DON'T PANIC

This coming Sunday -- May 25th -- is the 7th annual TOWEL DAY, a day of lugging your towel about everywhere you go in memory of the wit and wisdom of the late, great Douglas Adams!!!

:D

Not that I need a reason to celebrate the life and work of one of my all-time favorite authors, but I adore this excuse to remind people about the genius of DNA, or the excuse to try to introduce the man to potential new fans!!!

In anticipation of Towel day, I'm currently listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show, Secondary Phase. Not the best of all the HHGG series, but because of that fact I've listened to it the least, hehe.

I'm disappointed to find that the next series of Dirk Gently BBC 4 Radio episodes doesn't air until October. :( That would have been a great way to celebrate Towel day this year! However...

If you're not familiar with DNA's work, I recommend you browse your favorite second-hand book store and grab a copy of ANYTHING written by Douglas Adams. Do it Friday night or Saturday morning, then start reading immediately. By 12:00 am Sunday you'll be completely in love with Adams and will understand why we fans celebrate him annually.

OR...

If you have an iPod, an iTunes account and some money, you can get one of his audiobooks. This is, I find, a splendid way to enjoy Adams's work. I don't know why, but for some reason Adams's writing sound beautiful when read or dramatized!

I don't recommend the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a suitable introduction, however. The flick is great fun, but Adams -- and co-writer Karey Kirkpatrick -- had to strip away a great deal of the "Douglas Adams-ness" of the original work in order to make it a proper film.

I mean, if you know nothing about Douglas Adams and that's the only introduction that appeals to you, then it's perfectly serviceable as such. But the movie is a great deal more rewarding if you are already well familiar with the novel and/or the original BBC Radio series.

If you are familiar with at least one of Adams's novels, may I recommend the HHGG Advenutre Game as a wonderful way to celebrate the brilliance of DNA's wonderfully twisted creativity?

For those to young to remember, back before Guitar Hero, back before Grand Theft Auto, back before the first Tomb Raider and even before Tetris, home video games were mind-bogglingly primitive!!!

And adventure games were especially so!


But DNA -- fascinated with developing technology -- used the limits of "text adventure games" to its fullest advantage. It just so happens that his own unique sense of humor blended perfectly with the random-ness of text adventure games, and he was able to create a text adventure that makes you laugh as much when the game is perplexing you as you do when the game is going your way! :)

I don't think I'd recommend this as a way to get to know the man's work, though, lol. The alien-ness of the format itself is likely to put you off before you can discover its genius.

No, the BEST was to get to know Douglas Admas is through his writing.

That's what the man was: He was a writer. A wonderful word smith who crafted eact sentence with care and humor and insight. he was Monty Python in paperback, only you didn't need the visuals to fully appreciate the jokes, because he provided them for you. :)

He was so visionary that he predicted the future of computers!!!

Check this out:

The titular technological device of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a small computer, about the size of a small book, that connected to a network of information floating in the air, able to grab a random article and display it for use by anyone anywhere at anytime.

If you have a WiFi-capable Palm Pilot (or even laptop), you're first thought might be Google or Wikipedia.

But DNA imagined this 1978, LOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG before computers were nearly so compact (they used to fill up entire rooms) and well-long before anyone without a PHD in Computer Science knew anything about the Net! (Keep in mind that it wasn't until almost the turn of the millennium that we -- Society as a whole -- became so Net savvy! 20 years after DNA came up with the Hitchhiker's Guide!

In fact, I would argue that DNA was so far ahead of his time that many of the more Absurdist elements of his social commentary have not only come to pass, but become commonplace and accepted!

He joked in the first HHGG novel that the job of the President of the Universe wasn't to wield power, but to direct attention away from it. Any alert American citizen watching the Bush Administration over the last 8 years has observed the truth of that observation. ;P (Were we really fighting over whether or not gay people should be allowed to legally marry over here? Or did those in power want us to concentrate on that subject while they passed laws that took away a few more of our civil liberties?)

But Adams's work wasn't about politics. THAT is the beauty of it!!! :D

His work was about laughing at the absurdness of BEING HUMAN! :D He had this way of taking some of the more frustrating aspects of Life, the Universe, and Everything and allowing us to laugh at them, and thereby be freed from their power over us. (I say "had the ability to", but his work STILL has that power for me!)

Great poets can make us cry about how frustrating Life is.

But Adams is one of a handful that can make us LAUGH about it! And in doing so, the frustration subsides a little. It loses a little of its power, its strength. And gives that power back to US!!! :D

Oh, hey...!

If you're not familiar with DNA's work and you have the money to choose which book introduces you to his creativity, I'd like to recommend So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish! It's the 4th book in the increasingly inappropriately titled Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy, but it contains all the humor and charm and insight of any of his other works! It takes place in 1980s England (for the most part) and you don't really have to be familiar with the first 3 books to enjoy it fully. Plus, it is -- in my opinion -- a love story to rival any other! :)

And it took me 7 or more readings to finally get it -- what with all the jokes and stuff -- but it is also fulfilling Thematically. DNA has a very specific "something" to say about Life, the Universe and Everything, and he says it rather entertainingly!!! :)

Or if you're of a more "serious" mind-set, there's always his classic Last Chance To See, his only non-fiction book documenting his travels to view endangered species before they go extinct. This book may be quite a bit harder to find, but it's WELL worth the search! And you'll be surprised by how a man can believe so passionately about such a serious cause, and still make you laugh out loud throughout every page of his sojourn!!!

Okay, I've gone on for a while now -- I always do when I start talking about Douglas Adams, lol -- so I'm going to call it quits for now.

Here's hoping you join me Sunday in celebrating (not mourning) the life and works of Douglas Noël Adams! Worst Case Scenario: You lug a towel around with you all day and, when in public, you feel a little silly and laugh at the idea of how you must look to everyone else.

But even if you don't join me in celebrating Towel Day, I wish for you lots of laughter all weekend long! ;)