Why not take a page from Mad magazine for once. Well, while I'm sitting here, slaving over a hot statistics book, not absorbing it, I might as well take an all-too-brief time out to do something fun. Isn't that the motto of today's world? If you do what you love, then everything works out. So, what happens if you're not having fun? And what about all those jobs out there that have to get done and people have to do that, uh, frankly, AREN't fun? A lot of the people in Slumdog Millionaire sure didn't look like they were having fun. Which tangentially brings me to Josh Tickell, enthusiastic spokesman for biodiesel... I mean, dispassionate scientist. Sorry about that. First of all, I ain't never heard of this dude. But, he did manage to bag Larry David and Larry Hagman to be in his little documentary here, so he MUST be big. Yes, this casting director turned Michael Moore wannabe apparently drove across the country in a car run on the used cooking oil from McDonald's and its ilk. I do remember seeing a film just like this about 12 years ago where two women did the same thing. Yes, they were lesbians... or were they? Of course, does that really matter? Is that all you people care about? Sheesh.
Now, bear in mind, I'm no eco-doc aficionado, or whatever you'd call it, but I did see An Inconvenient Truth. So far, that's probably the gold standard by which all similar future docs will be judged. So, if Al Gore's one is, say, a 1.0, then I give Fuel a 0.7. Something like that. Somehow there's not enough novelty or showmanship to it, and frankly, there wasn't enough about his so-called drive across the country. And we can't ALL afford to be Josh Tickells, right? We can't all drop out of our 9 to 5 jobs, get green machines, and drive across the country, bringing peace and love and science and driving up to the drive-thru windows of America's fast food joints and say "Can I have your used cooking oil, please?" That would flood the marketplace! No one would take our country seriously anymore!
Forgive me if I seem a little... I guess the word 'irritable' would be putting it mildly, but help is apparently on the way. Even though the biodiesel market hit a big snag, a very VERY big snag that seemed to put it completely out of business, change is coming, people. Things are happening. Entrepreneurs are using their big science-soaked brains to come up with the inventions that will invent us out of this mess, and maybe even improve the sorry state of the planet in the process. (fingers crossed) That whole biodiesel from algae business looks pretty cool. Then there's this other dude inventing some sort of plastic-eating enzyme. Between those two, the future almost looks livable. In general I was on board with the film's message, but that whole oil company having accidents on purpose, well, I think I need a little more info on that. I mean, all the trouble people had to go through to prove the evil plans of cigarette companies - that's what Tickell will have to do to back that one up. I guess it's not so hard to believe, but somehow the oil companies don't seem to be in the same league as Halliburton and KBR. But that's just me. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just naive. And maybe I'm in a lot of trouble. First Amendment, don't fail me now! Oh yeah, nice computer graphics too, but would it have been too much trouble to give them another pass through Renderman? That's all I got. ***
-so sayeth the Movie Hooligan
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