7/7/7 = Jamaica! (or Al Gore)

DON’T PANIC if you have trouble contacting me in the days preceding our July 9 debate, since girlfriend Koli and I (seen above) will be in Montego Bay, Jamaica July 5-8 for the wedding of my friends Maria Gray and Allan Cohen (to be followed next month by the weddings of my friend-since-kindergarten Paul Taylor — who’s already been bachelor-partying here in NYC all weekend — and New York Post film critic and newly-minted blogger Kyle Smith, who didn’t like 300, so don’t get him the DVD as a wedding gift). I can’t find a picture of Maria and Allan at the moment, so the picture at left of Maria and two typical friends of Maria will have to suffice.

VS.

It was either attend this event or go to one of Al Gore’s 7/7/07 Live Earth concerts, but Jamaica’s a cheaper flight than going to the special concert area Gore’s reportedly set up in Antarctica, so I guess I’ll attend the wedding, perhaps pausing at some point Saturday to think about what a problem warm weather can be, what with the minuscule sea-level rises and people being forced to wear bikinis and everything. Like DC Comics, Al Gore does not use the word “crisis” lightly.

USE YOUR OWN JUDGMENT IN MY ABSENCE, AND ABOVE ALL, DON’T FREAK OUT, even if you’re a debater who has to cancel or someone with a projector who has to call the bar directly to ask about extension cords.

Some calming things you might want to do while I’m away drinking rum: (a) reflect on the true meaning of Independence Day, (b) see Live Free or Die Hard and ask yourself whether you would fight for freedom as effectively as Bruce Willis’s character does, or (c) see the Transformers movie (opening July 4) and ask yourself whether there’s any point fighting for anything when, inevitably, as L.B. Deyo will argue on the 9th, the robots are destined to win in the end…

…unless magic saves us, like in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (out on the 11th), but I’ll write a few articles and a couple blog entries when I get back from Jamaica about why that’s a lot less likely than the aforementioned robot revolution.