Well they're not _my_ friends...

I've loved Kay Hanley to mincy bits ever since I first saw her (in her band Letters to Cleo) performing 'I Want You To Want Me' on the roof of a school in the closing moments of '10 Things I Hate About You' - a sublime moment. (The mightiness of the song, the jubilant absurdity of a band suddenly singing on a roof with no-one watching, the pathetic fallacy of it forming a soundtrack to the events of the film...) Solo albums like 'Cherry Marmalade' are great - she does 'exhilerating' like no-one else, and has a fantastic lyrical edge and range.

Despite not being a Hanley completist, obliged to hunt down every bootleg and interview, I was slightly interested to hear that she (alternative diva that she is) sings the themesong to a Disney cartoon series, 'My Friends Tigger and Pooh'.



Now the song is nice enough (though parents who hear it several times a day might disagree.) But the cartoon looks like a living hell - sugar rushing hyper-reality channelled into screaming ugliness. I presume from this that whoever owns the Pooh stories doesn't insist on strict canonical accuracy in every manifestation of the characters, or insist that the visual style and tone match that of Ernest H. Shepard's wistful illustrations to the original books. But even allowing some creative license, the ghastliness of these images makes the original Disney film (crass horror that it is) seem like a masterpiece of subtlety.

I had the books when I was tiny, and like them well enough, but I feel a sneer coming on when I see grown up people with Pooh stationery or 'Tao of Pooh' books. Get out of the nursery, people! I expressed this thought in the office once, giving rise to general mockery given my visible love of superhero comics...

(Check out this guy painting his kid's bedroom with Pooh stuff hen redoing it with superheroes - best dad ever!)