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15Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – I’m off to Detroit!

15Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – I’m off to Detroit!

Off to host a greatest hits concert at my high school, Mumford, before the wrecking ball knocks down one of the most gorgeous Deco buildings ever ….

(Don’t start me on THAT!)…and the teachers, staff and principal are all let go so kids can walk into the cement block replacement and a wall of new faces over the summer. So this is going to be a big, fat blowout-sendoff-of-an-affair if I have anything to say about it. Which I do!

So 6PM. Thurs. night at Mumford. If you live in Detroit, get yourself to the funkiest couple of hours in the city. You do NOT need to have gone to Mumford to enjoy this. Really, if I do say so myself, there isn’t a corner or mousehole in the world where they don’t know “September”. It’s a fundraiser for the choir and tickets are only $5!!!

I’ll also be heading over to my father’s high school, Cass, which becomes only the second high school in the country to perform my musical, The Color Purple. Performances are Wed. – Sat. Ive been waiting for the high school part of TCP since I wrote it so I can’t wait!

The rest of the week is filled with an endless slew of meetings with movers and shakers, large and small, as I feel out a couple of long term projects I want to do in Detroit. There will also be a lot of barbecue and soul food. In anticipation and though it’s not from Detroit, this was lunch from Uncle Andre’s in Studio City, Ca. yesterday:

Usually, I blog endlessly about my exploits in Detroit, but this time I come back to LA just in time to jump into rehearsals for my Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review live show at King King on May 8 & 9. Im going to try and use this trip to become an interested and dedicated Tweeter, which has felt more like an invasion of my mental state since I signed up soon after the bird launched. But I’ll be in trouble if I concentrate on blogging and not beefing up for my live show, using my hotel bedroom as a pretend stage and finishing the seemingly endless amounts of special visuals and animations I started getting ready with Alfonso Estrada for the show.

So Bon Voyage as I head for LAX. Listen for the tweety bird (which I’ll probably post the best of here too). Back in a week. And back with AWMOK.com postings tomorrow when I awake in the Motor City.

11Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Countdown To Blast-Off! 27 days & Counting ‘Til May 8&9!

11Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Countdown To Blast-Off! 27 days & Counting ‘Til May 8&9!

Rehearsals for my May 8 & 9 return to the stage in my Super Ball Bounce Back Review have begun. Given what happened at my last show in October this is very significant!

I also leave for Detroit on Sunday where I’ll be hosting a benefit greatest hits concert at my high school and telling stories of how some of my biggest hits were written while students perform the songs. This includes kids from the dance and drama classes, concert choir, marching band and ROTC drill team.

Don’t even ask me how excited I am about that! Plus it gives me a chance to rehearse some of the stories I’ll be telling at my live show in LA in May. I’ll also be speaking to students at my father’s high school as Cass becomes only the second high school ever to perform my musical, The Color Purple. And all this is stuffed in between 8 trillion meetings with movers and shakers, big and small, to feel out a couple of long term projects that I want to do in my beloved home town.

All of which means I’m going to be completely insane over the next 30 days, which will inevitably cut down on my blogging activities as time I may have spent writing is now going toward prep and rehearsal of those ever-important two days in May, not to mention my week in Detroit.

As a result, I’m going to try and become an interested little tweeter. I don’t know if this will work as I’ve resisted regular tweeting ever since the bird first launched. As an avid natural writer, I’ve always viewed the constant barrage of 140 characters as an invasion to my headspace. I’m also someone who likes to think about what I do, so longer than 140 has always suited me best. But, at least from where my head is right now, tweeting may save me as I try to report in tiny chunks as opposed to longer daily excursions. Here are my tweets from yesterday documenting my first steps toward the stage again:

Rehearsals for my Super Ball Bounce Back Review at King King May 8 & 9 have begun! http://kingkinghollywood.com/

(BTW,What are the chances of there being another A. Willis gracing the stage with me? Well, that’s exactly the case here. That’s A. (Akua) Willis in the hat.)

Perhaps one day I’ll learn the lyrics to my own songs… Creeping slowly through Boogie Wonderland.

Slashing the script right outta da gate with Richard Dorton, my SKILLED and WELL REHEARSED tech director.

I know these are nothing dramatic and so far the only way I’m interested in tweeting is if I can have a photo as a punchline. I put this one up this morning, though the photo’s just a photo and not a punchline:

We’racing 2 finish horror film that opens my new show @ KingKing May 8&9. Best of horrific tech failures frm last show.

I hate typos like ‘We’racing’. That happened in efforts to cut down to less than 140 characters so a photo could accompany the tweet. In the old world I also wouldn’t have wanted to give away the fact that I was making a horror film of the most Titanic moments from the last show, but in a tweet-filled world there’s no room for secrets.

Today’s a free day at home, marking the start of the three day/three suitcase packing process. Hopefully the bug hasn’t hit me full strength just yet and I won’t become one of those tweeting fools who shows you every single thing I’m putting into those suitcases.

Of course, I couldn’t resist and just tweeted that. Now I just need to knock this down to 140 charcters:

My nimble assistants, Dina and Suellen, cut face masks and assemble souvenir multipurpose “Unisex Pendants and Keychains” made out of bubblegum charms that will be for sale at Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review May 8&9 at King King in Hollywood.

09Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – The Color Purple at the Celebration Theatre

09Apr 2012

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – The Color Purple at the Celebration Theatre

Before I co-wrote The Color Purple musical I had little interest in theatre. I had no desire to see people break out into song, oftentimes seemingly for no reason, and sing in that shrill kind of Broadway singing way, and leave not understanding or enjoying what I saw anyway. But I jumped at the chance to collaborate on TCP because it was such an incredible piece of literature, the most soulful on the planet.

After depriving myself of the genre for a lifetime, once I got the gig I spent a year in every regional theater, dinner theater, high school auditorium, every and any place I could bone up on musicals. Writing The Color Purple, though easily one of the hardest and most intense things I’ve ever undertaken, was also most pleasurable. And in the mere act of writing it I really understood that the theatre was not the stagnant-leftover-from-the-old-century medium I thought it was but, rather, a daredevil medium where you never know what’s going to happen as one actor coughs and it can turn the whole show.

Another thing I learned, as evidenced by the show as it’s currently being performed at The Celebration Theatre in LA, is that this is a medium in which work can change drastically depending on who stages it. And I saw just exactly why I put up with five years of tears, laughter, compromise, bending so far over backwards I thought my body would split, epiphanies, road blocks and more, I.E. a microcosm of life stuffed into five years of round-the-clock days, rewrites, and did I mention rewrites?

When the show opened in New York in 2005, we had a cast of 31 actors in the second largest theater on Broadway. On tour, the cast shrunk by a few actors but the stages were/are just as big, the auditoriums even bigger, and the staging was just a slightly skimmed down version from what it was on Broadway. But at the Celebration Theatre I got to see 19 actors stuffed into a 99 seat house, something I couldn’t have imagined working, but it was MINDBLOWING! Not only did everyone do their thing and then some, the intimacy of seeing the show staged for a tiny room with audiences on three sides of the stage worked so well for the piece I can’t tell you!

If you’ve never seen the musical you might think that this is a heavy, depressing couple of hours but ha ha, it’s a comedy, and an incredibly inspiring and uplifting adventure of someone who goes from less than nothing to the other end of the rainbow. If you live in LA I encourage you to see it. It’s here until the end of May.

Here are some photos from opening night at The Celebration Theatre a few weeks ago:

With my TCP collaborator, Stephen Bray:

With LaToya London, Shug Avery in the current production and Nettie in the second National Tour:

With Stephen and Michael A. Shepperd, a fiiiiine Mister indeed!

With Niketa Calame, an hysterical Squeak.

With Kelly Jenrette, a fantastic Nettie:

With Sixx Leah-Patrice Carter, Church soloist, and Lorie Moore, one of the hysterical Church Ladies:

With Harpo a.k.a. Terrance Spencer, and ensemble players Jonathan JT Thompkins and Akula Lyman.

With TCP director Michael Matthews, mo Church Ladies, and Kat Kramer.

With Na’Kia Bell Smith and Janet Washington, excellent young Nettie and Celie.

The opening was star-studded. Here I am with my ol’ pal, Dana Delany.

I love Wendy Malick!

So excited that Robert Forster was there:

And Sharon Lawrence too!:

With Dana Delany and her Body Of Proof co-star, Nicholas Bishop

Director Michael Matthews, Artistic Director of the Celebration Theatre, JohnMichael Beck and the cast:

Go see The Color Purple and make Allee very happy!

04Apr 2012

Yes, I’m back!! LIVE, for 2 nights only!!

04Apr 2012

Yes, I’m back!! LIVE, for 2 nights only!!

Yes, though one might find it hard to believe after my last foray into reclaiming the stage, I’m hitting it again in my new, improved and sans-the-idiot-tech-guy show, Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review! Two nights only, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 8 & 9 at King King in Hollywood. Lots of music, visual treats, stories, dance, games, all the hi-art-meets-kitsch mayhem you know me for PLUS MORE!! And many things I’ve never attempted before. And did I mention prizes? So I hope I see you at Allee Willis’ Super Ball Bounce Back Review May 8 or 9 at King King!

BUY TICKETS NOW!

Tickets also available at kingkinghollywood.com.

28Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – WORLD’S GREATEST CHILI at Chili John’s

28Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – WORLD’S GREATEST CHILI at Chili John’s

I love hot dogs. I mean, I lovvvve hot dogs. Usually I’m just a mustard and relish gal. But when I go to this joint, the chili is ON!

19Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Face Scarf

19Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Face Scarf

I was very excited when aKitschinado Michael Eli is sent me these two face scarves that his sister-in-law Diane made for me.

It’s not usually cold enough here in LA to wear something of this nature but I’m always one for something a little different that adds style and comfort to one’s life.

When Michael received the photos I sent him of me wearing Diane’s creations, he politely explained that I was wearing the accessories wrong. How was I supposed to breath covering my nose?! I should have known this as my very lust for these mini scarves was inspired when I spent last Christmas under the spell of this particular hat:

But, truth be told, I breathe through my mouth. So that little slit seemed more than appropriate to spotlight my ever-Mac Morange lips. I often do things wrong where instinct would have kicked into other people’s heads instantaneously. Like most folks wouldn’t be 15 years into their painting career before they realized that you mix colors to get other colors. Or that you cook oatmeal rather than letting the little hard disks of oats nick your throat like blades on an ice skating rink while throat doctor after throat doctor can’t figure out what the problem is. These kind of predicaments are the kind of things that dump themselves on my doorstep daily. This has forced me to have more of a sense of humor about most things and not be embarrassed when someone tells me I am wearing something wrong and will most likely drop dead from lack of oxygen inhalation in mere minutes. But I’m happy to say that I am just as happy with my face scarf being worn properly as improperly!:

Though I’d probably feel better if I could put lipstick on my nose as I’d love a burst of contrasting color in the midst of all that yarn. But I’ll settle for my nose going nude and being able to enjoy the nippy air as God originally intended it to. Thank you again, Michael and Diane!

13Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Luenell’s Big Birthday Party!

13Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Luenell’s Big Birthday Party!

Anyone who doesn’t know my friend Luenell, run to Wikipedia right now. If you ever even have caught a glimpse of her, maybe as the hooker in Borat…,

…or opening for Kat Williams…,

… or maybe in my backyard at one of my voluminous parties…,

…you know Luenell’s hysterical and don’t take no shit. I know her to also be a kind and seriously loyal friend, the type that just rings your doorbell and is standing there with her half eaten cupcake-in-a-cup offering you the other half. I would’ve shot a photo of it when she arrived here a few weeks ago wearing her pjs but I sucked it down too fast. Which is too bad because it matched my shirt:

Last night Luenell threw herself a huge party. Maverick’s Flat, the club on Crenshaw Blvd. where it was held, is as legendary as the star herself, ground zero in the 1960’s for iconic musicians, comedians and socialites to party together in a Playboy Club-type atmosphere. As an example of the excellent decor, here’s a door that still remains:

The funky and psychedelic design of the club even inspired the album art for one of my favorite LPs, the Temptations’ “Psychedelic Shack.”

Here’s an example of who used to perform at Maverick’s Flat:

But tonight it was all Luenell/all the time…:

… as we gathered “yet again to celebrate her 25th birthday”:

I arrived the same time as Luenell. Shitty photo of me but you can see the girth of the Paparazzi.

Lots of great friends in the house. Here I am with Abraham Mc Donald, who I met at Jenifer Lewis‘ one Christmas and who won the Oprah show’s National Singing Competition right after that.:

Then MAxi B, from The Mary Jane Girls…:

…and Norwood Young…:

…and William Papa Lee Handford Jr…:

I hope you can see the ultra expensive bling I wore. Here’s a slightly better shot of it on the red carpet:

Apparently my lips had a wonderful time giving an interview to WorldVideo.tv. Look at them leaping off my face!!

It got soooo crowded that we retreated to the roof, where we shared some smokin’ fried chicken and general frivolity. Here are me, Snappy P., Constance Tillotson and Michael Ruvo:

And then my camera battery died. I NEVER travel with just one, but seeing as I lost two cameras and four batteries this week alone, I was traveling solo with only one new cheap camera and the battery it was born with. Oh well….. Happy birthday, Luenell, and to 150 more magnificent 25th’s!!

08Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Amelia Earhart As Elvis Statue

08Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Amelia Earhart As Elvis Statue

Elvis is alive and well as Amelia Earhart on the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia in North Hollywood, CA. Carrying a propeller blade instead of a guitar, everything else about this Amelia screams the King, like her pompadour hairdo and bell bottom aviator pants.

I’m not nuts about that kind of feathering technique where it looks like a slasher took his aggression out in clay. The statue is quite large, Amelia herself least 10 feet tall, so the sculptor slasher really had room to go to town.

A little too foreshadowing for me as per Amelia is the circle of propeller blades that surround her bronzed clayness. For my money, it looks like she’s being circled by shark fins, which was most likely her fate.

I would’ve rethought this had I been the knife wielding sculptor.

Amelia was a proud resident of North Hollywood, where her statue is docked.

I used to make fun of the statue until I became friends with the teen idol I most swooned over as a kid, Fabian. I once gave him away as a prize at my Night of the Living Négligée pajama party.

I made a short film showing where Fabian would take the lucky winner of the “Win A Dream Date with Fabian” contest. The Amelia statue would be the first stop on their romantic landmarks tour.

Sorry the photo is so low res but it was 1989 and I had an excessively cheap and rarely working camera. If you think that’s low res, you should see the film we made.

I was carrying on about how bad the sculpture was until Fabian’s manager told me he was was great friends with the artist and not only did the city pay a hefty price for it/her but there’s another exact Amelia at the Burbank airport.

I know most people would never make the connection between Amelia Earhart and Fabian, let alone Amelia Earhart and Elvis, but that’s what makes life interesting through these eyes. I’d still ditch the shark fins had I been Ernest but I’m happy that Amelia is still standing tall, mere blocks from her home in beautiful North Hollywood.

06Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Pufnstuffin’ With Sid Krofft

06Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Pufnstuffin’ With Sid Krofft

New Year’s Eve, 2011. I’m coming down Sunset Plaza, a really windy road with million dollar homes right above Sunset Blvd. in LA. I’m in my Green Beetle, which is a lean and fast machine.

Sunset Plaza’s a pain in the ass to drive under any circumstance but nightmarish should you end up behind a slowwww driver, which is what fate dealt me this New Years when I was in a big hurry to get to my destination, my friends Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s pad, an ultra modern built-for-Brian-DePalma-in-the-70’s house that teeters on stilts overlooking the city. Here’s the view from the balcony:

There are very few parking spaces to accommodate a small fraction of the 50 people on their way up there. If you don’t get one of those spaces you have to turn around in a teeny tiny cul-de-sac and drive a quarter mile out the little windy road with hardly any shoulder and a drop-down of hundreds of feet. And then you’re back out on the main winding road where there are about two parking spaces for every fifty people. No way am I limping back up that hill on foot! So I start leaning on the horn behind this little black car driving at funeral speed. To my credit, I only honked when there was enough room for the stupid driver to pull over so I could pass. Finally, after five minutes the car hugs the curb and I whiz past, gunning it extra hard to show my annoyance even further.

I get to the house and thank God there’s a space left. I pull in, put some lipstick on and send a few emails on my iPad before I go in. A couple of cars pass me and I don’t see them coming back down the hill, which means they must’ve found parking spots too. I finally get out of the car and trudge the last 20 feet up to the house. Standing there is my good friend, Beverly D’Angelo, with a guy I don’t know. Beverly and I go way back and I love her. She’s also an excellent party guest, a criteria I have incredibly high standards for, and has been coming to mine for years.

Just as I’m getting in hugging range I hear Snappy P yell, “Green Beetle, that must have been Allee!”. “You fucking asshole, you almost drove us off the road!!,” screams Beverly as I approach. Oh shit, I rarely misbehave behind the wheel anymore and now I’ve gone and terrorized a friend. But then it gets worse, “Meet Sid Krofft,” she says, referring to the mystery man next her, adding that she brought him to the party specifically to meet me. Now I’ve been waiting to meet this guy since the late 60’s when his puppets, marionettes and insane live action shows started ruling TV and now I’ve almost killed him. “I wanted to get out of the car and tell you what an asshole you were” he says. Thank God the Beetle was turbo-charged and he didn’t have a chance. I ate a lot of crow for the next few minutes, but it was immediately apparent that Beverly was completely right. This guy was a kindred spirit and we hit it off like we had known each other for decades.

Though Beverly had told Sid he HAD to come to Willis Wonderland, I went to his place first, now a couple weeks ago. I took hundreds of photos but I can’t show any of them because Sid’s a really private guy. But it’s as handcrafted as my place is times 6 trillion-on-steroids.

In actuality, I didn’t really get full tilt into the Kroffts back in the day when their shows were on the air because by then I was way way way deep into records and the radio. As a fan and later as a songwriter, when my radio habit lurched into twelfth gear and I lived and breathed music every millisecond of every day, I was still aware of that Sid and Marty Krofft name and that it stood for something crazy. But it really wasn’t until so many friends of mine insisted I go to an auction of their props at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1998 that I realized the extent of that craziness as well as the magnitude of its reach. As a kitsch lover, how could I have not been familiar with every single detail of the Kroffts’ career, the guys on the throne at the top of the kitsch mountain??

YouTube, of course, makes for an excellent crash course. So I’ve seen more of the Krofft brothers’ magic in the last month than I have in my lifetime. And my respect and discovery of the depth of influence their work had on me subliminally has been a revelation. H.R. Pufnstuf is probably their most classic:

I don’t like to wake up early for social visits but at 82, Sid Krofft is in REMARKABLE shape, jogging 9 miles a day + a couple hours in the gym, so he’s raring to go when the sun comes up. 10:30 bright and early a couple of Tuesdays ago he and Beverly were at my doorstep.

I even got it together to cut up healthy food for him.

This is a BIG step for me as this is what’s more likely to be on that table on a regular basis:

Sid was as fascinated by Willis Wonderland as I was of his hand-built abode. As my yard is part of my living room, we hit that first.

Although it was raining when I took the following shot, you need to see those GORGEOUS 1950’s fiberglas fish lounges sans people:

As we strolled around outside we were joined by Donny Molls, a great artist and Sid’s next door neighbor:

We stopped and chatted in every room:

My downstairs, where that shot was taken, is particularly packed with memorabilia, some of which is Krofft Brothers stuff I’m happy to say I had the good sense to collect even if I wasn’t sure exactly what it was when I bought it.

If you’ve never seen Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, double up your sedation and watch now! EASILY one of the greatest title sequences in the annals of kitschdom:

Thank god I had a few View Master disks of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl in my collection too:

Sid and Michael Jackson were great friends so I pointed out some of my primo MJ cheese:

You really need to see what I’m pointing at. Yeah, I got the doll and the puzzle like a zillion other people…

…but who else do you know who has the drink cooler?! This is easily my favorite piece of MJ memorabilia I own:

When we got to my dining room…

… Sid posed in front of Mr. Wah Wah, a stunning portrait painted by my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist.:

We spent a lot of time in my recording studio too.

Although Sid has a computer he’s not obsessed with them as I am of my 11 networked Macs. So what we really wanted to do was show him how much of his stuff is online.

And there’s gaggles of it – H.R. Pufnstuf, Land Of The Lost, The Bugaloos, Lidsville, The Donny and Marie Show, not to mention Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for starters. And no exploration of Sid and Marty Kroffts would be complete without the Brady Bunch Variety Hour:

The Brady Bunch is certainly coming up A LOT lately!

One of THE most classic and cheesiest shows EVER on TV was called Pink Lady and Jeff. 1981. I remember being so intrigued by that nutty title that I tried to catch the show whenever I could. Imagine the complete and total ecstasy-breakdown I had when I saw the Pink ladies immortalizing my song,”Boogie Wonderland”:

Watching this again with the creator of that show who was totally in on the cheese joke of it all was even more thrilling. As we were poking around doing searches on YouTube I discovered that not only did Pink Lady do that quintessential performance of the song, they also recorded it. I’m still gasping for breath:

What a day I spent with the gang. Here’s one last parting shot for the photo LP before everyone left:

I sho love me some Sid Krofft!!

29Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Sunday Drive With Charles Phoenix: Cruising Van Nuys Blvd. In Search Of Beeps- Part 2

29Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Sunday Drive With Charles Phoenix: Cruising Van Nuys Blvd. In Search Of Beeps- Part 2

.

So Charles and I are driving down Van Nuys Blvd. in search of this 1950’s diner named Beeps that neither of us have ever heard of. We both find it hard to believe that if it were THAT good one of us wouldn’t have been aware of it. So we had low expectations until we turned a corner and saw this:

I would’ve stopped anywhere the occupant of that gold sparkle Chevy stopped to eat but I knew from the original Beeps neon that we hit the jackpot, Chevy or not.

All the signage at Beeps is pretty great:

Though some of the signage placement could’ve used a little more thought:

I wish that palm had settled in front of James Dean instead. I hate all that 50’s repro crap, especially when this place actually existed at that time.

Inside, there’s very little room for signage. However, every inch is covered with more 50’s repro madness. I HATE WHEN DINERS DO THIS, not when they should be preserving and relishing the authentically vintage naugahyde, chrome stools and formica covered tabletops they ripped out to make way for it in the first place. Unfortunately, Beeps is a victim of such “modernization”. But thankfully, I can still appreciate it from a kitsch POV as there’s such an overload of new crap everywhere:

Every surface is jammed, even where there’s barely any room, like this wannabe Elvis stuck in the “bar” area.

Even the ceilings are smothered with stuff:

I would suggest bringing a phone or a good book so you don’t have to look at the walls with every repro light-up diner poster ever made, like this one:

Same for the neon guitar:

In contrast, the restroom key is very minimalist. Although perhaps there could have been a more appetizing choice for a restaurant key fob than a drain pipe: