Champagne Wishes and Caveat Dreams

Did I ever mention I love alcohol?

Seriously...I love this stuff. I'm tiny and as they would say back in Jersey "I'm a cheap date".

While this brings up connotations of things most untoward, I'm not even going there. I'm a little person and my alcohol tolerance, i.e., "buzz level", doesn't take much alcohol for it to kick in.

Let me be perfectly frank here...I'm not an alcoholic, a lush, or a drunkard. I don't need to be interventioned and I don't need the number to AA.

I am a responsible drinker.

That might sound like a lesson in contradiction, but I am.

I never drive after I drink and I've never have fallen face-down in front of my kids and I don't "worship the porcelain god".

I have what people back in the 1960s would refer to as "The Bewitched Syndrome". (Okay, maybe only I would refer to it as that as I'm the one who coined the phrase.)

Do you not have a clue?

Let me help you out.

Did you ever watch the television show, "Bewitched"?

Darrin always had a Martini waiting for him when he got home. Sure, Samantha and Endora might have been bar-hopping on Saturn (they liked to say "Saturn" a lot back then - I was too little to know if it was an in-joke...and I'm too old now to care) with Dr. Bombay, but by the time the "going home whistle" blew at the advertising firm of McMann & Tate - Samantha was back on Earth being the dutiful wife...and Darrin was on his way home to wet his own whistle.

Honestly, I don't think there was an episode which didn't extol the virtues of alcohol. It's a wonder anyone growing up the 60s didn't have a monkey of sorts on their back...and I'm not counting any shows where Endora actually put one ON Darrin's back. Oh, c'mon the plot was always the same: Darrin does something to piss off Endora - Endora, in turn, casts a spell on Darrin, Darrin learns a lesson, Larry and Louise come over and down copious amounts of alcohol...something "witchy" happens and Samantha always weaves her way out of it.

This was way before Christine O'Donnell came on the political scene. Plus Samantha always tried NOT to be a witch...which was always central to the plot line...and everyone knows when Samantha twitched her nose... there was nothing really political going on. Unless, of course, you count the warlock council and that coven of witches...who weren't so much coveting votes as they were just trying to have a little fun messing with mortals.

Enter again - alcohol.

Every single one of them drank like a fish. The only one I never saw drink was their nosy neighbour, Gladys. She was probably too busy taking psychotropic drugs I guess. She always saw things and no one ever believed her. She was the poster child for Xanax if there ever was one, poor lady. And then there was Mrs. Stephens (Darrin's mother), who always had a "sick headache" -- not to be confused with a "regular one", because long before WebMD was invented she was the most neurotic person on television until Howie Mandel came along.

But, I digress.

As W.C Fields (who drank a lot) always said, "All things being equal I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

And, as Jimmy Stewart said to Cary Grant in "The Philadelphia Story" (and did I mention I grew up in Jersey -- and Jersey was very close in proximity to Philadelphia)..."Champagne is a great leveleler... leveleler. It makes you my equal." If you've never seen the movie - do so...it's better than the sum total of Bewitched episodes...and has its share of other champagne moments that anyone inside and outside of Bryn Mawr can relate to.

And, boy oh boy, can I relate to alcohol -- and if I would have been around during Prohibition - I would have shed my inhibitions to imbibe the 'nectar of the gods'. Did I mention I was a "cheap date"?

Oh well.

God knows I need a drink just to follow what I just wrote.

So, Cheers! Which, by the way, was a much, much, much better show than anything on the air today. Plus, ironically, it centered around alcohol.

Did I happen to mention I love alcohol?

Time Travel and the Grandfather Paradox aka My Theory of Non-Relativity

I do not claim to be the greatest thinker of all time. I also do not profess to be in the top one million. When I think lately it's more or less about how my headache is never "just a headache"...it has to be brain cancer...and that not finding the mouth ulcer thingy on my tongue this time (even with a lighted magnifying mirror and a long-handed teaspoon in one hand and a Q-tip in the other) is highly indicative of me having tongue/mouth/throat cancer (thank you - neurotic tendencies). The fact that I've been abstaining from all alcohol for absolutely no reason whatsoever this past week...is again, in my clinical opinion...probably directly related to my tongue/mouth/throat cancer.

So when I thought the other day of a thought I've frequently thought, as I talked to someone whose name I can't even remember...on the phone - for hours and hours (Jimmy Stewart's filibuster scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is nothing compared to my ability to talk endlessly)...I decided I would type this out to get it out of my system.

Time travel as we know it has been the thing many movies have been built on. And I always find fault with them all - basically because I'm anal like that and I like to compare notes after the film is over with other anal people who, likewise, feel compelled to share their insight via the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

We all know "Back to the Future", "The Time Machine" (don't bother watching the remake I didn't even know was remade until I watched it the other day), "Terminator" (and the four or seven sequels), "The Time Traveler's Wife" (horrid, simply horrid), and so on and so on...with "Twelve Monkeys" probably being the best in my opinion along with "12:01 PM.", a short film which is absolutely brilliant...but not true "time traveling of your own free will"...but I thought I'd mention it as it really is great. And then there's "Doctor Who"...who could forget him?

But I'm rambling...kinda like I do on the telephone...

Basically, when I'm not talking on the telephone, I sit and I watch television - mainly old films, very old films...or documentaries.

Some of these documentaries are about time travel...and I tend to uber-analyze them as much as I do the films of the same "genre".

Typically, if you've seen any of these shows...they are way over the average person's head, yet they get the guy with the PhD in Astro-Biological-Time-Quantum Physics to explain to us "little people" about theories we've gullibly bought in above said movies. To do this they resort to convoluted things like bending pieces of paper (marked "A" and "B") over and there's usually a ball and a trampoline employed somehow (think MacGyver as the prop man) and always a flashlight.

Well, one of these theories in time travel is the "Grandfather Paradox". In a nutshell, if you aren't familiar, it's where you theoretically can't go back in time and kill your own grandfather as you wouldn't be able to go back in time as you weren't born if you killed him. It's loads of fun to think about...especially if you've drank enough alcohol to get loaded or taken an Ambien...but never at the same time.

So, people with IQs in the tens of the power of 2 or 20 (or some other such mathematical rot) have concluded their own conclusions and summarily tossed time traveling back to commit such an act -- as impossible. Some have further theorized you can't go back in time prior to the invention of the time machine...as you'd have to wait X years after the invention and then can only go back in time as far as the invention was invented.

Eh...whatever. If I'm going to invent a time machine...it darn well better go back to point one and go in the future and sideways and longways and all the ways that Willy Wonka glass elevator can go.

Now, I've paid as much attention to these programs as one can (given the circumstances)...and they never bring up MY theory:

(clears throat) This theory, which belongs to me, is as follows... (more throat clearing) This is how it goes... (clears throat) The next thing that I am about to say is my theory. (clears throat) Ready? (Oh, lookie there...I time traveled back to Monty Python days.)

Seriously, here it is:

Okay, but first...you know that question which anyone with a child answers the same? The "If you could go back in time and change one thing in your life...would you?" And they get all "George Bailey" on you and say, "Well, I wouldn't because that would mean my child/children wouldn't have been born."

Well, I claim bull crap on that generic answer...which happens to be my theory.

IF you could go back in time...how do you know you wouldn't have the same children? Sure, you can speculate they'd be different...but you wouldn't really know it as you wouldn't know any differently as you don't have a time machine. Perhaps they were destined to be born anyway...and they aren't so much a strand of DNA as they are some cosmic entity that is yours alone...and no matter how many years or dimensions you could possibly travel through...they'd still end up getting here.

So, in principle, you could go back and kill your own grandfather as he wouldn't necessarily have to be related to you.

Or...something like that.

Hey, I'm still working on it...sheesh!

It's a theory in the making...and if Hollywood can get away with a few liberties, well, so can I, right?

(A side note: I am neurotic and always think the worst...I can't tell you how many times over the years it was brain cancer or throat cancer...so I meant absolutely no offense to Michael Douglas...and would never ever joke about something like that. Michael Douglas is doing the brave and right thing to tell people about his throat and mouth cancer...and because of his celebrity...many people will listen...and be saved by early intervention due to what he's been sharing. I applaud him and I hope he wins his battle.)