A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

"48 waist with the balloon seat, right?"

I'm gratified to report that, according to the fine folks at Mossimo Apparel, I no longer wear an XL swimsuit. I was all set to buy one at Target the weekend before we left on vacation, having had the old one for going on ten years, but something seemed a little...off when I took an extra large pair off the rack.

The Wife: That thing is huge.
Me: Is it? [holds suit up to waist] Jesus, I could fit a couple of naked...wives in here with me.
TW: Go for the large.
Me: You think? Gee, this is all so sudden...
TW: For Christ's sake. [throws size L into cart]
Me: Should I buy a few new pairs of shoes as well?

My glee was relatively short-lived, for after arriving in Galveston and plunging into the surf (the better to protect She Who Shall Not Be Named from the hordes of sharks lurking just offshore) I realized this particular clothing manufacturer must be having a laugh at our expense. The suit slipped off my waist so often and so...revealingly I realized I could've gotten away with a medium, which is patently ridiculous.

Anyone who's ever met me knows I'm not a small person. I did learn from my recent physical that I've actually lost about ten pounds in the last ten years (at this rate I'll be down to my so-called "ideal" weight around 2039), no big deal. But thanks to America's apparel industry, which is cleverly misleading our rapidly inflating population by adjusting sizes downward, I'll be proudly sporting an 'S' by my 50th birthday.

Time for another McGriddle.

Bad TV Ponderings - Verminators

One of the things the Discovery Channel's new show Verminators has going for it is the way it allows the network to finally show humans wasting other animals. Sure, Deadliest Catch brings us the killing fields of the king crab, and Bear Grylls always ends up eating some invertebrate, but you know DC has been dying to get its murder on ever since the first Shark Week.

"There's nothing more humane?"
"I could drown him."

The lamentations of Geralyn, the animal lover in Episode 4, who somehow can't reconcile her leaving food lying around for the neighborhood animals with the giant attic rat keeping her up nights. I credit the producers for the classic move of showing her in close-up while amplifying the sounds of J.D. shooting the thing in the background.

But like all-time favorite Cheaters, the real purpose of the show is to make us feel better about ourselves. 'Hey,' you think, 'I may be and uptight asshole who's no closer to realizing my dreams of writing professionally in spite of the looming specter of my 40th birthday, but at least I don't have an inch of bedbugs coating my floor.'

Naturally, it's loaded with the same ominous, self-important score and the military-style graphics that plague all these programs, but I suppose it'll enter the semi-regular rotation of shows I'll watch after SportsCenter when I can't find anything good on HBO but want to stay up to have one more beer.

It's a pretty prestigious rotation.

On a side note, I think I figured out why Frank Caliendo's show is doomed to fail. Certainly, he does a fine John Madden impersonation (which merely comprises 50% of his stand-up act), and his George W. Bush is decent, but if you're a...somewhat heavy impressionist who doesn't bear a passing resemblance to a dozen celebrities, your voice talents better be top notch.

Unfortunately, that isn't the case with Caliendo. Honestly, I didn't know who his Al Pacino or Donald Trump were supposed to be until I thought about it. And even then, all that came to me was that he was playing a fat Al Pacino.

For Your Review - May 9-11, 2008

Sometimes great movies don't always strike you that way at first. Repeat viewings may be necessary, or perhaps a little time needs to pass before you can really appreciate the film's understated magnificence.

And sometimes they're just pieces of crap. Case in point:

What Happens in Vegas * - I've been to Vegas quite a bit, and I somehow always miss out on the magical experiences all these movie people seem to have. Of course, I'm neither as cute as Ashton Kutcher nor as leathery as Cameron Diaz. Fun fact: I didn't realize she has six years on Kutcher. Time sure has flown since The Mask.

Speed Racer **1/2 - I really didn't understand all the negative press for this. Apparently everyone else was expecting Pixar. And as obnoxious as it was, it was still better than the cartoon.

"We'll even provide you with a prescription bong."

"Do you want the wizard, or the skull?"

The Kingwood teenager's story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.

Yet, Kevin Wade Jones Jr., 17, appeared almost indifferent as he relayed the bizarre description of his and two friends' activities at an Humble area graveyard, Adkins said.

"I just doubted it because it's very morbid, and I couldn't see anybody doing something like this," Adkins said Thursday.

Not until police went to the home of another Kingwood 17-year-old, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, did the officer believe the tale.

"He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it," Adkins said. "So I knew there was some truth to the story."
[...]
Houston police believe the teens disturbed the grave of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921.

The child was buried at an unmarked cemetery believed to be reserved for black veterans and their families, Adkins said.

I knew some real winners in college, including a couple of guys I worked with who were in the occasional habit of making off with headstones from local cemetaries. Rumor was they'd eventually ramped up their desecration to actual corpse abuse, but by then I'd quit the College Republicans.

Can't you get human skulls online? And is it true that ones from India always have perfect teeth?

A few things:

Jones claimed he and his friends used shovels to dig up the body and removed the corpse's head with a garden tool, Adkins said. Jones also revealed he and the other two boys took the severed head to the juvenile's home, where they used the skull as a "bong" to smoke marijuana, the officer said.

They would then use the marijuana to "get high," which would potentially lead to fits of "the giggles" and "munchies." Finally, the boys might listen to "Pink Floyd" before "passing out."

The three boys, all home-schooled, have also been charged in connection with the vehicle break-in.

Your dorsal ocelli are like limpid pools

Isabella Rossellini is doing a series of shorts for the Sundance Channel called Green Porno, in which she acts out the mating routines of various invertebrates. It is simultaneously one of the weirdest and coolest things I've ever seen (and I suppose it's technically NSFW):

In addition to snails and earthworms, you can enjoy simulated hanky-panky with such arthropod luminaries as the dragonfly, bee, and spider, peppered with informative commentary like, "My anus would end up on top of my head. Unfortunately."

Admittedly, I went straight for praying mantis, and was a little disappointed that the lovely Ms. Rossellini didn't play the female.

"Once you get twelve miles out, there's no laws at all. That's where they held the Tyson-Secretariat fight."

Silly Cedric, Lake Travis isn't international waters:

Former Longhorn running back Cedric Benson said he is innocent.

He was charged with Boating While Intoxicated (BWI) charges along with the resisting arrest charges on Lake Travis Saturday night.

Benson was arrested after a Lower Colorado River Authority officer said he failed a sobriety test.

Benson was operating a 30 foot boat with 15 passengers on it when he was randomly checked for a safety inspection.

It's unclear if the police were alerted to the presence of monkey knife fights aboard the boat.

But wow...15 people? I was on a 32-footer last week with four guys and we oft times had to maneuver in close quarters. Then again, we were usually casting from the same side of the boat.

Police said they used pepper spray to get Benson to a Travis County deputy's car.
[...]
Benson was the fourth pick in the 2005 draft.

As a fan of both the Longhorns and the Bears, I'm pretty qualified to describe Benson as a bust. In three seasons, he has less than 1,500 yards rushing and ten touchdowns. Unfortunately, as golden an opportunity as this is to cut him loose, the Bears would take a $6 million salary cap hit if they did so.

And however will they re-sign Cade McNown if that happens?

Beating a...

While we were at the "beach" last week (a perfectly serviceable sandy oceanfront surface, Angelo's snotty protestations aside), we discussed watching the Kentucky Derby. Circumstances - meaning She Who Shall Not Be Named's ongoing fascination with getting pummeled by surf - kept us away from the TV, which turns out to have been just as well:

Big Brown was pulling away from the field, accelerating with every powerful stride toward the finish line in the Kentucky Derby. The crowd of 157,770 was on its feet and cheering as the big, unbeaten, muscular bay crossed the line first, 4 3/4 lengths ahead of the filly Eight Belles.

Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. was still celebrating, along with thousands of happy bettors, as Big Brown and the 19 other horses in Saturday's race galloped out around the first turn at Churchill Downs.

It took a few minutes to sink in, but anyone watching those horses soon realized that one of them had fallen to the track.

"It's the filly," someone whispered. She went down about a quarter mile past the finish line.

In just a few minutes, the joy of the Derby and the promise of a new Triple Crown season were upended when Eight Belles was euthanized by injection on the track.

She had broken both front ankles and could not be saved.
[...]
Dr. Larry Bramlage, the Derby's on-call veterinarian, said the filly's injuries were too severe to even attempt to move her off the track.

"She didn't have a front leg to stand on to be splinted and hauled off in the ambulance, so she was euthanized," Bramlage said.

Trainer Larry Jones paid tribute to his fallen filly saying, "She ran the race of her life."

Apparently so.

I'm not going to get all bunged up about another (the fourth high profile racing death in the last two years) dead horse, seeing as how I: 1) eat meat; 2) take my kid to the zoo, and 3) just last week went fishing with The Father in Law. But remind me again how horse racing is different from the Iditarod or greyhound racing or any other borderline civilized animal sport? Is it the veneer of respectability afforded by millionaire owners? The venerable tradition of races like the Derby? Thoroughbreds are prettier than greyhounds? The relatively low mortality rate?

Horse always tastes a little gamy?

Ah well. This will cease to be a story once the Preakness rolls around.