apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

This is so perfect it's almost as if someone posed it as quintessential 50s kitsch.

And she has Betty Rubble's hair-(yabba-dabb)-do.

ugh, that's "dabbA"...

nothing like ruining a lame joke by poor spelling.

Is that a desk or a sewing machine?

I hate to be a contrarian but I really dislike this picture. She reminds me of a really mean science teacher I had in third grade. She looks like she is reading a report on reproduction in plants, and is thoroughly unimpressed.

sewing machine or desk i hope she's looking at a catalog for a chair to go with it.

That suburban photo set really put ants on me.

OK. My new fave. Hands down. Although it kind of DOES remind me of a line of greeting cards where they use similar old photos and put these captions in them that give them sarcastic and/or slightly off-color meanings. Or ... because it reminds me of those? Hmmm...

Click on the Bill Owens site for a good diversion.

Very sweet. I'm diggin' that chair fringe, too.

I see the pictures on the wall as three thought bubbles over her head.

In the first one, she's thinking, "Take the picture, already, they're about to French kiss!"

Women with big ankles should never sit in narrow-legged chairs.

All older women with thick ankles should be killed at birth, to spare Doug the agony of looking at them. He's very sensitive and no doubt has a beer gut out to there

Well, the slightly tricky thing about this photo is that it's a specific somebody's mama, and although the somebody probably realizes that his mama (as portrayed in this photo) is kind of a giggle, BUT as MY mama would say, "Watch the tone of voice!"

Because it is, after all, somebody's Mama, and if you talk about somebody's mama, they will be sorely tempted to cut you.

Um, Dougina, how exactly do you kill an older woman at birth?

(I think Doug was just kidding aorund, btw...)

I don't think her ankles are thick - I think it's the camera angle.

When I first saw this pic, I thought, oh that's someone's sweet mama way back. However, the caption is very influencing - "Bill OwensÂ’ Mom." What if the caption said "Mommy Dearest Is Watching" - ? The look on her face is ambiguous.

I'm not commenting because this is somebody's mama.

A thousand and one apologies!

I got the impression from the suburbia part of the website that the photos were all done for effect, and that since the website was playing up the kitchiness of the subjects, poking fun at one wasn't out of bounds. (If Aunt Enid has a mustache and a photographer snaps a picture of it, no sense not cracking a joke about the elephant in the room.) However, for the record, I don't think the ankles are that wide.

Nonetheless, I apologize to Bill Owens (wherever he may be), his lovely mother, his Aunt Enid (who makes the world's best macaroni and cheese), and all of the other little Owenses out there... even the ones who live on the next cul-de-sac over.

If they are interested, they are certainly welcome to come over to my 3 bedroom one and a half bath ranch in Levittown anytime and admire my jackalope collection. For added effect, I'll even gladly show them how I test the boundaries of physics on lazy Sunday afternoons by letting my big ole beergut go mano a mano with a slip-and-slide.

Beerguts and slip-and-slides! Now THAT's a party!

(seriously, it's funny to me that people will rip apart another's bed/bath/kitchen/apartment, or another photographer's work, but this vintage image of someone's Mom is bringing out the civility in people. I guess that's good, for Mrs. Owens especially, but, um, there are *actual real people* behind those other things, too.)