Hat tip to Frank for the above three “Kodak Moments.”

Richard: There are times I hate this job — times I hate having to take the piss out of perfectly normal, sane, well-meaning people who’ve had the misfortune of being captured (mostly naked) at precisely the wrong moment.

Take this young fella for example — clearly a proud father serenading his son in a late-night lullaby. I feel doubly saddened by the fact that his son was born without an immune system, thereby requiring him to live forever in a plastic bubble. On the upside, however, technology seems to advanced since John Travolta’s day, to the point that such bubbles now come in a variety of designer colors — in this case, a shade of kelly green that perfectly complements the room. Because, I mean, the last thing anyone would want would be for their immune-comprised baby’s bubble to look obvious or anything.

John: Everything traditional is what our hero is looking for. The warm matronly cabinet behind him, the cradle at his side, the Tex-Mex acoustic guitar to cover his naughties — he’s looking for marriage, guys. No furtive clutching at each other over the gear shift in a sedan, no smoky bars where they serve lite beers — no he wants the full deal. In a church. Kids — adopted, if necessary; mixed-race, preferably (O, save the planet!)

And he’s dynamite in bed too. The long hair and the iguana appliqué on the guitar tell you that. Our boy knows how to get down and righteously nasty, but only in private and only for you. Most of the time he wants a life as four-square and settled as this room — with a little medicine ball action in the cradle to liven things up.

Steve: Why aren’t we talking about the small, fuzzy turtle with bushy orange eyebrows that oversees the entire scene from his varnished podium of judgement? Is that taboo? I feel like I’ve missed a crucial cultural cue that would allow me to understand why the turtle is normal.

I only bring it up because the turtle looks concerned, and I think it points to a deeper story here. Something years in the making that has culminated in the moment we see. The cords hanging from the ceiling are also saying something to me. I can’t be sure without confirmation, but I suspect that this man’s life may depend on which one of them our concerned turtle friend decides to pull.

Shout Out! to Wayne from Wayne’s Naked Musicians. ROCK ON!
 

John: Nothing gets the juices flowing like a leopard skin rug from Target. Our hero is telling us he is a primitive, an aboriginal, a wild thing of the jungle. Also that he is at home in the housewares section of any major mall.

The beer belly without the beercan dick is a bit of a deal breaker, but the nipple tweaking shows our happy camper is willing to go for the hard sell. I don’t understand the sloppy paint job on the wall borders but perhaps it’s another way of insisting that he is not made for the white man’s world — like in Tarzan’s New York Adventure where Johnny Weissmuller thinks the best way to get to Brooklyn is to dive off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now is it just me, but whenever I see an A’s cap, I think “Asshole”. What next? An “L” cap?

David: Everything about this foyer telegraphs disaster: The greasy, high gloss Wedding Cake White paint job around the window (it’s called masking tape btw — check into it), the brick-a-brack shelf hinged above a baseboard heater (uhm … heat rises, Lillian Vernon shit melts, drips and will often ignite).

And that doorbell you can’t hear ringing? That’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses making their first call of the morning. It’s gonna be a fucked up day.

Richard: I can tell from that baseboard heatifying contraption that this shot was taken north of the Mason-Dixon, so I say this as both a Southerner and a faggot: y’all Yankees don’t know what to do with a goddamn house.

For example, any good ol’ boy worth his weight in pralines — which, by the way, is pronounced praw-LEANS, you sons of bitches — knows how to deal with hardwood floors. We know they require monthly — if not weekly — cleanings with Murphy’s Oil Soap.

We know that clean or dirty, they’re very dangerous to run around on when you’re wearing tube socks. And most of all, we know that a rug on hardwood without padding is a herniated disk waiting to happen.

learly, this poor Svengali broke both of the latter rules whilst engaged in a wild sex romp with Carlito, the superintendent’s hot young nephew, recently arrived from San Juan. Luckily, the guy’s fall was broken by an antique rug that his family had made from the now-extinct Southern pine leopard during their carpetbagging years in Atlanta immediately following the War of Northern Aggression.