The Euro Cup was absolutely thrilling, and we couldn’t be happier that Spain won. I’d been watching the matches and had predicted early on that Spain would win. Of course a lot of that was wishful thinking, but still, I was right. We watched the final at a packed Spanish bar surrounded by cheering, dancing and kissing Spaniards.

The Spanish love football. They really love it. So all the hugging and kissing was reserved for football celebrations while the annual Erotic Film Festival in Barcelona was uncharacteristically chaste. Normally the promoters expect 50,000 men in trench coats using aliases and paying in cash. This year’s attendance was down over 70%, and the decline was blamed on the Euro Cup.

“Football is one of the few things that can compete with sex,” moaned the festival director: compete and win, apparently.

One of Spain’s newest sex symbols:

How can hot, naked women compete?

Last night La Mujer and I traveled to St. Albans with some friends for a wedding reception. At the bar there was a girl working who had a tattoo across her chest that appeared to be done in white ink. She had a very British complexion which is to say that a white tattoo on her skin is slightly harder to distinguish than rice in a snowstorm.

I’m a nerd about tattoos. I love them, I love the art of the tattoo and I will always look at other people’s work. What she had was a nice tattoo from what I could gather. I believe it was a fairly old school American design with a flaming heart and swallows. But it was just visible enough to barely register forcing one to really stare to attempt to discern what it was. I didn’t want to appear to be a letch staring at her boobs, nor did I want to have to explain to my wife that I was simply attempting to study the artwork, so I never really figured it out.

Ladies: If you’re going to get a tattoo on your chest, please make it clear. It’s unfair to get in trouble for ogling breasts when it’s really an attempt to suss out whether there is a strange pattern there or not.

The wedding reception was for a Danish friend of La Mujer, and the reception was filled with Danes. The big news—that everyone was receiving text message updates on—was the Euro 2008 qualifying match between Denmark and Sweden in Copenhagen. Apparently the rivalry between the two is akin to the Red Sox/Yankees one so it was a fairly big match. Sweden went up early and within the first 30 minutes led 3-0. I also learned some new Danish swear words.

Remarkably, Denmark rallied and tied up. Then with a minute remaining in the match, a Danish fan stormed the pitch to attack a ref for calling a penalty. The match was called off, and as of now, it’s unclear what the final result will be but it could very likely go down as a 3-0 victory for Sweden. Which would obviously be very, very bad for Denmark’s chances for the cup.

And this guy probably doesn’t have too many friends hanging out next to him at the moment.

Pretty bubbles in the air! Ah, good ol’ West Ham. My adopted home team here in East London pulled it off in a big way today. And beat the top team in the Premiership in Manchester to boot. Two months ago I was positive West Ham would be relegated to the Championship. A month ago I still thought they would be. But each week a little glimmer of hope kept growing, even though as a Seattle sports fan accustomed to disappointment, I tried not to be too optimistic.

That little glimmer of hope is largely due to Carlos Tévez, who was signed under a shady deal and West Ham was fined £5.5 million for it, but wasn’t docked points which would have relegated them. I’m sure Charlton, Sheffield and Watford supporters are quite upset about this and will doubtless cite many reasons to be so. The controversy is well documented and I really don’t know enough about the history or the regulations to chime in on what’s right or not, but I also don’t particularly care. West Ham won and affirmed their place at the bottom of the premiership and I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl.