Four Country Songs You Didn't Know Had Sequels

4. El Paso

El Paso is a 1959 hit written and performed by Marty Robbins. It is told from the perspective of a man who falls deeply in love with a girl named Feleena who works in a Mexican cantina. When another man begins to pursue her, the narrator's deep jealousy leads him to challenge the interloper. The resulting gunfight ends in the other man's death, and the narrator is forced to flee to escape the law. But his love for Feleena is too great and he eventually returns to see her once more. Tragically he is shot to death just as he sees his love one last time. It is a sad story.

Robbins would go on to write two sequels, both of which were popular at the time they were released. The first, Feleena (From El Paso), is not technically a sequel. Instead it tells the same story but from Feleena's perspective. It reveals that after the cowboy was shot to death in the first son, Feleena took his gun and turned it on herself in her grief.

The second sequel is El Paso City, which takes place in contemporary times. The narrator is looking down from a plane upon El Paso, which leads him to remember the legend of the cowboy and Feleena. As he ponders this, he mentions how he often feels a deep connection to the cowboy and alludes to a past life.

3. The Devil Went Down to Georgia

The Devil Went Down to Georgia is an excellent song. In it, the Devil receives his comeuppance when he challenges the wrong person to a fiddle duel, and is sent packing back to Hell. So when I found out that The Charlie Daniels Band recorded a sequel, I was pretty stoked. Did it live up to my expectations? If you have ever heard The Devil Comes Back to Georgia, you can probably figure out the answer. When I first heard Johnny Cash, I was like "Yeah!!!" but then I heard Marty Stuart's voice and my expectations were shot.

It's not a bad song, for sure, but all in all it's just a retread of the first, both in plot and in tune, with a few little differences here and there.

2. Big Bad John

Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John is a classic. It is a tale of a mysterious miner surrounded by rumor and legend which ends in tragedy when the titular character sacrifices himself to save his fellow miners from a collapsing mine.

So how many sequels does Big Bad John have? A grand total of three. Two were written by Dean; The Cajun Queen and Little Bitty Big John. The Cajun Queen is a pretty crazy song. John's Cajun lady friend (she's mentioned in the first song) shows up. She is unconcerned by the fact he died and goes ahead and brings him back to life. They get married, grow old, and end up with 110 grandchildren, no joke. Little Bitty Big John is about John and the Cajun lady's son. It seems to disregard The Cajun Queen and John still seems to be dead.

The last sequel was performed by Dottie West. Called My Big John, it has a different take on John's Cajun girl friend than The Cajun Queen. Sadly I cannot find a good link anywhere.

1. North to Alaska

This song was one of Johnny Horton's best. The story is about George Pratt, his best friend Sam McCord, and George's brother Billy and their quest during the Yukon gold rush to strike it rich. Well, they do strike it rich, and George asks Sam to go back to the lower 48 and find him a ring so he can propose to his girlfriend. 

This is where the song ends. The thought that there was a sequel never crossed my mind. Then one day I happened to see a John Wayne movie called North to Alaska. My mind was blown. As it turns out, Horton wrote the song as a tie-in to the movie. It plays during the opening credits and then the movie picks up where the song ends. Sam (John Wayne) goes to Seattle to bring George's girl back to Alaska. What he finds however is that she got hitched while George was away. Sam isn't sure what to do, so he brings back a prostitute called Angel as a substitute. Crazy hijinks ensue. 

Maybe I'm cheating a little by counting a movie as a sequel, but on the other hand it was a good movie. Being a pretty basic John Wayne film, I enjoyed it for what it was. If you like the song and/or John Wayne, you should check it out if you ever have the chance.

Waldo and Carmen Sandiego : A Match Made in Heaven?

When I was little, there was nothing I loved more than watching Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? It was a great show in which two young children were tasked with catching Carmen Sandiego, the world's greatest criminal mastermind and head of the world's largest crime cartel. There was literally nothing she could not steal. The Sphinx's nose? Carmen Sandiego. Mona Lisa's smile? Carmen Sandiego. SNL's relevence? Carmen took it back in the 80's. Even Batman isn't immune.

And if there is one thing she is better at than thievery, that is being impossible to find. The entire Carmen Sandiego franchise is built upon the concept of legions of detectives running around the world attempting to locate her while her heists continue to become more outrageous and bombastic. Heck, I spent many hours playing that blasted video game, and never had anything to show for it. At times, I would find myself thinking that maybe Carmen Sandiego was a lie, that she never existed at all and was nothing more than a cheap gimmick to gip me out ten dollars.

Truly, there is no one more elusive than Carmen Sandiego. 

Right?

Wrong.

Waldo may be a schmuck, but obfuscating stupidity is one of the oldest hats in the book, and Waldo's been wearing that particular hat for quite some time now. Waldo's been playing a game of cat and mouse with all of us for years, and much like Carmen Sandiego, has an entire line of books and games built around him. Believe it or not, there was even a Waldo cartoon back in the nineties. Fittingly, I can't find it anywhere*. And not only have people been trying to figure out the where of Waldo for years now, but also the who and why. Many theories have been proposed. Maybe he is a man on the run. Or maybe a secret agent. Even Werner Herzog has his own ideas.

Whatever the case may be, I grew up with both Waldo and Carmen Sandiego. I suppose the idea eventually had to occur to me; what would happen if the two of them met? It was sort of like getting hit by a lightning bolt. I thought about it, and then decided that such an idea was too obvious for one man to have. Just like the steam engine, someone else, somewhere else, had to have shared my thought. Naturally I went to the internet.

The internet did not disappoint. I found this.

and this...

and this...

And a lot more besides. An endless parade of cartoons all making the most obvious punchlines. Sometimes I love the internet. This was one of those times indeed.

As I scrolled through google images, it became clear to me that for whatever reason, most of these artists wanted Carmen and Waldo paired together romantically. That thought had never occurred to me before. Let's be honest; Carmen Sandiego is a fox. Waldo is, as said before, a schmuck. The plausibility of that hookup was negligible at best, nonexistent at worst.

But then I gave it some thought. When it comes to unique skills, there is no one who will understand Carmen Sandiego like Waldo, and vice versa. Also, it provides couples a unique way to celebrate Halloween together. And as a geek myself (case in point: this blog), shouldn't I be pulling for Waldo in this situation?

Faced with facts like these, I had to admit it made sense. I only had one lingering question. What happens if they have a kid?

Everybody should have seen that coming.




*Ha ha, but seriously, I can't find it.



All images belong to respectful deviantart users, google images.

Football vs Soccer Part 1

As a whole, it seems like everyone but the United States has nothing to offer but disdain for American football when comparing it to association football (better known as soccer in the US). A video spot done by the insufferable comedic genius John Cleese outlines some of the more salient points. Here's some good examples of such complaints.

1) American football is commercially oriented. Each short play allows for that much more time devoted to adverts.

2) American football allows for very little creativity, with little to no thinking being done by the individual players.

3) To call american football 'football' is a misnomer, because the feet are rarely in contact with the ball, and the ball is not a ball at all. 'Handegg' would be a more accurate title. And the fact that Americans refer to  association football as soccer is just idiotic.

4) American football players are pansies. If you want to see real men, watch a game of rugby.

For people who haven't seen much of John Cleese's more politically charged material, this may seem pretty venomous. It is hard to determine whether his gripes are born out of legitimate annoyance or a needlessly confusing attempt at humor*, or some combination thereof.

However, since Cleese is a well known master of satire, I think that it is reasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt. The problem is that his sentiments are echoed by thousands of others who are quite serious in what they say. So for all of those people, here is the other side of the story.

1) American football is indeed commercially oriented. This is because our networks operate in a capitalistic system. It costs money to gain broadcasting rights; ergo, to remain competitive, they must advertise up the wazoo. But in the UK, citizens pay for television with government taxation, which means they don't have nearly as many commercials.

2) I don't know how much american football John Cleese has ever played. Probably none, but he is getting up there in years, so statistically there is a reasonable chance he has at least once. It is a very tactically oriented game in which the coach and the various coordinators duel with their opponents by trying to exploit the other team's weaknesses and to capitalize on their own team's strengths using carefully designed plays. It's really hard to compare this system to that of association football since it is effectively an apples and oranges debate. The level (player vs coach) in which 'creativity'** occurs in each sport is determined primarily by where such creativity serves to benefit the most.

3) Where to begin? In case you didn't know, a lot of field sports in the UK are called 'football'. Rugby is short for rugby football, american football is actually called gridiron football (because the field resembles a gridiron), and of course there is association football. When rugby football was imported from the UK to the US, we modified the rules to our liking and named the result gridiron football, because that was the naming convention. We also kept the rugby style ball, which, you guessed it, happens to resemble an egg. We also decided to start calling a lot of these sports by their abbreviated names to make things simpler. This is why you rarely hear rugby referred to as rugby football anymore and you will hear american football called gridiron from time to time.

This is also why we call association football soccer, because soccer is short for association. If that seems a little dumb, blame the Brits, because they coined the term soccer long before anyone in the US ever used the word. Really.

4) I should probably skip this one, because it's not really related to the question of football vs soccer, but I'll go ahead and talk about it anyways. As a person who has played quite a bit of american football and a little rugby, I can honestly say that american football is much, much more violent. Rugby is a contact sport, american football is a collision sport. The reason pads are required in american football is because the death toll in the early 1900's was too high.

So that's the end of part 1. Now that those complaints have been covered, I'll probably spend more time talking about which game is more enjoyable to watch and play.

*Since I am a yank, it could very well be I just don't get Cleese's British humor.

**Also, players in american football probably don't get enough credit when it comes to individual contribution.

Because Life Should Be This Awesome