Have a Topless Senior Year

I would like to direct this Stephen Elko and his local photography studio. Now, Steve, I hate to take you on like this. After all, you did sponsor my brother’s little league team – quite possibly the most dominating group of 11-year-olds since the Goonies. Sadly, someone needs to call you out. Your billboards are both stupid and creepy. They are, in a word, horrible.

First of all, the grammar sucks. It asks if you are AN 007. Now, I assume this is a reference to the graduating class of 2007, and the accompanying senior pictures which put the food on the table. Now, clearly the 007 is also the reference to James Bond, Double-O Seven. You even ape the James Bond logo. So, whenever anyone looks at the sign it reads “Are you an double-o seven”. Check the article, dude. Last time I checked double started with a consonant. This calls for ‘a’ instead of ‘an’. This is simple grammar, and there’s no excuse for you to have huge billboards all over the county with such an egregious error on it. Who’s checking your grammar? Joe?

Well, that’s why the billboards are stupid. Now, it’s on to the second, more chilling charge. Your billboards are very creepy. Why in God’s name would you put a picture of a topless youth on your billboard? Who takes their Senior photos sans shirt? Was it the kid’s idea? Seriously, the picture looks like the boy’s audition reel for Playgirl. I refuse to believe any high school kid would actually want a topless senior picture. I don’t care how ripped you are, how big a jock you are, or how cool a table you sit at for lunch, a picture like this opens you up to a huge amount of ridicule. The picture looks like the cover for a gay porn. Surely, when this baby was circulating the halls people whispered behind the kid’s back. He may be cool now, but at the twenty year reunion when the smart kids have become the cool adults this guy’s going to realize how creepy the pictures were.

Then again, maybe the pictures were not the kid’s idea. God, Steve, I hope they weren’t yours. I mean, I hate to even think about it, but I hope the photo shoot didn’t go something like this:

Steve: Well, Billy. We’re almost done here. Why don’t we drop the top and call
this a day.

Billy: Drop the top?

Steve: Come on. Take
that shirt off. You work out. I can tell.

Billy: I need an
adult.

Steve: I’m an adult. Don’t bother leaving. All the doors out
of the basement are locked. Just take the shirt off and we can
leave.

Billy: Ok. Here. Like this.

Steve: Let me pose
you. Wow, you’re hairless, like a seal.

Now, this in no way meant as an actual description of what transpired. It is still quite likely the kid is a total douche-bag, and insisted on disrobing for his senior photos – ‘hey, old man,’ he might’ve said, ‘light my chest better. I didn’t grease it for nothing’. Of course, this does not adequately explain why you chose this photo of all the photo’s you have taken in recent years. Do you think this makes people want to go to you? Do you believe parents are going to see this creepy, child molester-esque photograph and say immediately to themselves: “Now that’s the basement I’m taking my Billy to for his senior pictures”? Stephen, have you gone mad? Honestly.

shalom