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Welcome to Day 4 of the Blog. It's a glorious day, significant, of course, because it's the day the knockout stage of Euro 2004 begins.

Euro 2004, by the way, is the European soccer championship. It is, like the World Cup, held every four years, and it's probably the second-most prestigious soccer tourney in the world. If you're lucky enough to live in a town with a decent soccer bar, sneak out at 2:45 today and watch England play Portugal. If you can't, listen to the feed on the BBC website.

My favorite thing about English soccer is probably the press coverage. I get the impression the players don't really cooperate with anyone, so the writers and announcers don't have to worry about burning bridges. Either that or they're just a brutally frank group of people, because they'll write or say just about anything.

Listening to an England game is like listening to Ian McKellan and Peter O'Toole read a transcript of a debate between Bill Walton and Stephen A. Smith on the state of the NBA. During the England-Croatia game on Monday David Beckham, the country's most beloved footballer,was referred to once as "a waste of space," and at another point one of the announcers observed, "Beckham's been getting all of this publicity, and he's been little but a cockup." I can't imagine Al Michaels saying that about Shaq, especially if he were representing his country at the time. (They'll also drop some flowery prose on you. The other day a TV play-by-play man noted that Croatia's coach had just turned 71, making him "the Methuselah of football managers.") It's been a great tournament so far -- too bad it can only be seen in bars and on pay-per-view in the States. ...

Also from the BBC: The Ukranians have invented a new snack: chocolate-covered pork fat. It might top the Scotch egg as the least healthy snack ever. (A Scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg that is wrapped in sausage, breaded and deep fried. I've only seen one in an episode of The Office in which Keith, the big guy, eats one. But it looks and sounds fantastic.) ...

According to yesterday's New York Times, ushers at Madison Square Garden are going on strike to protest plans to make their jobs redundant. If you're trying to prove how valuable you are, is the best plan really to walk out and let people see how smoothly things will run in your absence? I think the masses will be able decode the system used to number the seats -- especially now that most of them have read The Da Vinci Code. ...

With apologies to D-Rays fans... (What? None? Oh.) With apologies to D-Rays players and their families, I sense a 12-game losing streak looming before the end of the season. ...

What is with ESPN's use of Kenny Mayne? I love the guy, think he's whip smart. So why have him film a silly scripted SportsCenter "segment" with Ben Stiller that was nothing more than a promo for Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story*? And don't even get me started on that gameshow thing Mayne hosts. They've taken their best anchor and turned him into Bill Cullen. Toss in those short films, and when it comes to SportsCenter, the password is: tedious. ...

I was determined to hate the new Wilco album, A Ghost is Born, primarily because it has two songs longer than 10 minutes, and nothing screams "self-indulgence" like tantric sonic doodling. (Seriously, name one good song that's longer than 10 minutes.) But it's a great album. My theory is that a band's self-indulgence only becomes a problem when the band becomes more self-indulgent than its fans, and from what I saw at a Wilco show last summer that's not going to happen anytime soon. I spent much of the gig talking to a guy in his early 20s who was wearing a fedora. There's really no excuse for wearing a fedora these days unless it happens to be the same one you wore the day you voted for Herbert Hoover. ...

Steve Cannella yesterday pointed out the absurdity of using Golden Brown, a song about heroin, to sell fries. That reminds me of There She Goes, a bouncy little number by The La's that was covered by Sixpence None the Richer and then used in a birth control ad. It, too, is about heroin. I want whoever pitched that ad campaign to negotiate my salary, because if you can get your bosses to bite on, "Let's have a Christian rock group sing a song about smack and use it to promote birth control," I think you can get my bosses to give me a few extra bucks a month. ...

OK, thanks for listening. Bechtel out. (Uh, it worked for Ryan Seacrest.)

Mark Bechtel edits Scorecard for the magazine.