Break a Leg

This post was going to be about the $300 plumbing bill and the 3-day shoot I just did for the Discovery Channel and the porn stache that necessitates, but I pretty much just covered those, so I'd like to talk about something much more important to me.

This is my 42nd blog here at Break a Leg, and any geek/nerd worth his/her 12 sided dice knows the significance of the number: 42.

Let Uncle Jennifer tell you a story...

And I bet you never, EVER expected to see those words in print outside a gay porn fantasy mag...not that I have ever read any of those...

Anyway...my siblings and I were attending a private school back in the day.  One of our fellow student's older sister was a model for some add agency and the agency needed some little school girls for an ice cream commercial, so they called up our school and all the girls approximately the same age got to be in this commercial.  All the boys were extremely jealous...especially when the checks started rolling in.

So, this was about the time the first NES's were coming out.  If you don't know what NES means: shsh, honey, the grown-ups are talking. At the local mall they had this booth where you could come play test versions of games and buy said games and the system itself and all the accoutremont...I'm not sure that's how you spell that word, but I'm too tired to check dictionary.com and it looks pretty French enough as it is to me.  Anyway, my sister, out of the kindness out of her hear was buying a NES and a couple of games.  This would be the first electronic gaming system in our house.  I suppose that kind of statement would be more impressive and/or sad these days, but back then it was still reason for much excitement.

So, while my sister was listening to my brother as to what games "we should get" with her money, I wandered over to the Walden's Books that was mere feet from the Nintendo booth.

This is the part where fate happened, or destiny, or herpes, or whatever you call it.

Back in those days, audiobooks took up a mere revolving rack as opposed to the massive city-block shelving units now dedicated to their...oh right, itunes and online shopping...that USED to be dedicated to their combined weight that would warp gravity around them for parsecs.  And on this particular, pathetic, revolving cage was one audio book whose cover art spoke to me from the very depths of my geekdom.  It was a little green planet sticking its thumb out at me.  And in that moment I knew that I had to have that cassette tape (shsh, honey, the grown-ups are talking).  Thankfully, my mom was a big fan of audio books, because hey they were books that everybody could Be Quiet and listen to.  So along with our brand new NES, a copy of Ghosts and Goblins, and Metroid, we picked up, yes, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

I spent most of my childhood falling asleep to those tapes.  When my brother and I learned that there were MORE books and they were on tape as well, we went out and rented them, Yes: RENTED THEM, from the library.  We of course made copies, which was about as close as you could get audio-piracy in those days - just one step higher than recording songs played on the radio.

Then, years later, one Christmas, my uncle got my the Unabridged Audio Tapes Read By the Author.  I nearly crapped myself.  Until that point I didn't even know what "unabridged" meant.  I spent the next several years of my line trying to track down the other unabridged-read by the author versions.  I finally tracked them down in a Barnes & Noble in Georgia in 1996...I just thought that sentence would sound all gum-shoey, but it was really kinda sad.

My brother and I (and to a lesser but still present extent, my sister) grew up on the works of Douglas Adams.  We can still quote passages.  It's where we learned to talk with an English accent.  And in our circle of friends and acquaintances we were considered wierd for this private dialogue that we would share with each other.  It wasn't until years later that we discovered other people knew what we were talking about.  It was sort of a lonely way to grow up, but it all turned out for the best.  It's like having a secret that isn't really and you want to share, but nobody around you wants to share it, and then you fall into the great wide world, and you find that there are people out there that know the secret, too.  And they all want to share it with each other!

And that's what Douglas Adams did: he created something that could not be kept secret in greed, but shared in joy and wonder and laughter.

So, Mr. Adams, on whatever plane of existence you are now sipping Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters, there's really only one thing I can think to say that does your memory any justice...

Hey, you sass that hoopy, Doug Adams?  There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

Douglas Adams

1952 - 2001

Happy Jenday