I attempted some revenge googling today. I walked to the “El� this morning in a sleet and snowstorm and got soaked. As I was trying to hurry under the cover of the train station, some lady got in my way and asked me if I had a minute for the environment. I did not. I was in the midst of being crushed by stinging frozen rain; so I didn’t even have a minute to berate her for asking me, much less aid her cause. Not that I’m against protecting the environment. This just wasn’t the time. I don’t discriminate against causes. I refuse to stop on the street for any of them. Unless the tree-hugger asking happens to be attractive, which was certainly not the case today. Plus, the fact that it’s snowing in April doesn’t exactly give credence the whole greenhouse gas effect. The millisecond that it took to put a swim move on the environmentalist chick caused me to miss the train. I was less than pleased, so I thought I’d take it out on the leader of the cause, Al Gore.

Unfortunately, my efforts were for naught. I tried googling “Al Gore SUV�, hoping that a picture of Gore in a gas-guzzling Escalade might pop up. No dice. I also tried “Al Gore NASCAR�, thinking that he might’ve driven the pace car back in the 90’s. No such luck. I stumbled upon an old biography of the former Vice President; and it turns out that I was somewhat misinformed about his passion for the environment.

Since “An Inconvenient Truth� came out, I got very sick of seeing Gore everywhere. I didn’t need to see his ego being stroked by Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars. I assumed that Al Gore was “Johnny Come Lately� to the whole global warming cause. But I found an old biography that was written before the Toyota Prius became the “it� car in Hollywood. It turns out Gore’s always been somewhat passionate about the earth. Good for him. He is also a former roommate of Tommy Lee Jones.

Because of his wife Tipper, I can’t think about Al Gore without thinking of 80’s rock. Tipper, of course, is famous for censoring music. “Ode to Tipper Gore� was the last track on an album by the hair band “Warrant�. It wasn’t a song, it was just lead singer Jani Lane yelling swear words for 2 ½ minutes. In grade school, I thought that was just about the greatest thing in the world. For that reason, the phrase “Ode to Tipper Gore� will forever be stuck in my head.

I didn’t really come to any conclusion in my 9 minutes of environmental study today. All I know is, if our very existence is threatened on a global level, I can rest comfortably in the knowledge that Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are around to save us, just like they did in “Armageddon�.