Saturday, February 03, 2007

Where the wild things are


I need to do a deeper, more philosophical post about our recent trip to Hong Kong. But, in the meantime, is this not the coolest place for a seven-year-old to live? Meet Aidan Holmbraker, aspiring paleontologist and rock-and-roll drummer; the mural on his wall surely gives him a leg-up on the former career. The son of our dear friends Bernie and Amy Holmbraker, Aidan said his one condition regarding the mural was "no meat-eating dinosaurs," lest they disturb his sleep. [But he still had plenty of awesome pictures of raptors digging into intestines to share with me.]

When Bernie told me Aidan had a dinosaur mural on his wall, I thought, hey, cute. But I was unprepared for how breathtakingly professional it was; not surprising, given that the muralist, Bernie's Chicago-based sister Susan, has been at this for a number of years. It took her five days to execute this project. I was so taken with it I immediately wanted murals and frescoes of dinosaurs, Godzilla, and maybe Frankenstein and the Wolf Man on our walls here in Brooklyn, but while marveling at the quality of Aidan's artwork, Lora was rather unenthused about my plans. A man can dream. Click to see more of Holmbraker Murals.

I thought I knew a few things about dinosaurs, my life-long obsession, but I'm amazed at how much more Aidan knew, and how adult his books were. Dinosaurs, rock-and-roll, and an Asian address that's reasonably close to Mongolia and fossil finds: the pride of his parents is shaping up to be the 21st century Indiana Jones.

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