Not only is this an excellent salad/party condiments serving piece but it serves just as well as a conversation piece as its composition is a complete mystery. I haven’t been able to come to a 100% consensus on whether it’s made of plastic or glass since I bought it for a hefty $9 at a thrift shop a few weeks ago. It sits out on my dining room table and it’s become almost a ritual for guests to tap their fingers against it and register a vote. It looks like glass and it sounds like glass and it certainly is as heavy as glass but every now and then a tap will deliver a dull thud, the signature sound of plastic. Actually, most votes are that it’s a bizarre combination of glass and plastic, one or the other covering the other one so you have the beauty of glass but practicality of plastic. I know this makes no sense but this appears to be the way of the world.
I think the only way to know for sure is to drop it, a fate I hope does not befall this beautiful bowl. Did I mention that it’s quite chunky? 16″ across and 10″ high.
When I went to measure it just now it clanked against the top of the metal shelf I pulled it out from. It sounded like glass and I was expecting it to shatter but it came out chip free and once again sounded like hollow plastic when I tapped it again.
The marks on the bottom of the bowl tell me nothing. Though that smudge looks pretty plasticy but then again, the base could be plastic and the rest of it glass.
I’m just happy to own this pretty bowl. I don’t intend to eat it or use it for anything other than what it was intended for - to be beautiful and make whatever is inside of it look even lovelier. And as a Kitsch lover I can make a case for whatever material it’s made of and love it just the same.
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Categories:
Accessories,
Art,
Furniture and Housewares,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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I’ve seen trillions of sculptures of hands giving the peace sign but this is the first time I’ve seen a foot flashing the international symbol of love and harmony. As if that wasn’t kitschy enough, a cheaper made sculpture you could never find. Adorned with a flimsy paper peace sign sticker and colored to make it look like rich wood, this peace foot is made of incredibly cheap plastic, lucky if it weighs an ounce despite being 6 inches tall. There’s no manufacturers mark anywhere on the appendage, as if whoever made it didn’t want to take credit for such a lovely and peaceful foot.
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Accessories,
Kitsch,
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Political,
Sculpture
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I beg to differ with the quotation “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”. I offer as proof this ungodly garish tote bag I picked up at the Mexican swap meet the other day, belted and sequined within an inch of its sow eared life and a stunning example of one of my favorite genres of kitsch - when someone takes something so pathetically plain Jane most people wouldn’t give it a second look and attempts to make it look like something that would accompany one to a dinner at the White House, the Academy Awards or some other such fancy dress affair.
Categories:
Accessories,
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Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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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.
Categories:
Accessories,
Fashion,
Place,
Transportation,
Travel,
Travel souvenir
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When the first four Holiday Inns were built in 1953, this was the ashtray that was sitting in the rooms. Heavy glass with raised lettering and cigarette rests, the shape is perfect 1950’s, the font iconic. I don’t go out of my way to collect Holiday Inn artifacts, but through the years I’ve amassed cups, matches, ashtrays from all the decades, postcards, playing cards, ice tea spoons, room keys and more. I even have this sign from a Holiday Inn somewhere in California. It’s rusty but you would be too if you baked outside for the last 60 years.
Categories:
Accessories,
Furniture and Housewares,
Place,
Travel,
Travel souvenir
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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.
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Kitchen,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Self expression,
empowerment
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For someone like me who likes to have the right purse for any possible theme this 13″ long plastic peanut seemed like it was perfect. Excellent as a summer BBQ fashion, it would also appear to be the perfect vessel to house the plethora of electronic gadgets I carry around with me which includes two cell phones, two digital recorders, two cameras and multiple batteries for all. I’m a firm believer in ‘two’ for any vital electronic gadget. Whether it’s dead batteries or service providers not working in certain areas, I learned long ago that dependence on a single electronic gadget is not the life for me. So I was elated to find a purse as cute as the peanut that could house all my paraphernalia and lined up in an orderly fashion no less. But a dead battery would have been a lot better than the dead phone, camera and recorder I experienced when I opened my peanut for the first time on a subway platform only to watch a train crush all three after they spilled out of easily the stupidest purse I ever carried. Though I suppose it was me who was really stupid. Anyone who wasn’t so carried away with the aesthetics would have realized that the way the two sides of the peanut were attached wasn’t really going to serve anyone well as a purse.
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Food,
Kitsch,
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It’s always a good sign of kitsch when right off the bat the packaging describes the product wrong. On the top of the package it very clearly states that I will be getting one Felt Coaster Love Type. But a few inches lower it clearly says that I will be unwrapping two Felt CoasterS Love Type. Perhaps the designer of the label was too excited at the hearts leaping out of the coffee cup to go for accuracy in the product description.
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Drink,
Kitchen,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Romance
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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.
Categories:
Accessories,
Bar accessory,
Forgot to Categorize,
Furniture and Housewares,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day
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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.
Categories:
Accessories,
Kitchen,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
empowerment
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