Just like Brian Wilson

Truly awful real estate agent photos: an art form for our times

It's late, I'm tired, but I feel a bit guilty that I haven't blogged in a few days. Usually I enjoy it, but right now I'm wrapped up in more medical tests (easy-peasy today, a CT scan in which I was all finished ten minutes before my appointment time - something paranormal about that machine), family problems that I can't even begin to address (but which seemed somewhat better today), and endless preparations for a book launch which will probably net me about two sales. Nevertheless!

I keep being directed back to this site through Facebook. It's sort of like going to a sideshow: you look through your fingers, but you nevertheless look. These are (we think) actual photos taken by actual realtors to sell actual houses. The followup is never mentioned. The ones I post here are not, believe me, the most extreme examples, some of which are stomach-turning and seem to be fresh murder scenes not yet investigated by the police.

Part of the charm of these weird things is the godawful photography, just abysmal. Even I could do better. This one should be captioned "the light at the end of the tunnel: or, my near-death experience".

Remember before we could delete photos, when we had to have a whole roll developed, and out of 24, 22 would have someone's thumb in the corner?

And why take a picture of somebody's stove?

Weird or inappropriate decor. These settings look disturbingly similar to me.

It's important to put some serious dollars into fixing up your house before putting it on the market. Shows it off to its best advantage.

This is a series called "inappropriate toilets".This matched set would be good for the Doublemint twins.

I can think of a million jokes, but really, this situation is too bizarre to joke about.

Front-row seats! Do they hold up little cards, do you think?

Ah, right by the front door! Convenient, isn't it? If you really have to go when you get home from work - perhaps. But I'm worried about the placement of that mail slot. 

It's strange what realtors consider to be a selling point. I'd put up a baby gate so you couldn't go upstairs.

Dead goose in the rafters: are the holes in the roof that big?

I just can't comment.

"Built-in air conditioning!" "Ideal for someone with one leg shorter than the other!" Bah, I'm to bed.

(oh no, oh no, oh no. Oh NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. But yes. Here it is. One even worse.)

At first I thought this was some sort of perverted church, until I looked at the furniture. It's somebody's house. The windows, well, by God. . . I don't know what to say. It's a cock, is what it is, all done up in glass. Whee dogies.

Milk art

Wicked Milk of the North

Fifty Shades of Milky

Milkitudes

Flourescent Milky

Through a Glass (of milk) Darkly

Stained Glass Milky

Orange Milk

Across the Milkiverse

Milky, Prince of Darkness

Go ask Milky

One spell makes you larger, and one spell makes you small. Go ask Milky, the Magic Clown.

A few years ago when I first revived my strange relationship with the dreaded clown of my childhood, I could find almost no images, nothing about him at all except on Ed Golick's fantastic Detroit kids' TV site. But since then, there has been a renaissance. This one even features the hand-puppet Creamy the Rabbit, for some reason looking at a drawing of a pig.

I mean, I just keep finding new stuff! Not really new, of course, because it looks pretty brown to me. But this ad, curiously, is from Texas, which is nowhere near Detroit. Wonder what happened there. 

Unless TExas was just one of those phone curiosities of the times, phone numbers beginning with letters that maybe indicated the region, i. e. ELgin 2-8994 (a number burned into my neurons which will be buried after my last gasp. Hopefully not before.)

It's always a thrill to discover a new Milkster photo. This one reminded me of the call letters WJBK, and the size of the camera reveals a lot about the technology of the late '50s - early '60s.

This must be some sort of game. I do remember, though vaguely, lots of games on these Detroit kids' shows. Poopdeck Paul had a limbo contest, and Captain Jolly was giving away something called OJ Squeeters (plastic things you stuck into an orange and sucked) for winning something-or-other. If you won something on Milky's show, the spectral figure with the Pagliaccio costume would allow you to stick your hand in a jar of pennies. Room temperature, I hope.

This is fan art, though I am unaware of the provenance of it. Believe it or not, there is lots more of this, but I won't post it. An artist named Mike Kelly has done a series of four (at least) portraits of His Milkness, at least one including the immortal Creamy. This is serious art however, not amateur stuff (though I would describe it as primitive, painted on pieces of plywood, particle board, etc.) But the point is, there has been a Milky art boom, or at least boomlet, just in the past few years. Awful repressed memories are emerging from the brains of people who were traumatized back in 1963. To cope with this, they're making art and creating Pinterest and Facebook pages.

I will admit, I fell into it myself. I started noodling around, and hey, if Mike Kelly can stencil a perfectly round likeness of Milky onto a scrap piece of wood, can't I use photoshop here and there? Andy Warhol used adulterated photos all the time, didn't he? It's my only real hope for making art of any kind.

"You can have worry-free. . . home de-li-ver-y. . . "

Post-blog ruminations. Call these philosophical ramblings, made late at night when I usually blog. I did find one more mysterious picture of His Milks with a boy scout (and when Milky isn't doing lame magic tricks with "crippled children" like Little Nancy, above, who by the way never gets to sit down but just spends the whole three-hour fundraising program standing, he's always shown with a boy scout), but I have no idea what he's doing. Strange are the ways of Milky. Is that a sandwich he's giving him, on dark rye maybe, or a huge square Oreo with the filling squishing out, or a book, or just some sort of lame magic prop from his lame magic prop storage room? Sorry, Nancy, I didn't mean "LAME lame". More like "lame-o".

I hate clowns

 (In dishonour of my returning nightmares of Milky the Clown, and because I don't feel like writing anything, here is a pre-summer repeat of a kind-of-favorite/not-too-bad post.)

I hate clowns, I hate clowns,  I truly hate clowns,

They always depress me and drag my soul down.

When somebody puts on such strange things to wear,

The human condition is truly laid bare.

I ask, what's the point of all this tom-foolery?

It triggers in me a deep incredulity.

Now here is a clown who caused me great dread.

In childhood this creep rented space in my head.

His name was Milky, which was awfully scary,

Just clowning and whoring for Twin Pines, the dairy.

Before John Wayne Gacy came ambling along,

There was this guy here. And he was just wrong.

He wore stars and stripes for some unknown reason,

Though flag mutilation's a high form of treason.

Back when I lived near old Detroit town,

I saw a strange act performed by a clown.

When he mounted his friend, to my child's mind, 

of course he

Was riding on Bozo, just playing at horsey.

When I saw this old photo of black-and-white clowns,

I climbed on a bridge and just threw myself down.

There's Milky and Bozo, the two that were lovers,

Jingles, and Whatsis - who cares, they're all mothers.

This clown guy I mentioned, and those of his ilk

Did a lot of hard-selling by sucking down milk.

In Milky the dairy thought they would invest - right?

Then found out that he was a flaming transvestite.

Twin Pines weren't aware that they'd started a fashion.

Soon clowns 'round the world drank their milk with a passion.

And poor Pagliaccio was filled with a rage,

So he drank milk, then  killed his poor wife right on-stage.

With hijinks like this, some dark force was released.

The ringmasters shot themselves: all were deceased.

Clowns threw nasty fits, banged their heads on the wall:

These Komedy Kapers weren't funny at all.

If this gets much weirder, I'm going to be sick.

I've never laughed once when a clown did his trick.

I can't speak for you, but I think this is rude -

I never knew clowns were this nasty and lewd.

Milky is dust now, and Bozo is dead.

Their romance still haunts me and lurks in my head.

I hate clowns, I hate them, I'll never be free,

They never will get one guffaw out of me.