When did Al Gore become cool?

You all remember the Al Gore that spoke…like…this…and claims he invented the internet?  You know who I’m talking about, the guy that most would mistake for Mr. Roboto but realize they’re wrong because he was so incredibly lame.  What happened to that guy?

Al Gore has taken the world by storm this year, making the critically acclaimed documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which was well received at both Sundance and Cannes.  The guy whose most recent claim to fame was a role as a disembodied head on Futurama has become one of the world’s most respected advocates on the issue of global warming.  He’s also one of GQ’s Men of the Year, joining Jay-Z, Ryan Gosling and the cast of Jackass, among others.  It is almost strange to think that a man we once thought was the most wooden and boring person on the face of the planet is…well, as dynamic as he seems to be these days.  You should read the interviews he does with GQ and Time.  The man makes, like, jokes.

More importantly, he seems like someone that would be an ideal candidate for the Presidential election in 2008.  He’s almost the anti-Bush, someone that can purge the world of all the crap that W has done in the past six years.  A quote from The Guardian, a UK newspaper, puts it best.  “Since losing to George Bush in 2000, Al Gore, the former Vice-President, has reinvented himself as America’s voice of reasoned opposition…”  However, while he isn’t ruling it out, he is definetely not expecting to run.  Earlier this year, there was some speculation that he would, in fact, challenge frontrunner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic candidacy but he has said in more recent interviews:

Well, I don’t plan to run.  I don’t plan to run.  And I don’t expect to run.

But you’re not ruling it out?

Uh…no. [smiles]

As for An Inconvenient Truth, I picked up a copy today.  Apparently, it’s made entirely of recycled material…so everything but the $25.99 price tag feels like a pirated DVD from the Richmond Night Market.  I’ll probably watch it in a week or so after I’m finished with my current workload so I’ll reserve comments about the film, Kyoto and global warming for now.

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