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Douglas Adams Remembered By Those Who Knew Him
John "Widgett" Robinson writes "IGN FilmForce tapped a bunch of folks who knew and worked with Douglas Adams, asking them to share some stories of their time with the man himself. They've posted the results as an article that includes responses from Pythoner Terry Jones, author Neil Gaiman, actor Stephen Fry, Rutle Neil Innes, zoologist Mark Carwardine, and Monkee Michael Nesmith. I've never heard any of these stories before, so the thing winds up being a unique tribute to a very cool frood."
The Pythons have been making fun of his death since his passing in 1989, even to the extent of doing an entire TV special with his theoretical urn on the coffee table, spilling it out, in fact.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Yes, yes it is an attempt at humor.
A few years back, the surviving Python members got together on the Tonight Show (IIRC). It was the first time they had been together in years. One of them held an urn holding Chapman's ashes, saying that it really was all of them together again.
Then, not long into the interview, someone dropped the urn and the ashes spilled everywhere. The Python guys went nuts, cleaning it up (one pulled out a dusbuster, while someone else swept the ash under a rug) and then everyone realized it was a joke.
If only we could all be remembered like that.
Actually it's hoopy and/or frood. Froopy was never actually used in the HH books. Note it says 'derived' in the linked definition.
You may commence eating your towel.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
... don't forget the towel day this year guys!
http://www.towelday.kojv.net/
chris
Anyone remember when this was posted? Man, the earth stood still that day for me.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Just an FYI. And he does it very well from the examples on the international HHGTTG movie site.
Actually, that was from an HBO special, "Live from Aspen" I believe, that was hosted by Robert Klein. It's one of the available programs in the "Monty Python Live" 2 DVD set...well, here in the States anyway. I'm not sure if they're distributed any differently outside of the U.S. and Canada.
Terry Gilliam "accidentally" kicked the urn from a coffee table that was on the stage in front of him. A butler came out with a Dust Buster. Some of the other Pythons pushed some of the remaining ashes under the area rug. Definitely one of the funniest moments of the entire show.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Unfortunately it is true, he died in a Gym. Lalla Ward, actress and friend of Douglas Adams, had this to say on this matter:
I think the only thing that might conceivably have made Douglas laugh was the thought that some of us now have an excuse never to set foot in a b****y gym ever again, because that's where he died.
You can read/listen to the full interview of Lalla Ward here
There are some interesting bits in this interview that show just how many people Douglas Adams knew. For example Lalla Ward met her 2nd husband Richard Dawkins (Famous evolutionary Biologist and author of such books as "The Blind Watchmaker" through Douglas.
Two memorials by Richards Dawkins from 2001 are here ("a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be carefully thought through") and a eulogy here.
The latter piece includes this quote from Adams:
It's a reminder that the best way to remember Adams is to re-read what he wrote.
We erected a tribute page on our website in his honor:
http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/abs/douglasadams /
Two years later, we finally ran our Big Event, with Bill Nye the Science Guy and Dr. Jill Tarter of SETI fame. We opened with a dedication to Adams. Here are pictures from the event:
http://homepage.mac.com/uniace/PhotoAlbum21.html
The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy game is one of the best and most difficult text-mode adventure game ever written. It was co-written by Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky (author of the famous Planetfall and Sorceror, among others).
t ml
The BBC has an interview with Meretzky about how his collaboration with Adams went, a great, long and detailed text, full of information. Now, that's good reporting!
Read it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/stevem.sh
I didn't know Douglas Adams, but I knew the guy who killed him.
Adams lived and worked out in Montecito, CA, right next to Santa Barbara where I live. At the time I worked out at a small gym called just "The Club" down on lower State Street. It was kind of a personal-trainer gym and most of the people who worked out there had trainers.
Three of the trainers decided to start their own private gym in Montecito, and one of them had Adams as a client. That was where he died.
Apparently the private gym didn't have defibrillator equipment, nor had these personal trainers had any classes in using that kind of equipment. Adams' unexpected heart attack didn't have to be fatal. As he lay gasping his last breaths at the foot of this trainer, a guy I had seen around The Club, the trainer just stood there staring helplessly, wondering what to do.
It's a sad story, and the lesson is, make sure your gym has defib equipment, and make sure the trainers know how to use it. It could save your life some day. Don't let yourself end up as another preventable tragedy like Douglas Adams.
While Douglas Adams was visiting Anchorage Alaska he gave a talk "An Evening with Douglas Adams" in 97/98.
After a rather lengthy soliloquay on his doings, mostly consisting of his in depth searches for very rare animals on the planet (dolphins in the Yangzee for example), he opened the gathering to question and answer time. Fortunately he'd apparently already alotted half the time to doing this cause lets face it.. Fans Have Questions.
A friend of mine stood up and thanked him for taking a side trip to our state (Alaska is Never on anyones route). Then she offered up her towel in the sign of the sworn follower and asked "Where is your towel?".
He kind of giggled then went on to tell the story of how the towel came about.
Before the radio show came into existance, he'd spent quite a lot of time hanging about the beach on the Mediterranean Sea. Rumor has it that he even spent some time there with Sean Connery at one point although I can't recall if he mentioned that at the time.
It seems that every day he and his chums would head out from their beach house to go for the swim. He pointed out that why on earth it was called a "beach house" was beyond him since it was over 2 miles from the beach. None the less it was all they could afford to rent for their holidays.
Nearly every day, he would find himself half way to the beach before he'd realize - in fact - he was totally and completely devoid of a towel.
After four or five days in a row of this, it became a fixture in their routine and then became a metaphor on life where in there were "the sort of people who knew where their towel was, and the sort of people that didn't"
"I of course", he lamented "was one of the latter - but its amazing that so many of you think that I'm the sort of fellow that knows where his towel is."
He was a brilliant orator, speaking much like he writes: Several paragraphs of amusing setup with one solid thrust to the funny bone at the end to make sure your no longer seated in your upright position. I will miss him always.