Anyway I don’t want to choose (yes, I know that’s a copout). They’re both part of my life. My friends call me Bruce* and I always know where my towel is.
*so I’m visiting my friend’s house with two mates also nicknamed Bruce. One of us knocks over an ornament in the bathroom. The host (yes, all right, he answers to Bruce too) tells his wife that Bruce is very sorry about an accident in the bathroom. She says ‘Which one?’ and he replies ‘We’ve only got one bathroom’…
‘Hurry up Mr. Dent or you’ll be late’
‘Sorry, but is it really important?’
‘Yes, I meant as in the late Mr. Dent - I’ve never been very good at threats’
Yes, Glee, you did. I thought it was a good idea for a thread, although I am suprised at the lack of responses. Come on Teeming Millions, there has to be some rabid Monty Python fans who are shocked that anybody would pick Hitchhiker’s Guide and vice versa (or do I need to change the OP to which is better Star Wars or Star Trek? :))? Let’s see some blood!
What more could you expect from somebody who lets people kick him to the head?
Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do… except for my wife and a few of her friends. Oh, yes, and Captain Johnson. Come to think of it, quite a few people enjoy a good laugh more than I do, but that is not the point. This discussion is getting too silly. Now for punnishment, I shall now recite some Vogon Poetry…
Okay, how many people, seeing this thread’s title, thought it referred to an urban legend about people soliciting rides and being attacked by large constrictor-like snakes?
Hey, I helped inspire a thread! (My cunning plan for world domination will continue when I pluck up courage to start one myself).
The difficulty in getting debate started is probably that both series are well thought of and frequently quoted:
‘is this the 5 minute argument?’
‘I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side’
‘always look on the bright side of life’
‘brain the size of a planet’
I consider them equally funny, but more of the people I know are familiar with Python than with Hitchhiker’s, just because Hitchhiker’s is “science fiction” and most of my friends don’t read SF. So I get more laughs with Python quotes, and more blank looks with Hitchhiker’s quotes.
There’s a special place in my heart, though, for the ones who can answer the Question correctly.
“It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.”
“I think you ought to know that I’m feeling very depressed.”
O fredded gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee!
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously spindle thee with crinkly bindlewurdles
Or else I will rend thee in the gabberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don’t!
Ah! A fine example of the third-worst poetry in the universe. If only I could find the complete text of “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morn.”
IMO, he’s at least as funny as Hitchhiker’s and Monty Python, but the humor isn’t as obvious.
Umm, let’s see …
“Of course, it couldn’t be a final frontier, because then it wouldn’t have anything to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it was pretty penultimate.”
No, Douglas Adams never wrote for the Flying Circus. He worked with Graham Chapman on some other project for a while, and he did appear as an extra in two Circus sketches (once as a surgeon, once as a pepperpot, I don’t know exactly which sketches they were), but he didn’t actually write for it. The whole thing about him writing for Monty Python was just a misquote of something some publisher cooked up for publicity. Entirely appropriate, don’t you think?
Modest? You bet I’m modest! I am the queen of modesty!