Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

The Goodies

With the recent passing of the brilliant Bill Oddie (Bloddie), so many happy, positive, absurd memories of The Goodies come flooding back. Perfectly suited to my sense of humour.

In Australia, their show was repeated on TV every weekday early evening for 20+ years. Every Aussie child in the 70's and 80's watched and knew The Goodies devotedly.

My three children (now adults) still adore The Goodies! Oh YES!!!

https://youtu.be/dDC7vy6Jmac?si=7sK78xOJ3fA1RFvT

I cannot name just one positive, hilarious, absurd moment.

"Bellamy!" 😄

OK, the personal story...

I would have been about 16, c. 1980, when the episode "Animals" aired. Everybody at school watched The Goodies. I mean everybody. This episode would air at about 6pm on a weeknight.

The next morning, on the bus to school, the call of "Bellamy!" echoed up and down the bus, for the entire 20 minutes!

It was unspoken, but everyone. on. that. bus. knew exactly what it meant. We'd all seen it. Popular kids, poor kids, dork kids etc. Everyone... Men. Dressed as rabbits, trying to hide from rogue animals... of course [laffs]

https://youtu.be/Tz524KEe-kg

(The episode parodies nature documentaries and presenters—including David Bellamy—while exploring themes of animal rights and the economy running on animal power.)

Twas a truly classic childhood memory. A community event. Brilliant.

cf. from 2:14 to 3:00

https://youtu.be/k2-fH4bLJDA?si=7AWXwWhVf7CQxoS_

I loved to make reference, while I was presenting on the radio, to "And now... 'A Walk in the Black Forest'..."

https://youtu.be/dgb2hrjJXRk?si=Ul-zsljzbWMCkCAZ

https://youtu.be/4dGVNAvc-eg?si=jJcJdHEz5e8x6KwK

I still have their books too.

Peas be with ewe
Mal

Saturday, 25 May 2024

Towel Day

Towel Day is celebrated every year on 25 May as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans. On this day, fans openly carry a towel with them, as described in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author.

RIP Douglas Adams, you creatively smart bugger.

Of course, this meshes well with my sense of absurdist humour.

Yes, I was one of the original hoopy froods who knew where his towel was, after discovering the radio series and books way back in High School in 1980... gagh! They are still one of my favourite series of comedic books around. I adore the absurd abstractions on philosophy, theology and space/time in general! Thank you, Douglas Adams, for enabling us to take a 90-degree twist on reality with these books.

I have all six books in the (increasingly inaccurately named) Trilogy... I bought myself a copy of the sixth book a year ago.

Note: The Books and Radio Series, NOT the travesty of the 2005 film!

(Source)

As The Guide says:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Bookmark this Page

Also: 42

Peas be with ewe
Mal

Monday, 13 May 2024

Some Favorite Books

Here are some favourite books of mine...

listed in no particular order...

I caught the passion for reading and books from my mum, from the youngest age - thanks, mum!

💥 Also see my post from 2009:
"15 Books"

➽ So... read anything good lately (a good list of 100 books!)

► Life of Pi by Yann Martel - 2001

An emotional, spiritual and philosophical journey, using paintings in the mind.

► Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - 1955

What can be said, that hasn't already been said about this classic?

► The Far Road by George Johnston - 1962

Semi-autobiographical, two journalists amid utter human disaster, with drastically-opposing viewpoints.

► HHGTTG - by Douglas Adams (1979-2009)

Yes yes, I was one of the original hoopy froods who knew where his towel was, way back in 1980! Gagh! Still one of my favourite series of comedic books around. Adore the absurd abstractions on philosophy, theology and space/time in general! Thank you, Douglas Adams, for enabling us to take a 90-degree twist on reality with these books.

"The books are described as "a trilogy in six parts", having been described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth book. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover..."

► Life Studies by Robert Lowell - 1959

My favourite poet... he's taking his family stories and turning them into something else here.

► My Brother Jack by George Johnston - 1964

A glorious view of a long-gone Australian society, warts and all.

► Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy - 1895

The protagonist is never good enough.

► The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - 1947

The Anne Frank Museum - http://www.annefrank.org

► 1984 by George Orwell - 1949

This was NOT meant to be a "textbook"!

► Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - 1932

When people do not "fit".

► Animal Farm by George Orwell - 1945

"Some are more equal than others..."

► The Darkness Outside by George Johnston - 1959

Paranoia in the middle of nowhere... fearing some horrific unknowable 'social calamity is coming for them, an archaeological team in the desert - nature and time is against them.

► Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt - 1996

An almost-unbelievable biography, growing up in Irish poverty.

" 'Tis".

► The Far Side by Gary Larson - 1980/95

The first time I discovered these cartoons, I physically could not put them down... I had to borrow my friends' copy, and it all went from there. Love his absurd twist on reality.