I know. It’s been pathetically long since my last update. This is not due to inactivity! We’ve been having 12 hour days here at Willis Wonderland since January and STILL haven’t quite gotten through all the footage and recording tracks, close to 3000 hours and 5000 tracks respectively, for “The D” record and multiple music videos, and Allee Willis Loves Detroit our feature-length hybrid documentary. Not that this has been driving us crazy or to drink.

There are a lot of D deputies in the way of engineers, editors, and assorted characters here every day:

I know it might seem like we do a lot of lying around but this rarely occurs unless eyeballs start rolling in the back of our heads after working 16 straight hours looking at 743 takes of various groups singing the same line. Two of these folks in the above photo are gone already. We hate to lose them, well one of them at least, but when one is paying such a high salary, as close to zero dollars as humanly possible due to our expansive budget known as my pocket, these things are inevitable.

Challenges have abounded. Like having to replace my hundred terabyte server in the middle of editing and mixing so that master files are scattered around on a trillion different drives and computers as opposed to one central location while the switchover happens. So this includes helpful things like servers constantly going down or computers not being able to talk to each other, watching files getting eaten up before your eyes, overwriting files, and all the other joys that come with working in a part-time dysfunctional digital environment.

And then there was the hideous discovery that due to brain slippage of a certain IT person (no longer) working here nothing had been backed up since February and we lost at least a month’s worth of footage of us figuring out how to jam thousands of voices and instruments into one record so everyone’s heard. Not to mention the fits of hysteria incurred after looking at blurry key footage and figuring out how to work around it. This had me in a such a comatose state I had to shoot Vernor’s, Detroit’s beverage of choice, into my veins to keep me from slipping into a coma.

But the trauma has always been tamed by the joy of working on such a unique project. Sometimes we have even have FRIENDS drop in to bring us matzoh ball soup, cupcakes, and other modes of sustenance to remind us we have a life on the outside.

And now traveling for “The D” crew kicks up again. I will be spending one week out of each of the next four months in the Motor City, this month to attend my 107th high school reunion!

Then I return two weeks later in August to give a speech on Creativity And Detroit at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey, four hours from the city and where my parents bought their very first first house. Then I’m elated to report that on September 21 (yes, the “BaDeYa, say do you remember” 21st of September!) I will be performing LIVE in Detroit at the historic United Sound, the recording studio where the very first Motown records were made and still a vital part of Detroit music history. And then again at the end of October when the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, comes back to the D for the fourth time, this time starring Dreamgirl Jennifer Holliday, who I wrote for many a year ago and haven’t seen since, making for a Dream D reunion! All these extravaganzas will be filmed and recorded for “The D” and Allee Willis Loves Detroit.
So as we cut and paste, chop, mix, curse, cry, hug and exhibit all the various kinds of behavior that come with undertaking a task of this girth I thank all of you who have donated or contributed your services thus far. It’s not too late to donate!! We will do you proud!

Yours in The D,
Allee The D/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit home: http://www.WeSingTheD.com Sneak Peak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rkbTpZdxy8 WDIV/ NBC Allee Willis Does Detroit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8HdLEfw1zg Fox 2 News: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=9361767

Sorry, sorry, sorry for no new entries in an eternity. I’m working around several clocks and all the energy that used to be poured into this blog has to now go into slogging through the close to 5000 vocal tracks and 3000 hours of footage so that I can complete “The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit before my 100th birthday. Although joyous work for a completely worthy cause – DETROIT! – it all makes me very tired, especially when the 100 Terrabye server goes down and makes my collaborator, Andrae Alexander, and I experience death by technology.

So I am putting a convenient little button to transport you to Facebook where I now say in relatively few characters what I used to put into my often novel-like blog. That way you can experience at least some of my day, though I am far from the type whose fingers are constantly tapping the keys to tell everyone what I’m up to.

I’ve been online since 1991. I came up with the concept of a social network in 1992. I’m not someone who blogs because you have to blog or tweets because you have to tweet or puts incessant photos of my food and footwear on Instagram. I have always lived by the rule that my creative flow was a little garden that I had to nurture. So please enjoy the flowers at the above link and I shall be back to blog when time, the gods and my overstuffed brain allow it.

No new kitsch posts today as I woke up bright and early to finesse a melody and finish a lyric before engineer Supremo, Jared Lee Gosselin, and soul legend, Booker T., walk through the portals of Willis Wonderland in less than an hour.  We started a killer song, title as yet undetermined, on Friday. All I need to do is hear Booker hit the keys of a B-3 and melodies start dancin in my head.

I could NOT believe that I was singin’ with Booker T again! It had been almost 30 years since we wrote together. That was before I started carrying a camera around so no photos of us together. Though here’s what I looked like at the time for some context:

Our new song has a “Green Onions” vibe to it.

And it definitely has the insane soulfulness of “Groovin”:

So, back tomorrow with more kitsch. As for today, it’s SOUL all the way!

So yesterday was the big Fluff Festival in Sommerville, MA.  If I wasn’t still out of town and so far behind getting my upcoming Soup To Nuts Party Mix live show on October 18 written I would sit here and post a zillion photos that I took over the last 36 hours. But I couldn’t get a plane out of Boston with an aisle seat so I vowed to lock myself in my hotel room for the next 36 hours until my flight and write, write and write in hopes of having something significant to say and do on stage. But I’ll be posting a bunch of Fluffified photos every day this week. That is if I can get all the marshmallow out of my hair and off my fingers so they don’t stick to the keys as they’re doing now. So for now I’ll just leave you with a couple photos from Friday night at the Fluff VIP party with two fellow VIPs, the Brady girls, Cindy and Jan #2, Susan Olsen and Geri Reischl, photo #1 of our first dip into the Fluff and photo #2, post dining on the foodstuff we flew thousands of miles to honor.

Long love Fluff. Stay tuned for more…

 

One of the best things about the 4th of July is the food one consumes as a means of celebration, and normally my Independence Day spread looks like the above. I would be eating that or any of the following recipes were I not on a plane flying back from a wedding in Kenosha and munching on a can of Pringles as we speak.

So I’m going to pretend my mouth is chewing something other than dried potato wafers as I tell you what would be on the grill at Willis Wonderland today were I home instead of packed in next to a snoring pork of a passenger on American somewhere over Nebraska. First there’s my favorite recipe of all, Bacon Wrapped Hamburger Hot Dog Turtles. Thank you, k2dtw, for submitting this beauty to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch!  Just jam three weenies through a hamburger, whack the appropriate weenie limbs for feet, shave the tail, wrap the torso with bacon and throw the reptile on the grill for perfect BBQ sealife.

Although not as pretty of a design as the carnivore turtle, the Original Bacon Explosion packs more pound-for-pound bacon punch. There’s a documented-better-than-a-crime-scene recipe for this charred-looks-like-something-else too here.

Even better, the Original Bacon Explosion comes with its own Bacon Explosion Pig-Porter!!

I would love, of course, if I was the one who turned you on to the Bacon Explosion but its fame is well-established:

For a BBQ treat slightly more obscure, how about an Ultimate Meat Lover’s BBQ Pizza?

And for dessert, how bout a flag cake? I’d go with donut holes for the white part.

Actually, I’d rather serve an ice cream cone Uncle Sam.

Any cake with color correct food coloring is also fine…

…as well as marshmallow studded kabobs:

For optimum eating pleasure, serve all of the above on appropriate BBQ dinnerware. Don’t even ask me how many pieces of this pattern I have.

Happy 4th, happy BBQ and happy listening should you be lucky enough to own this:

I shall be chewing along pretending I’m not on a plane sitting next to a man whose hairy legs are protruding from his khaki shorts making it impossible for me to enjoy my (BBQ sauce-less) Pringles.

 

Bleary eyed from chasing a friend’s cat through the hills above the Hollywood Bowl all night last night – finally captured I’m happy to say! – I had to get up bone-breakingly early this morning to pick up a keyboard in Hollywood. My eyes were still practically glued shut but there’s so much kitsch along the roadways in this city, I can always deal with a situation as long as I remember to bring my camera. In addition to the above mural painted underneath the 101 on Argyle, here are but a few of the gems that crossed my car and eyeballs as I made my tired trek this morning.

There’s nothing better to me than when someone takes a plain building and slaps some cement art up on it.

Well, maybe this is a little better… taking a plain box of a house and attempting to make it look like the Parthenon with the MGM lions greeting you at the door:

I wonder if that person knows that plants can actually be planted in the ground? The only thing missing is a blue tree…

…and maybe this hedge as an entrance:

Thank God this bus wasn’t parked in front or passersby wouldn’t be able to see any of the architectural or fauna beauty:

Despite so many insanely wonderful vintage structures falling victim to the wrecking ball, Hollywood still has some incredible period architecture like this church hugging the entrance to the 101 On Hollywood Blvd.:

You can’t really tell how gorgeous this is from a distance but in addition to those incredible fins and peculiar arrangement of windows, the entire building is made up of 1 inch lavender mosaic tiles. Unfortunately, that wall was slapped up a few years ago depriving drivers of the building’s full beauty. Luckily, the full finned magnificence of the Peterson Automotive Museum on Wilshire and Fairfax is not hidden by a stupid wall.

I know that this is a hideous photo but I  took a short cut through a muddy construction site and barely had time to fumble for my camera as I passed this window:

Perhaps a close-up will reveal more of its beauty:

I swung by one of my favorite papusa places hoping to grab a little breakfast before I sped home to throw myself back in bed but it was closed. The mural still woke me up.

I hope everyone reading this has as jam-packed full and colorful a Sunday as this overly-enthusiastic balloon/cotton candy/inflatable toy man walking around Echo Park Lake this morning. Open your eyes. Beauty is all around you!

I have a problem with lettering on cups when the word is short yet from no angle on the cup can you see the entire word.

And I always think that cup manufacturers cheese out when they don’t spring for anything printed on the back. The last time I looked there were more righties than lefties, which means that ‘Papa’ is ignored the lionshare of the time.

The little leaf pattern seems a tad too delicate for ‘Papa’.

And speaking of that which is not entirely masculine, let’s discuss the handle of this cup:

In addition to being a little froufrou, those sharp little bits of ceramic sticking up dig into the back of your thumb  and side of your middle finger like little knives, making it impossible to hold this as one would naturally hold a cup lest you risk puncture wounds.

I know that ceramic piece stretching across the inside of the cup is to keep ‘Papa’s’ mustache out of his coffee. But this looks much more like a bat to me and if I were ‘Papa’ I wouldn’t be so happy about my lips resting on an animal often confused for a rodent.

And what are all those brown spots at the bottom?

They’re embedded deep in the glaze and I have no idea how they got there as it’s a completely different color than the gold that graces the rest of ‘Papa’s’  cup.

Hopefully you have fewer gripes about your father than I do about this cup. If so, please wish ‘Papa’ Happy Father’s Day for me!

I never really got into The Smurfs. That shade of blue was definitely not my favorite color and I didn’t have the patience to learn the Smurf language. I also didn’t have the patience to study Hebrew for the couple of years I attended Hebrew school at Beth Aaron, right across the street from Mumford High in Detroit, so have no idea what this Smurf is saying.

The only thing that kept me going to Hebrew School for the two years of one afternoon a week after school I went was the candy truck in the parking lot where we boarded the bus. I was bad enough at languages that use English lettering but once it came to Hebrew (or Chinese or Arabic or anything else that wasn’t the straight 26 letters I was used to) my brain turned into a quivering Jell-O mold. I hope this Smurf is saying nice to go along with the flowers he’s offering.

If only he was holding a bottle of Mogen David.

I do love that he’s speaking in a language other than his native Dutch or adopted English. And I do hope he’s not saying anything anything offensive but, rather, something like “Have and happy Passover and please enjoy the matzoh.”.

My intentions were good. I was gonna wake up and spring back into action as I haven’t blogged regularly in over a week but my body still feels like it’s broken into 13 million pieces and I need a recuperation day from one of the greatest weeks in my life in Detroit that included giving a speech about the rejuvenation of the city, conducting my beloved Mumford high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits and, for the first time since my musical, The Color Purple, opened five years ago, conducting part of the show. My spirits are HIGH, like being powered by a hemi engine, but I need time to decompress, not to mention unpack my seven suitcases, go through the thousands of photos that were taken, begin transferring the close to 75 videotapes that were amassed, and somehow attempt to get back to my everyday life of music and mayhem in Los Angeles. So give me 24 and I hope to be back with something soon…

 


This 1980’s plaster salute to love was a hot ticket item in Mexican swap meets in Southern California throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Although back then they were too cheesy for my just-out-of-the-gate budding love of kitsch which, although quite robust, still hadn’t crossed the line to full blown Camembert such as the love interpreted here. Thank God, I had the presence of mind to buy these Siamese lovers as lamps, plain sculptures, towels and any other material their love could be possibly be moulded or stamped upon.

The lamp lovers are very fit.

They look much more romantic backlit.

Her hair sweeps back and his sweeps forward, representing the push/pull magnetism of the universe.

With the lights on, the lovers look a little dusty in the chest area. This is why I hate this kind of matte finish on ceramics; all the imperfections show.  Like in real life, leaving the lights on despite the fact you spent all day at a flea market and haven’t had a chance to shower yet.

Most of all, I love that my cat Niblet loves spending time with the lamp lovers.

May anyone reading this be glowing all day today.  And remember, the real glow comes from within, so mate or no mate, I hope you wish yourself a very very VERY happy Valentines Day today!