Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Was listening to the new BBC radio dramatization of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase. There I was, listening to the new shows on the bus, reminding me of the time when I played tapes I had made off of the radio on a similar bus commute I did to go to school in the city when I was a young teen in the 80s. The technology may have changed -- am now listening to the shows downloaded from a Bittorrent portal as MP3s on a Sony mini-disk player, instead of on old Kmart-bought cassette tapes played through headphones on an old Sony Walkman (or imitation thereof) -- but the shows and especially the humour still resonates. At least now I can easily play back all of the shows in their entirety, as I had painstakingly recorded the original series using an old ghetto blaster as they were broadcast in annoying 10-minute chunks on the CBC morning show way back when. I don't think I ever heard the original shows in their entirety until I was in University, "auditioning" the records from the record library at CFRC.
And the new shows are exceedingly well done, and mesh nicely (from what I remember) from the original series -- helped by the fact that most of the voice actors from the original series are reprising their roles in this one. Marvelous stuff.
The new show also reminded me of a "problem" I had when listening to the original series on the bus: trying my hardest not to laugh out loud. It was all I could do to stop from howling with laughter on the bus when the ever-persecuted character of Agrajag (recorded by Douglas Adams himself before his untimely death) haranguing Arthur Dent for continually killing him in his various lives, and Arthur saying it was just the Universe "playing silly-buggers" with them both. And then the awful realization that Agrajag can't hope to kill his unwitting nemesis since he's pulled in Arthur "too zarking early", as Arthur goes on to accidentally kill Agrajag again in at least one more life. Agrajag then tries to kill Arthur anyways out of maddened desparation, and accidentally gets killed again in the process. Hilarious! Am sure people were looking my way as my face contorted trying to suppress my mirth.
Originally I had found the third book a bit of a let down, especially with all of the stuff about Cricket, which stretched incredulity for me at the time -- Adams wrapping a story around a weird sports-themed premise. It felt more contrived, more forced than the original two books. But many years later I can more readily give up my prudish sensibilities about plot and just "go with the flow" more, as the revel in Adam's humourous observations on life and existence. The G.K. Chesterton of his time, who left us far too early.
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