Sometimes things are wonderful not just in spite of but because of their tackiness.
In my house, it’s gotta be my Schlitz lamp. It looks just like this one except I never had the globe part. So my golden lady is triumphantly holding up a regular lamp shade.
So what about you? What decorative touches in your house are tacky as hell but great because of it?
Ugh! Either Mr. hp’s Royal Doulton Elvis character jug, or his “NRA Life Member” Minute Man figure. I, on the other hand, have nothing tacky (please exclude the repro “Lonesome Dove” sign–“We don’t rent pigs, etc.”)
cool:
I’ve got a great poster collection- a few giant Chairman Mao ones, a pile of Hindu posters depicting some of the stranger gods, and the star is an utterly bizarre Nigerian poster that is too strange for words.
A stuffed frog mounted upright, playing a fiddle. (Garage sale, fifty cents.) I’ve parked a tealight-holder in front of it to hold my spare change, and it looks like a busking-tips container.
He stands proudly in my foyer, BTW. Just so that visitors know exactly the sort of cheeseball they’re dealing with. 
My Michael Jackson radio, which I’ve had ever since I got my first apartment in 2002.
It is fabulous.
A 4’ X 6’ painting of a foggy woodland scene with a stream running through it.
Across the stream is a somewhat oriental looking foot bridge.
Along the banks of the stream are a variety of pastel colored flowers.
In the water are scattered pastel water lilies.
Bright green moss grows on most of the tree trunks.
The style could best be described as “completed in the course of a 30 minute public access channel art program”.
It sits right above our fireplace in the living room.
My wife bought it for me as an anniversary present. She adores it because it somehow reminds her of her native Japan (I guess she did a lot of blotter back then).
In reality it looks exactly like a painting on the side of a panel van in the 70s. All that’s missing is a fucking love-struck unicorn or maybe a wizard holding a staff in one hand and a glowing crystal ball in the other.
I can’t tell her how much I loath it because she loves it so.
When my 10 year old daughter saw it for the first time she exclaimed “What the FUCK is THAT?!”
I was not angry as it was a completely appropriate response (luckily my wife was out of the room).
I warn people before they come over for the first time about our “art”.
Sometime I pray the whole Goddamn house burns down while we’re all at work/school just to send that abomination back to the pit.
My grandfathers tombstone. Guess I better explain that one - he died (as it turned out) 40 years before my grandmother when times were tough. All that “we” (well before my time on this earth) could afford was a simple stone marker “for one” basically made from a scrap piece of granite. When my grandmother passed away, we (me being me by then) all chipped in and got them a good marker with both their names. The cemetery was just going to pitch the old one so ------- basically now it sits on the tiles at my fireplace. It’s tacky in the extreme in some ways but I sort of like it.
Three chef-on-a-bicycle trivets hanging in my kitchen.
They were a housewarming gift from my BFF when I moved in here. I think that they will be conveniently lost in my next move.
Could be the bronze-looking bust of Abraham Lincoln I have on top of a bookcase, or maybe even the Tiki statuettes surrounding it, or maybe even that Ouzo decanter shaped like a Greek man that I picked up at a Goodwill a couple of months ago (as seen in finer Greek restaurants everywhere)…
My wife framed and hung her Cross Stitch projects. If you’ve never seen Cross Stitch, it looks a t-shirt iron-on. She also framed one of those puzzles where a big picture is made up of little pictures.
The Dorky Dancing Doll. Sort of looks like Beaker, doesn’t he?
What, may I ask, is so tacky about cross stitch? I have many cross-stitch projects displayed. I’ve given many as gifts. Some patterns are glurgey, but not the ones I use. And I don’t see the t-shirt iron-on similarity (and I do know what an iron-on looks like).
Sadly, I think I am the tackiest thing in my house.
I do, however, have a bowling pin lamp somewhere that is on when upright, but you knock it down (eh? Get it? Knocking down a pin?) to turn it off.
Probably the mangy cat.
There is some shitty looking bust of a cheetah.
That would be a three-foot-long, stuffed stegosaurus, displayed prominently in my living room.
We have a nicely framed pinup calendar from 1954. Very scantily dressed and posed ala Vargas. I like it, my wife bought it, but many visitors are sort of perplexed. I don’t know why.
An 86-year old woman was visiting, and walking by it she said, “Oh, I remember those days”…
I have a menorah shaped like a dog. The head and tail are on springs so they can bob around. The candles go into hexagonal nuts that are lined up along the back.
Our kitty skyscraper, a plastic tube construction of black mesh and pink nylon stands out as the most tackiest itme in the house, the SO nearly roared when he saw it and scared the cats off it so now they don’t go near it. So I am spitefully leaving it up just for the way it towers above the room and glows in all its tacky glory.
We have a Chinese restaurant calendar hanging near the kitchen.
There’s a large Orangina poster in my wife’s office.
I keep a leaping trout sculpture ashtray and a Columbus Clippers bobblehead on my bookcase.
The milk crates that make up my TV stand and free-form bookshelves.
