I love Jell-O! I love all colors. I love it plain or with things floating inside except when people suspend stuff like little sprigs of broccoli or carrots in it that interrupt the smooth chew. I especially love Jell-O when it comes from a little individual mold. This vintage set of six is the real deal made by the Jell-O company itself. Made of aluminum, the all-ruling metal of the 1950’s, the scalloped sides make for an impressive sculptural mound of Jell-O but I wish the Jell-O name on the bottom (or top depending on which way you look at it) was embossed on the inside as opposed to the outside so that the brand name was gouged into the mound when it popped out. I know I’m not the only one who would eat around everything and leave the Jell-O logo until last.
I’ve actually made Jell-O birthday cakes using these molds by pouring different colors of the gelatinous stuff into each cup and unloading them around a giant peak of whipped cream with shredded coconut scaling down the sides. They look like futuristic condominiums surrounding a snow-covered volcano.
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Categories:
Food,
Furniture and Housewares,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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Resin grapes were a huge thing in the late 1960s/ early ’70s but none so succulent or popular as those that were fashioned into pineapple table lamps. I have the red one pictured here as well as a yellow one and a purple one. It’s a bitch to change the bulb though. I always have to call my electrician when one burns out. If I were the inventor of these I would have had one easily decipherable grape that popped out for an easy change. But for all I know these lamps have that feature because as adventurous as I am in my life and career that’s how unadventurous I am when it comes to figuring out anything mechanical or that involves following detailed instructions of any kind. Lucky for me,these grapes look fantastic whether they’re turned on or off.
Categories:
Crafts,
Food,
Furniture and Housewares,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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Poodle anything almost instantly qualifies as Kitsch. This one is a double K because for years I thought it was a pitcher until I finally went to use it and the canine started hemorrhaging lemonade from its back. I was upset because I’ve never noticed any hairline fractures but upon closer examination I discovered it wasn’t a pitcher at all but, rather, a bank!
Categories:
Accessories,
Animals,
Bar accessory,
Drink,
Financial,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Toy
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I’ve collected four of these porcelain pitchers from the late 1960s over the years. I’ve only seen this particular style with the casual, beaming Afro-endowed hostess on the front, never the matching male, so perhaps Canadian Club was making a pitch to the swingin’ middle-class lady set that things other than water and lemonade should be pouring out of their petite white pitchers.
Categories:
Advertising/ Promotion,
Afro,
Bar accessory,
Drink,
Furniture and Housewares,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
Protected under a Creative Commons license
Nothin’ tastier in the morning then to slip on a nice pair of bacon shoes and go about your day. As someone who loves the meaty stuff, this is the perfect way to avoid all that grease and and keep your feet looking crisp and scrumptious all day. I have bacon bandages, bacon scarves, designer bacon everything, but the printing is so cheap on most of it it just looks like pink and red wavy stripes. But on these Keds it actually looks like the real thing.
Categories:
Clothes,
Fashion,
Food,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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Popular causes have always been prime breeding ground for Kitsch but none so powerful as the first wave of products that spin out of these Pop Culture phenomenon. Both Libby The Lovely Liberated Lady and the Do-It-Yourself Coloring Kit Black Power Statuette are two such statements from burgeoning Civil Rights movements in the 1960s and ’70s when these folks were expressing themselves freely among the masses for the first time.
Categories:
Afro,
Civil Rights,
Crafts,
Dolls,
empowerment,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Memorabilia,
Self expression,
Toy
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Seems like there are hundreds of photos circulating on the Internet from my party Monday night where, among a zillion other things, members of Earth Wind & Fire performed in a parking lot for anyone who wanted to sing my EWF hits, “September” and “Boogie Wonderland”.
Categories:
Art,
bad art,
Boogie Wonderland,
Celebrity,
Earth Wind & Fire,
Hollywood,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Music,
Party,
People,
September
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Yes, it was the opening line of my very first hit and it was the greatest way ever to celebrate the opening of The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch with bad karaoke versions of the song and have Verdine White and Larry Dunn, original members of Earth Wind & Fire who played on “September” and every other EWF classic, back up me and Luenell, the hysterical hooker from Borat, on a $39 1981 Casio MT-65 and a 1965 knock-off Apollo bass. We proceeded straight into “Boogie Wonderland” with hundreds of people in attendance at Ghettogloss singing along. It was that scrumptious combination of the very highest form of the art smashed together with the very lowest that made this aKitschionado’s heart spinnnnnnnn out of control!
Categories:
Party,
People,
September
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The response to awmok.com has been insane, beyond my wildest and most hopeful expectations both from the press and from the public who has been contributing so much mindboggling Kitsch to the museum it staggers even this ol’ aKitschionado. Once I get through party #2 tonight at Ghettogloss, the cap to the end of a glorious week of Grand Opening festivities, and taking the physical display down tomorrow and setting everything back down in my house and studio I hope to properly document what has truly been one of the most thrilling weeks of my life not to mention events in my career. I know the nature of the Internet is to post these things immediately but it’s all part of a massive, organic, oozing project of connections to me and I don’t want to just slap up a bunch of photos and thoughts online without giving them their proper creative do. So enjoy some photos from party #1 now, have a chocolate milk or Kool-Aid on me, and know that much, much, much, much more is to come.
Categories:
Forgot to Categorize,
Hollywood,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Party,
People
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This ran on September 18, 2009. Thank you, NBC and especially Cary Berglund, for getting what Kitsch is and giving it the props it so richly deserves!
Categories:
Forgot to Categorize
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