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1. From StuffOnMyCat.com to S – – t My Dad Says, Web sites making fun of run-of-the-mill domestic life are big business. Just ask screenwriters Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, whose Web site AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com spawned a book just a year after the site launched in May 2009.
Bender and Chernack’s “Awkward” success continues to grow with a spinoff site, AwkwardFamilyPetPhotos.com, which gets about 75 photo submissions a day.
Here are four current and former New Yorkers who’ve raided their awkward archives for our amusement.
2. “This was taken as a Father’s Day gift,” says Grace Jones, the now-grown girl in this 20-year-old photo. “My stepmother — who’s in the photo with me — thought it would be a great idea to round up the cats and attempt to get a nice family photo. If I remember correctly, Mouthy (the black-and-white one) peed, Mr. Cat (the tabby) pooped in the corner, and at one point Larry (the orange one) tried to attack me. Thank God, he was declawed!”
Jones, whose dog named Mushu now stars on her Christmas card and lives with her in Chelsea, still remembers the photo: “I loved those polka-dot leggings!”
3. “We had lots of pets growing up but, sadly, the chimp didn’t belong to us,” says Bill Miller (right, in the glasses) of Park Slope.
The photo dates to the early ’80s, when Miller and his brother Steven were showing chickens at a state fair in Washington. “The white outfits were required for the event,” says Miller. “Our parents took us to a booth at the fair where a man was taking pictures of people with his chimp.”
The picture itself was a small Polaroid, says Miller. “It spent most of its time next to the television in the little paper frame that it came in.” Now, he says, it’s in storage.
Miller and his wife now have a black house rabbit named Inky.
4. “I had a dog and seven birds when I was younger, but this photo was taken at a zoo in Florida when I was around 6,” says student Brittany Elias. “My parents told me that I basically forced them to take the picture. I remember the monkey was wearing a diaper, and it was very dirty.”
While Elias has no pets right now — she lives in a NYU dorm in Union Square — she wanted to become a vet. “Apparently all I wanted to do was hold animals,” she says. “There are more pictures of me holding a snake, birds and a turkey — and they’re all just as awkward!”
5. “This picture was taken in the spring of 2009 in our backyard in Jackson, Miss.,” says Ari Glogower, who now lives in New York with his wife Katy Rivlin, also pictured. Unfortunately, Minibus, their “pig-child,” did not make the move. “All the brokers and landlords we talked to laughed at us when we asked about keeping a pig,” says Glogower. “So he’s boarding with Katy’s mother in Mississippi.”
Ari bought Minibus at a flea market as a gift for Katy. “At first, he was meant as a joke,” he says, “but it wasn’t long before he was a part of our family.”
This photo, taken just before the move, is framed and displayed in their Manhattan living room. “It helps bring a little of the pastoral ideal to the East 20s,” says Glogower.