Thoughts some thirty minutes after leaving one of those phoney-baloney Irish pubs in the Carrollwood section of Tampa, FL.:

-- Perhaps no American in the past thirty years has walked into a phoney-baloney Irish pub and started to read "Gas From a Burner" by James Joyce and lived to talk about it. Perhaps no such person exists. And anyway, no one goes to a phoney-baloney Irish pub to hear James Joyce. They all want to watch sports on teevee, at least nowadays.

-- It can get awful loud in certain "Irish Pubs" on any given Friday night. What you may think is the quietest corner of the place could face the band that has no idea how to sing "Margaritaville". The speakers sometimes are turned so far up as to render intelligent, articulate conversation virtually impossible. And all you hear is NOISE! NOISE! NOISENOISENOISE!! LOTSOFGODDAMNNOISE! IT'S SO NOISY! WHERETHEFUCKISTHEKEYTOTHEHOUSE?!?!?!

-- And because it's so noisy, just try picking up a woman in an Irish pub. Likely, you can't. You may have to start the most enthralling and passionate relationship of your life by using Morse code.

-- If anyone who runs an "Irish Pub" wants to attract more customers than he repels, he could do several things. He could offer more than just the usual bangers & mash on the menu, which I believe is an English dish anyway. There would be an actual thatched roof on top of the pub itself--there is in one bar in the Downtown Tampa area, which, if I were as smart as I would like to think that I am, I would have gone to. Maybe an actual Irish fiddler could play on Friday nights, or a singer could sing "The Jolly Tinker" or "The Bold Grenadier" and really endear himself to the patrons. Maybe there could be staged fights between two white-haired lads named Kevin and Timothy, kind of like the sausage races between innings--you know, maybe Kevin will win one night and Timothy the next. Just a thought.

-- And anyway, you can tell you're in the wrong "Irish Pub" for your temperament if you're on your way out and wondering when to schedule an appointment for the kind of cochlear implant that Rush Limbaugh has. This is exactly what I thought when I came up to my car and saw two women in the space next to me about to go inside. One of them was wondering if she should leave her belt on or take it off. (For the record, it came off.)

Slainte!