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.

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I was already onto more sophisticated teenage fare like Hullabaloo and Shindig by the time Green Acres, a hokey journey into the countryside by two rich city slickers, came on the air in 1968.  But the hokier still theme song always stuck in my head so I was well aware of it. And there evidently was more to that theme song then there was magic glue or whatever it took for these “stay-on” clothes to stick to Eva Gabor/Lisa Douglas and Eddie Albert Jr./ Oliver Wendell Douglas (no garments for Arnold the pig) cuz they sho ain’t stickin anymore. Despite the directions, no amount of rubbing will get any of the 36 costumes that drop like dead flies as soon as you remove your hand to “stay-on”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Last night was the closing of The First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple.  I had never written a musical before, hardly ever went to see them.  I’m an all-the-way Pop Culture gal and for me this was a medium from ancient times with way too histrionic sounding songs and singers frozen in time.  I was the least likely person in the world to write a musical but write one I did, with Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray and Marsha Norman. We were nominated for 11 Tony’s.  How we even won one, the brilliant LaChanze for Best Actress, was a miracle in the climate on Broadway. (Don’t get me started on that one…). Beyond being eternally proud of the work, especially the uplifting and joyous effect it had on audiences night after night, the most stunning part of the journey was the family of friends I made through the Broadway run and the ensuing national tour.  Right from the beginning when we started writing Purple in 2001 I always heard that  there’s constant bickering among everyone but we were all really friends.  And I mean everyone, from Alice Walker, the Pulitzer prize winning author of the novel, down through us authors, the cast, director, producers, hair, makeup, wigs, production managers, everyone.  I was always being told by other friends who had written for Broadway that by the end no one would ever talk to each other and that so many writers of so many shows, because the experience takes years and is so intense, never end up  speaking unless they write another show and then it’s just about work. Our case always was and remains different. This is a family that will be together forever, bound by an experience where the piece itself was bigger than any one part. Everyone felt chosen and blessed to be a part of The Color Purple. Fantasia WAS Celie.  Watching that journey of her finding herself through this character was a joy and a privilege. Every cast member, starting with the staggering Felicia P. Fields, Tony nominated for Sofia and the first actor we ever cast in 2003, was not only a triple threat – brilliant singers, actors AND dancers, a rare enough find in one person let alone an entire cast – they were a gift for any artist to have interpret their work.

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