Tag: Larry David

Global Warming Backlash

Following his Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has become a pretty large target by some global warming skeptics. Here’s what ABC News reported earlier today.

Armed with Gore’s utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

“If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn’t care,” says the Center’s 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. “But he tells other people how to live and he’s not following his own rules.”

This isn’t a new tactic. Laurie David, wife of Larry David and green activist, was singled out after she called for environmental restraint while flying coast-to-coast by private jet!

I’m not a big fan of making examples of individuals. We all have feet of clay. Still, there is some food for thought here.

I drive an SUV. I live in a fairly large house. Am I going to have to hide that in the future? Do I get a pass for having a short drive to work?

As I’ve made clear here, I am very skeptical of dire predictions of large scale human induced climate change. I really don’t want to change my life if there will be no benefit. I certainly don’t want to cripple our nation’s industrial base.

Meanwhile, in order to maintain credibility, the loudest voices will have to walk the walk as they talk the talk.

Observations On Steve Martin

I spoke to my mom last night as I was heading home from work. She and my dad had watched a tribute to Steve Martin who won the “Mark Twain Prize” in Washington.

Until then, I’d never heard of the Mark Twain Prize.

From pbs.org: Upon learning that he had won the Mark Twain Prize, Martin remarked, “I think Mark Twain is a great guy, and I can’t wait to meet him.”

I’m dubious when this thing happens as your movie is coming out (Shopgirl). Remember when celebs used to go on TV with nothing to plug? We’ll give Martin the benefit of the doubt here, but don’t let it happen again.

PBS aired the ceremony and it really was star studded. Maybe the real question is, would this award exist at all if PBS wasn’t airing it?

My mom loved the show. I thought it was lackluster as I watched the 1-3 AM rerun. For some reason the clips didn’t excite me – and believe me, there were classic bits. Actually, there was one clip that did make me smile, Steve and Dave’s Gay Vacation, with David Letterman.

The highlight of the might was Larry David, who told a hysterical tale of he and Steve Martin in New York. It was classic Larry David.

The show got me to thinking more about Steve Martin. There are many TV performers and comedians whose work I see and then I say, “I’m as good as he is.” I’ve never said that with Steve Martin. He is far above and beyond anything I could do.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, anytime he is on with Letterman, he prepares special material. Steve Martin could come on and just sit at the couch. He doesn’t. He works at doing something special every time. I appreciate that.

I believe (I base this on nothing but observation – I have no special insight) Steve Martin would like to get away from his wild and crazy guy past and be seen as an intellectual… a guy who collects art, reads a lot and writes in the New Yorker.

It’s going to be tough to shed that over-the-top persona. So many people who appreciated his physical comedy don’t get ‘intellectual.’

Steve Martin is one of our true comedic treasures. And, he really is an intellectual. I wish the tribute would have been worthy of all that talent.

My Friend Bob Blogs

I got an email late last week from my friend Bob, newly landed in Austin, TX. He wanted to start a blog and he wanted to know how?

This is one of those good news, bad news stories. The good news is, you can blog easily. The bad news is, if you take the difficult route you’ve got a lot more flexibility (and work). Since Bob isn’t computer-iffic I recommended the easy way out.

Bob is now firmly established on Blogspot, the Google blogging tool. I’ve added these links to his site because that will help Google and the other search engines find it&#185.

I’m pretty impressed with the ease at which his blog was created. I don’t think he can do all the tricks I can do here – though I’m not quite sure if that’s to my advantage or not. It will be interesting to see if he can continue to post on a regular basis.

In the meantime, in the more established ‘blogosphere,’ Arianna Huffington’s new, mainly liberal, blog community has made its debut. Walter Cronkite, Larry David, Mike Nichols and a host of other luminaries are there. That’s pretty impressive for a maiden voyage.

Again, like Bob’s blog, it will be interesting to see how it looks in a few months and whether there is enough discipline among her unpaid writers to keep it up.

&#185 – Getting links is good. I’m always appreciative when someone adds a link from their webpage to mine.