What happens in the barn...

...stays in the barn.

Or so says the promotional material for an upcoming CG animated feature - BARNYARD. I'm not in any rush to go out and see it, altho I do appreciate a good kid-tipping. (Sorry, this isn't about THE SHIELD. =)

Have you seen any ads, or the trailer, for this? Do you notice anything... peculiar?

I started a wee ramble on this while scattin on the Parade o Cows currently hittin Bostonia, and then harassed my friend Jess about it via IM, and finally had the 1am-thought that I should try spooling the scattin out at a more sensible pace here.

Okay, so! The main characters of BARNYARD are cows, see? They lead hidden lives, see, all smart and walking upright on hind legs, and apparently gifted with an opposable thumb-hoof... or something..., see? Which allows them to participate in that activity which we consider to be unique to humans, and demonstrates that we are apart from and better than other beasts... And what is this mark of higher intelligence, of civilization and culture, that proves that among all of the spaghetti monster's creations, we are blessed?

Partying, apparently.

Hey, it's not my movie. I might've said volleyball, or canning salted meats, or foleying martial arts films, or 10-sided dice, or banjo playing, or disgruntled teens, or deciding it's a good idea, once our naturally provided source of it disappears, to continue to consume milk for many many years, taken from another species...


Okay, I'm rambling away from my ramble, sorry. Have you checked out the trailer?

Okay, so, you see how the stars are the cows? And the cows, they're these rambunctuous guys, right? Okay. Think about that...

COWS.

GUYS.

They're standing up on their hind legs and if they were talking at you, I would understand if you might miss a word or three as you are a bit distracted by their flapping udders.

Now, I know cartoons and animated worlds are not the places to visit for realism or consistency (except perhaps for FANTASTIC PLANET, or the leg-warmered bird and fishiness of the Don Bluth animated segment of XANADU =). I mean, how do Mickey and Minnie get away with bossing around their dog Pluto? And if Pluto's a pet, what the heck is Goofy? And how the heck does Donald go pantsless without making the police blotter?

I suddenly wish I had the multimedia power to replace Jar Jar Binks with Goofy in all the prequels.

But, c'mon! Nickeloden is gonna push boy-cows (not bulls - you do see the udders, right? Well, we HOPE they're udders...) as their main characters in a feature film? Doesn't that just seem... irresponsible? Wrong? Maybe... MAYbe they do something really smart and clever and self-referential in the movie, to acknowledge/explain this TRANSAMOORICA strangeness... Or maybe, it just seemed funny, absurd, and it's cartoony, so, why not? No one expects reality on this screen, right? Still... This just makes me wish I could divert all box office bucks from this movie to PBS.

Perhaps it's not so fantastic. These cows are just a little bit different thanks to the GM corn that's been mixed into their feed...?

Man o Mantooth. What am I going on about here?

I'll chalk it up to some sleep deprivation and stress and time crunch brought on by closing on a condo with my sister and brother-in-law, visiting parentals, and choked up bandwidth at work.

My parents' visit was a good time. Low key and all. I paid for lunch at S&S. (I remember Carol M. once saying, "S&S, that's the place you take your parents when they visit.") They paid for dinner (bulgogi and sushi! =). We toured the new condo-homestead and they deemed it Good. We watched some WINTER SONATA (the Korean melodrama sensation) I recorded on a whim but hadn't yet found a right time to watch on my own. And, oh yes, how could I forget what was, no doubt, the high point of their visit? I took them grocery shopping with me, cuz I needed to get some supplies for volleyballing at the beach the next day, when I kicked them out of the apartment. Heh.

Allright, I've gotta finish up some workywork. I was working on it earlier this evening, at a slackerly pace, between visits to the laundry room and a bedeviled ham sandwich dinner, but around midnight was feeling pretty loggy. I went to bed, but after a half hour, couldn't drop off into slumber. Typical. I was yawning HARD around siesta time at the office this afternoon, but come midnight, I can't settle down enough to sleep.

So, I watched some JUSTICE LEAGUE (the one with Supergirl and the Legion of Superheros =) and started typing this.

And aren't you just so lucky I did?

Boy-cows... WTF?

Keep on keepin on~

p.s. I'm not in a hurry to see BARNYARD, but it doesn't mean I won't. =)

p.p.s. But definitely not before I see CARS. So... Were there, like, dinosaur-cars in the prehistoric world of CARS? Wiped out by a meteor-car strike so that millions of years later their remains could become the oil that their Paul Newman and Owen Wilson voiced descendants would run on...?

p.p.p.s. WOW! I can't believe I found "Don't Walk Away" from XANADU on Youtube! I went looking for it a year or so ago and didn't find it. I suppose Youtube and Google video might not have been up back then, eh? Or at least, not yet enough of a destination to be primed with "kitchen sink" material. I just listened to "Xanadu" on Sunday on new my summer 2006 drive-to-the-beach mixx CD.

Ah, XANADU. Greek mythology, Solid Gold dancing, roller skates, Olivia "Sandra Dee" Newton John, Michael "Megaforce Warrior" Beck, and Gene "Gene Kelly!" Kelly! Such Goodness! I walked into it under duress when I saw it lo, those many years ago. It was one of my sister's "picks," y'know? But I came out of that theater with a new appreciation of peasant dresses, leg warmers, and ELO. I do love that movie. =)