Wednesday, March 22, 2023

John Oliver on water for World Water Day

Happy World Water Day! For this year's observance, I sharing Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).

John Oliver discusses the water shortage in the American west, how it’s already impacting the people who live there, and what God has to say about it.
In addition to being a particularly American perspective on the 'World's Water Crisis' and 'What Will Life Look Like as MAJOR Rivers Run Dry?', it's also an update on Western drought likely worst in a millennium and may be the beginning of 'aridification', Vox asks and answers 'Who's really using up the water in the American West?', Wall Street Journal on 'Las Vegas: A Water Conservation Trailblazer Amid the Worst Drought in 1,200 Years', and PBS NewsHour on Great Salt Lake shrinking during the current drought. After all my posts examining the problem from a serious news perspective, it was time for some comedy.

Speaking of comedy, I thought Bryan Cox's guest starring performance as G-d was hilarious. Not only was it an appropriate response to the Governor of Utah asking people to pray for rain, it reminded me of three things. First, the Emmy-winning Cox will be returning in "Succession" this Sunday. Second, "Succession" is an HBO series that will lead into "Last Week Tonight." As I mentioned most recently in 'Navalny,' 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,' and 'A House Made of Splinters' — three political and social issue documentaries nominated at the Oscars, "my readers should keep that relationship in mind when watching the clip above. It's not just news value that's driving it." Finally, as I wrote in 'SNL' sends up Trump's visit to the train derailment site in Ohio in its cold open and Weekend Update, "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" has been moved out of variety talk to a new variety scripted category, where it will compete against "Saturday Night Live." Maybe that will mean that Cox would be eligible for an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series nomination for this performance to go along with his likely third Emmy nomination for "Succession." I can hope.

I'll return to this and other water stories presently. In the meantime, stay tuned as I continue my celebration of completing another year of blogging and starting another with statistics followed by retrospectives on (Wayback) Wednesdays, (Throwback) Thursdays, (Flashback) Fridays and selected Sundays through the rest of this month and probably all of April.

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