Toga!

The rerelease of Animal House on DVD is a pretty big deal for me and apparently for many – it was a sell out at our local Wal-Mart. My obsession is in ample evidence in this analysis of the movie, and this look at the soundtrack.

But there are people even more devoted to the phenomenon than I: the cheery townsfolk of Cottage Grove, Ore., where the movie was filmed, had the world’s biggest toga party to celebrate the 25th anniversary yesterday:

An “Animal House” parade crawled up Main Street, a small-town thoroughfare that still looks the same as it did in the wild fraternity comedy. Thousands lined the street in this town of about 8,000, chanting, “Toga, Toga!”

Dozens of residents who had bit parts in the film compared fading photographs and memories.

The party animal award went Greg Hamilton, a health technician at a Portland hospital who resembles the movie’s late star, John Belushi.

Hamilton said he became fascinated by “Animal House” while a student at the University of Oregon in the early 1990s, when he saw a hole, lovingly preserved, that Belushi had knocked in a fraternity house wall with his guitar.

….Event organizers in Cottage Grove sought out actors who had bit parts in the film. Requests for tickets came from as far as New England.

Sean McCartin, who was 14, played “Lucky Boy,” the kid whose eyes were glued to a Playboy centerfold when a Playboy bunny came flying off of a parade float through his bedroom window, knocking the wind out of him.

“Thank you, God,” he said, and now he’s still saying it. He and his wife founded the Eastside Faith Center in Eugene nine years ago. [AP]

Now that’s funny.