Anyone who knows me knows I love bowling. It’s not the sport itself but, rather, the accessories that go along with it that make my heart sing. I have no idea what this little mini pin was made for – I’m guessing a standalone trophy – but I found two of them and wish I had more. I used the first one as the end of a banister going up my stairs:
I don’t known what The Fun Club was but I want to be a part of anything with that name. I also love anything that’s formally printed up where someone can’t resist the urge to embellish it with their own personal painting touch. The ‘Tom’ (or is it ‘Glom’?) and the ‘218′ add such an elegance to the pin.
Nowadays, this little pin’s only job is to stand around and look pretty. Every now and then I hear it being batted around the house by the cats. I know it’s the bowling ball that’s supposed to roll but I hope this pin has some sense of the energy of its big brother bowling pin heritage and can enjoy its journey skidding over the hard wood floor, even though it’s been hit by a cat and not a ball.
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Categories:
Awards,
Games,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Toy
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A few nights ago I had dinner at Street with Michael Patrick King.
Categories:
Celebrity,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Romance,
Street,
Toy
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As I lie in bed with food poisoning after ingesting some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten in LA Saturday night (at an expensive downtown restaurant which shall remain nameless as I’m only 99.99% sure it was the scene of the crime and not 100), this rubber doctor puppet seems a very appropriate Kitsch O’ The Day offering. Made by Childcraft in 1968 and used in African-American classrooms to teach about good role models the set also includes two girls, two guys, one kid, a grandmother, a grandfather, a policeman and Nelson Mandela.
Categories:
Afro,
Brands,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Medical,
Toy
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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.
Categories:
Architecture,
Clothes,
Creativity,
Fashion,
Gadgets,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
People,
Photograph,
Place,
Toy
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This was a gift from Michael Patrick King, writer and director of Sex and the City, a couple of years ago for my birthday. I always thought the doll had a Carrie Bradshaw vibe to her, smiling and happy and looking good in red. One day I slammed my shin into the table Rolly Polly sits on and it made such a great chime sound I didn’t mind the dripping gash down below. I limped into my recording studio and dragged a mic to reach her, tilting her in all directions, spinning her around and pushing her across the table. The different chime patterns sounded great and distinctive, sometimes carrying on for 30 seconds or more.
Categories:
Accessories,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Musical Instruments,
Toy
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This is a product worthy of an Oscar for Best Kitsch, a fake wood cardboard stand-up “plaque” that looks suspiciously like the piece of cardboard that comes with any cheap picture frame, stapled on, staples askew, emblazoned with a cheap gold embossed sticker with three imprints, none of which have anything to do with the Academy Awards other than a trophy atopped with a nude female athlete that kinda sorta is in that Oscar trophy pose.
Categories:
Awards,
Celebrity,
Forgot to Categorize,
Hollywood,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Toy,
bad art
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In anticipation of the throngs about to stroll through my house tonight for my annual Sound of Soul fundraiser with Pacific Radio Archives not to mention a celebration of the culmination of The Color Purple First National tour I thought that my James Brown whistle from the Godfather’s little known late 50s TV show, a rare item indeed, was the perfect Kitsch O’ The Day today. I rotate my collection fairly regularly but for this particular party everything in the house is part of my African American Pop Culture stash. As I said yesterday, it was James Brown himself who encouraged me to keep collecting these Soul artifacts as there was usually no budget to market these products on a national let alone worldwide level so they were only popular regionally. Like my game of Slang-A-Lang, Black Bingo, that was manufactured in 1969 in Detroit probably never got on shelves farther away than Cleveland.
Categories:
Afro,
House,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Party,
Toy
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These cheap, flimsy plastic fake pens were all the rage as similar ‘joke’ toys made in Hong Kong like snapping packs of gum and snakes exploding out of peanut cans flooded novelty and drugstores shelves in the 1950’s and 60’s. You pull the cap off, squeeze the pen as you hold it in water (or invisible ink!) and then aim. I bought these ultimate squirt guns by the carton full with my allowance money and spent my youth asking people if they needed a pen.
I found this set for three bucks recently. I was only paying 29 cents back in the day, which means 14.5 cents a pen/squirt gun. Though I’m still never without 10 (real and more expensive) pens on me at all times these are still my favorites.
Categories:
Accessories,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Toy
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I shared many a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Vernor’s with Sky King and Penny as nothing could separate me from the TV when they were puttering around the sky in their beloved Songbird in search of bad people, hikers and whoever else roamed the environs near their Flying Crown Ranch. I wish that Sky and Penny were roaming around the skies of LA right now zipping up the clouds so the rain and hail would subside and we could have our nice sunny LA back.
Categories:
Crafts,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
TV/Radio,
Toy
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Very nice of the Federal Credit Union of Signal Hill, CA to give these promotional money sack banks to Long Beach city employees but the gift would have been ever more meaningful if it came with a little cash jingling inside, something I’m sure the employees needed more than this lump of clay.
Categories:
Accessories,
Advertising/ Promotion,
Financial,
Kitsch,
Kitsch O' The Day,
Toy
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