Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

No, this is not about the 1967 Sidney Poitier film, nor the 2005 remake. A week or so ago, I was struck by a very random, whimsical urge to poke around this old forum I was a part of in my youth. In fact, around the 2005 mark would have been one of the heights of my participation in this online community dedicated to the fandom of 24. If you’re looking for some strange duality between the title, its relation to a movie made in the year 2005, blah, blah. Looking at some of the things I wrote/said back then...well, I was a bit of a monumental prat in those days. I’m more a statuesque prat now, smaller than a monument but still pretty dull.

Anyway, I stumbled upon a thread started by a user known as Yil. He was quite the erudite, intelligent young chap. Quite on the ball as I remember it, astute observations...the kind of fellow you invite over for tea and cake, end up debating the merits of Nietzsche and Voltaire. Then retire for whiskey and cigars in the smoking room, with your high-backed, winged chairs and smoking jackets in front of a crackling fire.

In this particular thread, Yil asked who people would invite to their ideal dinner party. Six guests, living or dead. Back in 2004, when the question was posed, I had no answer. It was something that I didn’t even think about. Dinner party? What the frak was a dinner party?

Eleven years later, I have found myself contemplating which six guests would constitute my ideal dinner party:

1. Richard Feynman

Nobel Laureate in Physics, noted for his work on quantum electrodynamics, the Feynman Lectures and the Feynman Diagrams. A scientific genius, oft overshadowed in popular culture by Albert Einstein but every bit his equal, if not on some occasions his better. But more than anything, Feynman is a genuinely brilliant and fun human being. A series of YouTube videos posted by Reid Gower can attest to this. I’ve provided a link to one called “The Key to Science”. When Feynman explains what the key to science is...just brilliant. An amazing dinner guest.

2. Douglas Adams

One of the funniest writers in all existence. Let’s face it, all my guests after Feynman have been influenced by his placement on the guest list. Who work with Feynman? Well, having read The Salmon of Doubt and seeing just how deeply funny a man Douglas Adams was, I can only imagine the hilarity and good conversation that would ensue at the dinner table to have such a talented humorist as Adams and an irreverent scientist as Feynman...it would be beautiful.

3. Sir Terry Pratchett

The other funniest writer in all existence. Such a gifted and talented man whose worked has touched a generation and the effect of which will ripple onwards through time, a legacy to match the previous guest. The combination of wit and wisdoms from Feynman, Adams and Pratchett...I would have to keep a team of trauma surgeons on standby to repair the guts busted from laughter.

4. William Gibson

One of my all time favourite writers. As evidenced by a video I saw the other day, itself from 1994, quite the funny chap too. Although his writing is not outwardly intended to be funny, they are laced with fun little moments (my favourite in Zero History, where an American in London calls a Belgian with the name Bigend “Mr Bellend”. I maintain it was a nod to the British readers who know exactly when to use the term “Bellend”). Also, when conversational matters turned to more serious matters of science, Feynman and Gibson would be two very formidable visionary minds I think.

5. Sonya Belousova

Not all my guests would be writers and scientists. As much entertainment as they would bring through conversation, a good dinner party needs something else. Some music. And Sonya Belousova is an incredibly talented pianist. She does spectacularly awesome piano arrangements of theme tunes from TV, movies, video games. They’re amazing. I am also just a tiny bit love with her and would also use the dinner party as an opportunity to woo her. Undoubtedly. Check out her YouTube channel and tell me you wouldn’t too.

6. Bear McCreary

While my guests are gathered around the arbitrarily placed grand piano to hear some music and I want to impress Sonya rather than have her make me melt with her musical talents, I have a back-up plan. My other favourite composer and quite awesome pianist, Bear McCreary. For evidence of his piano talents, this video of my favourite song from Battlestar Galactica, “Something Dark is Coming”. Also I would have to pick his brains about Battlestar and all of the things. And make him play all of my favourite songs. Then have Sonya do the same, whilst settling down for whiskey and cigars with Feynman, Adams, Pratchett and Gibson.

There are, of course, many, many more awesome people I would love have at a dinner party. These guys are just the first round. Perhaps I should have monthly dinner parties, with different guests each time...hmmmm...well, anyway, those are my six ideal dinner party guests. What about you, dear readers? Who would your six be?

A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to

I have chosen Gandalf's words of wisdom on wizards' sense of temporal mechanics for two reasons. The first is obvious - my shameful neglect in the up keep of this blog. The second, is talk in a little more depth about my history with Lord of the Rings and very specifically about my thoughts and feelings on the latest movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Unlike many of my geeky friends, in fact unlike pretty much ALL of my friends, the non-geeks included, I did not see any of the Lord of the Rings movies when they came out. I had not read the books as a child and held to the incredibly strange and continually baffling logic that, at the time, one could either be loyal to watching The Matrix movies or Lord of the Rings. In retrospect, by gods I really did bet on the wrong horse.

It emerged in later years that not seeing or reading Lord of the Rings is pretty much considered treason in the geek world. Liking them may not necessarily be required, but you at least have to see them and read them so you can form an opinion, which can then lead to late night, Mountain Dew-fuelled discussions on the subject. So far I have completed the watching them requirement, with the full intention of obtaining the trilogy of books and reading them. I already have, and have read, The Hobbit, so I suppose that's something a start. My geek credentials, taken from me by the benevolence of Spike, have since been returned by the same token of benevolence, with the stipulation that I must get my arse into gear and read the frakking things.

But enough on that. Time for my thoughts and feelings on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

I'd heard some quite mixed things about this movie. Some said I should prepare to be disappointed, others said I would enjoy it and that it wasn't a bad movie. In short...I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I read The Hobbit at the beginning of 2012, just before the GRRM Reaper and Song of Ice and Fire entered and thoroughly took up residence in my life. So by the time I saw The Hobbit in early 2013, my memories of the book had faded a little bit. So I didn't necessarily recognise all of it, but there were a lot of points where I was thinking "Aha, I remember that" and, of course, points where I thought "Hang on a second, I'm fairly certain that didn't happen". However, I was prepared for this. As always, after the release of the movie, the Internet and die-hard Tolkien fans erupted in various states of outrage regarding deviations from the source text. Unfortunately, this is a reality of the movie industry we have to live with. Which is why I take the Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy approach and view such things as separate entities to be enjoyed on their own merits. That said, comparative studies can be quite fun too.

The obvious trickiness of movie adaptations is bringing the characters to life. You have to be real careful about who you pick to embody certain characters, because the fanbase you're relying on to bringing in those opening weekend bucks are going to have some pretty firm ideas about what those characters are like. In this, I think there was much success. Thorin Oakenshield's company of Dwarves are indeed a very merry gathering and Martin Freeman quite brilliantly portrays Bilbo Baggins' confusion over the presence of them in his neat little Hobbit-hole. Or at least it was neat before they arrived to pillage the pantry and trod mud into the carpets.

So far, I'm enjoying this trilogy. I know it's only one movie in, but hey, I'll start calling it a trilogy anyway. Saves time later. It felt like they had added a lot of things in that I didn't remember from the books, but regardless of that I really enjoyed it. I imagine that the original Lord of the Rings trilogy will stick out as my favourites, but that'll probably be for all the battles. Saying that, we do have the Battle of the Five Armies to look forward to. Along with many, many other things.

I feel like I should be saying more but it was a fair few weeks ago that I saw it and my mind draws blanks. I really, really have been atrocious with updating. I blame my parade of early morning starts at work. Getting up at 5 am five days in a row doesn't do great things for the energy levels. But I'm getting close to getting used to it (so Sod's Law dictates that my shift pattern is going to drastically change now), so with any luck I'll be able to update more often. That and I'm not playing anymore Skyrim until I send my novel out to at least five agents. Yeah, I'm getting to that exceptionally scary point in my writing career. Actually trying to get paid for this so-called career.

So until next time, here is a little musical gem by a gifted fellow named Peter Hollens that I discovered and relates quite nicely to what I've been babbling about: Misty Mountains Acappella. 

Curled Up Next to the Fire: Guards! Guards!

Now this has taken me some time to get to. It's a strange old story really. I tell people I'm a geek and it conjures up all sorts of images and associations in their heads. Also a lot of assumptions. They assume I've seen this or read that. Then I have to squeak in an ashamed tone of voice, "Well, er, actually, it, uh, turns I out I haven't." Notable examples of this are having only seen Lord of the Rings: Return of the King the whole way through and not the other two movies and, until about twenty minutes ago, never having read a single Terry Pratchett book.

All these things, by the way, are grievous offences that I am working to rectify. Life just keeps getting in the way, you know? Pesky Life. Should mind its own business really.

AHEM.

Anyway, moving swiftly on from what could become some kind of existential rant, my purpose here is actually to rave. You see, all those people who kept telling me and telling me that I would love the Terry Pratchett books can now beam with the pride of "I told you so". Might even let them say it. Once.

So, my at-long-last induction into the wondrous world of Terry Pratchett. In the years that I was harassed to read the books (and being read very, very amusing snippets), I was told that instead of starting in the logical and fabled place of "The Beginning", I should avoid doing that and start with the City Watch sub-series of the Discworld novels. Given that the very, very amusing snippets read to me were from the City Watch/Samuel Vimes books, I picked up Guards! Guards! And in the last week (or two, temporal mechanics has gone all a bit fuzzy now), I have been finding it somewhat tricky to put the book down.

Now at first the structure worried me. I'm an OCD man, I like to finish a chapter of a book before putting it down and going to bed/conducting whatever mundane Life activity I have to perform. So when I first sat up in bed to read Guards! Guards! I did my usual trick of un-focusing my eyes (sounds weird, but the vision is blurred enough that I can barely read words and thus avoid spoilers) and flicked ahead to find the chapter end so I knew when I would be logically able to put it down, should sleepiness overcome my desire to read. And this is when I found that there were no chapter breaks. This was a little disconcerting, but I pressed ahead regardless. Must have demolished about twenty pages before heavy eyelids made me put it down. And a very amusing twenty pages they were. After that, worries about structure melted away and whole thing just flowed quite beautifully. Probably helped with the whole not-quite-being-able-to-put-it-down thing.

I imagine a good percentage of my readership are more than a passing familiarity with the works of Terry Pratchett and how deeply, deeply hilarious they are. I had been told and told, but I guess I never truly one hundred percent believed it until it was staring me in the face, reducing me to absolute hysterics.

It has just occurred to me that I've missed out on a certain obligation of book review-type posts - a brief summation of the plot.

So, Guards! Guards! is the story of Captain Samuel Vimes, currently commander of the Night Watch in Ankh-Morpork's City Watch. And he has a lot to deal with - new recruit Carrot Ironfoundersson, a suspiciously human-looking dwarf who actually believes in the Law and goes around arresting people and, unknown to him, a secret brotherhood that are busy going about trying to conjure up a dragon. All in all, the last things Captain Vimes ever expected to have to deal with.

Now back to the hysterics. Not many books can claim the honour of making me laugh out loud. Especially in public. They are Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and its two subsequent sequels, Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe and Everything) by Douglas Adams and jPod by Douglas Coupland. Notice a trend? Both called Douglas. But now, Terry Pratchett has muscled his way into a neat little spot that I suspect was waiting for him all this time.

Also, pretty much every Ankh-Morporkian speaks in a West Country accent. Especially Sergeant Colon. Might be a side effect of living in Somerset, but whenever I read their dialogue, it's definitely West Country. Don't know about everyone else's opinions on that score.

So there we have it really. Everyone now gets to pat themselves on the back and say "I told you so". Because you did bloody well tell me, didn't you?

It's rather unplesantly like being drunk

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"Ask a glass of water."

These words are spoken between Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, while about to travel into hyperspace onboard a ship of the Vogon constructor fleet that has just demolished the Earth. It is one of many, many genius quotations from a book I have a great fondness for and could quite happily quote all day long. And it would be quite fitting to do so today. For today...

...is Towel Day!

I've mentioned it before, during my assertion that we should have a Shiny Day in honour of Firefly. It is a day to honour Douglas Adams, author of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as well as their many, many sequels. Two weeks after his tragic passing in 2001, fans of Hitch Hiker's decided that every 25th May from then on should be Towel Day, a day to pay tribute to the brilliance of Douglas Adams. Traditional fashion dictates that Towel Day be marked by the wearing of one's towel all day.

Hence why mine is on my hip, dangling like a gun in a holster, where it will remain for the rest of the day.

This is the essence of Towel Day.

That and I have the 1980 TV series of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy playing in the background.

I will quoting along with it all day.

But I thought I would also talk about The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Much like my journey through the world of tea, there's been something of a journey for me here, with The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Rather fitting, given its title.

My journey began somewhere in 2005. I say somewhere. It was around May, in fact. This was when my GCSE exams were happening. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I had encountered Hitch Hiker's, though I may have come across it before. My mother had come across a long time before and she had the "Trilogy in Four Parts" version of the books (I have the hardcover Trilogy in Five Parts). Anyway, it was on BBC2, quite late at night and back in the day, I was a really nocturnal creature. Still am mostly, but work tends to mean I go to bed early.

Anyway, GCSEs, BBC2 and Hitch Hiker's. A combination of things that most of my teachers probably wouldn't approved of. Especially since my earliest and clearest memory of watching Hitch Hiker's was the day before my English Literature exam - an exam I had completely failed at during my mock exams the previous year. I say completely failed. I was given an E. My teacher had the distinct impression that this wasn't the grade I should've received. With that in mind, I probably shouldn't have been up late, having cram revised that day, watching TV.

But watch it I did. And thoroughly enjoy it I did. It was one of those things that I kept catching on TV now and again for the next few years. I even borrowed my mother's copy of the book. It is one of the only books that has ever made me laugh out loud. I mean, there are points in books that make me giggle, those that make me gasp at their twists, then there's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. No other book has made me laugh so much. jPod (Douglas Coupland) came close, but it couldn't match the hysterics Hitch Hiker's reduced me to.

The hysterics I was reduced to wasn't the only effect Hitch Hiker's had on me. Around 2006/2007, well...there was this girl. It's a story my friends have heard a thousand times. But this particular incident led to an intriguing story being written. It goes something like this. Back in the day, I had codenames for girls I liked. Around 2006/2007, I had discovered James Cameron's Dark Angel and used X5 barcode designations as codes for these girls...this is not entirely a good story the more I say it, but oh well, it's in the past now.

Anyway...

It had reached the point where I'd explained the X5 thing to so many people that it wasn't so much of a secret code anymore. So, to preserve the secrecy of my crush on X5-718 (my school friends, if any of them are reading, should remember who this was), I wrote a completely random paragraph that contained within it all the elements that constituted the girl's name. Anyone who read it would just think it was something completely random. It was perfect. And somehow, it became the basis for a story I called "A Series of Universally Random Events" - essentially my version of Hitch Hiker's. Nowhere near as epic in length or funny in content, but oh well. It was something and people did find it funny, which was another something.

In 2008, I acquired the Trilogy in Five Parts of Hitch Hiker's. And it was probably around May that year that I was reading it, sitting in the window of my first year room, legs dangling out (I was on the first floor), vaguely enjoying the sunshine while laughing incessantly. Around the same time I bought the 1980 TV series on DVD (the same DVDs I'm half-watching now).

It wasn't until 2010 that I first observed Towel Day. I was working at TGI Friday's at the time. It was quite a quiet Tuesday. I had my towel hooked on my apron, on the side, gunslinger-style - the very same style I wear it today. The presence of the towel caused much, much confusion but after a quick explanation, everyone pretty much just accepted it and I went about my work. The next year, I had long since left TGI Friday's and was solely working at Boston Tea Party. I had checked and triple-checked that no one would have an issue with me wearing a towel to work, so all but one of my colleagues knew I was going to be wearing a towel. And no customers really questioned it.

No one tends to question the towel.

So this has been my random babble about Towel Day and The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I hope it's made sense and that everyone has a wonderful Towel Day, Glorious 25th May or Geek Pride Day, depending which geek holiday you're observing today. 

Everything's shiny, Captain, not to fret

We return here to the wonders of Joss Whedon quotation after the discovery of a quite astonishing fact. Through conversation and conspiracy with Thief, it was discovered that there is no such event as Shiny Day. Now, I don't know entirely what to make of this. I imagine if I delved into the deep underworld of the Internet I would find some kind of Firefly/Serenity commemorating day, but...I mean...no Shiny Day? What madness is this?

I'm going to postulate some things here for a minute. First, Firefly isn't really, truly gone. Here I refer to another day event, Towel Day, that commemorates the awesome of the late Douglas Adams. Every May 25th since his tragic passing in 2001, fans of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Adams' other works take a towel with them everywhere they go. I have done this two years in a row, both times taking the aforementioned item of bathroom-wear into my place of work and causing much amusement amongst my colleagues who hadn't a clue why I had a brightly coloured towel tucked in with my apron. I very much plan on doing it this forthcoming May 25th, too. Might even ensure that photographic evidence on hand as well.

So yes, Firefly isn't gone. Joss is still most definitely Boss, the impending release of The Avengers (or, for some reason in the UK, Avengers Assemble) will go and prove that. The cast are still around - Alan Tudyk being AWESOME at every he does and Nathan Fillion being ever so ruggedly handsome in Castle. So in that vain, there's really no reason to be commemorating something that isn't lost, not in the eyes of fans anyway.

Now as I said earlier, I may be overlooking the fact that there is an alternatively named day that commemorates Firefly and Serenity, but...it's not called Shiny Day. And I think that's just a little bit wrong...here's my case.

Shiny. It's a beautiful, versatile(ish) word. It has many, many real world applications and has such pleasant connotations that instead of saying of "okay" or "great", an expression of "Shiny!" can brighten someone's whole day. There's also phrases such as "Shiny, let's be bad guys" and "Everything's shiny, Captain" (particularly useful when pieces of your ship are breaking off).

The gist of this is, if no one's guessed already, "shiny" is an awesome word and one cannot honour it or its many uses without of course honouring its origin, the beautiful and wonderful show Firefly and the Big Damn Movie, Serenity. So I propose that, for 2012, we, the loyal Browncoats, establish Shiny Day - a day to wear our long coats of a brownish colour that we bought on sale, to say "Everything's shiny, not to fret" when things are blowing up around you and "Shiny, let's be bad guys" when shenanigans and capers are afoot. My suggestions for the precise date for Shiny Day are as follows:

• September 22 - In 2005, this was the date of Serenity's premiere in the United States.
• October 7 - Same year, only this time it was the UK premiere of Serenity.
• September 20 - In 2002, the original US airdate of Firefly.
• June 23 - birthday of Firefly creator Joss Whedon.
• March 27 - birthday of Nathan Fillion, everyone's favourite loveable rogue starship captain, Malcolm Reynolds.
• June 2 - birthday of Jewel Staite, the most loveable damn mechanic in the whole 'Verse and most frequent user of the term "shiny".

So there you have it, fellow Browncoats - Shiny Day. Who else is up for it?