The last time we went out on a date was back in 1990--before $3.00 gallons of gasoline; before the Prius; before the iPod; before the World Wide Web; before frickin' Harry Potter. We saw Darkman, and Marion was so disgusted by the opening scene where the bad guy cuts off Darkman's finger with a cigar trimmer she walked out of the packed theater (I got her to come back and there were no more problems; it was a bad movie--very dark, but that's about it).
Last Friday night, sixteen years later--one boy off in Maine, one in Florida, and the youngest at his friend Charlie's for an overnight--we decided it was time to rekindle our pre-child relationship. There was only one movie to see: An Inconvenient Truth. We're so happy we went, even if it cost $19.00 to get in, the popcorn line was insanely long (we went without), and we felt lost in the Big Box suburbs of Philadelphia. The movie is fascinating, disarming, and important for everyone in this great country of ours to see at least once. I will not ruin your day by doing a review of it. By now you've read and seen enough, I'm sure (although I promise to write in here one day soon a treatise on why it is that the liberal version of apocalypse is just as weird as the fundamentalist version).
I do want to share with you a number of ironies and interesting tidbits that should at least be amusing, if not downright deep.
First of all, we were dismayed to find when we got to the theater parking lot that they did not have big Al's movie posted on the giant marquee over the theater. Such an experience with sins of omission out in the real world provided us with the opportunity to revisit our old conspiriologist days. Could Regal Cinema somehow be in league with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute? We didn't know, but as practiced curmudgeons and rebellious freedom fighters from the old guard, we certainly weren't going to leave blank spaces like that up to chance--nor were we going to take it lying down. Something had to be done! But what? (Later we figured that they just didn't have enough lettering for every one of their movies since they did indeed post An Inconvenient Truth on the marquee out in front of the theater plaza where all cars and trucks and SUVs are whizzing by--or sitting in traffic jams).
Secondly, An Inconvenient Truth has been running now for something like ten to twelve weeks. You'd think that on a Friday night, love birds that we are, Marion and David would be the only people in the theater (I was kind of hoping we could makeout during the boring parts). Not so. The room was at least half full, maybe more. I'd say they made about $600 bucks off of us responsible and concerned citizens. That's not bad when just down the hall Talladegha Nights was packed on it's opening night.
It may be that An Inconvenient Truth was so well-attended because of the heatwave that we recently experienced here. It sucks when your basic feeling towards the outdoors is: "Screw this 21st centurty summer crap. I'm climbing in the fridge. Let me know when it's over." In fact, two weeks ago several respectable media outlets reported that scientists feel there is a definite connection between global warming and the overwhelming heat waves we've had around the world over the past few years. Probably the most disturbing aspect of these studies is the insight that average nighttime temperatures are on the rise. A good resource for some of the new data out there is the NOAA site--especially for skeptics and nay-sayers. Real information! No bull!
The third irony here is that Gore learned that carbon dioxide traps heat in the outer reaches of the earth's atmosphere from his professor at Harvard, Roger Revelle, who had been studying carbon dioxide levels since 1958. I couldn't help thinking about the fact that there were people who knew that global warming was a real possibility while the rest of America was busy going through its hippie phase--stoned, oblivious, hooked on free love, and rebellious as hell. Imagine if we could have tapped into all that frenzied positive energy back then...
1958 was also the year I was born. In fact, the history of the planetary greenhouse effect goes back more than another 100 years.
But the most ironic experience of the night was that we froze our asses off sitting there staring up and chuckling along with our good buddy Al while he talked about how hot it was getting. The air conditioning in the theater had to be set at 68-degrees--maybe lower. I was wearing long pants for the first time in two months along with a sweater. If Marion hadn't been there to snuggle with, I would have been thrown out because my chattering teeth were violating the "silence is golden" rule they broadcast before the movie starts. My guess is the Regal spent about $100 on cooling that it didn't need...Later on we went to dinner at the UNO Chicago Bar & Grill and had the same problem. We begged the waitress to put us as far away from the air conditioning vents as possible. My guess is that whatever we paid for our dinner was used to keep everyone else there cucumber cold.
At any rate, if you haven't seen the movie, it's time to go. Take three or more people with you and make sure at least one of them is someone you've been having arguments with about global warming. We are heading back next week with both Jesse and Conor (Sam saw the movie the first week it was out) and are going to invite everyone from all three baseball teams I coached this year to meet us there.
In closing, I will note this: There should be no need to argue about whether global warming is real or not once you see this movie (yes, there are technical points that Gore probably needs to revisit, but the main ones are kind of inescapable--unless you don't understand math and science). The question now is whether you are willing to take responsibility for your 15,000 pounds a year of greenhouse gases, or whether you don't give a damn. There really isn't a middle ground. Hopefully, it's the former and not the latter.
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