A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

"Tall and tan and young and lovely"

"The girl from [Argentina] goes walking:"

The attorney general of South Carolina on Tuesday asked the state law enforcement division to review Gov. Mark Sanford's travel records after the governor admitted to more visits with his mistress than previously disclosed.

"In light of the governor's disclosure of additional travel today, I have requested that SLED conduct a preliminary review of all Governor Sanford's travel records to determine if any laws have been broken or any state funds misused," Attorney General Henry McMaster said in a statement.

After returning last week from a secret trip to Argentina that his staff and wife didn't know about, the Republican governor admitted to an extramarital affair and said he had seen his mistress three times in the past year.

But he told The Associated Press on Tuesday he had met with Maria Belen Chapur seven times, including five visits in the past 12 months. Sanford also told the AP he'd "crossed lines" with other women, although Chapur was the only one he had sex with.

What constitutes "crossed lines" to Sanford, I wonder? Are we talking Clintonian definitions of "sex?" Did they hold hands? Talk dirty on his government friends and family plan? Did any of those emails start with "a/s/l?"

McMaster, a Republican, has so far been reluctant to move forward with calls for an investigation into Sanford, saying he is wary of mixing legal matters with political score-settling from longtime Sanford opponents.

McMaster is running for governor next year. His opponents say his hesitancy to investigate Sanford is meant to prevent a Sanford resignation, which would elevate Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer to the top office. Bauer, also mulling a run at the governor's mansion, would then be able to run as an incumbent in next year's race.

"There's been a lot of speculation and innuendo on whether or not public moneys were used to advance my admitted unfaithfulness. To be very clear:no public money was ever used in connection with this."

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer confirmed Tuesday that Sanford had met with his mistress more times than he originally admitted.

Two of the meetings in the past year included multiple-night stays in New York, Sanford told the AP. Sanford told the AP he met with Chapur a third time in New York on what was intended to be a goodbye visit. Sanford was accompanied by his spiritual adviser, the AP reported.

Sanford is certainly a cad for fooling around on his wife and a hypocrite for doing the same while embracing the GOP's crumbling "family values" platform and using Clinton's extracurricular activities as an excuse to call for his resignation, but this just proves Chapur wasn't too bright either. I mean, it isn't bad enough that he's being dishonest with his family and constituents to begin with, but he has to bring a wingman to help him break up with you? The last time I tried that was when I asked my friend to suggest to a girl I was dating that I was no longer interested. I was 16.

To Peenman's credit, he refused.

Sanford also told the AP of two nonromantic encounters, including their first meeting in 2001 in Uruguay and getting coffee in New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

"There was some kind of connection from the very beginning," he told the AP.

Since Sanford's admission last week, there have been growing calls for him to step down, with critics saying he's not able to steer the state out of its economic crisis.

Republican Larry Grooms, who is running for governor in 2010, told CNN Tuesday that Sanford "is incapable of leading because of his behavior."

Unlike many of his colleagues in the chamber, most of whom have remained silent on the resignation question, Grooms, a key conservative ally of the governor, has been a supporter of Sanford's fiscally conservative agenda in the Senate. But Grooms said he told Sanford by phone last Thursday that he thought the governor should resign. Sanford said he disagreed.

"He indicated he believed that his only chance for redemption was to stay in office," Grooms said. "To me that doesn't serve any purpose well. That doesn't serve the people. It's not about him; it's about governing the people of the state."

To be fair, what does he have to go home to? His wife already confirmed she had known about the affair and told him to break it off. Instead, he disappeared and was subsequently found out. Even if Jenny and the four AT&T bars are still living in the Governor's mansion...well, let's just say they're probably saving a lot on A/C bills.

But in all seriousness, I almost feel for the guy. True, he parroted the same social conservative garbage as the rest of his GOP cohorts, but maybe - like many pragmatic Southern politicians, perhaps - he never really bought into it, but had little choice other than to play by the political rules laid down by Republicans decades before. Maybe he went home every day to a wife and kids who never understood the real Mark Sanford, the Mark Sanford who dreamt of idle afternoons on the shores of Ilhabela, drinking daquiris and realizing long repressed desires a hemisphere away from the scrutiny and judgment of the puritan South.

Or maybe he's just another windbag politician who thought he could get away with it. Whatever. Just thought I'd give this "compassion" thing a shot.

"Why do they call you 'Meat'?"

A youth almost entirely (mis)spent watching bad movies does strange things to a person, as The Wife and I discovered last night. We were dozing through the local news, specifically the story about how a grand jury declined to indict a Metro cop in a fatal shooting outside the Medical Center. Metro chief Thomas Lambert spoke in support of the officer in question, one R.L. Harrington. That, in and of itself, isn't surprising. No, the interesting part of the story - to me anyway - was Lambert's resemblance to a certain 80s teen comedy villain.

This is Chief Lambert:

This is Wallacetown, FL entrepeneur "Porky" Wallace:

Not pictured: Ms. Beulah Balbricker

I guess the destruction of his riverboat casino at the hands of Pee Wee and Tommy and the gang finally convinced him to turn over a new leaf.

"...and I got my cake."

It's June 21, and we're hopefully still a little over two weeks from the arrival of Hecate and Kali (The Wife will be plenty doped up when it's time to sign the birth certificates). There was a bit of worry earlier this month when the doctor said the fluid levels had dropped, but a week of forced couch rest and plenty of water and we're back on track.

I haven't been writing as much as I'd normally like, for what I hope are obvious reasons (I did find time to make some completely pulled-out-of-my-ass box office predictions about the rest of the summer blockbusters at Hair Balls). In a perfect world, there would've been a Worst Movie Dads entry on Friday, but it completely slipped my mind. The short list included Jack Torrance, Dad Meiks (Frailty), and Bill Maplewood (Happiness). Those are pretty standard choices, however, so I'd probably have to throw in Daniel Hillard (Mrs. Doubtfire), because lifelong trauma caused by a cross-dressing father has to count for something.

I'm sure my kids will attest to that in a few years.

Given The Wife's delicate condition, Father's Day here is a little subdued. She got tickets for m and her dad to go the Pirates-Astros game a couple weeks back, and she let me sleep in, even though "breakfast at Frank's" became "Mommy's going back to sleep for a couple hours." She still needs to stay off her feet, so we'll be continuing the summer weekend tradition of Dad taking She Who Shall Not Be Named to the pool for a couple hours, then meeting up with the Father-In-Law for dinner. Would I like to sit on my ass, watching baseball/Deadliest Catch marathons and drinking beer all day? Hell yes, but it's obvious that the best gift I can get at this point is two healthy, full-tern daughters (a magic wand to cure SWSNBN most likely isn't in the cards).

That doesn't mean I'm not going to slip the wedding band off when I take SWSNBN to the grocery store later and try to score some sympathy digits. Certain things are expected of me, after all.

Happy Father's Day, everyone. And Dad, when I call you later, please try to refrain from gloating about the goddamn weather in Maine. I promise to return the favor in January.

"The new phone book's here!"

I didn't get all Navin Johnson-y when Fark linked to my Hair Balls list of the Top Five "Summer Blockbuster" Duds, because I didn't find out about it until two or three days after the fact. Clearly I'm not spending enough time on the internet.

My favorite part is the way the commenters assume I was writing aboutall-time box office bombs then branch off into spirited defenses of The Last Action Hero, which is noble and all...except it wasn't even on the list. As you can see below.

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That thud you heard last weekend was Will Ferrell's career settling noisy back to earth. With a budget estimated at over $100 million, Land of the Lost was supposed to propogate the 2009 summer blockbuster season (handily inaugurated by the new Star Trek) and continue Ferrell's successful box office run.

Surprisingly, American audiences seem to have tired of well-meaning doofuses who run into things and holler a lot, even when you throw in a T-rex. Ferrell, however, can assuage his hurt feelings with the millions of dollars already stuffing his California king mattress, and the knowledge that plenty of other would-be summer blockbusters didn't quite meet financial expectations either.

5. Stealth (2005)
Budget: $138,000,000
Domestic Gross: $31,704,416

Stealth proves the old adage that there's no movie so bad that it can't be made worse by an expensive explosion sequence and nu-metal sountrack. Jamie Foxx, who won the Academy Award for Ray a year earlier, can at least commiserate with Renée Zellweger and Halle Berry about their post-Oscar career choices.

4. Catwoman (2004)
Budget: $100,000,000
Domestic Gross: $40,202,379

Speaking of Halle Berry, she may want to consider sticking to ensemble superhero movies from here on out. Already the weakest link in the X-Men films, she actually played chicken with the 20th Century Fox over getting Storm more screen time...and won. To celebrate, she went on to make a Catwoman movie with no connection to the Batman universe where the titular character dresses like an extra from a Winger video.

3. Battlefield Earth (2000)
Budget:$73,000,000
Domestic Gross: $21,471,685

It can certainly be argued that no one was expecting a filmed adaptaion of L. Ron hubbard's thoroughly ludicrous sci-fi "epic" to break the bank. Scientologists, apparently, felt they'd done their part in buying multiple copies of the book (the better to deceive various bestseller lists) that they didn't have to pursue similar tactics at theaters. Books can be shelved unread, after all; buying a ticket means you might actually have to sit through two hours of a dreadlocked Travolta shrieking about "man animals."

2. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
Budget: $110,000,000
Domestic Gross: $48,608,066

It's impossible to ignore the laugh value of this Keanu-less sequel, especially when seeing all the comedy movie shout-outs in this scene, where the ill-fated ship cruises inexorably out of control into the harbor. I personally spotted Al Czervik's runaway yacht from Caddyshack, the finale of Airplane, and the boat jump in Live and Let Die.

1. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
Budget: $100,000,000
Domestic Budget: $4,411,102

How often does Eddie Murphy dream longingly about the years 1982 to 1988 -- when his résumé listed movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places -- only to wake up to the horrible reality that is the last 20 years? Does he call Steve Martin for a sympathetic shoulder to cry on? And should vast amounts of government funding be set aside to research this descent into suckitude that seems to afflict all comedic actors? Will Ferrell may depend on it.

Rex for misery

With apologies to Billy Idol

Figures. I root for two NFL teams, and this guy's going to stink up both of them:

If he passes his physical today, former Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman will sign a one-year contract with the Texans.

On Thursday, the last day of organized team activities, the Texans agreed to terms with Grossman on a one-year deal for the minimum $620,000 for a veteran with his experience. Grossman, who turns 29 in August, was drafted in the first round in 2003.

Grossman will join Matt Schaub, Dan Orlovsky and Alex Brink as quarterbacks on the roster. Coach Gary Kubiak plans to keep three on the roster this season.

If Schaub is sidelined because of injuries for the third consecutive season, Grossman will give the Texans an experienced backup behind Orlovsky, who signed as a free agent from Detroit.

Fans used to seeing David Carr's ass on the turf will be back in their comfort zone watching the awesome backward scrambling skills and wildly erratic passing that made Bears supporters the world over rend their hoagies in frustration. Meanwhile, they can continue to ponder why in the hell anybody every drafts a QB from Florida.

Or am I misrembering Danny Wuerffel's contributions to the game?

I can taste colors

I watch Deadliest Catch. It isn't out of some unfulfilled desire to test the limits of my endurance out there on the edge of the envelope, or whatever, but because I kind of enjoy watching a bunch of alcoholic psychos chasing marine cockroaches across the Arctic Circle. And because I think chain-smoking, blood clot suffering Capt. Phil is going to drop dead in his seat and that'll make for great TV.

But...because it is such a manly exercise, I tend to have a beer or two while viewing. The local Spec's has gotten some nifty stock over the last few weeks, and being an IPA fan I was especially interested in this:

20% ABV (by conparison, Stone Ruination is 7.70%). Nice alternation between hops and sweetness, and distinctly hallucinatory. I may have had an actual conversation with a mirage that looked like Frank Reynolds, the ABC News anchorman.

I think I'm going to have a "freak out" beer tasting with this, Russian River's Damnation Ale, and La Fin Du Monde. Then we'll all take naps and log our dreams.

"And that would lead them back..."

"...home."

Hopefully soon to be followed by Jango Fett (Headless) and Qui-Gon Jinn (Perforated).

"Did you see the sun[s] rise this morning?"

Finally, someone has come up with a way to combine two of my oldest loves: Han Solo and Magnum, P.I.

And the side-by-side comparison:

Perfect. especially in capturing the annoying similarities between Luke and Rick.

Ouch

I'm at a local big box store the other day, picking up the dresser and changing table we ordered. This girl - and I console myself by observing that she was 19, tops - processes my order and prints out the necessary documents for me to sign, which I do. Whereupon she speaks:

"So, these for your grandbaby?"

Remember that scene in "Homer and Apu," when Apu moves in with the Simpsons after losing his job and Marge asks him if he wants to go with her to the Kwik-E-Mart to get milk for Maggie and he knocks over the cans of corn in despair? Well, that's sort of what I did, except I was signing my name and my neat if somewhat illegible autograph was interrupted by a long, jagged line.

"Uh, no...they're actually for my kids. Twins, in fact."
"...Oh."

She had to wheel the stuff out to the van, which was an awkward slog. She may have muttered something about her grandmother having gray hair too, which helped. Really. What helped even more was getting home and resting these tired old bones. Land's sakes, I don't rightly get around like I used to.

A college ex-girlfriend of mine used to get on me about dyeing my hair (one of the many reasons for the "ex" part). Times like that make me think maybe I should've listened to her instead of just engaging in frequent and noisy intercourse.

Maybe not. But really, it's great to be thought of as 20 years older than you really are. I can't wait for the first time I'm out with The Wife and somebody refers to her as my daughter.