Allee Willis Blog » Allee Willis

18Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Souvenir Of Detroit Shoe and My Love Letter To Detroit in Time Magazine

18Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Souvenir Of Detroit Shoe and My Love Letter To Detroit in Time Magazine

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When the post I wrote for Time Magazine‘s wonderful Detroit Blog was published yesterday, my love for Detroit escalated even higher than the sky-high affection I already had for the city I grew up in that still inspires just about every move I make. Despite whatever you might think of Detroit for anything you may have heard about it’s slow and agonizing demise over the years, it’s still the Soul capital as far as I’m concerned and a city that has the potential to lead us into the future this century as it did much of the last. As anyone who’s half evolved knows, when things fall apart it becomes a ripe breeding ground for rebirth in new and magnified ways. The revolution is coming and it’s already arrived in Detroit. My love letter to my city is here.

I’ve always collected kitsch souvenirs from Detroit. I have everything from custom painted Detroit bottles to can openers, pot holders, funeral fans, miniature cars, notebooks, pencils, rolling pins and more. But this little unassuming shoe has always been one of my favorites.

As small as this souvenir high heel is, only 2 1/2 inches long, it’s as giant in stature to me as the old 25′ x 30′ x 20′ stove that sat out in front of The Michigan State Fairgrounds for years on Woodward Avenue. I used to drive by it every day and wonder if I would ever learn to cook. The answer remains no.

And then there’s the giant tire that started life out as a ferris wheel at the ’64 New York Worlds Fair and was then moved to the side of I-94 where it still sits to this day. I’ve had better success with tires than with cooking though not as much as with shoes.
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Detroit is a city that many may have lost faith in, a shrinking blip on the map, no longer looming above the horizon of hope like a massive stove or tire. But the naysayers should remember that spirit and strength are qualities that lie inside and, when nurtured, can bloom in the most unexpected places and ways. All it takes is the brains and balls to stay the course, and the belief that change is the one constant in our life and that it can be steered like a big giant-finned Caddy to a better place if enough people just believe that can happen. People from Detroit have always dreamed and given the world some amazing gifts – cars and Motown for starters. So I have faith that whatever comes of the ashes of Detroit will be great. It may just look like baby steps now – afterall, the shoe is tiny – but get outta the way because wheels are turning and the footprints that will be left are BIG.

15Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Do It Now” Napkin Holder

15Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Do It Now” Napkin Holder

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In a couple of hours I’m speaking on a panel called “In The Biz In LA – For artists who act, direct, produce, edit, write, or administrate” led by my pal Barbara Deutsch, who I’ve been friends with since we were both secretaries at Columbia and Epic Records in 1969. Here’s what I was told to prepare: “If you were to only give the audience 3 pieces of advice that you have learned personally for the industry or life, what would it be? Feel free to be profound or silly.” There are many big deal tv and film directors and producers, casting directors, managers and agents on the panel. Everyone’s got big fat credits. When I’m on panels like this I find a lot of people giving very practical information. Despite the fact that I too have those big fat credits much of my career has been on the outskirts of the entertainment behemoths, self funded to insure maximum creative freedom so I could do what was in my head, usually a combo of “profound and silly”, and not spit out works by committee and become a depressed albeit wealthy artist. I’ve always had a lust to combine “hi” and “lo” aspects of art within the same work and this doesn’t usually fly when creating by committee.

When I first started out it was absolutely taboo to be a multi-media artist if you were a behind the scenes creator. Anything outside of songwriting that I did like art, furniture design, set design, early social network design in 1992, really anything that didn’t involve solely music and lyrics, was viewed as a little hobby by the industries I did them in. It took into the new millennium for industry folks to see that the new and most vital kind of artist was, in fact, a multi-media artist who could combine all traditional art forms into one big ball of expression and execute in both traditional linear mediums as well as in all existing digital ones, hopefully integrating them as opposed to slapping assets from the traditional ones onto the new virtual medium, the Internet, as if it were a giant billboard.

I don’t expect to stand out like a sore thumb on this panel the way I used to on traditional showbiz panels. (BTW, the sore thumb is a great thing to be on panels as audiences are most appreciative for alternatives points of view.) My thing has always been to screw the rules if the rulemakers aren’t going for what you do and then do what you need to do by any means necessary. But now that it’s overwhelmingly accepted that we’re living in revolutionary/evolutionary times I expect everyone on the panel to come through with some version of this same message. Though I certainly don’t expect anyone else on the panel to own a napkin holder as lovely and inspirational as this one before you now.

Though It looks like it’s made of cheap plastic, the message is actually stamped in metal and mounted on a heavy marble base. It’s that perfect combination of “hi” and “lo” art that I love.

A few minutes ago I emailed Barbara Deutsch to see if I could bring a guest to the panel. She immediately wrote back and said yes but informed me that the panel was, in fact, yesterday… I obviously didn’t “Do it now” yesterday. That would have been a very “lo” part of this experience but, as luck would have it, there’s another panel today. I have absolutely no idea if the topic is the same but my ‘Do it now, do it good and by any means necessary’ message sure is. And by all means, show up when you’re supposed to as opposed to polishing your napkin holder so it looks pretty in photos. You’re bound to get farther in the world.

12Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tree Growing Out Of Traffic Cone and Palm Trimming Nightmares Abated

12Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tree Growing Out Of Traffic Cone and Palm Trimming Nightmares Abated

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Yesterday, all 31 palm trees that surround my house were trimmed. I’m used to this being a total nightmare. As much as I love my Palm trees, 29 of which are the babies of the original two planted when my house was built in 1937, trimming all of them at the same time has traditionally been hell – expensive, messy and dealing with a bunch of tree trimming shysters. All of which makes me long for a simpler approach to fauna, perhaps this little miracle tree growing out of a seemingly dead tree trunk and the traffic cone set on top to protect it. And trust me, it’s really growing. Right on Tujunga Ave. in Studio City. I even got out of my car and tried to pull it out. It’s real.

The fact that freaks of nature like this exist, the little twig that could, busting through a stump and reaching for the sun as if it were God, which I guess it is if you were a tree, makes me wonder if the trauma of maintaining 31 palms is worth it.

Palms are my favorite kind of tree in the world and my grove is, after all, family. The two original trees are close to 80 feet tall. They spit out enough seeds when it’s windy to populate all of Los Angeles with its kids. My entire front lawn is shaved palms that long ago took over where grass used to grow. They look exactly like grass blades except that when you get down to their level you see the blades are oblong and not straight.

The babies even grow through rocks:

Let me tell you, for what it costs taking care of this massive palm family as it grows these trees may as well be going to college. But thank God I finally found an honest, neat and reasonably priced tree trimmer. I’m used to being held hostage for days by companies who promise me they’ll take care not to poke thousands of holes in the trunks as they shimmy up them with metal spiked heels, not to crush all the plants and flowers below and not to leave my house looking like this overnight:

I know it doesn’t look that bad in the dark but there are palm fronds, seeds and ripped plastic covering everything, not to mention a massive shovel and ladder left out to make it convenient for anyone who wants to to break in. I usually have the happiest house on the block but when the A&M tree company took over it looked like the most haunted house on the block not to mention the dirtiest. Here’s what it looked like during the day despite the fact that the clean-up was “almost done”.

A&M even wanted to leave it like this over the weekend. I insisted on next day cleanup but that didn’t stop them from leaving a 25 foot truck parked out in front of my neighbor’s house for four days before they got it together to pick it up.

Once you have this many palm trees you really have to keep the trimming up because they start growing things that look like shafts of wheat (if I really knew what wheat looked like).

And those growths start throwing up all over everything below them so that a once pristine table and chairs now looks like this all the time:

It doesn’t look so bad in the photos but some of this stuff gets really sticky and also if you sit down on a bunch of it it pokes you in the ass.

I’m happy to report that I found a fantastic tree trimming company this time, Manuel’s Tree Service. They don’t mess up your trees with those hideous cleats. They don’t bitch about not leaving jagged frond ends hanging 60 feet up in the air. They’re not too lazy to put the equipment away at night if they don’t finish in the eight hours they swore they would be finished in. They don’t whine about covering everything below in plastic and even brought a roll of their own, something that no other tree company ever did unless you call two little tattered 10 foot tarps enough to cover a nice big lawn and three cars enough. And they don’t burn out entire sections of your plants like the Thrifty Tree Service did when they parked their Chipper only inches away from my 12 foot high wall of horsegrass and burned a 5 foot hole in the wall.

At Manuel’s they finesse those trees with skill. This guy swung from tree to tree, and I’m talking about 80 feet high in the air, never leaving a mark and clipping the tops just so.

In the end, all my trees have nice new haircuts and the lady of the house spent a nice, trauma free day out in the sunshine watching an artist do his work.

Now I have a nice trauma-free six months before the whole thing starts up again. But at least I no longer am at the mercy of companies like A&M and Thrifty, both of whom also repeatedly showed up on the wrong day because they were trimming other trees in the neighborhood and thought they could save on truck rentals. Thank you, Manuel, for turning what was once a nightmare into a pleasure. I no longer have to consider a little tree growing out of a tree trunk and traffic cone as a plausible alternative to maintaining my grove.

11Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Luer Lard Box

11Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Luer Lard Box

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I’ve never actually chomped down on a hunk of Luer Pure Lard but it sure comes in a pretty box. Not only is the box coated with enough wax to make you feel like you’re actually picking up a fistful of lard but many important lard ladden foods are illustrated in glorious color on it.

I especially love this graphic of the chocolate cake:

I’m not sure how much the lard had to do with it but the way the cherry pink frosting is positioned on that cake knife hovering in perfect symmetry above the crumbs of chocolate is picture perfect.

I’m also not sure how ‘Luer” is pronounced but I have a feeling it’s not a perfect rhyme with “sure” as they’ve implied.

It’s a good thing that whoever came up with that was writing slogans and not lyrics. Always better with a perfect rhyme in songs though I can’t tell you how many songwriters throw that one out the window.

I never understood the use of these kind of boxes to package lard. Not that I ever bought any to know for “sure” but wouldn’t the product goop out of the sides and top and be more appropriate in a tub? I’m just glad that none of it slopped on this box before I got to it.

Manufactured by Luer Bros. Packing Co. of Alton, Ill. sometime around 1950, I have a feeling that the boxes were actually more popular than the lard inside. A search on Google turns up enough of these 2-1/2″ x 3″ x5″ honeys to paper a path from Manhattan to LA.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Ginger Durgin, for your generous contribution of ten Luer Lard boxes to the permanent collection of The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch!

08Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bowling Bag Coin Purse and Matching Bowling Everything

08Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bowling Bag Coin Purse and Matching Bowling Everything

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Bowling is easily the sport that has rained down hardest on Pop Culture in terms of artifacts emulating its shape, spirit and efforts to capitalize on the good clean brand of social interaction the sport promotes. Though I go a little farther than the normal person in terms of their love of the sport. I should clarify that it’s not actually the sport itself I love so much as the accouterments associated with it. You name it and there’s some bowling derived interpretation of it. I have bowling can openers, decanters, tables, lamps, brushes, floors, shirts, shoes, dishes, cups, glasses, trophies and then some. Sometimes I even turn the trophies into door handles.

I’m sipping decaf from a bowling ball cup right now.

I clean my clothes with a bowling pin brush.

I work by the light of this bowling pin lamp.

Sometimes the lamp sits on one of four bowling tables I got from the famous Hollywood Star Lanes when they closed their doors in Hollywood in the late 90s. I use them as desks.

I have bowling balls planted in my garden.

I even have a bowling ball carved into my kitchen floor.

Yesterday I extracted coins from my bowling ball coin purse and bought these bowling shoes.

When I got home I popped open a bottle of Bubble Up. I had a choice of two bowling pin bottle openers.

Alas, my bowling bag coin purse is not going to be opened for any more bowling memorabilia for a while. As I’m a totally self-financed artist, my pennies need to be pinched for all the projects I’m working on. That would be depressing but when it all comes down to it my favorite place to be anyway is home. If I’m bored I can always go bowling in the sand.

03Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Owl String Painting

03Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Owl String Painting

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In the 1960’s and 70’s when string paintings were at the peak of their popularity more string owls lived on wallpapered and wood paneled walls inside houses than real ones lived outside. I never took the craft up. The strings in the crowded areas reminded me of tiny spider legs. The nails were tiny and unless you hit them dead on the black velvet would twist around the shaft and pucker everywhere. Then the string, or in this case yarn, had to be pulled completely taunt or you’d have a sagging bird. All those crisscrossing strings gave me Vertigo, especially when it got to places like around the eyes where there were so many of them it was like a spider convention at The Sheraton. This was way too precise of a task for a free-form, spontaneous artist such as myself. I felt the same way about Spirographs.

As ubiquitous as they were there were way too many little spider leg lines for me and you had to adhere too strictly to the rules.

Whether fashioned out of string, metal or ceramic the owl is one of the most iconic birds in art. Although I collect string owl paintings I prefer my owls in more solid form. I have owl cups, …

… an owl radio,…

… an outdoor metal owl…

… and a zillion other forms of owls. I even have more owl string art.

I think my black velvet owl string painting is one of the best looking around, bare bones and to the point.

The disadvantage of owning a string art owl is that keeping him clean is nasty business. Black velvet is hard enough to keep clean without 12,000 little worms stretched across it. The next time you see string art at someone’s house take a good look. The little nails are like barbecue pits around which families of dust balls gather. So, no barbecues at my place, no owls on the wall, just a nice string painting, wrapped back in plastic, going back to nest in a rack in my garage until the next time I need a good look at the First National Bird Of Kitsch.

02Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1968 Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars Book and Saturday Night with Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder, 2010

02Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1968 Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars Book and Saturday Night with Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder, 2010

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My life would have never been the same without Soul music. Growing up in Detroit, my teenage years were spent on the far right of the AM radio dial, down where the black stations were. I had no idea I would eventually become a hit songwriter especially because I never learned (to this day) how to play an instrument. Call it a limitation but I’m someone who believes in finding power in limitations. I learned everything I know from the Soul Stars in this book. Published in 1968 by Right On! magazine, a division of Tiger Beat, Right On! was THE commercial rag of blended Pop Soul, music that rippled with unbridled joy of freedom and self-expression, exuding confidence and spontaneity that sprung from a Black Is Beautiful social consciousness. Listening to THAT music was all music training I needed.

Here’s Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars as of 1968:

I know the names are small but squint to read them because they changed music forever and most of the records they made sound as contemporary today as the day they were mixed.

I loved every record the Supremes made though I loved the earliest ones the most.

The original version of “I Heard It through the Grapevine” by Gladys Knight and the Pimps slayed me. In 1973, “Midnight Train to Georgia” became and remains my single favorite background vocals record ever recorded.

Marvin Gaye’s songs recorded by the time Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars came out, especially “Wonderful One”, “Ain’t That Peculiar” and “I’ll be Doggone”, were my favorites. When he released his version of “I Heard It through the Grapevine” I think it became one of the greatest records ever made.

Merry Clayton was the believable female voice on The Rolling Stones ‘Gimme Shelter’. I got a promo copy of her solo LP in the early 70s when I was working at Columbia Records and played it constantly until I used it as a hat brim for an outfit that really screamed for an albeit impromtu hat.

The highest form of Godliness in Soul, Aretha’s ‘Soul ’69’ is still one of my favorite LPs ever.

I was very depressed when I graduated college having to leave all my friends at the University of Wisconsin. The only thing that kept me somewhat calm and optimistic on the long drive back to Detroit was hearing “Oh Happy Day” over and over again on the radio.

For as great as 1968 was in producing Super-Soul Stars it was still too early to include the group that honestly and for real changed my life, Earth Wind & Fire. In 1978 they gave me my first hit single, “September”, and in ’79 my first hit album, “I Am”, on which I co-wrote every song but two. Here’s they are in 1975:

Larry Dunn, keyboardist extraordinare, had the most awesome Afro of anyone in the group.

Though they too had spectacular Afros I hadn’t even heard of The Emotions when Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars came out in ’68. But years later they joined Earth Wind & Fire to sing my second hit, “Boogie Wonderland”.

Last Saturday night I went to The Waterfront Concert Theater in Marina Del Rey to see Elements of Fire, an EWF tribute led by Larry and Sheldon Reynolds, who joined the group as guitarist in the late 80’s and filled in for co-founder/lead singer and my favorite singer of all time, Maurice White, when he left the group. I bumped into Larry as I was walking in.

Once inside I met up with one of my favorite friends and funniest persons alive, Luenell, who was introducing the band.

If one just judges the music and love affair between performers onstage and the audience, the evening was spectacular. I spent two exquisite hours enjoying some of my favorite music on earth, several songs of which were mine. I was surrounded by friends from back in the day. But that’s where the party ended. Once the evening was in the hands of The Waterfront “Concert Theater” it was a 3, no, 23 ring, circus of errors.

As a purveyor of kitsch and aforesaid strong believer in rolling with limitations if you can’t do anything to change them, these are the moments I must take a breath and remember I’m blessed. Rather than chasing down the manager to strangle him/her I just squint and look at the evening as a massive wheel of brie spilling off a way-too-small buffet table and know I will remember it as a stand out in the annals (or anals depending on how hard you’re squinting) of Kitsch.

The screw-ups started a full week before I even got to The Waterfront “Concert Theater” when I tried to buy tickets over the phone and talked to a chain of robots, none of whom could help me other than tell me that dinner was served during the show. I would’ve bought tickets online but after five minutes of searching the site for a link to the box office there was no link to tickets for the band I wanted to see. I finally bypassed the club and got tickets through the tour manager. But even with them printed out in hand you still had to stand in line to pick up the real tickets which were the identical printed sheets of paper. Which would have been slightly more tolerable if the air conditioning had been working.

Soaked like a mop, I went to the bathroom to freshen up. I know this place is called The Waterfront because it sits on the harbor. I just wish they would’ve confined the standing bodies of water to outside. Nothing short of a few sticks of dynamite could’ve unplugged this:

I moved on to sink number two but unless I had brought my bathing suit and spent the night sitting on the bathroom counter dipping my toes to try and cool down from the malfunctioning air conditioning I still was left with no place to wash my hands.

I included the following photo because it’s important for you to see the primo condition vintage 1950’s rayon shirt I have on. Covered with starbursts, it’s one of the best Atomic Age shirts I own. I only wear it on special occasions when I know I want to feel good.

Little did I know as I swept past the Waterfront’s beautifully finished bathroom walls…

… and well-attended to wastebasket…

… what would happen the second I got to my seat in the “VIP” section, three bridge tables plopped in the middle of the one and only narrow aisle that led to the stage and at least 20 other people who would need a waitress or a bathroom throughout the night. Though we were in slightly better shape than hundreds of other sardines smashed together in a room with only one exit. I finnnnnaly stepped over enough bodies to crumble into my seat and a waitress dumps a bottle of beer and a full whiskey sour on my beautiful, special, rare and beloved Atomic shirt. Ice cubes dribbled down my back coating both sides of the garment with sticky goo and deposited yet another body of standing water in my chair, the kind that has ass indentations carved into the wood so any liquid just sits there. Despite not being enough to soak up the mess on me, my chair, the floor, the people next to me and my once beautiful but now permanently spotted leather bag the waitress returned with six towels, a blessing as she only brought one thin paper napkin when she finally delivered our meal, the one and ONLY item on the “full dinner” menu the robots had told me was available, a Styrofoam plate with a tiny pile of bagged salad, an unidentifiable mound of squishy stuff that was probably going for Jumbalaya and “Chicken Strips”, 4 tiny frozen Costco chicken legs. As Luenell said when she got on stage, “Don’t be tellin’ a black woman you got chicken strips and then bring her no chicken legs dripping with sauce so now her lipstick’s smeared all over her face and she got to get up on stage. That’s dangerous.”

After about a half an hour I adjusted to the fact that I was stuck in a beer and whiskey soaked outfit in a club with little to no air conditioning and no sink to clean any of it or me off. The music was SO good – “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Reasons”, “Serpentine Fire”, “Can’t Hide Love”, “I Can’t Let Go”, “In The Stone”, “Getaway” “Fantasy”, “That’s the Way of the World” and on and on. I even got used to having my chair shoved in my back every time anyone needed to get by. Of the hundreds of times it happened that night thankfully one time it was by this guy in the blue shirt:

He had many hits by the time he made it into Right On’s 100 Super-Soul Stars in 1968.

Ultimately, I think covering a sweat soaked body with an outfit made of beer and whiskey made Stevie’s medley of “Shining Star” and “Superstition” even better for me. Despite the constant efforts of The Waterfront Concert Jail I Mean Theater to do otherwise, it was the kind of night where you couldn’t help feeling like a Soul Star when you left.

(For more of me, EWF & Luenell on an evening that was far better managed, see the opening party for my social network, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at AWMOK.com, last September 21st, the date that’s in the opening line of the song, “Do you remember the 21st night of September…”. Larry Dunn and founding EWF member Verdine White, greatest bass player who ever lived, played for anyone who wanted to sing kariokee of “September”. Though there are no drinks being spilled, no germ infested bathrooms, lots of food, air conditioning and folks who worked there who actually got past the first grade, it’s still fantastic viewing material for anyone who likes me, Earth, Wind & Fire, Luenell or Super-Soul Stars in general.)

Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B12TPKuVcSY

“September”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKXU2o6NVT8

“Boogie Wonderland”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj1tzW4kyMg

29Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s “Sponge Cloth”

29Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s “Sponge Cloth”

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Long before Mr. Clean and Magic Sponge promised fewer steps and happy housewives came Harwood’s Sponge Cloth, one of many modern miracle kitchen products offered for the first time in history in the post-war Atomic Age to ladies of the kitchen. As chemicals developed for warfare or space travel like Teflon were trickling down to pots and pans, linoleum floors and kitchen counters, the Sponge Cloth promised to be a “Sponge and Dishcloth in One!” that “Cleans and Dries in One Stroke!” “Wet•squeeze•use” and for 35¢ lives were changed because now there was more time to run into the next room and enjoy the revolution happening in the living room, television.

I’m always completely intrigued by people who develop a supposedly revolutionary product and then come up with a name like “Sponge Cloth”. Like a wad of mud sliding down the wall of creativity until it hits zero. Smash! A direct hit on the head of the mundane.

I’m sure it’s true that “Millions of Satisfied Users” lost muscle mass because of the minimal arm movement involved in operating the Sponge Cloth.

I just hope it cleaned better than it aged:

The photo actually makes the Sponge Cloth look like a normal scouring pad but in reality it looks much more like stale matzoh or a piece of insulation than it does either a sponge or a cloth.

I always love when a product refers to itself as “amazing” and promises HUNDREDS of uses or, in the case of the Sponge Cloth, “a Hundred Uses” on the nose.

Does that mean that the Sponge Cloth can be used 100 times or are there 100 different ways to use it? If the latter, The Harwood Company of Farmingdale, New Jersey could have gotten a little more imaginative on the big three than ‘wash’, ‘wipe dry’ and ‘polish’. But, then again, it’s the Sponge Cloth. Same guy working on the art direction as the name.

As much as I disparage the Sponge Cloth, if it really was a cloth that cleaned and dried in one stroke I wish I had found a case of them instead of just one. And didn’t wait 60 years to use them.

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

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Other than the fact that it’s packaged in a 750ml bottle, the standard size vessel for champagne, the stretch to connect product with name is so thin and precarious here as to induce the medical condition known as Kitschago. As a writer, it’s painful to see so many plays on words in trying to make elements as disparate as popcorn and classical music seem connected. As a kitsch lover, however, it’s ecstasy. Let’s see, how many ways can we thwack the creative brain with a lead pipe and make this popcorn/ Beethoven connection work? The label, Château de Musica, implores the popcorn ingestee to “HANDEL with care”. I don’t understand what care it takes to eat “Le grand Pops” but if one does apparently HANDEL it wrong the bottler, RACH MANINOFF, guarantees “your money BACH”.

Unfortunately, the LISZT price isn’t stamped on the bottle. And I don’t know enough about classical music to know if Albert Elovitz has anything to do with the art form but somehow the military managed to get in on the wordplay as Distilled by credit goes to KERNEL Albert Elovitz.

Thankfully, the bottom of the bottle remains pun free.

I cringe when people send me really cheesy song lyrics to critique, so pun filled at times I find it necessary to tell them that connecting together a bunch of plays on words isn’t an original concept and rarely works unless something else so unique is tossed into the mix. In this case, it’s thankfully not a crappy song I have before me but a champagne bottle, vintage 1986, filled with popcorn. It may not be musical but it’s definitely what I would stock in the bar to serve with the cheese wheel at my next party.

And while we’re on the subject of Beethoven’s Fifth…

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

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I’m not sure which kitsch factor I enjoy most about this made in Japan Portable Banana Keeper, the fact that it’s pierced with hearts because it loves bananas so much,…

…or that you can wear it as a necklace,…

…or that the little latches that keep your banana secure are so hard to pop open it will only last for two or three reloadings,…

…or that my cat loves it…

…or that there’s a special one for green bananas…,

…so special, in fact, that it’s called a Banana Case…

…as opposed to its yellow big brother,…

…The Banana Keeper,…

…and is scientifically designed with tiny holes instead of large hearts…

…to ripen your fruit quicker despite the fact that few people I know would walk around with their banana around their neck for days while they waited for it to ripen.

Or maybe it’s simply the fact that all bananas aren’t created equal and some don’t fit into their new home.

Whatever the case may be, I love plastic convenience products from Japan. And I don’t really care if the Banana Keeper/ Banana Case works or lasts at all as long as it continues to make my cat happy.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Margaret Lewis, for your generous contribution of one Banana Case and two Banana Keepers to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com!