Here's a few pictures I would loved to have had on my wall when I was a young teenager. The picture on the top is from Tesla's lab and shows arcs of high voltage electricity jumping the gap between two Tesla coils. Every self-respecting kid wants a set-up like this in his garage. I tried to find a good black and white photo of Edison's lab, which I also would like to have had, but found nothing that grabbed me.
Here's (above) a picture of two gladiators. It's a grizzly scenario and it appears to have been painted in urine but boys like this kind of spectacle. Click on it to see more detail.
The busy black and white photo is a replica of Sherlock Holmes' flat on Baker Street. The man on the horse is obviously Napoleon. Every kid identifies with Napoleon but few adults do. Kids also identify with pirates. Thanks to The Pirates of the Carribean there's no lack of interesting posters on this subject.
Here also is Attila and his barbarians. As a kid this would have inspired lots of imaginary swordfights as I fought to defend Rome and my bedroom from the screaming hordes.
14 comments:
You forgot a framed picture of John Wayne. Boys need cowboys EDDIE.
I had a reproduction of Reubens' Rape of the Sabine Women on my wall when I was a boy!
See ya
Steve
Not exactly to do with wall-hangings for a young man's bedroom but there's at least a tangential relationship...
A cousin of mine had the opportunity to dictate how his bedroom was to be redcorated. At the age of twelve, he came up with a foil-based checkered-flag wall paper and a race-car bed (along with the requesite shelves, bean bag chair, etc.)
He came to regret it a few short years later when, as a no-good teenager, he would wake up in his li'l racecar bed, with a raging hangover, only to see the morning's light refracted on the garish wall paper.
I undertand he puked quite often into his Dukes of Hazard waste paper basket as a result...
Every kid identifies with Napoleon
Yeah, those Napoleon Action Figures outsell Pokemon and Grand Theft Auto combined. ;)
I had several Looney Tunes posters on my wall and one of Charlie Chaplain. OOH, and a Jimi Hendrix poster I got for my birthday one year.
These are great, subtle ways to encourage today's youth into becoming the cultural innovators our world needs. Look at all the neat toys scientists get to play with. Junior, if you study hard enough in school, you could get a job playing with pyrotechnic equipment, bubbling chemicals or the very foundations of life itself. Go forth lad and seize what is rightfully yours (like Attila the Hun). Son, did you think Napoleon Bonaparte arose to greatness by sitting in his room and playing video games?
Much to the horror of my mother, my room would have jars and canisters filled with animals I found outside or bought at the pet store. And each week, I would post the cover of the current Newsweek on the wall. After a few years, these Newsweeks make interesting wall paper.
I had a lot of monsters and mad magazine content on my walls, and a bit of sports for a short time, and perhaps, shortly a motorcycle and a formula 1 racer. And I think, the cathedral of Notre Dame, gothic architecture. Oh, some Disneyland placemats, and maps of disneyworld.
Cowboys were passe at the time... this was the space age. Tons of nasa inspired stuff.
The sports related stuff wasn't even my idea, or my families. They were all giveaway freebies from boxes of cereal or trade magazines (fer'instance, I had both Sam Snead and Babe Ruth on my wall, neither of which were still actively playing in this sphere of existance. Similarly I had portraits of Chaplin, Marx Brothers, W.C.Fields.
And Maps. Then Burlap Rock and roll tapestries, and actual advertising pieces, for music generally.
This was thirty years or more back. Ten or Fifteen years ago, I got back into Maps, usually wallpapering a stairwell with street maps of cities I was about to visit, to get the lay of the land.
Speaking of pirates, this tuesday will be national "Talk Like a Pirate Day"! That's the day when you're supposed to talk like a pirate all day and say things like "avast" and "Aaaaarrrrr". My idiot friends and I will be celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day with a Talk Like a Pirate PARTY (we've been celebrating our favorite holiday for many years now), and we'll order our wenches to bring us our grog. Landlubber!
anonymous is right: A Boys room needs maps. Nothing gets a boy thinking about the future like maps.
That gladiator pic would have been so sweet when I was a kid.
I think a little boy needs lots of pictures of Dinosaurs, Robots, and outer space!
Yeah... a huge tapestry of a dinosaur and a robot fighting on Mars with little martian barbarians fighting in the background... wow that would have been cool. Damn I still think it would be cool!
Kali's right too, cowboys are cool... but space cowboys are better !
Reubens'Rape of the Sabine Women inspired the Hollywood musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
I like how the dude in Tesla's lab is just chillin' reading a book. "So what if there are enormous, spasmodic bolts of lightning exploding forth before my very eyes, I'm at the good part."
Such is the power of READING, kids!!
Great poster indeed!
Kali: You should see writer Paul Dini's house which is strewn with singing cowboy antiques. It looks great!
Craig: Hilarious!
Eric: True enough!
John: I would have put a map up if I'd had more bandwidth.
Tesla was one dude who knew how to have a good time.
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