Allee Willis Blog » Kitsch O’ The Day

14Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Drunken Cucumber Man

14Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Drunken Cucumber Man

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To any of you having company over today I’d like to suggest this insane little dip with a sloshed, poorly cut cucumber complete with little olive ring burp bubbles lying in a vat of fruity stuff. I have no idea what this actually tastes like but the arts and crafts aspects of it are spectacular and dips in general tower high on the Kitsch Top 10 of conversation sparking party foods.

Thank you, aKitschionado Nessa, for submitting this gem to the Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at awmok.com! According to Nessa, “This was on the buffet at a church dinner my mom talked me into going to with her. There were little nuns in full habits spreading this stuff on toast.” Nuns presenting a dip featuring anything drunk is excellence in Kitsch no matter how you dole it out.

I love food art anyway but there are several outstanding features that make me love Drunken Cucumber Man more than anything:
• Of course, the fact that he’s drunk and is served at a church smorgasbord.
• The fact that the arms aren’t attached to the shoulders and the way the shoulders are attached to the torso is so much larger than the little skinny arms that should be attached to that.
• The fact that the dip is “some sort of fruity stuff”.
• LOVE the bottle but couldn’t they have attached it to his hand?
• LOVE the pimento tongue.
• Skinny Legs and All
• Love the inside of the cucumber as a hat texture.

If the nun who cooked this lived in LA I’d invite her to come to my next pot luck party. In the meantime, I’m pretty sure Drunken Cucumber Man dip will be present one way or the other.

12Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Fake McDonald’s Plastic French Fries Clock

12Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Fake McDonald’s Plastic French Fries Clock

Everything about this clock is wrong, not the least of which is trying to get away with looking like it comes from McDonald’s when it’s actually from the M. A Collection in China whatever that is. Made of chunky hard rubber yellower-than-mac-‘n-cheese-made-with-3-pounds-of-Velveeta yellow french fries popping out of a red fry bag…

…with a not quite centered clock in it, I got this as a gift in 1995. I’ve never changed the battery and for 15 years have watched the little yellow hand twitch as it tries to push itself past the 12. Apparently more money was spent on the batteries than making the clock.

Although it’s completely hollow the french fry clock weighs a ton. Literally, it weighs over 4 pounds and I can’t figure out why. And there’s this strange bowling pin shape etched into the back…

…with no apparent purpose other than the designer apparently liked the shape.

Although one might assume it would pop out so it can be hung, unless you consider hiring a pile driver to pound it out there’s no way that sucker’s leaving the lead-heavy rubber anytime soon.

Despite its shortcomings or maybe because of them I’m strangely and loyally attached to this clock. Many things have come and gone in my kitchen since I owned it but the fries ain’t goin nowhere (mainly because they’re too heavy to lift).

11Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Giant Ceramic Snail Ashtray

11Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Giant Ceramic Snail Ashtray

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The snail is right up there with the owl and poodle as animal kingdom icons of Atomic Age Kitsch. In the 1950s, snails popped up as vases, plates, tabletops, ashtrays, purses, swimming pools, anything and everything that could be pounded into the instantly recognizable shape.

This 12″ x 9″ x 2″ ashtray is a classic baby pink with little smoke gray bevels and gold cigarette rests. I always thought this was the perfect model for a swimming pool and jacuzzi as there’s room for lounge furniture around the edge of the pool, the jacuzzi’s poolsize and the center where everything snail meets would make a perfect bar accessible to swimmers and spa-ers alike.

There’s no manufacturers mark anywhere but the ashtray’s stone cold up-from-the-sea 1950s. it lives outside as snails should on my 1960’s mint green fiberglass table with matching chairs.

It never moves an inch because it weighs as much as a whale. Literally, it’s the heaviest ashtray I own.

09Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Plastic Rolly Polly Doll

09Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Plastic Rolly Polly Doll

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This was a gift from Michael Patrick King, writer and director of Sex and the City, a couple of years ago for my birthday. I always thought the doll had a Carrie Bradshaw vibe to her, smiling and happy and looking good in red. One day I slammed my shin into the table Rolly Polly sits on and it made such a great chime sound I didn’t mind the dripping gash down below. I limped into my recording studio and dragged a mic to reach her, tilting her in all directions, spinning her around and pushing her across the table. The different chime patterns sounded great and distinctive, sometimes carrying on for 30 seconds or more.

I love working with tracks I record just by banging on things around my house. This is nothing a skilled or trained musician would do but my specialty is hearing rhythm and time in places most people don’t. As my Color Purple collaborators used to say, “All aboard for Willisville!” as I continually heard things in different time signatures they thought a piece of music was in and never cared about working off of a grid, preferring instead for everything to play as it lays, natural and funky. I love things that lazily and organically hang together and this little Roly Poly girl doesn’t disappoint. I doubt MPK thought he was giving me a musical instrument for my birthday but that’s exactly what she’s become.

If you ever get a chance to knock one of these gals around I hope you do. She makes one of the happiest sounds in the world.

08Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Academy Award Screen Stars Stamp Album

08Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Academy Award Screen Stars Stamp Album

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This is an amazing movie find, especially for a stamp collecting movie nut (which I’m not but I can appreciate the passion). Sixty pages of blank squares, each ascribed with the name of a 1920’s – 50’s star, from Academy Award winners to TV stars, “The Young Set”, International stars, World-Famous Women, Animal stars, Shootin’ stars (Western), Symphony stars, Singing stars, Comedians and every other category that Hollywood could possibly subdivide itself into.

The Screen Stars Photo Album was made in 1955 by the Harlich Manufacturing Co. of Chicago and approved by the National Poster Stamp Society with “All Rights to Screen Star Stamps and Stamp Albums fully protected by Hollywood Star Stamps, Inc. in cooperation with the Stars, Studios And Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc.”.

07Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1976 Do-It-Yourself Oscar

07Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1976 Do-It-Yourself Oscar

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This is a product worthy of an Oscar for Best Kitsch, a fake wood cardboard stand-up “plaque” that looks suspiciously like the piece of cardboard that comes with any cheap picture frame, stapled on, staples askew, emblazoned with a cheap gold embossed sticker with three imprints, none of which have anything to do with the Academy Awards other than a trophy atopped with a nude female athlete that kinda sorta is in that Oscar trophy pose.

All of this is encased in a really cheap brittle plastic enclosure that’s tinted gold to make it look more fancy. The writing on the package slays me. As if any idiot wouldn’t know to “INSCRIBE IN ALLOTED SPACE YOUR OWN GRAND AWARD WITH ANY BALLPOINT PEN”. How elegant! And how worthy of ALL CAPS!

These “Awards for those you Love and Admire” – I guess ALL THREE stickers are Oscar worthy despite the lack of tie-in – were made by Syd Art Novelty Company, Inc. of New York in 1976.

The Do-It-Yourself Oscar is “Fun Giving for Gags”. Then come the words “Sports” and “Occasions.”, the latter of which somehow also merits a period. Perhaps next time Syd Art could hire an actual writer rather than some family member to create the language for a product that supposedly honors achievements in creativity.

An excellent feature of this is that the price tag is still on and it’s from the Hollywood Magic store, a relic a lot older than this do-it-yourself Oscar that’s still alive and well on Hollywood Boulevard, just down the street from where the real Oscars take place tonight.

05Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Streaker Pendant

05Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Streaker Pendant

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Cheap jewelry is always a popular breeding ground for Kitsch. Kitsch glitz shines especially bright when designs are made to capitalize on popular trends such as the streaking craze that began in the 1960’s and attained astronomical heights when a peace signing streaker crashed the 1974 Academy Awards blazing behind actor David Niven. From that point on, streaking was as glorified in all forms of design, from T-shirts to decals to plaster figurines to the kind of tacky finery you see here.

If the people who practiced the sport had incredible bodies it would make for fine spectator fare but usually it’s just some attention starved paunchy dude with a severe “shortcoming”.

Also, most streakers were/are male so curious they chose a female to be immortalized here. So very 1970’s Woman’s Lib.

04Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Rubber Waffle

04Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Rubber Waffle

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Of all the things I have in my house, a 40 year collection of Atomic, Soul and Kitsch memorabilia, this rubber waffle that’s sat out on my kitchen counter since I bought it in the 1980’s is one of the most popular things in the joint. Made by Iwasaki Images of America, the premiere display food manufacturer in the world, this waffle looks so drippingly, syrupy and buttery real even I’m tempted to chomp a bite out of it every now and then.

I also have a huge roast beef, some sushi, a dozen sweet rolls, donuts, a glass of milk, a glass of orange juice and some scrambled eggs. There’s rubber food that looks like it’s made out of rubber and rubber food that looks good enough to eat. No question that Iwasaki serves up the latter.

03Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Green Thumb Planter

03Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Green Thumb Planter

I may have sore thumbs but not green ones. Not an area I have especially great skills in other than I seem to have a talent for nursing baby Palm trees. Nothing that would fit in this 5″ ceramic planter with the perfect green thumb though. Instead, seeds drop from two 80-year-old massively high Palm trees at my house and thousands of little baby Palms sprout all over my yard. They’re faithfully mowed twice a week so they look like the perfect sheared bright green astroturf lawn.

I’ve never heard of a Palm tree lawn before. I’ve seen a lot of green thumb vases too but this one feels as special as my lawn.

02Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1959 “Name That Tune” Game

02Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1959 “Name That Tune” Game

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Well, the obvious tunes I would name are “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done to Deserve To This?” and I guess “I’ll Be There for You”. The rest of my favorite tunes are here. But if I have to credit an early source of inspiration for being in the music business and then becoming a songwriter it would have to be the TV show, “Name That Tune”, upon which this game is based and which I watched religiously as a wee nip.

There’s nothing more I like in a game from a Kitsch perspective then if it’s convoluted to play. On the other hand, I love the early attempt at injecting multimedia interactivity into it. Made in 1959 by Milton Bradley, you play “Name That Tune” by the player elected to be “Disk Jockey” spinning the dial three times, calling out the numbers on which the arrows stops each time and then spinning the enclosed 78 on which actual TV host, George De Witt, introduces himself, calls out a number and “plays” a tune.

From here on in I don’t understand the instructions. But maybe you do as there’s still a foot of them to go through:

“Name That Tune” ran from 1953 to 1959 on CBS with De Witt as the most popular host until it came back from 1974-’81 with Tom Kennedy and later with Jim Lange. The game show became the template for a continuing slate of copycat shows as well as ones that borrow from it heavily including current fare like “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” and “The Singing Bee”.