How Inconvenient! How original of a title!

Saw "An Inconvenient Truth" last night, a good six weeks after its nationwide release (I like to watch my movies in empty theaters). There weren't many aspects of Al Gore's presentation that truly shocked me, since I was already plenty familiar with our planet's expedited path towards certain doom, but because I derive a perverse joy from being continuously hit over the head with the horrifying truth about global warming, I really got a kick out of this one. And that computer-generated polar bear hopelessly searching for an iceberg was icing on the cake. Did you see the look on his poor little face? All in all, it was like paying $10 to revisit a lecture from my freshman year seminar "The Planet Earth," but then again, $10 is a deal when you consider the price of Hopkins tuition.

According to box office receipts, the movie made a good chunk of change, but I still think it would have drawn better If it were called Scary Movie 5: Revenge of the Sith and starred the Wayans Brothers in Caucasian drag. I just hope enough people see the movie and become inspired to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in their own way, either by shunning private automobile use in favor of public transportation or simply by breathing less.

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Mike's 21st birthday was pretty unremarkable -- a whole lotta binge drinking, binge puking, and binge sitting around and looking bored. But I did meet a very cool girl (let's call her Baby Jessica to protect the innocent and offend the citizens of Midland, Texas), and if it all works out, I hope to drag her into a disappointing relationship that may last just long enough for me to get a few decent jokes out of it. I'm thin on relationship material.

Funny thing though - this girl has a reputation for being attracted to black men that precedes her and set the foundation for perhaps the greatest Rogowsky-related soundbyte in the history of our humble Polish clan. Baby Jessica and I had been chatting here and there over the course of the evening, but I had yet to make any significant "move" (namely, dropping trou and saying, "Come an' git"). As I huddled in the corner contemplating my strategy, who walks in but two very tall and very muscular black men. Before I had time to feel completely sexually impotent and psychologically intimidated, she was getting their phone numbers and agreeing to follow them to the next party.

A little later on, she asks her friend, "Should I go with the black guys, or Scott?"

Should I go with the black guys, or Scott?

Never have I ever imagined myself on this set of scales - on the one side, a gangly, stubbled, poorly-postured Jew in an ill-fitting vintage plaid shirt; on the other, two brawny, well-groomed black men with confident swaggers and a very positive stereotype working in their favor. Was the jury really still out on this one?

Inexplicably, she went with me. I suggested that she might have made a mistake, that black guys usually throw much better parties (I watch BET, I know these things). But she was content to settle in with me for the night, and I was happy to satisfy her Hebraic desires.