My children are both feverish and sick. It's cool enough to play outside, but mainly we'll just watch movies and drink a lot of liquids. Since they were throwing up anyway, I'm letting them watch some of the direct-to-video sequels that Disney craps out after almost every film.

At the moment they're watching Lion King 2. This movie picks up after the birth of Simba's cub. We know it is Simba's cub because in the original Lion King Simba gains control of the pride from Scar, and when a new lion takes over a pride they systematically kill every cub sired by the previous leader.

Also, the Disney movie portrays them as singing and dancing, when every zoological study reports that lions only enjoy slam poetry.

A notable exception to the usual sequel garbage that Disney manages to compact into a DVD is Toy Story 2. This was made by Pixar, just like the first one, and Disney distributed it. Disney doesn't actually make them, see, but they market damn hard to make people think they do. Pixar was working on the sequel and basically called Disney up and said "Sorry, we don't know how to make...crap."

Thus, the budget for Toy Story 2 was upped considerably and even released in theaters. It was even better than the first one, in my opinion. Emotionally, it had some very complex scenarios. Also, it was hilarious.

And Disney learned nothing.

Now that they have considerably more influence after purchasing Pixar (although the boys are still pretty bad ass; one of the head guys flat-out told Disney that they wouldn't do any sequels "unless the story demands it".

I'm hopeful that they'll be able to fight off the Disney influence. If they turn into an inbred studio like Disney, raping classic stories and then shuttling off the twisted spawn into a Wal-Mart bin near you.