Costner to the gulf's rescue!

I had one thought when I heard Kevin Costner has $26 million worth of oil separators in his garage:

Man, we’re paying way too much for movies.

Who can afford a hobby like that?

But right now starstruck BP engineers, men and women who’ve devoted their lives to complicated formulas and chemical equations, are asking the man who played John Logan in “Sizzle Beach USA!,” “Uh, now explain again how this is supposed to work?”

For those of you too young to know -- and you haven’t missed a thing -- Costner was a big deal about 20 years ago.

He is a professional actor. And in my opinion he’s been acting like he’s an actor ever since they yelled, “That’s a wrap!” on the set of “Silverado” way back in 1985.

He still has a lot of ardent fans, but I’ve never understood his appeal. His looks to me are oatmeal bland. Even in his prime, he never had the devilish dash of men like Paul Newman or Johnnie Depp, a trait that makes women swoon.

He never had the mischievous edge of someone like Jack Nicholson, which appeals to men.

And he never displayed any of the spastic humor of madcap Robin Williams, which appeals to people who’ve suffered repeated brain trauma.

Plus -- and to me this is a sin -- he took himself way too seriously. At the height of his fame in the early to mid-‘90s, he made a string of big boring movies (“Dances with Wolves,” “The Postman” and “Waterworld”) whose sole purpose seemed to be giving Costner a preening opportunity to celebrate being Costner.

The movies were very PC and larded with sullen messages about our need to treat each other and Mother Earth with greater respect.

He was an actor, for crying out loud. What an ego! His biggest hit was an Iowa pseudo-baseball movie that could be called corny in every sense of the word. What, he thought we needed a guy like him to save the planet?

Well, batter up!

The only way I’d be more surprised was if the potential gulf savior was Pee Wee Herman, another actor now better known for his more unusual hobbies.

His business partner, John Houghtaling, told the LA Times that while Costner was making “Waterworld” in 1995, he became so troubled by oil spills that he began developing an ingenious system to cruise the surfaces of oil polluted waters.

“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners,” Houghtaling said. “They sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water.”

It’s all very noble, but I wish he’d have been as troubled at the time about how the distraction was going to eventually ruin one night of my life and cost me about $12 the night I took the missus to see “Waterworld,” to this day a mainstay on all the worst-movie-ever-made lists.

This is exactly the kind of news I’ve been hoping we’d hear. It could change the world for the better in so many ways.

Just imagine, a machine that separates out all the offensive crap and leaves behind only the good and useful.

It’s just too bad he never thought to apply that sort of technology to some of his scripts.

Teach fish to eat oil

It’s becoming clear that the only sensible solution to the crisis in the Gulf is to teach fish to eat and enjoy crude oil.

Really, can it be more difficult than teaching a 4 year old to eat vegetables?

I respect and admire the vegan mindset and could probably go without juicy red meat for long stretches and when I was sure no one was looking.

But I’d perish without seafood.

And probably so will the rest of us in the year 2050, according to a new study released today by the United Nations. They said overfishing is on-track to deplete the oceans of fish within forty years.

My wife and many other people I know are just fine with that. They could take or leave seafood and they hate going in the ocean because of what lurks beneath the surface.

And a fishless ocean, I concede, is not without its appeal. It gives even a seafood lover like me the creeps to be standing in the surf and feel something slimy brush up against my leg.

Blame Steven Spielberg. His 1975 classic, “Jaws” remains one of the scariest movies of all time. And a great buddy movie, too. I stop whatever I’m doing any time I happen upon the scene where Quint, Chief Brody and Hooper are getting drunk and swapping stories about their scars.

I respect all God’s creations, but if someone said we were going to get rid of all the sharks I’d be hard pressed to come up with an opposing argument.

They’re dangerous and contribute nothing useful to the planet.

Same goes for things like mosquitos and Ashton Kutcher.

Every time I read news that a shark has eaten a hapless swimmer or chomped a limb off some surfer dude, I always go to the seafood counter at my local grocer and order a pound of shark meat for lunch on the grill.

I figure it’s the least I can do. I put some seasoning on it, maybe a little butter, flip it after four minutes over the glowing coals, repeat. Then I say a little grace and take a bite.

“How do you like it, you man-eating son of a bitch?”

The thing is, shark isn’t even that tasty.

Neither, I suppose, is unseasoned surfer dude.

It’s not like that with lobsters, Neptune’s most heavenly offering. I steam one at home whenever my wife takes my daughters away. I don’t like to hear the girls shriek about my inhumanity when I plunge live lobster into the steaming brine.

It distracts from my ability to hear the doomed lobster shriek.

Kidding! I don’t like the act of it either, but if any of us were at all ethical about food consumption then none of us would, as Lisa Simpson advises, ever eat anything that casts a shadow.

I’ve been conditioned by culture and security measures at my local grocer to think dining on lobster is the epitome of class. It’s served at only the finest restaurants and is the only item in my entire grocery store that is under 24-hour lockdown.

It’s true. Whenever I order a lobster, the guy in the seafood department has to go fetch a set of keys and unfasten two fist-sized locks bolted to a metal bar securing the tank.

I understand their potential value, but I can’t image surging levels of desperation and sophistication so unrestrained that anyone would be moved to shove a live lobster down his or her pants.

I’ve wondered if maybe I had it backwards. Maybe it wasn’t to keep thieves out, but to keep crafty crustaceans in.

Nah, can’t be. I’ve been to lobster-rich Maine many times and I’ve never seen loose lobsters on the lam -- and wouldn’t that make for a dandy surf ‘n’ turf!

For all it’s succulence, lobster isn’t one of the healthiest seafoods, certainly not like salmon, mackerel or sardines.

These are among the fish that are described as “oily” and provide us with a rich source of omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids which help reduce the risks of heart disease. Amazingly, food described with words like polyunsaturated, fatty and acid is actually healthy.

Who’d have guessed?

And that brings me back to teaching fish about the benefits of consuming all the oil that is right now threatening to kill them.

Gulf fish supercharged on pure oil has the potential to be the healthiest fish ever produced.

I can hear the slogans now: “Eat Oil-Enriched Gulf Fish! Crude enough to put in your engine, refined enough to put on your plate!”

Get a haircut, save a fish

A flurry of offbeat news stories has me once again yearning to pursue my dream job.

I look good in a smock. I love to yap. I want to help save the planet.

Yes, I still dream of becoming a barber.

I’m perfectly charmed by the news that Matter of Trust is harvesting mountains of hair to sop up all the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico (and is it out of stubborn Anglo arrogance that no one ever calls it the Mexican Gulf?).

Here’s the note from their website:

"Anyone and Everyone: salons, groomers, individuals can sign up to donate hair and fur clippings and nylons for our Oil Spill Booms. Our Excess Access program sign up is FREE, fast and helps us to coordinate the masses of donations.



CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TO DONATE HAIR / FUR / NYLONS and get a delivery address emailed. Warehouses are small, so we're not posting on the web, we're orchestrating how much goes where all along the Coast. We all get it. We shampoo because hair collects oil!



Thousands of pounds of hair and nylons are coming in by UPS and FED EX from every State in the US and from Canada, Brazil, France, UK... Booms are being made all along the Gulf Coast near beaches and marshes. What a community feeling!"

All I can say is, “Bravo! Hip! Hip! Hair-ay!”

This would be the focus of all the banter at my Main Street Barber Shoppe, (open Tuesdays through Friday, 10 a.m. -- 6 p.m., Saturdays 9 to noon). I’d share with all my customers the news that some fresh thinkers have found a way to combat a nasty pollutant with something so green, or in my case something so frosted brown.

I’ve always thought barbering would be the perfect job because it shares many of the qualities I enjoy in my primary occupation, that of avid bar patron.

I love to sit stationary and discuss the topics of the day, joke, listen to music and get a mild buzz on while more ambitious sorts are out nurturing heart disease through their stressful, driven lifestyles.

So if someone could teach me how to cut hair while seated and sipping beer, barbering would be ideal.

But that’s a dream for another day. Right now, my immediate goal is not to be a barber, but to become a person who looks like he really, really needs one. I want to donate something that even PayPal won’t take.

See, when disasters like the one in the gulf strike, I feel impotent in ways a middle-aged man still feels manly enough to discuss without blushing.

I wish I could do something to help. I want to clean up oil-smudged ecosystems. I want to patronize struggling businesses. I want to bath an oily fish and then give it to a bayou chef who’ll cook it up and serve it to me with some tasty red beans and rice.

I want to do something other than sit and get depressed about my inability to do anything but pray.

So now I’m excited because I’m helping by just sitting here and sprouting hair. In fact, growing hair for a reason might be my most productive endeavor since I started blogging.

One report I read said hair grows 1/2 an inch a month. That sounds skimpy to me. The exuberant hairs up my nose grow that much when I’m watching one hour-long episode of “Survivor.”

Still, given my track record, I know my efforts to grow enough boom-worthy hair would be half-assed -- and would still be even if I remembered to shave the unsightly patches from both sides of that plush region.

The idea is generating widespread interest. In an era when any 50 percent of the population thinks the other 50 percent are idiots, this is one solution that’s garnering universal support.

Everyone has a suggestion. Some are saying, “Shave all the hippies!” Some are saying, “Shave all the Rastafarians!” Some are saying, “Shave all the dogs!”

We’ll save the gulf with a Great Hairier Reef!

I’m wondering where we can find just one Rastafarian hippie dog for me to shave.

That’d be a good test case for a budding barber with sharp scissors and shaky hands.