Derek Larson poised to win "Most Awkward Family Vacation" photo contest

courtesy of Derek Larson

Hail to the geek.

​Not long ago, GQ magazine voted St. Paul one of the worst dressed cities in the country. Clearly, the writer failed to consult the Larson family first.

In the early 1980s, the St. Paul family donned some seriously patriotic duds and someone had the good sense to snap a photo.

The result is so awesome that it just might win Derek Larson and his family a two-week vacation to Waikiki.

Larson, who is the webmaster for the T.D. Mischke fan site Madness of Mischke, says he's also been a big fan of the "Awkward Family Photo" website for some time. When he saw the site was running a contest, he drove to his mom and dad's house in Lino Lakes to pore through old photo albums, certain they had the winning photo there somewhere.

"We thought it was fun to do these strange things that made other people laugh," he says of his mom's tendency to dress her kids in elaborate costumes.

After four or five hours of searching, he settled on the following photo:

Derek Larson

Maureen, Karen, Harry, Mike and Derek Larson.

​Larson says this was taken near Mankato at a Fourth of July tennis tournament. His mom made the hats out of KFC buckets. Note the photobomber in the cutoffs.

Larson submitted the photo to the contest -- the prize is two weeks in Hawaii and $15,000 dollars for airfare. For obvious reasons, it is kicking ass. As of this writing, it has over 4,300 votes. The second runner up photo is more than 2,000 votes behind. Voting continues through August 9th.

This actually isn't Larson's first submission to the site. In April 2010, he submitted this little gem as well, which he says the site is actually looking to buy the rights to:

Courtesy of Derek Larson

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If he wins, Larson says, he's going to try to bring everyone from the Fourth of July photo with him to Hawaii, although that will likely be impossible since all the Larson kids now have spouses and kids of their own.

"Maybe this will be the one thing that breaks us all up," he laughs. "No, we'll work it out fine."

Vote awkward and vote often here.