Letters from the Past

As a jet-setting time-traveler, I sure get a lot of letters from people in the past. Here's one I received yesterday:


Dear Kevin,
What's it like living in the future?

-Bayne Garver, La Brea, CA, 1976


Well, Bayne, it's pretty crazy when I live! We don't have any flying cars (yet!), but Back to the Future 2 is in just four more years, so they're just around the corner! And I don't need a key to unlock my car anymore - I just press a button on the now pointless key and I even have a cd player inside to listen to whatever I want!

Get this, though - since I live in such a commercialized, consumer-driven, mass-produced time, there is actually a nostalgia for fake old-timey things. You actually pay a premium for products that have been distressed and weathered to look older than they really are! Clothing comes delicately pre-torn by the nimble hands of Chinese children. Pristine hand-crafted wooden furniture is thrown down six flights of stairs after being perfectly sanded and varnished to look like it tumbled down six flights of stairs...just like your ancestors used to do!

Some things never change, though. I'm still listening to E.L.O. and they've never sounded better. Oh, that reminds me! Without giving away too much information about the future (I don't want to disrupt the time/space-contiblahblahwhatever), just wait a few years and they're going to do the soundtrack to an incredible new movie with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John! Oh, man...you're going to LOVE it!


Dear Kevin,
Huh? What's a cd player?

-Henry Fussleman, 1858


Um...nothing. Hey, look over there! It's some shots of Elsom Cellars in Woodinville! Go visit their tasting room and buy some wine. And don't think about altering my future, Henry - that's my job.