A few hours ago,** due to an alert in the inbox, I introduced a CFE** to the television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! It's on the computer television station thing now, here. I hadn't seen this in nearly 30 years, and though he's heard the full 26-episode radio version (because they have no choice since it's on heavy rotation around here as background entertainment on housekeeping and heavy-cooking days) he'd never seen it at all.
I fired it up on my computer, then wandered away after about 5 minutes because I don't actually like watching movies or television on the computer. (I can take the occasional documentary, though.) I bailed to the solace of my kitchen for the second-to-last round of Chriskwansoltikkah cooking.
He sat through four episodes before I kicked him out of my house and back on the road to his own. Throughout I endured shouted bitching about "some of the voices are different"; "that's not what happened in that part"; queries on "my preferred advertising experience"; and lots of loud chortling from the living room. I think he liked it. He particularly loved Marvin's appearance. "Come look at him! That's almost what he looked like to me!!" And even though I was up to my elbows in molasses at that moment, and I already knew what that version of Marvin looks like, I left the kitchen and sat on the couch for a bit to experience the debut of Marvin with him. This mostly involved him poking my arm while going "Is that great!? Is that not great or what!? They got that right! He's perfect!!!!" An experience repeated later when the philosopher's union/Teamsters guys showed up in the Deep Thought sequence, but with much less enthusiasm. My arm still got poked (ow. stop it.) but it is true that the radio version of this episode is light years better than the tv version. I think that all comes down to the voices of the Teamsters, who are freakin' hilarious in the radio version, and the slight difference in the script. The Teamsters bit has more heft in the radio version. Also, the voices of the pan-dimensional mice in the radio version are better than the tv version. The radio mice are so incredibly Edwardian smug, but the tv mice are reedy annoying.
However, the giggles from Ancient Betelgeuse Death Anthem in that episode (not in the radio version, and blanked from my memory), which sounds Suspiciously like my nation's national anthem, made up for those deficiencies. (Yankee Doodle Dandee, beeyotches!) By the way we were falling out all over the place, you'd never be able to tell that neither of us had consumed a drop of alcohol first.
Next step: I gotta encourage him to read the books.
After that: I didn't know the original series was on dvd. I might have to pick them up for nostalgia reasons so I can watch it again after all these years.
And then: This CFE has never seen the Hollywood movie version of The Guide. He might discover its existence and it is my Duty to steer him away from it because that won't go well.
Meanwhile, it's still raining. Eww. And Annie Lennox made an AWESOME fucking Christmas album.
** More accurately, last night. Hooray auto-post feature.
** Officially he's joined the ranks of post-CFEs, but as I don't yet have a proper term for that I'm going with the confusing pre-existing terms.
