Everything about this clock is wrong, not the least of which is trying to get away with looking like it comes from McDonald’s when it’s actually from the M. A Collection in China whatever that is. Made of chunky hard rubber yellower-than-mac-’n-cheese-made-with-3-pounds-of-Velveeta yellow french fries popping out of a red fry bag…
…with a not quite centered clock in it, I got this as a gift in 1995. I’ve never changed the battery and for 15 years have watched the little yellow hand twitch as it tries to push itself past the 12. Apparently more money was spent on the batteries than making the clock.
Although it’s completely hollow the french fry clock weighs a ton. Literally, it weighs over 4 pounds and I can’t figure out why. And there’s this strange bowling pin shape etched into the back…
…with no apparent purpose other than the designer apparently liked the shape.
Although one might assume it would pop out so it can be hung, unless you consider hiring a pile driver to pound it out there’s no way that sucker’s leaving the lead-heavy rubber anytime soon.
Despite its shortcomings or maybe because of them I’m strangely and loyally attached to this clock. Many things have come and gone in my kitchen since I owned it but the fries ain’t goin nowhere (mainly because they’re too heavy to lift).
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Kitsch O' The Day
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The snail is right up there with the owl and poodle as animal kingdom icons of Atomic Age Kitsch. In the 1950s, snails popped up as vases, plates, tabletops, ashtrays, purses, swimming pools, anything and everything that could be pounded into the instantly recognizable shape.
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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.
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This is an amazing movie find, especially for a stamp collecting movie nut (which I’m not but I can appreciate the passion). Sixty pages of blank squares, each ascribed with the name of a 1920’s – 50’s star, from Academy Award winners to TV stars, “The Young Set”, International stars, World-Famous Women, Animal stars, Shootin’ stars (Western), Symphony stars, Singing stars, Comedians and every other category that Hollywood could possibly subdivide itself into.
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Cheap jewelry is always a popular breeding ground for Kitsch. Kitsch glitz shines especially bright when designs are made to capitalize on popular trends such as the streaking craze that began in the 1960’s and attained astronomical heights when a peace signing streaker crashed the 1974 Academy Awards blazing behind actor David Niven. From that point on, streaking was as glorified in all forms of design, from T-shirts to decals to plaster figurines to the kind of tacky finery you see here.
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Of all the things I have in my house, a 40 year collection of Atomic, Soul and Kitsch memorabilia, this rubber waffle that’s sat out on my kitchen counter since I bought it in the 1980’s is one of the most popular things in the joint. Made by Iwasaki Images of America, the premiere display food manufacturer in the world, this waffle looks so drippingly, syrupy and buttery real even I’m tempted to chomp a bite out of it every now and then.
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I may have sore thumbs but not green ones. Not an area I have especially great skills in other than I seem to have a talent for nursing baby Palm trees. Nothing that would fit in this 5″ ceramic planter with the perfect green thumb though. Instead, seeds drop from two 80-year-old massively high Palm trees at my house and thousands of little baby Palms sprout all over my yard. They’re faithfully mowed twice a week so they look like the perfect sheared bright green astroturf lawn.
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Well, the obvious tunes I would name are “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done to Deserve To This?” and I guess “I’ll Be There for You”. The rest of my favorite tunes are here. But if I have to credit an early source of inspiration for being in the music business and then becoming a songwriter it would have to be the TV show, “Name That Tune”, upon which this game is based and which I watched religiously as a wee nip.
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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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I’ll be waving one of these all day and night today as these are the final two performances of the First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. The whole 4-1/2 years I was writing this with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray we waved these church fans and others from my collection of 60 from the 1950’s and ’60’s daily. I’ve been stuck on songs before but being stuck on a song for a musical when one has to consider way more then the singer or the content of the song like the plot, which we were writing at the same time as the songs, the dialogue, whether something should be musicalized or spoken, is there dancing to it or not, does the wig guy have enough time to make the wig changes, on and ever-increasingly on…, let me tell you the sweat pours down and these church fans, totally organic to what we were writing other than a couple decades too late, came in mighty handy.
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