al-gore

Al Gore's Tennessee tax trick

Owen Thomas · 11/12/07 03:07PM

Does Al Gore's accountant choose the site of his magazine photo shoots? As we noted, Gore should be making much more use of his San Francisco condo now that he's a partner at Kleiner Perkins. But the Fortune article which broke the news of his hire lensed him in his Nashville, Tennessee home. Granted, I'm sure the Nashville manse is more filled with greenery than the St. Regis highrise, making it a better backdrop for Gore's new career as an environmental profiteer. That's not the only reason it's good for his image, though.

Al Gore gets a real job, if being a VC counts

Owen Thomas · 11/12/07 12:50PM

Anyone remember "Gore and Doerr"? That was Silicon Valley's dream presidential ticket in the late '90s, long before the Supreme Court nixed Al Gore's presidential career and John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC, torpedoed his own golden reputation by missing out on all the hot Internet companies of this millennium. Gore and Doerr are teaming up again, with Gore joining Kleiner Perkins as a partner specializing in greentech startups. Finally, he has a real excuse for buying that condo in San Francisco's St. Regis tower: His previous Valley gigs, as an Apple board member and a senior advisor to Google, were thoroughly part-time, if incredibly lucrative.

Choire · 10/31/07 05:11PM

One of Al Gore's boys from Current TV got waterboarded. I'd issue a disclaimer about the video but really any of you who've ever set foot in a leather bar (which is most of you!) have seen much worse. [HuffPo]

Al Gore's cable channel worth $2 billion, says backer

Nicholas Carlson · 10/30/07 12:49PM

Supermarket magnate Ron Burkle recently valued Al Gore's Current TV at $2 billion, the New York Times reports. You'd think that Burkle, one of Current's backers, would know when the produce is not quite ripe. By contrast, NBC Universal recently purchased the nine-year-old Oxygen Network for $925 million. Note that ComScore reports Current's site as averaging only 152,000 unique visitors a month. Sure, we should probably expect this kind of thing after Microsoft set Facebook's value at $15 billion. But still. I know the guy won a Nobel Prize and all. But anybody else starting to doubt global warming?

Is YouTube a business?

Owen Thomas · 10/19/07 02:12PM

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Current.com CEO Joel Hyatt — yes, the guy from the lawyer ads — is rambling about "the magical elements of the Internet." He's bragging on, of course, his website-cum-cable channel's supposedly fantastic library of loser-generated content, and the me-too social-network features on its relaunched site. And then Hyatt lays this zinger on the audience: "YouTube isn't a business." Joost CEO Mike Volpi, also on stage, immediately disagrees, pointing to YouTube's "$20 CPMs" — the high rates the Google-owned site is able to charge for video advertising. Hyatt has no response to that. One wonders what rates his video site is able to charge. And what Current.com partner Al Gore, a senior advisor to Google, thinks of his YouTube jab.

mark · 10/16/07 06:40PM

According to third-quarter donation reports, Hollywood is still lavishing cash at presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the candidate Oprah Winfrey recently dipped in honey, heaved into the money pile her friends built at her Montecito compound, and allowed to walk off with the three million dollars in donations that clung to his sticky, glistening form. But we suspect that most of those fickle little political starfuckers will be cured of their Obamamania and climb into Al Gore's hybrid bandwagon the minute the Oscar/Emmy/Nobel triple-threat announces he's running. [HuffPo]

Choire · 10/12/07 02:15PM

Bill Clinton is an UNDERMINER! "Al Gore has been warning and educating us about the dangers of climate change for decades. He saw this coming before others in public life and never stopped pushing for action to save our planet, even in the face of public indifference...." [NYO]

Al Wins A Nice Nobel Coaster For His Oscar

seth · 10/12/07 11:58AM

While we at Defamer aren't typically in the business of reporting about any award that isn't voted upon by industry guilds or the George Lopez-Loving People, we nevertheless feel obliged to relay the news that former Vice President and Lifetime Friend to Prius-Driving Hollywood Types Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize today, along with his colleagues from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (You'll think us crazy, but we dreamed this would happen, in an epic nighttime hallucination involving Leonardo DiCaprio applying suntan lotion to Gore's back on a polar ice cap melted down to approximately the size of a manhole cover.) Leave it to the British, then, to acid rain on his Peace Prize parade:

Choire · 10/12/07 10:20AM

Nobel peace prize winner Al Gore (right!) has started to eerily resemble drunken National Book Award finalist Christopher Hitchens! What happened to Gore's face? "Too many porkchops with David Remnick," suggests a reader. We already know what happened to Hitchens' face: Booze and bile and sexism are murder on the jowls.

Will Nobel Prize lift Al Gore's career out of the toilet?

Owen Thomas · 10/12/07 09:42AM

Al Gore, the senior advisor to Google, Apple board member, and former U.S. vice president, has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his crusade on climate change. Sure, there was that documentary. But his finest achievement, I feel, is his work in urination. Besides Apple and Google, Gore also serves as an advisor to Falcon Waterfree Technologies, a company which sells toilets that spare our earth's precious watery resources. They're installed in national parks, the Pentagon, and all sorts of other places. Whenever I unbuckle at one of these Mother-Nature-friendly rest stops, I think of Gore, take a wide stance, and smile.

The Nobel Peace Prize Will Not Get You A President Gore

Choire · 10/12/07 08:30AM

In the wee hours, those wizards over in Sweden announced they were giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the U.N. global warming crew. And now everyone is soooo excited that he'll be our next president! The Times (as they have done before) notes that Gore's supporters want him to join the "crowed [sic] field of Democrats" and that though he "lost" the 2000 election (THAT IS A LIE!) he "has said he is not interesting [sic] in running but has not flatly rejected the notion." Right, except when he said, "I have no intention to run for president." And when his spokesperson said "I think he's said it many times, that he has no plans or intention to run for president." Give it up, people! He's the president of the polar bears now!

Choire · 10/03/07 09:50AM

"I visited the set of '30 Rock,' and Al Gore was definitely there; apparently, the cast & crew wore 'Gore '08' shirts. His appearance should be on the 5th episode this season...."

Choire · 10/03/07 09:00AM

Hey! Radar says that our actual President, Al Gore, shot an appearance for "30 Rock." Cool! But we wonder: Are the "sources close to the production of NBC's '30 Rock'" actually "Radar editor Maer Roshan's boyfriend, Matt," who has, we hear, a bit part on that very show? Maybe not! But maybe! Update: We've been assured by Radar folks that it absolutely wasn't young Matt. [Radar]

Emmys Telecast Flirts With Low-Rated Awards Show History

mark · 09/17/07 02:08PM

· Last night's Emmys drew the second-smallest TV audience in the awards show's history with an anemic average of 13.1 million viewers. No one, it seems, was tantalized by the sketchy possibility of Britney Spears showing up to apologize for destroying her career, or by the prospect of emergency host Ryan Seacrest breaking into song. Congratulations, America: you saved yourself over three hours of torture. (We were not so lucky.) [Variety]
· Tina Fey hopes 30 Rock's big win for Best Comedy Series will bring viewers to her show—obviously, she wasn't privy to the preliminary Emmy Nielsens when she made that crazy wish. [THR]
· AMC has an Emmy coming-out party, capturing four awards for Broken Trail. [Variety]
· Remember Pop-Up Video, the show that provided you with amusing, if useless, factoids about the "music videos" one used to be able to watch on VH1? It's coming back in a mobile format, allowing you to learn everything you ever wanted to know about "Hollaback Girl" by staring at your cellphone's tiny screen while stopped at a red light. [THR]
· Internet-creating former VP Al Gore doesn't even know the URL of his interactive TV network's website. [Update: Whoops, yes he does!] [variety]

Magic Johnson Beats The Hillary Drum

seth · 09/14/07 02:26PM

· Not to be outdone by Oprah Winfrey's lavish Barack Obama fundraiser—attended by the likes of Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Chris Rock—lesser community-outreach deity Magic Johnson hosts one for Hillary Clinton at his Beverly Hills home. [Variety]
· Finally convinced it won't lead to an assist-tent-city for Valkyrie crew members to work out their shoulder knots and lingering Hitler-thetans, Germany reverses its decision not to let the Tom Cruise movie shoot at a historical execution site. [Variety]
· Al Gore's presence at this year's Emmy awards has been confirmed, where he'll be called upon to solicit an apology from Britney Spears for "squandering her one comeback chance and rendering polar bears extinct." [Variety]
· Alyssa Milano will star in Wisegal, a Lifetime movie about a female mobster that will require her to tap into the brash street-smarts of a Samantha Micelli, and the steely business sense of an Angela Bauer. [THR]
· New Line hires the Ghost World screenwriting team of Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes to rewrite (and Zwigoff to direct) The $40,000 Man, about an injured astronaut rebuilt as a bionic man on "a measly budget of only $40,000." We're seeing Will Arnett trying to catch up to a moving bicycle, accompanied by the familiar sound effect. [THR]

Karl Rove uses an iPhone

Owen Thomas · 08/06/07 06:35PM


Ah, gadget love transcends party lines. Presidential advisor Karl Rove, shown here consulting with White House colleague Josh Bolton in Minneapolis, is, it seems, an iPhone user — despite the fact that Al Gore sits on Apple's board. (Photo by Chris Usher for Time)

Sarah Gore and Bill Lee

Megan McCarthy · 07/23/07 02:50PM

Former Vice President Al Gore has solidified his status as a "Valley Guy" by marrying off his daughter to a Sand Hill-financed entrepreneur. Gore's youngest daughter Sarah, a medical student at UCSF, was married July 14th to Bill Lee, founder of Benchmark-backed RemarQ, a messageboard company sold to Critical Path in 2000. The two met at an event for her father's film An Inconvenient Truth, hosted by former eBay president Jeff Skoll, an executive producer of the film. Skoll, eBay's second full-time employee, also served as best man at the nuptials. It's been reported that Donald Trump and Bill and Hillary Clinton were present, but we haven't spied any notable Valley names on the guest list, yet. Know of any? Fill us in.

abalk · 07/02/07 08:20AM

In fact, the only people who didn't know how the 'Sopranos' finale concluded in advance were you and Rudy Giuliani. [NYT]

Al Gore Victimized Once More By Questionable Metrics Tool

abalk · 05/30/07 02:35PM

Tough news for Al Gore from popular blogger Matt Drudge: "'THE REAGAN DIARIES' OUTSOLD AL GORE'S 'ASSAULT ON REASON' IN OPENING WEEK ACTION, BOOKSCAN WILL REPORT. REAGAN WON THE RACE BY SELLING JUST 5 MORE BOOKS THAN GORE!"