I would make a show called: The Dinosaur Hunter starring Rufus Xavier.
“Look at this beauty. A Coelophysis. These guys are really fast and they travel in packs. I don’t know why this one is all alone… uh oh…let’s get out of here.”
Hmmm. Fun in theory, but in reality, not so much.
I guess I’ll settle for traveling through time to various venues where my all-time favorite music was performed, including Vienna and Prague in the 1780’s, New Orleans in the 1920’s, New York in the 1930’s and 40’s, Havana in the 1950’s and London in the 1960’s, just to name a few off the top of my head. I would record them all in digital video, of course.
I’d to the same with old Vaudeville shows and early Broadway musical theater. See George M. Cohan in action! And I’d be sure to stop by Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and record the premiere performances of all his plays. (Settle a lot of arguments among Shakespeare scholars.) And ancient Athens during the annual Dionysia theater competition.
Oh, BTW: If you want to fuck Cleopatra, the rules allow for that, if she’ll go for it. (Just materialize in her bedroom and tell her you’re the god Horus! )
Whenever I hear about time travel, I always think of that story. “More versatile,” indeed!
But here’s what I would do:
Go back to the building of Stonehenge, with plans and photos of how it looks today - all the missing stones, the fallen stones, the crooked stones. Convince them to build it exactly this way, rather than the perfectly intact circle they had planned. Baffle archeologists for millennia.
Get a videotape of Mohammed denouncing all forms of violence. Same for Moses and Jesus.
Videotape the conception of Jesus, as well as the aftermath of the crucifixion.
Ask Jesus about homosexuality.
Show van Gogh the prices his paintings are going for.
Watch Michelangelo sculpt David, then go back to Samothrace to see what Winged Victory looked like, intact.
Witness Hellen Keller, spelling w-a-t-e-r.
Go back to the first moon landing, with a mariachi band in space suits, to welcome the astronauts.
Go back to my High School days, and watch a certain someone taking a shower after gym class. Follow him home, and watch him doing what all boys do when home alone.
Go back to my own conception, to see if my mother really had to get my father drunk, to have sex (as I’ve often suspected).
You better hope he was a virgin birth or your tape is going to be called Pissed Off Carpenters Gone Wild.
Since I can’t use the time machine to buy a lottery ticket (which I believe is a violation of my Constitutional Rights under the Time Travel Conduct Amendment of 2283), I’d go back to the 1820s and buy every copy I could find of Tamerlane (the anonymous self published novel of Edgar Allan Poe) and bury them in a waterproof vacuum sealed box under a granite rock on the farm where I grew up (thus allowing them to age 180 years, but in excellent condition). I’d “find” one every so often and offer it for sale along with the boxes other contents, Gutenberg Bibles autographed by the Apostles (you didn’t say that I couldn’t take extra junkets).
I’d go to West Memphis in 1993 in 1993 and even if I couldn’t save the little boys from being murdered I could either exonerate or confirm the guilt of the West Memphis Three. I’d do likewise for Bonnie Lee Bakley and Nicole Simpson (not that there’s terribly much doubt as to the identity of their killers).
Ah… I’d also love to make video and high quality audio recordings of Farinelli and other great castrati in their prime (Moreschi was neither one of the greats nor in his prime when he made the only known recording of a castrato) as well as of Paganini, Jenny Lind, Mozart. I’d record speeches of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams so that we’d know how they sounded and film the Wright Brothers flight, Philo Farnsworth’s first video transmission and the Lumiere brothers filming a movie. Video of Robert Johnson meeting Old Scratch (“now he goes by the name Legba”) might also be interesting.
I would also go to China, 3rd Century B.C., just before Qin Shih Huangdi issued his edict to burn all books except those on (I think) agriculture, medicine and and magic; and I would buy up (or steal, if necessary) every book I could.
That would require a lot of trips or a very spacious time machine, as the Chinese had not yet invented paper and wrote their books on strips of wood or bamboo (which made it harder than it might have been to hide them from the emperor’s soldiers). If that were a problem I could just scan the books.
First, I’d check out Jesus and if he really was crucified and resurrected, and if possible I’d get videotape evidence either way (film of the resurrection or videotape of his decaying body a couple of months later) but I’d want to get that out of the way quickly so I can do what I really want to do…
65 million years ago. North America. Me, Tyrannosaurus rex, and the best digital video camera money can buy…(sigh, she’s so dreamy…)
It’s kind of surreal for me to realize that if it really came down to it, I’d have a seriously hard time deciding between verifying/debunking Jesus’ resurrection and having a chance to observe a T.rex in the wild…
I would go back, gather something that would make me fabulously wealthy, return, and then sell it to the highest bidder. As much as I love history, the possibility of being a billionaire trumps sitting in on the assassination of Julius Caesar for me any day.
Some stuff that I’d bring back with me (in no real order):
The manuscript of the complete plays of Menander that allegedly existed in 15th-century Constantinople.
A copy of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s “Cardenio”, Shakespere’s only lost play.
Sound film of Sir Henry Irving or Edwin Booth performing Shakespeare.
I owe Eve a gift- how about Theda Bara’s “Cleopatra”?
Virtually no radio programs from before 1930 exist- I’d like to go back and record a week’s worth of broadcasts.
The earliest surviving radio broadcast of a World Series game comes from 1934. I’d try to get one from earlier, especially one called by the great (and now forgotten) Graham McNamee.
Let’s see how naughty a film “Convention City” was.
Let’s also see how scary “London After Midnight” was.
Most of the jazz greats are under-represented on film. It’s time to correct that.
Some kinescopes of pre-WWII television, in the US and the UK.
I take that if I visited a movie studio circa 1930, they wouldn’t mind if I took their entire silent film archives, right?
Anything else that any of you want me to grab while I’m out getting this?
…and while we’re at it, let’s go back to 1400s China and find out whether the Treasure Fleets really did circumnavigate the world, as a book I saw last weekend claimed. (Must go back to the bookshop and try to find it again…)
I would take video of disasters, any one I could view safely. Krakatoa’s blast and tsunami, Mt. Vesuvius at Pompeii, the San Francisco earthquake, the Chicago and Peshtigo fires, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory- all kinds of disasters.
Then I would sell it as a reality TV show, with cheesy sound effects and voiceovers. (…look at that wave scouring the valley- it wipes out entire towns on its path of destruction leading straight to Johnstown….)
Infamous executions would be the second show. Joan of Arc, Caesar, any day in the Coliseum, etc…
Offended by the “see what happened to Jesus body” comment but if I could go in a time machine I would either go back to the 80’s, go to the 50’s, or go back to Ancient Greece.
I would go back to the 80’s because it seems like it would have been fun to live back then and be old enough to appreciate it because everything seemed so colorful and I secretely love 80’s pop music, I’m starting a small collection.
I’d go back to the 50’s and buy so many toys, baseball cards and magazines and then take them back with me and go on “Antiques Road Show”… Good suggestion! Then I would go to the deep south to witness the beginnings of the civil rights movement and then get out as fast as I could before I got hung.
I would film ancient greece, I think the ancient city pompeii was the one that got buried under when a volcano went off. I spend a few days there video taping the people and then get out before the volcano erupts.
We couldn’t change things but could we do this: Fight someone. In 3rd grade this bigger kid kicked my butt, could I pop in and beat the kid up and pop back out?
I’d take a shitload of archaic currency purchased from a dealer, go back to 1946 or so, buy a house and a couple hundred acres in the woodsy areas of Greenwich, Connecticut, (say Deerfield Drive) and destroy the machine.
Oh, and if I had enough, buy some property in New Cannan, Darian and Glastonbury.
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