I’ve got a a few little items I’ve been meaning to bring to your attention that have gotten lost in the shuffle of all the important issues of the past few days: what spa treatments to sign up for, where to have dinner, what to wear, for goodness sake!
First, I forgot to tell you about the opening of a very important off-site wing of the Smithsonian last week: the Madame Tussauds Galley of the Presidents. American history in wax, brought to you exclusively by Simoniz – a multi-purpose product we use a lot of around here.
The likenesses of Big Guy and Lady M have been in the offing for over a year. You may recall that I filed a report last year on the increasingly wax-like appearance of the Big White occupants. I determine at the time that my concern was unfounded, butt I will tell you that even now I occasionally catch a glimpse of that waxy facade in my refractors, and it still creeps me out a bit.
Am I real, or am I wax? Only our personal cosmetic surgeon knows for sure.
Big Guy’s and Lady M’s likenesses seem to be fine, butt after seeing Richard Nixon’s waxy reincarnation,
Seems to be patterned on a cross between his Halloween mask and Alan Grayson
And George Herbert Walker Bush’s,
fashioned to resemble a nervous hospital resident.
And Ronnie’s:
Did they purposely try to turn him into a game show host?
I would sure hate to be the next R- word president.
Meanwhile, all of our union agitators in Madison are providing adequate cover for Lady M’s Rocky Mountain get away. There have been isolated complaints, mostly from right-wing blogs, trying to use Big Guy’s own words from his budget presser to criticize Lady M’s well-earned ski get-away: "If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation."
The whole issue is moot: the operative term here being “if”. The O’s sure aren’t trying to cut back, they’ve only got 22 more months of this gig in the bag.
Anyway, did you know that former Vice President Al Gore is also in Colorada this week? Yes! Right up the Gore Creek in Aspen. He came to make one of his curiously impassioned pleas to save the trees – or the pine bark beetles, or maybe the world.
Al Gore with some other dead wood. Troy Hooper photo
Forty years ago this spring, AlGore first felt the magic of the forests around here. He had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army and decided to motor west from his home in Tennessee.
I always wonder why they mention that: “honorably discharged?” Wouldn’t you just normally assume… I mean, he was Vice President?
Algore continues:
“I put a tent in the trunk of my Chevrolet Impala and drove to the White River National Forest, no kidding, and camped there,” the former U.S. vice president told a room packed with cultural, scientific and political leaders at the Aspen Institute on Friday night. “In the following years I came back and I’ve been back many times since – not camping – but I have my own relationship with the forests here.”
Thankfully, we didn’t get to hear about that “special relationship.” But we did get to hear about his passion for the environment – which he credits for helping him ascend to the Senate and Vice Presidency, as well as landing him the Nobel prize and an Oscar for his movie. Wow! Talk about “Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow!” This guy could’ve written the book. And he didn’t even mention the gazillions of shekels he’s made off off his other passion: carbon credits!
Butt despite everything he has going, he tells us he’s been plunged into despair by the destruction of his beloved forests by pine bark beetles; all caused by the earth’s fever:
“The linkage these scientists have referred to over and over again with global warming is something some people resist but it’s a fact,” Gore said. “It’s unprecedented and we really have to face up to it.”
And remember ladies! This totally untrained but universally acknowledged expert on all things scientific, and inventor of the worldwide Interweb is once again on the market! Claim him before it’s too late and his globull warming kills the mother ship.
And one final note: apparently Lady M did not heed my advice about not taunting gravity and insisted on displaying her amazing athleticism on the slopes. Here’s the first public sighting to slip through the embargo.
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