Happy Feet, I've got those Happy Feet ...

So you think this is just a movie about dancing penguins, hmmm? I did too.

Wrong.

Happy Feet should come with a warning. Right out of the box. It will make you want to tap dance, even if you can't. You will want to take home a baby penguin. (And even if you could, that's really not such a great idea, is it?) Most of all, this audacious, blindingly bright, glittering music box of a movie is going to knock you out of your seat with laughter one moment, tears the next, and finally -- in the end -- with a take-no-prisoners message about what we're doing to the planet (hint: it ain't good) that won't be ignored. Not for one minute.

What to do with it all, what to do, what to DO? I may have to see it again to decide.

I know I liked it, and on many levels. On some, I even loved it. Especially gratifying is the central story of Mumbles -- the fuzzy, happy footed hero whose tap dancing expresses what his lack of song cannot. Like Rudolph with his beacon of a nose, a liability is turned in the end to triumph.

That's the spirit. Yeah, you show 'em kid!

See this movie. Take a kid, or three. It will quietly piss off your very conservative friends and relatives (think of it as a bonus), while showing the little ones a good time. And it will dazzle you ...

... like it did me.

L.A.E.

Women who run with the horses ...

There was a news item a short while back about a herd of horses who were trapped by rising waters on a very small patch of land. Apparently a group of four women went out to save them, and it was captured on video:

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-4584913278289860160

To see what we can do, the power we have when convictions and courage move us to action, is heartstopping, convicting and furiously full of hope.


L.A.E.

Election 2006: The Day After

I live in the "bluest" (most Democratic) state in the nation, but the city I live in is surrounded entirely by "red voting" districts and the governor-elect just barely won the votes of my neighbors. To the north is New Hampshire, a red state gone newly blue, to the surprise of many and the chagrin of a few.

I'm no pundit, and not vain enough to think anybody wants to hear my opinion on anyof this. But I do have a blog, and therefore a little space in which to hold forth, a tiny squeak in the whole universe of web chatter.

So here is my say: Enough is enough! Enough of the fat cats, enough of the lies, enough pandering to the interests of the greedy politicos who line their pockets and feed their private interests while innocents pay the price.

Enough!

The time for change has come, and the rally around the ballot boxes is more than proof enough of that.


L.A.E.

1955: Plath's 'Ennui'

A recently discovered sonnet, penned by then-undergrad Sylvia Plath, has been published on-line by Virginia Commonwealth University.

A voice like hers blazed early, bright, and strong ... these many years later, we are rapt for more. More Plath, we strain at the possibilities, voracious for morsels from the stilled voice, the spirit fixed under glass, too soon an apparation.

'Ennui' is fertile, numinous with the points of her nimble writer's mind. Still, it haunts even as it satisfies. From early on, Plath saw ends from afar, eddying and looming into the everyday, her deathless perception an inescapable double bind.


L.A.E.