Bended like Beckham
The soap opera that is David Beckham’s life becomes more bizarre by the day, and seemingly at the expense of his soccer career.
Fresh off the controversy caused earlier this month, when Madame Tussauds, the London wax museum, put on display a Nativity scene featuring Beckham and his pregnant wife, Victoria, as Joseph and Mary, comes a black-tie christening party for their sons, Brooklyn, 5, and Romeo, 2, that cost a reported $900,000.
The British press took great delight in ridiculing last week’s lavish event, which the Daily Mail called “absurdly over the top.” Several newspapers recalled Beckham’s famous comment about Brooklyn: “I definitely want him to be christened, but I don’t know into what religion yet.”
Dubbed Britain’s “alternative royal family,” the Beckhams built a chapel on their “Beckingham Palace” estate north of London for the ceremony. The guest list, which included Tom Cruise and Elizabeth Hurley, was headlined by Elton John, who was named godfather to the boys.
Meanwhile, the Real Madrid midfielder finds his star on the wane in Spain, where one newspaper recently described Beckham as “a model who plays a bit of football in his spare time.”
My, how your garden grows
Amid all the farms along Georgia’s Highway 231, Phillip Jennings’ 3,000-acre spread near Riddleville is, well, in a field of its own this month.
Jennings makes his money growing grass – the legal kind – and for almost a year, one four-acre stretch, sewn with a mix of Bermuda grass, perennial ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass, has been given the most preferential of treatment.
According to the Detroit News, the field has been mowed daily to a precise height, liberally treated with fertilizers and scoured for such pests as mole crickets and army worms.
On Thursday, the pampered pampas will be cut into sheets, rolled up, loaded on trucks and transported to Jacksonville, Fla. The Feb. 6 Super Bowl is a month away, but the field will be on its way.
No way to fly
Greg Cote of the Miami Herald is spending way too much time in the air.
Commenting on the end of the NFL regular season, Cote wrote: “The 12 playoff teams will be seated in first class, sipping champagne. … The 20 eliminated teams will trudge ashamedly past them into coach, carrying a bawling infant and rolling a suitcase that won’t fit into the overhead bin, and headed for an assigned middle seat between an old lady complaining of nausea and a snoring 473-pound man in a tank-top.”
Beauty is the beast
Buck-toothed Brazilian magician Ronaldinho has Barcelona in first place in the Spanish soccer league, has totally eclipsed David Beckham in popularity and a couple of weeks ago was named FIFA’s world player of the year for 2004.
All of which has Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Perez, ruing the day he listened to this bit of advice from one of his advisors:
“How ugly is Ronaldinho? There was no point in buying him, it wasn’t worth it. He’s so ugly that he’d sink you as a brand. Between Ronaldinho and Beckham, I’d go for Beckham a hundred times. Just look at how handsome Beckham is, the class he has, the image. The whole of Asia has fallen in love with us because of Beckham. Ronaldinho is too ugly.”
Calling all space cadets
Noting that Santiago University in Chile is offering a course on UFOs titled “Unexplainable Air Phenomena,” Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times wrote, “School officials are so excited about the course that they’ve even offered to waive out-of-state tuition fees for Dennis Rodman.”