Jay Lillie

Happy New Year!

Originally posted Summer 2008

My friend Katherine thinks we live in “interesting times”. She mentioned this over the weekend while we were playing in a Washington, D.C. celebrity tennis tournament. Katherine is a very good tennis player, and she follows all the national Championships.

The courts at Melbourne have a retractable roof. That’s interesting.

“Yeah, and tennis is a lot more global these days. Sexy Latins, beautiful Russians and Eastern Europeans winning and adding a lot of pizzaz.”

But it costs too many US Dollars now to go across and see the “French” and Wimbledon.

“Everything’s relative,” she said. “Sure the dollar doesn’t get us very far, but that’s interesting too, don’t you think?” she said.

It’s scary, that’s what I think.

“But think how dull our lives used to be. We were on top of the world in business, we had lots of money, our athletes excelled in most sports other than soccer and cross-country skiing, and we were envied so much that we got away with behaving badly. That wasn’t fun; it was boring. I think Americans are beginning to learn a little humility, and that’s interesting.”

Where are you going with this?

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m just observing, you know, like Mark Twain used to do.”

I guess he lived in interesting times too.

“Are you kidding he had to make it all up from whole cloth. Can you imagine anyone today writing about painting a fence? Oh, but that man would have a ball today.  Imagine how he’d handle the high price of gasoline.”

Somehow that doesn’t seem like his thing.

“Of course it does,” she scolded. “Can’t you see him following some hot shot Corvette putting down the road at 1500 rpms to get better mileage, while a little old lady in her Japanese hybrid zooms by, waving.”

That’s sick.

“Not if you’re the little old lady.”

True enough, but it’s still doesn’t seem like Mark Twain. I remember “Huckleberry Finn”.

“No one today even knows what a huckleberry is, so you can forget about him.”

We also don’t read books any more, so I’m not sure Samuel Clemens could make a living if he were around.

“Don’t try to fool me. I know Mark Twain was Clemens’ pen name.  And if he was around today he’d be doing sitcoms for television and making a fortune.”

You do make it sound interesting.

“Maybe we should bring Huckleberry back as a television character.”

What do we do with his friend “Joe”?

“No, his character is not politically correct. He’d have to go.”

Tom Sawyer?

“He’s clean enough for Hanna Montana, but he was no Huck Finn.”

You’re right, but boys are much badder now. How do you make Huck interesting?

“Make him a social icon and put him on You Tube or My Space.”

Speaking of icons, who’s our next opponent?

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.