Towel: Encyclopedia II - Towel - Pop culture trivia

Towel - Pop culture trivia

Towel - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Towels played an iconic role in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG). They are described as the most "massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." The fictitious time/space traveller and Guide Researcher Ford Prefect uses the idiom "a frood who really knows where his towel is" to mean someone generally alert and aware. The fictional HHGG has the following to say on the subject of towels:

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. 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 vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft 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 to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); 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. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have 'lost'. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with." (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter Three)

Some fans of Douglas Adams have seized on this idea, and towels are now considered a symbol of one's devotion to the Hitchhiker books, radio series, TV series, website, etc. Towel Day, is held each year in memory of Adams.

Towelie from South Park.

A Terrible Towel.

Towel - Other references

• In the cartoon South Park a character named Towelie is a walking, talking towel that was artificially created in a lab for military/subversive purposes. As a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy he frequently reminds people to bring towels, because you'll never know when you'll need a towel.
• Fans started using Terrible Towels in the 1970s to encourage the Pittsburgh Steelers as they sought (and eventually won) an NFL championship.
• In 1982 Roger Neilson, the then head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, waved a white towel on the end of a hockey stick in mock surrender at what he felt was a sequence of unfair penalties during a playoff game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Three Canucks emulated him and all four were ejected from the game. The following game thousands of fans brought and waved towels and it has remained a traditional way for fans to show their support during the playoffs. There are even official towels which are sometimes handed out at playoff games.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Pop culture trivia", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki