Dave Wielenga, in “Staff Infection,” wrote of that strange and annoying subsect of men who don’t just dig Bruce Springsteen but diiiiiiig Bruce Springsteen. Dave has a name for them: Wendys. “Those 40-to-60-year-old guys with their denim outfits, their jutting lower lips and their certainty that Bruce alone understands them, and vice-versa. Like silly little man-girls they dissect his every word and swoon as they not-so-secretly yearn to wrap their legs around his velvet rims and strap their hands across his engines, like little E Street tramps.”

These are the dudes who can’t just say they like, or even love, the music of Springsteen–whom they never refer to as Springsteen but always Bruce or Boss in that unsettling familiar way stalkers have when informing you that Bruce is their boyfriend but “we like to keep that on the down low.”

And it’s not just VPs of marketing and quality control engineers, their stomachs battling against pressed dungarees, who are smitten. No, this includes journalists–boy does it include journalists. Check out these two reviews of Springsteen’s recent Sports Arena gig in the OC Register and LA Times. The pieces, by top-notch rock journalists Ben Wener and Randy Lewis, aren’t nearly as breathless as the legendary porn pieces penned by Robert Hilburn, but they do show how even a professional can get weak in the knees when his man comes in sight.

Tags: Ben Wener, bruce springsteen, E Street Band, LA Times, OC Register, Randy Lewis, Robert Hilburn