The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Friday, August 30

Hi, everyone!

There’s tennis to accompany (distract) me while I write the Hoddle, and there are few things I enjoy more.

Ramble of the Day

I always enjoy a footballer that dabbles into music for the concept alone. For the most part, these ventures look like very fancy hobbies, and therefore inoffensive fun. You’d think that, by the same logic, I’d be into the idea of actor Jeremy Renner having his own music career. By the way I phrase things, you’ll probably guess that I’m not interested at all, and I will confirm that for you.

It’s not just that his music is so bad that I can’t stop thinking about a tweet I saw saying that he doesn’t have friends who are honest with him. He’s seemed to gain some version of legitimacy with a series of Jeep advertisements, each one of them sillier than the next. Naturally, I’m going to embed them and discuss them now.

This is the least offensive of the series of Jeep- Renner combinations. He’s in a diner writing some music and then takes a peek at a Jeep (possibly his) outside. Then it turns into a regular music video, set to some not so great music. It’s the other commercials that really, really suck.

This is significantly worse, as the concept of the commercial is that Renner is so entranced by someone else’s Jeep, they mutually agree that the Jeep owners ride in his tour bus, he drives their Jeep and leads the bus to the place of performance. I guess it’s just Jeep trying to sell one of their vehicles, but it really is a weird arrangement.

This one, though, takes the cake in its ridiculousness. Renner starts the commercial at a bar in a suit and bowtie. Then, he suddenly decides to leave, kissing his very surprised date goodbye and tossing his bowtie into perfectly good desserts. We quickly find out that a white Jeep is more important than his date, his bowtie, and those desserts, and he of course drives through some rugged terrain to get to his destination. Once there, he puts on a much more casual outfit, belting out what might be his worst song of the collection. (I can’t decide which one is the worst, but I think this one annoys me the most.)

Renner’s cringe level is not limited to these advertisements. He has an app, and this is how Kaitlyn Tiffany described it for The Verge:

When you launch the app, it autoplays a 42-second sample of Jeremy Renner’s cover of “House of the Rising Sun,” loudly, no matter where you happen to be. ... The app will also rank Jeremy Renner fans based on their dedication to him, using the measure of “activity,” which is powered by stars, which you can purchase in various increments starting at 200 for $1.99.

It all seems very unnecessary for an actor who is famous for playing the least superhero-like member of the most famous group of movie superheroes out there, but I suppose we all have to make money somehow. Since we are talking about the seemingly unnecessary music career of Renner in the first place, this seems like a perfect place to cap things off:

tl;dr: Jeremy Renner’s music career is completely unnecessary.

Links of the Day

A DFB committee will not sanction Schalke chairman Clemens Tönnies after he made racist comments directed towards Africans.

The daughter of former Spain manager Luis Enrique has died aged nine after a battle with bone cancer.

Uli Hoeness has resigned as the president of Bayern Munich.

A Ligue 1 match between Nice and Marseille was suspended after a section of the crowd were chanting homophobic messages.

Transfer updates: Inter has signed Alexis Sánchez on a season-long loan from Manchester United

Today’s longer read: Bolton fan Maggie Tetlow on the experience of supporting her club and the doomed ownership of Ken Anderson for The Guardian