Radish

My throat hurts more than ever.

I can go about four hours before I start to get fatigued and the pain in my throat is intolerable.

Did I mention I went to the hospital (because my doctor couldn't see me)?

Well, I did. I was there for three hours, 15 minutes of which was actual Doctor/Patient time, with his amazing diagnosis:

"Yep, your glands are swollen."

Thanks, Doctor! Now I can see why you're in your profession!

It got better from there:

"Just keep taking what you're taking," he told me confidently.

"I'm only taking over-the-counter lozenges and ibruprofen, and they're not really doing much," I said, incredulous.

"It should last another week or so," he responded, completely oblivious to my concerns.

"But what about the fatigue, low temperature, earache and headache?"

"That happens when you have swollen glands," he said, smartly. That sure showed me to be the stupid patient that I am.

See, this is the same hospital that sent a local man home, mis-diagnosed. He later died of a heart attack.

I'm not saying that I'm going to fall victim to a massive coronary, but I could have Strep Throat, or Mono, or something other than "Inexplicably swollen glands." I do not have much confidence in the medical staff of this particular ediface.

Here's hoping some more sleep will fix things.

Posted by Jack Tango at 19:17 | Permalink | Comments

Where have I been? What have I been doing? What new things have been happening in my life and why have I not been updating this blog?

Perfectly acceptable questions, my faithful blogdience. You will know the truth of my absence from posting and learn the immensely secretive actions which were undertaken during that time. You will marvel at my adventures, revel in my successes, and recoil at my failures. You will cheer, you will laugh, you will cry.

Just not today.

Today I will talk about something else entirely.

I read an advance screening review of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the reviewer savaged the film completely. His main complaint: It removes too much of the original story, and is nowhere near as good as the TV series or Radio Program.

NEWSFLASH: The original story was far too long and insular to be properly adapted as a movie. If you want a movie that's extremely faithful to the original text, go see Sin City. The TV series and Radio Program allowed far more time to insert all the crazy little bits of dialogue and characterization that made the books so entertaining.

The movie does not have that luxury.

Time is a constraint, most definitely -- as is accessibility.

The original story was very witty -- and the dialogue was astoundingly brilliant -- but a lot of it would be far over the heads of your average moviegoer. In adapting the film for a national audience, and in order to receive the budget required to do so, mass-marketization must occur.

This means we lose little asides of dialogue that really do nothing to progress the plot but rather serve to amuse us. If you are not a fan of the original you won't be aware that you're missing out on a thing.

The reviewer of this movie completely misses the point of the film, claiming it's mediocrity is due to it's lack adherance to the original script.

Poppycock, I say!

Don't let overaggrandizing individuals who exaggerate excessively sway you from enjoying a product on it's own merits! A review is most often stemmed in bias, due to experiences in his or her life leading up to the exact moment they saw the film. Their opinion should bear no more weight on your decision than your dog's opinion of what suit you should wear to an important business meeting.

In the case of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the producers and directors have attempted to streamline the story and make it accessible to a large audience. In these cases the only thing one has to look for is the Spirit of the Original tale. The movie studio is incapable of producing a quadrilogy of pentalogies designed to capture every single line of dialogue and prose that comprised the original film, so one has to be able to gloss over what's been glossed over.

All that matters is that they've captured the Spirit.

It would be foolish of a fan, a consumer, or any other rational being, to think that anything is going to come out exactly as we like it. The most important thing is that the good outweighs the bad, and that overall the product is mostly harmless to the source material. This is called The Best Case Scenario.

Judge it on its own merits, and see for yourself. I'm not going to let some Douglas Adams addicted Briton deter me from watching a movie that I've eagerly anticipated for quite some time, merely because it's not exactly like every other adaptation that's previously existed. To do so would denigrate my opinion, and serve to bruise my ego.

And if there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Posted by Jack Tango at 13:29 | Permalink | Comments