Better living through bowling

Friday, September 30, 2005

Bowling for Everyone!

Maury of Greetings from Thingsville, US" blogged about one of those pamphlets that makes everyone from the 60s seem like they are on crack, in a boring kind of way: Bowling for Everyone!

If ever I had a sport explained to me in such bland terms, I'd be sure to avoid it at all costs. With a libretto worthy of a educational filmstrip, I'm glad I can drink under the blacklights at my bowling alley. (Thingsville)

Bowling's Best Couple

Excerpted from bowl.com:

Who's Bowling's Best Couple?

loveCouple_small

Gene and Janet Vincent of Decatur, Ill. hold the record for the most 300 games by a husband and wife. Does that make them bowling's best couple? Or would it be pros Carolyn Dorin-Ballard and Del Ballard or maybe pro Chris Barnes and Team USA wife Lynda.

Maybe, just maybe, you have better suggestions than all of these. We are looking for the best bowling couples. Send us a note at webmaster@bowl.com or drop us regular mail to:US Bowler, Best Couple, 5301 S. 76th Street, Greendale, WI 53129.

A picture of the happy couple would help convince us.

+ENYC

Click here to view a short film about anguish and addiction.

Here are the complete credits, BTW:

Executive Producer: McCracken
Line Producer: McCracken
Associate Producer: McCracken
Producer: McCracken
Directed by: N/A
Starring: McCracken and The Condiment
Elph Cinematography by: McCracken, ASC
Sound Design by: McCracken
Written by: McCracken
Based on an idea by: McCracken
Title based on an offhand comment by: McCracken
Transpo: McCracken
Crafty: McCracken
Edited by: The Condiment
Winner of Largeball bowling games: The Condiment
Supreme Being of the Universe: The Condiment

See ya!

Why does this sound like one of those "how you lost your virginity" stories?

My brother took me for my first bowling experience when I was 7 years old. Now "took me" is a very slippery term. He was forced to take me by our mom and this, of course, pissed him off since he didn't want me tagging along with his friends and, no doubt, embarassing the hell out of him.

I knew nothing of the game save its existence and that you threw the ball down the alley and knocked over the pins. I had no clue how to throw the ball or even how to tie my shoes. My brother begrudgingly tied my shoes, but told me nothing about throwing the ball.

My first throw, of course, was lackluster--it went 5 feet and promptly fell into the gutter. My subsequent throws were no better: each ended up at some point in the gutter.

His first frames, on the other hand, were spot on--a couple of spares and even a strike. His attitude towards me was spot on too: surly and condescending. His friend Ricky Dick (who had no room to make fun of people due his name) taunted me everytime I threw a gutter ball. Now I was a kid who tended to burst into tears at the first sign of frustration or unfairness, but the taunting just made me mad so I sucked it up and threw three more frames of gutter balls.

Louise, the woman behind the snack bar counter must have noticed both my frustration, anger, and complete lack of ability, and came out to give me some pointers while my brother and his friends were off doing something.

"First you put your two middle fingers in these holes, not the two end fingers." She demonstrated the technique with my own fingers, her beehived red hair wobbled in the flourescent light. "When you throw the ball, try to aim at the middle arrow in the alley. Now try it."

With my new technique I managed to bowl 5 straight strikes. I don't think I've ever seen my brother so perturbed.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

The Anthropological Anomaly of Candlepin

Two years ago I went on a few dates with a girl from Boston. On the third date (a non-date, really, and a dealbreaker) she invited me to the Lucky Strike where she and her sister and her sister’s friends were to engage in hip, expensive bowling.

A girl who bowls. Hmm, this was very intriguing (and not unattractive, I might add). Now, the Lucky Strike is for socializing and celebrity sightings and anyone who really likes bowling wouldn’t be caught dead there, but my interest was piqued.

Of course it was a disaster and we never actually got to bowl because there was a four-hour waitlist and the point of the Lucky Strike isn’t to bowl but to sit around and drink cocktails while three-dimensional bowling activities go down in your periphery and Rock-n-Bowl lighting effects prevail.

But it was like I was in the grip of some weird drugs--I found that my judgment of her was severely amplified because of the close proximity of bowling. I was being driven toward a precipice—The Precipice of Bowling Appreciation—and our future would depend on this moment. Bowling is like peyote—it strips away the illusory and artificial external world and reveals the inner truth. Bowling Reveals. Bowling Never Lies.

At one point I brought up the anomaly of candlepin bowling. I had heard stories of this freakish curiosity from others, but had never verified its existence. The girl from Boston went one further. She said that until she was eighteen or so she had never even heard of “large ball.” Large ball? You mean, normal bowling?

This blew my mind. Was it true or was she just really, really thick? Boston is in Massachusetts and Massachusetts in the United States, definitely. Indeed, it doesn’t even border Canada. So was it possible that someone with an IQ over 100--who was born and raised in the United States--could not know of the existence of normal “large ball” or “bigball” bowling and that someone could think that the bizarre spectacle of duckpin bowling was what bowling actually was?

Whoa.

At first, candlepin bowling appears to be the evolutionary cul-de-sac, the Neanderthal in the spectrum of bowling history. But actually, if you want to talk history, candlepin is probably closer to bowling’s roots, which was skittles, I believe, and which descended from bocci ball or lawn bowling. I have never thrown bocci balls, but a candlepin ball seems roughly the same size and heft. At some point a brilliant dandy had the idea to put ten skinny skittles down at the end of a green (a bowling green, perhaps?). You were to roll the ball down there and knock the skittles down.

That’s right, skittles. Of course gambling and hooliganism immediately prevailed.

So bowling-bowling (which we shall call “largeball” for purposes of clarity) is actually the evolutionary offshoot. Largeball is NuSkool and candlepin is Old School. Candlepin is where it’s at, historically. But boy is it strange.

Candlepin is largeball on acid. All the ingredients are the same but tweaked out in incomprehensible mind-blowing ways.

First, there are the balls, which are small and palmable, just slightly larger than softballs. There are no holes in them and they are all the same size, weight, and color.

wr-1

Second, there are the pins, which are skinny and tall and basically cylindrical but for a slight potbellied bulge in the middle. The spaces between the pins are vast and intimidating, veritable deserts of nothingness thru which the little ball often vanishes without impact.

wr

Then there is the lane, which seems normal, but has some weird (and provocative) lines on it that demark unheard-of rituals and unspeakable bowling variants. We can only imagine what these are for.

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Then there are the rules:

1. You get three chances to knock down the ten pins.
2. The lane isn’t swept until after the third ball, so you can bowl into already-fallen pins to obliterate other pins, something McCracken and I call “The Propeller Effect” or “Propellerhead.”
3. You bowl two frames at a time. That is, one bowler bowls frame one and then frame two, and the other bowler then follows suit.

This makes for some good speed bowling. And because all the balls are the same and there are six or seven there waiting for you at all times, there’s no need to wait for the lane to sweep and reset while your ball rolls back down the tube toward you. You just throw over and over and over. Two frames at a time, no waiting.

Speed bowling. And very fun too, I might add. This is a picture of The Condiment using his trademarked flailing style:

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This is a picture of McCracken using a more traditional, more refined technique:

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We still never figured out the scoring. On the one or two occasions where we managed to knock down all of the pins in three tries, nothing really happened. We expected some kind of bowling reward, like getting ten points plus the number of pins on the next ball added to the total, something, but there was none of that. Instead of having 58 points, I had 59. And that was that.

I theorize that if you get a strike or a two-ball spare then you might be entitled to extra points, but the third ball is just kind of a bonus ball to clean up the mess with. Like a matador who doesn’t kill the bull on the first try…the third ball is kind of shameful…and definitely not worth congratulation or reward.

But we were never able to knock down all of the pins in two tries, so I guess we will never know.

For those who might be interested, the Condiment prevailed in game one but McCracken held off a late advance in game two to tie the thing. So the 1st Annual Beantown Candepin Am is a push. Inconclusive. Very fun, and highly recommended, but only as a curiosity. Honestly, the anthropological anomaly of candlepin just doesn’t seem receptive to our addiction.

Not like largeball, anyway.

As for the girl from Boston, well, that never really worked out. Now if she had been passionate about candlepin (or a champion or something), then that would have been kind of interesting and admirable, like dating a beautiful girl with a really huge nose or supermodel with a hunchback. I can definitely get behind something like that. But she wasn’t. Candlepin was just something that was around, something kind of stupid for boring Friday nights in Boston.

How dare you call candlepin stupid? I think to myself, now. Strange and unusual, sure, but stupid? Come on, lady, where is your soul? Even the oddest (and worst) bowling variant is better than the best day of nonbowling.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Velocity Raptor and the Kingpin Wormhole

In 1991, my junior year of high school, my friends and I spent every day after football practice shooting a movie called "Minimum Security Prison" with a VHS camcorder. It was about a guy named McCracken who is convicted for "pulling his schlong from his pants," promises revenge on his lawyer, goes to the MSP, breaks out, and gets shot just before he actually gets his revenge.

Four years later, in my junior year of college, my good friend Velocity Raptor and I decided that rather than to spend our weekend binge drinking, we would go bowling at one of the many deteriorating, smoke-filled Pennsylvania alleys. Until then, I had two perceptions of the game: 1) the thing my grandma did with her friends on Tuesday afternoons and 2) the thing old, bald or mulletted, mustached, fat men did on weeknights.

When you know nothing about bowling, the best part of isn't the game, it's coming up with your bowling name. That night I chose McCracken in honor of the fallen criminal character from my past. It was through McCracken's eyes that I realized having an alternate identity makes it easier to justify taunting and ridicule of your opponents. My bowling addiction was born.

One year later, "Kingpin," was released. All I knew about the film was that it was about bowling and it took place in Pennsylvania. VR and I went to see an afternoon screening at the local theater, where was a tear in the screen and we were the only two people in the room. It was unlikely it would actually be a good film. Then Bill Murray appeared with a wig made of genius and his name was Ernie McCracken. Suddenly, my life made sense. My name, my sport and my home state had collided at the nexus of the universe and I was complete. I'm pretty sure I traveled through a wormhole and returned safely in the same spot to finish watching the movie.

Since then I have acquired the bowling essentials; a red ball emblazoned with "McCracken", sweet white shoes, a crazed competitive drive and friends like The Condiment who love bowling either as much or more than I. And although I was never there to witness, I now understand why my grandma spent every Tuesday at the alley with her friends.

Welcome to the Syndicate. Tell your story.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Welcome to the Syndicate

My good friend McCracken and I sat down one day and mused on the possibility of a team blog. Blogs can be tiresome and awful, but personally I've found them to be tremendously inspiring. I will do the wacky thing just to blog about it. I will go on a humiliating date if it makes for some good writing. The blog forces us to make some sense of our lives and put it out there for public consumption. And just as a sporting event is enhanced tenfold by the pre-game show and post-game analysis, so too can one's life grow by just looking at it a little closer.

We thought this was a great format in which to forge some personal change in our lives. What thing was missing? What item could we blog about to make it more central to our existence? What exactly was that white hot pain of absence in our stomachs and where did it come from? What was this thing? What?

Bowling. It was bowling.

We would make a blog about bowling. And only bowling.

And it would change our lives.

Who can deny that we are happier human beings when we bowl?

So McCracken and I would like to welcome you to the Bowling Syndicate, a team blog on the joys of bowling. We encourage anyone interested in contributing to drop us a line. We'll send you an official Blogvite and soon you will be an official member of the Syndicate and posting about your 200+ Game in New York, Puking in Prague, the Heavy Pins in Provo, the Shoe Theft in Glendale, the Most Amazing Choke of All-Time in Santa Monica, the Date Gone Awry in Tokyo, the Time Drew Barrymore Split Her Pants At the Lucky Strike, the Rock-n-Bowl Sabotage in Seattle, the Sub 50 Game in St. Petersberg, the Man Who Bowled Off His Leg and Fell Into the Lane When He Had A Chance To Win On The Last Ball Of The Game...

There are only two rules:

1. Posts must be about bowling. No exceptions. Sort of about bowling, at least. I mean it, seriously, there have to be some bowling metaphors, or something. Please, I insist, please remember our motto: "All bowling, all the time. Everybody else leave."

2. You can't actually be any good. Anyone with an average over 200 must leave and never come back.

That is all. Welcome to the Syndicate. We are gearing up for the 1st Annual Beantown Am tomorrow night (it used to be the Beantown Pro-Am, but no pros are gonna be there....so there). The Condiment guarantees victory.

And to anyone who thinks we might not be taking this seriously, I give you this picture of our founding father, Tricky Dick:

NixonBowls

I assure you, we are taking this seriously. Very seriously.