42.5

Update: I forgot to mention that my birthday is in mid-May.

Watch the beginning of the video above.  It’s part of the television series that first introduced me to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  If you aren’t familiar with the Hitchhiker’s Guide, you’re a loser, but you still have a chance to learn about it.

Hitchhiker started as a radio show written by Douglas Adams for the BBC.  It was a wacky, science fiction comedy about a man named Arthur Dent, who bounced randomly around the universe trying to find some semblance of comfort among aliens who didn’t drink tea.  Along the way, he learned disturbing things about the importance of the number 42, the origin of the planet Earth, and why white mice should never, ever be trusted.

"Oh, I won't try to chop up your brain.  Come closer.  CLOSER."

The radio show was so successful it spawned two great books, the television show above, another mediocre book, a musical, a terrible book, another mediocre book, and an awful movie.

The early radio show is still the best version of the story and proof that Apple Macintosh destroys creativity.  You see, Adams used to work on a manual typewriter, rewriting an entire page if he found a single typo.  The constant rewriting made Adams’s work consistently miss deadlines, but also wildly funny and inventive.  Years later, when he got a Mac and no longer had to rewrite, his writing took a turn for the worse.

"Yes, come closer.  CLOSER."

This year will be my 42nd birthday.  Along with the other things that I want to do, I want to celebrate my connection with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  I want to go to a pub with friends and re-enact the scene above.  Unfortunately, I have three problems:

1. I don’t know any pubs.  Certainly not any English pubs that wouldn’t mind having a group of people pretending the world is going to end.
2. I don’t know anyone else who has already memorized the scene above so he or she can act it out with me.
3. I don’t know any bartenders who work at the aforementioned bars and know the aforementioned scene and would be willing (as aforementioned) to play along.

That’s where you come in.  I need some help finding all of the three things above in Northern California (I don’t think I can travel all that far this year).    If you know of a good bar, a wacky bartender, or a Hitchhiker geek/actor that I can use, please let me know.  If not, you can still show up to watch when I do it (and I’ll even buy a “round,” whatever that is).