David: As hard economic times continue to decimate America, we’re discovering more interior submissions like this one where plastic and detritus overtake a room. We suggest limiting storage units to one per room. Also, one trash can per room will suffice. (Though here, with so much shit cluttering the floor maybe this guy is dealing with a hoarding situation and what we witness here is simply overspill). On the plus side I appreciate the surreal effect of the different cloth treatments in this room. The zingy tropic-inspired swatch above the bed is complimented by the spilling forward of a giant wave of beige mediocrity that’s ready to swallow all in its path, including the homeowner. Thank you Mood Fabrics in New York, once again you’ve helped another budding designer find their way (or their demise.)

File Under:Bedroom Terrors

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Richard: If we have to slog through yet another 1970s revival, can we please do it the right way this time? The decade of Bowie and disco got a bad rap because some people went a little craftacular in their home decor — like, all-Etsy, all-the-time. But there was a flip-side to that, a stunningly simple, clean, 70s aesthetic. Think of the work of Richard Serra or that killer home in Zabriskie Point (which is technically late 60s, but shut up). Point is: not everyone was down with the macrame.

The good news is that there’s hope for this rumpus-room-cum-Barbie’s-Karaoke-Dream-Studio. For starters, that wallpaper is fanfuckingtastic. Take down those poorly framed (or worse: unframed) family portraits, put the least-awkward ones on a tastefully appointed sofa table, and dump the rest where they belong: in a shoebox in the closet, along with that Styx ticket stub. Then poke around in the attic, find the extra roll of wallpaper grandma bought, and patch those nail holes. Leave the light fixture. Don’t TOUCH the goddamn light fixture, asshole.

The rest is just a matter of cleaning. Open the front door and toss out those Thanksgiving tchotchkes, and the stuffed monkey, and the Steelers fleece, and those encyclopedias (or mineralogy guides or whatever the fuck they are), and everything else in the room, including those cheapass cabinet speakers. Then hold a yard sale, and use the proceeds to buy some new, unstained carpet. When you’re done, I don’t want to see anything down here but a TV and that painted saw. (Hang it over the doorway, just to make people nervous. Well, more nervous.) 

File Under:Living Room Wreckage

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Shawn: What’s the first thing you think about upon witnessing this setting? That’s right — colonial furniture is back! The WASPy emotional austerity and the sense of elder class boundaries gone to seed in modern suburban limbo is so sublimely barren. Remember the good old days when savages, and provocative, unmarried women were openly scorned without recourse and Lucifer himself lurked behind every poplar tree? Like you, I miss those times, and so there’s no more ignoble fate for the Spirit of The Mayflower than to be condemned to stark, prefab domesticity. Yep, somehow nothing screams the death knell of The Age of Innocence quite like a kitty litter box being placed so brazenly in the parlor.

That the litter itself is nearly the same shade as the carpet?

Wanton!

File Under:Dining Room Don'ts

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Shawn: Hey, at the end of the day, we all want to be Elisabeth Shue doing her opening credits thang in Adventures In Babysitting, but sadly, life comes with all manner of constraints. And really — isn’t this whole scene a testament to the defiance of the suffocating hedges of reality? The fact that the wall map — easily tacked-up but lacking the integral fourth corner — is deliberately left amiss is a blatant and flouting psychological giveaway; that an item that’s a fixture in rigid learning settings is so deliberately compromised says all you could ever want to know about the occupant. What else can you think when the walls are so utterly devoid of any other adornment and as bare as the exposed box spring? Weirdly, the entire room seems utterly out-of-time-place-context as well. The bed just screams halfway house — an incomplete border zone on the frustrating cusp of uncertain where-the-Hell-do-I-go-from-here imminence. Cabin-in-the-woods blanket and mismatched pillowcases? More like a cleaved psyche, with one self fighting in vain for respectability and the other just throwing up its hands in frustration. Ultimately, it’s the vintage ’60s-style Keds on the floor reveals that is not so much a physical locale as it is a netherwold zone accessible only by the ghost roads of the mind.

File Under:Bedroom Terrors

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Richard: This can’t be real. I have to believe that this is a movie set or an art installation or possibly a frame from a gay horror video game based on Dennis Cooper‘s novel The Sluts. Because if this is real, I lose all remaining faith in gay humanity.

The problem isn’t the paneling. I mean, I don’t get all warm and gushy thinking about the 1970s, but neither do I pretend that the decade’s fascination with half-assed boiserie never happened. Nor do I have an issue with the sad floor lamp propped in the corner or the disheveled futon. Hey, everyone has a first apartment.

But how anyone could sleep beneath that wisp of a valance — ripped from the set of The Town That Dreaded Sundown (starring Dawn Wells!) — is beyond me. And while I appreciate any paint-by-numbers portrait, I cannot believe that anyone would pair this one with a craptacular framed print of an egret (or a heron or whatever that thing is) stolen from a community dental clinic. Stealing is WRONG, in so many ways.

File Under:Bedroom Terrors

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David: Wake up all you passed out hipsters. Did you know Lurid Digs has a growing community of fans over on Facebook? We post regular updates PLUS kookie interior design tips that you won’t be able to live (or decorate) without. And, better yet, a special gallery devoted to Lurid Digs REJECTS (try to imagine — we dare you!)

JOIN US on The Facebook. And when you’re done — spread the word — tell your friends, tell your high school P.E. coach, tell Maggie Gallagher — hell, tell your mom — she’s homo-hip isn’t she?

File Under:News

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David K: We’re often asked why we don’t include more references to 16th century literature on Lurid Digs. A normal request I suppose. I mean, we have created metaphoric references using everyone from Tammy Faye Baker to Idi Amin in the past. So let us now bring Edmund Spenser into the mix. In his hallucinogenic poem The Faerie Queen, Spenser describes the beguiling Bower of Bliss like this:

“It was a lovely spot, a place adorned in the most perfect way by which art could imitate nature; everything sweet and pleasing, or that the daintiest fancy could devise, was gathered here in lavish profusion.”

So I would say this homeowner, inspired by the great English poet, has done his best to transfer the feel and vibe of the bower directly onto and into his living room sofa — a near success. There are problems with the hodgepodge of textures (both natural and synthetic) and patterns (animal). This lack of balance generates a vertiginous vibe — and this might be the proprietor’s conscious intent. Back to Spenser on the Bower as a reference:

“In the porch sat a tall, handsome porter, whose looks were so pleasant that he seemed to entice travellers to him, but it was only to deceive them to their own ruin.”

Mind you Spenser was writing before the glut of gay porn, web cams and hookup sites. A modern retelling would revamp the above passage and present Spenser’s porter as supine, legs languorously laid open and showing a post-coital tristesse.

Richard:Isn’t it eerie how affects can transcend time and find their modern-day equivalent? Foreseen is forwarned: Look, but do not touch!

The major problem here? Pharmaceuticals are NEVER sexy. I don’t care if you wear contacts or if you have crippling sinus infections: your boudoir doesn’t need a shrine to Walgreen’s. This is what medicine cabinets are for. In fact, there is an entire room of the house devoted to bodily goo, and it is called the bathroom. Hie thee hence. 

On the upside, I love room with animal patterns, even if those animal patterns come in the form of dingy fleece throw blankets. I’m particularly fond of the Egyptian-themed bed-runner, which loses points for being draped over an ill-fitting damask slipcover instead of an actual bed, but it wins me over again by being a print of cheetahs instead of a garden-variety cheetah-print. (Would it be better with a print of Chita Rivera? Obviously.)

But the runner’s biggest selling point is that it brings to mind one of the best lyrics ever written by Morrisey, which seems somehow appropriate: “As Antony said to Cleopatra/As he opened a crate of ale/Oh, I say…”

File Under:Living Room Wreckage

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