If I had a time machine, where would I go? Top ten list of places:

1. The liberation of Paris. Does anything else compare, for pure joy? I doubt it.

2. The Library of Alexandria. I’d back up a bunch of moving vans and bring all the books back to the present.

3. Gertrude Stein’s Paris, 1900-1927. Hang out with Picasso in his studio; go drinking with Hemingway. I’d take a side trip to New York City for the Armory Show.

4. The American Revolution. I could spend hours and hours talking to Jefferson and Hamilton.

5. Athens at the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. (Socrates, don’t drink that! It’s poison, dude!)

6. Studio 54 in the pre-AIDS, pre-Just-Say-No ’70s.

7. New York City in the ’50s and ’60s. Hang out with the Abstract Expressionists, then move on to Andy Warhol’s Factory.

8. Paris at the time of Voltaire and Denis Diderot.

9. The Roman Empire before Christianity took hold. (Nothing against Christianity, mind you, I just want to see what the empire was like.)

10. Shakespeare’s England. Who wouldn’t want to see the original productions at the Globe theater?  [inessential.com