Anyone who knows me knows that despite writing songs that have sold over 50 million copies and being obsessed with music since I can remember I rarely go to concerts. I hate waiting in line, being trapped in a row once you sit down, being blocked by someone’s head or worse yet dancing body, and I certainly don’t want to hear someone in my immediate proximity singing along who I didn’t pop down multiple clams to see. So it’s a really rare occurrence to get me to actually go out and see something. But I’ve been working with Storm Lee…

…he ex of X-Factor and very currently one of the amazing singers on Glee, so I knew I had to haul my ass out to this concert.

What an unbelievable night!! Organized by Storm as a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, all of the behind-the-scenes Glee singers sang their favorite Christmas carols or holiday oriented songs. Although I wish they sang selections from this album…

…or maybe this one…

… – oooh, that makes me hungry – though not as hungry as this one…

… the Glee singers’ killer voices, all unique from each other, made for quite a gift from Santa!

It was a night of complete joy, and even included a special appearance by Glee cast member, Amber Riley.

And unbeknownst to me, the keyboard  player/leader of the band was Chris Price, who worked with me on my first appearance in 37 years as well as my Soup to Nuts Party Mix show a couple of months ago.

No rest for the weary, bright and early the next morning, a Sunday no less, Storm and I went to work on my new show, a newly realized iteration of the technologically-train-wrecked Soup to Nuts.

We were very much in the holiday spirt and full of GLEE.

 

If I thought Indonesia could slam it out of the park as far as they shot this kitsch-krested pencil case every time they turned out another product I’d sign up for the mystery package monthly home delivery! Man, this thing is truly insane. Big, ratty cabbage patch-reminiscent heads with little tuffs of madness as limbs…

…and what looks like laundry lint for hair.

And how about that nose?!  Eyes don’t seem very important to this pencil case.

Lucky for me, there were three of these tucked into the bin at Dollar Tree.

Apparently, 2/3s of the litter are elephants:

Although they only got half as much lace around the collar as their sock muffin sister, they got much fancier fabric for cuffs, or should I say arms.

I never would have pegged these pouches as pencil cases.

Although there’s a nice supply of shredded paper inside keeping the little girls/boys/unidentifiable lifeforms nice and plump,…

…the cases aren’t quite long enough to get a whole pencil in should you be starting with a brand new just-sharpened-once one.  It’s an excellent sign in a kitsch world when what the purpose of an object hasn’t been taken into account in its design.


So girl/boy/unidentifiable lifeform, smile for the camera, though not necessarily the pencil case!

I’ve had this thing so long I don’t even remember where I got it from. A petite 6″ x 9″ x 3.5″, d hard plastic goldleaf textured frame surrounds the fluffiest kitty on the planet. I especially love her little forlorn mouth and seafoam blue eyes.

The sad little floral bouquet burrowed in her fur also kills me.

The pussy’s frame almost looks like it’s made out of plaster,…

… but it’s this puffed up thin plastic that cracks like dry twigs in a forest if you even stare too hard at it.

Such a happy pussy!

 

As many times as I’ve stopped at The Madonna Inn, I’ve never stayed overnight until a trip to celebrate my birthday a couple of weekends ago. I’ve always fantasized about staying there. How could I not with each of the 109 rooms uniquely designed and insanely themed, with names like Love Nest, Old Mill, Kona Rock, Irish Hills, Cloud Nine, Just Heaven, Hearts & Flowers, Rock Bottom, Austrian Suite, Cabin Still, Old World Suite, Caveman Room, Elegance, Daisy Mae, Safari Room, Highway Suite, Jungle Rock, American Home, Bridal Falls, and more? I picked the floral crested Madonna Suite, which was personally decorated in the late 60s by the Inn’s Grand Dame, Phyllis Madonna.

The first thing that hits you when you walk in is that signature Madonna Inn carpet:

Next, the generous amount of seating choices:


It’s hard to tell from the photo but that’s monogramed light pink pony skin on the chair backs:

And those are rock stools in front of a working fireplace:

Those are right round the rock from the bed that was way too messy to shoot every time I went to take photos of it. So here’s a close-up  of the bespread just to show that none of the lust for pink was lost in more subtle areas of the room.

There’s also a lot of mirrors.

Those angels are all over the Inn. This one hangs over the bed:

This chandelier hangs over the dining room table and pink cowhide chairs…

…illuminating the Madonna Inn ice bucket and branded glasses…

…and water.

Some other water is branded as well, at least until you lift the lid:

As you can see, I love pink, which reminds me of home:

All the doors, walls and ceilings in the Madonna Suite are pink too:

This door leads into the bathroom:

….that’s lit by nice, simple pink rose lights:

…over a nice, simple rock sink…

… with electrical outlets perched periouslously close to running streams of water that zip through every crevice in the rock:

Everything is embedded into rock, including the Kleenex box…

…and the light switches:

All of this is across the rock floor from a waterfall rock shower:

It’s impossible to see detail here but right above the showerhead a waterfall splashes down from rocks that jut out above it.

I acquired quite a stash of Madonna branded freebies…

…collecting every bag, napkin, pen, soap container, toilet sanitation band, and info sheet the place had to offer.

Though it still didn’t stop me from going a little nuts in the gift shop:

I’m very attached to The Madonna Suite so will probably end up always bunking there whenever I stay overnight, but here are a few other choices I’m toying with for next time:

Old Mill:

Caveman:

Yahoo:

Barrel Of Fun:

Austrian Suite:

American Home:

Vous:

How could I go wrong in any of them?!

Bright and early the weekend before Thanksgiving Prudence Fenton and I hopped in the mustache van and drove up the coast to San Luis Obispo.

If you’ve never been to The Madonna Inn there, drive, fly, walk, bike, whatever mode of transportation it takes, and go there NOW!

I don’t care where you’ve been to see your architectural kitsch, this is one stop shopping of infinitesimal magnitude. I’ve blogged about this place many a time before but one post, even a hundred, could never cover the staggering detail present on the 2200 acres that appear mirage-like on the side of the 101 freeway.

The whole place was designed by this guy

…. for this lady:

Alex Madonna, a construction magnate and entrepreneur who among other things built the section of the 101 the Inn sits next to, built this palace in 1958. These portraits of Alex and his wife Phyllis’ hang right outside the main dining room.

You need a closer look at that mother of all grape lamps in between them. Eight feet of barrel and the most magnificent assemblage of resin grape clusters anywhere:

This hangs right across the cave from this stairway, one of the subtler ones at The Madonna Inn:

Every time I drive up north taking the 101, I stop at The Madonna Inn to eat. Usually I’m in a hurry and just have time to hit the coffee shop. By the way, coffee always tastes better when the sugar is in one of these two forms, available only here:

The pink crystals and rock formations look especially good on the all copper counter and tabletops…

…which are surrounded by all copper decorative trim…

…which makes sense as this is the name of the coffee shop:

But if I’m not in a hurry to get where I’m going I try to park myself in the main dining room, The Gold Rush Steakhouse. I think you can see why:

Here’s another reason:

That’s one big ol’ slab o’ beef! As an animal lover I  don’t like to think about this but the beef is grown mere feet from the restaurant.  Here I am posing at midnight with the subject of my meal:

I always love a restaurant that starts you off with a relish plate:

Far from the usual celery and carrots and olives, this one has salami and a big brick of cheese thrown on top.  Also thrown in for my birthday festivities was Nancye Ferguson, who drove up to join us.

When it’s your birthday at the Madonna Inn your table is marked with a balloon:

Tables with balloons get free cake for dessert:

I had seen the 9″ high pink champagne cakes in the coffeeshop earlier…

So I got a big hunk of it:

Cake always tastes better when it matches the decor.

It’s even better when the decor is decorated for Christmas.

At this time of year, any place there’s room to stick a Christmas tree at The Madonna Inn there is one:

Angles guard over every table:

Some of the most famous rooms at the Madonna Inn are the bathrooms. The most famous is the men’s room. I finally got the balls to sneak in with Jim Burns, a.k.a. Sgt. Frank Woods in Call Of Duty-Black Ops, who also joined us.

Although the giant clam shell sinks are fantastic…

…the legendary waterfall urinal is the main attraction:

Though sans waterfall, the ladies room next door has its own unique charm:

In another bathroom off of the coffeeshop, little girls get their props.  You can’t tell the scale from this photo but the toilet is teeny tiny tot sized…

…and matches the mini little girl sink in the middle of the big gal facilities:

All of this pales next to the bathroom in The Madonna Suite, where I tended to the needs of my roast-beef-sugared-champagne-caked body.

Here’s a little closer look at the sink, though it’s hard to see detail amidst all the rock. Water trickles down all the troughs dug out of the rock.

A full tour of The Madonna Suite tomorrow…

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“Hey Jerrie”, the video I made with 91 year old female drummer on an oxygen tank, Jerrie Thill, is the little engine that could! Every week since we made it in 2009 the video has steadily grown. With absolutely no promotion since then it steadily gained viewers. Nothing dramatic but inching along a few hundred or thousand every week. Then all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago the numbers started going crazy. Tens of thousands of new views a day to the 1,079,439 it is today!
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I’ve had some videos that have gotten close to the million mark but they’ve mainly loaded on the views in one big chunk around the time of release. But Jerrie, who departed this plane last year, just kept on ticking and crossed over the magic number a couple of nights ago.
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There’s something wonderful about this happening to Jerrie. She had a wonderful career, working steadily since being discovered by Al Capone’s brother while her parents ran gin for the boys during Prohibition. But she never had recognition in the millions or even tens of thousands and the million mark would make her VERY happy indeed.
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More about Jerrie here.

A few Sundays ago, me and the lovely Snappy P, a.k.a. Prudence Fenton, headed down to Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs, just outside of Palm Springs.

Most people come here for the natural hot springs.  I came for this:

The greatest barbecue I’ve ever seen. Saw it about nine months ago in an email from Modernway, an incredible vintage store on the main drag in Palm Springs, and finally made the trip down to claim it. I was tempted to leave with this as well but my pockets somehow remained zipped:

Though now that I think about it, a sunflower table next to a golf-ball-on-tee BBQ would have made an awfully nice set. But I had spent all my petty cash in Beaumont, a de rigeur vintage stop on the way down from LA, buying things like an exploding Mt. St. Helen’s whisky bottle…

…and an excellent apple ashtray:

Everytime I’m in Palm Springs I take endless photos of the former mayor, Mr. Sonny Bono. I love when statues look absolutely nothing like the person they’re carved to commemorate:

We stayed here, a few miles out of Palm Springs:

Two Bunch is a very private place so I must honor it by not posting any photos. I will say, however, that I’ve always enjoyed the neck-like-a-giraffe-horse waiting patiently outside the men’s room.

And, despite the refrigerator that has rumbled every time I’ve stayed in Villa 2 as well as the air conditioner that’s placed so it directly blows on your head – curious placement for a room in a health spa – I continually go back.

Though relatively little time was spent turning into an iceberg as we immediately headed back into Palm Springs to eat at Circa 59 in the relatively newly refurbished Riviera Hotel.

The last time I walked in this place was about 10 years ago when I was in an art show sponsored by Nancy Sinatra. As her father spent so many years frolicking at the Riviera it seemed only right I participate despite the fact that I had to whip something together overnight. I don’t remember the show being too successful. Maybe my piece would’ve had more impact if it were featured here, just down the block from the Riviera.

Needless to say, I’d love to be invited to a luncheon at the lodge.

The new and improved Riviera is quite a different story than the Dolly Sinatra Lodge. Here are a few shots by way of demonstration:

Those cutout panels are all over the ground floor of the hotel. Orange being my favorite neon color, it definitely set the tone for an excellent evening. As did the seating in the lobby.

There was interesting seating all over the place.

Though none as favorite as this little area that popped up a few times in the grand hallway leading to the restaurant.

I love pearlized leather.

I also love the pool table right across from those couches.

And i really go for the scale of the doors.

There are also great mirrors all over the place.

And a curved walkway to the rest rooms.

Despite a few hiccups like broccoli being undercooked despite sending it back twice and still tasting like a baseball bat and never getting any bread, the food at Circa 59 was pretty good. I totally forgot to take photos of it though so instead you can see my new little knit cap that I also bought in Beaumont as it’s displayed against the high booths in the restaurant.

I hate how that thing is positioned on my head. It has stripes all around the top but just looks like a lumpy muffin here. Speaking of lumpy muffins, they usually go great with fried chicken. But this is the closest I got to fowl, just down the road from Two Bunch:

And this is the closest I got to an elephant, whizzing past this one on the 60 freeway as we headed back to LA:

There was also a dinosaur sighting:

Though perhaps my favorite sighting in Palm Springs was this T-shirt…

…that was across the street from these two plaster guard poodles…

…that was down the block from where I picked up my golf ball bbq.

And that’s what brought us here in the first place.

As soon as I read about this alley in downtown San Luis Obispo I knew I had to hit it. Even with the possibility  of it being underwhelming and gross, an assemblage of decades of wadded-up gum had to be paid homage to by any self-respecting aKitschionado. I’m elated to report that Bubblegum Alley is 15 x 70 solid feet of sheer chewed brilliance!

I love that so many people would participate,…

… some of whom are more eager to be identified than others.

I love that so much ephemera accompanies the saliva sculpture.

Though at quick glance from a distance it could be mistaken for a condom wall.

Just a few blocks away there’s another tableau that looks like like it might have been influenced by the great wall of gum.

Though dexterious, these are thespians balanced on a play rather than wads of gum.

And here’s another textural experience in the neighborhood, a paper plate Christmas tree..

After such a massive consumption of kitsch I always get hungry. Though I could do without the pub part I tend to look for places with names like this…

…or murals like this:

Though it doesn’t seem like Ben Franklin should be be flying any kites near bubblegum walls as one gust of wind and there goes the discovery of electricity. Way too good of a chance of the kite getting stuck on a wad of Bubblicious.

I’m pretty religious about celebrating one’s birthday all day from the strike of midnight through the next 24. Years that I haven’t observed this rule I’ve been miserable. If I’m stuck working I don’t concentrate on the work anyway, too resentful that I didn’t stick to what I had laid down. This year, my festivities are taking place a week late at my favorite place on earth, The Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, with the little group I spend each and every birthday with, some of whom joined me on my big night last Thursday at Bar Marmont.

That was just the little hamburger teaser so the day itself, November 10, would not go un-celebrated. But Bar Marmont didn’t happen until 9 PM. so there were many hours to fill with birthday escapedom building up to it. So I spent the day tooling through East LA and beyond photographing my favorite vintage and kitsch spots, eating tacos and picking up treasures at every 98, 99 and dollar store I could find. On my way, I passed many signs like this:

I love handpainted beauty salon signs. Especially because of the portraits, featuring ‘Familiar’ hairstyles of decades gone by, evidently still sculpted inside, and very macho looking men.

I love how massive the male’s head is on this next sign compared to the diminutive female’s that’s sporting the illegitimate hairstyle child of Jane Fonda circa 1967 and me for the last 2 1/2 decades:

Even more than bad art on beauty salon signs I love when a nice Grecian pillar holds up nothing:

Especially if the windows around it lead to nothing but brick.

Windows aren’t the only thing I like painted on walls:

A nice ghoulish girl in the middle of a desert dressed in trashy lingerie sucking on a can of beer is nice too. And I always love a nice family painted on windows. This one kills me because look how perfectly the actual table outside fits in with the grill that silicon-injected mama is cooking on for her family in the mural:

I think you need a closer look at silicon-injected mama. Of course, her upper torso hogs all the attention but can we discuss the size of her thighs and how, if her entire body were painted, she would be 14 feet tall?

It’s always a nice touch when something that should be one word is split up into two. Especially if one of the syllables is ‘high’ and it’s painted to preserve symmetry so that one enters the mar-ket.

I love when letters are missing from signs:

One doesn’t have to look far to discover the mystery here. What’s missing from church is a ‘u’.

One of my favorite genres of signs are these 1950’s style ones on a stylus that contain many different signs to make up one master one.

 

This one is very faded but I love motels so much that I always like when each letter earns its own space:

In its heyday, this one must’ve been a killer:

And I always love when these sectioned signs end up in a 1960 cascade of lights at the top:

I agree that softserve ice cream is important enough to cap off this honey:

Of course, when a sign is carved into the shape of what it is that they’re selling inside it always gets extra points:

But perhaps no sign has had a more pervasive effect on the American culture and landscape than this:

The very first McDonald’s in the world, built in 1953 and featuring Speedee the Chef, is still standing and serving today in Downey, CA.

I don’t know what this structure is hidden behind the fence right next to it but I’m hoping it was some kind of gas station where burger-chompers could fill up their tanks and ingest fumes from the gorgeous 1950’s chariots they were being served in.

Now here’s something I would love to get my hands on. I’m sure Norms was no competition for the almighty McDonald’s just a block away, but this little Dutch-gone-Atomic structure with the big saltshaker tower in the middle was probably what I would have steered toward if given the option back in the day:

I passed a ton of stunning and thankfully still standing architecture on my drive, like this old movie theater very close to the ch rch a few photos back.

The new slapped-on colors are oh so wrong and it’s a shame that a construction company inhabits this instead of a projector and an incredible candy counter, but at least all the details have been preserved

I’m incredibly partial to Deco architecture because I live in such a structure. That these two buildings are still standing on Soto Street is a wonder of anti-wrecking ball nature:

Just as impressive as gorgeous architecture is gorgeous foliage, especially when carved into the shape of  what the architecture holds inside.

I’m not sure if the Del Rio Lanes in Downey is new or old. Although the architecture screams 1950s, the paint looks brand spanking new, refurbished in a way that a Marge’s or Ruby’s diner looks old but is inescapably and cheesily retro new.

The sign looks like the real thing but then there’s something again about the way it’s painted that makes me think otherwise:

None of that really matters to me because they have the good sense to keep the bushes appropriately trimmed:

When it comes to appropriate landscaping. There’s nothing I like better than a nice burger, fries and a coke up on the roof:

 

I’m not sure why the hot dogs escaped sculptural interpretation…

…but they make an excellent roofline nonetheless:

Last but certainly not least, I love a company that sells one thing but moves into a building that represents an entirely different thing in the same genre. This is where I’d want to go if I was interested in cement blocks as a fence, not chain-link.

Even better, what does the elephant have to do with anything??

Perhaps it’s there to remind me that elephants have extraordinary memories, and that I should always remember what a blessed life I have in that I understand that all these things that have crossed my eyeballs through all these years are gifts to make me smile and remember that one thing I love about life so much is that people get to express themselves in all different ways. And most of them make me happy. Which is a nice thing to experience every day but especially on your birthday.