Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Yesterday was quite a day – we started out in the morning, relatively early, to grab a nice breakfast and drive all the way up to Kettle Moraine State Forest (South) for a short hike in the woods. It was a nicer day for it than we expected but we only took a couple of photos. It was the longest drive we’ve taken in the new car (Ford Escape Hybrid) and we geeked out in a couple of ways; namely we set up a competition between the portable navigation system (Fred, who’s pretty smart and easy to program) and Edna (the built-in system, who’s not too bright and hard to program). We hiked along until we realized we were going the wrong direction (the GPS system we ALSO have and my “analog watch GPS” trick notwithstanding) and turned around.

We enjoyed the birdsong in the woods and also exploring an old cemetery, which featured a bunch of people named Stute and Muldoon and other Germanic or Irish surnames at the top of the hill, and one lonely headstone for a young man named Joseph Arenz at the top of the hill. We theorized that young Joseph must have been that nice Jewish boy from Chicago who moved to the woods for his health on the advice of his doctors, worked as a tailor, but unfortunately he died young and alone of tuberculosis or something. So the good Stutes and Muldoons and whatnot buried him, but weren’t quite sure about putting him in with the rest of the local Catholics, but the good ladies of the Lutheran and Catholic churches raised money with bake sales and quilt raffles for a nice headstone, and they wore their nicely tailored finery to his memorial, and so everyone felt better about poor young Joseph, buried at the bottom of the hill.

Anyway, after this outdoorsy excursion into fictionalized local history, we headed back toward home to meet up with Steve and Ruth and some of their Chicago Mensan friends to see “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

We called Steve first to get a location and try to figure out our best ETA; he mentioned then that he had just bought a couple of towels and some packets of salted peanuts to take to the theater. If ever a thing is worth doing, Steve’s reasoning dictates that it is worth overdoing – so we dutifully bought a couple of dishtowels on the way to the rendezvous point, which was Noodles and Company near the theater. Not a bad place, wish there was one closer to us.

I have to say that the movie was far, far better than I feared it would be, especially after reading a review that made it sound like all the best bits had been left out. Yes, a lot of things were not in the movie – like the “accident with a contraceptive in a time machine” bit and the Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses and so on. But there was an awful lot that WAS left in, or was somehow referenced visually.

If you have a pair of 3-D glasses, take them to the theater with you. Put them on just after the Heart of Gold arrives at Magrathrea. And if you ever watched the TV show, watch for a couple of cameos.

The Mensans were mostly harmless. I did wonder why the hell one couple thought it was okay to bring a newborn baby along. 🙄