Tuesday, May 25, 2010

TODAY IS......

25 May - Towel Day and American Idol finale competition day...both! American Idol needs no further explanation from me, other than a sigh of extreme relief that it'll soon be over. Towel Day might not be as well-known in the USA (or maybe it is?) Wikipedia will explain.

I can't allow this 25 May to go by without remembering one of my favourite authors: Douglas Adams on his special day, created by fans in 2001, a couple of weeks after his untimely death.
"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough"(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Douglas Adams had Sun in imaginative Pisces, Venus in Aquarius, and Aquarius's ruler: whacky Uranus right on his ascending degree in Cancer, the strongest point in the chart. His whacky imaginings knew no bounds!

How to amalgamate these two entities though? American Idol and Douglas Adams? I feel certain he'd have found a way to do it, and would've been able to write a whole book about the manic wonderland that is American Idol.

Crystal Bowersox and Lee DeWyse compete for the crown tonight. Crystal has led the field from the start, Lee has come up from way outside, spurred and whipped on by judges and producers. In previous posts, accessible by clicking on American Idol in the Label Cloud (sidebar @ right), I've looked at their natal charts and assessed their chances. It's impossible to guess tonight's outcome, bearing in mind some obvious manipulation by the programme's producers. So.... "Break a leg, y'all."

Crystal has Sun in Leo, and Lee has Sun in Aries (if Wikipedia is correct on both counts), both Fiery Suns, both competitive and wanting to lead. Both have a planet close to an angle of the chart for tomorrow night's announcement of the winner - they are well-matched.




In honour of Towel Day, I'll bring in Douglas Adams, via quotation, to leave messages for American Idol:

"Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy."

"And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged."


To Casey James So long - and thanks for all the fish!(the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express route). And see below for more on
Casey who is all set to zoom along that express route to success, unfettered by the Idol crown.

Lee: He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Everything was ready, everything was prepared. He knew where his towel was.


Crystal:
She had a look at herself in the mirror in the elevator lobby while she was waiting. She looked cool and in charge, and if she could fool herself she could fool anybody. If life had taught her anything it was this: Never go back for your bag.
"There," he said. "Three-leaf clover. Good luck you see." He peered at it closely to check that it was a real three-leaf clover and not just a regular four-leaf one that one of the leaves had fallen off.





To the judges: "Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."

And at the end of the finale results show - tomorrow night, when Ryan Seacrest is about to announce the winner:
There was a long silence, during which they thought they could feel the Universe age a little.




More from Casey James:



And before American Idol

2 comments:

anyjazz said...

A good examination using Douglas Adams quotes. You know he is another favorite of mine.

Twilight said...

anyjazz ~~ Yep! :-)