#the guy who played Marvin in the 80s HHGTTG?!?!?!

[mycological-mariner]

So I downloaded and watched half of The Last Place on Earth and while I have Thoughts, I dropped them when I kept getting jump scared by the cast

[dearyallfrommatt]

I’d be off like a shot.

I love Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Genuinely, like I love banana pudding & cat-head biscuits. I have to sometimes physically restrain myself from reading, watching or listening to it again. I am rarely successful.

 I have owned some copy or another of the books since I was 12, which means going on 33 years. Someone made me copies of all the recently (ish) released audio dramas, from HHGTTG to Mostly Harmless which are different from the original radio broadcast as well as the LPs released in the ‘80s. I have digital copies of the BBC TV show from the ‘80s and own a copy of the audio transcripts. Somewhere I have copies of the three-issue comic book DC put out in the early ‘90s. Here’s a link to the fiendishly hard computer game that was stupid hard back in the days before bigger nerds had the internet to you how not to suck at fiendishly hard video games.

 I’m not kidding, that thing’s a booger. It’s a text-based game that follows Adams’ squirrelly sense of logic and humor. Furthermore, if you’re very well versed in HHGTTG lore and, especially, the book, it’ll screw with your head. I’d say pound-for-pound the hardest free computer game.

 The 2005 movie was... okay. I’ve never seen anything else Garth Jennings has directed nor, to cut the bull, can I with certainty tell you what makes for a good director and what doesn’t make for a good director. I just know it didn’t work on me. And, yes, I understand the concessions made in getting Hollywood to make the damn thing - like the romance subplot that doesn’t exist in other formats because that’s the joke - and I understand the changes in aesthetics that a modern movie required. I read somewhere that almost every glaring change in the movie - i.e., the romantic subplot - was done by Douglas Adams. The emphasis on the Ultimate Question, the Point-Of-View Gun gag that fell flat, that whole business with John Malkovich, all that was done by Adams.

 So it didn’t fly with me, others enjoyed it, and on the whole, I don’t find it a disgrace like, say, Blues Brothers 2000 or how all these sad bastards claim the new Star Wars movies do them. By itself and on it’s own, it’s a perfectly fine movie, whereas Blues Brothers 2000 just sucks out loud.

 Everyone was fine. I’ve grown to tire of Martin Freeman since, which is nobody’s fault but mine. And while I appreciate that Arthur Dent being the last person that should be travelling the Galaxy in search of excitement and adventure and really wild things is part of the joke, but he was a bit much. Mos Def was fine, Sam Rockwell was okay. Zoey Daschanel was adequate. Alan Rickman gave Marvin the best voice since Steve Moore. Along with Stephen Fry as The Book, the only ones that equaled the radio originals.

 I’m probably one of the few fanboys who are less concerned with/entertained by the whole concept of The Ultimate Question than I am by how Probability or, for that matter, Improbability affects sentient beings. We move freely in three dimensions and in one direction in the fourth. However, the fifth dimension, Probability, moves around us and is beyond our control. It’s beyond anyone’s control. We’re constantly caught up in it and can’t get free.

 That sort of outlook - plus a healthy dose of Marvel Comics - definitely influenced my future scientific interests. Don’t get it twisted, I do not have sufficient Latin to speak with authority on these matters and I could totally be getting it confused with fiction or, indeed, my own imagination.

 Like String Theory. Depending on how you approach it, String Theory says there are at least 10 dimensions, all curled up into each other once you get past spacetime. Best I can tell, this is more a mathematical tool than something that could be considered a perfect representation of reality. Like the Holographic Principle or Loop Quantum Gravity, physicists use these as mathematical paths to try to figure out how to combine the Standard Model and Quantum Mechanics to where it makes sense. Otherwise, it’s dividing by Zero.

 And again, it’s fun to think about. Since Many-Worlds Theory is gaining another look as of late, if Sean Carroll’s to be believed, it fits in with that, as well. But actually, it fits with the Copenhagen Interpretation as well, since Probability figures in to something not really existing until it’s observed and what that suggests on a philosophical level.

 MWT is even more fun, since it argues that what it could have been before observation still exists anyway, just in a different dimension or universe or however in the hell they figure that works. It’s all a matter of Perception or, indeed, Probability that determines what “exists”. While it’s entirely possible I am completely misunderstanding modern arguments, all that “existence” is happening all the time. The Matrix, Maya, all that stuff is real. And not real. Or whatever.

 The Ultimate Question does have its charm, don’t get me wrong, but I think the rest of the joke sort of gives the answer. Forty-two, that’s the Answer. That’s the joke. The Answer’s silly because the Question is meaningless. Life, The Universe and Everything just is.

 It’s molded other aspects of my personality and beliefs, as well. An absurdist, borderline nihilist view of existence. The never-ending search for a good laugh in the face of all that’s absurd and nihilistic. The idea that there’s no one, really, in control of it All and, indeed, if there actually is, they’re if not incompetent and silly, they’re beyond comprehension. A galaxy and existence that’s more ridiculous than I can even imagine and simply beyond my ability to wrap my head around it. The emphasis on having fun and dealing with the moment because the future is malleable and the past is unreliable. The bizarre cruelty of life that is nevertheless extremely funny at times. And what the hell, might as well enjoy yourself because no one will do it for you.

 Plus it’s colored my tastes in science fiction, particularly stuff that takes place IN SPACE. I have no truck with Star Trek’s order. The galaxy is an unruly, anarchic place and anyone who tries to put it in a a proper manifest is pissin’ in the wind. The Vogons ring more true than the Federation ever has. The guy just trying to get from point A to point B is more interesting than a Chosen Hero any day of the week.

 Furthermore, since I read that first book back in 1987, I’ve longed for an actual Hitchhiker’s Guide. I forget what it was called, but when a dictionary-slash-encyclopedia cartridge came out for the GameBoy, I searched desperately for one. I’m not even sure it was released. Apparently you can do something similar with a 3DS but I don’t know.

 I put off getting a cell phone for the longest time, but even the burner flip phone I had was like finding out Spider-Man was real. And a smartphone? Get out, son, I have a Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Earth and you can’t tell me otherwise. Why we as a culture don’t appreciate that we’re all carrying super computers in our pocket and what all that allows, and instead use it take pictures of our food and insult each on Twitter depresses me to no end.

 That’s too bad, really, ‘cause I have a Hitchhiker’s Guide, buddy. The Big Trip proved that, as I would plan my days through whatever I was able to find whenever I stopped and looked it up on my smart phone. It gave me direction and answered my questions. Once or twice, it kept me from panicking. Plus, it played music.

 And if someone made a Guide for the Galaxy, I would be off like a shot. I might leave Momma a note, but the rest I wouldn’t even look back. And I’d definitely love to be a roving researcher for them so, you know, give me a call.