the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

I think the last few entires were a bit on the serious side. Not that it's totally out of place. I'm often in a serious mood but I'm not sure to what extent I should inflict it on everyone else. Especially since I've been gradually telling more people about this blog.


Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is coming out in movie theatre's today. Hopefully I'll be able to find a group of friends to go see it soon. Mos Def is in the movie playing Ford Prefect.

(I'm making sure to mention him because he's my thin and tenuous "justification" for mentioning the movie here at Planet Grenada. I'm actually planning on writng a seperate blog entry sharing some thoughts and info on Mos Def too. I love Mos Def. I've often thought to myself that the ummah could really use an "intellectual (i.e. academic, scholarly) Mos Def". But the more I read about him, the more I realize that reflects my own pre-conceived notions. He's not exactly a slouch. His creative career has been rapidly expanding in a couple of different directions, making (remarkably thoughtful) hip-hop music, Def Poetry, acting and activism. He's already making serious contributions to culture, even if its not in the ivory tower

Anyway, Hitchhiker's Guide has already been made into a television series (like over 20 years ago!) and a radio show. Even a computer adventure game (Oh my God, I feel so old. I used to play a bunch of those Infocom text adventures on my Commodore 64 way back in the day. Sometime in the future, a kid in middle school is going to be taking a history test where they have to identify which artifact is older...and on one side of the page they will be shown a commodore 64 and on the other they will be shown a picture of some kid in breeches playing with a hoop and a stick in the street... and this will be the hardest question on the test.)




So for all you archeologists out there, here is a site where you can actually play alot of the classic Infocom games. Some of the games might require maps or other props which were sold with the original packaging but you should at least be able to get a flavor of how the games worked back in the day. Besides, I'm almost certain that if you do a search online you should be able to find the relevant information online in some form which will let you complete the games.

But as far as the new movie goes, I should probably wait till actually seeing it before commenting much on its islamic or afro-futuristic implications. (athough the original novels did get into a fair amount of theology in a very quirky and lighthearted way. InshaAllah we'll see how, or whether, the subject is handled by the film.)