David Beckham loves carbon

In his lengthy career as a famous person David Beckham has been accused of being everything from overly metro sexual to overrated. But the latest charge against the global icon is by far the most hysterical: The British environmental group Carbon Trust has done some calculating and has concluded Beckham's carbon footprint may be the largest in human history.

But what the environmental group doesn't account for is the pleasure Beckham's carbon-birthing conspicuous consumption brings to his hundreds of millions of fans in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America -- as well as the dozens of Mexican immigrants who cheer for him in Los Angeles. While slashing his carbon footprint to a more manageable Al Gore-like level of gross largess could be the right thing to do for the planet, a David Beckham with only ten luxury cars shatters the aspirational dreams of so many of the same planet's inhabitants.

Although making the switch from a wife that runs on fossil fuels to one that is at least partially solar-powered is probably right thing to do if just to help on the not-letting-the-terrorists-win front.

Al Gore hearts electricity

Just in time for the aftermath of the Oscars, a small Tennessee think tank has released the details of Al Gore's utility bill. In 2006 Gore's suburban Nashville home consumed 221,000 kilowatt-hours of gas and electricity at a rate that has been steadily increasing, despite his well-publicised calls for others to carefully monitor their personal energy use in these apocalyptic times.

Or, to put it in financial terms, Gore's combined gas and electricity bill was 30,000 dollars last year.

That's 20 times the rate of the average household in America. A country, Al Gore likes to remind us, known for its wanton use of energy resources.

Or, to put it in scientific terms, the IPCC has calculated there is a 90 percent chance Al Gore has personally wiped out 2 to 7 previously undiscovered species of Antarctic crustacean in the past 12 to 96 hours.

Contacted last night, a Gore spokesman did not deny the utility bill and added something about carbon footprints, carbon offsets, rich people and Gore and his wife Tipper working from home -- although I would hardly call playing electric guitar as you jet around your air-conditioned backyard on a riding mower work.

Look we are all hypocrites. Every single one of us. I'm not here to bury Al Gore, I'm here to praise him.

You see I'm also someone who goes out of my way to consume as much household energy as I can. It's not to destroy the earth, per se, it is because my landlord pays my utility bills and running them up astronomically is the only way I can make up for their stunning lack of service and attention in other areas.

While I think I'm pretty good at being wasteful, I'm always looking for ways to get better.

Now that the cat is out of the bag I imagine Gore would be reluctant to share the secret behind his massive waste -- even to a fellow traveler like myself.

But I thought of an ingenious way to circumvent this.

Remember during the Oscars when they kept telling you to check out Oscar.com to find tips on "going green?"

I figured I would use these tips as a reference point and then plan on doing the exact opposite. It's like Al Gore's secret message to me!

This proved more difficult than I imagined. For what exactly is the opposite of a compost pile? I think it might be burning your garbage with gasoline soaked coal, but that doesn't really serve my objective of running up my utility bills.

The website did provide a good affirmation of the things I am already doing right: I don't use fluorescent light bulbs; I never turn off my lights; I keep my drapes closed in the winter and open in the summer and my apartment suffers from a woeful lack of weatherization.

Most importantly, I set my air conditioner to 65 degrees and run it 24/7 in the spring and summer, often with my windows open. This is not just to screw my landlords, it is also for my own comfort.

I get criticized a lot for this practice. Especially when I go out of town and leave the air-conditioner on.

Think of it this way: Let's say you've been on a grueling two week tour of speeches, personal appearances and scaring children into thinking the world is going to end. You return home to a sweltering Nashville. You know the walk from the your limo to your front door is going to be beyond brutal. But you also know once you open that door a blast of cold air -- the very cold air you are trying so hard to save for future generations -- will soothe and relax every inch of your being. That's heaven. That's what our forefathers fought for.

So don't hate me because I'm wasteful. Don't hate Al Gore either. It gets really hot in Tennessee in the summer. And the revolution isn't cooled by solar power.

79th annual Academy Awards

It was a good night for Martin Scorsese, the Spitting Image puppet that ate Al Gore (and everything else) and bearded Mexican men.

You are forgiven if you forgot the part about the bearded Mexican men. They starred during the first third of the telecast, the part dominated by technical and artistic awards. Unfortunately, the whole show wound up pushing four hours.

For all I know it was the same bearded Mexican man holding up Oscar again and again. Or maybe it was a Spanish man. If host Ellen DeGeneres, who introduced herself to the world-wide audience by flubbing Penelope Cruz's place of birth, can't tell her Spaniards from her Mexicans why should I be able to?

Overall, I thought DeGeneres overcame paper thin material to do an OK job. That is a well-qualified OK. Since I'm not schooled in her comedy, I'm not sure if she is always this minimalistic in her approach, or if she was told by the Academy to dispense with any proper joke writing or topical references and instead just humorously putter about -- which she did.

Speaking of a show about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld, who presented crowd favorite Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth the Oscar for best documentary, strikes me as a perfect candidate for a future Oscar host if the Academy wants to play it safe like it did tonight. We know Jerry has the time, and there is nobody better at making the benign hilarious without losing his edge.

But, as you always realize when you watch the Oscars, after the opening monologue the host becomes a very small part of the proceedings.

This wasn't a great year for the movies critically, and only few of the films nominated for best picture or the acting awards made the slightest dent at the box office. So to redeem itself and the year the Academy needed to give Scorsese the individual recognition that had eluded him for so long.

With The Departed already grabbing trophies for adapted screenplay and editing, and with Spielberg, Coppola and Lucas -- the three other faces on Scorsese's generation's directorial Mount Rushmore -- picked to present the best director trophy, there was even less suspense than there would have been otherwise. And even less than that a few minutes later when The Departed took the ultimate prize.

It was a bland night without a signature moment or any surprises -- save a hairless Jack Nicholson and the reminder that Reese Witherspoon is an Academy Award winning actress.

And, yeah, it was way too long. Only I don't know what the producers could have done to make it that much shorter.

The speeches and presentations were kept to a minimum. When the third part of the winning best sound mixing trio attempted to add his thank yous not only did the music play but a large man slid into the frame.

I tend to like the movie montages and, whatever I think, the musical performances are here to stay.

I guess the honorary lifetime achievement Oscar -- the one where Clint Eastwood forgot his glasses and the honoree forgot how to speak English -- could have been (and should have been) chopped.

Of course the best way to shorten the telecast, and alter it radically, would be to get rid of all the art direction, make up and sound awards. Talented bunch or not, if entertainment value is valued what is the logic in giving such an obscure group of people such an incredible audience?

This year axing the technical and artistic awards wouldn't have gone over well in Mexico. Or was it Spain?

But it would have allowed the rest of us more time to appreciate the wizardry of the human shadow puppet. And cherish the first stop on Al Gore's beg-me-to-run-for-president tour. Who knows, Gore may still have them begging by the time the 2008 Oscars roll around. Unless that great wave of former icebergs sweeps us all away.

Such a fate would be a tiny bit less tragic, now that Scorsese has his Oscar .

Lindsay Lohan still can't spell "adequate"

A couple weeks ago Lindsay Lohan mourned the loss of "father and grandfather" Robert Altman and reminded us all to be adequite.

While she still hasn't found the spell-check feature on her blackberry, Lindsay, who has been worried about her image lately, may have found a new older male mentor. She claims:

"Al Gore will help me. He came up to me last night and said he would be very happy to have a conversation with me. If he is willing to help me, let's find out. Hilary [sic] Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Evan Metroplis [sic], and John Daur who works with them would be willing, if we just ask. If we just ASK."

It might sound far-fetched, but the former Vice-President has displayed a fascination with Lilo in the past, once declaring on The Tonight Show that he was fueding with the redhead.

First Gore was going to fix the environment, and now he is going to fix the Lohan? The hubris on the man has no bounds.

New math claims first victim

The Foley scandal claimed its next victim and it wasn't Dennis Hastert. Instead former Virginia governor and unlikely netroot-hero Mark Warner took the fall.

Many had touted Warner as a dark horse candidate for the '08 Democratic presidential nomination citing his centrist policies and fundraising prowess, while ignoring his hideous teeth. The "Anti-Hillary" officially ended his campaign before it began yesterday, claiming he needed to spend time with his family.

Of course by spending time with his family he meant he had known the company of many interns and realized that would no longer fly.

Nobody thinks the Republicans are going to be able find a Democrat who was trying to bang boy pages, but everybody knows they will be able to find Democrats who have been having fun with girl interns. And they will withhold this information until it works most to their advantage.

Recent history shows a politician can survive one girl intern banged, or a handful harassed. But in the post-Foley environment any further intern excess will result in sudden political death and a trip to rehab.

I've analyzed the rest of the 2008 Democratic field in light of this new math:

Barack Obama -- They call him a "Rock Star. They say he's "inspiring." You know who likes "inspiring rock stars? 22-year old girl interns.
Verdict: Toast. Warner wants to trade videotapes.

Hillary Clinton -- A serial harasser of both sexes, Hillary pushes her unwanted attention to its focus-grouped limit and never beyond.
Verdict: Hillary sticks around as long as the vast right wing conspiracy knows they can beat her.

Al Gore -- Don't let that "I love earth" junk fool you. Al Gore is an extra-terrestrial with a set of needs completely his own.
Verdict: People get uncomfortable when they see him around penguins.

John Kerry -- If you got your internship because your daddy contributed a ka-zillion dollars to the DNC, Kerry will come sniffing around.
Verdict: Nobody likes John Kerry.

Russ Feingold -- The only single member of this group. Yet he seems an ethical fellow and might object to intern banging because of the whole "subordinate" thing.
Verdict: If you're not going to win you might as well have a good time.

John Edwards -- He wants you to think he bangs interns. Just like Bill Clinton did. Although when confronted, he'll try to pin it on Wal-Mart.
Verdict: If the electorate were like a jury there would be a lot more politician jokes.

Joe Biden -- Biden has probably sexually harassed every man, woman and child in the Mid-Atlantic. But nobody believes he meant to. Or he ever has the foggiest idea what he's talking about.
Verdict: Your 2008 Democratic nominee.

Al Gore blames global warming on Tonto

I was living in New York when Mayor Bloomberg proposed making the bars and restaurants in the city smoke-free. At the time I was completely outraged by what I thought to be state-nannyism run amok.

Although, as a non-smoker, I found the smoke-free bar and the lack of smoke that goes with it to be quite agreeable in practice.

Another benefit of the ban was you no longer had to actually enter the bar to make it a night. Instead you could just buy yourself a larger bottle of malt-liquor, paper bag it, and chat up the girls smoking on the street outside the entrance.

And if the young lady doesn't succumb to your wiles in the span of cigarette? Well, there will be another one jonesing for a smoke any second now. The only downside to this strategy is if you wear your more ironic hipster garb you will be mistaken for a vagrant.

This is all to say I believe within five years smoking will be made illegal in any remotely public place in the United States -- if not the Western World.

So what's a government to do, after relieving the tobacco companies of a couple hundred billion dollars and then ungratefully banning their product from plain view?

I see Bloomberg is taking his righteous crusade to transfats. But Al Gore -- who is famously not in the government -- is still trying to bleed Big T for every last drop of political capital.

In a speech to the UN yesterday Gore named cigarette smoke as a "significant contributor to global warming."

His likely-spurious accusation should be an affront to my fairness barometer. But hey, anything that takes the heat off air-conditioning is cool with me.

50th post

So far so good. I set out to write about politics, world affairs, media, pop culture, music and sports. Aside from being a little heavy on the politics and a little light on the sports I think I've accomplished this. But I do have one enormous regret:

I've completely ignored Lindsay Lohan.

I know, I know, they could pull my blogger's card for this.

It's not like I'm doing it purposely. I actually have a shameful amount of pent-up Lohan knowledge (loledge?) -- I just haven't had the proper venue to display it.

I thought I was going to get my chance last week when Al Gore hinted at a feud with Lohan on Jay Leno. There was no truth to it -- it was another case of Al Gore's new found comedic touch. Gore has beat the odds and become as funny when he's trying to be as when he's talking about carbon.

Then there were rumors of a video clip where Lohan blasts Gore's climate-mongering. My brain almost exploded and my limbs became spastic. If true, I could retire on it. But it wasn't the slightest bit true. In fact, it was just a cryptic joke about Gore's comments on Leno.

I promise to do my part and find a way to intertwine Lindsay into future posts. She's the first human internet creation* we have and now that I'm involved with the internet I acknowledge I have an obligation to her.

Truth be told, I miss her. At my old job the guy next to me had a Lindsay Lohan screen saver. At first I thought it was a little strange -- for a grown man -- but I've come to appreciate Lindsay's freckled splendiferousness in its absence.

Finding myself busy these days, I no longer have the time to read about Lindsay's latest exploits. I have no idea how big or small her boobs are, how red or black her hair is, how her "multiple trips to the bathroom" habit is going, or even who she's been canoodleing lately.

I can take solace in the fact Lindsay has six movies in production and might not even need me anymore.

Although it just might be that I need her.

* Some might say P*r*s H*lt*n was the first human internet creation. I disagree. She broke pre-internet saturation, in the days of Page Six/National Enquirer dominance, and on the strength of her famous name. Lohan seemingly appeared out of nowhere (or Long Island.) Plus, if you even type P*r*s's name you could get gonorrhea. Why risk it?