PARIS -- They are wearing all the usual outrageous stuff from crass clashing colors to jewelry in their hair. They are spouting on about everything from the World Cup to weird cutlery and holding daily family practices, which are so much ridiculously better than any of the official matches, the tournament should gather up a ton of Euros and pay off the rest of the women's field just to get their pitiful butts out of here so we can watch the sisters duke it out.

	Serena Williams ditched the Cameroon garb for diamond-like tiara/headband.

Equal prize money? Equal to what, celebrity boxing?

That's about how legitimately competitive the French Open pour femmes has been -- outside the wise and wisecracking and wondrous Williams Sisters who are strutting, swaggering and star-turning their way smack toward each other and what seems to be an inevitable collision in the championship round.

Younger sib Serena easily mutilated another poor Ova on Saturday, this one Janette Husarova from Bratislava, 6-1, 6-3 -- making it a matching dirty dozen to her older housemate, Venus, who grandly reamed Rita Grande, 6-1, 6-4, the day before. Both have given up but twelve games in their three first-week matches. And Serena didn't even have to wear her lucky Cameroon national team outfit of lucky green dress, yellow knee socks and red biker pants for the latest one. She did, of course, have the terrific fashion sense to don her neon golden slippers and fasten a faux diamond tiara thing to the top of her head so that she resembled some kind of Hip Hop prom princess.

"It was a bit hot today," Serena explained about not wearing the 'Roons' colors on the day Cameroon opened at the World Cup with a tie against Ireland. "I know you guys miss it. But keep your fingers crossed. I'm thinking about retiring the outfit." Wait a minute. Didn't Serena mean she's NOT thinking about retiring the outfit. Sometimes it's as hard to pick up on the Williamses' syntax as it is their crosscourt bullets. "(The game) was too early for me. But I heard the score was 1-1. At least they didn't lose."

Another day of women's tennis smelling, uh, progressing like it did -- fourteen of the sixteen women's third round matches went straight sets, most of them in less than an hour -- Serena was actually asked how she was going to prevent this from becoming an international incident. No, not the sisters destroying tennis. Cameroon.

"They identified with you. You are their heroine. You raise the (hopes) of the Cameroon people so high. Now you go out in different colors and turn your back on them?" asked an American journalist.

"No, they're in my heart," Serena said. "I could never turn my back."

She might not be able to turn her back on her next Ova, or rather Eva -- Vera Zvonareva, 17, another infant Russian who has won the Orange Bowl the past two years and has a humongous backhand. She might also win the match with her eyes closed, as she and her sister could have done the first week of the French. But, in truth, apart from Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles, there's nobody left who looks remotely unscared enough merely to walk on court against the two-headed monster.

Sadly, too -- Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport MIAs before the tournament even started, the Belgian waffles, Justin Henin and Kim Clijsters beaten early -- the most scintillating women's story could have been that little Circus Baby, Aniko Kapros, who won 12 of the past 13 games against an obviously sick Henin in the first round. Kapros, from Hungary by way of Hilton Head (where she winters with the noted tennis teacher, Dennis Vander Meer), is the offspring of Attila and Aniko, the latter a member of the Olympic bronze medalist Hungarian gymnastics team in 1972 who more intriguingly then joined her husband under the big top in the traveling Maygur circus.

"They went a lot of places. The Bahamas (where she did a lot of growing up). Las Vegas. I think they got an invitation to the Lido (the famous night club in Paris). But my mom was pregnant with me at the time," Aniko said. "They were artists. It's hard to explain. They have this board in the middle of the stage and my dad jumps and my mom flips and my dad catches her. That's mainly it."

	Venus Williams says she's giving up shopping -- for clothes that is. Her new thing is home decor.

That's mainly it as a description of Kapros' serve as well -- she flips it and any cocker spaniel could catch it. "Pretty bad, pretty soft," conceded the bebe de cirque after she came through against Henin, who wasn't merely sick but had to be near life support to lose to this girl. A chip off the old tumblers, Kapros even rolled through another round, beating Virginie Razzano, before being dropped by Mary Pierce on Saturday, 6-3, 6-0.

Fortunately, Attila didn't try to catch Pierce, who since winning the French Open title two years ago has split with Robby Alomar and cut her hair but obviously not her visits to Pierre's All-You-Can-Stuff Breakfast Bar-- "Mar-ee, she gains at least the 25 pounds, easy," said one French writer. Even the Williamses, neither one, had the gall to break out one of Mary's meshed midriff dresses in which, somebody said, she could have caught enough minnows to stock the Seine.

Before the first week was up, however, the Sisters Sledge were already talking about their anticipated meeting in the final round. If Serena were to beat Capriati in the semis, for example, she would leapfrog The Capster, to be Number Two in the world to Venus' current Number One. Talk about confident. Serena says she is saving the Cameroon number until she reaches the championship match.

And even Venus conceded Serena was pounding the ball in their practice sessions, keeping the taller girl "on my back foot."

"She's fibbing," Serena countered. "I haven't been practicing well at all. She's (Venus) practicing immaculate. She's been putting me on my back foot, which made me really want to play better today because I've seen the way she's been practicing and playing. She's keeping the balls deep, running me. Hitting winners left and right. She's just doing unbelievable right now."

Perfectly understandable, really, inasmuch as the older Venus is not only the proud recipient of a recent honorary degree from Howard University (Quantum Physics? Philosophy? Sequin Application?), but she's licked her shopping jones. "I don't need any more clothes, got a new passion ... home décor," she said. "I had a problem with cutlery. There's so many kinds out there. If you ever get in the market, you'll see there are so many selections. 'This (setting) will go on the breakfast table ... This will be for my sitting room.' Since there was a sale, I bought a couple more. (Even when) I realized I didn't need all those forks and spoons. Before you know it, you're in a world of trouble.

"How many sets did I buy? I hate to say it. Oh boy. Five or six," Venus said. "I had quite a few places to put them. This year I noticed we (she and Serena) didn't really have any plates. Not really nice ones. I could upgrade, so I did. I had fun. We got on a roll. It was fun while it lasted."

Someone asked her if the Williams entertain a lot.

"No. Never. The problem is I don't really have any friends. I think Serena goes to see hers. I don't think they really come to the house. We're still looking to have that housewarming."

Maybe the sisters will have some time after Roland Garros. Setting, say, for two.

***

The Jim-Grey-Get-Lost Emmy goes to...
Following another dramatic three and a half hour victory on Court Suzanne Lenglen, this one by Sebastien Grosjean over Vince Spadea, 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (5), 6-4, Nelson Montfort of France Television, approached Spadea at the edge of the still pandemonium-filled court for a live interview.

Montfort: "Vince! The noise! The excitement! The atmosphere! It makes you want to come back here, yes?"

Spadea: "Yeah, I guess so. But I can't hear a word you're saying."

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.