Several things about this glass have all the earmarks of Kitsch with a kapital K. First of all, it’s from a piano bar restaurant. Second, the name Lenny Dee is a perfect name for a player at a piano bar. Third, there’s Lenny himself, festooned in the perfect polyester outfit, visible through the oval peekaboo window on the front of the glass. Fourth, the piano keys go all the way around the glass as opposed to just in the front.

I’m not sure what’s happening on Lenny’s ultra long 70’s pointy collar polyester shirt but it’s the perfect design complement to the piano keys above him. Lenny’s comb-over and especially hairy hands are also excellent graphic touches for a drinking glass.

In case you can’t get a clear shot of Lenny once your glass is filled with liquid, there’s a non-peekaboo photo of him on the back.

I’m assuming the ‘O’ around Lenny’s head is a record and not a halo:

Then again, maybe it’s an ‘O’ and his last name is O’Dee and not Dee.  This led me to google Lenny.

I found out that Lenny no-O Dee made a few records and was an awesome organist. Just listen:

He was quite the talker too:

Treasure Island, Florida appears to be the perfect place for Lenny to be doing his magic.

According to Wikipedia, “Treasure Island got its name after several property owners attempted to boost sales of the properties by first burying and then “discovering” a couple of wooden chests on the beach. After claiming the chests were filled with treasure the news of the discovery quickly spread and people began calling the island Treasure Island.

I think Lenny Dee is the buried treasure (he passed away in 2006). I’ve had this glass staring at me in my kitchen for years but only now decided to see who Lenny actually was. His organ sound slays me – he worked hard getting all that reverb – and I shall forever enjoy drinking out of him!


No new aKitschionado posts until tomorrow as I have to leave early this morning to go to Milly Del Rubio’s funeral where, as I did for both of her sisters, Elena and Eadie, I’ll be delivering the eulogy. Normally this would be a very upsetting task, but as all three of the Del Rubio Triplets were fond of saying, they were “three people with one head” and never could live with the thought of the group not being together. I’m at peace that they’re finally reunited, as Eadie passed in 1996 and Eleana joined her in 2001.

I thought about dropping ‘Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day’ from the title of my post today but if ever I were to worship at the throne of Kitsch it would be at the base of three magnificent thrones with gold nameplates that say “Del Rubio”.

I should also mention that Holy Cross Cemetery, where the triplets are buried next to each other by the time you read this, is right across the street from the Fox Hills Mall, where I got this:

I constantly get complements on how gorgeous this microphone pendant is. No doubt the complement flingers think it’s real diamonds but all that bling only cost $39.99. Not that I need a funeral as an excuse to go to the Fox Hills Mall, but if anyone would appreciate fantastic music-themed jewelry like this it would be the Del Rubio Triplets.

Milly, I know how long you’ve wanted to go and be with your sisters so I’m not sad to lose you now.

I trust that the three of you are already assembled in front of glowing diamond microphones, singing the out-of-this-world harmonies you sang even here on earth, and standing in the order you were born in, stood on stage in and did everything in life in; Eadie on the left, Elena in the middle and Milly now joining on the right.

Peace out.

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:

.

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

Judging from the photo on the package I suppose this is some sort of little storage bag or purse or something but the only thing that I can tell from the labeling is that it’s “New” and its name is perilously close to the weight loss drug in the mid 90s that took a whole lotta people out.

Unless you can make sense of it also being “Nearby double seam, abrasive resistance” and that it “Prevents the washings to distort, tie the knot.” But it’s actually the last important point about the product that’s my favorite: “The good classification, the clean is clean”.

This mangled translation, of course, makes me love this product no matter what its use. Serious kitsch value is in leaving the package undisturbed and never knowing the true nature of the contents. And you won’t get help from the back of the package either:

This is what I LOVE about 99¢ and dollar stores. You would think for overstock product shipped from overseas that they would at least slap a label on that told you clearly what was inside. Though for a buck I guess they’re counting on the fact that if you can even guess what it is it’s such a bargain you’re gonna go home with it anyway. For me, it was enough to see psychedelically influenced flowers printed on shades of pink mesh that did it:

Because  it has a zipper I might put my money down on makeup pouch. Or perhaps a small storage bag. I did a search for the company name, Fenfang, but all I found was a Chinese restaurant in Cochin, wherever that is, and a Fen Fang, a praying mantis that’s eating a cricket, on YouTube. Neither one of these give me any clue as to what the mysterious mesh flower artifact is. Hmmm, maybe you stick something like nylons, which I haven’t worn in decades, in so they don’t tangle while drying quickly?

Ultimately, none of this matters as I’m way more attached to packaging that makes no sense than I am to having one more little case that can get lost in the bottom of my drawer only to have me discover it years later and re-gift it.

Of my entire immense collection of Disco artifacts this almost-John-Travolta-with-almost-Toni-Tennille disco mirror is way, way, way up there on my favorites list.

Almost-Travolta and his partner are exactly the kind of people who wouldn’t have made it into Studio 54. Quite the contrary, her little-too-late  swish of Farrah Fawcett hair, drapey polyester dress and bangle bracelets make for the kind of outfit that filled up discotheques on the outskirts of towns at the sides of freeways all over the United States.

There’s so much more going on on this mirror than disco dancing it’s totally nauseating to look into it for very long.

But I would never complain too loud about a product that hangs on a wall that’s actually called “Disco Dancing”.

The footwear especially kills me:

Which is good because after staring into the mirror for too long it’s all I can do to stare down at the floor and see my own feet in order to bring my head back to a normal state. Then again, it’s a very cheap and medically safe high to look at almost-John, almost-Farrah/Toni T. and their disco floor-inspired mirror background to feel like I’m hallucinating.

I know that in most of the rest of the US having an umbrella barely pricks the surface of the smoldering heat that’s gripping it like a rabid python. If you live in one of those places you probably don’t want to hear that here in LA, outside of a couple 100° days, it’s been a pretty water park of a summer.

Frogs are more suited for heat infused weather then I am. I would happily volunteer to be a guinea pig whenever they invent air conditioning chips that can be inserted into your body.  But until then I’ll just have to pray the sun behaves in LA and look for shade when a super hot ray pokes through, just like these happy little frogs.

I wore my fringe vest for years. It was gold suede, just like the cheesy-haired couples’ on the bottom of this McCall’s pattern, though mine didn’t have the little turquoise beads. I think the sound of them knocking together would have driven me insane. I wore that that vest religiously from about 1970 to 73 but it got so pit stained I finally had to retire it. Suede does not take kindly to pit stains. I know I still have it sitting in a box somewhere. It was too much a part of my formative years to part with forever.

Speaking of pit stains, I’m not wearing my  fringe suede vest in this 1971 photo, when such a garment frequented my body, but I certainly am exhibiting pit stains:

I had just graduated college and got a job in the advertising apartment of Columbia and Epic Records. Although I would soon go on to become a copywriter, writing ads and commercials for all of the female and black stars on the labels, and eventually recording an album there myself, here I am as a secretary getting Johnny Cash to approve some copy my boss had written to promote his upcoming album. I remember being so upset about the pit stains when I finally got my photo developed, but it makes me love it more now.

I can’t seem to find any photos of me in my  fringe vest. But here’s one taken not long after the Cash photo where I’m wearing another vest  that displays the art of macramé, another massive trend in 60’s and 70’s fashion. This was the first and last vest I ever made. You can tell by the difference in the size of the holes that something that demanded this much precision was not my forte.

But back to fringe vests. I’ve never seen anyone wear one better than Peter Carpenter, writer, producer and star of one of my all-time favorite bad movies, “Point Of Terror”.  Just look at him work the fringe in the opening titles of his 1971 masterpiece.

Should I ever have the urge to wear a Fringe vest again I can always pull out my McCall’s pattern and pray I have better luck and skills then I exhibited with macramé. I’ve definitely learned how to control the pit stains.

 

So that’s it. The third and youngest miniskirted, go-go booted Del Rubio has left the planet to rejoin the act. Normally I’m really sad when a friend of mine passes away. Trust me, I’m upset about Milly, but as the Del Rubio’s themselves were fond of saying, they were one person with three heads. And now they are back together as one.

Milly passed away Thursday night. The last time I saw her was this last Valentine’s Day when I delivered the hundreds and hundreds of cards, many of them handmade, that people sent to me, many of those via Hidden Los Angeles, to give to her. She wasn’t feeling especially great that day and discouraged me from taking the hundreds of photos I usually do because her hair and makeup weren’t perfect. Not that mine are in this photo with Milly from 1996 after a day in the sun on the roof of the triplets’ mobile home.

This was the last photo I have of Milly, taken about a year and a half ago when I saw her and we discussed that if she started playing her guitar again I would throw a big party to present her.

I had the honor of delivering the eulogies when the first two triplets passed, Eadie in 1996 and Elena in 2001. Immediately after Eadie passed, the remaining two, whose lives had always been enriched and enlightened by the performances they did, announced they never wanted to perform again. I tried to pull them back into it for a couple years, telling them that the reason audiences loved them would not disappear because there was one less sister. But they would have none of it. As you can imagine, that worsened for Milly when Elena left to join Eadie.

I can’t imagine that the world will ever again see something as magnificent and innocent as The Del Rubio Triplets. They were completely unaware that they were somewhat of an oddity and lived to entertain and make people laugh. Although people who were seeing them for the first time may have started out laughing because they had never quite seen anyone who looked or sounded like The Del Rubio’s, they were always won over and went home uplifted, adoring the triplets and remaining eternal fans.

The Del Rubio’s were massive part of my life. I always lived to combine high and low elements of art. I met the Del Rubio’s after my songs had already sold over 30 million records, but to have the opportunity to hear my hits performed Del Rubio style was the biggest reward of all to a budding kitsch lover such as myself. The very first time I ever presented them to the public they did a duet of “Neutron Dance” with Ruth Pointer, who sang lead on the hit record that was then number 6 on the Hot 100 chart. That was honestly the peak moment of a lifetime devoted to the pursuit of Kitsch meets Art, a musical highlight equal to winning a Grammy for the song, which was part of the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, that same year.

If you’re unfamiliar with The Del Rubio Triplets, you can get a crash course here. And here.

There’s a fund established for Milly and her sisters at the Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace Foundation in Wytheville, VA., which you can make donations in Milly’s memory to here. You may not know who Edith Bolling Wilson is. She was the wife of Pres. Woodrow Wilson and the great aunt of the Del Rubio Triplets.

That’s right, they had Presidential connections big-time as you can see from that photo taken with Edith Bolling Wilson, with husband Woodrow looking on, at the Woodrow Wilson House Museum In Washington DC. Any of you who saw The Del Rubio’s already know how regal they were. Their presidential link is just one more cherry on the kitsch and musical sundae known as The Del Rubio Triplets.

If you’re on Facebook you can go here to leave a note about Milly and/or leave one here. R.I.P. sweet, blond, go-go booted angel…