Clearing my throat; or, a Flemish Pause

Ok, bear with me, because this really has nothing to do with the Olympics. It doesn't even have anything to do with Italy. But maybe it'll keep you occupied while we all wait for curling to begin. (Quick aside....I've made contact with a star of the New Zealand curling team. We're supposed to meet up later today. Somebody tell the Pulitzer committee.)

So I was in Brussels with eight hours to kill, and I jumped on a train into the city. Like Washington, Europe is filled with free commuter papers, although I've yet to see any friendly, winter-hat-wearing, Hare Krishna-like employees forcing them into commuters' hands. I miss those guys. In Brussels, the paper of choice is called Metro, which comes in two flavours, green (French) and blue (Flemish). I went with Blue, because I like my commuter paper to have a lot of Z's and J's.

What was remarkable was that, if you were a typical half-asleep commuter, you might have thought you were actually reading Express. I certainly did. Here were some of the celebrity nuggets contained inside: something about Courtney Love and Billy Corgan, something about Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora, something about Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow, something about "Extreme Makeover," with a Washington dateline. The celebrity birthdays? Babe Ruth, Ronald Reagan, Natalie Cole, and Mike Farrell, who apparently is at once a football recruiting expert, a middle aged college tennis player brilliantly profiled in the Washington Post (can't find the link) and an acteur from M.A.S.H.

(Granted, there were a few Metro stories that wouldn't have flown in Express. One, for example, was accompanied by a photo of dozens of naked people. Some kind of public art project, from what I could gather. Lots of nakedness in Brussels. Every magazine seemed to have someone naked on the cover. Even the porta potties have a picture of a little naked dude.)

Getting back to Metro, even the headlines were in English. Like check this one out, possibly the greatest headline of all time:

"Rising Star Blijft Down to Earth."

Some Flemish copy editor deserves a major raise for that one. Tremendous, right? Any Flemish speakers care to fill me in on the meaning of "blijft?" Pronounciation?

So my theory on how to save our industry, assuming Olympic blogging doesn't do the trick: just drop off 200,000 copies of Express in Brussels every morning. At least half the readers wouldn't know the difference. Sure, there might be occasional questions, like what happened to the front page updates on Belgian tennis star Xavier Malisse's fascinating performance at an obscure ATP tennis event in Delray Beach. And what happened to all the J's and Z's. And why is there yet another column from Swengali about George Washington's strength of schedule. (For my international readers, Express is a Washington Post-owned commuter paper, Swengali is its sports columnist, George Washington is a basketball team ranked eighth in the country, and its strength of schedule is stinkier than Toma del Maccagno.)

By Dan Steinberg |  February 9, 2006; 11:46 AM ET
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Posted by: Josh A. | February 9, 2006 01:07 PM

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