Towel Day: A Tribute to Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has a great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you-- daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhichhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hichhiking slang, as in

"hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Classic.

I am very fond of the Hichhiker's books, and I miss Douglas Adams. I plan to celebrate Towel Day on the Thursday. Maybe I'll post pics on my photoblog.

Any other fans out there?

*copyright © 1979 by Douglas Adams

Before ...

This is before the movie. You can tell I've been working out. *Sniff* Ayup! Michelle took the picture. She could barely keep her hands off me the whole time. I think those other folks just wanted to be seen with me. I let them stand there next to me there by the wall there. 

Seriously, that's me, David, Gradon (Graydon?), and Lydia. My dearest darling Michelle took the picture. (We really can't keep our hands off each other, though. That part is true.)

... and After

Ah, the memories. Happy looking bunch, aren't we? Hey, I'm wearing that same t-shirt again! I need to change my profile picture. 

A review of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie

Ten thoughts about the Hitchhiker's Guide movie:
1: In my opinion, this was the first (perhaps the ONLY) movie yet released this year with two titular h's side-by-side within the same word.
2: There were a few striking similarities between this movie and a book series I read.
3: It wasn't my imagination - Sam Rockwell, the actor playing Zaphod, is the same actor who played Guy in Galaxy Quest.
4: The chairs were comfy.
5: There sure were a lot of things that happened in the movie!
6: I bet it cost a lot of money.
7: At times, it seemed like some of the characters were very excited about things going on. At other times, I wasn't sure.
8: Aw, who am I kidding? You get the idea by now.

Get Fuzzy and H2G2

Yes! Let's hear it for the freaks! I've heard the movie's not good. I still look forward to seeing it. 

The Get Fuzzy comic strip is by Darby Conley.

What?! Doctor Who?

I just found out that Doctor Who has been revamped as a brand new series and they already have made three new episodes!

Why did no one tell me this? You there! Why didn't you tell me this?

The Doctor Who series had a profound influence on me growing up. My favorite was Tom Baker, but I also loved Pertwee. I enjoyed Hartnell whenever I could but they hardly ever ran those where I lived. There was another Doctor - number two - but I only ever saw him in the episode "The Three Doctors" and then again when they made "The Five Doctors'. I wasn't too keen on most of the Doctors that came after, but I still would watch them whenever I could.

I can't wait to get my hands on some of the new episodes, to see how they measure up. BBC has a fantastic web site for the new series. That's how I discovered it. Check it out.

I can't believe it. A new Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie, and a new Doctor Who series. I feel like I've regenerated into a younger, more vibrant version!

On the lighter side ... H2G2

It's true! The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie is coming soon! Here's a link to the official movie site. Any web search will give you tons of other interesting sites as well. http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/main.html

I'll add just two more links ... one is a really interesting site, the idea for which was Douglas Adams's own. It is an on-line encyclopedia written by average folks like you and me. Anyone can contribute entries. The idea was to create a real sort of Hitchiker's Guide for earthlings. You can find it at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/. It looks to me as though the contributors tend to take the entries relatively seriously.

And the other is an older, more tongue-in-cheek version of the same thing called Project Galactic Guide. This one was created first, by fans. I don't think it was ever endorsed by Adams. Many of the entries are in imitation of Adams's style - some do it well - many do it abominably poorly. Still, there are many good entries: http://www.galactic-guide.com/.

I've been waiting for a good movie adaptation since ... well, probably half my life! I remember when PBS showed that BBC production, I think it was in the mid- to late- eighties. It wasn't all bad, but it was a disappointment overall. This time, I am expecting something significantly changed from the book. Because of this, I think I will like it better. The previous adaptation tried to follow the book exactly and a lot of things just didn't come through very well because of it.

The movie comes out on May 6th ... That's finals week ... that's perfect!