Speeding with the Gores

I’m worried, darlings, about my dear friend Al.

Al is one of my many brilliant friends, and like most of my brilliant friends he has at least one weakness about which he is painfully unaware. For some, like my dear astronomer friend Carl, who was cursed with paralyzing halitosis, it was something easy to get past. But Al’s weakness is that it is practically impossible to listen to the sound of his voice without lapsing into a stupor. And now he has gone and made-- narrated, even!-- a terribly important film about the environment, and I’m just afraid that the message will be lost over the sounds of loud snoring.

I remember the last time I saw Al and Tipper (whom I adore, despite her simply insane devotion to Christian rock) at a small party they were throwing for some occasion or another. It wasn’t the sort of thing one simply lapses into a nap in the middle of-- some parties are-- so to prepare myself I had Paco whip up a mix of espresso, Red Bull and crushed No-Doz. But I suspected that would not be quite enough, so I called up dear friend Hunter, who would know more about this sort of thing.

“Christ, dinner with Gore?” he shrieked. “How much coke can you get your hands on?”

“Darling,” I reminded him, “you know cocaine goes straight to my thighs.”

“I’ll be right there,” he said. And an hour later he was at my door-- I don’t dare ask how he got there so quickly from Colorado, but one didn’t ask Hunter about these things-- with a bottle of lavender tablets.

“I gave a half one of these babies to a tree sloth once,” he said, grinning manically, as he was wont to do when he was excited about a pharmaceutical endeavor. “He chased down a gazelle, and then tried to fuck it. Take two. And here’s a few for Tipper. She eats these like Pez.”

Yet despite my extensive preparations, I nearly fell dead asleep in my tiramisu during Al’s toast. And I was doing well. Marty Sheen got caught up in a discussion of Latin American economics with Al by the pool and had to be fished out of the deep end by two secret service agents equipped with ear plugs and emergency Modafinil tablets hidden inside of fillings in their molars.

Tipper confided in me that night about all they had done with Al to make him sound less somnambulent, but nothing seemed to work. “We hooked him up to an electric shock device, but it just made him modulate randomly,” she said. “The only thing that seems to help is using the electric shock on his audience. But that’s difficult to do on a large scale.” Then she started going on about the new Stryper album and I had to excuse myself.

So my point, darlings, is I’m afraid the response Al’s little environmental movie isn’t going to be quite what he hoped, and that’s a shame, because the environment is just awfully important. I’m looking at it right now, from the chaise lounge in my temperature-controlled sitting room, where the picture window affords just a spectacular view of the valley. (Today is an indoors day, darlings. This humidity just wreaks havoc on my pores.) The only hope for it is if Tipper somehow got shock pads installed in the movie theaters in time, like the ones they had in the seats at Cannes.

Ah well. That’s all for today, darlings.