Steve: Ambiance isn’t reserved for the tasteful, squirreled away and rationed to owners of high-end condominiums. It’s possible for men from all walks of life to bring the same basic principals to their life spaces through some creative application of personal flair and a hearty dose of “personality.”

File Under:Kitchen Kitsch

50

Steve: Wait, hold on, I’m still working on this, but I was thinking… What if I put… No, we’ve got the bicycle and two vacuum cleaners. I was thinking we could kick this over into sexy if I’d just… It’s the lamp, isn’t it? Is that distracting you? I never knew quite what to do with those pillows from the estate sale. Are they stealing too much focus? I know I can still make this work.

File Under:Living Room Wreckage

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Richard: And here we have Chi Chi‘s private living room, designed by Miss LaRue herself. Oh, and what luck! Here we have an actual hustler, ladies and gentlemen, probably plucked from the very sidewalks of Santa Monica Boulevard! Take your photos quickly, my dears — tomorrow he’ll be charging $300 an hour for it!

David: I’m a sucker for composition. And it’s fabulous how the model looms out from the center of the image, claiming his domain. It’s an effect that’s amplified by the crazy lines of the wainscoting zig-zagging through the blazing orange room — “Yeah, baby!” Everything here screams ‘A’ for effort. Still, I’m filing this under: Celine Dion‘s Venetian (Tangerine) Daydream.

Heather: Real Men Decorate With Naugahyde. Ooh, and that paint! Must be from the new Campbell’s Soup Collection.

John:The more I look at this photo the more fake it becomes. Is this the hocus pocus of Dr. Photoshop? Can he really be looming so enormously in the foreground? Of course, there is a whole genre of amateur porn photos — I call them the Colossus of Rhodes photos — shot from the floor where the head seems to brush the ceiling. Still…

So anyway, here we have yet another Colossus of Rhodes on the loose. This one rampaging through the pages of Architectural Digest. Correction, through the home of someone who reads entirely too many Architectural Digests. You know how there is such a thing as Fashion Victims? There is such a thing as Architectural Digest Victims.

File Under:Calvacade of Calamities | Living Room Wreckage

6

Steve: I wouldn’t want to insinuate that this might ever be the future location of sweaty gay sex, but it might. Isn’t that the most wonderful thing?

Rest assured, everything will smell completely fresh for the duration, and you’ll be surrounded by a dizzying array of delicate pastel-colored ornaments, hand-painted in Taiwan.

File Under:Dens From Hell

31

Steve: If you’re not getting the response you want from one photo, you might try changing the setting of the shot. Many times, this changes the tone entirely.

…

Though not always.

File Under:Dens From Hell | Living Room Wreckage

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