the show last weekend went pretty well. the ride was comfortable thanks to my new civic. i think i played a pretty good set, as did most of the other performers. we even sold a few cds. i could go on & on with a detailed report, but i've recently a much more pressing issue, a new evil which has just now pounced upon the public, its bloody corporate fangs positioned to maim & disembowel all that is pure & true. i'm speaking, of course, about lady and the tramp ii.

i'm sure you remember the original lady and the tramp, the classic 1955 disney feature about a posh, spoiled pup named lady who falls for that rascally rifraff from the wrong side of the tracks, tramp. right now you're probably picturing that unforgettable spaghetti scene, or trying to recall the lyrics to the siamese cat song (which i recently acquired on vinyl... precious). but did you know about its straight-to-video sequel, which was released today, feb 27 2001? apparently, after 46 years, those 2 dogs had a puppy! from what i can tell by the billboards, they didn't have a whole litter either, just that one puppy, named scamp. i was sure that if they weren't both long dead, lady would at least be menopausal by now. maybe she goes to a fertility clinic; i'll never know because i vow never to see this video.

why did lady and the tramp need a sequel? it was the classic love story, retold allegorically through dogs. how can you add to that? what more can be said without annihilating the willing suspension of disbelief? what made that movie good, like all quality movies with happy endings, is that it knew where to end. that's the key to happy endings, as neil gaiman pointed out. if you follow any story for long enough, it turns tragic. because everybody dies. no romance can stay perfect forever (or ever be perfect, for that matter). the world never remains saved for too long.

happy endings work precisely because they are endings. they are a glimmering snapshot in time. people can look at that one moment & feel warmth & hope because they can't see any of the bad stuff that happens afterward. they don't have to see the newlyweds fighting, cheating, or separating, let alone dying in hideous accidents or from cancer or even from old age. love stories aren't supposed to have sequels. that's left pretty much to action/adventure stories, where an action hero is obviously the type who would get in other action-oriented situations. what else are the characters in a love story going to do, aside from fall in love?

it's a given that everyone on the creative team of the original movie has either retired or died long since. this isn't an extra part of their vision. this is a product developed by committee to cash in on a disney brand which was beloved but was apparently not bringing in enough money. it is the boldest & the most disgraceful in the recent movement of straight-to-video disney sequels (following the at least plausible aladdin sequels & the curious little mermaid sequels [interesting because in the hans xian anderson original, the little mermaid dies, so there couldn't've been any sequels if they'd followed that]... none of which i've seen, mind you). why lady and the tramp? why not sleeping beauty ii? what are the chances? beauty falls asleep again, & only the kiss of prince charming, who is inconveniently very far away, can revive her! or pinnochio ii? he's a real little boy, & goes off to school, where he's routinely bullied by the children who were never made of wood. how about dumbo ii? the genetic mutation carries on to dumbo's children, but they, too small to fly yet, are bullied by the other young elephants, who are jealous of dumbo's fame.

i'm not really sure why this lady and the tramp ii business bothers me quite so much as it does. maybe it's because i already had my old childhood favorite the fox and the hound ruined by rewatching it recently & realizing how awful the music was, & i don't want that kind of taint coming over another pure childhood memory. because that's what this sequel does: it pollutes the first movie by associating with its name. it's like idolatry; it steals away glory from the original. we never knew what happened to lady, tramp, the siamese cats, or any of the bunch after the first movie ended. it was left to the perfection of our own imaginations. now that's all been spoiled. disney is trying to tell you that your imagination is wrong.