Time Travel: A Cautionary Tale

Dear Friends, 

Malcolm is smitten with theoretical astrophysics and takes it upon himself to educate anyone who will listen about black holes. I find it quite charming, at least until he drops the word "space-time." Because that's just taking unrelated concepts (space and time) and pretending that the intervening hyphen turns them into a single concept. I guess that's what makes it theoretical physics. Standard high-school physics teachers would never try to attribute observed phenomena to vacuum-topography-chaos-velocity or friction-adjacent-parallax-bureaucracy. 

The Hard Taco song for December, "Inverse Chinese Finger Trap," showcases just how little I actually learned from those conversations. 

What I was really hoping to learn is whether black holes prove that (A) time travel is possible, and (B) I could use one to go back and prevent my dog from chewing the eyes off my most precious stuffed animal, Opus. 

As a child, I related deeply to this little penguin's optimism, hopeless naïveté, and body-dysmorphic disorder. We even posed together in my high-school senior portrait. 

A boy and his penguin. A penguin and his boy. 

This delighted the folks at Worzella Photography; up to that point, no teenage boy had ever chosen a pose other than their standard three offerings.  

Approved Teenage-Boy Portrait Poses: 

(A) Scowling While Leaning Against a Brick Wall,

(B) Scowling While Sitting in the Wheel-well of a Monster Truck, 

(C) Scowling While Trying to Break Out of Minimum-Security Prison. 

Worzella Photography was so proud of the Opus picture that they featured it in their brochure the following year, along with the only other creative photo they had: Girl Scowling While Leaning on the Ruins of an Enemy Shrine.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if a black hole would take me back to 2023 so I could counsel myself to keep Opus on a high shelf so that Ozo the Labradoodle wouldn't rip the poor penguin's eyes out. 

Unfortunately, knowing my 2023 self, I would insist that 2025 Me say nothing. "The consequences could be disastrous," I would warn my future self, "Telling me to put Opus on a higher shelf (or why) could cause a chain reaction that could unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!" 

So, I would take matters into my own hands, safely tuck Opus into a closed drawer, and return to the present, only to discover that Ozo the Labradoodle had instead ripped the noses off my other two precious stuffed animals, Winnie the Pooh and Fievel. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

Fortress Party 2024 - Back to the Future and Fractured 1995

We started out with a Back to the Future-inspired sign in sheet. 

In the garage, we had a DeLorean. Okay fine, it was a Tesla, but the spoilers, smoke machine, custom license plate, and DMC logo may have fooled some guests. Not shown: there were flickering red Christmas lights behind each tire, implying time travel flames!

On the inside, there was a Flux Capacitor and the time circuits, which are set to 1995, the year of the first Fortress Party. 

Guests would pass through the back seat of the car, where this video was playing on a large TV crammed into the front seat. (The TV did not survive the uncramming the following day; its final moments were showing this video on loop for 12 hours.) 

This was the first time we displayed the sign-in sheets electronically rather than practically. This meant we had/got to put up an extra room this year. 

Once guests slid through the back seat of the car, they came out in a hallway. A sign informed them that they had arrived at the original 1995 Fortress Party, but accidentally stepped on a butterfly on the way, changing everything. And with that, they entered... 

The theme here is that everything from 1995 has been mixed up, starting with the movie posters that were on the wall:

And VHS tapes were sewn together to make other mashups.

On the TV, there was a loop of TV shows, commercials, and movie previews that were also messed up. 

In other ways, the room was a tribute to the original Fortress Party, with sheets tied loosely to the wall and hanging over the back of a couch. 

 

Nine Movies in Ten Sentences

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for January, “Pando,” is about my love for the largest and oldest living thing on the planet, Pando. Pando looks like a forest of aspens, but he Is actually a single organism with a network of underground roots throughout 106 acres in Utah.

Countdown Stories

Lauren and I have a homegrown road trip game we do with the kids. We try to tell the synopsis of a popular story in exactly 10 lines, with each line one word shorter than the last. The first line is 10 words, the second 9 words, etc., and we have to finish the story by time we get down to the final 1-word sentence.

Here are some Countdown Story retellings of some of my favorite classic movies.

Historically speaking, merpeople and humans don’t hang out very much.

“History my ass,” Ariel says, rescuing hunky unconscious guy.

She swaps her voice for... what’s that? Legs.

Calypso music, we discover, is quite romantic.

The prince learns a valuable lesson:

Never trust hotties named Vanessa.

The ship shanks Ursula

Making witch kebab.

Teenage wedding?

Sure!

Luke grudgingly befriends a hermit. They overpay a glorified cabbie.

The hermit disintegrates, but the princess with Cinnabon earmuffs

Fits Luke with a size small orange uniform.

Some X-shaped spaceships attack a moon-shaped base.

A disembodied voice tells Luke,  “Relax.

Turn off that targeting computer.

Envision murdering womp rats.”

Thanks, dead hermit.

Thanks, cabbie.

Kaboom.

A mopey beauty, whose soulmate allegedly perished, goes horseback riding.

Three guys with different accents and BMIs kidnap her.

She shoves her masked rescuer into a chasm.

A fanged capybara gnaws on his shoulder.

Suction cups leave him mostly dead.

Who will stop this wedding?

The unintelligible rhyming giant?

Either mustachioed protagonist?

Fred Savage?

Anyone?

Bilbo goes sightseeing with Gandalf’s little buddies whose names rhyme.

Though small, Bilbo outsmarts trolls, goblins, spiders, and elves

Plus, a shriveled riddler with dissociative identity disorder.

The dwarves covet jewelry above meaningful relationships.

So, as it happens, do dragons

And pretty much everyone else.

Hobbits have hairy feet,

But they’re sweethearts.

Where to?

Home.

Professor Jones is on sabbatical, doing fieldwork in South America.

Is getting tenure really worth tarantulas, boulders, and blowguns?

And when will he finish his big grant?

Never, with the Nazis constantly scooping him.

The academic world is ridiculously cutthroat

It’s literally publish or perish

And during the Depression

Funding is tight.

Aw, crap.

Snakes.

Forrest has short hair, loves God, and joins the army.

He does not embrace the excesses of the 1960s.

Jenny, however, represents everything wrong about liberal counterculture

She’s promiscuous. She’s anti-war. She uses drugs.

The lesson is hippies get AIDS.

Obviously, it’s all conservative propaganda.

Gump even wears a

Red trucker hat.

Forrest Trump.

#sad.

Doc’s time machine requires stolen plutonium to generate 1.21 gigawatts

Libyans in a Volkswagen Microbus want their plutonium back.

Marty escapes to 1955 and coaches his parents,

Preventing them from becoming alcoholic loser dorks.

He teaches Chuck Berry rock music,

Then harnesses lightning to return,

Producing flaming tire tracks.

Now where’s Doc?

Uh oh...

Libyans!

A paleontologist, paleobotanist, and chaos theorist ride a customized Jeep

It’s storming when Messy Fat Guy unleashes some dinosaurs

Who devour Samuel Jackson, except for one arm.

Aren’t they hungry enough for both arms?

Dinosaurs spit on Messy Fat Guy

Before ravaging him off camera

That’s what he deserves

Because he’s evil.

Pure evil.

Newman!

Balding psychiatrist and his wife have been growing apart recently

Because (spoiler alert) he kicked the bucket last year.

Everyone who ever died in Philadelphia harasses Cole.

He’s lucky he doesn’t live in Beijing.

Fortunately, he (spoiler alert) learns something.

I saw Haley Joel Osment

On Buzzfeed last week.

He’s no longer

(Spoiler alert)

Cute.

Mikey’s searching for One-Eyed Willy, which is not a euphemism.

Mouth speaks Spanish, Chunk Hebrew, and Data broken English.

They disarm booby traps thanks to piano lessons.

Once, Chunk feigned puking off a balcony.

Mikey uses his inhaler too often.

Mama Fratelli makes Corey Feldman

Spit out the pearls.

Sloth love Chunk

Chunk reciprocates.

Hugs.

With warmest regards,

Zach