So as I was saying yesterday, this last weekend at Willis Wonderland we aKitschionados from The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch saw the light of Fluff!

For a quick recap if you were too lazy to click on that link, many of us are converging on Somerville, MA. September 24th to attend the fifth annual Fluff Festival to celebrate the marshmallow food topping in the city it was invented in. aKitschionado Rusty suggested that we first convene at Willis Wonderland in LA, the physical arm of AWMOK.com, and spend a day cooking with Fluff. Bear in mind that many of the aKitschionados in attendance had never met before and only knew each other by commenting on the kitsch they’d submitted to AWMOK. So everything served had to be a real icebreaker. As such, the first course was Fluff inspired sandwiches…:

… accompanied by Goldfish in sea foam dip vegetables:

All of which was washed down with Flufftinis…:

…an original recipe by aKitschionado iamfluff, a.k.a. Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady of the Bunch:

Extra points were earned for color-coordinated food, dishware and clothing:

Even more points racked up for color-coordinated lamps and other sugary Fluff alternatives:

aKitschionado Mark Blackwell scored even more bonus points for coordinating his jellybean tribute to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch with the aforementioned lamp and M&Ms.

I hope anyone reading this appreciates the importance of color-coordinated meals and accoutrements. If there’s any question at all about the importance of food and furnishings color-coordination, please refer here.

The main course was delicious and nutritious Fluffernutter cake. I know this photo’s blurry but so was my vision after the day’s 21-gun sugar salute.

If you think that cake is gooey, let me tell you that as the party hostess who had to clean up – actually I didn’t clean up at all as the aKitschionados are a very conscious and esthetically tidy breed – there were vestiges of Fluff everywhere. Like on Mark’s pants:

Slightly less lava-flowish-of-Fluff were the fried S’Mores made by akitschionado Snappy P.

Technically, there’s no Fluff in this recipe but as its fraternal twin, marshmallows, are a key ingredient the Willis Wonderland stove did not discriminate.

Many aKitschionados came bearing gifts. Doug Wood, for example, brought me a lovely kitsch-filled basket:.

One of the gifts was a practical Hostess Twinkie holder:

Many aKitschionados were jealous of my acquisition:

Just as important as protecting your Twinkies is protecting your Pringles. Thank you, aKitschionado Windupkitty, for the lovely Pringles protective case.

By the way, a practical party hint: name tags are essential. Even if your guests know each other for a hundred years it gives them an opportunity to express what they’re feeling in name, which acts as much of an icebreaker at a party as food no one has eaten since they were 11 years old.

It also saves the host or hostess time in making introductions.

As I said, the bulk of the day’s festivities centered around cooking and eating. But aKitschionados were free to wander around Willis Wonderland to enjoy the artifacts they’ve been seeing in my posts since I first launched AWMOK.com in 2009. Many of them also enjoyed the fine reading materials scattered around.

and

That book deserves a close up:

In fact, my whole Soul kitsch collection deserves a close-up. Here’s but a few of the shelves of it:

I think Fluff is a soulful food. It recalls one’s childhood and brings feelings of peace to the mind if not the blood vessels, as aKitschionado John Zenone experiences here:

Off in my recording studio, I was showing some of the aKitschionados some more of my Soul kitsch collection:

You might want to see the front of that picture frame:

As much as I covet my James Brown autograph, I covet this bit of Soul kitsch almost as much, Sammy Davis Jr’s last stash of marijuana:

Slightly easier to see than the cannabis in that last photo are the edges of the round circle rugs that cover the floor in my recording studio. They’re there to protect the plastic that’s actually the floor surface that scratches as soon as you breathe on it. Here’s what the floor looks like in real life:

Despite signs posted all over begging aKitschionados to carefully step on the rugs, several of them found it necessary to defy their leader’s command. Bad girl, kookykitsch!

And Meshuggah Mel!

And Rusty!

And Ken!

Although it was close to 100° and muggy, we also spent time outside.  That’s where my over 200 pieces of bamboo dinnerware are.

And for anyone who missed the sugar inside, there was plenty of cotton candy floating in the pool.

Food that floats is something every party chef should consider when throwing summer parties.

So all in all, a good and Fluffy time was had by all!  Come back again soon, aKitschionados. See you all in Somerville in “September” one way or the other.

 

Photos: Allee Willis, Prudence Fenton, Mark Blackwell, Rusty Blasenhoff, Ken Dashner.

 

awmok-logo

Running around all day today on about a second of sleep doing final tweaks on the first party celebrating the Grand Opening of The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch tonight as well as coding my tootsies off on the virtual Museum, the heart of the experience, at AWMoK.com. I hope to open the floodgates online at noon LA time. (Until then, the ‘Coming September 14th’ page with the trailer, press and a few other goodies is still there.) Not sure I’ll make the noon door opening but once it flies open there’s some magnificently supreme kitsch to browse through in The Museum itself and in the Kitschenette wing there are incredibly easy instructions, customized for dummies and people like me who get confused reading directions of any sort, for how to submit your own prize Kitsch. 

AWMoK.com is a mini social network, built to scale up and incorporate more interactivity as more Kitsch is injected into it. Please visit later today or tomorrow and register to become an aKitscionado, another process that I’ve slaved over so it’s pathetically quick and easy. You can browse both The Museum and The Kitschenette but you need to register in order to submit anything or make comments.

Party photos will go up sometime tomorrow and video will follow though not sure when. The parties, tonight and next Monday night, were supposed to be webcast but the DSL at the gallery can’t handle the upload speeds so now it means digitizing six hours of footage from each of the three cameras and editing everything, a far more gruesome process than just letting it stream as it happens. But photos will be up as soon as I wake up tomorrow, which could be God knows what time as I haven’t slept in a week and have to do a lot of press tomorrow. 

Today is also the beginning of a weeklong “What Is Kitsch?” Film Festival on YouTube, eight short films I made on the subject of Kitsch. I’ll be posting the links to these when I upload them. There are two going up today, the introductory film, “What Is Kitsch?”, as well as one that’s about submitting items to The Museum. (When I say submitting items I mean images and descriptions. As much as I’d love to own all the stuff you guys tell me about, The Museum is virtual so photos and not the actual item is what you’ll be contributing.)

I’ve worked on putting The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch together online ever since I started my Kitsch O’ The Day blog seven months ago. Integrating virtual and physical spaces is what I’ve dreamed about doing since I stumbled on the Internet in 1991. I hope you enjoy The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, The Kitschenette and the eight short films as much as I’ve enjoyed – though sometimes been tortured by! – making them.

Nice story in the LA Times today too.

Running around all day today on about a second of sleep doing final tweaks on the first party celebrating the Grand Opening of The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch tonight as well as coding my tootsies off on the virtual Museum, the heart of the experience, at AWMoK.com. I hope to open the floodgates online at noon LA time. (Until then, the ‘Coming September 14th’ page with the trailer, press and a few other goodies is still there.) Not sure I’ll make the noon door opening but once it flies open there’s some magnificently supreme kitsch to browse through in The Museum itself and in the Kitschenette wing there are incredibly easy instructions, customized for dummies and people like me who get confused reading directions of any sort, for how to submit your own prize Kitsch. 
AWMoK.com is a mini social network, built to scale up and incorporate more interactivity as more Kitsch is injected into it. Please visit later today or tomorrow and register to become an aKitscionado, another process that I’ve slaved over so it’s pathetically quick and easy. You can browse both The Museum and The Kitschenette but you need to register in order to submit anything or make comments.
Party photos will go up sometime tomorrow and video will follow though not sure when. The parties, tonight and next Monday night, were supposed to be webcast but the DSL at the gallery can’t handle the upload speeds so now it means digitizing six hours of footage from each of the three cameras and editing everything, a far more gruesome process than just letting it stream as it happens. But photos will be up as soon as I wake up tomorrow, which could be God knows what time as I haven’t slept in a week and have to do a lot of press tomorrow. a
Today is also the beginning of a weeklong “What Is Kitsch?” Film Festival on YouTube, eight short films I made on the subject of Kitsch. I’ll be posting the links to these when I upload them. There are two going up today, the introductory film, “What Is Kitsch?”, as well as one that’s about submitting items to The Museum. (When I say submitting items I mean images and descriptions. As much as I’d love to own all the stuff you guys tell me about, The Museum is virtual so photos and not the actual item is what you’ll be contributing.)
I’ve worked on putting The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch together online ever since I started my Kitsch O’ The Day blog seven months ago. Integrating virtual and physical spaces is what I’ve dreamed about doing since I stumbled on the Internet in 1991. I hope you enjoy The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, The Kitschenette and the eight short films as much as I’ve enjoyed – though sometimes been tortured by! – making them.

aw-is-kitsch

I had always thought that the day before the Grand opening of the virtual Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch I would have one of the most spectacular pieces of kKitsch in my collection to feature on Kitsch O’ The Day. But I’m going completely insane on massive overload trying to get the online interface/mini social network at awmok.com scotch-taped together enough to open tomorrow – sometime between noon and 5 PM West Coast time – not to mention building physical displays, handmaking souvenirs and getting auction items ready for the first of two grand opening parties tomorrow night at Ghettogloss on Melrose. 
I have no hands left, my brain has been reduced to the size of a pea and the thought of photographing one more piece of my Kitsch and writing a description is enough to throw me into a deep coma after mounting an exhibition of every object featured in Kitsch O’ The Day since I began the blog in early March, building customized bubble display cases for everything, tweaking the descriptions, filling four foot wide bowls almost big enough to take baths in with junk food, and doing the 175 other things on my list for what I’m sure will be another 20 hour day of tweaks. So no Beatles sneakers, bedazzled Snuggies or motorized go-go boots that move on their own to “These Boots Were Made For Walking” today and, instead, an amazing 4′ x 4′ three-dimensional-made-from-all-my-junk “Allee Is Kitsch” portrait of me done by my very talented friend, Jason Mecier. The portrait is featured at the opening parties along with the other 150 aforementioned Kitschifyingly spectacular objects.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet or don’t know much about The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch please proceed to awmok.com. Otherwise, see ya tomorrow!
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-09-10-kitsch-museum_N.htm
http://www.examiner.com/x-8310-Trendy-Living-Examiner~y2009m9d7-Allee-Willis-Museum-of-Kitsch-opening
http://flavorpill.com/losangeles/events/2009/9/14/allee-willis-museum-of-kitsch
http://eccentricroadside.blogspot.com/2009/09/whole-kitsch-and-caboodle-allee-willis.html
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/bitch-popaganda-superwomen-or-lack-thereof-edition

I had always thought that the day before the Grand opening of the virtual Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch I would have one of the most spectacular pieces of Kitsch in my collection to feature on Kitsch O’ The Day. But I’m going completely insane on massive overload trying to get the online interface/mini social network at awmok.com scotch-taped together enough to open tomorrow – sometime between noon and 5 PM West Coast time – not to mention building physical displays, handmaking souvenirs and getting auction items ready for the first of two grand opening parties tomorrow night at Ghettogloss on Melrose. 

I have no hands left, my brain has been reduced to the size of a pea and the thought of photographing one more piece of my Kitsch and writing a description is enough to throw me into a deep coma after mounting an exhibition of every object featured in Kitsch O’ The Day since I began the blog in early March, building customized bubble display cases for everything, tweaking the descriptions, filling four foot wide bowls almost big enough to take baths in with junk food, and doing the 175 other things on my list for what I’m sure will be another 20 hour day of tweaks. So no Beatles sneakers, bedazzled Snuggies or motorized go-go boots that move on their own to “These Boots Were Made For Walking” today and, instead, an amazing 4′ x 4′ three-dimensional-made-from-all-my-junk “Allee Is Kitsch” portrait of me done by my very talented friend, Jason Mecier. The portrait is featured at the opening parties along with the other 150 aforementioned Kitschifyingly spectacular objects.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet or don’t know much about The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch please proceed to awmok.com. Otherwise, see ya there tomorrow!

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-09-10-kitsch-museum_N.htm

http://www.examiner.com/x-8310-Trendy-Living-Examiner~y2009m9d7-Allee-Willis-Museum-of-Kitsch-opening

http://flavorpill.com/losangeles/events/2009/9/14/allee-willis-museum-of-kitsch

http://eccentricroadside.blogspot.com/2009/09/whole-kitsch-and-caboodle-allee-willis.html

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/bitch-popaganda-superwomen-or-lack-thereof-edition