Drama! Suspense! . . . Toilet Paper? It’s a ‘Ripley’ Sequel, Believe It or Not

Return of the Sequels: The “Scrabble syndrome” has struck Off-Kilter. You know how it works: The first player puts down a word like “phone,” and the second player builds on it to create a new word, “xylophone,” which earns 62 points because it’s on a triple word score, so the first player spells out “rexylophone,” which is obviously the word for what you do when your old xylophone needs replacing, but the second player challenges it, which causes the first player to get upset and--after a scuffle--one of them goes to the hospital with a small tile “X” lodged in his trachea.

In our case, we recently wrote a column on the coming glut of movie sequels, such as “The D.A.R.E. Witch Project,” in which three drug-abuse counselors vanish in the woods while trying to help a heroin-addicted witch.

A few weeks later, the Portland Oregonian’s humor column, the Edge, reprinted our column and added a few sequels of its own: “Silence of the Lambs 2: So Many People, So Little Seasoning,” “Being John Mellencamp” and “The Sixth Sense II,” starring Marlon Brando (“I see fat people”).

So we contacted the Edge guy and promised to do a column ripping off his ripping off of us. He said, “Fine, then I can rip off you ripping off me ripping off you.”

Oh right, like that is just so mature. Anyway, here’s our latest batch of movie sequels:

* “The Talented Mr. Whipple.” An elderly toilet-paper spokesman goes on a killing spree in Europe, murdering anyone who squeezes the Charmin.

* “The Muppets Take Magnolia.” Subbing for Tom Cruise, Bert plays a misogynist puppet who visits his dying father while Los Angeles is paralyzed by a freak rainstorm of Kermits.

* “Scream 4.” Barbara Walters broadcasts yet another interview with Monica Lewinsky.

* “Bye-Bye Bicentennial Man.” A frustrated movie critic locks all of Robin Williams’ excessively schmaltzy characters in the trunk of an old Buick (Patch Adams, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jakob the Liar, the doctor in “What Dreams May Come,” etc.) and pushes them off a cliff.

* “Snow Falling on Cider House Rules.” Audiences keep mixing up “The Cider House Rules” with “Snow Falling on Cedars,” so Hollywood combines them.

* “Deuce Bigalow II.” Bill Clinton finds post-White House employment.

* “Anna and the Don King.” The love that dared not speak its name between a pious schoolmarm (Jodie Foster) and a legendary boxing promoter.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Story: We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the world is about to end. On the plus side, the stock market will continue to soar, but otherwise things look rather grim, especially for religious figures.

For example, according to prophetic scrolls recently unearthed by the Weekly World News, Billy Graham will soon be kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists and tortured to death with cattle prods after he refuses to bow before Allah on worldwide TV. But Graham gets off easy compared with Pope John Paul II, who will be “vaporized by a short-range nuclear missile” while visiting North Korea.

Even worse, Jesus Christ himself will fall when “skittish National Guardsmen, egged on by United Nations observers, cut [him] down with AK-47 assault rifles and an estimated 200 canisters of incendiary tear gas upon [his] return to Earth at the height of a race riot in New York City on Easter Sunday--just months from now!”

Happy new millennium!

E-mail Off-Kilter at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And we still think “rexylophone” is a word.