L is for...

"Land of 1000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett

Or, as that album cover calls him, "The Exciting Wilson Pickett."  He sure does look excited, though, doesn't he?
I've loved this song since I was very small, because it was in the movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest.  The version in the movie is by a band called Guy, but I liked it a lot, so I ended up finding the originally version later on.  You know how every kid has a favorite movie, one that they force their family to sit through over and over again, and seem somehow incapable of setting tired of it no matter how many times they see it?  For me, FernGully was that movie.  I watched it all the time.  I loved it.  It was awesome.

Unfortunately, I don't remember a whole lot of it now, since we had it VHS and I haven't seen the thing since the advent of DVDs.  What I do remember are the crazy bat character, a vague outline of the major plot points, and the pollution monster.  My god, the pollution monster.  You know how kids are scared of things like the boogieman?  That pollution monster was my boogieman.
I'm not sure I'm able to convey how deep and pure my fear of this thing was.  Here's what it looks like:

It's name is Hexxus.  As far as I was concerned, that guy was lurking in every dark corner of every room, ever, just waiting to chase me down and swallow me whole.  When I turned off the basement light (conveniently located at the bottom of the staircase) I ran to the top of those stairs like my life depended on it.  Because it did.  Hexxus wanted me dead, and I had to RUN.

Is it weird that I continually watched a movie with my worst nightmare in it?  Well, I suppose he is technically defeated in the end (though he's only trapped and don't think I wasn't aware he could be freed again at any time), but maybe the other characters were enough to keep me coming back?  I have no idea.  It was a complicated time.