Allee Willis Blog

11Aug 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Meet Pigmy Will!

11Aug 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Meet Pigmy Will!

Here’s how I spend my spare time, making this highly sophisticated -NOT- animation with Prudence Fenton, of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Peter Gabriel videos fame. After being a private joke for 15 years, we’ve finally committed (in all senses of the word) the Pigmy to film. If anybody deserves a place on the mantle of Kitsch Klassicism, it’s Pigmy Will.

We’ll be churning out two to four of these weekly, all under 30 seconds, as fast as our minds can de-numb and fingers can move.

Today’s offerings include “Pie Day”, “The Counter”, “The Boat Ride” and “Take 20”. At the end of each masterpiece you can click through to the next one. So just click here or on one of the videos below to get started.

Follow pigmywill on Twitter! And join his fan page on Facebook if you’re there too.

See all 4 Pigmy Wills (by the time you read this there may be more):

Deet deet deet deet!!

Anywhere from 2-4 of these coming out weekly, all under 30 seconds, as fast as our minds can de-numb and fingers can move. Today’s offerings include “Pie Day”, “The Counter”, “The Boat Ride” and “Take 20”. At the end of each masteriece you can click through to the next one. So just click here to get started.

See all 4 Pigmy Wills:

“Pie Day” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRS7D6mSoHs

“The Counter” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFKQ3iCcS3Q

“The Boat Ride” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psJQPtbY1h4

“Take 20” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buNtwIwlcE0

20May 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – James Brown, Me & How To Write for Money

20May 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – James Brown, Me & How To Write for Money

Here I am with James Brown in my studio in 1984 as we peruse one of my favorite Kitsch books, How To Sing For Money. The Godfather and I used to joke that it should have been called ‘How To Write For Money’ as there were so many ways songwriters got screwed out of royalties and credit, a situation that befell both of us numerous times.

I thought this would be an appropriate Kitsch O’ The Day post in view of my post yesterday on behalf of jilted songwriters everywhere. The book, only the top quarter of which is visible in this photo from Billboard magazine, was published in 1945. Maybe the advice worked back then but it’s irrelevant given the oil slick music industry of the last thirty years.

I was, thank God, Reality TV before Reality TV existed as I filmed almost every significant moment of my life since I owned my first video cam in 1978. Here we are seconds after we read the book, writing an ode to my dog Orbit, a plain brown baked potato who Mr. Brown loved and let sleep on his mink coat whenever he came over.

09Mar 2009

I Believe I Was Sitting In That Chair – My Dance Marathon With Technology

09Mar 2009

I Believe I Was Sitting In That Chair – My Dance Marathon With Technology

My relationship with technology has been one of the most intense and complex relationships of my life. Here I am with my main squeeze in 1991, the first Powerbook ever released, a 170.

I was always a multi media artist, combining my music with my art and interactive parties long before ’91 when I first I attempted to combine these artforms in a digital realm. My dream was to redefine music, art and socializing in the as yet unembraced Pop medium, the Internet, where the audience was as much creator/ collaborator as the artist herself.

My premise, which I shouted from every keynote podium from 1991-1997, was that art and information were no longer under strict control of the person who originated them but, rather, the co-product of the people who interacted with the art and information. In the Digital Age, the artist would shift from sole owner/creator to cruise director, merely providing the first piece and directing from there a never ending sprawl of mutations from users who were interested enough to impact the original work.

This premise was blasphemous to captains, worker bees and artisans alike in the all ruling Entertainment Industry. I viewed them as horse farmers, belligerently staring as prototypes of the Model-T cranked down dusty roads at the dawn of the 20th Century, arrogantly holding on to the belief that nothing could supplant the sale of their well bred horses. But the horse farmers didn’t understand that the promise of automobiles was the reforming of communities and a collapsing of time and space. Just like the Entertainment Industry almost 100 years later didn’t understand that the promise of the Internet, mobile devises and any connection that linked virtual and physical space meant the very same thing – a redefining of community, living space and beyond anything, the empowerment of common man.

In 1992, after I proclaimed my total disinterest in all artforms linear, I started developing an idea for willisville, the world’s first visual and collaborative social network. It would also link the Internet to TV, radio, film, video, books and physical spaces. You can bone up on it in detail here.

Attempting to sell this vision in 1992 and throughout the 90’s was like living in the basement of Hell. No one in Hollywood could fathom funding it as the Internet was to them a very creepy, laughable space. Folks in Silicon Valley could think of funding it but only if enabled by technologies they had already invested in. The one we were saddled with at Intel, who funded a willisville prototype in 1995, had about as much potential of encouraging socialization and artfulness among users as inviting someone to a party on the promise that you were going to rip their toenails out without anesthetic.

So, in 1997, after spending every penny I had ever earned on trying to sell my vision of the Internet as a social environment I crept back into writing songs and painting and even writing a Broadway musical. I still built websites, rather distinctive ones at that, but I shoved my quest to build the Brave New World and staying at the forefront of social technology down so low into my solar plexis it felt like I was made of cement.

This went on for almost 10 years. But painful as my self-imposed exile was, I was aware that my brain had been profoundly reshaped from the previous seven years of attempting to make order out of all the disparate forces coming together to define The Digital Age. And this impacted the linear work I started doing again. I was always an artist who looked to integrate my music with my art but now I was capable of thinking on a zillion levels at once, connecting everything so that one singular vision resulted from trillions of different threads.

The linear arts – music, art, videos, musicals, whatever – seemed simple and straight ahead after all the years of thinking about art as a never-ending series of connections and collaborations that linked to a lifestyle rooted in self-evolution whose very engine was kept running by the connections and creations made in cyberspace. I welcomed a break from the tedium of tapdancing for money, always hoping someone would be smart enough to invest in a non linear vision of social art. I once again loved linear songwriting and painting for the pure joy of creating. I hadn’t felt that way since I had my first hits in 1979 and felt the pressure of a follow-up and the boredom of working in just one medium.

But with this simplicity a new kind of artistic self torture identified itself. Things like Ebay, Amazon, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook had popped up. Wait! Wasn’t I the one who had thought of garage sales, homemade art, parties and collaborations in cyberspace? Wasn’t I the one who had preached Power To The People a full decade before the proliferation of social networking sites? I, who was sooooooooo ahead of the curve on all things digital, was now the last one to the party.

It finally hit me when The Color Purple opened on Broadway at the tail end of ’05 and I had a little breathing room to figure out what I wanted to do next.

If I started singing my own songs I could do the videos and build web worlds and begin to have the kind of presence in cyberspace I had envisioned for everyone so many years before.

My first smash-up, “It’s A Woman Thang”, co-starring my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist, exploded on YouTube in 2007 and won a Webbie Award Honorable Mention in the Viral category. (I recently uploaded a wayyyy better resolution version of it so watch this one if you haven’t seen it already.) I’m on my fourth one now, “Hey Jerrie”, featuring me and a 91 year old female drummer on an oxygen tank. I view these videos as welcome mats into my world. But if that world is to be the one I envisioned oh so long ago it meant I needed to understand technology, integration and trends as deeply as I did in the 90’s.

I write, sing, play on and produce the records and write, paint, film, animate, direct and produce the videos and web components. I do some of the functions with partners and some without. To support the output I slowly and resentfully built my MySpace and Facebook pages. I made myself build pages wherever anyone told me to – Bebo, Uber, et al – and hated each one more than the last. I understood that these things were necessary but MySpace felt like one big hype assault from fledgling bands and hooker wannabes. Most of the other ones felt like pale imitators.

My breakthrough came when I finally started adding friends on Facebook after having a page that had all the life of a stillborn baby for almost a year. I looked for people who liked soul music, animation, kitsch, Atomic design and all the other stuff that I was not only interested in but had turned out like a mofo for decades. Some people never responded. But the ones who did were enthusiastic. And I communicated with them when they communicated with me. I understood that this social network had found an incredible abbreviated way for people to realize the potential in each other and form new alliances that physical space never encouraged them to do.

But Facebook cuts you off after 5000 friends. Which means you have to uninvite people when you hit that mark. Bad Facebook. Seriously stinky rule. I’m a party thrower. I have friends. Talk about a major shortcoming if you’re lucky enough to be popular.

Other than the fact that I, like most folks I know, are run ragged by attending to all the little gardens they have scattered all over cyberspace because they all lack something major that would allow for one centralized online presence, I realize I am finnnnnnaly building my own social network, finding what I enjoy about all the ones that already exist and building little presences wherever I can stand the interface. It’s not the elegant cul-de-sac I once dreamed of with willisville but there’s a little piece here and a little piece there and with enough overtime and bus fare it’s manageable.

I’m in the midst of said proliferation now. I’ve been consciously thinking about cyberspace for 18 years. I have no idea what tomorrow holds. I rarely have. I just know that I hate to be bored. I hate creating what I’ve already created. Reinvention is my middle name. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. But my brain enjoys getting watered and I can finally see green pushing up through the ground. If you’ve read this far perhaps you’re ready to hop on the bus and take the ride with me.

10Feb 2009

I’m The One Who Needs Oxygen

10Feb 2009

I’m The One Who Needs Oxygen

64,000 YouTube views and counting since the “Hey Jerrie” launch party a few nights ago at Ghettogloss that I should be blogging about right now instead of writing this.

If you follow this blog at all you know how I am. I know any decent blogger or social networkist posts photos and videos immediately. But for me, documentation of an event is an equal part of the art the event was thrown to celebrate. So before I can post anything I need to find the right place for said documentation in the organic ball of goo that is “Hey Jerrie” or any other piece where my music, art, video, animation, technology and a party converge into the octopus-like formation known as “my art”.

I can deal with the photos, though writing captions makes me feel like a Roto Rooter is sucking my blood out. But I did manage to go through them and despite the fact that the shots are mostly posed so the craziest spontaneous moments, the ones that make the party ‘THE party’ are nonexistent, you may go here to see them. But make sure and come back.

Now going through party videos so I can get some stuff up online quick is another animal entirely. I’m conditioned to being terrorized by camera people who don’t capture any of what I’m experiencing and instead concentrate on such tight close ups I may as well be talking to myself at a party of one. If my wrinkles were what I wanted to see I could have just stayed home and looked in the mirror. Besides, transferring 16 hours of footage from three cameras and archiving it so it can be found in the glut of 42,000 terabytes known as my server demands I enter the proper brain space – blissful peace meets mob mentality – and I’m just not there yet. So instead, as process is the most interesting thing about creating art to me, I shall regale you with how it got to the point of “Hey Jerrie” being the 34th most viewed video in the world on YouTube just 36 hours after its release and, just as important to a kitsch freak like me, how it became “the most responded to video EVER” in Hong Kong.

(If you have no knowledge whatsoever about my rendezvous with Jerrie Thill, the 91 year old female drummer on an oxygen tank and primary star of “Hey Jerrie”, read my previous posts on her (of which this will appear first so scroll down). If you are familiar with HJ or if you’re too lazy to catch up on the posts, which I certainly would be if I were reading this, please continue.

When I first met Jerrie a few months ago I invited her over because I thought she’d enjoy my collection of Atomic 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s Kitsch, much of it music based from an era when she ruled the drum thrones of clubs in LA. But as our date drew near it dawned on me it would be stupid not to record her. It’s not like she could just run down the hill if I got a good idea for a song.

I had no interest in capturing Jerrie playing her standards like “When You’re Smiling” and “Route 66”. Anyone could do that. It had to be one of my songs for me to truly be interested in doing anything with it. “Neutron Dance”, whose bass line was a calculated 50’s jazzbo rip, felt vaguely appropriate. But at the same time as my gut was telling me to write something original I was (foolishly) swamped with The Stallionaires. I also hadn’t written by myself in years so I just prayed the music muse would arrive sometime before Jerrie rang the bell.

Two days before she came over the melody hit me getting off the 101 at Highland. As is a nasty mental habit of mine, some of my simpler stuff, songs that ultimately catch on the quickest, seem dumb as I’m writing them. “Neutron Dance”, which I won a Grammy for as part of the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, was definitely one of those. But now I was just looking for something sing-songy that would be easy for Jerrie to drum to. So I decided to commit to the melody stuck in my head long enough to write the lyric.

Although I’ve written both the music and lyrics for 90% of my songs my lot in life has been to be thought of as a lyricist, probably because I wrote with so many male groups like Earth Wind & Fire and the assumption is the female’s there for the lyric or perhaps it’s the fact that I don’t know how to actually read, write or play music. When it’s really flowing, music and lyrics arrive in my head in one tight package. The words “Hey Jerrie, put on a show” spilled out spontaneously with the melody. By the time I passed The Hollywood Bowl at the end of the freeway exit I had the entire first verse:

Hey Jerrie, put on a show./ You play them songs everybody knows./ Beat them skins and keep it in time./Ya make me loose like a bottle of wine when you beat!

Sing-songy, not going to win a Pulitzer prize but it had Jerrie’s zippy spirit written all over it.

The next couple of nights I wrote 36 different versions of verses, choruses and chants. I recorded the beat in my head by playing one drum at a time – I have no idea how someone plays different things with different hands let alone gets their feet synchronized – but even a pathetic little temp track would make it easier to sing the song down to Jerrie when she gets here. I constantly change the lyrics as I sing it down.

D-Day arrives. As soon as we hear the car pull up with Jerrie, Allison Freebairn-Smith who introduced us, and Carol Chaikin, Jerrie’s sax player, my longtime assistant Dina, who started out working my parties in the late 80’s, became my cleaning lady in the 90’s and graduated to chief assistant/ videographer/ keeper of the house in 2003, starts shooting. By this time it’s dawned on me I need to capture some decent stuff in case the song is actually any good and I might want to do a video. So I shoot Jerrie and Dina shoots both of us.

It’s then I realize I’m going to have to deal with the sound of the oxygen blasts that shoot into Jerrie’s nose every few seconds as they’ll be audible in the live recording. I can’t yank the tubes out for 3 minutes or we’ll lose the drummer. So I decide to time the song to the little puffs. I believe it’s the first time oxygen has been used as a percussion instrument and this makes me very excited.

Jerrie does the song in one take. The sound of her kick drum slays me. The weathered, muffled thud sound I had always lusted for.

So I end up with some dark cramped footage and a song that’s starting to sound like it could be something. Carol adds a few takes of sax and flute but the fact that I don’t play, despite hearing every note in my head, has me concerned about how I’m going to finish the record.

The next night I go to see a friend of mine’s 10 year old kid who’s playing Blues guitar at Genghis Cohen. I am definitely guilty of telling someone I’m really interested in hearing their kid play or sing when in truth I’d rather be having my toenails pulled out without anesthetic. All parents, at least the good ones, think their kids are tremendously gifted in their artistic pursuit. If I had the guts, I would tell them to save their money as the kid’s talent is usually hovering in the local telethon area. But this was someone who had recently started coming to my parties who I wanted to keep as a party guest so off I went on a Saturday night to see the 10 year old who I thought was going to put me to sleep.

Lo and behold, Milo Sussman was a mofo. Total Chicago Blues chops and attitude mixed with endearing naivite. By the second song all I could think was 91 year old, 10 year old and me plopped somewhere in the middle. As if 91 years old and an oxygen tank wasn’t enough, that’s a hook!

After the show the mom tells me her 6 year old is as good a drummer as Milo is guitar player. I book them both and they come over twice after school to lay down guitar and add to the toms and two fingered keyboards I’ve played on top of Jerrie’s track. I video every inch of this as well, still no idea how to make anything that looks like something other than a home movie of the sessions, of no interest to me whatsoever. And the kids footage is full of parents and bad lighting.

I’m tortured by the prospect of a dull video. I want people to know about this woman who’s been beating the skins since the Capones saw her play sax and drums in their clubs while her parents ran bootleg liquor for them. I decide to scan in all her dust-crusted photos. At least I know how to make those come alive. If something cute enough happens maybe that will be a starting point. I also decide to bring Jerrie back, clear everything out of my living room and roll around in an Aeron chair like it’s a dolly so I can get longer and brighter shots than the cramped-in-my-bedroom-home-studio footage I have thus far.

One of my favorite records of all time is Ramsey Lewis’ “The In Crowd”. Very loud partygoer crowd sounds surrounding that great piano playing and Maurice White’s record debut as an artist. I call up a bunch of my friends, some of whom can’t even carry a tune, and make them come over to clap and sing along. I forget to tell them I’ll be filming so the combination of no make-up, ugly clothes and, due to cramped studio conditions, footage of mostly shoes and backs of heads, makes the video aspects of “Hey Jerrie” seem even further away.

That’s when it hit me I had to throw a party. Which is where this whole blog started…

As I stated earlier, though I’m a natural writer I’m not a natural blogger. I mean I actually love to blog. But I hate to blog just as I hate to write when I’m blogging just to blog. So now I’m really into telling you the rest of the process of making “Hey Jerrie” and it taking off on YouTube the second it arrives there. But if I continue doing that now, with the video and party process still to go, you will be here the better part of your week. And the idea of having material for imminently future blogs is exhilerating to me. Maybe even a tweet or two!

So I’m calling it for the night and will pick up on the rest of it in my next posts. In the meantime, please enjoy the party photos. To make your experience more authentic the main meal items at the party were Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Pixie Sticks. So if you have any of those around you may want to start chewing now.

To be continued…

06Feb 2009

Jerrie Beat!

06Feb 2009

Jerrie Beat!

Had a totally triumphant party last night at ghettogloss, to launch “Hey Jerrie”, my latest music video with me and Jerrie Thill, my favorite 91 year old female drummer/singer on an oxygen tank. I would have woken up and started to get photos up here but I looked at YouTube and the video has EXPLODED. Close to 25,000 views in the first 24 hours and it’s on 37 charts around the world. So I’m fielding a gaggle of emails, Facebook messages and the like so reporting on the frivolity of the launch party will probably not happen til sometime this weekend. So for now, please enjoy the video (hit the ‘Watch in HD link’ or it will look like crap) and send http://www.jer91.com to everyone you know.

Love from Allee and Jerrie.

01Feb 2009

Breathing Easy…

01Feb 2009

Breathing Easy…

I’m racing down the final twists and turns of the highway known as Allee’s Throwing A Party and have hit the inevitable pothole of I’ve Got It Together/ I’m Totally UnPrepared. One of the reoccurring bumps in the road has been the design that accompanies this particular project/ party and whether I’ve gone too far or not far enough – a creative problem an artist with any depth must learn to handle gracefully without the aid of too many outside stimulants.

This Thursday night, 2/5, is the launch of “Hey Jerrie”, my new music video featuring me and spectacular 91 year old female drummer on an oxygen tank, Jerrie Thill. As I am wont to do for my parties I’m sitting here hand-making hundreds of souvenirs including fans of my and Jerrie’s heads:

aw-jerrie-heads

Also making backscratchers (age makes sweet spots hard to reach), CDs, DVDs and prints of graphics celebrating the ongoing and persistent Ms. Thill.

When we met a few months ago Jerrie was visibly upset about her new appendage, a portable oxygen tank. My way in life is to deal with circumstances in the most spectacular way possible. The bottom is as much an opportunity for change and empowerment as the top. Which means that if you can’t breathe without the tank, make that tank work FOR you and not drag you down like the annoying and potentially humiliating chunk of steel and gas that it is.

I tell Jerrie to think of the tank as a fashion accessory – jewel the carrying case so it looks like a shoulder bag or build a cart with fins and chrome and roll it around like a doll in a kiddie car. I also tell her that she’s got the ultimate hook in this Age Of YouTube. How many people making contemporary music videos have tubes jutting into their nose? As if being 91 years old and still beating the skins in time isn’t enough! This POV has had a positive effect on Jerrie whose spring has now returned to her step.

I always design graphics to accompany anything I’m working on. But drawing ones that honor my sense of kitsch and rather loud design and still be respectful of Jerrie’s age and situation – i.e. the tank. – is more challenging than I imagine. After weeks I finally came up with these:

At first I thought you can’t have any fun with things like lungs and tubes. But having fun is what’s kept Jerrie alive. It’s what keeps me ticking like a teen, working through a plethora of careers wondering what I’ll be when I grow up. You have to find something fun or interesting about the life you live or you’re just miserable and bored and want to curl up in a hole and die. As long as you have a conscious breath in your body life is too precious to give up that easily. So here’s to lungs and tubes and anything else that’s a part of you.

“Hey Jerrie” goes up on YouTube at 6 pm this Thurs. Set your clocks now please!

27Oct 2008

The Price Of Success

27Oct 2008

The Price Of Success

I just won SIX W3 Awards. I wasn’t 100% sure what these awards were when I entered two of my videos but as an independent artist whose only distribution outlet is the Internet I felt I should take any and all shots to kick up some dust. Here’s what I won:

“Allee Willis presents Bubbles & Cheesecake – Editing Is Cool” – Gold – Music category
“Allee Willis presents Bubbles & Cheesecake – Editing Is Cool” – Silver – Animation category
“Allee Willis – https://www.alleewillis.com” – Silver – Personal Website category
“Allee Willis presents Bubbles & Cheesecake – It’s A Woman Thang” – Silver – Innovative/Experimental category
“Allee Willis presents Bubbles & Cheesecake – It’s A Woman Thang”– Silver – Music category
“Allee Willis presents Bubbles & Cheesecake – It’s A Woman Thang”– Silver – Animation category

I won in every category I entered. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth – I’m always happy to win! – but it seems I’ve stumbled onto something more significant than snagging the prize – an Internet business that’s guaranteed to bring in more cash than the records, videos and other web delights I’m chained to my desks creating, remuneration for which is zero or just above it in this day and age where such creations are viewed as public domain.

Check out this racket, um, strategy of the W3’s. Charge a hefty entrance fee. Create enough categories so it’s confusing which one your work should be entered in. If a music video has animation and you put it up on YouTube is it in the Music, Animation or Viral category? And don’t forget the Innovative/ Experimental category if your work is anything above average. Better enter all four categories to cover your ass. The triple digit entry fee multiplies faster than the number of times McCain spits out “my friends”.

A couple of months later I receive an email saying the deadline for the Awards has been extended. This means that either these are puny Awards and not enough people entered or these are greedy Awards and not enough people entered. But the email dangles that award carrot so I enter alleewillis.com in the personal website category, resisting the urge to cover my ass again and enter it in all the categories it qualifies for.

I forget about everything until the letters start arriving. “Congratulations, you have won…” (see above). I’m happy for a millisecond until I see that proof of winning each of my six awards will cost $175 a pop plus shipping and handling for a certificate and a statue. I check the W3 website. Nowhere, not even in 1 point type, is there mention of the fact that if you win it will cost you more than what it cost to enter.

This is SO offensive to me. At the very least how about the piece of paper for free and then a nominal fee to cover the price of stamping out the statues? I still think the latter is tacky but it’s better than nothing, which is what you get when you win a W3 and maybe want to buy food before an ugly paperweight.

I’ve thankfully won many awards. No one else ever charged me to be honored. Oh wait, I used to have to pay for my gold records when certain artists forgot that had it not been for the songwriter they would have had no song to sing.

I’ve spent days trying to decide which W3’s to fork out the dough for and which to ignore, but it sickens me to pick a favorite among my babies. So as soon as I finish this I will reluctantly write a check and tell my After Effects artist not to come in for a few days so I can afford to be honored. I’m also thinking I should cancel all the records and videos I’m currently working on and just dream up some Internet Awards so I can live off the entry and awards fees. How about the “Most Unoriginal Website Awards? I could make a fortune.

14Aug 2008

Editing Is Cool (Then why is this blog so long?)

14Aug 2008

Editing Is Cool (Then why is this blog so long?)

OK. I reallllly should be writing a detailed blog about the party I threw last Thurs. night here at Willis Wonderland to launch the new Bubbles & Cheesecake video, “Editing Is Cool”, and to debut my first official painting collaboration with Bubbles the artist, the Print Painting series, featuring canvas prints of five of Bubbles’ most popular images that I hand embellished with paint and vintage found objects. That sounds pretty ho hum, a party to promote something, but anyone who knows me knows I’m a hostess with mucho mostess and stiff is at the north pole of oppositeness of what went on here.

In order to do this party justice I need to go through 14 hours of video footage and this is not a job to do when you’ve slept for 21 hours total the previous week and your brain mass is still dripping through a strainer trying to get back to any semblance of normal. So I’m slogging through all of it as fast as I can but know if I drive myself nuts to finish in the timely fashion bloggers are wont to do I won’t enjoy any of it. So please know that the merriment of the “Launching Allee” party is forthcoming – you can look at a few photos from it in the meantime – and instead this blog is about how I took my own advise as offered in my brand new shiny video, “Editing Is Cool”, and got through the party without killing someone.

An example of “Editing Is Cool” philosophy at work: It’s 102+° in LA all day/all night last Thursday. You know you’re a sweating and potentially smelly party hostess and that all your guests are equally uncomfortable other than when they hug you and you accidentally spill your drink on them which coincidentally cools them off. Your choice of psychological mental states is either I’m a sweaty, smelly, sloppy party hostess or the funky jungle is alive with wild sweaty natives and I’m the effervescent jungle captain. I EDITED out pathetic choice #1 and opted for #2.

For months now my server has been going nuts. Files get corrupted and disappear, the network is so constipated it crawls like a turtle with corns. All in the midst of me getting ready for this party – finishing the video, redesigning my website, making speed movies of the 23 hours of video I took documenting every second of creating the 45 paintings in the Print Paintings series, designing and printing signs, order forms, name tags, artist’s statements, bios, size charts of all the paintings, cards to hand out and that’s not even a quarter of the list. I’m working off of eleven different external drives as the ones on the server choke. I’m overwriting files faster than I can create them I’m so confused trying to keep track of where everything is. My internet access is fluttering on and off and the backup DLS goes down.

And through it all I’m still trying to figure out how to conceptually tie together everything I’m presenting at the party so the theme is cohesive – 45 new paintings, the first ever I’ve done by printing the image on canvas and embellishing on top of that as well as the first time Bubbles and I have openly collaborated on paintings. Plus a new video that happens to not only be my most ambitious work but one that more than anything I’ve ever created embodies my personal philosophy on Life. I cannot say I remained cool throughout the neverending cascade of technical disabilities but I didn’t lose it like I would have in the old days. I EDITED out that part of my personality that is exceedingly skilled at maintaining misery so that at least a few moments of peace pop through.

Which is good because the night before the party a bridge breaks in my mouth and I can’t open it without feeling like razors are dragging across my gums. So less than seven hours before 300 people knock at my door I have oral surgery. The anesthesia from which leaves me hallucinating all day as I work outside in the blasting, scorching sun with 25+ people in various degrees of non-readyness tweaking everything I turn on, hang up or create on the spot.

Then at 2 pm. the impossible happens. Someone forgets to shut the water off and the pool overflows and FLOODS the backyard. And then the pump breaks. And then the back-up pump breaks. So mere hours before show time one crew is filling up buckets while others stomp on every clean towel I have trying to soak up the water that’s saturated the grass as mud wrestling is not on the party agenda. It takes every ounce of mental strength to not go completely psychotic as all my red button panic issues have been fully engaged – medical emergencies, technical failures, flooding. But I remember that EDITING IS COOL so I take a deep breath and decide to move on to something easy like hanging paintings.

3 pm. One side of the yard is finally in shade so we bring half of the paintings out and start to hang them on palm trees all over the yard. But it is SO hot that all the objects I’ve glued on to them start sliding off. So we climb back up the palms, take them down and store them back inside. Which then makes it impossible to clean any of the rooms they’re stacked up in. I re-glue everything and keep repeating the mantra, “EDITING IS COOL”.

The heat continues to pound even as the sun goes down so we wait until the last possible minute to re-hang all 45 paintings. Less than half are up before the first guests arrive. This kind of stuff makes me CRAZY. I’m an efficiency freak and have been planning this schedule for months. How could this be happening?! But I know my options are complete hysteria = horrible party hostess or just hang on for dear life, plug whatever holes in the dyke you can and keep smiling. I EDIT out option #1.

But that’s when the real challenge begins. Starting four days before the party the air conditioning in the submarine where the servers are shuts off every 20 minutes turning the room into an instant inferno. Every millifiber of information re my life and career is on those servers. Fire is no good. Only two years old, this piece of shit Soleus unit was installed by a company that knew it was “overly sensitive” and constantly shut off but never told me or offered to do anything about it other than try and sell me a new unit when I finally confronted them. Oh, wait…. Bubbles is insisting I tell you that if Nicholas Aire Systems of Santa Clarita, CA. knocks don’t answer the door.

So the ac is going down every 20 minutes. That means 48 times a day multiplied by four days so please picture this process 192 times as you continue to read and remember to multiply that exponentially for how many times since then it’s happened until today when a new unit was finally installed by a new company for half the price. And don’t forget to factor in that I haven’t gotten more than 15 minutes of sequential sleep for 11 days now as I have to reset the Soleus shit box to keep it going for another 20. One hour before the party I call Nicholas of Nicholas Aire and say to him, “You know what’s involved in turning this unit back on and know I have to do it every 20 minutes and you’re telling me this is what I have to do while the I’m hosting a party that’s introducing some of the most important work I’ve ever done in my career?!” He says, “yes”.

So here’s the drill: First I have to pull out two racks of equipment that each weigh over 1000 lbs. in order to get a clear shot at the sensor button on the Soleus with the remote. After five or or six body bending tries – the room is only four feet wide – the hot air spitting unit shuts off. Then I have to carry a 25 foot ladder to the front of the house, CLIMB UP ON THE ROOF, pull this scary looking electrical thing out of this scary looking black box, hang out on the roof in the blasting sun or dewy moon for 5 minutes before thrusting it back in, climb back down (more scary than going up), return the 25 foot ladder to the backyard so as not to provide incentive for anyone wishing to break into the house, race back inside and down the stairs, body bend again to turn the unit back on and wait in the inferno for 5 minutes to see if cold air actually kicks in. Then I have 15 minutes until it all begins again.

It’s ten minutes until the party starts. This Nicholas guy has made me miserable for months, ever since I found out he knew he installed a unit that wasn’t fit for the job it was supposed to do. When “the best he can do” is send someone out in the morning and I’m stuck hiring a party guest to sit at the side of my house and race up on the roof every 20 minutes I tell him where to stick it and feel completely liberated. Now I’m in a great mood because I’ve EDITED the Nicholas out of my life!

Jerks must be EDITED from your life. Calamity must be EDITED from your life. It gets easier every time you make a cut. Exercise your power and EDIT your life. Because EDITING IS COOL.

07Aug 2008

“Editing Is Cool”

07Aug 2008

“Editing Is Cool”

Here’s why I have been so blog poor over the last few months, my little 9 month labor of love, my life philosophy rolled into one bouncing bundle of sound, sight and spirit:

Allee Willis Presents Bubbles & Cheesecake “Editing Is Cool”