Should Bad Pop Culture Be Forgot?

We can always feel better about the present by scrutinizing the past.

The Institute of Official Cheer is dedicated to "helping tomorrow feel superior by scoffing at yesterday." It features a mega-gallery of retro oddities and critiques that enshrine American pop culture of the last century.

From architecture to matchbook covers and ads torn from Cold War issues of "Good Housekeeping," this site catalogs and parodies the dilemmas of modern life in a most pleasant, eye-catching way.

Founded and run by journalist James Lileks, the site chronicles the torment of its own upkeep and highlights with witticism the subtleties of Americana in advertising, art and culture.

Lileks is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a syndicated political humor columnist for Newhouse News Service and a contributor to the Washington Post. He's also written four books: "Notes of a Nervous Man" and "Fresh Lies" and the novels "Falling up the Stairs" and "Mr. Obvious."

Lileks started the Web site in 1995, during what he calls a period of underemployment.

"I thought, 'This is the next thing.' I wanted to be there," Lileks said in a phone interview.

"You never know where this (the Web) will pay off down the road. I certainly have made more money than Boo, though," he jokes, referring to an apparently nonfunctioning e-commerce site.

Lileks says that the site will never host banner ads and that he has always done it for fun and "altruism." That said, he did make some money by selling a Toronto newspaper a compilation from one of the site's subsections, Bureau of Corporate Allegory.

One of the most popular sections is the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Lileks calls it "a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes," with pages torn from '50s cookbooks and long-forgotten home-ec texts on Jell-O molds, SPAM wannabes and primitive treks into exotic cuisine.

He got the idea from an old "hideous" cookbook of his mother's and was soon bombarded with recipes from readers.

The hodgepodge of terrible tastes will be available in book form in spring 2001.

Obscure Perv Remembered

The Art of Art Frahm focuses on the truly twisted works of a '50s pin-up artist, whose works all feature girls with their underpants around their ankles, holding a bag of groceries, while some stout, impish pervert looks on in the background.

It is an exercise in peculiarity and could provide some psychology student with enough material for a fascinating thesis. Or it could just make a good calendar for the toolshed or garage.

The Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots is an album of clip-art characters such as Kraut King and Bondex Betty. They are the abandoned advertising icons of days gone by, clipped from old newspapers and microfilm. Lileks urges readers to cut and paste them into their own Web pages to finally give them a good home.

"Day and night, their tireless smiles will endorse the goodness of your Web page to the world, nourished only by the HTML code that bonds them to their owner."

Elvis Becomes Liberace

The gallery of Bad Publicity spotlights the big names in mid-20th century entertainment as they are not remembered. These rarely seen celebrity snapshots were culled from the archives of old newspapers. Jack Lord: Artist. Elvis and Liberace switch personalities.

Lileks takes a perverse pleasure in digging up these gems of the past and regularly haunts the libraries and dank underground bookstores of the city for a scrap of camp.

"The rule is, I have to find it," he says. Plenty of readers send him material, but avoiding copyright hassle is easier this way.

Off of the main site, Lileks.com, one finds the American postcards index, with vintage views from around the country. Blow them up and frame for some retro d?cor.

The Ghost ads showcase those fading facades on the sides of buildings for chewing gum, flour and plenty of soda pop from the days before billboards.

Monstrous Structures

Architecture of the past is a big theme for Lileks. He says that he wanted to be an architect, until he "realized that it involved math and my buildings would probably fall down."

The Gobbler motel is a lost piece of '60s architecture, known as the Grooviest Motel in Wisconsin. Harking from the days of "space age" and polyester, this one-of-a-kind monstrosity is an homage to every sick and wrong piece of architecture built between 1955 and 1980. Industry should have been banned from designing, constructing or marketing any product at all from this era of faux-rock faces and un-fantastic plastic furniture.

Minneapolis: Past and Present chronicles the downtown of yesterday and today, what remains and what is forgotten, including some great vignettes from New York City and Fargo, N.D. (Lileks' hometown). He has a great eye for Art Deco and modern design.

There are plenty of pop-culture junkyards cluttering up the Web these days. You have to get pretty specific to find what you want.

But Lileks has taken a voluminous body of kitsch, coupled it with his own biting commentary, and honed this site into a fine aesthetic work representing the height of American civilization. Or is that the depth?