I try to always keep an open mind and my wits about me. Other than that, anything goes! Makes for some unpredictable adventures out there in the real world. I've worked in the publishing industry for 10+ years and have been a member of the FSWA for 5+ years. Go Steelers!
Website URL: http://www.drinkfive.com
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
Whooooooooosh. That’s how I felt when I finally got around to beginning the herculean task of digging deep into the history of Douglas Adams and his works. Obviously we can’t cover everything here, but since there are already so many biographies and profiles out there detailing the basics – why not just quickly cover the bases and dive right into the fun stuff? Why not, indeed.
First of all, if you stumbled here by accident or ignorance and you’re not sure who Douglas Adams is, he is most well-known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book series that grew into an empire of media and is supported by legions of die-hard fans. But we’ll get back to all of that.
Tune into the drinkfive Retrospectical Podcast (Episode 02: Douglas Adams, The Life and Times of)
Born on the 11th of March, 1952 in Cambridge, England, the Adams family (just the one ‘D’, mind you) actually moved to and lived at a RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) shelter in Brentwood, Essex shortly after his sister, Susan was born. He was about 5-years old at the time, when his parents divorced and he went with his mother and sister to live at the shelter with his grandparents. It makes sense that this time in his life may have sparked his love for animals and nature and he went on later in life to become a well-known environmentalist and wrote Last Chance to See, a novel and radio series on the BBC about witnessing species near extinction first-hand over several trips.
Back to School
Known for his humor and writing prowess at an early age, Adams went through his school years being noticed not only for excellence in creative writing (he was the only student ever awarded a 10/10 by his English teacher Frank Halford in prep school) but also because he was already a towering 6-feet tall when he was just 12-years old (he would top out at 6’5”). By all accounts he breezed through university on nearly wit alone and was able to explore quite a few avenues of his creativity – not only on the page, but also onstage as a comedian.
In addition to the adventures he surely had while staying at his grandparent's animal shelter, Douglas hitch-hiked from Cambridge to Istanbul (not Constantinople) and elsewhere around Europe in the years surrounding his education at St. John's college. Not being from a particularly affluent family, he needed some way of making money to support himself while traveling and among other short-lived professions he worked as a barn builder, a chicken-shed cleaner and a hospital porter (for those not familiar with the job, it involves running laundry, patient hygiene and other similar tasks).
It becomes clear when looking over what has been recorded of Adams' life that he had no qualms whatsoever about taking whatever job could get him through the next few months or years between writing projects. My personal favorite was Adams' stint as a bodyguard to a Qatari family of oil tycoons while they were staying in London. According to Adams, that particular job involved "opening and shutting doors and running away if anyone turned up with a hand grenade". Yikes.
Anyway, it was a very uneven path that Adams walked after his days at St. John's and since falling in love with comedic performance (he had been involved with several during his days in Cambridge) he was bent on getting into TV and/or radio as a comedy writer. He was one of only two people outside of the original cast of Monty Python to get a writing credit (in this case for a sketch called "Patient Abuse") and later even appeared in 2 episodes (one of them being episode 42, no less!) of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Frustration & Inspiration
Unfortunately - after enjoying some successes - Adams' opportunities slowed to a crawl. It was during this time that he tried to support himself through the mess of odd jobs mentioned above. He had a hard time dealing with this lack of interest in his work and that was reflected in his opinions of himself at the time. From Adams' The Salmon of Doubt, "I have terrible periods of lack of confidence [...] I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realized it was like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather - you just have to get on with it".
So, how did The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy get its start when it looked as though Adams was already nearing the end of what would have been a rather short career? First, let’s go back to one of those nights he spent hitchhiking around Europe (Innsbruck, Austria in this case) before heading back to his studies in Cambridge. At the time, Adams had been using a copy of Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe to make his way around and one night when he was “frantically depressed” in Innsbruck he stared [drunkenly] up at the stars and thought that maybe there should be a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because it “looked a lot more attractive out there than it did around me.”
It wasn't immediately, but rather when he was backed into a corner and nothing else seemed to be working out for him did Adams come back to this idea of writing a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like so many other artists before him, it seemed as though all of his worldly experiences up to that point came together in one creative surge to produce the story-line and characters in their original form. Originally, Hitchhiker’s was developed as a sci-fi comedy radio play composed of six episodes (Douglas called them Fit the First, Fit the Second, etc as an homage to The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll) and quickly became a cult favorite in spite of the lack of advertising (in fact, the first episode aired at the awkward time of 10:30pm on a Wednesday night).
There were several things about the radio series that contributed to its popularity and uniqueness among all of the other material on BBC Radio at the time:
Moving Right Along..
With the success of the radio show, Adams was given a job at the BBC as a radio producer but he was never really interested in the position, instead wandering over to work on Doctor Who as a script editor. He later went on to pen several Doctor Who episodes including “City of Death” which is widely regarded as one of the best classic Doctor Who stories of all time. Nice work, Douglas. A few notable things from these days:
Douglas Adams eventually finished 5 novels in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series as well as two radio series (Fit the First through Fit the Twelfth) and there have been additional radio series’ and novels but they were all finished and produced after Adams passed away in 2001. So far the series has been a radio broadcast, multiple theater productions, a “trilogy” of books, a BBC TV series, a computer game, a comic book mini-series and a Hollywood movie. He also wrote two novels in a different universe with different characters, called Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (described as “a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic”). These novels had some critical success but never reached the level of his most famous series.
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish..
Other stuff you may not know about Douglas Adams:
Welcome to the TV Soup podcast, the home of drinkfive.com’s television review series. This episode begins our discussion on the Breaking Bad spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul starring Bob Odenkirk. The season premiere of Better Call Saul is spread over two nights and two episodes: "Uno" and "Mijo". Be sure to check out the companion article to the first two episodes of this season.
Our plan is to review every episode of whatever series we are currently watching (unless they end up being too horrible for either of us to handle, in which case we have no problem panning the show and changing it up!) both on the podcast and also in more traditional, long-form articles. Please follow along with us as we begin our journey into Better Call Saul and thusly into the mind of Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman.
Welcome to the Retrospectical podcast, the home of drinkfive.com’s more ambitious podcasts. This episode is about the history of TV and how we interact with it on a regular basis. We also touched on how it changed us as a society in general. Be sure to check out the companion article, Evolution of TV: How Television has Changed America.
As usual, we also enjoyed a few beverages while doing the show. This week was special as it’s the first episode of the new season, so we decided to bust out a special beer, Bell’s Hopslam. Hopslam is a double IPA that is a very limited seasonal, so get out to the store now and hope they haven’t already sold out of it!
The end of the road for most fantasy teams is this week's championship game. Listening to the right advice can make or break your team and I'd like to try to help you across the finish line by providing you with a few great plays for Week 16. As always, quite a few guys that may have been helping you throughout the season are probably headed to IR or underperforming at this point in the season. So who do we turn to? Let's find out..
QB:
The drop-off for QB ownership is a steep one. Right around Andy Dalton, QBs are either quite a bit better or quite a bit worse. Actually, let's include Joe Flacco and Mark Sanchez in that.. we can call it the 'QB Triangle'. If one of these guys is your starter (in 1, or 2 QB leagues), you've got serious problems to address. Although I think that Johnny Manziel (37% owned) will have a good performance eventually, he looked sufficiently bad for me to avoid him for the remainder of the season at least. Alex Smith (37% owned) on the other hand, had a great game with 297 yards and 2 TDs against the Raiders. Smith has been a consistent member of the drinkfive waiver wire list and should continue to do well against the Steelers pass defense which is still susceptible to big plays on the outside. Smith has more points this season than Kaepernick or Dalton and almost as many as Newton and Romo. If you need help at the position, don't sleep on him.
WR:
Much like the 'QB' triangle, we have a similar collection of players that should not be owned in Cordarelle Patterson, Denard Robinson and We Welker all hovering around the 50% mark. But can we find some real talent at the position if we dig a little deeper? Well, once more, Charles Johnson (32% owned) had a good game and put up 5 receptions for 72 yards against the great Lions pass defense. Remember that he's a rookie, but with this year's draft class.. why not another standout receiver? Clearly the Vikes' #1 guy at this point, look for a similar performance but with a great chance of a TD against a slipping Dolphins pass defense this week. Harry Douglas (27% owned) is an interesting pickup if he's still available in your league, because he had a great game and Julio Jones may be out again this week. Although Coach Mike Smith says he expects him to suit up - he is not to be trusted. I keep hearing Cecil Shorts (41% owned) and Stedman Bailey (14% owned) but I don't believe it and you shouldn't either. Both guys are too unpredictable this year and on teams that are equally difficult to predict.
RB:
Now that we're comparing what players exist around that 50% mark at each position, let's look at RBs. Got any guesses? Due to dual-eligibility, Denard Robinson is here again of course, but not including Robinson we have Doug Martin, Ben Tate and Terrance West. What a great collection of running backs that is! The decline in ownership is much less steep but we can definitely pull some talent out of the pool here. Carlos Hyde (35% owned) was running very well last week before hurting his back on a play. Looks like he'll play ahead of Gore at this point, though. He is worth a pickup in every league, even if you're not going to start him.. just so your opponent can't start him against you. With Gore likely out with a concussion, Hyde will monopolize the carries if he plays. Kerwynn Williams (18% owned) was an unlikely candidate to perform well last week due to a committee backfield and good Rams' rushing defense, but he still went off for 75 yards on 15 carries and caught 2 passes for 11 yards. Grice looks to be a non-factor and Stepfan Taylor will split the carries but Williams is the better bet for a TD. Bad news? Seattle. And they've been playing well. I like Williams but would stay away from this situation unless you're desperate.
TE:
Yeah I know, you just can't wait.. ok, I'll tell you. The 50%'ers at TE this season are Jordan Cameron, Kyle Rudolph and Charles Clay. Wow, a couple of those guys were definitely taken pretty high up in drafts this preseason. Moving on, Mychal Rivera (26% owned) is still not owned in many leagues this year and presents a good option about 1/2 of the time. Better in PPR leagues because of the volume he gets, Rivera is still a good bit better than the TEs owned less than him. Jermaine Gresham (9% owned) just scored a TD last week and has been getting consistent targets all year. Also, he plays against Denver who has given up quite a few points to opposing TEs. Unfortunately, he was inactive for last week's game against the Browns even though he was warming up on the field. Apparently some kind of toe injury, reports say that Gresham should be starting again against the Broncos in Week 16. I actually like him a lot here if you think he'll be a go.
Defense / Special Teams:
Here I like Carolina (vs. CLE), Miami (vs. MIN), Green Bay (@TB) and Jacksonville (vs. TEN)