Monday Odds & Ends.

Feeling a little scattered, so I loaded it all into the blog shotgun and am firing it on this page. Yes, it's the old Random Thoughts fallback today....

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Since we lost Junior Varsity Dog Nipper, my Fitbit thinks I died. Or maybe went into a coma. I have not hit 10,000 steps in almost two weeks. Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz simply doesn't need or care about the kind of exercise that Nipper demanded. Fazzy is content to plow through the snow in the yard, and boy do we still have a lot of snow. More coming today. My main exercise is plowing through the snow to pick up after him or make sure he doesn't get to the street without a leash. Two feet of snow makes for a tough slog. And Fitbit gives me no credit for extra effort.

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I've got a great idea for a novel -- it'll be the biggest thing since Scarlett, the 1991 Alexandra Ripley sequel to Gone with the Wind.  

Think of it! The injured Ishmael, the lone survivor, is reunited with Queequeg, who turns out to have survived the destruction of the Pequod as well, by floating to Nantucket in a barrel. The two band together, determined to avenge their sunken pals and bring Moby-Dick to justice. The only person who believes in them is Phyllis McSnord, the Boston socialite who found Ishmael and nursed him back to health. Her heart yearns for him -- but is his too full of vengeance to love? It's a revenge novel, a buddy novel, a romance novel, and a sailing novel all in one! 

Of course, there are some issues. I've never sailed on anything but a cruise ship, a ferry, and a catamaran. I've never even been in a rowboat. So the research might be a little daunting. Plus, I'd probably have to read the original Melville novel, and if I could get through college with an English degree and avoid that chore, I'm certainly not inclined to take it on now. All right, never mind.

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So I fixed the dishwasher. (He said casually, as if a minor accomplishment, hardly worth mention.) This actually occurred a week ago, although the problem went back to my last column of miscellanea in September. To fix the broken flap on the part of the dispenser that stores the Jet Dry, I had to buy a new dispenser, take out a dozen screws to access the interior of the door, gennnnntly unplug the wires leading to the old dispenser, force the part out without breaking anything, put in the new one, plug those wires (seriously, they are so fragile) into the new unit, reassemble the door, and pray that the new dispenser would work and that the hollow door wouldn't fill with water when I ran the thing. So I have avoided mentioning this until the dishwasher had been run enough times to confirm that it is working and I did not break it. Ha! 

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Been working on very PC novel, targeted at the youth. When I say it's very politically correct, I mean it. The author has used mathematical precision to bring in all preferred groups (ethnic, sexual, people who use weird pronouns), and the characters smack down each other for the slightest hint of un-PC or white supremacist behavior. Anything that happened before their tender little lives is racist garbage. 

Do kids really live this way? Life as a perpetual chase to be PCier than thou? What a drag, man. And this is supposed to be light reading, not a serious drama. If you hear about college-age folks feeling stressed these days, look at the sheer panic they live in, terrified of getting caught out by someone being bitchy, tagging them with labels of uncleanliness, online where all the world can see. Forget the pandemic; this is what's scaring the youth to death. 

For the record, my preferred pronouns are Youse, Dem, Dese, and Doze. 

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The problem with chips is that once you start eating chips you can't stop eating chips. Corn, potato, vegetable, tortilla, silicon, poker, doesn't matter. It's the first chip that gets you. The only way to win is to not play the game.

Bad film sequels.

Came Back with More Wind

Casablanca II: Search for the Waters

The Lost Three-Day Weekend

The Second-Longest Yard

Norma Rae vs. Erin Brockovich [posters just say NR vs EB]

Soylent Green II: There's Always Room for Soylent Blue

La La La Land: More La

Dumbo and Timothy Go to AA

Manos 2: The Feet of Fate

A Bowling League of Their Own

Thelma and Louise II: Not Quite Dead Yet

Fried Green Tomatoes: This Time It's a Casserole

The Iceman Leaveth

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Even More Fraidy

Then Again, They Might Not Be Giants

Rebel Locates a Cause

Riskier Business

Riskiest Business

Even Panickier in Needle Park

The Grapes of Wrath II: The Must of Indignation

Flag Day: Phil Connors Returns (and Returns and Returns)

It Happened Again Another Night

The Pride of the Yankees II: The Joe Pepitone Story

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe II

The Princess Bride 2: Humperdinck's Revenge

Romy and Michele's 30th High School Reunion

Casablanca III: Play It Again, Sam

The Perfecter Storm

Waking Ned Devine 2: Ned's Weekend at Bernie's

Prancer Comes Back

The Towering Inferno II: Jernigan's Return

Some Like It Hotter 

Tora! Tora! Tora! And Tora Some More!

The Brunch Club

Lawrence of Arabia in Chingford

Welcome Back Braverman

Then, Voyager

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory II: Oompa Loompa Labor Dispute

It Happened Again Another Night

A Christmas Carol II: What the Hell, Three More Ghosts

Angry Birds 2: Even Angrier Birds?

I probably saw the original Angry Birds on the iTunes App Store first, but I didn't think it would be something I would like. Then a friend of mine mentioned over cards that his daughters had gotten him completely hooked on this stupid cartoon catapult game. It was cheap, so I tried it, and I was disgustingly hooked. Got hooked on the Seasons game, too. And the first Rio game.

If you've been offline except for this blog and your flip phone, here's the description: a bunch of green pigs have stolen eggs, and the birds are mad. They pursue the pigs to kill them and reclaim their eggs. Each different bird has a different ability (speed burst, explosive egg drop, splitting into three, etc.), but they all have to be launched from a slingshot. You kill pigs, you move on to the next board. It never ends.

When I changed phones and lost all my progress, I lost the will to live. No, kidding! I lost the will to start the games again and go through all the frustrating levels of the past. I never much enjoyed the Space or Star Wars versions; I thought the Epic game was little fun, and the racing game (Angry Birds Go!) was pretty much the same thing over and over: Here's a race! It's over! Buy upgrades with actual money! It looked like that would be it for me and the Birds of Anger.

Now there's Angry Birds 2.

First off, I really dislike in-game purchases, but that's the way of the game world now. You get a free game and you progress either through skill and patience or through buying access. Kind of the way of the actual world, I guess, so maybe there's a lesson there. They also use advertising inside the game, which you can use to your advantage---watch an ad and get an extra bird, for example. Which is worth the thirty seconds of your life when you're thiiiiiiiiiiis close to getting through a board. It also has the lives system that Candy Crush made so popular: When you're all out of  birds, you will have to wait half an hour to get them back. You may get the ad-watching option. Or you could buy some more lives, if you're impatient and want to pee away money.

I'm sad that three excellent birds, Stella, Bubbles, and Hal, are not in this game. Bubbles especially is awesome. Hal, the boomerang toucan, would have had limited advantage; this game uses spitting flowers (they spit back whatever falls into them) and teleportation portals (the pigs can't build a decent house but there's teleportation?), so around-the-back shots are not as crucial. In the original game, you were given your birds in the order in which you had to use them; here you're given random birds and you can choose among three for any given shot, unless you have fewer than three birds left. Repeating a board does not mean it will be identical; in keeping with the "under construction" theme of the game, there are possible differences each time. There are also magic spells you can use... unless you run out or (doy!) want to buy some more. The advertising can help you in another way: You may have to watch an ad for Honey-Nut Cheerios, but the game may also randomly give you a Honey-Nut Cheerio spell to attack pigs with for a round.

Whereas the original game was a puzzle that required skill, the new game is more skill and luck based. Boards less often have a particular means of completion. In fact, the setup is very different in that, rather than having a level made up of a number of boards, as in the original game or Candy Crush, you have levels made of boards that are themselves made up of a series of three or more boards; you have to budget your birds to get through the series. You can earn extra birds in the series by scoring lots of points, or you can... dare I say it?... buy more.

Do I like the game? Sure; it's always fun to destroy things in the name of justice. And there is some relief in retrying a board and finding it set up easier on the second go-round.

Am I disgustingly hooked? Not really. The original game was so challenging I would have to resort occasionally to instructional videos on YouTube; can't see me doing that here. A game ought to not be impossible, but should occasionally make you nuts. It isn't love if it can't make you crazy.

On another note, I hear that there is an Angry Birds movie coming out next May. It could be fun... but I liked the grittier live-action version that came out a couple of years ago.

Song sequels.

Last year James Lileks on The Diner revealed something I never knew, nor really needed to know:  Mungo Jerry, the band that had a massive hit with "In the Summertime" in 1970, tried to do a sequel with "Summer's Gone."

That worked about as well as you might expect.

Still, the idea of a sequel is oh-so-tempting when you've had a hit, especially if it looks like your bite of the cherry is all there is likely to be. You suddenly understand the idea of the sophomore slump---you threw your best pitch and now you can either vary it or throw as near the same pitch again, knowing that that's what the public expects. And then the public yawns and says, "They're still doing that same dumb thing."

Chubby Checker essentially made a career of it---although he had many non-Twist hits, he followed the massive 1960 chart-topper "The Twist" with "Twistin' U.S.A.," "Let's Twist Again," "Slow Twisting," "Twistin' Round the World," "Twist It Up," and, with the Fat Boys in 1988, "The Twist (Yo, Twist!)." All charted. But no less a light than Irving Berlin wiped out with a reworking of "Cheek to Cheek" called (really!) "Back to Back." * What was Irv thinking?

As they say: No one knows nothing. Hey, if I knew what the public wanted, I'd have freaking five books on the best-seller lists now. 

Still, one can only wonder what sequels other musicians might have tried... [Cue woowooshwoo music, woozy screen, dream sequence]

Musician	Song	Sequel
Blue Oyster Cult	Don't Fear the Reaper	Fear the Reaper's Cousin Melvin
The McCoys	Hang On Sloopy	Look Out Below (Sloopy's Fallin')
David Bowie	Suffragette City	Suffragette Sprawl
Paul McCartney/Wings	Band on the Run	Band Settles Down, Gets Work
Jethro Tull	Thick as a Brick	Slimn as a Hymn
Peter Gabriel	Shock the Monkey	Revenge of the Monkey
The Drifters	Under the Boardwalk	Over the Tattoo Parlor
Sir Mix-a-Lot	Baby Got Back	I Changed My Mind About the Butts
Bill Withers	Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)	Now There's Sunshine (Since She's Back)**
Chuck Berry	Sweet Little Sixteen	Bitter Old Seventeen
The Lemonheads	It's a Shame About Ray	Sucks About Bob, Too
R.E.M.	Losing My Religion	Also Lost My Car Keys
Shirley Ellis	The Name Game	The Date of Birth-Social Security Number Game
The Bangles	Walk Like an Egyptian	Crawl Like an Etruscan
Murray Head	One Night in Bangkok	Equals Three Nights in Buffalo
Dire Straits	Sultans of Swing	Barons of Bebop
Don Henley	The Boys of Summer	The Puberty of Autumn
John Mellancamp	Jack & Diane	Jack, Diane, Jack Jr., Lynnette, Little Peewee, Francis, and Ditty the Labradoodle
The Free Design	Kites Are Fun	Balloons Are Okay
Frank Sinatra	My Way	(Thud)
Led Zeppelin	Stairway to Heaven	Dumbwaiter to Purgatory
Benny Goodman	Sing, Sing, Sing	Shut up, Shut up, Shut up
The Foo Fighters	Long Road to Ruin	Wide U-turn to Resignation
The Shangri-Las	Leader of the Pack	Treasurer of the Pack
Pink Floyd	Learning to Fly	Get Me the Hell Down
Clint Holmes	Playground in My Mind	Parking Lot in My Medulla
Tony Orlando & Dawn	Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree	Tie a Pink Bandanna to the Willow Stump
ABBA	Waterloo	Gettysburg
Bobby Darrin	Mack the Knife	Bill the Spork
Leslie Gore	It's My Party (And I'll Cry if I Want to)	It's the Next Day (Still Cryin')

* Really: "That's that new attack / That the other dances lack / You can see what goes on in the hall /When you dance back to back"

** He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, etc.