Odd Future

Despite what your idiot friend posted on Facebook, today (or yesterday, or a week ago) is not the future date Doc and Marty traveled to in "Back to the Future II." The real date however, October 21, 2015, is not that far off. It's a date that I've had on my mind for most of my life and for me it'll be a pretty surreal experience when it actually comes around. It's a rare thing to be able to have the singular fan experience of existing in the exact same date as a favorite film or TV show. Star Trek is in the distant future, Star Wars is in the distant past (and a distant galaxy), we're about 60 years ahead of Indiana Jones, and I don't even know if the Lord of the Rings even takes place in our reality. I guess X-Files and Terminator fans could lay claim to experiencing a near future date set by their creators, though since they both involve the end of the world I imagine it wasn't quite as fun (in the case of Terminator fans Judgment Day just keeps on getting moved up like the predictions of a really lousy cult leader).

October 21, 2015 unfortunately will also likely bring the BTTF fan many disappointments when it comes to predicted advances in technology. I even found an old post in the archives listing my top 5 things I'll be disappointed in the distant year of 2015 if they didn't exist (it's quite disturbing that the post is almost 7 years old) and it seems only one item, power laces from Nike seem to be a possibility.

While the likely lack of future wonders like hover board technology, delicious hydrated Pizza Hut pizza, automated dog walkers, and dust resistant paper (you know for all that paper media we use) is a bummer, I started to consider maybe there were some things from the Hill Valley of 2015 we are better off not having. Here are a few things:

1. The US Weather Service. Sure it seems awesome that meteorological science had advanced to the point where weather could be predicted to the second (alas the Post Office is apparently still a mess in 2015). This is assuming that this is how the Weather Service works. Consider the possibility that the Weather Service isn't predicting the weather with deadly accuracy but rather controlling it. Now the name takes on a much more ominous tone, like the arm of some powerful totalitarian Big Brother. Having absolute control of the elements would go a long way in maintaining a subtle but complete control over a society. Could the world of 2015 Hill Valley be a discreet dystopia?
2. Hyper Inflation. When Doc gives Marty instructions on how to pretend to be his future son, he tells Marty to order a Pepsi at the Cafe 80's and gives him a fifty. Now it could just be that Doc only has large bills on him and doesn't care if Marty's going to look like a jerk going into a restaurant to order a soda and pay with a fifty dollar bill, but then later on Marty is solicited by a volunteer on the street asking to donate $100 to save the clock tower as if it were spare change. I know that our economy's been pretty rough so far this decade but our currency hasn't lost that much value.
3. No Lawyers. Marty reads a newspaper article about his son being arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in the state penitentiary within two hours. When he asks Doc how all that could be done in 2 hours, he explains that "the justice system works swiftly in the future, now that they've abolished all lawyers." Contemporary society's hatred of lawyers aside, do we really want to live in a future where lawyers are abolished and long prison sentences are determined in a matter of hours? How are these "trials" conducted? Isn't that how the justice system works in North Korea? This sort of goes back to my suspicions that BTTF 2015 is actually a harsh authoritarian dystopia.
4. Handheld Roofie Devices. Doc uses a convenient handheld "sleep inducing alpha rhythm generator" to immediately knockout Marty's overly inquisitive girlfriend Jennifer and later Marty's son so Marty could take his place. Call me crazy but such a device may have potential for some abuse. Is this some black market good or just the contemporary version of pepper spray. I really hope Doc had to buy it from some shady drug dealer in some dark alley rather than just purchasing it at the nearest CVS. Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, would be date rapist will have to drug victims the old fashion way.    
5. Creatively Bankrupt Film Industry. Sure Hollywood is guilty of leaning too heavily on sequels and adaptations of established franchises while taking as little risk as it can in terms of novelty and creativity, but I don't think it'll ever get bad enough to the point where a 19th Jaws movie is produced. Going by the historical decline of the series from the classic original to universally panned Jaws 4: The Revenge, I shudder to think how absurdly terrible the 18th sequel would be, in hologram form no less (even the Saw movies stopped at 7). By contrast the movie industry is in much better shape in reality than in this fictional 2015. 
6. Japanese Hegemony. The film's future seems to be reflecting the fears of the 1980s that the surging Japanese economy would eventually come to dominate America. I suppose fortunately for us, that the Japanese have been in an economic funk for the past decade or so and however poorly we're doing they're doing just as poorly or worse. American workers won't have to kowtow to their angry Japanese corporate overlords who regularly monitor their personal video calls and instantly fires them via mass faxes (I love how there's a fax machine in every room of the house). Tying it back to my dystopia theory, maybe it's the Japanese that are running the show as if the U.S. was conquered by them sometime between 1985 and 2015. They could now be running America with an iron fist, controlling our weather, abolishing our adversarial judicial system, wrecking our currency, manufacturing rape devices, and hamstringing our movie industry Hmmm...sounds like a potential YA franchise.

Say Hi To Your Mom For Me

To be a fan of the "Back to the Future" trilogy is to be forever pondering. Take all the questions you would have after watching one standard scifi movie about time travel and then multiply it by three. There are just so many complexities and "what if"s that come along with Doc and Marty's adventures through the time space continuum that you just have to raise your hands up, admit it's just a movie and allow for its fair share of plot holes and ambiguities (though I still don't know why Doc couldn't have written another letter to Marty to bring along a spare gas canister to 1885...but I digress).

Issues of time and space aside, one thing I did start thinking about recently as I was re-watching the films was about the background of the trilogy's main antagonist, all world mega bully, Biff Tannen. Throughout the films Marty encounters Tannen at various ages, various alternative states of existence, and even deals with his ancestors and descendants. During all these encounters with the latter I started to wonder, what are the Tannen women like?

As horrible and despicable as Biff and his male family line are, apparently they all found women (whether through marriage or other means) and managed to pass down their Tannen asshole genes through the decades. Who are these Ava Brauns? What kind of women are drawn to these uniformly awful Tannen men. They seam to lack any redeeming quality that would make a rational woman say "I want to start a family with that guy". And clearly these Tannens aren't adapted, they share a disturbing amount of genetic similarities.

In the series there is only one brief instance of a female Tannen, in "Back to the Future 2" when Marty, spying on Biff's house, overhears the voice of Tannen's grandmother arguing with him as he leaves. I always thought this scene humanized Biff just a little bit. I imagined him as an unhappy teenager without parents, being raised by his mean (perhaps even abusive) grandmother; this in turn fueled his bullying in school.

According to this totally unscientific Tannen family tree from a BTTF wiki, Biff's grandma is listed as the daughter of Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen from the third film. So somewhere in his life as a notorious outlaw and murderer of at least 12 men (not including Indians or Chinamen) he managed to pass on the family name. I would think it must have been before the events of BTTF 3 since he ends up going to jail at the end for robbing the Pine City Stage. As for Biff himself, he must have gotten over the heartbreak of being rejected by Lorraine and the humiliation of being knocked out at the dance by George to find someone to settle down with which eventually leads to his doppelganger grandson Griff.

The family tree gets even more complicated as you can see when you throw in other BTTF media like the 90's cartoon and the recent PC game. The cartoon series is especially ridiculous since nearly every episode Marty or the Brown family would travel through time and meet a different past relative of the Tannen family from Roman era Bifficus Antanneny all the way to Ziff Tannen of the year 2091. In the series, the Tannens' are less a family line than an eternal fixture of time itself. Maybe that's how we should view Biff and the rest of the Tannens as the constant corporeal manifestations of man's inescapable dark side. Perhaps there never was a time and, until man can overcome his inhumanity to man, there will never be a time without a Tannen in the world.

This is heavy! Five random things I noticed while watching "Back to the Future" on Monday

If you haven't heard or read already "Back to the Future" just turned 25 recently and in addition to the new press, internet buzz, awkward cast reunions, and blu ray releases, the first film was brought back into select theaters nationwide for a brief two night engagement (last Saturday and Monday). Fortunately I found out about the limited run in time to catch the Monday night showing. While I had seen the "Back to the Future" trilogy (particularly the first and second one), far and away, more than any other movies in my life (I'm talking by a huge margin like Gretzky to Messier on the all-time points list), I never got to see it in an actual theater. Considering how the first movie is so deeply ingrained in my mind that I could probably do a one man scene for scene monologue of the entire film ("We enter to the ticking cacophony of the myriad of clocks in Doc Brown's cluttered home...") I really didn't expect any surprises from watching the big screen print of the film aside from the enhanced audio and visual experience (that old person makeup for Marty's parents, Biff, and Doc in 1985 did look a lot less convincing in high def). However, as is the case with all truly great and timeless works of art repeat viewings still manage to reveal new unseen subtitles and nuances.

I want to preface that my following observations have less to do with the endless number of complex and hypothetical issues and consequences regarding time travel that always arise from watching the film. As anyone who has enjoyed the films will agree, those complicated questions of why didn't this happen to Marty or what Doc could have done or how the time line really should have changed are a given (and part of the enduring nature of the trilogy). The following are more plot and character touches that I never considered in prior watchings (with maybe a few space time continuum issue sprinkled in there):

Doc Brown is crazy...in a disturbing, dangerous way

Watching the film as a kid, Doc Brown was hands down my favorite character, and really what kid wouldn't find him to be the coolest character? He's charismatic, lovably manic, entertainingly hyperbolic, has a Bill Nye-esque way of explaining situations with ease and amusement, and after all it's his creation of the time machine that sets all the events of the movie into motion. He's the classic friendly mad scientist. However, looking at his actions throughout the film I noticed he also carries the all too common mad scientist trait of extreme recklessness and utter lack of scientific ethics. Without even getting into his questionable actions in the sequels (excessive time altering, knocking people out with his date rape gun thing, train hijacking) over the course of the original film he:

• Conspires with deadly Libyan terrorists in obtaining illegal stolen plutonium. Even before the post 9-11 era this is a monstrously unethical act. It's bad enough that the Doc is illegally possessing stolen plutonium, the fact that he negotiated with a terrorist group (even in bad faith) probably qualifies him for the highest level of treason.
• Initially tests his time machine on his pet dog. Call it hubris or recklessness, but the Doc seems totally caviler with possibly vaporizing his loyal dog in dangerous new plutonium powered time machine. It's not like it's strongly implied that he has ever made an invention that worked up to this point.
• Unnecessarily risks his and Marty's life. Once Doc puts Einstein in the Delorean he sets the car via remote to come barreling directly towards them with the assumption that the car will disappear into the future and not crush both him and Marty. Couldn't they just observe the experiment safely from the side? Once again, hubris or recklessness?
• Total lack of lab safety training. Aside from the above noted examples of careless behavior, Doc does not even maintain a safe laboratory environment. In 1955, while he is showing his plan via models to get Marty back to 1985, he causes his model toy car to burst into flames and go straight into a highly dangerous piles of oily rags and flammable chemicals. Luckily he manages to get the flames out in time, but as we learn by 1985 he eventually ends up burning his entire house down sometime in the next three decades. At least he wears goggles?
• Proves himself to be a total hypocrite. Doc gives Marty plenty of shit for trying to telling him one crucial piece of news about him in the future and lecturing him about the horrible dangers of messing with the time space continuum, yet he's the one who still irresponsibly builds a time machine so he can learn everything about the future. If Doc really cared about the ethical dangers of time travel he would have immediately stopped himself from devoting the next 30 years of his life to making a time machine! He sort of starts to get the idea that time traveling maybe irresponsible and prohibitively risky in the sequels but obviously abandons it at the end when he makes another time machine out of a locomotive to replace the Delorean.

Gee Mr. Strickland, that was kind of uncalled for.

Mr. Strickland is a fairly one note, single purpose character. He's a dick authority figure that pisses on the dreams of current day Marty and sort of shows the lousiness of his current situation. It's also amusing to see that he has remained unchanged since his father attended high school in 1955. When he catches Marty being late for school again at the beginning of the film he basically reads him the standard riot act. He issues Marty a tardy slip. Reasonable. Advises Marty to quit hanging around that dangerous lunatic Doc Brown. More and reasonable given the above points. Tells him to ship up and quit being a slacker like his old man. Fine. Then things get weird. He gets progressively angrier and unsettlingly up close and face to face with Marty (yeah like Hall & Oates H2O album cover close) and, in an excessively petty display, starts trashing Marty's band, telling him he has no chance in to succeed in the auditions for the school dance. Finally, he then goes a step farther by stating that no McFly has ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley, thus stating that Marty is destined for failure. Those last two statements seem quite inappropriate for a school principal to be making to a student. It's almost as if he has a personal vendetta against Marty to the point where he keeps tabs on him (like his band trying out for the dance) so he can belittle him later. His disdain for all McFlys may indicate some sort of personal anti-Irish sentiment. Well, at least he's not pointing a gun at him.

Biff is a lot more evil then I remember

We all know series antagonist Biff Tannen is simply and irredeemably evil (as are his alternate reality incarnations, descendents, and ancestors). The evilest incarnation of Biff is arguably his powerful and rich alternate 1985 version in part 2 who kills George McFly; marries, beats, and cheats on Lorraine, and somehow manages to turn Hill Valley into a Sammy Hagar blasting hell on earth. In light of the later incarnation, it's easy to write off original 1955 Biff as just a cruel, petty, bully; but really he's almost as heinous. In the famous skateboarding chase scene midway through the film where Marty cleverly causes Biff and his gang to crash the car they're in into a manure truck; I never realized that Biff probably intended to kill Marty by running him over with his car...essentially over tripping him and pushing him over at the cafe earlier, fairly psychotic. Then of course there is the obvious attempted rape of Lorriane at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance at the end of the film that was only prevented due to George's timely intervention (given this ugly incident you'd think George or Lorraine would have some objection to ever seeing him again let alone hiring him to wax their cars in 1985). Attempted murderer and attempted rapist, I can't believe I ever felt sympathy for his neutered sycophantic 1985 incarnation at the end.

What was up with that jerk at the dance?

Obviously Biff and his band of hoodlums are the main antagonists of the film, but almost no one gives any notice to the one other villain in the film: that douchey, red headed, jerk that cuts in on George and Lorraine's dance and nearly ruins everything. You'd think after conquering all the obstacles to Marty's parents finally getting together and George finally standing up to Biff, everything would be smooth sailing but then this dude comes along and before you know it they're playing that "Sonic the Hedgehog"-like drowning music and Marty's hand is disappearing; that's some scary shit. The whole sequence barely lasts a minute before George reasserts himself, pushes red aside, and subsequently seals the deal with Lorraine by kissing her but man it would have been something else if after all that some totally absurd unforeseen factor came in and ruined everything (perhaps if it was directed David Lynch or something). Unfortunately the guy is so overlooked that I couldn't even find a picture of him, so I had to substitute him with a shot of Rick Astley (which he does sort of resemble).

Marty, such a nice name...for our third child.

So at the end of the dance everything has worked out well: Marty got his parents to fall in love and ensured his existence, Biff got his comeuppance, and rock n' roll was inadvertently invented. Marty bids a hurried but heartfelt goodbye to his young parents before he has to ride the lightening back to 1985. After he leaves the couple briefly reflect on the exceedingly bizarre week they had with this mysterious stranger and Loraine thinks out loud that Marty is "such a nice name". You'd think that after that they would name their first son after this remarkable figure they briefly met who got them to fall in love and suddenly disappeared without a trace; but no they name him Dave. It's only by their second son and third child overall that they decide to settle on Marty. Obviously Marty wasn't as nice a name as Dave.

My god has it been that long?

I remember it vividly. I was ordering from one of those dozen movies for a penny clubs my Dad got into, it was a scam, I got to pick one, I checked off a film at the edge of the sheet. And weeks later when I came home I had a package, a VHS, a picture on the TV. A picture of this...this is what makes time travel possible. Back to the Future.

As a loyal fan of the trilogy, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that today is the official 25th anniversary of the premier of the first "Back to the Future".* While I wasn't really old enough to have seen it in theaters, it obviously ended up altering my life later on. While I idiosyncratically find the second film to be my favorite (what can I say it has the most per minute time traveling going on) I acknowledge that the first is the overall better film and the crucial genesis of the entire trilogy.

I also want to note that I've throughly enjoyed the new resurgence of "Back to the Future" awareness and activity that has been going on for the silver anniversary. With all the aging original Star Wars Trilogy fans and its dilution from the new movies, I think that "BTTF" is in a fine position to be the definitive widely referenced pop culture trilogy for this decade on (at least until those kids who watched Lord of the Rings growing up start taking over the zeitgeist).

Additionally this anniversary is bittersweet as it serves as a sad reminder that as old the the film becomes, I will always be one year older.

I'll see everyone in 2014 for the 25th anniversary of the sequel!

*Whoops, my bad, the movie actually premiered July 7th, 1985; October 26th, 1985 was the night (morning) of Marty's first trip back in the movie. Either way it's still 25 years.

A Red Letter Date in the History of Science

It's downright inexcusable that I have gone through most of today, completely oblivious as to the historical significance of the 5th of November (and no, I'm not talking about Guy Fawkes Day, you limey). On this night, November 5th, 1955, 54 years ago, noted German-American Scientist/Inventor Dr. Emmett L. Brown, after a serendipitous slip off his toilet seat while attempting to hang a wall clock, ultimately uncovered the secrets of time travel.

As we all remember from his famous recollection of the event to his young friend Marty in the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall on the historic eve of the first manned trip through time:

"I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink. And when I came to I had a revelation, a vision, a picture in my head. A picture of this...this is what makes time travel possible. The flux capacitor!"

Little did the we know what sort of monumental Biff Tannen-related implications this discovery would end up having on mid-80s suburban California...and the world.

Now I've got to go home and hang my ceremonial clock over my toilet.

Happy Flux Capacitor Day Everybody!

Hyperdunks! 2015! That's how you do it!

As we inch ever so closer to the wondrous future of 2015 with its flying cars, handless video games, and convenient cold fusion technology; the signs of progress are slowly becoming apparent. Just recently, Nike has announced that sometime by the end of July, there will be an Air McFly edition (sans power laces) of their latest Hyperdunks line! While it is still quite disappointing that the shoes will not be equipped with their trademark pneumatic power lace tying technology, this is, regardless, a significant step forward. In terms of my previous ultimatum, I have to say we now have about four and a half to go. Now, can self drying clothes and Dustratron paper be far off?

Apparently the shoes from the film were the original inspiration for the Hyperdunks line in the first place. In a way you can say that they were retro-engineered from the future. If you think about it, it makes total sense. How else could a company have come up with an athletic shoe that is so far ahead of its time that it allowed Kobe Bryant to avoid a speeding Aston Martin as gracefully and as effortlessly as a Colorado sexual assault conviction? Obviously for the new round of marketing campaigns for the Air McFly, they will have to get Michael J. Fox to perform the even more impressive feat of jumping over a speeding 1946 Ford Convertible (perhaps we can even get Christoper Lloyd to play the Ronny Turiaf buddy role).

We're gonna see some serious shit!

Being There

As with any individual of my generation who grew up watching the "Back to the Future" Trilogy I have a hypothetical list of dates and activities I would do if I somehow managed to get access to a time traveling Delorean in reality. Notable temporal activities would include: (1986) watch game 6 of the World Series at Shea, (2525) see how prophetic Zager and Evans were in their predictions all those years ago; (1618) witness the Second Defenestration of Prague; (1999) really party like it's 1999 instead of being distracted by Y2K and Pokemon; (1848) fulfill that literary dream of a threesome with the Bronte sisters (sans Anne) at the peak of their writing talents.

The most recent addition to that ever growing mental list would be to transport myself back 24 or so years right into the thick of the 1983-1984 NBC television season. It would be at this point that I could actually witness, and verify with my very own eyes and ears, quite possibly the worst prime time network television season in the history of the medium. For now I can only dig up artifacts, uncover second hand accounts, and hypothesize about things that once were and that time has mercifully forgotten. I can only accept the historical records of the season where every prime time show that premiered in the fall was canceled by the end of the season. I can only begin to imagine a season so poor that it would count mid-season replacement detective series "Riptide" as one of its major successes. I can only attempt to rationalize how network executives and producers could with a serious face greenlight certain shows with premises so bizarrely awful in concept and execution for a mass audience.

Here are some of the offerings the prime time NBC viewer was rewarded with circa 1983 for following NBC's request to "Be There!":

Jennifer Slept Here

Jennifer Farrell was a once popular actress who got run over by an ice cream truck and now haunts her Los Angeles home. Her lawyer's generic 80s TV sitcom family (complete with sassy generic 80s kids) moves in and hilarity ensues. The hilarity ensues to a critical level when it turns out that only the teenage son Joey can see and hear her (hearkening back to the "classic" Fred and the Great Gazoo era of the Flintstones). This constantly gets Joey into trouble and makes everyone think he's crazy. Oddly enough this was apparently one of the more popular offerings of the season and even cracked the top 20 once, although in the end it was dead on arrival. Also, the opening sequence seemed to visually give very little insight into what the show was about.

We Got It Made

Mickey Mackenzie is a hot young woman who applies to be the live in maid to two zany bachelors David and Tom who share a two bedroom apartment. They become smitten by her and she is hired. However, hilarity ensues as this causes tension between their two respective girlfriends Claudia and Beth who are suspicious of their boyfriends living with the beautiful Mickey. This seems sort of like a mix of the equally awful contemporary show "The Big Bang Theory" and the fake pilot to "Jerry" ("because he's my butler") on "Seinfeld". I can't imagine why this show petered out, the complex set up had legs to go for at least a decade. It must also have been a Herculean effort on the part of the show's producers not to change the "Made" to "Maid" in the title.

Manimal

As the William Conrad narrated introduction explains, Dr. Johnathan Chase is a wealthy, young, handsome man who traveled the world, learning the ability to transform into any animal he wants, which he uses to fight evil! So it's basically like Batman except with transformation powers...and a limited special effects budget. Despite the myriad of animals he could have turned into, apparently hawk or panther was the choice most of the time. Also scenes where he needed to change into something more complicated (snake, dolphin) the change would occur off screen ("Wow, did you see that?! He turned into a snake! Here he comes now!"). In only three months of airing it gained a reputation as one of the worst science fiction shows ever aired and even an apparent cult following (I guess there might be worse cults to be a part of).

Mr. Smith

So here's the entire show in a line: Mr. Smith is a talking orangutan (played by Clyde from "Every Which Way But Loose", the Lawrence Olivier of orangutan actors) with an IQ of 256 who is a political adviser in Washington DC. Take that Reagan Era America! How did he get so smart you might ask? By drinking a bottle of an experimental formula of course! This is a show that flies in the face of conventional logic. It's one of those complete "what were they thinking?!" kind of shows that, while completely ridiculous in their execution, deserve special notice for even making it on to national television; from "My Mother the Car" to "Cop Rock" to "Caveman". Of course as the case with such high concept fare, "Mr. Smith" lasted all of 13 episodes.

There were many more failures but they just weren't as interesting or noted. Other lowlights included: "The Yellow Rose" (some sort of lame "Dallas" clone about a cattle ranching family with Sam Elliot), "Bay City Blues" (a series centering around a minor league baseball team that sounded like the forgotten 2004 CBS series "Clubhouse"), and "For Love or Honor", "The Rousters" and "Boone" which I couldn't really find any information on.

So I guess the moral of all this is, in the context of modern TV, Thanksgiving, and the on going writer's strike, that for every "Chuck" or "Carpoolers" or unnecessary "Bionic Woman" remake we should be thankful for what we've got and that things could be much, much worse.

What do we become? Assholes or something?

A friend of mine recently called me out of the blue to ask me a valid question about a major space time continuity issue involving Back to the Future I & II. I would say spoiler alert, but I can’t imagine anyone reading this blog to have not seen the Back to the Future Trilogy or that there are actually people who read my blog. In any case, the question dealt with Doc Brown’s Back to the Future II explanation of the alternate 1985 they accidentally created when the Biff of 2015 gained access to the Sports Almanac and the Delorean. Basically, if Marty and Doc still existed in the alternate 1985 they created in the past along with their alternate 1985 counterparts, shouldn’t Marty have had an alternate doppelganger in the alternate 1985 he created when he helped his parents meet in 1955 in the first movie? This question then sprung a whole host of other questions like how come the improved version of his family at the end of the first movie live in the same crappy house in the beginning of the film save for the fancy BMW and better jobs? Or why would Marty still be friends with Doc Brown if things were better now? Or why Marty is friends with Doc at All?

I eventually came to the final conclusion to just accept that it’s a fantasy and to chalk it up to suspension of disbelief. I realized that these tedious, unanswerable questions would have only served to take away from the enjoyment of the greatest movie trilogy in cinema history (that’s right I’m talking to you Three Colors Trilogy.).

What I also came to realize was that we were not all that far off (only a mere 8 years) from the wondrous 2015 of Back to the Future II. 2015 Hill Valley was one of the earliest and still one of the best imaginations of the future I’ve ever seen in a movie. It was fantastic without being unfathomable, it was flawed without being dystopian; a vision of the future with enough roots in the 20^th century to make it strangely believable. With that being said, the film has obviously set the bar for what I’ll expect the world of 2015 will hold. I’m not expecting cold fusion or flying cars but I will be quite disappointed if certain innovations aren’t available, here’s my top 5:

5. Automatic Dog Walkers. You only saw them for like 5 seconds in the movie but I think they’d be pretty nifty. A fairly simple concept, I’m sure somebody has a blue print for one somewhere. I suspect we’re getting pretty close to them too, we already have the Rumba and vacuuming your home seems just as if not more complicated than walking your dog. I’m even going to be lenient on the floating element, they could be wheeled or have tiny robot legs; perhaps by 2030 they’ll even pick up the poo.

4. Power Laces. A jacket that talks to you, automatically adjusts to your body size, and blow dries itself when wet seems like a pretty tall order for 6 years; but sneakers that tie themselves? I think the always competitive athletic shoe industry can swing that. They already have shoes on the market with microchips in them to keep track of your running or something or other, why not take the logical step forward. The world’s been yearning for another sneaker innovation since the Reebok Pump.

3.Hydrated Pizzas. When I was a kid that Black & Decker pizza hydrating machine was, behind hover boards and the time machine itself, the coolest item in the movie. That Pizza Hut pizza looked great! Imagine fresh delicious pizza from a non-perishable little disk in seconds. Let’s see Digiorno compete with that! I refuse to believe the army doesn’t have a working prototype for such a machine.

2. 80s Nostolgia Cafes. Who knows, a place like this might actually exist right now. Maybe robotic Ronald Regan/Ayatollah waiters aren’t taking orders but with a three decade upgrade of a Johnny Rockets and you got yourself a Café 80s. There’s really no technological roadblock getting in the way of one being made, we just need the nostalgia to build up to a critical mass, and thanks to the good folks at VH-1 we’re steadily getting there.

1. Hover Boards. Need I say more! Since the movie came out people have been looking for these things. There have been twenty years of rumors and hearsay about an actual hover board existing but so far I only ride them in my dreams. When director Robert Zemeckis joked that they were real, there were enough desperate fans to cause a stir. According to the wikipedia page on hover boards there have been similar boards that used hovercraft like air technology, but I won’t be fully satisfied until somebody comes up with a legit one that just mysteriously hovers off the ground. I suspect it’ll involve powerful magnets of some sort.