Best Original Song, eh? Nothing against Melissa Etheridge, who happens to be a talented rock musician, but how in the world could the Academy vote for that song over the three from Dreamgirls? It was a generic rock tune about saving the environment. In elementary school, two friends wrote a jingle called "Recycle, Reduce and Reuse." And our class put together a rock/pop number about saving the Boardman River from pollution. We even ended up performing it at an environmental awareness day or two. Was it good, musically? No. It was just a generic tune that was probably taken from several other rock songs and the whole point was "we're running out of time, we have to act." The question, of course, was which song was I just now referencing.

Suffice it to say, the Academy's "Best Original Song" category has become a joke the past two years. Last year, 3:6 Mafia won from the movie Hustle and Flow, a great movie that didn't win any other awards thanks to several three-award films. Unfortunately, the response from many was that the 3:6 Mafia song was not the best song performed that night; perhaps two or three were considered better than it. However, the Academy clearly used it as a political play and gave Hustle and Flow its only academy award.

This year, it's the blatant political statement song. On a night when the Academy honored Ennio Morricone, do they really feel that Melissa Etheridge wrote and performed the best original song? Yeah right. At least we know they love Al Gore.

Al Gore has yet to convince me of anything. My opinion of global warming is lukewarm at best (no pun intended), especially in light of the current winter we have been having in the North, especially Michigan. That being said, we are expected to be good stewards of the earth on which we live. While I completely disagree with government mandates about light bulbs, I can understand where the politician is coming from.

Technology has progressed to a point to be significantly more energy efficient, but in our spend-hungry lives, we often forget to consider the types of advancements available to us. Consider the relatively-new Compact Flourescent light bulbs. Designed to use less energy, the bulbs themselves cost more money than traditional incandescent bulbs. But they have longer estimated lives, plus the wattage comparable is significantly less (a 20w CFL bulb, for example, replaces a standard 75w bulb). Take a few moments and calculate what your energy savings could potentially be and you might be inclined to buy a few CFL bulbs the next time you are at the store.