Sequels

Sequels

My second tour of midnights has gotten me thinking about sequels. The second time around for a movie, album, book and video game very rarely achieves the success of the first. Since I am in the very beginning of my midnight patrol sequel, it is too early to tell if it will be with the common fate of the sequel (think bad) or the more rare but possible “good” to "great" outcome. The following are a series of sequels; some the beloved younger brother (EB) but most the despised next door neighbor (DNDN).

Equal or Better (EB)

Star Wars…Empire Strikes Back
Wow a great adventure movie with a happy ending followed by a great dark movie with the big reveal. What can I say that has not already been said.

DNDN

The Matrix…The Matrix Reloaded
Right after the first movie I left the theater thinking, “I don’t know what that was but boy was it cool.” The second movie got lost in its own internal rules and attempt to come up with a relevant plot line that matched the promise of the first. It didn’t. On a side note this may be one of the times that a serviceable movie that could have stood on its own was a victim of the brilliance of the movie that came before.

EB

Doctor Who
The First Run…The Current Run
I love Doctor Who. When it was announced that they were going to start producing the series again, I thought there is no way it will be anywhere close to where they had it with Tom Baker. Eccleston and Rose were not all that bad but did not equal the greatest episodes from the first run. Then they found Tennant and he and Rose were everything that Doctor Who should be. Then they find this Smith guy and it can’t possibly be as good but Amy Pond comes with him and it has me thinking it may just be as good as the Baker years (and if I have been drinking I may even admit that it could possibly be better).

DNDN

Battlestar Galactica…Galactica 1980

Space battles, the enemies were cool looking red eye sweeping around Cyclops’s shinny metal head, cool nicknames (Boomer), good looking women (I was just starting to find that species interesting), mission to save their race from extinction, a robot that looked like my dog…Lorne Green! Just to be followed up by dudes hanging around earth for no particular reason with no special effects budget. I was young but not stupid enough to follow the second series.

EB

All Creatures Great and Small…All Things Bright and Beautiful (James Herriot).

Two books that where a match for each other. Warm, witty, English, was the reason I tried to name my oldest Tristan and was accepted into the University of Illinois Veterinary program.

DNDN

The Eye of the World…The Great Hunt (Robert Jordan)

The classic tale retold many different times. Jordan had a village boy who was not important, found to have special powers and needed to save the world but now has to run to stay alive till he can save the world. The first book was well paced, the characters felt and acted real and according to the rules that Jordan had set up. Just flat out fun. Then he got mired in this huge plot line with too many people, too many things to do and too many loose ends. Each book, after the first, got longer and the characters did less, even worse the characters became stereotypes of themselves and started acting outside of cause and effect. Disappointing.

EB

Star Trek: The Motion Picture…Star Trek (2009)

Love me some Star Trek. I even like the first movie even though they went dark and arty. But the reboot caught it just right. Adventure, friendship, humor, the created a world where you would have loved to have actually been with them there participating in it all.

DNDN

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark…Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom. The first movie is an adventure with humor and a plot line that keeps you guessing. It is in my top five all time. The second is a ride at the local amusement park, it just moves from point A to Point B looking to give you a thrill but not looking for a reason to care. It is another reason to keep Lucas doing nothing other than supervise special effects.

EB

Cheers…Fraiser. One is a fun buddy comedy about the times and trials of a group of misfit friends from working class backgrounds. Fraiser is about the times and trials of a group of family members and friends who are misfits, generally from a upper class background. They were excellent.

DNDN

X-Files…Millennium. X-Files was great gothic mystery theater with a conspiracy overlay. Did Fox Muller’s sister really get taken by aliens or was it the government or a secret third party. Just who was that smoking man anyway? Was that a werewolf? Millennium, first it was about tracking down serial killers at the end of the age. Then it was a conspiracy theory tied to the end of the age, then it was about…wait I quit caring and turned it off.


EB

Shadowrun: Never Deal with a Dragon…Choose your Enemies Carefully. This was my first foray into the world of cyberpunk. I loved it and when it brought in fantasy elements into the story line in the second book it got even better.

DNDN

Ian Fleming-Man with the Golden Gun and Jonathan Cape-Colonel Sun. I loved reading James Bond Novels growing up. He was cool, he got the ladies, he was gritty, he was deadly and he saved the world, every time. When Fleming passed away they handed the torch to Cape who sent Bond on a bland parody of everything Ian had created.

EB

ACDC Bon Scott…ACDC Brian Jones. What is there really to say. Highway to Hell was followed up by Back in Black. 32 years later and both songs are in my MP3 player.

DNDN

Van Hallen Sammy Hagar…Van Hallen Gary Cherone. I thought that no one could replace David Lee Roth but Sammy stepped in and held his own with some of their best songs. As comic book guy would not say, “Best transition ever!” Then they tried it again with Gary and promptly blew up. They sounded old, weren’t relevant, didn’t seem to be having a good time and sounded terrible to boot.


EB

Resident Evil…Resident Evil 2. Fantastic. It brought me into the world of horror survival games that I have never left. Then they took everything that captivated me and moved it out of a home and into the city of Raccoon. There were more than a few nights that turned unexpectedly into days playing those two games.

DNDN

Shadowman…Shadowman 2. The first game created a mythos that was unique and unexpected. The serial killers as bosses was genius. It was also very hard. There were many times were I had to back track for thirty minutes to find the place or device or item I missed. The second game was whipped out, bland game, with no story line, pointless quests and too easy. Well it was too easy till you got to the final boss who was way, way, way, way too hard. A total waste of time.

I could have spent twenty pages on this so I just decided to stop here. I will probably come back to it since the topic is full of examples. As much as I have days of midnights left.


Joshua 3:7
And the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses.

Back in the Saddle Again-Midnight Shift Patrol

Well, I had thought that the good ole midnight patrol shift was behind me eight years ago when I had enough seniority to go to the afternoon shift, then the day shift and finally into investigations. God has a funny way of making the improbable, probable.

So here I am in my second week, back in uniform, back in patrol and back on midnights. It is a place I never thought I would be without sergeant stripes on my shoulder. Midnights (well really 11:00 pm to 7:00 am) is a strange place and creates a strange existence.

The first thing you notice is how you awake in the dark and go to sleep in the light. It really throws you. Every time I get up I have this one second of disorientation in which I try to figure out how early in the morning I am getting up. Is it three or four in the morning? Then my brain gets properly warmed up and I realize, oh, yeah, its 8:00 pm. The other thing is that at the end of your day its sunny out and yet you’re really tired. Since all of us has been programed from the beginning of our lives to be active during the light and sleep during the dark, you find yourself foolishly fighting to stay awake because you can’t really be that tired if the sun is out or so your brain lies to you.

The second thing that has struck me is how isolated and alone you feel. There is no one out here. In my eight hour shift I pass more deer, fox and opossum than I ever do with human beings. It brings out a Twilight Zone-esq feeling of living among people but not with them. When you are coming home from work, they are going to work. When you are sleeping, they are awake. Your breakfast is their dinner and your dinner is their breakfast. Your news is never current it is just a recap of the day. Etc.

The third thing is now I sleep alone. I have been married for more than fifteen years and only five of them have we not shared a bed together. Yet now when I come home, she is jumping up and getting the kids ready for school and she enters the bed right when I am walking out the door at night. I have to admit I have searched for her in my sleep, with that sleepy outstretched hand thing and came really close to falling off and hitting the floor when she was nowhere to be found.

Finally just some observations and situations that have come up:

“Why are you drinking a beer right now it’s 7:00 am!” But honey it’s the end of my day not the beginning.
“Why are you eating breakfast cereal for dinner again?” Well for starters it’s my breakfast time.
“Let set that appointment for 1:30 pm.” Um no that would be the same as setting it for 3:30 am for everyone else.
“Aren’t there scientific studies that show the midnight shift takes five or more years off your longevity?” Yes but so far the department has not accepted my proposal to have robots fight crime from 11 to 7.

“Aren’t shifts picked by seniority?” Only if the union will fight it when they are not.

“Don’t you pay a lot in Union dues?” We have a great BBQ once a year.

“What are you going to do for this whole year?” Keeping working and be joyful and remember all my friends that don’t even have a job to be irritated with.

And

“How is working midnights as a police officer different than the other two shifts?” It is easier; there are not any good or legit reasons to be out and about this time of night. Just ask your grandmother, she's right in her advice.

So as you can see I am in the process of coming to grips with it all and it will be interesting to see where this journey takes me. God is in control and he never seems to ask my opinion first before he acts. So when I have the ability to look back and see the context of this current situation I will understand, to a very tiny aspect, how our great and glorious God’s hand was moving to bless me. Until then, well…persevere and convince my daughter to stop asking questions at the foot of my bed at 4:30 pm.

1 Peter 3:17
For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.


Image Credit: NASA