I apologize to those of you whose only mission in life is to visit Smythe's World and find out about what's going on in my life, not just what my opinions are about the World Cup, Lena Olin, and the Middle East. In any event, your patience is about to be rewarded.

Last night, I ventured down to the happiest place on earth, Irish sports pub Joxer Dalys, to watch England v. Brazil, and was joined by about 125 revelers in what quickly became an overwhelming sea of humanity. For those of you who haven't been there before, I should point out that it is about the size of an ordinary bar; this isn't Yankee Doodles or Champions, with multiple floors and a large billiards and air hockey room in the basement. As a regular (by the way, that's a pretty sad thing to admit), the staff pretty much knows that I'm only going to drink Beamish or Carlsburg while I'm there, so I didn't have to wait in line, but for about 90% of the customers, getting a drink was a major hassle. Oh well, sucks to be them.

Anyway, considering that the crowd last night was larger than Super Bowl Sunday, the bartendresses did a pretty good job--the one quibble I have was that the stout was, well, just a bit too warm. The customers were split down the middle; a surprisingly large pro-Brazil contingent was there, and obviously they went home feeling pretty good about themselves. As an Inglaterra fan, last night's game was one of the more frustrating events I've witnessed there recently; even when Brazil went down a man, they controlled the game, and no one on the English team was a threat to score once Owen was subbed.

GO SENEGAL !!!!