Post lunch discussion today. You have a friend who owns the world's first and only time machine travel company. For your birthday, he's giving you two tickets to any event in the twentieth century. You will be there for three hours. What are your choices?
It came up over a playing of Nirvana's unplugged recordings... but I'm not sure that would be on my list. For me, it would probably be Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, and Stu Ungar's first World Series of Poker victory.
Maybe a more interesting question is, if such a ticket was available today, and cost $50,000, what would be the most requested events? Off the top of my head (not necessarily things that interest me, but that would be popular):
Superbowl I
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Woodstock
Kennedy Assassination
Beatles' Rooftop Concert
MLK's Lincoln Memorial Speech
Something involving Marilyn Monroe
Something involving Elvis Presley
Apollo 11 Launch
Let's assume that you can't change history, just observe, and that the fabric of space/time is robust enough to endure you going back without altering our current reality.
Can you bring back souvenirs? The BBC had a mediocre series about a guy who travels regularly back in time to WWII; he becomes prosperous buying furniture and art objects in the past and selling them in the present as antiques. Somebody (Isaac Asmiov?) preceded that by a few decades with a story about a housewife who stumbles across a time travel technique and uses it to stretch her grocery dollar by doing all her shopping in the Great Depression.
As for your question, I'll bet that the Beatles and Woodstock would rank very high.
Watching Jeremy lose a mortgage payment in O'shea's casino at casino war. Other than midget tossing Gary Coleman into a super glued wall, I can't think of a funnier/more entertaining thing to do.
Posted by: Mike on February 27, 2003 12:51 AM
let's say you can't bring anything back. And let's say, for MZ's argument, you've already seen JK hit rock bottom at the worst casino on the strip. Which you have. What about Jimmy the Greek hitting a seven out after a whole weekend of hitting points, and going from +1,000,000 to +0?
I'll add another category: an evening hanging out with dead literary heroes. Although your machine doesn't permit souvenirs, presumably it lets you bring along a bottle of whiskey and a forged letter of introduction ("Show this guy a good time - he's not as boring as he looks. Love, your editor"). Whether to hang out with Hemingway and friends, Kerouac/Ginsberg/Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Ken Kesey, Arthur C. Clarke (not dead yet), etc. is a matter of personal preference. I'd probably go with Hemingway for the food if not the company. Although come to think of it, Anais Nin might be a better choice.
Good point on the literary heroes. I'm not sure it would make my top two, but I would like to down a bottle with Bukowski. I actually had multiple chances to meet Ginsberg from 93-97 -- he frequented my campus and gave lectures/readings fairly regularly there -- and kick myself that I never did.
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