Dances With Crude

Remember Waterworld? It was that Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic tanker that proved, definitively, that children in Sci-Fi films are vastly more off-putting than even the protagonist drinking their own urine. If it wasn’t thrown in the same mental junk-drawer where you keep The Postman and Star Trek: Insurrection, you might recall that the bad guys in this multiplex Multisanto (who were called The Smokers) rode around in an apparently refurbished Exxon Valdez.

Not content to have his exploits combating the pinnacle iconography of crude-based environmental cataclysm eclipsed by the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, Costner and his brother Dan headed down to the gulf to lend a hand, as reported by the Chronicle’s Celebrity Buzz Blog:

The brothers run Costner Industries Nevada Corporation (CINC), and have previously promoted a filtration system, designed by Dan Costner, to recycle oil.

Now BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles has agreed to test out six of the devices on the oil spill this week.

I’m not one of those people that thinks BP is dragging their feet or incompetent or being impertinent in all this. Far from it. But, I am going to go ahead and say that, following on the heels of describing a shut-off method as involving golf balls and old tires (rather than, say, ceramic spheres and strips of radial-steel reinforced rubber), they really should stop giving the late-night comics such ready and easy fodder as enlisting Costner for help. Please leave your best Costner entendre in the comments.  If you spill it, he will come.