RIP Wire-haired Man-goblin

Last fall, while everyone was paying attention to the presidential race, the NFL held a football season--one of the most boring ones that Fosco can recall (is is possible to care about the Tennessee Titans if one lives outside of Nashville?). Imagine Fosco's surprise when he woke up today--in a post-political mood--to discover that the Arizona Cardinals will play in the Super Bowl.

For those of you who don't follow football, let me try to put this in context. Having the AZ Cards in the Super Bowl is a bit like Norbit winning the Oscar for Best Picture: technically the movie is eligible, but Eddie Murphy isn't exactly calling Spago to reserve a room for the victory party.

What makes the Cardinals Super Bowl run even stranger is that their quarterback is the aged Kurt Warner (seen at right with an unidentified companion), a man who has had the strangest football career of the last twenty years. In the late 1990s, he was playing for an arena football team in Iowa (and bagging groceries in the off-season). In 1999, he was a backup in the NFL who ended up starting due to injury: he was named NFL MVP that year and won the Super Bowl. Two years later, he was MVP and led the Rams to the Super Bowl again. Good story.

But then, three years later, he was released and had disastrous tenures as a starter for two other teams. This year, Warner was expected to be Arizona's backup before the season started. And then he won the starting job and, well, here we are... It's just such an odd story of ups and downs--second chances, third chances, etc. And yet, if Warner wins this Super Bowl, he will have more NFL championships than Brett Favre or Peyton Manning.

Now Fosco has always appreciated Kurt Warner, despite the fact that Warner is something of Jesus-freak who believes that God is directly responsible for wins on the football field (as if God would be an Arizona Cardinals fan! We all know God prefers Tom Brady's Patriots.). For Fosco, the most entertaining part of the Warner mystique had to do with Warner's crazy wife, an ex-Marine divorced cougar with a penchant for feathered apparel. She also maybe looked a bit like a lesbian (of the New Age variety). I mean, look at her: she's just one Native American tattoo away from owning a crystal store with her lifepartner in Taos, New Mexico. Needless to say, Brenda was no typical NFL trophy wife... And did I mention that she had a habit of calling in to local sports radio and defending her husband?

My love of Brenda Warner reached its apex with this headline in The Onion (or see below):

There is probably no better phrase in the English language than "wire-haired man-goblin." (N.B., this was also the apex of Fosco's appreciation for The Onion.)

But things have a way of changing, no? Imagination Fosco's surprise when he discovered that the years have been kind to Brenda Warner. Very kind. As Deadspin reports, Brenda Warner has become "kind of a babe." Which is good, I suppose. I mean, it's nice if Brenda wants to look more like every other NFL wife. And yet... I miss the man-goblin I learned to love. She was weird and she was tough and that made things (especially boring things like Kurt Warner's personality) a lot more interesting. Please, Brenda: bring back the man-goblin! Make this Super Bowl worth watching!