have a horrible memory for names so I hope I have the wee one’s right) displaying the beautiful trophies about to be handed out to the Fluff cooking contest winners:

I’m not sure what shape I’ll be in tomorrow as my plane doesn’t arrive in LA until 11 PM tonight, which means I won’t get home before 1 AM and tomorrow is an insanely packed day, making up for my four days of absence. But I will do my best to post more Flun photos of the fest.

In the meantime, don’t forget to eat your Fluff today.

 

In 1974, Allee Willis walked off stage in the middle of her own show. Now she’s finally coming back! The Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter, artist, singer, technologist, collector, and party thrower comes to the El Portal Theater in beautiful North Hollywood for one night only of songs, stories, and party games. Sing-along to Willis’ greatest hits like “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done To Deserve This” and “I’ll Be There For You (theme from Friends)”! Win valuable prizes! Watch her as she attempts to get through the evening without walking off stage for another 37 years!

Show starts at 8:00PM, Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Doors open at 7:00PM with kitschy food + drinks, beer and wine available

TICKETS
So reasonable it’s crazy!
$24.99 and $34.99
(tickets are limited and they’re going fast…)
http://www.elportaltheatre.com/events.html
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9248165
or call 1-866-811-4111

El Portal Theatre
5269 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

“Ms. Willis…considers party-giving an art form” – New York Times

“Allee Willis’ parties are the campiest hot tickets in town” – People Magazine

“..A rare look inside the process of one of the most prolific and tenacious interactive media artists working today.” – salon.com

“Willis is the spokeswoman for this grand dance of junque nouvelle and vérité… as if Ozzie Nelson had acquired a sick and sudden taste for Surrealist poets. Her own interest in kitsch typifies the dichotomy that makes her interesting…The silliness, un-self consciousness, sense of whimsy and innocence are reflected in the absurd designs and bright colors (that surround her). Even the themes lack pretension… Hopeful images of a powerful America and its future.” – LA Weekly

“…A singular vision by an artist, who if not limited by building codes, would be the Simon Rodia of the 21st century.” – Chris Nichols, Los Angeles Magazine

So as I was saying yesterday, this last weekend at Willis Wonderland we aKitschionados from The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch saw the light of Fluff!

For a quick recap if you were too lazy to click on that link, many of us are converging on Somerville, MA. September 24th to attend the fifth annual Fluff Festival to celebrate the marshmallow food topping in the city it was invented in. aKitschionado Rusty suggested that we first convene at Willis Wonderland in LA, the physical arm of AWMOK.com, and spend a day cooking with Fluff. Bear in mind that many of the aKitschionados in attendance had never met before and only knew each other by commenting on the kitsch they’d submitted to AWMOK. So everything served had to be a real icebreaker. As such, the first course was Fluff inspired sandwiches…:

… accompanied by Goldfish in sea foam dip vegetables:

All of which was washed down with Flufftinis…:

…an original recipe by aKitschionado iamfluff, a.k.a. Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady of the Bunch:

Extra points were earned for color-coordinated food, dishware and clothing:

Even more points racked up for color-coordinated lamps and other sugary Fluff alternatives:

aKitschionado Mark Blackwell scored even more bonus points for coordinating his jellybean tribute to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch with the aforementioned lamp and M&Ms.

I hope anyone reading this appreciates the importance of color-coordinated meals and accoutrements. If there’s any question at all about the importance of food and furnishings color-coordination, please refer here.

The main course was delicious and nutritious Fluffernutter cake. I know this photo’s blurry but so was my vision after the day’s 21-gun sugar salute.

If you think that cake is gooey, let me tell you that as the party hostess who had to clean up – actually I didn’t clean up at all as the aKitschionados are a very conscious and esthetically tidy breed – there were vestiges of Fluff everywhere. Like on Mark’s pants:

Slightly less lava-flowish-of-Fluff were the fried S’Mores made by akitschionado Snappy P.

Technically, there’s no Fluff in this recipe but as its fraternal twin, marshmallows, are a key ingredient the Willis Wonderland stove did not discriminate.

Many aKitschionados came bearing gifts. Doug Wood, for example, brought me a lovely kitsch-filled basket:.

One of the gifts was a practical Hostess Twinkie holder:

Many aKitschionados were jealous of my acquisition:

Just as important as protecting your Twinkies is protecting your Pringles. Thank you, aKitschionado Windupkitty, for the lovely Pringles protective case.

By the way, a practical party hint: name tags are essential. Even if your guests know each other for a hundred years it gives them an opportunity to express what they’re feeling in name, which acts as much of an icebreaker at a party as food no one has eaten since they were 11 years old.

It also saves the host or hostess time in making introductions.

As I said, the bulk of the day’s festivities centered around cooking and eating. But aKitschionados were free to wander around Willis Wonderland to enjoy the artifacts they’ve been seeing in my posts since I first launched AWMOK.com in 2009. Many of them also enjoyed the fine reading materials scattered around.

and

That book deserves a close up:

In fact, my whole Soul kitsch collection deserves a close-up. Here’s but a few of the shelves of it:

I think Fluff is a soulful food. It recalls one’s childhood and brings feelings of peace to the mind if not the blood vessels, as aKitschionado John Zenone experiences here:

Off in my recording studio, I was showing some of the aKitschionados some more of my Soul kitsch collection:

You might want to see the front of that picture frame:

As much as I covet my James Brown autograph, I covet this bit of Soul kitsch almost as much, Sammy Davis Jr’s last stash of marijuana:

Slightly easier to see than the cannabis in that last photo are the edges of the round circle rugs that cover the floor in my recording studio. They’re there to protect the plastic that’s actually the floor surface that scratches as soon as you breathe on it. Here’s what the floor looks like in real life:

Despite signs posted all over begging aKitschionados to carefully step on the rugs, several of them found it necessary to defy their leader’s command. Bad girl, kookykitsch!

And Meshuggah Mel!

And Rusty!

And Ken!

Although it was close to 100° and muggy, we also spent time outside.  That’s where my over 200 pieces of bamboo dinnerware are.

And for anyone who missed the sugar inside, there was plenty of cotton candy floating in the pool.

Food that floats is something every party chef should consider when throwing summer parties.

So all in all, a good and Fluffy time was had by all!  Come back again soon, aKitschionados. See you all in Somerville in “September” one way or the other.

 

Photos: Allee Willis, Prudence Fenton, Mark Blackwell, Rusty Blasenhoff, Ken Dashner.

So the Fluff gang, most of whom flew down from the Oakland/Palo Alto area, have all boarded planes and taken their Fluff-filled tummies home after an extraordinary weekend of sugar highs and flea marketing. As I said on Sunday when I documented some of the fluff-tweaked tasty treats that filled our gullets, between everyone’s cameras there are literally thousands of shots to go through. This is also a huge music deadline week for me and one during which I should be working on my live show, Allee Willis’ Soup To Nuts Party Mix, my first live performance since walking off stage in the middle of my own show in 1974. So I’m going to do this most fluffy Fluff post in pieces, one for each day it takes for my sugar levels to return to normal. So please tune in tomorrow to get the full picture of the marshmallow madness that took place at Willis Wonderland this weekend and from which I am still pulling Fluff off the walls and my clothes.

This whole Fluff thing came about because aKitschionado Rusty Blazenhoff, who threw me a party without even knowing me when I drove up to Alameda for Meshuggah Mel and Kookykitsch’s Clean House garage sale in May, suggested that members of The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch take a field trip to the annual Fluff Festival in Somerville, MA. this September. She also suggested a preliminary field trip to Willis Wonderland for a day of cooking with Fluff so we were all up-to-speed on the foodstuff.

Guests were slated to arrive here last Saturday at 12:02 PM, a time mutually voted on by the attending aKitschionados. First to hit the deck was Windupkitty.

To put the attendees in the proper brain-frame, Windup assisted me in making a lovely and nutritious lunch of Cheez Whiz, peanut butter and jelly, egg salad, and fluffernutter sandwiches.

The vegetable portion of the meal was Goldfish in Blue Seafoam Dip.

A good party hostess always thinks about theme-appropriate serving pieces, in this case a dead-on match for the Goldfish.

Appropriate glassware is equally important. Although Disco has absolutely nothing to do with Fluff, Disco anything is appropriate for absolutely everything in a kitsch universe.

The cup goes well with many of the other Disco accoutrements at Willis Wonderland.

It’s really too bad you can’t see aKitschionado John Zenone’s glass better in that photo with my Disco cup. Here it is:

If only Helen Reddy had been in attendance on Saturday it would have been an even Fluffier day! But Disco and Helen Reddy aside, our real purpose was to glorify Fluff, the marshmallow food topping that most of us are flying to Somerville to celebrate and where I, along with Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady, the youngest of The B Bunch, will be riding atop a Fluff float. So obsessed with Fluff is Susan that she glorifies it in her art. Here’s “Fluffaganesh”:

As such, Susan started off the afternoon serving her signature Flufftinis, Fluff and cotton candy rimmed glasses holding enough whipped cream vodka to anesthetize a horse.

Here’s akitschionado Meshuggah Mel enjoying a delicious Fluffitini:

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Most of the Fluff-glued cotton candy was still standing tall on Mel’s glass but you can see the effect the vodka has on such foodstuffs in aKitschionado John Z’s drink as it liquefies the sugary stuff and all kinds of colors start globbing down into the liquor and Fluff-filled glass.

You might also notice the beautiful pendant that John is wearing. I hand-made souvenir Fluff baubles for all the attendees.

Here’s a closer look:

But before the Flufftinis were even stirred, Susan arrived with a beautiful vegetable plate. I’m not a lover of vegetables so I wasn’t upset by the paucity of them as I pried the Saran Wrap, stuck to the glue-like dip, off.

Turns out that the the dip Susan made was pure Fluff and the vegetables were pure candy. As to why she arrived with so few as to make guests share the miniature carrots and such, she admitted that these were all that were left after her dog gummed the rest of them. Here aKitschionado Prudence Fenton admires the candy buds on the canine saliva-smeared broccoli:

Had we not stopped aKitschionado Jesse Greene from eating the healthy vegetables we may have had to take him to the vet.

As members of The Allee Willis Museum Of  Kitsch always arrive fully prepared, many guests carried their Fluff in appropriately vintage suitcases.

Rusty’s suitcase was also filled with tee-shirts for the mommies in attendance. Akitchionado Kookykitsch, the first member to sign up when The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch launched in 2009, joins Susan and Rusty as the third Fluff mommy.

aKitschionado Ken Dashner, made the girls’ tee-shirts.

Since she first mentioned the Fluff Festival a few months ago, Rusty talked about making a Fluffernutter cake. She e-mailed so much about this I took it for granted that this was a tried and true recipe she had long perfected. But when she arrived we learned that not only had she never made the recipe before but, by her own admission, she was a really lousy cook. To a junk food lover of kitsch this makes for very exciting prospects!

Indeed, the cake took over 3 hours to make. I swear to God, this was all that happened after 15 minutes of Rusty wielding the electric mixer:

The other side of my hair could’ve grown in faster. Perhaps it was due to Rusty’s beverage choice, which goes excellent with Fluff btw:

Though the cakemaking process was exhausting….

…the end result did not disappoint!!

Though you might think that it was the Colt 45 that gave the cake it’s Niagara Falls effect, it was aKitschionado Charles Phoenix, a test kitchen expert, who encouraged Rusty to use a full jar of Skippy, more than the recipe called for.

Charles has excellent cakebaking skills as evidenced by his prizewinning/ front-page-of-the-Wall-St.-Journal Cherpumpumple cake.

In fact, the overflow of Fluff-spiked Skippy made the Fluffernutter cake taste even better.

Though the volcanic goo flow made it almost impossible to appreciate the giant sandwich shape it was intended to retain.

I’ve eaten messy sandwiches before but this took the cake.

More fluffied treats and goings-on tomorrow…. In the meantime, may we offer you a Flufftini?

 

Sorry, no real post today as I’m busy playing hostess-with-the-Fluffiest-mostest to members of The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch who convened at Willis Wonderland this weekend for a pre-Fluff Festival junk fest featuring, among other outstanding foodstuffs, whipped cream vodka Flufftinis…,


… Goldfish in seafoam dip…,

…a Fluffernutter cake…,

…Cheez Whiz, peanut butter and jelly, egg salad, and fluffernutter sandwiches…


…fried S’Mores…

…. and candy vegetables with Fluff dip.

I hope to get documentation of the pre-Fluff Fest up within the next couple of days. Those shots will include the attendees eating the aforementioned snacks and engaging in various Fluffed activities. But between everyone’s cameras I have at least 1200 photos to go through and I had to get up bone-breakingly early this morning to accompany the aKitschionados to the Pasadena City College Flea Market, followed by a trek to Pie ‘N Burger for an equally nutritious lunch as AWMOK members feasted on yesterday. So I’ll be back tomorrow with at least Part 1 of Fluff Time at Willis Wonderland. Until then, remember to eat your

Last Saturday night my friend, Chris Nichols, threw a party at The Wigwam on Route 66 in San Bernadino, CA.

With no traffic it’s still a good hour and 15 min. from Los Angeles and I would never make the trek there for anyone other than someone with a great reputation for throwing parties. Besides, Chris had just written a great piece about me in his Los Angeles Magazine blog, so Mark Blackwell and I hopped into the mustache van and headed to the tepees.

Here’s a daytime shot of the wigwams:

By the time we got there the sun was dropping fast.

But it was still light enough to see they did an adequate job of restoring the 1949 original, the seventh and last of the Wigwam motels across the United States, when it was restored a few years back. Though I wish the sign didn’t look so cheesy new.

There’s an appropriately kidney-shaped pool,…

…a totem pole pointing the way in…,

….several Hawaiian themed fire extinguishers, though not sure what that has to do with Indians and teepees,…

…and an excellent snack bar.

Fortunately we also had excellent barbecue prepared by Chef Christopher Martin.

I love the entrance of the Wigwam rooms, plaster mounded to look like pulled-back teepee flaps.

I poked my head into someone’s teepee. I apologize in advance as none of the stuff strewn around is mine. The rooms are small and compact, just this…

…and this, plus a little bathroom.

As far as rooms go, if I were going to stay in a teepee I would want to lie in bed and feel like I’m in one. Instead, the ceiling is so low I imagine it feels more like you’re sleeping in an attic.

But the grounds around the teepees are perfect for a party.

Most people dressed appropriately:

Notice this guy’s vintage Sahara Hotel tie:

Here’s Charles Phoenix and I before he changed into his head-to-toe authetic Indian headress:

Many guests drove appropriate vehicles to the party too.

Check out the Chrysler’s backend:

I definitely wouldn’t mind this parked next to my teepee as an added rec room:

A peek inside:

Complete with excellent curtains:

This was there too:

I would have driven my Studebaker were it not up on blocks and acting like a planter.

There was an entire evening’s worth of entertainment but that’s where I had to draw the line.

I know it’s antisocial but I listen to music all week.

So as soon as the organ, accordians, harmonicas and kazoos began Mark and I jumped into the mustache van and headed back to LA. But not before a fantastic night was had by all at the Wigwam!

Mere days after my first and only album, Childstar, was released on Epic Records in 1974, I walked on stage in front of 10,000 people to open in Boston for folksinger David Bromberg.

The only other time I had been on stage before was when I played a little fur tree in a school play when I was 8. Now here I was singing soul music, the first 10 songs I ever wrote, plus a Mary Wells medley and Brenton Woods’s “Oogum Boogum”. My band, the singers of whom would go on to become Chic, were dressed as sequined vegetables and I was in a satin suit that I’d autographed from head to toe. This is a really crappy photo of part of the costumes on mannequins but it’s all I’ve got;

Me and The Angle Babies aren’t in costume here but you can get a pretty good idea that between us and our costumes we weren’t what the folksinging crowd came to see.

I didn’t have a very good time on stage. I never could remember my lyrics and I always spent more time designing the sets and costumes than I did rehearsing or getting comfortable being on stage. After five performances on the East Coast we were booked into a lunchroom at Ohio State, the only way the college could also get Joni Mitchell to play in the main auditorium because we had the same agent. Our only audience were three people at a bridge table eating hot dogs and a psychology class being conducted in the back of the room, with the professor telling us to lower our volume after every song. I walked offstage after six songs and made the decision to just be a songwriter, where at least if I was being tortured it was in the comfort of my own room.

Through the years I’ve gotten much more comfortable performing – in my own unique way of doing so which doesn’t include singing live – mostly because I’m a big party thrower and walk around on mic the whole time.

Almost every conversation I have comes through the speakers and I’m literally directing and producing the party as I go. Throw in the thrift shop auctions and stupid party games that I lead the guests through and I’ve gotten very relaxed holding that cold metal thing in my hands.

But I still never have gotten it together to sing anywhere other than in the studio.

So the fact that in mere hours I will be up on the stage for the first time in almost four decades and I’m not sitting here throwing up is a MASSIVE ACHIEVEMENT! Me and five other well oiled songwriters will be singing our greatest hits and talking about how they were written. It’s just with a keyboard – Chris Price, who I’ve been writing and recording a song with and shooting a video all on iPhones, is accompanying me –  but I’m singing and remembering lyrics and lines nonetheless.

And if I can get through the evening not thinking about soul singers dressed as vegetables, psychology professors and hot dogs I will have made a big breakthrough.

I’ll be performing “September“, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, and “I’ll Be There for You (theme from Friends)“. At least radio has regaled me with these songs thousands of times over the years so I’m hoping that for once I can remember my own lyrics and be happy I’m up on stage.

Wish me luck!

As I’ve been blabbing about for weeks now, I had the extreme pleasure of conducting my high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits in the lobby of the theater I grew up in in Detroit with the cast of the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, singing along. I meant to post video of our performance as soon as I got home but to my horror, one of the three cameramen only shot the students from the back and the other both forgot to turn his camera on for parts of songs and babbled over the footage like he was the subject of a documentary. So it took quite a lot of editing to get something where you could even begin to see the  warm, wonderful and uplifting-higher-than-the-sky feeling that permeated the theater that day.

The performance was a benfit to buy new marching band uniforms for the Mumford band. The last time they got new uniforms was in 1984 when Jerry Bruckheimer, also a Mumford grad, bought them so they could play at the premiere of Beverly Hills Cop in Detroit. I got a Grammy for Beverly Hills Cop so this entire extravaganza was tied up in one fantastically organic bow!

Also organic was my shoes and socks combo in the Mumford school colors.

I had an excellent time wearing my hat, color coordinated to The Color Purple, the matinee of which started immediately after the closing notes of the marching band. Though my hat ecstacy only lasted a couple of bars. Too wobbly on my head.

If the music was wobbly at all it’s only the charm of a high school band and a songwriter who’s never learned how to read, notate or play music despite her songs selling more than 50 million records.

That’s the innocence of youth. I hope you enjoy our youth as much as me and the kids did. It was a VERY special experience indeed.

As much as I look forward to rolling out of bed every morning and choosing a fresh, new and wonderful artifact of kitsch to present, today is an absolutely torturous day in terms of what I have to accomplish. First of all, I’m driving back to LA from Monterey. It’s supposed to rain like cats and very large dogs most of the way back so I have to get an early start. Also, I have to write tons of the kind of stuff I hate to write because I’ve got to unleash a whole Facebook campaign on a death-defying event I’m attempting to pull off in 2 1/2 weeks in Detroit when I conduct my high school band in the theater I grew up in playing a medley of my greatest hits before a performance of my musical, The Color Purple, with the cast singing along. This should sound like a manageable event, but just imagine the sound of a marching band playing in the four-story high/almost block long lobby of a theater built in 1930 of solid concrete and marble, the acoustical nightmare of which has just dawned on me: What’s the point of having a sing-along if all you can hear is a bevy of brass drilling through your your eardrums?

And how do I conduct an orchestra facing one direction at the same time as a sing-along, which demands me turning the other way to conduct the crowd? These are the kind of mindnumbing challenges that someone like me, who gets an idea and charges ahead, forgets to deal with until it’s too late to examine the sanity of attempting to do such a thing in the first place. So I rely upon my ability to create good enough art and somehow combine it with everything else that inevitably reels off the railroad tracks, tipping over and spilling down the hillside into a vat of how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-pull-this-off-let-alone-raise-the-money-I-need-to-raise-to buy-the-marching-band-new-uniforms to understand that all of this makes for fantastic kitsch and I just have to roll with it.

Also today, my good friend and hysterical comedy person, Maxine Lapiduss, releases a song/video of a song I co-wrote called “Scared About Life without Oprah”, produced by Wendy and Lisa and featuring Jane Lynch. Of course, Maxine expects me, as any artist or co-writer would, to promote it on Facebook. So not only do I have one most important event to promote I have a song to push as well. So the immediate task is to to sit here on the 101 when it’s not my turn to drive and figure out some way I don’t nauseate myself by unleashing a couple weeks of vigorous begging and pleading to take note of all that is wonderful in Allee world without pissing people off I’m hawking so much. To some folks the shameless task of self-promotion comes naturally. To me, it’s razor blades in my eyeballs unless I can think of an entertaining way to do it.

All this to say I apologize for not posting fresh kitsch today but I will be back tomorrow with bran’ spanking new wonderfulness from the shelves at The Allee Willis Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com (shamelss plug #3). Please send all creative vibes my way today! And pretty please go here and support the cause: https://www.alleewillis.com/mumfordinvite. And if on Facebook please join here to follow the precarious journey to new band uniforms for the funkiest high school band on the planet: https://www.facebook.com/AlleeWillisMarchesOnDetroit

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Sunday night I went to Storm Lee’s birthday party. He’s a great singer and killed it on The X Factor, the British version of Simon Cowell’s follow-up to American Idol, soon to debut here in the states. Storm and I have only rendezvoused a few times, once at his birthday party and then when he came over after we met at a party a few months ago. We got along famously from the second he walked in my place. First of all, he had on excellent kitsch bling, a bulbous brass Mickey Mouse ring.

When I admired bulbous Mickey, he immediately gave me this:

Anyone who walks into your house for the first time bearing gifts is pleasure enough. But when they hit it on the nose as severely as a sunglassed, gold grilled Michael-Jackson-as-the-Sphynx pendant you can only hope that their personality is as good as their taste in gifts as this could be the start of a wonderful friendship not to mention music collaboration. It’s an even better sign when you’re both wearing the same shoes, albeit different colors.

I believe in synchronicity. My life has always gone that way. I won’t be aware of anything and then something so pertinent to the immediate events in your life shows up all of a sudden, perfectly timed. That’s how it was with Storm and the Michael Jackson sphynx pendant.

The sphinx has always held special significance to me as I got my big music break with Earth, Wind & Fire, a group whose graphics and sets prominently feature Egyptian icons. Within hours of Storm gaving me the pendant, I went to a party for a soon-to-be-released documentary about the Fender Rhodes, the preeminent electric keyboard. I was in the documentary singing my first EWF hit, “September”, with Larry Dunn, the group’s original keyboard player who played the Rhodes on “September” and all my other EWF songs. The segment was filmed at my house a few months earlier. I had only seen Larry once since the early 80s and he had absolutely no idea that it was my house he was coming to to film the documentary. So the fact that I was seeing him once again on the very night that the MJ sphinx was bestowed upon me felt highly synchronistic to me. Here I am that night wearing it with Larry:

I remember not being happy with my choice of glasses. But Michael-as-sphnyx drew so much attention I didn’t have to worry about people focusing on my face.

So Sunday night it was only natural that I wear MJ sphynx to the person who gave it to me’s birthday party.

Also at the party celebrating Storm and admiring the sphinx were (L-R) International Chanteuse, Morganne, ASCAP’s Brendan Okent, and songwriters Robin Lerner and Ken Hirsch…

…and Jim Budman, not in the floral arrangement, who I came with and have known since I was a teenager in Detroit.

Did I mention that Michael Jackson-as-sphinx can also be worn as a pin?

I always appreciate when something is multifunctional.

I am multifunctional. And now Storm is multifunctional as both friend and music co-conspirator!