Drug hysteria has never tasted so good

Before climate change dropped it like it was a 40 ton grease-slicked hot potato, the crystal meth epidemic was by far my favorite over-hyped scare phenomenon.

It all seems so quaint now, gangs of bug-eyed Midwesterners wandering the nation like excitable zombies, toothlessly knocking over convenience stores and local social services. Especially when compared to the horrors of scorching heat, giant tidal waves and raining frogs.

But the meth-madness crowd won't give up without a fight. In fact, they pulled exactly the same move breakfast cereal manufactures do when a brand goes stale: They added more sugar.

The new fear is devious meth dealers, in an attempt to hook 'em young and sweet-toothed, are adding candy flavoring to their product. What impresses me most about this theory -- which I hesitate to call baseless, but would be willing to wager on being highly anecdotal -- is that it adds to the meth epidemic the fable of the super-aggressive drug "pusher," and even throws in a touch of that old poisoned-trick-or-treat-candy campfire story.

Will it be enough to push the meth epidemic back into prominence? I doubt it. But I'm giving points for the effort. Strawberry flavored points.

Slow days inspire bad puns and potty humor

Last year the big story from the White House Correspondents' Dinner was the caustic performance of comedian Stephen Colbert. Colbert's routine wasn't well received in real time, but took on water cooler status once it hit the unwashed masses via YouTube.

This year they hired tamer entertainment, and left it up to the guests to provide the morning-after controversy. Global warming first-responders Sheryl Crow (singer) and Laurie David (wife of enthusiasm deficient, Seinfeld-rich Larry) tried their best by confronting famous White House advisor Karl Rove with their crusade. Rove, according to most reports, including Crow and David's own, reacted with over-the-top rudeness to the ladies' well-plotted invasion.

Rove became particularly unnerved when Crow reached over to touch him.

On Monday we got further insight into why Rove, who was headed towards his table to eat, may have become so enraged by the touch of a woman many consider to be desirable.

It turns out, in her full effort to save the globe, Crow limits her toilet paper usage. Severely limits.

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the dust-up, Crow appeared on the daytime talk show The View. "Have you seen my ass" was The View's co-host Rosie O'Donnell's incredulous response to Crow's one square per sitting standard. But Rosie didn't simply rely on words when she referred to her posterior. She created a succinct visual. (Pictured above.)

A rectangle, formed with her pointer fingers and thumbs, that clearly represented not the whole ass, but only the section relevant to wiping -- the part you aren't allowed to mention on TV.

So the next time you feel like staging a confrontation with a government official concerning your pet "save the world" project at a social event -- or even if you just have the urge to harass, with talk of Jesus or whatnot, some poor guy who is trying to walk to the grocery store -- remember, your evangelical zeal and surprise tactics are unlikely to change the mind of your target.

And might just trigger a chain of events ending with the ample Rosie O'Donnell graphically describing her most "holey" attribute to an audience that is likely to be eating lunch.

Here is where I say something nice about Britney

You can't always judge a book by its exposed scalp and vagina. Case in point: Britney Spears. Recently the former pop princess has received nothing but bad press and ridicule, yet she still gives back generously to the world that has so callously turned on her.

Spears shelled out 590,000 dollars to charity last year, despite a floundering career and money-grubbing soon to-be ex-husband. Granted some of that money went to Kabbalah (the Hebrew word for sucker) affiliated charities, but many a hurricane victim and a human without a habitat benefited from the wealth Britney had accumulated by pouting suggestively during happier times.

Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, isn't so generous with his 15 million dollars per film largess. He might fly around the country on his private plane fueled by lettuce, er, I mean earth-strangling jet petroleum, lecturing us all on how to save the planet, but when it comes to actually giving money back to the world he takes so much from he is only 1/10 the star Britney is.

Although I'm sure Leo feels that by acting as spokesperson for the greening of everybody else's life, he is giving the environmental movement millions of dollars in free exposure.

Also, Dicaprio did allow famous quarterback Tom Brady sloppy seconds on Leo's Brazilian supermodel ex-girlfriend. And really, it's that kind of charity -- the rich and handsome helping the rich and handsome -- that has made our country great.

Over all else, severed appendages equal box office

Starting this summer, carbon-neutral Hollywood will attempt to roll out a series of big-budget films with environmental themes. Many of these movies will cast man as the bad guy and Mother Nature, with her own unique brand of hurricane and melting ice caps vigilantism, as the victim.

This melding of Tinseltown's environmental ethos and box office aspirations has worked in the past -- in 2004, environmental disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow grossed over half-a-billion dollars world-wide and facilitated discussion of global warming. More recently, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth proved quite profitable.

Although some studio executives are concerned that, partly due to the relative success of Gore's documentary and the awareness it raised, mass audiences will now avoid the parade of environmentally themed would-be blockbusters -- just as they have been avoiding other topical message films, such as Syriana and Blood Diamond.

That calculus provided no hindrance to 300, a movie which just posted the largest March opening ever. 300 tells the tale of Thermopylae, an epic battle in the Greco-Persian war of the fourth century BC. In the end the brave self-sacrificing Greeks, who are considered the fathers of democracy and Western Civilization, defeat the Persians, who are portrayed as homosexuals. A double whammy which isn't sitting well in Iran, the current home of the Persian Empire and the rumored next stop on Team America's tour of democracy.

Of course it's highly probable that, unlike the hyper-sensitive Iranian clerics, American movie goers aren't seeing any parallels to the present; they just like to see guts spilled and heads removed.

Which means, assuming Mother Nature does her share of impaling and braining, this summer Hollywood may be able to have its cake and eat it too.

It was either him or famous dolphin Jason Taylor

Lefthander Dontrelle Willis's career has been impressive. He blasted onto the scene in 2003 and led his tiny market, underdog Marlins to an improbable World Series victory over the mighty Yankees -- winning the Rookie of the Year along the way.

He was even better in 2005, topping the Major Leagues in wins and posting the third lowest earned run average among qualified starters.

Willis's sky-high leg kick makes him one of the most recognizable players in baseball, and his affable demeanor makes him one of the more popular figures in sports. But Dontrelle Willis has never been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Until this week. Until SI decided to tackle the pressing topic of sports and global warming.

When the globe warms the stadiums will flood with water. And Dontrelle Willis is a Marlin. And a Marlin is a fish. And a fish's natural habitat is the very water that will flood our stadiums.

So Willis, who didn't even know he was so honored until a reporter showed him a copy of the magazine, has finally made the cover of Sports Illustrated. Because he is a fish.

Just the way he dreamt it when he was a boy.

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.

Mother Nature: Not comfortable with the victim card

Eyebrows have been raised, over the last couple months, as environmentalist and Evangelicals have been increasingly joining forces to fight "global warming."

It doesn't seem like such a odd coupling to me: Evangelicals get tingly when they successfully spread the word on the likelihood of Jesus' return and the planetary doom that would accompany it, just like environmentalists get tingly when they successfully spread the word on the latest climate catastrophe scenario and the planetary doom that would accompany it.

And I imagine all tingly feelings relating to consensus on the coming apocalypse are similar enough.

Since we have already delved deeply into the supernatural and the highly speculative I would like to share a fear I have: I'm starting to worry about how Mother Nature is taking all of this talk of the devastating effects of rising temperatures.

Mother Nature has been around for a long time, and we might be messing with her pride when we claim she will be completely knocked out of sorts by some earthly carbon. Dinosaur flatulence was nothing to sneeze at but she got through that OK.

I see that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to form a committee on "global warming" and even President Bush might address the issue in his next State of the Union.

They might want to hold off. It was about a week ago when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, amongst much fan-fare, signaled his intention to make fighting global warming one of the cornerstones of his administration.

I hear it's been cold in sunny California ever since.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I say it would be best for everyone if all grand declarations on global warming are made only in the dead of summer.

Just when I thought the globe was getting warmer

It might be 103 on the East Coast, but it's actually snowing in my old African stomping grounds.