For posterity

No comment to make - I sort of just want to save this paragraph from the New York Times web site for posterity:

NBC, which had scheduled a one-hour tribute to Farrah Fawcett tonight at 10 p.m., has now expanded that special to two hours, beginning at 9 p.m., to cover the deaths of both Ms. Fawcett and [Michael] Jackson. CBS will broadcast a special report covering both deaths at 10 p.m.

OK, two comments, actually.
1) From my office window, I can see three of the helicopters covering the action - to the extent that someone still being dead is "action" - at the hospital where Jackson died. So I've got that going for me.
2) How big a bottle of Champagne is Mark Sanford drinking right about now? Yesterday was clearly the right time to admit having an affair with some chick from Argentina. Nice going.

Five more losers, Hollywood style

Despite all of the headlines it generated - not to mention the breathless publicists who were "shocked" - I don't think I really care at all about the news that the smarties behind the Academy Awards decided to start naming 10 nominees (up from five) for the Best Motion Picture award.

It almost as if all of these movie-industry pundits don't realize that it basically just means five more movies are going to not win the award, which they were going to do (or not do) anyway.

I do find the announcement ironic, though. This being the year that Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and He's Just Not That Into You were released, it seems like an odd time to expand the number of films up for awards.

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And, not that it's going to affect your day or anything, but I get to see/hear Wilco tonight! As my sister might say: Yeah, baby.

And one to go

In my first real job, one of my responsibilities was to call staff at sports teams all over the country to find out what their latest marketing plans were. If that doesn't sound like fun to you, don't worry: There were a few perks.

One of those perks was that after I had worked at that company for a year, the owner installed a heater in the bathroom, a long overdue upgrade because (1) our office bathroom was one metal door away from being outside, and (2) our office bathroom was located in Chicago, which, as you might have heard, gets a little chilly for five or six months out of the year.

Another perk was that some of the calls I made were to area code 803. That was especially nice whenever the recipient of my call was a woman, because I tended to think that South Carolina women have a great accent - somehow, noticeably better than that of their counterparts in both North Carolina and Georgia.

Apparently, however, South Carolina's governor doesn't find that accent quite as mellifluous as I used to, because Mark Sanford went south - way south - to hook up with a woman not named Mrs. Sanford.

As you've probably read by now, not only did the ex-rising-star Republican publicly admit today to having an affair - "extra-marital," the New York Times article helpfully points out - but he flew to Argentina to do it. That's first class.

Then he admitted to being AWOL with her in Argentina the last week, while his staff told people he was "hiking on the Appalachian Trail." Maybe they just meant that as a euphemism. Well, what the affair lacked in convenience, it did make up for in creativity, I guess.

I find this news especially exciting, because of that old rule of thumb about politicians' career-ending extra-marital affair admissions coming in threes. (That might not be the exact rule of thumb, but it's close.) Arizona's John Ensign - who must be breathing a sigh of extra-marital relief right now - was last week, now Sanford, and I'm thinking we'll have ourselves another before too long. When we do - as Sanford himself might put it - y'all come back now, hear?