My Letter to Brad Pitt

(Some of you know that I am good friends with Brad Pitt. The following, with permission, is a copy of an email I sent him yesterday. More to come, perhaps, later.)

Hey Bradster, how's it goin?

I was looking at the Yahoo homepage section about celebrity goings-on and I happened to find a little article about you doing some kind of speech or something in New Orleans telling the people there that they had to be environmentally friendly in how they rebuild the city. You know I love ya, brother, but I gotta tell you that made me wonder if you and Angelina and all those kids of yours have been spending a little too much time over in Guatemala under that hot, hot foriegn sun they have. I mean, you know I am as environmentally conscious aware as the next famous actor type, but I am just not sure this most recent approach is as carefully thought out as your speeches against homeless people having their toothbrushes confiscated by Republicans and your hunger strike against "odorless" garlic capsules, all of which you know I was totally on-board with and would have been right by your side with were it not for the fact that Angelina has that thing for me and I know it makes you all uncomfortable, which I totally understand, so don't feel bad. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.

So I didn't really read the article or anything, but this whole thing about environmentally friendly rebuilding in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, are you sure that's a good idea? Here's my thinking: Say all those people down there go ahead and use, you know, like real wood and bark and, I don't know, like native dirt and grass to rebuild the city, and it becomes rather a bit of an environmentalist victory, and they open a theme park called something like Brad-land where they can show off all the ways they learned how to make concrete out of mulch and seaweed and a little cajun pepper or something so it not only makes great parking lots but actually smells and tastes pretty good, too. And then, the next year, it being New Orleans, some new hurricane comes along and flattens everything all over again and washes most of the city down into the ocean again. What then? Start all over again and rebuild again in an environmentally friendly way?

Listen, for the sake of the planet, Bradster: After a few more hurricanes, this whole approach could become an environmental catastrophe of really, like truly epic proportions. The entire area would be completely stripped of all those environmental bits and pieces that the people kept on using to rebuild the city; it'd turn into a desert wasteland! A tombstone to the overuse of the environment by unfeeling stupid people who keep on building in the geological equivalent of a bathtub!

I know what you're thinking. Here's how we could salvage this: environmentally friendly building in New Orleans equals, are you ready? Building everything out of chemically mass-produced heavy-polymer styrofoam!! That means no environmental resources are used up at all, AND, come the next hurricane, the entire city will simply float on top of the water, tethered to their foundations by retractable chains made of teflon fiber! Brilliant, right? It actually becomes a sort of tourist attraction. I mean, people would flood (ha! ha!) to New Orleans on the brink of a hurricane to stand on a balcony on Bourbon Street while every building in town bobs around like so many bits of pink styrofoam driftwood!

Anyway, have your people call my people and I'll help you put together a press release. This could be big, buddy!

Anyway, no, I advise against doing Fight Club 2. Sequels are out. What's in is the blockbuster icon-meets-icon flick. Maybe Batman versus the Lone Ranger? I'd see you as LR, but I don't know what Angelina would say. Tell her I said "hi" in a purely platonic way, OK?

Later!

George