Happy Feet Comments and Clip

I knew they were cute. So did Gerard Vanderleun.
And from time to time I see somebody else is looking for the Penguin Batting post I put together. (The link sees to be broken, incidentally.)
We now have the dancing penguin Gloria under the Christmas tree and she has to perform for everybody who comes to visit.

Go figure.

This Happy Feet movie is symptomatic of our national need to escape the empty, savage reality of events over which we seem to have no control. My wife and I were in New York with another couple in October, 2001, just after the WTC attack. While we were there we escaped into a performance of Mama Mia which had just opened. One of our friends was an entertainer in her early years and made an inciteful observation. She said that Oklahoma the musical was an escape at the time it opened from the horrors of World War Two. Here's a poignant thought: As a social metric, I can understand this penguin film as being to the Iraq nightmare what Oklahoma was to the Second World War.




Well, crap.

My wife tells me that the film is politically "controversial."
"What are you talking about?"
"Some Christian families have walked out. Something about homosexuality."
"I see. Probably has something about those two queer male penguins in a zoo I read about who formed a pair, bonded, found an abandoned egg, hatched it and raised a baby penguin."

I guess we have to wait to find out if the penguin hatchling turns out to be a three-dollar bill. I'm sure there are people watching and waiting with great expectations, not sure whether to pray for the baby penguin to turn out heterosexual, for his sake, or gay, to prove some kind of perverted point -- if you will excuse the term. (Oh, yes. There's also a book. Go get the matches.)

Gimme a break. I looked it up and sure enough she's right. There are those who want to use this animated film to bash everything from fags to Gore. Go read about it for yourself, if you're drawn to that sort of thing... [Advisory: spoiler here if you haven't seen the film.]

It's the Christmas season, but Scrooge isn't gone by a long shot.