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.
I always love a bag with a nice belt.
The back of the bag remains completely pee yellow and lifeless.
There’s so much synthetic fabric on the inside of the bag it becomes almost impossible to get anything out without getting your hand entangled in fabric. I just pray for limb extraction without a fabric rip though the danger of a nice big scratch is ever present as whatever synthetic fabric this is so rough against the skin.
With all of its limitations I still give it an A for effort and wear it proudly.
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I used to actively collect figurative sculptures made out of plastic fruits and vegetables. Largely crafts projects, I loved them because most of them were so completely stupid looking but you could always tell a lot of love went into making them. I eventually stopped collecting these anthropomorphic fruit and vegetable people because in order to stand up straight most of them were made out of really light, cheap plastic food that would crack after a couple of years leaving them looking like accident victims. Much like what happens to actual vegetables that I periodically have a conscience to buy only to end up jamming them down the disposal when they start curdling and smelling up the frig because they’ve gotten too old to eat. But as with anything, I love when things have dual purposes like plastic fruit for display/plastic fruit for body parts. Like what a great shape an apple makes for a head or how natural the sprouts on the top of an onion look for hair. And until now, that’s how I prefered to experience vegetables.
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In anticipation of the Memorial Day holiday tomorrow and the many glasses that are about to be lifted these Party Jocs drink cozies make it easy to keep track of your drink and keep your hands moisture free as you chug it down.
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Yesterday, iconic TV host Art Linkletter passed away. Even as a little kid Art seemed a little square to me but there’s no doubt that he pioneered many of the formulas of today’s TV shows with segments like celebrity guests, cooking, talking to kids and audience quizzes. His big two hits which between them ran from 1952 to 1970, House Party and People Are Funny, were massively popular. This ‘party game with cards’ spun out of the latter and continued in people’s living rooms what was so popular on Art’s shows - getting everyday people to do dorky stunts like trying to cash a check written on a watermelon and make fools of themselves, oftentimes ending up with a pie in the face for failing. It’s obvious that Linkletter’s tactics are still very much alive on TV today.
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This vintage cleaning product can may be a little worse for wear but so am I as I hobble around my house shining it back up to its usual state after a couple hundred people trounced through here yesterday in celebration of John Lloyd Young’s debut exhibition featuring his very first works of Kitsch Pop art. I love that cleaning products in aerosol cans were so new when this came out in the 1950s that it was made of silicones (more than 1!) and was referred to as the “push-button cleaner”.
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With 3D all the rage today many people forget that the first ubiquitous mass consumer experience with the technology was with View-Masters. Introduced in 1962, one could view seven 3D images as they spun around on a paper disc creating lifelike reality inside the mouse hole of two eyepieces. The earliest View-Masters featured popular tourist attractions like this one of Miami Beach, where I first started buying these.
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My trip was postponed for a month so the suitcases on are back in the closet and the percussion is resting nicely in its regular bed.
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As Kitschmeister General I love, love, love the San Fernando Valley, just inches from the center of Hollywood and pumped full of Kitsch like a buffet line at Trader Vics. This is the first in a series of short films I’m making glorifying the Kitsch monuments that abound around me for bigisgood.tv. Part 1 features everything from Roman architecture and giant submarine sandwiches to clowns, frog families, volcanoes, giant fish, horses, shoe cars and very happy houses.
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I have three of these insanely beautiful vintage portholes off of a 1952 Chris-Craft boat. I found them in three separate eBay auctions a few years apart.
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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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