"Mr. Peabody set the Way Back Machine for Boston, 1988"
Author's note:
Links to Iggy Pop and the Channel nightclub in blue text.
Some facts, names, dates, timelines were bent in the remembering.
If you crave exacting journalistic integrity, make your own blog.
"You know the worst thing about time travel? Since we were discussing it". We were discussing it? "Yes you were saying you wish you had a time machine. You'd go back and tell yourself not to miss the big Iggy Pop show at the Channel tonight".
... And then I was going to say"...
"You know what the worst thing about time travel"?
It's the damn non interference rule. You can't go back and change anything that has happened, or anything you've done. You can't go back and change history, or use information from the future to benefit your present or past self, like using future stock information to go back and invest in the past stock market to get big dividends in the present day. Savvy? It's kind of like the Star Trek Prime Directive. It prohibits (Star Fleet personnel) from "interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations, particularly those that have not yet developed warp drive, even if well-intentioned, often requiring officers to sacrifice their lives rather than violate it".
All well and good. Of course you would never go back and teach a bunch of cavemen about warp drive and then you come back in a half year and they now have military dominion over a whole quadrant of the galaxy. Nobody got time for that. But think back on it. Kirk and Spock used to frequently play fast and loose with the rules about time line interference. They did it all the time. It usually had more to do with who had their hands on the script that week, Ray Bradbury or DC Fontana. Anyway, to quote Hector Barbossa from those 'Pirates' movies, "It's more of a set of guidelines".
In any case, I'm getting off track. All ethical considerations about timelines and non-interference aside, a more likely problem you would encounter travelling time has more to do with believability. So say I want to go back in time to give myself some advise. There are many things I did or said, that I would love to go back and change. Jumping into a lake and breaking my neck is a great example of something I would want to go back and change (but THAT is another story for another time). Or even something more simple. For example, say I wanted to go back in time to warn my younger self to not drink so much alcohol and stay out so late on a work night . Well, knowing me, I might be inclined to think I was some kind of a nut. Even if 'I' believed 'I' was 'me',
'I' can just imagine 'past me's' reaction getting lectured by older 'me'. My reaction would probably be similar to an Alfred Hitchcock quote I once heard: "I told myself I need to stop drinking so much. But I'm not about to start listening now to some drunk old weirdo that talks to himself".
I mean, think about what 'I' might say if future me comes up to present me in a pub having a good time, drinking and moshing, and staying up too late on a work night. 'I' start giving 'me' advice about taking better care of myself and what not, and asking 'me' if 'I' needed the pint 'I' was going to order. Sure 'I' might actually believe that I am Jack from the future, coming back to the past to tell you(me) how your(my) present behavior will impact (our) future fortunes. As present me, in the past, I might buy the whole premise of time travel but I would probably also say, ''Well, the guy IS devastatingly handsome. And he does seem really intelligent. But he seems okay, and healthy and well adjusted. If he's future me, I must be doing alright. So I guess I'll go ahead and order me and the gang here another round, and as a compromise, I can just skip work tomorrow. I won't be that old dude for a long time. And I'll only be young once.
You know I think I am starting to get my tenses and adjectives confused. Despite such complications, I still believe a time machine would still be pretty cool, if for no other reason than to go back to a time, when I had less troubles, more fun, a less fucked up lower back, and still had the ways and means to check a few things off my bucket list that I hadn't even made up yet. So, all that said, Mr. Peabody, fire up that WayBack Machine, and set the dials to July 19, 1988. The place, Boston Massachusetts. The Channel Nightclub. Venerable music legend and punk icon, Iggy Pop is slated to play this seedy but similarly iconic bar and music venue.
''See that body, floating in the water, keep on walking, Coo coo ca choob''
To quote past me, in 1988:
Exhibit A~
"Iggy Pop always represented the seedy underbelly of Rock. The Channel always represented the seedy underbelly of Boston Rock clubs. Iggy was also riding a wave of popularity from his big hit 'Cold Metal'. The Channel was one short commuter train ride from where I was living at the time. Iggy would subsequently use the recordings from this gig to make a live record. The Boston Globe described the show in such epocryphal terms as 'tour de force' and 'juggernaut' .
Only an asshole would miss a show like that, right? Well call me an asshole, because I missed it. Not because my Mom was sick in the hospital. Not because I had to be at the birth of my first child. No, just because I didn't feel like going out that night. When I die and go to the Pearly Gates, and they ask me if there's one thing I would go back and change, it would be that I would have gone to see Iggy Pop that night. You know why? Because now he's over 60. And he's got a bad hip. And one of these days, I'll pick up the Globe and read that Iggy Pop has died in his Detroit Mich. home after complications from a fall".
Exhibit B~
I didn't really have anything to do that afternoon or evening. I was actually IN Boston, verily several blocks away. I was walking right into South Station, and was fixing to catch the Attleboro local back home after an afternoon dicking around in town, after playing hooky from my gig as a carpenter. I wasn't particularly tired. I mean, I was in my early 20's for God's sake. I was full of juice. There was no reason, perhaps except just plain sloth. I had my mind on going home, hitting the fridge for a cold one, then hitting the pool, testing the seaworthiness of a pool floaties. Sloth or whatever, if I had only taken a left instead of walking into the train station, I could have called up my cousin I-Dog, or my old pal Small Room over in Back Bay, two of my best, most reliable drinking buddies. All I had for an obstacle was a short zip across the channel, past where old Milk Bottle ice cream stand, past the little breakfast nook where I always stop for coffee and breakfast when I play hooky from work, like I had done this morning. I could keep walking, passing the derelict buildings, dead bodies floating in the water, and abandoned cars, and there I'd be there. Bob's your uncle. I could hang out at the Channel until one of my esteemed cronies arrive, and await rock and roll history with a reasonably priced well Channel well drink.
So that's exactly what I did. The show was epic. He was 100% Iggy: a jumping, gyrating, screaming and whooping tour de force. The show was so good that he decided to take the 1recording of the night and release it as a live record. I would have been a fool to have missed it. And as far as disturbing any time continuums, I don't see how any harm was caused. I actually saw him again the next year in Maine at Colby College, backing the Pretenders. When Chrissy Hynde took the stage, she prostrated herself on the stage floor and bowed in deference to the God father of Punk. So I think that nobody was hurt by my foray into skipping through time. Kirk and Spock would have approved. There was no divulgences of Warp Drive.What I know now about Iggy is exactly what I have always known. He is the master of rock and a giant of giants. All heads must bow. All tongues must confess. No matter what time continuum you exist in.
I'm only five foot one! I got a pain in my neck!
"With a bottle of aspirin, and a sack full of jokes.
I wish I could go home with all the big folks"
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