And..... it's a draw!

So guess who showed up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change? Bono! And he saw "me" drinking a coffee. Of course, it wasn't actually me. I had such bad caffeine withdrawal symptoms that I sent my stunt double (yeah it's not just Saddam Hussein who pulls that trick!) to do the summit for me. I mean, come on. I'm not going to fly to Copenhagen if I can't even get out of bed. Bono claims that this violated the spirit of the bet, and I could see his point but I did technically make it through with no coffee, so we each ended up donating to each other's charity.

By the way I drank 3 coffees yesterday to celebrate being done with the week of no coffee! Woo! Woo! Woo!

Paris Hilton - the back story

Yesterday I had a chat with Paris Hilton, but before I get into that I thought I should tell the story of my previous communications with Ms. Hilton.

A couple years ago, she called my house out of the blue and asked if I could go to this nightclub opening in Vegas with her. I of course told her that I would not be able to, and that as a general rule I would only attend such an event with my wife. She went on with some ridiculous nonsense about how sexy I was in "An Inconvenient Truth", but I finally got her to admit that she'd been put up to asking me out on a dare.

Anyway, I think she was fairly surprised that she got "rejected" - apparently married people in Hollywood generally have no problem when their spouses go to nightclubs with other people? Well, I'm not sure what she was thinking, but for some reason she started calling me a lot. She'd ask me out on some kind of date or outing, and I would say no of course. Then I'd try to tell her that she is an intelligent girl and she just needs to apply herself and be a tad less slutty, and she could really make something of herself. Honestly, I think she liked getting advice from me. (I'm pretty sure she didn't take any of it though.)

Despite the fatherly tone of my conversations with Paris, Tipper started getting kind of annoyed after a while, and really who can blame her? She was worried about rumors spreading. I mean, let's face it. I'm Al Gore. I'm mostly serious with a bit of fun, light-hearted humor sprinkled in now and then. I testify to congress, fund raise, release bald eagles into the wild, that sort of thing. If John Denver were still alive, the two of us could be photographed together. Paris Hilton, not so much. That is why one day Tipper finally said "Hey Al, can we take Paris off of the List?"

The List is a list of names of friends and family. We change our phone number a lot, probably every few months or so, due to prank calls and whatnot, and the people on the List get notified every time that happens. When I say get notified I mean that someone on our staff calls them. Obviously I don't have time to sit there and call hundreds of people.

After the next number change, we still get calls from Paris. She got the number so quickly, we figured that someone on the list must be leaking it to her. Tipper and I looked at the list and on the first page we spotted our answer. Bill.

I called Bill and asked him about Paris, and he confirmed my suspicion. "Why Al, this nice young lady, who happens to be very attractive, calls me up and asks for your number. I may be a lot of things, but I am not a cock-blocker."

I explained the situation to him, and asked him if he could do me a favor. I then gave him the phone number of Cousin Frank. Now, Cousin Frank is not my cousin. He's a guy I went to high school with. I could tell some stories about Frank but suffice it to say that you can find some pretty hard-core hick stuff going on in Tennessee, and Frank exemplifies that quite well. Missing teeth, banjo, works in a mine, the whole bit.

Bill agreed to give Frank's number to Paris after our next number change, and ever since that time I had not heard from Paris again. Until yesterday.

to be continued...

P.S. Today is day 6 of my no coffee challenge. The headaches have finally subsided, but I am still taking a nap every afternoon. It's very strange. I am so glad that tomorrow is the last day of this nonsense, because I don't really have time for naps. Maybe when I'm 85 or so I can start that.

My Feelings are Hurt

Normally I don't do google news searches on "Al Gore", because my doctor says it's bad for my blood pressure. This is another funny thing about being Al Gore - at least once a day, every single day, someone writes something really mean about you on the internet. Just to give you an example, today someone here wrote:

Al Gore - the former vice president, Nobel Prize recipient and Academy Award winner for "An Inconvenient Truth" - has made tremendous money off the global warming hoax.

Maybe it's just because I haven't had my coffee this morning but I find that whole article to be exceptionally hurtful. First of all, even if I were a charlatan, at least I'm not this guy. A 60 year old Puerto Rican who claims to be Jesus? Why not pick on him you right-wing meanies?

Second of all, unlike Puerto Rican Jesus, global warming actually has, oh I don't know, 100 million Gigabytes of scientific evidence to back it up! Not a hoax.

Just as a side note, I had a statue commissioned to hold my Nobel Prize and Academy Award. It's a glass tree, and there will be places within the branches that snugly hold the awards. It's going to be so beautiful you guys! It's kind of like.... the fruits of my labor. Get it?

Apologizing

One funny thing about being Al Gore is that random people are always apologizing to me for stuff. For example, if I order a coffee at a fast food place, and it comes in a Styrofoam cup, the employee might say, "I'm so sorry we don't have biodegradable cups!" People apologize to me for using plastic grocery bags, not riding their bikes to work, watering their lawns. It's kind of weird.

Sometimes I just want to say, "you know what? One time I was on a friend's yacht and we ran over a freakin' dolphin and killed it. So don't feel bad."

In other news, I called Bono back last night. Starting tomorrow I am drinking no coffee for one week. Yikes!! Or, as the kids these days say, OMG!

Phone Call from Bono

A few days after Tips and I get home from Dubai (I'll admit that dang party was pretty fun), I get a phone call from Bono. He wants me to donate $50,000 to his Africa thing. Here's pretty much how that conversation went:

me: Bono, I just spent so much money on carbon offsets because Tipper and I flew to Dubai. I pretty much pump all of my money into the environment.

Bono: So you're saying that you think trees are more important than people? Think of all the starving children over there!

me: Hey, of course I think of them man. Every time I finish what's on my plate. But you know what, to be totally honest, I'm not sure how eco-friendly the people in Africa are. I mean, they're probably littering, burning their trash, and driving around on scooters with 2-stroke engines.

Bono: I'll have you know that impovrished Africans are very eco-friendly. Most of them don't use any electricity at all, don't drive cars, and the ones who aren't on food aid eat 100% locally-grown food. Do you eat 100% local Al?

me: Well, I shop at my local farmer's market every weekend.

Bono: Do you drink coffee?

me: yes, I love coffee.

Bono: Do you know where that comes from?

me: ummmm.....

Bono: How about this? If you can go for one week without drinking coffee, then I'll make a 50k donation to your eco thing. And if not, you have to make the donation to my Africa thing.

me: Hmmmm. I have to give a talk tomorrow. Not sure how that would work with no coffee..... let me think about it.

So, I don't know. I'm thinking about taking this no-coffee challenge. I haven't been without coffee since my undergrad days at Harvard, but it would be for a good cause.

Eco-friendly Celebrities

Sometimes people ask me if I get to hang out with a lot of movie stars, since I am a celebrity and all. I tell them that normally politicians tend to run in different circles than Hollywood celebs, but I was roommates with Tommy Lee Jones back in the day. And let me tell you, we got into our fair share of shenanigans. Well ok, mostly I was the sober one trying to keep everyone out of trouble. But I've witnessed some crazy stuff.

Sometimes it's hard hanging out with celebrities because they're always inviting you to stuff that isn't very eco-friendly. For example, Tommy's wife Dawn recently invited Tipper and I to this party that they were throwing in Dubai. And you know women. Dawn and Tipper get talking about purses or something, and how the ones in Dubai are so cool and everyone is shopping there, and blah blah blah. So Tipper says she wants to go to this party and I am like "hey, we can't be flying halfway around the world just for a party. Do you know how many carbon emissions we'd put out over the course of that trip?" I felt kind of bad because she seemed really upset, and of course this wasn't the first time that I was putting my foot down against some celebrity nonsense. But I knew that she loved the environment too, and once she calmed down she would realize that we were making the right decision. Sure enough, once I poured a couple glasses of wine and popped in a Planet Earth DVD, she came out of our room and snuggled.

At that point I thought everything was cool, but to this day I am a little suspicious about what happened next. The very next day I got a call from Bill.

"Hey Al," he says, "I just had a speaker cancel on me for a CGI conference coming up next week. I know it's really short notice, but is there any way you could give that same slide show presentation you did last weekend? It was so great, with the polar bears and what-not."

"Sure Bill, of course." I don't know how many of you have ever talked to Bill, but he has this amazing way of getting people to say yes before they realize what they've committed to. "Where's the talk?" I ask him.

"Dubai."

Score 1 for Tipper.

Welcome to my World

I already have my journal, which is full of serious environmental stuff, but I thought I'd start a 'fun' blog also. The thing is, a lot of funny stuff happens to you if you're Al Gore.

For example, Tipper and I still laugh about the time a couple years ago when our cleaning lady showed up to work driving a new Hummer H2. I mean, hello, can you say public relations nightmare? We got into this huge debate about what to do with it. Obviously we didn't want our maid driving a Hummer, but we also didn't want to sell the thing, or even give it away, because we didn't want someone else out there driving this monstrosity!!

We even tried calling Bill to ask for suggestions, but he wasn't much help. He said "I know a few girls who like hummers," and then laughed at his own joke for at least a full minute. Seriously? You can't even make this stuff up.

Finally we came up with a solution that we thought was pretty awesome. We took out the engine and gave the Hummer to our maid's brother so he could start a business giving horse-drawn Hummer rides around downtown. It pretty much seemed like a win-win for everyone! Unfortunately that guy later got busted for running a cock-fighting ring... I'm telling you, it's always something.