Running around all day today on about a second of sleep doing final tweaks on the first party celebrating the Grand Opening of The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch tonight as well as coding my tootsies off on the virtual Museum, the heart of the experience, at AWMoK.com. I hope to open the floodgates online at noon LA time. (Until then, the ‘Coming September 14th’ page with the trailer, press and a few other goodies is still there.) Not sure I’ll make the noon door opening but once it flies open there’s some magnificently supreme kitsch to browse through in The Museum itself and in the Kitschenette wing there are incredibly easy instructions, customized for dummies and people like me who get confused reading directions of any sort, for how to submit your own prize Kitsch. 

AWMoK.com is a mini social network, built to scale up and incorporate more interactivity as more Kitsch is injected into it. Please visit later today or tomorrow and register to become an aKitscionado, another process that I’ve slaved over so it’s pathetically quick and easy. You can browse both The Museum and The Kitschenette but you need to register in order to submit anything or make comments.

Party photos will go up sometime tomorrow and video will follow though not sure when. The parties, tonight and next Monday night, were supposed to be webcast but the DSL at the gallery can’t handle the upload speeds so now it means digitizing six hours of footage from each of the three cameras and editing everything, a far more gruesome process than just letting it stream as it happens. But photos will be up as soon as I wake up tomorrow, which could be God knows what time as I haven’t slept in a week and have to do a lot of press tomorrow. 

Today is also the beginning of a weeklong “What Is Kitsch?” Film Festival on YouTube, eight short films I made on the subject of Kitsch. I’ll be posting the links to these when I upload them. There are two going up today, the introductory film, “What Is Kitsch?”, as well as one that’s about submitting items to The Museum. (When I say submitting items I mean images and descriptions. As much as I’d love to own all the stuff you guys tell me about, The Museum is virtual so photos and not the actual item is what you’ll be contributing.)

I’ve worked on putting The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch together online ever since I started my Kitsch O’ The Day blog seven months ago. Integrating virtual and physical spaces is what I’ve dreamed about doing since I stumbled on the Internet in 1991. I hope you enjoy The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, The Kitschenette and the eight short films as much as I’ve enjoyed – though sometimes been tortured by! – making them.

Nice story in the LA Times today too.

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With the hairdo on the left looking like the perfect bundt cake, a bulldog in the middle and a bouffanted Jay Leno on the right, what Jesus used was The Faith Tones’ heads to perform some of the most astounding hair artistry in the history of Christian album covers, the Kentucky Derby of cheese championships in the 1960’s and 70’s.

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Man of greased-Beatles-bowl-haircut and beauty-parlor-cape-karate suit chops concrete blocks in efforts to deliver the mighty message of God. But 14 slices of prime LP cheese in the name of the Lord later, Crane is the real deal, a Preacher and master of Kung-Fu and Karate for 45+ years with a 10th degree black belt equivalency. 

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Not sure what kills me most about this Christian Crusaders LP cover: The guys’ matching shirts, ties and Good Humor pants, how the spaghetti-thin flip-adorned female’s 70’s rug-like skirt misses the color scheme completely, the arrangement of flesh under the large guy’s pants, the twists and turns of his greased hair helmet and pork chop sideburns, the mystery of the exact size of the scrunched up guy on the ledge or that this religious LP features “The Monkey Song”. If the Christian Crusaders and Al Davis sound anywhere as good as they look we’re all in for a joyful noise!

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Long before I co-wrote the musical The Color Purple, in which trees are a powerful symbol, I believed these lumber providers were among nature’s most powerful species. But I never knew they could talk. Geraldine Murray, who claims God delivered her the gift of ventriloquism while she was asleep at age 14, apparently felt differently. Her wooden friend, Ricky’s, voice could make your ears bleed, perhaps causing the tree, well actually shrubs, they’re sitting in front of to creak loud enough for Geraldine to interpret it as speaking. 

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JOYCE!  As a result of this 1983 Kitsch classic LP, Joyce may not have had the opportunities now presented to Ms. Boyle but she certainly had the look to permeate our hearts and remain there as long. I was lucky enough to find this cover (LP long gone) in 1983 at my favorite junkyard, The Champagne Of The Salvage Industry (real name), in Long Beach, CA. As that was the year of the LP’s release, perhaps the songstress and her songs, featuring “I Get All Excited”, weren’t quite as compelling as the cover. But like Susan Boyle, word of Joyce has spread virally over the years, especially after her inclusion in the 2004 book, The Worst Album Covers in the World. I pride myself among the lucky ones to own a piece of Joyce Drake of Sealy, Texas who, if she’s still around, I hope is sharpening her pipes for next year’s Idol auditions.

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