Happier Feet

To begin with, I'm not a big fan of "Happy Feet"... stupid Penguins thinking they can stop stupid humans from fishing in their stupid waters, and all of that singing. My God the singing. Plus, I absolutely can't stand a movie that has a blatant message that punches you in the face repeatedly, especially one that would make Al "energy-conservationist-hypocrite" Gore sit back in his 30-gigawatt, coal-burning, fossil-fuel-powered armchair in his giant 11,000-square-foot mansion (where he uses his electricity meter as a ceiling fan) and sigh in approval that someone else was getting out the global-warming-sham message besides him.

Anyway, the other day, I was tootling the kids somewhere and in the CD player of my truck was Prince's "Kiss," (don't judge me, I like it), and if you might recall, it is the very song Mama what's-her-face sings at the beginning of the movie to attract potential mate, Elvis what's-his-face, and out of nowhere, Natalie drops this very Prince-esque "whoohoo!" in the exact spot in the song it's supposed to land, with perfect timing, duration, tone, tune and attitude. Prince barely did a better job.

So, every time Matthew roots around in the TV cabinet where we keep the DVD stash, he usually seeks out or comes across by chance the Happy Feet DVD. He'll carry it around a while, peeping "Appy Eet!" until I put in the movie...which he will watch about forty seconds of it before finding some other shiny thing that grabs his attention.

But the first time they watched it together, there was much dancing around the ottoman, as Matthew sucked up some of Natalie's dope moves (do the kids still say "dope" anymore? I'm so old). Actually, they both dance like Elaine from "Seinfeld," which resembles calisthenics more than dancing, and the frequent stops are for cheese and crackers and those little red sticks. So I nabbed a few clips, haphazardly strung them together, added a simple title, some fades, and propped the whole thing up under some boring, monotonous techno music that nicely drowns out the hacked up soundtrack to "Happy Feet." I did have to finesse it to fit with some of the breaks so there was some minimal 2am-effort involved...

Watch sparingly.