Bread and Circuses

Is writer’s block and writer’s apathy the same thing? NO, I haven’t filled out my brackets (or my taxes, yet) and the conspiracy to keep Barry Bonds out of baseball isn’t exactly a news flash.

So I find myself reading the soccer section on FOX. Usually good for an “in case of emergency break glass” type story. Murdered coach, contract jumping star, icon playing for an ungrateful American audience, your odd riot. That sort of thing.

Slim pickings. I read all the headlines and I have no clue what season it is. It looks like the professional regular season, but there’s all this about the missing spark of leadership on the British team, and there’s some under card international tournament somewhere. And a few odd comments about the sorry state of talent levels in US soccer, which is like pointing out that we have very few good yodelers.

But FOX did have something else for the lazy reader (me). Pictures of soccer wives. Evidently they are a uniquely European phenomenon and rather eye-catching.

This fellow appears to have won some kind of trophy (the cup, the gold cup).

This woman is the girlfriend of a German soccer player. Nice photo, but much more interesting is the reaction of the woman in the upper right portion of the photo. Can’t make out what she’s saying. Sounds like….

This is just sad. The woman on the left is Cheryl Tweedy, a singer of some sort and girlfriend of Ashley Cole (who I’m pretending to have heard of for the sake of this blog). She evidently is some sort of Brittany Spears impersonator. The woman to her left is either a malnourished waif or “that Beckham woman”.

And this would be Ms. Tweedy and Mr. Cole. (I have no idea, so don’t ask).

A German player and his girlfriend watching Argentina play Germany. She thinking “What am I doing with this schmuck.” and he’s thinking “As soon as she goes for a bratwurst I’m making a run for it.”

Wayne Rooney is a very big star in England. This is his girlfriend Coleen McLoughlin. Who couldn’t fall in love with a smile like her’s?

Goalie’s girlfriend. Enough said.

The wife of Steffen Effenberg. Or Effen Steffenburg. I forget. Anyway, it doesn’t say, but I assume she’s some relation to Crocodile Dundee.

I assume this is some sort of soccer wives book club meeting. “Like, she’s all ‘Strum and Drang’ this and ‘You just must read ‘The Sorrows of Young Wether’ and I’m like, “Why bother? Just go straight to Hegel and Schelling. Who has the time these days?”

And she can do that thing with her wrist!

Bad day at Baden-Baden.

Think I’ll go see if I still have that Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers CD with “American Girl”.

Why? Just because.

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