I’m so glad to see my little thread took off while I was home yesterday being sicker than three pups (very bad reaction to an antibiotic—anyone wanna buy some leftover Cipro?). Glad you liked the “Christmas in Chernobyl” gag, and I’d be honored to have it stolen.
My illness has knocked clear another memory: a boyfriend and I were driving through Joisey about ten years ago and passed a Lawn Decoration Warehouse. Inside the chain link fence were HUNDREDS of lawn jockeys, many of them pressed to the fence, their arms hopefully raised (with lanterns) through the holes. “STOP THE CAR!” I screamed, and got out and tooka photo, which became that year’s holiday card: “Greetings from the Lawn Jockey Detention Camp.”
There are thousands of people who would buy leftover Cipro. You could probably sell asprin tablets as Cipro in the US right now.
Back to lawn ornaments, or as my sister mispronounced on occasion, ‘ordamints’: there’s a house in Mediapolis whose lawn is completely covered with absolutely everything. The yard is relatively tiny, which seems to make it even worse. Not only is the yard full of crap, but I think there’s stuff in the windows too. I don’t even want to know what it look like inside.
One of my friend has a yearly party at what is now called ‘Camp Flamingo’. I beleive it just started with a couple plastic flamingos, but then someone bought some flamingo xmas lights, and it just went from there. It’s a nice place, though, just covered in flamingo stuff. I built him a flamingo that’s eight feet tall out of wood, to which is attached a bunch of small flaming sticks collectively known as ‘lancework’. Ever seen a flag at a fireworks display? Same idea, just a flamingo eight feet tall.
My econ/government teacher in High School was a nice guy. We had a lot of fun, he was the type of teacher who would get you to learn the required stuff when it needed to be learnt, but could also be completely distracted from the topic at hand into telling stories about pretty much anything. Essentially, he was one of the more popular teachers, and thus was the target of many pranks. One such prank was the theft of a wooden wagon wheel that he had at the end of his lane. It was then presented back to him at the yearly student-run talent/comedy show thing. Lots of laughs.
Now it’s in exactly the same spot, but achored with iron bar and concrete.
I couldn’t resist the lawn (actually deck) goose myself, it is my one tacky indulgence if you don’t count the 2 flamingoes wearing lifeguard shirts by the pool. Hey I made those T-shirts myself…
Several years ago all the lawn jockeys in my town were stolen in one night. Left in their places were a sign saying “Freed by the Lawn Jockey Liberation Society”. Now I know where they all went.
This summer a local couple had a dozen or so garden gnomes stolen from their yard and wrote a touching letter to the editor explaining how they had collected them from all over the world and how it was just like losing members of the family. A local TV station did a little piece on them and a reward was offered. The renegade gnomes were later found on a local baseball diamond arranged as if playing the game–including the one sliding into home and being tagged out.
Aside from a candle and wreath in each window, the only additional christmas decorating I’ve done is put a santa cap on my gargoyle. He is sooooooo cute.
I just remembered another San Diego-area example of yard creativity. This one is in Poway; it’s a garden of balancing rocks. The whole front yard is brown gravel, and all along the front edge are two-rock combos in which a large, roundish rock is uneasily balanced on a tall, narrow rock. They must be epoxyed or drilled with a support rod or something, but they kind of make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
i had a “friend” for a while who never had an original thought in her life. any time i would say i was going to do something, she would run out and do it first, from decorating my home to buying clothing. if i said that i was looking for tiles with herbs on them for my kitchen, the next time i went to her house, she had 5 of them in her kitchen. if i said that i was buying an aquarium, she had one the next day. at first i took it as a compliment, but after a while it got really annoying. sooooo, i told her that i was getting a garden gnome for my garden. 3 days later there was one in her front yard. then, told her i was putting one of those victorian gazing globes in the yard. she got one the next day. two days ago i told her i was getting pink flamingoes.
seasonal:
there is a house a couple of blocks from where we used to live that has some kind of pink wooden siding on it. it already has several tacky fountains, gazing balls, flamingoes and assorted other kitsch in the front yard. then, at xmas time, they hang RED icicle lights from the eaves. place looks like santa’s whorehouse!
Awwwwwwwwwwww…I thought I would have nothing to post to this thread, Birmingham UK not being big on lawn ornamentation of any description. But on my way home tonight, I found a delightfully tacky new lighting installation on the house just down the road. Alongside the icicles, holly and flashing “Merry Christmas”, Santa is waving joyfully to the assembled traffic. And his arm is gently stroking the arse of a pert reindeer. Even better, the deer is heading a pumpkin skyward.
Just when I thought good taste was winning in the 'hood we get new neighbors down the road. They have this wood frame outline of a Christmas Tree to which they have attached aluminum pie plates. Inside of each pie plate there is a green light except for the middle pie plate which has a red light. They gotta be kin to Nonie and Oscar!
I don’t know if this would qualify as “ghastly” but here in Middle-of-Nowhere, New Mexico, there is a local artist who does a yearly “Festival of the Crayons” at the same time as “Festival of the Cranes” (a bird-watching event).
Ooooh, I just remembered: one of my college roomies strung up BLINKING multicolored lights in our dorm room one year. When she was out of town for a weekend, I restrung them in the window to read EAT AT JOE’S.
There’s a family about a mile down the road from my house that goes all-out with the holiday decorating…the full complement of nuclear creche figures, six or seven glowing Santas (several on the roof), lights on every exposed surface. It’s pretty typical suburban overkill, until you get to the 10-foot cross made of 2-by-4’s and wrapped in multicolored, blinking lights that looms behind a group of Santas and tin soldiers.
My very favorite part is that they stretch their decorating dollar by making the cross pull double duty. How, you ask? Why, rewrap it in pastel lights and put it out again for Easter! :rolleyes:
Most people on my street have pretty tasteful decorations come the holidays. Everyone who puts lights up uses those nice white ones that look pretty without looking tacky like the multi-colored ones. And no one has non-seasonal leprechauns or fountains with no water. Our house was one of the “good” houses in our neighborhood up until last Christmas when it started slipping a little. We had a light-up Santa who waves at whoever is driving by, and a light-up Snowman who serves a similar function. We also included multi-colored lights in our dazzling array of white glitter. Big mistake and the mechanical Santa and Snowman were $125 each.
Just last night I passed a lawn with one of those six-foot cutout storks on it, trumpeting IT’S A BOY! with all the kids’ vitals. I mean, it’s lovely that you have spawned, but what makes you think perfect strangers passing your home should be apprised of this fact?
Growing up in Glendale, I always assumed it was a regional phenomenon of native Ny’ers…Italian & Germans living in semi-attached dwelling to be more exact. I’ve even seen them painted R/W/G and B/R/Y, the colors of the Italian & German flags respectively.
Anyone living in Minneapolis should know of the existence of a house on Penn Ave, owned by a has-to-be-crazy lady with an Einstein-like shock of white hair. Every year she adds a new, 2’ colorful painted stripe encircling her home; green with red polka-dots, purple with small flowers, etc. At this point, the stripes reach nearly to the top of her home. The rest of the lawn is dotted with primary color painted tree stumps. She has now begun the same treatment on her garage.
She also is an aspiring artist. My sister and I were driving past the house one day and saw a collection of objects on the lawn and a “sale” sign. We couldn’t resist taking a look. In the collection was a painting depicting an armchair with a stapler on it, and several apples at the base of the chair. The title on the bakc read: “Stapler telling bedtime story to apples”. The next painting was of a baked potato, resplendent with butter and sour cream, with a background of balloons and confetti. The title? “Celebration of the Baked Potato”. Both of these paintings were for sale for the bargain price of $450.00 As my sister and I struggled to keep from wetting ourselves on her lawn, the woman who owned the house glared at us from the front porch.
Apparently not satisfied with making her neighbors sob for their declining property values, she recently painted a cartoonish sheet-clad KKK figure on her front door, waving his hand cheerfully at passers-by. A scathing editorial was written in the papaer about this, so she decided to clarify her intentions by scrawling “End Racism” in white paint over the figure. I’m sure that put everyone’s mind at rest. Where this woman will stop I do not know; there has to be some kind of law about turning your house into a carnival of horrors.
I’m supplying you all with a link to the Museum of Bad Art. The galleries are chock full of the “cream of the crap”. This is truly not to be missed. Maybe your neighbor lady can donate some of her work to the museum! http://www.glyphs.com/moba/
“Art too bad to be ignored”. Words to live by, my friends.
A farmer in northern Minnesota along hwy 37 stacks plastic wrapped round hay bales into various configurations for the different hollidays. black spiders with corogated drain pipe for legs=holloween. Red and white bales and a red cone shaped hat forms a santa = Christmas and winter in general gets tripple stacked white bales 3 in a row to represent 3 snow men (all complete with a giant scarf!) a mamma, papa a child.
Waaaay to much time on his hands me thinks
Cheektowaga, for those of you from outside the Northeastern United States, is a largely blue-collar, predominantly Polish-American, extremely old-school Catholic town of some 100,000 residents, just east of Buffalo.
I regret to say that I grew up in a house that was festooned with ghastly lawn ornaments.
Just yer typical fare, half-a-dozen each of plastic ducks and swans, arranged as though they were on a pond, ignoring the similar number of rabbits walking on water a few feet away, several “sunflower” pinwheels, faux windmills in varying scales, gnomes, gnomes, gnomes, plastic deer, an unlicensed Disney Snow White tableau, — oh, god, I forget what all was there. No one piece was any tackier than your run-of-the-mill garden store crap, what made it especially egregious was the sheer quantity, which seemed calculated to distract the viewer from the unfortunate fact that we didn’t actually have a lawn. Nope, we had a whole lot full of decorative barkmulch. Why, I have no idea. This entire atrocity was demarcated with an unreasonable number of those little two-foot-high white plastic chain fences which someone afflicted with a merely average level of bad taste might use as an accent around their rose bushes. Nope, this surrounded the entire property, and lined the walkway up to the front door. The chain was supported by hollow plastic tubes every four feet, which the neighborhood children took great glee in ripping out about three times a week. I would then be required to set the damned thing back up again, my cheeks burning with embarrasment and shame.
I suppose it was just one more reason I lit out for the territories when I was just thirteen.
One of our neighbors (and this is a nice, fairly well to do neighborhood too), took a kids bouncy horse, attached antlers to it, hitched it to a little red wagon, and covered the whole kit and caboodle with white lights and placed it near a reindeer made of a log, thick sticks for legs and a “burrel(?)” head which is also covered with white lights.
So the bouncy horse with antlers and the log reindeer appear to be pulling the “sleigh”. Which in the wintertime they plop a plastic santa into.
