OMG Totally The Best Hotel Room EVER!!!!
Posted on October 24, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 59 Comments
The room is called the “teen dream” room; it’s designed to approximate the dream room of a 14-year-old girl circa 1983 or so. The pictures on the wall include teenage Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Kristy MacNicholl… and unicorns. Athena thinks it’s just about the best thing ever. I have a slight headache.
Lucky bastard…you get to wake up to Scott Baio’s loving gaze.
Yay! Unicorns AND Scott Baio!
Oh my…
I WAS a 14-year old girl in 1983 in or around 1983, and it’s making me feel a bit ill.
What about Michael J Fox?
Wow- suddenly I’m being earwormed by Andy Gibb songs.
Is that a little unicorn statue under the desk lamp?
Nice little desk….
Oh, and they fucked it up.
The posters should not be in frames, but rather stuck to the wall with Scotch tape or thumbtacks. Also, it’s not nearly obsessive enough…all the posters need to feature the same guy/band/animal, or two different guys/bands/animals at the most.
Finally, there’s no way a teenage girl circa 1983 would have a laptop with a color LCD in her bedroom.
Oh, yes, I can totally see how thrilled Athena is by this room…
I must say, though, having been a 14-year-old girl 20 year later, I find this room utterly repulsive. My room was painted blue. I called it Finding Nemo Blue, because it looked like I was in the ocean since I had stupidly asked to have the ceiling painted as well. (Wanna know what happens when you paint a room, including the ceiling, a dark color? It turns into a cave. Kind of cozy, actually.)
Also? No celeb pictures. Wait, I take that back. I had the DVD inset from Troy of Brad Pitt looking all hot, but that was a bit later.
You must tell us where this is. Even if it’s after you leave (you know, to avoid creepy stalker-folk), you must tell, so that I know where not to stay.
The “consumed by bears” scenario is definitely out. “Consumed by unicorns”, however…
I’m kinda wondering why John booked himself into the teen dream room…. *cough*
Dear god. This IS my bedroom, circa 1983. I actually recognize many of those pinups, torn from Bop, 16 and Teen Beat.
I had a huge crush on C. Thomas Howell. I must have watched The Outsiders about six dozen times.
Horses. Oh, yes, horses. *MUST* have horses. Horses, boys, lilac walls…does it have a fluffy bedspread? It needs a fluffy bedspread.
Sophia thinks our room at the Hilton is pretty frikking snazzy, too. Very posh, she said.
Now the ride over to the Hilton with the racist Muslim cab driver who dropped the dime on all the Jews who got phonecalls to get the hell out of the Pentagon on 9/11? Yeah, that was not so cool.
Will we see you for breakfast tomorrow at 8:30AM?
Wow. When I was 13 (1991), my room was almost this exact color. As per Marko@7 though, my pinups were all NKOTB and not nearly so nicely organized. They did however leave very little of the pepto-bismol pink showing through.
Hey, I was a five year old girl in 83 and I would have been all over the unicorns. Not so much the pink though.
Is there any David Bowie?
I believe that you have misspelled “EVAR” in the title of this post.
That is all.
I like unicorns.
I was 14 in 1981 and my room looked nothing like that. I had Frazetta posters hanging on the wall. And the velvet flock panther poster with the eyes that glowed in the dark. All ordered out of a comic book, probably either House of Mystery or Wonder Woman. I also had the Beatrix Potter needlepoint mouse lady selling balloons that my mom sewed for me.
But definitely nothing cut out of Tiger Beat. I’m pretty sure the only magazines I subscribed to at that time were Dr Who Monthly, National Geographic and The New Republic. And I’m positive The New Republic never had a Scott Baio centerfold.
Is there a princess phone in the room? And what about Rick Springfield posters? There should be at least one copy of the cover of “Working Class Dog” up there…
Of course, it’s been a long time since I listened to my Shaun Cassidy albums (whole days), and have thus forgotten (or blocked out) the fact that his name is spelled with a U, not a W…
And you’re staying in this room why?
What’s Krissy reading?
Admit it, Scalzi, that’s your bedroom at home, isn’t it?
So, where *is* that, precisely?
You musn’t forget the Lisa Frank images!
“OMG”?
How anachronistic. Next thing you know they’ll be handing out a cell phone that weighs less than eight pounds.
I was 13 in 1983, and I have to say it doesn’t look a thing like my bedroom.
My walls were painted a shade halfway between neon and lime green. And although I had Garfield posters on the door, there were no posters on the walls. And definitely no pin-up magazine pictures.
I was instead into hand sewing outfits for my Strawberry Shortcake dolls from leftover scraps of material and building furniture for them out of pieces of cardboard.
And reading Agatha Christie. I was big into Agatha Christie in jr high and high school.
And that about as much of those years as I care to remember.
I was going to ask about Shaun Cassidy. My friend’s sister had plastered her walls with his pictures. She was a few years older, the girls around my age worshipped Rick Springfield a short time later.
I was a ‘fan’ of Sheena Easton myself.
Wow #27, we so would have been BFF! My mom saved all my SS dolls with their handmade clothes and furniture, and it’s currently in my closet waiting impatiently for my baby to grow up. I had a crib made of a green strawberry pint basket, and a bed and chairs made out of green plastic soda-pop bottles cut into cunning shapes (with cushons made out of strawberry print fabric).
I know that there are some boutique hotels in Washington, DC with interesting rooms. But it doesn’t look like this room is in this hotel or any of the same chain. So it must be a boutique hotel elsewhere.
I’m with Michelle, it doesn’t look like my bedroom in 1983.
I was 11 in 1983. 6th grade. No Tiger Beat for me, I had a big ol’ glow in the dark poster of the constellations on the ceiling. Maybe one unicorn or pegasus figurine. A teddy bear or two. No horses. EVER.
Michelle, I think we we’re just nice girl geeks even back then.
Obviously the reason the photo/posters are framed, and said frames screwed onto the walls, is to prevent people still living in that era from STEALING said decor as souvenirs…
My first thought was — they’re definitely too straight and they’re all the same size. It needs that collage/layered look. Layered, like Kristy MacNicholl’s haircut? (grin)
Dr. Phil
Ahhh, looks somewhat like my room now…
Except that my biggest poster is the Periodic Table of the Elements. And my smaller pictures are all torn-off pages of my Harry Potter calendar. But still, close enough.
Torn off calendar pictures? Heck no! The idea is to get a wall worth of calandars that have artists you like (Frazetta, Schimmel, Freas, etc.). That way you get a whole new wall each month that you still like.
Where the hell are the Duran Duran posters??!!
But… but where is the poster of the pink ballerina slippers? “Before the performance comes the practice” — and the one about letting entities go because they will come back to you, unless they hate your guts?
I could be off by a few years…I think I was 14 in ’88. There would have been some incriminating Val-Kilmer-as-Madmartigan prints involved…
John,
I forwarded your post to my daughter, who was exactly 14 in 1983.
Her reply – “1983 was all about DURAN DURAN…come on!!!”
With best wishes,
– Tom –
I think I’d agree with the person who said ‘pictures should be bluetacked to the wall or pinned up’ — in one house I had an entire wall of cork tiles to facilitate this. I also think it might be a wee bit earlier than 1983. All these glossy-haired idols feel very 70s, and indeed, I was 14 in 1979. I was so proud of my collection of pictures of Slik etc, together with a small collection of rainbows and unicorns. But no photos ever got taken of my bedroom walls. We tend to take photos of the novel rather than the familiar.
Where are the small gonk-like things and other trinkets on every flat surface?
I’m continually surprised that my daughter doesn’t have her walls covered in tat. Don’t people do that any more? She does have my collection of Wade Whimsies prominently displayed, though.
My eyeballs actually crouched back in their sockets looking at that. Really. I felt them squish in. It was like being at about five atmos pressure.
Gnrrrrgh!
Whenever someone tells me I have gigantic eyebrows I just think to myself “Rob Lowe use to be a sex symbol, so take that”. It usually makes me feel better.
How did you luck into this room? I’ll bet Athena won’t want to leave.
Where are the shelves filled with tchotchkes from Grandma, and the desk covered with books and schoolwork? Oh, over in the other corner? Okay.
Too early for pinups of Wil Wheaton, I guess?
You agreed to that room why?
Quick! Find something sharp and poke out your eyes! It’s the only way to survive!
*Sigh*
Unfocused Girl says, “Unicorns? Where? Let’s find the unicorns! Hey, is that Athena’s room?”
*Shakes head*
Teen Queen room, yes?
Anyhow, must stay there when I am in city of location with my wife and daughter. Something about ephemeral retro pop culture causes me to be twice as nostalgic.
As an architect, I deeply apologize. Egad. Someone needs their decorating license revoked, lol.
and what totally irritates me in that photo is that the photo montages are so *careful* on each wall and YET do not relate to each other at all and are instead shifted from aligning. It could have been a fun concept. But is poorly executed. The whole bed headboard wall could have been a photo montage wall. oy. Okay, gotta stop………… Hope you sleep…. lol.
Ok, I’m a 14 year old girl NOW so I’m not so sure, but i have seen a movie (The Outsiders) with teenage rob Lowe (without a shirt on) and he is (was) prettty=]
The room is amazing….I just wish when I went on trips as a kid with my dad the rooms we stayed in were half as interesting as that one.
Have to agree that the pictures of multiple ‘hunks’ are a bit off as most teenage girls i’ve known obsess over only one or two guys.
BTW I was only 5 in 83 my teenage bedroom had Robbie Williams and Tony Mortimer on its walls, mostly ripped from the pages of Smash Hits.
wtf? No Duran Duran posters? Pfft.
Also you misspelled “Evah” as wirelizard pointed out but I will reiterate.
Darn, late to the party. As a 13yo in 1983, my room was plastered in Duran Duran posters and cut-out pics from Bop and the like. As I recall, I also had a border near the ceiling of Rolling Stone covers. No unicorns though. That’s so 1980-81 (as were rainbow shirts where the rainbow ran from one arm across the chest and down the other arm).
As another completely random 80’s aside, I’ve had “Stay gold Pony-boy. Stay gold” in my head the past few days.
Yowza. Are you at the Drake?
As it happens, I was a 14YO girl for most of 1983, and this was not how I decorated my room, or even the inside of my school locker.
MY hot guys of 1983 were Kevin Bacon and Harrison Ford and Duncan Regehr. (Oh, Prince Blackpool…*swoon*) Geek girls always liked the older men!
I did, however, have posters of unicorns.
I believe it was the Gladstone, but my internet sleuthing could have been off.
I was 11 in ’83 and I remember having that exact picture of Rob Lowe on the horse (not sure if it was 83 exactly). I also loved C. Thomas Howell …But my absolutely favourite boy was Ricky Schroeder. I actually wrote a fan letter to him and was giddy when his people sent back a form letter and signed (photocopied) picture.
Yep, it’s one of the artist-designed rooms at the Gladstone, also known as the best place to go for life drawing sessions on a Wednesday night.
(I recognized it when you posted, but avoided linking as long as you were in town, because that seemed rather invasive.)
Re: Comment #38…Dad, I beat you to it. I was #36.