Monday, May 31, 2010

More Time Travel

Another entry point in our culture for thinking about time travel is sports. Sports fans think about this all the time, wondering what Ty Cobb would hit in our era, or what would happen if the '59 Celtics played the '89 Pistons. In contrast, no one spends much time arguing about whether Meryl Streep would have won an Oscar in the 1940's, whether Ulysses S Grant would win a 1992 election versus Teddy Roosevelt, or whether Winton Marsalis would have succeeded at jazz if he had lived during the Dixieland era.

Our loss. Those would all be fun to think about. Sending Winton Marsalis back for a Field of Dreams moment? (Or more precisely, Kinsella's companion book The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, which is better.) I can see him wanting to make the movie, too. Or Presidential Playoffs set in a particular year? I'm thinking a 64-team field, seeding by number of terms and vote dominance in their own years, with at-large bids being given to close finishers like Al Gore and William Jennings Bryan. But maybe a double-elimination tournament would be fairer. None of that World Cup group stuff, though. This is America.

And who wouldn't want to see Errol Flynn in a movie with great CGI?

Sports and Sci-Fi have more male fans than female, so maybe that's part of it.

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