Things That Go Blog in the Night

Ryan was watching the 3D animated film "Chicken Little" today, and there came a point in the story where the kids played dodgeball to C+C Music Factory's hit "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)".

No big deal, except that yesterday, when Ryan was watching the 3D animated film "Robots", there came a point in the story where everybody danced to C+C Music Factory's hit "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)".

And who can forget the trailers for "Flushed Away", where the slugs all danced to C+C Music Factory's hit "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"?

What's odd about this is that these are relatively recent films (2005 and 2005 releases), but the song is from 1991. Is the entire 3D animation community stuck in the early 90s?

It seems that some songs (such as Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", especially if a character just might be gay) lend themselves to the kind of self-referential cultural humor that is the lifeblood of the current crop of 3D animated films, much as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana lends itself to a certain genre of battle epics.



Be sure to enjoy this clip from the Simpsons episode "Homer's Phobia", where Homer takes Bart to a steel mill so he can see real men behaving like real men. Naturally, the mill transforms into "The Anvil", a gay bar where everyone dances to C+C Music Factory's hit "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)".

A month or so ago, our friend Steve (who pastors a nice little Methodist church in Rocklin, CA) and his wife Karla introduced us to their favorite swimming hole, a pool about half a mile upstream of the spot where CA 49 crosses the Yuba river. This weekend, we took our 10-year-old son Ryan there. Naturally, he loved it, and I suspect he'll be back again and again.

Among my friends who make and drink cocktails at home or on vacation, it seems that the "Mojito" is the latest fashion. It consists of lime juice, syrup or sugar, spearmint and rum, and sometimes club soda.

This week, I'm on vacation. We spent the last three days with the family of our son's classmate, and they enjoy putting a few drinks away each night. Maybe more than a few.

Among them were Mojitos made from a mix. Mmm, tasty. It was a cool, refreshing contrast to the leafy messes at a party we attended a week ago, where everyone spent a good deal of the night picking chunks of mint leaf off their lips after every sip. I guess the trick is to get the mint flavor into the drink without a lot of leaf litter getting into the drink.