On May 8 and 9, 2012, I took a giant leap in my evolution and broke through an almost 4 decades-long bout of stage fright, performing two sold-out performances of my Super Ball Bounce Back Review, a combo concert/sing-along/party extravaganza at King King in Hollywood.
Lack of performing has always been a raw, gaping hole in a long career that’s stretched across various fields of the arts, despite the fact that I’ve always had the balls to throw myself off cliffs as I periodically dive-bomb into pursuits I know nothing about. I’ve hosted multimedia theme parties where I’m perenially on mic so that even the conversations I have with everyone are blasted throughout my house or wherever else I host these beasts. And God knows I walk around in hair and clothes that makes peoples’ necks snap if they’ve never gotten a gander of me before. Throw in that I’ve sold 50,000,000 records despite the fact that to this day I have no idea how to read, notate or play music, and I sold hundreds of paintings before I realized that you mix colors to get different colors. So backing away from displaying myself publicly made absolutely no sense.
But then I realized that this theme of living fearlessly was at the heart of everything I ever created. View life as a creative process. You are the canvas. If you’re stuck with a weakness, for God sakes turn it into a hook. Nine times out of ten, you’re the bogey monster scaring yourself shitless so just get out the way! So I finally did.
So here then are four videos from my Super Ball Bounce Back Review. If you like them and are going to be in LA on September 21 and/or 22, I’m rising again at NoHoPAC in a salute to “September”, the first line of which mentions the date of the opening night.
“September”:
“Boogie Wonderland”:
“Neutron Dance”:
And the whole enchilada:
Badeya!
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Categories:
Afro,
Allee Willis' Super Ball Bounce Back Review,
Allee's live performances,
Animation,
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Boogie Wonderland,
Bubbles the artist,
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Friends theme,
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video
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99¢ and discount stores in general are fabulous all year round but there’s no question that the season they shine most at is Christmas, when all stops are pulled out and the shelves are packed with more crap than even a kitsch loving aKitschionado such as myself can absorb. These stores at this season offer the perfect storm of circumstances for me, especially as I needed some Christmas arts and crafts supplies to make Pigmy Will Christmas ornaments.
Categories:
Celebrity,
Fashion,
Furniture and Housewares,
Holidays,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will,
Toy
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Last weekend I drove down to San Diego to see a performance of my musical, The Color Purple. I rarely get a chance to see the show but when it’s anywhere near LA I choose which performances I’m going to see by which town has the best thrift shops and then I make a whole trip out of it. For this performance I mapped out all the second hand shops between LA and San Diego. But we left too late so dealt with the shopping jones in one antique mall in Solana Beach on the way to SD. I especially love antique malls this time of year because the Khristmas Kitsch comes out in full force.
Categories:
Animals,
Art,
Celebrity,
Crafts,
Holidays,
Pigmy Will,
Place,
The Color Purple,
Toy
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Each ornament and tree topper is a unique work of art crafted by Pigmy Will, Feathers and Whiska, when he’s in a good mood.
Categories:
Animals,
Art,
Crafts,
Holidays,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will
Protected under a Creative Commons license
For any of you reading this who might not know “Pigmy Will” because this is the first animated one of the under-60-seconds series we’ve done in quite a while, it’s a horribly drawn/ much beloved chronicle of Pigmy Will, a diminutive yet eternally optimistic being whose best friends with a palm tree named Feathers and a pineapple on a tricycle named Whiska. They’re all the creations of me and Prudence Fenton, much more heavily tilted toward the latter, who IS Pigmy Will as she possesses an unnatural ability to thrust her voice into the ozone and come out with a sound that makes dogs hide under the nearest couch. If you remember the hi-pitched voice of the flowers in the window box in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that was Prudence (who also created Penny). We write these, record them, voice them, score them, direct them and work with our animator, Alfonso, and engineer, Scott, to finish them. Here are two of my favorite “Pigmy Will”s:
Categories:
Animation,
Creativity,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will,
video
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Pigmy Will, Feathers and Whiska and the Battle of the Caramel Apple.
Categories:
Food,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will,
video
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This is one of my favorite Pigmy Wills. I love him because he’s fearless. And he makes a smooth entry.
Categories:
Animation,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will
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Pigmy Will and Feathers – created, written, art directed and “acted” by me and Prudence Fenton, animation and special effects director for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and all around the animated visual genius – have added a new friend to their neighborhood. Whiska, a pineapple who sees the world through polar opposite eyes than Pigmy or Feathers and who tricycles into town in this introductory episode (if I can be so generous and label something an episode that consists of a few seconds of poorly drawn and animated nonsense).
Categories:
Food,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Pigmy Will,
Transportation,
video
Protected under a Creative Commons license
