The entertainment portion of the holidays started out on Christmas Eve day at Michael McDonald‘s and me using my iphone for photos. This is a no-no if you’re expecting recognizable lifeforms when you flip the setting so you can see what you’re shooting. The shots come out like those portraits made out of of macaroni and rice. Not the best look for the holidays but here I am with the excessively pixelated Michael and Prudence Fenton:

Jai Rodriguez was also there (and also grainy):

Then we shot across town for a Christmas Eve barbeque at Luenell‘s, pictured here with me, Prudence and Constance Tillotson. At that point my Canon Elf took over so all’s clear from here on:

The next day, Christmas, it was off to Liz Heller and John Manulis’, who I forgot to take a photo with.  Their place is THE food fest spot of the holidays. Here I am after sampling four different varieties of mac ‘n cheese with Prudence and Ed Begley Jr.:

Lynne Scott was also there,…

…as was Nancy Moonves:

Bob Garrett and Storm Lee weren’t there but were at Julie McDonald‘s, who I also forgot to shoot a photo with, the next day for her Boxing Day party. Our outfits worked so great for Christmas we dragged them into the next day with the boys:

For most of the two following days I locked myself inside and worked on my new live show. I emerged on the 29th to have dinner at Street with Tony Selznick, Storm and Prudence:

Another day of intense writing the next day and then this meeting with Richard DortonRita Maye Bland, and Storm, all of whom are working on the live show.

And then it was New Years Eve. Every year for the last eight years I’ve gone to Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s party, a reliably fantastic gathering of folks in one of the greatest modern houses in the city. High up on stilts with one of those mindblowing arial views of LA like you’re looking at it out of an airplane. Here I am with Nancye, Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin, comedy legends I died with joy meeting for the first time:

I was as excited about my Jeremy Scott Adidas’ as I was about meeting Paula and Dick:

The shoes were way too big for me but I will never sacrifice style for practicality. So I stuffed the toes with fuzzy balls and let the wings do the talking.

I also had never met comedy superstar artist/producer Sid Krofft before. Here we are with Beverly D’Angelo and Prudence:

Diva Zappa and her tutu provided lots of New Year’s cheer. At one point she wore it as a hat.

Ian Buchanan is a fellow regular partier at Nancye and Jim’s,…

…as is Antonio Hendricks,…:

…and Richard and Candy Clark:

And then it was 2012. I started out the new year where you can usually find me if I’m not at home, Susan Feniger‘s Street:

…where Storm and I had a hangover fix of champagne and donuts:

And then it was off to Gail Zappa‘s, whose birthday it is on New Years Day, and who has had a party ever since I insisted she do so five years ago after never having a birthday party before:

This is another one of those parties that now happens like clockwork in a fantastically crazy house with great friends, food and a bagpipe player:

Michael DesBarres and Storm were there,…:

as was Jeff Stein,…:

…Nancye and Michael Patrick King,…:

Jared Lee Gosselin, who I intend to do a lot of musical damage with this year,…:

Dweezil Zappa, one of Bubbles the artist‘s earliest patrons,…:

Pamela DesBarres and Jimmy Intveld,…:

Loree Rodkin,…:

Peter Asher,…:

Sally Kellerman and Beverly,…:

…Ian and Buck Henry,…:

…Gail, who was of course at her own party, and Eric Idle.:

Eric’s feet were looking mighty sharp:

As were mine, Charles Phoenix‘s and a token one of Prudence’s:

Here’s our top portions. Notice how much New Year’s food is stuck to my teeth:

In addition to the spotted teeth, I should call attention to the fact that I know that most of my poses and camera angles are identical. At festivities such as these, the last thing you wanna do is to continually ask someone to take a photo for you. So I’ve just learned to stretch my arm as long as possible and hit the button myself. I’m happy to do this as long as I have good friends to aim at. Which is what I hope 2012 is filled with. And clean teeth, of course.

Nothing especially kitschy here but soulful and slammin’ and I’ve always been a massive Run DMC fan so was most excited to be in the studio yesterday writing, recording and singing with DMC! My friend Gail Zappa, pictured with us, married to Frank and mom of Dweezil, Moon, Ahmet and Diva, set it all up as DMC’s producer, the great Jared Lee Gosselin, was recording in Frank’s studio.

I had an absolute blast, we wrote lightning fast – finished 90% of the record in a day –  and it sounds fantastic! A little more work on it this week and hopefully it will be out in about a month. Will keep you posted.

Special words from the God of Kitsch who watched over us:

I wasn’t going to do anything for my birthday this year. Too overworked and no extra coinage to throw around. But word leaked out and spread and all of a sudden these people, most of whom I’ve spent every birthday and momentous occasion with for umpteen years, showed up at my house:

Bottom row (L-R):  Diva Zappa, Lisa Loeb, me, Prudence Fenton and Michael Patrick King.
Middle row (L-R):  Jane Wagner, Lesley Ann Warren, Bob Garrett, Lily Tomlin, Pamela Des Barres, Karen Levitas, Gai Gherardi, Gail Zappa, Nancye Ferguson, Stan Zimmerman and Jim Burns. Top row (L-R): Ben Bove, RuPaul, Tom Trujillo, Roey Herschovitz, Jimmy Quill, Charles Phoenix, Sonny Ruscha Bjornson, Mark Blackwell and Jack Nesbit.

Though all of my friends may not practice kitsch like the religion I do, their lives and occupations are consumed with pop culture and they all bring unique individual style and vision to everything they do. None of us are color-in-the-lines people. Which means that when it comes to birthday presents, it’s fantasyland overload as their sensibilities collide with mine in harmonious gift wrapped chaos! For example, here I am with perennially great gift givers Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burns:

Jim is looking very happy because the video game he stars in, Call Of Duty Black Ops, was released the day before and set the opening day record for ANY type of entertainment,Is he is grossing $320,000,000 by the time he reached my house. Maybe that’s why they got me 14 gifts. Though Nancye and Jim are always reliable for a smorgasbord of age-inappropriate-unless-you-happen-to-be-me offerings like this magnificent 1950’s mother of pearl poodle pocket mirror/pill box:

… and this convenient land line phone ear piece for my iPhone:

They also gave me this wonderfully famous Enid Collins owl box purse…

…and this fantastic 50’s fold up wallet with plastic coin holder inside like the Good Humor ice cream man used to wear on his belt to give people change:

They also threw in this 1960’s Wilma Flintstone bathing cap.

Here I am with Pamela Des Barres, the world’s most famous groupie, and Diva and Gail Zappa, who came straight to my place from the airport after being honored at a Frank Zappa festival in London.

Pamela is a fabulous writer and also travels a lot for her work. Which is lucky for me and the rest of her friends as she hits thrift shops wherever she goes and picks up stuff for us all year round. She makes these finds for pennies and stacks them up so she can arrive like Santa Claus on any given occasion. These “On The Wagon’ coaster and snack trays she gave me are just about my favorite bar accessory ever!

I love when snacks are referred to as ‘Tid Bits’, especially when what is normally a single word is broken up into two separate words as stamped into the belly of the wagon.

This nightshirt could be the heaviest gift of the evening. It’s hard to see all the 1960’s pop culture graphics and slogans in this photo and I’m not sure who the characters on it are but there were more than a few vintage clotheshorses at the party, certainly including myself, and we all agree that Pamela’s $2 purchase would easily go for $500 in the right store.

Then there’s this early 60’s Make-Up Mask that you pull over your bouffant to protect the Max Factor from rubbing off your face when you pull your angora sweater over it:

Pamela graciously modeled it for us throughout the evening.

Her excellent gift giving instincts have definitely rubbed off on the other Des Barres in attendance, Michael, who reliably gives me fantastic African swag.

At one point there was a girl’s conference in the bedroom.  Here I am with (L-R) Lily Tomlin,Prudence Fenton, and Jane Wagner:

Prudence not only cooked an incredible dinner for everyone but made the excellent “Crackerature” portrait of me that’s between our heads in the photo above.

Lily and Jane gave me the most ridiculous-in-the-best-kitsch-sense-of-the-word-ridiculous gift of the night:

He’s only about 3″ high, his little arms are made out of bobby pins and his body is some kind of overcooked Sculpy or baking soda concoction. The card that accompanied him was just as kitschy.

The Diller is Phyllis Diller, which adds a few pounds on the kitsch scale for this gift. The note Jane and Lily wrote me make the cheese wheel even weightier:

Joining Lily and I here is Stan Zimmerman. We all grew up in Detroit.

Stan added a little class to my gifts with this 1950’s signed Sasha Brastoff ashtray.

Here’s Lily and I with RuPaul. Both of them have added greatly to the kitsch cache of my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist, as they are the #1 and #2 collectors of her art, each owning over 20 pieces.

Michael Patrick King, seen here with Pamela Des Barres’ lovely feet, brought me some of my most Americanized presents.

He brought my gifts back from Dubai when he was there filming Sex and the City II. First, this green shopping bag featuring a carefree Michelle Obama:

And then this brain-numbing Muslim Barbie shoulder bag:

I got one more bag, actually a Kitsch Emergency Kit, from Karen Levitas.

It’s nice when your friends give you a healthy snack of sardines to enjoy while you read cheesy poetry from the 70’s:

Here I am with Mark Blackwell, who’s also a November 10th birthday baby, and Sonny Ruscha Bjornson, Lisa Loeb and Roey Hershkovitz:

Lisa and Roey gave me some quality reading material:

Maybe I will learn to make beautiful cakes like this one on page 110:

But when it comes to baking, there’s only one Supreme Master and I’m pictured with him here:

Just a few days before my party Charles Phoenix was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal with his signature “Cherpumple” cake, one of which he baked for me.

A Cherpumple is three Sara Lee cherry, pumpkin and apple pies stuffed inside three Betty Crocker cakes and frosted as one happy stack of sugary ecstasy:

Here’s my friend, Lesley Ann Warren, indulging in some. Perennially skinny and always eating healthy, she hit the Cherpumple as an extreme gesture of kitsch on my birthday.

Lesley was my first friend when I moved to Hollywood in 1976. She was also the first person ever to sing one of my songs on TV when she did the third song I ever wrote, “Childstar”, on Johnny Carson.

Some people went back for seconds of Cherpumple. Each plate weighs 2 lbs.

Gai Gherardi and Rhonda Saboff shared their Cherpumple:

They gave me an excellent pair of glasses from LA Eyeworks, which Gai co-owns and where I’ve bought all of my eye coverings for the last three decades.

When RuPaul arrived he brought me another birthday cake.

It was delicious but everyone had already gorged on too much Cherpumple.

Which means that everyone went home in sugar shock, the condition they’ve had much practice existing in as they’ve all been over to my house a trillion times before.

I didn’t have far to go as my bed was only feet away from the remains of the Cherpumple. I went to sleep with my crown on and had sugar sweet dreams anticipating a very good year to come indeed!

More party photos can be seen here.

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I bought this Party Pendant at a thrift shop recently, brought it home, shined it up and glued little rhinestones on it. I’ve only worn it out a couple of times but people have ooh’d and ahh’d as if I’d gotten it at Tiffany’s. So I decided to make it a habit and wear it when I knew I’d be attending a hot party. I did, in fact, know that Nancye Ferguson’s birthday party Sunday night would be hot as all of her parties are at her amazing Atomic house that gives you one of those aerial postcard views over the entire city of LA. But when I got home and dumped my photos I realized that not only had I forgotten to take a photo with Nancye, the Party Pendant along with every other piece of jewelry I meant to wear had been forgotten in a drawer at home, replaced with my Color Purple backstage pass that I still had on from earlier in the day when I went to see the fabulous new cast of my musical at the Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks. As proud as I am to have that pass swinging from my neck, I do wish that my ratty ass cheap Party Pendant were also present as it would have been so appropriate hanging in the following photos.

Here I am party pendantless with Michael Patrick King and Prudence Fenton.

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Michael may have written and directed the Sex and the City movies and much of the TV series but this guy wrote The Graduate and created and wrote TV series like Get Smart.

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Not  that I wasn’t excited to see Buck Henry but I almost needed to be hospitalized when I stumbled onto Dr. Kildare in the kitchen.

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I’ve long been a collector of Richard Chamberlain/ Dr. Kildare memorabilia.

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Speaking of doctors on television, here I am with Ian Buchanan, Dr. Greg Madden on All My Children, and Diva Zappa.

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Diva’s father was Frank. Here’s a portrait of Frank carved a few years ago by Diva’s brother, Dweezil.

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Dweezil was missing in action Sunday night but here I am with his mom, Gail Zappa.

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And here I am with Pamela Des Barres. Among other things, Pamela used to babysit for the Zappa kids and was in the all girl band Frank put together in the 60’s called The GTOs.

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It’s ancient history but Lisa Loeb used to go out with Dweezil.

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In 1999, Lisa commissioned my alter ego, Bubbles the artist, who I used to manage, to do a portrait of Dweezil and all the things he loved for his birthday. Lisa is standing outside the window playing golf, Dweezil’s favorite sport.

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I wish I could say that we played golf or did anything other than taking long rides on Sunday and eating in dives and somehow tie it into the rest of the narrative, but here I am with Charles Phoenix and Jack Nesbit.

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Ultimately, I can only tie that photo in by saying that Charles and Jack brought the balloons we’re standing in front of for Nancye’s birthday, the one person I somehow forgot to take a photo with. Here’s one of us for reference, taken at Diva Zappa’s birthday party last year, tying things up nicely.

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I love going to parties when they’re good parties. I have good friends who throw good parties. Now I also have good bling for good parties which I’ll hopefully remember to wear the next time I go to one.

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