A few minutes ago, I read a VNN post by Yankee Jane on body odors and thought about a video my wife borrowed from a girlfriend a few nights ago. Over the Hedge has "racial overtones" that led us all to wonder how it ever made it into the marketplace.

My dog and I are inseparable and he is a lot like me: Hurt him and he's not discouraged-- quite the opposite: He shook a skunk to death about a month ago and he still smells somewhat after hydrogen peroxide, ozonated water, baking soda, ammonia, you name it-- including the myth of tomato juice-- we've tried it. Now, when we're afield, he seems to be looking for another one. I'm betting that he can't kill just one.

My new New Balance shoes, that now live on the porch in the sun, still have been laundered until I'm concerned they'll fall apart and they still smell. I'm sure I smelled for days but one's scent receptors overload quickly and become unreliable. I'm sure our smell is something else with which my wife is burned-out on us. Anyway, unless you've had the experience, you can't really appreciate the seriousness of such a decontamination problem.

Seems skunks are loaded with about five rounds and I suppose this one let everything go eventually when he realized he wouldn't be needing them anymore.

Anyway, it is the skunk character with the Black woman's voice in the video that you don't want to miss.

There was a dark period in American animation after the passing of Walt Disney and Walter Lance and, after "cartoons" that were still photos with cut-outs and moving human mouths, I feared the art was dead and didn't watch any of this stuff until relatively recently. However, the subtle nuances and remarkably high brow humor says these are not JUST for children began to impress me with The Incredibles and, as far as I'm concerned-- having worked with both blasters and homeowner association presidents, the scene prefaced by the skunk warning "Fire in the hole," was worth the price of buying my own copy.

There was a time, I think in about 1964, when I thought I'd like to be a cartoonist, when I grew up. Guys like Bob Parsons (See his cartoons in The Moneychanger) are the most gifted artists of our time. To understand us, historians would do well to look back on what gave us comic relief in such times. That's what I'd like to be able to do-- to help myself by helping others lighten-up, from time to time, while teaching something very important at the same time. The problem for me is that I don't think I'm going to live to grow up.