The Future

Uh-oh: apparently someone has made a combination television remote control/cordless phone. It's called the My1Remote. At last you can lose both your remote control and your cordless phone with one economical bout of forgetfulness! The tag line is, "Make a phone call while turning on the TV!" I figure you'd still have one free hand to turn on the garbage disposal or turn up the stereo -surely, at that point, the phone call would be entirely and efficiently neutralized, making it that much safer to stay home and watch -more TV!

This incredible innovation is being made available to us through the fine folks at YouCanSave.Com (a subsidiary of WhatTheHellLetsCapitalizeEverythingForNoReason.Net), and it comes to us at a time when most people would rather spend fifteen or twenty minutes searching through all their couch cushions and most of their laundry before they lower themselves to actually get up and touch the TV. Best of all - it only costs $69.95!

They even encourage you to order by phone, and of course I hope you all will. When you do, make sure you have your television turned up all the way -that way, they'll know they're on the right track.

I'm telling you, the future is going to be beautiful! Why, I can envision the day when you'll be able to turn everything on at once, make six simultaneous phone calls to people you've never even heard of, get them all worked up about who's calling and what's that awful racket, and then turn everything off again, just by clapping! There's no end to the things we might accomplish!

Yes, the future is always a swinging place. Why, only last night I not only ate but actually started to like sushi, for no good reason! As a friend pointed out, it'll probably be no time before I'm jogging and smoking cigars. I have truly started to embrace all things modern, only to discover that, ironically, not all modern things seek my embrace (in fact, some of them filed complaints.)

No sooner had I enjoyed sushi and considered my future as an architect/mountain climber/lacrosse dad than I was whisked off to Fall River to see Dan Hicks at the Narrows Center for the Arts with some of Mrs. Kelp's gay, madcap friends. (Mrs. Kelp herself, as some of you may recall, is a viciously erotic, cat-like seductress -the kind men kill for, albeit much more friendly, approachable, and down-to-earth than most seductresses.)

Even though many people think of Dan as a retro type, in fact he is also getting modern-er all the time.Word is that he has completely given up drinking, which, for him, is deeply and recklessly futuristic. This is a kinder and gentler Dan, almost chatty compared to the old version. Strangely enough, Dan has apparently decided to embrace the future by doing more scat-singing and dancing in his shows, proving once again that there are things in the future that science has no answer for.

I am also compelled to announce that I have a very close friend (ridiculously close, really) who is appearing in a play this month, namely Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile", which is at the Orleans Academy through February 2nd. I'm told his is a very small part, which is fortunate given his entirely estimable talents. (I won't name him -you go ahead.) Apparently, there are also some real actors in it, hopefully deployed strategically so as to conceal his efforts from the more discerning viewers. In fact, that must be the case, as they already got a good review, though that was in one of the other, lesser papers.

You'll find this week's kolumn a bit shorter than usual, due mostly to the future being such a zippy location. People in the future won't have time to read -they'll be too busy dancing and scat-singing. The future will be fast, sleek, and technologically impressive, but we're still years away from solving our frightening scat-singing problem.