Time-Based Fee System

When I was a kid Pops used to take us on Sunday mornings to the Daffodil Bowl in Puyallup, Washington. I would prepare for this by watching the PBA tour on ABC on Saturday afternoon, right before Wide World of Sports. The PBA tournaments had the most bizarre made-for-TV structure: After all of the preliminaries, the top five finalists would play four games to decide the overall winner. That is, the number five seed would play the number four seed and the winner would play the number three seed. The winner of that would play the number two seed and the winner of that game would bowl against the number one seed for the championship.

So if you are the #1 seed then you only have to win one game to win the prize money but if you are the #5 seed then you have to win four games in a row! Seems hardly fair, but whatever. But it was during those years when I came to idolize the lefty nerd Earl Anthony and his graceful dominance. There were epic battles against his nemesis, a skinny and swarthy mustachioed man named Willie Mosconi. That couldn’t have been his name because that’s a legendary pool player, but it was something like that. I always rooted for the southpaw and his wholesome bowling and good sportsmanship. Mosconi was clearly a rogue. Most of the time Anthony won and good prevailed. But not always.

On Sundays Pop would take us to the Daffodil Bowl at around 9 in the morning. This seems totally implausible, but I remember (erroneously perhaps) that we bowled under a time-based fee system. That is, we’d pay (Pops would pay, I mean) for two hours of bowling. We owned the lane for two hours and however many games we could bowl was our business.

So we’d freak out and bowl four or more games…

Maybe it didn’t happen this way but it seems like it was this way for a while.

I would like to propose a return to this system. Of course, this would wreak havoc on glacial bowlers like Lintinin, who is in perpetual risk of delay-of-game warnings. At Lintinin’s pace, he’d probably only get one game in every two hours. So this is very interesting to me because it pits Lintinin’s love of the game and Lintinin’s desire to bowl more games with Lintinin’s desire for quality and good scores.

It is not unlike Heat’s Conundrum: Bowl Sober or Bowl Well?

I encourage the Syndicate to lobby your local bowling stadiums to return to a Time-Based Fee System. A return to the Golden Years, The Halcyon Days of Speed Bowling.

Think of it.

Farewell, Gramby Joe

A friend just took a job in Florida that will remove him from LA for at least two years. It is likely that he will never return (if you left LA, would you come back?). In celebration of his new job and to say goodbye, Heidi and I decided to take him bowling, where we could talk and mow down some pins.

Moments before the start of our game, I got a call from my mom that my thirteen year old dog, Gramby Joe, had just passed away back in Pennsylvania. Gramby Joe was a good friend. Heidi asked if I wanted to leave, and at first I did, but then I realized that there was no better way to spend those moments of sorrow than with special people doing something that I love. Gramby would have wanted it that way.

McCracken: 161, 135 (ave: 148)
Blanche: 73, 126 (ave: 99.5)
Wilma: 81, 103 (ave: 92)

Thanks for some great times, Gramby. You were much loved and will be missed.

Halloween at the Chateau?

Any you MIBs want to get humiliated by Condiment on Halloween? Come to the Chateau if you don't have anything better to do (ie wife, date, party, ESPN, shampooing, snacking).

You bums need to post more, by the way.

Witness the New Condiment if you dare, Unstoppable Killing Force that he is. (I'm talking to you, Lintinin).

World Series of Bowling

Ok so yes, I was bored as fuck by the last game of the World Series. I should have stuck it out and watched the 8th inning wizbangery, but the real passion called: let's roll. So June Bug, the Late JC and I abandoned the couch and headed out to the aforementioned Sue Rich. A solid night or average bowling ensued. None of us fell below 120 (well mostly) and we all had key strikes and key moments.

These are the nights when you appreciate real sport.

Ride the Bus to the Super Bowl

Remember when Michael Jordan wore #45 for a few weeks after his un-retirement? He just wasn't the same. But eventually he saw his error and went back to #23 and then won three more Championships.

Well, following yesterday's outing, I have the following two announcements:
1) McCracken is my new full-time starter.
2) LDB will be benched.

On a similiar note, I make these two requests of Steelers' head coach Bill Cowher (who is of course reading this blog):
1) Make Jerome (the Bus) Bettis your starting tailback.
2) Bench Willie Parker.

I am out of sports analogies for now. Just rest assured that McCracken is back.

P.S. the road to the Super Bowl goes through Pittsburgh

Humongous v. Schizoid LDB/McCracken

Here are the scores:

Game 1
LDB 77
Humongous 144

Game 2
McCracken 132
Humongous 147

Averages
LDB 77
McCracken 132
LDB/McCracken 104.5
Humongous 145.5
Humongous/Humongous 145.5

Notes;

Humongous bowled three strikes to start game 2 and marked six of the first seven frames before the meltdown occurred.

McCracken bowled well, LDB needs to have his license revoked.

Weather: Sunny and uneventful

Get you out of the house

I'm going to Minneapolis/St.Paul this week:

What's the first thing I look for in my travel guide. You got it!



I think they could have mustered up a more exciting intro line, however.

Chance Meeting

On this illustriously wet and rainy day in beautiful Southern California I decided to partake in a little bowling. I decided this around eleven am and proceeded to call Lintinin. Well needless to say he had work to attend to. So then I called Sterling only to receive his voicemail. After two failed attempts to have a buddy bowler I decide solobowl is better than nobowl.

The Shatto is pretty dead when I get there (It’s a Monday afternoon for god sake.) I pay for my three games up front and head to lane 31. The Heat is entered as my name and I don my shoes. I am still attempting this new technique of bowling that the denim clad man has passed on to me, so I take my time, roll and get nine. I begin to think about what I am doing when out of the corner of my eye I notice a large ominous figure getting some shoes. I slowly walk towards this figure feeling as though I have seen this person before. The figure turns and I see who it is, and with a smile the Condiment says hello.

I say Condiment to you only because that is how he is known, but on this day the Condiment has taken to an alias.  Captain Bingo. At first I wondered if this was some new strategy or just plain old good-natured fun. But then I said to myself it has to be the latter, because there is no strategy associated with the Condiment, only bowl.

Captain Bingo is now entered into lane 31 underneath The Heat and another wonderful day at the Shatto had begun. Still working out the kinks in my new form I ended game one with a 113. Captain Bingo was right there with me in score until the tenth frame. He rolled and got a strike which gave him 106. Next ball he rolled and got eight. He had won already, but still one more ball to roll. I must tell you this, no one not even the Condiment could have guessed what would happen next. This was a game of strikes every once and a while but no spares whatsoever. Until. Captain Bingo rolled his last ball, hit the two pins to pick up the spare, and then turned in angered happiness over his win, when suddenly the power went out. Pitch Black. Scientist will for many years argue over what the actual cause of this brief power loss was. Was it the sheer power of Captain Bingo or was it the fact that a spare was picked up causing the Accu-score machine to have a slight hiccup which in turn caused all of the processing power available to Accu-score to be accessed at one time in turn boosting its power consumption needs and briefly shutting down power at the Shatto? Who knows? But once order was restored Accu-score still had the score of the game on the screen. The Heat 113. Captain Bingo 116.

Game two was all Captain Bingo. I still attempting this new technique bowled a respectful 137. Bingo 168.

Game three. I started getting somewhat of a hang of this new technique, but of course there were times of shame. On one instance I took my back swing and nearly dropped the ball behind me. Luckily I mustered enough strength to bring the ball forward and directly into the gutter. I ended with a 140. As for Bingo his game was not going so well. He states that he was trying to aim and if anyone has pitched before they should know that to aim is not good, just throw. Bingo ended with I believe a 110 or 111. I am not sure. I do, however, know that our averages were about the same for the day.

The Heat         130 Average
Captain Bingo 131.6666666 Average

Once again the Shatto comes through with another good post. So now the question is when are all of the LA contingency of the syndicate going to meet up for a bowl?

The horror

Horrible time bowling last night. Nothing was going down right. Meh.

LDB

One sunny ☹ LA weekday, Heidi (my wife) and I were walking in our quiet neighborhood and strolled upon a small yard sale hosted by a nice old woman. There were no interested buyers present. I have rarely found anything truly worthy at a Los Angeles yard sale, so it was without much interest that I glanced over her collection of undesirables. But before we could cross to the next property line, something caught my eye: a 1950’s era bowling bag of white and baby blue. You know the kind: shaped like a gumdrop, dual plastic handles on the top and a zipper that rolls from one bottom corner all the way up through the handles and back to the other bottom corner.

Yes, I already had a bag (given to me as a memorable gift by that silver-clad syndicate fellow, Sterling) and I was not looking for a new one. But this bag was just sitting in the grass, looking for a home, like a lost puppy.

Heidi and I secretly agreed that $15 was an acceptable price to pay since it was pretty freaking cool.

“How much for the bowling bag?” I asked.
“How about two dollars?” the nice old lady replied.

Now, this may only make sense to people living in LA, NY and Tokyo, but to be outside during the day and to spend two dollars on that bowling bag would actually cost us LESS than to NOT spend the two dollars and continue walking.

I gave her 2 (two) single United States of America Dollars, and with that, I snatched the plastic handles, eager to go - but when I straightened my back to stand, the bag held to ground with the force of, let’s say… 14 pounds?

“Is there a ball in here?”
“Yes.”

I unzipped the bag to find a well-kept burgundy large ball with the initials L.D.B. proudly engraved. For obvious reasons, I felt a presidential aura flowing from the bag.

“Is the ball included in the price?”
She smiled kindly. “Yes,” as if it were obvious.

My exterior demeanor hadn’t changed, but my mind was going through convulsions of Mt. St. Helens proportions. Although the odds were low that LDB would fit either of our hands, this was still too good to be true.

And so, it became official: the finding and purchase of LDB rose to the top of our Good Deal List (topping the time the Arclight gave us four free tickets because they spliced the fifth reel of Spiderman 2 upsidedown).

We postponed the rest of our walk to return home for an immediate inspection of LDB. Our findings:

1) LDB was accompanied by a few penciled score cards that showed the old woman (named Lorraine) was an average 200 bowler. She also rolled with some equally talented women with equally strong bowling names (Beatrice and Florence for example).
2) The $2 bargain also included one of those handled cloths that you can hold your ball in and rock back and forth to wipe it clean.
3) The most stunning revelation of all: LDB fit my hand just like my custom-drilled ball, McCracken (a generous gift from the Lord of the Ring: Lintinin), but slightly heavier.

This presented a new dimension to my universe: could I become one of those guys who solo-bowls with two balls? Although we’ve all made our guesses as to why one would want two balls (perhaps different weights for late-game fatigue or maybe the need for a different spin to hit that one pin that the other ball could not), I wasn’t so sure having two balls would be a good thing.

And I still don’t know.

I’ve not had many opportunities to roll with LDB, but I will say that my recent bowling has been lackluster. I speculate that my bowling with two balls is similar to games where the Steelers try to use two running backs equally in one game; neither back is able to get in the flow of the game and thus two backs with 15 carries each is worse than one back with 30 carries.

My bowling miscues may have less to do with LDB and the Steelers running game than with this troubling truth: I do not bowl enough.

And with that, I support J’s call for action and look forward to a syndicate gathering soon. I’ll bring McCracken and LDB and we’ll get to the bottom of this.

Heat Here

First off I would like to say Hello to all that are a part of this amazing online bowling community. And now to the blog.

So I have been reading all these blogs and actually feeling upset and jealous. Upset because I haven't been bowling in a while and jealous because all of you are bowling. So today I went to Shatto 39 to get my bowl on.

It was nice. I walked in around noon o'clock to a loud Shatto, but not loud in the good way. There was a large amount of young hooligans playing video games. No one was bowling. You might be thinking that this is a tragedy. Well you would be right. I went up to the cashier and said, "I am here to bowl." His reply, "Pick a lane and its yours." Ah, if life were only this easy. As I walk to a lane I notice that the lanes are slightly oily. I am the first to bowl that day so I know that they have just oiled them that morning so wherever I go it will be an interesting bowl with my spin.

I sauntered up to lane 8. I donned my Lucky Strike bowling shoes and picked up The Heat. After typing in my name, I made my approach. Two short steps, three a little quicker, then the release. My right foot kicks back with authority and hits the ball return. Gutter ball. Okay no big deal first bowl of the day. I try again. Once again my leg hits the ball return. I hit three pins. Already off to an amazing start. This goes on for 5 frames. Finally I tell the cashier I need to switch lanes. Lane 9 is now home to the Heat. I bowl slightly better, but still very bad. Game one 83. Yes an 83. At least I beat McCracken by ten pins (Images of a Disgraceful Afternoon post).

Game two 117. By now there have been a small group of kids bowling. They bowled about two games then left. Then some teenagers came in and bowled one game. At this point I am into game three. Things are about the same as game two and I end with a 119. Game four 134.

I begin game five with a spare. I notice that a man clad in denim has chosen to sit behind me. I begin to feel a little weird. I don't know if it is the desire to do good while someone watches me bowl or a weirdness that some random dude has decided to watch me bowl. I try not to look back at him. So after each roll I do that backwards walk as if you are contemplating what you just did with the brief glances to the score board. As of now I am bowling the best that I could that day. Eighth frame a spare. Ninth a strike. Tenth a nine (7-2). 147. I turn around somewhat happy with it, however still upset with the idea that I may have lost it. Then I realize that the denim clad man with a breast pocket filled with GPC cigarettes is motioning to me. I walk up to him. He begins to critique my game. I take it in stride, but he is making some great points. He then walks me to the ball return and begins to motion what I am doing wrong and what I should be doing.

Fifteen minutes later he says, "Well there you go, but I don't want to mess you up. Just think about it. Do what you want." And then he leaves. Some good tips that he game me are:

1-Make your approach slow and steady as well as your release.
2-Keep your shoulders squared up.
3-If you are missing the head pin to the right move more right. If you miss the head pin to the left move more left. (small moves maybe a board or two.)
4-Make your first game the one where you figure out the lane. Try the middle,bowl. Try the left, bowl. Try the right, bowl.
5-When you make these slight adjustment to the right or left never be afraid of the gutter. Because there is no reason to be.

So I bowled one more game with these new tips. Not my best of the day at a 121, but it was the most consistent bowl of the day. I hope that some of you can use these tips to help your game and if you would like instruction just go to the Shatto during the day. The cashier tells me that the denim man is a regular that hangs around and plays video games. Maybe he'll stop by your lane and give you some advice.

Not the greatest day of bowling but one of the more interesting days of bowling.

This is The Heat signing off.

"Wicked Frame"

Ten-pin bowling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "It is common knowledge that the vast percentage of bowlers bowl a 'strike' on their first frame. This is known as a 'wicked frame', or commonly referred to as beginners luck."

Is that really common knowledge wikipedia? I mean come on, , I had no idea and others I asked had no idea. Even google seems to have no idea what the hell you are talking about, wik. I mean I don't disagree that I probably throw strikes first frame quite often, but is it really statistically established?

By the way, that wikipedia entry on bowling seems a little bit underdeveloped. Want to get on that Condiment?

Tuesday Afternoon Masochism?

I'm thinking about hitting the Shatto tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday the Somethingth) if anyone was to join me. You will witness a great rage flow like a violent wind from Condiment's face (and other impressive things).

Rip it up! Bowling the Wilhelm Way.

Well lookie here: Rip it up! Bowling the Wilhelm Way. Note the larger QuickTime file is actually the one cued for web streaming, so it might be viewable faster. Wilhelm is the name of my house.

Thursday Night Bowling at Sue Rich Lanes

June Bug, Da Bone Jah, The Late JC and I arrived at Sue Rich Lanes in good old SLC around 9 to find the place completely empty. As you can see, Sue Rich is one of the last of the small bowling alleys with only 12 lanes. It is surprising that a place like Sue Rich can compete against the mega-plex bowling alleys. It is undoubtedly because the family has owned the alley for many years and the overhead is not too eggregiously high even if you only have leagues playing Monday through Wednesday.



We were given lane 8, smack dab in the middle. June Bug quickly found a suitable ball. It took me a bit longer, but I found a ball I called the General because of its 5 stars with the hope that as a 16 pounder it would do me well:



All this, of course, made me realize again the necessity of getting my own ball. The Late JC and Da Bone Jah had their own ball and prepared it adequately:





LJC and DBJ share Homer, the ball we bought JC for his birthday back in May.



Our first game was a bust. I won it with a pathetic 114. We all broke a hundred, but it certainly didn't bode well for the night.



Luckilly, our next game picked up. The Late JC won with an awesome 181, while I managed to pull my first strikes of the night and a slew of spares to get a 150. JC had a turkey and a half. Da Bone Jah and June Bug's scores also improved.





Not a bad round and I was feeling a hell of a lot better afterwards. My posture was right, but the General just didn't have much bounce to get me the strikes I needed.



Our final game was more average. JC fell off his high from the previous game, but June Bug and Da Bone Jah found their form. I had a middling 132 to carry out a solid 2nd place finish overall.



Not a bad night, in all. Not a great one but well worth the effort.

As we were leaving I spied a rather interesting ball in the pro shop:



I might just have to get it since it would represent my crash-and-burn style rather well, I think.

League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Three things to note about this movie:

1. United States of Entertainment.
2. Big bellied beer drinkers.
3. Microsoft millionaires to the rescue.

Read about League of Ordinary Gentlemen and watch the trailer.

Oh and it has live action of Nixon bowling and a clip from Bill Clinton being sour about the lack of American participation in bowling leagues.

Images of a Disgraceful Afternoon

This is a picture of the Mecca. Note the high hard shadows of the noonday sun:



This is a picture of the sniggering, supercilious Juan Sabado:



This is a picture of game one. Sabado beats McCracken by 58 pins and Condiment by 67:



This is a picture of Juan Sabado finessing his frail 13lb ball into some inexplicably explosive pin action:



This is a picture of game two. McCracken scores an all-time low 73:



This is a picture of a--for lack of a better word--disghausted McCracken. He is ready to tear the building apart in a blind rage...or fall asleep.



This is a picture of Sabado bowling another strike. How I hate him:



This is a picture of McCracken accepting his fate:



This is a picture of the Loser Bowl (a McCracken/Condiment spinoff). Condiment barely clears 100.



Daily averages:

Juan Sabado 165
Condiment 117.333333
McCracken 100.33333

As Lintinin likes to say, Condiment smash!

The Bowling Sonnet

When I first came to Utah in 1998, I took a poetry class from a formalist who required everyone to write sonnets. I think it was the first sonnet I had ever written. It was about bowling. It went something like this:

Catholic Night at Big Junction Bowling Alley

All the grown up choir boys are here,
wearing crosses and Virgin Mary pins.
Each tells the story of his highest score,
like a sinner taking measure of his sins.
For each of them, league night is confession,
the trespasses of their days made tangible.
When pins fall, it's not bowling, it's redemption,
a need that Hail Marys can't fulfill.
Every Strike dissolves a strike (adultery?),
and every Spare spares them a wrong they've done.
For every ball they throw they feel less guilty.
And each bowls against his sins: one on one.
And every frame they play enacts their goal:
The fallen swept away and brought back whole.

Condiment may feel that sonnets are too high brow for this low brow endeavor, but the Bowling makes the sonnet middlebrow.
I plan on taking Son bowling this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some news soon. Some real low brow bowling news, I mean.

Monday 2pm Solobowl

Lately I've been experiencing some middle-age form of ADD. Perhaps this is a side effect of my latest Caffeine Reduction Act--perhaps there are other forces at work. Whatever it is I just can't focus. In light of Lintinin's tragic burglary and subsequent bowling catharsis, I decided to hit the Shatto 39 for some afternoon solo bowling to clear the head. The Solobowl isn't something I've ever done in my lifetime, but hey, I'm always up for trying new things, and if Lintinin can do it, then so can I, durn it.

The only other guy there was an old Korean man, also there by himself. He watched me and I watched him. He was hobbly and a little gimpy and took long breaks between balls, but I saw him nail a wicked 4-10 split and when I applauded he looked at me and nodded without breaking a smile. Then he sat down.

This is a picture of him, the other Solobowler:



Today I couldn't find a house ball that worked. I have the problem of having big hands with skinny fingers and prominent knuckles. My knuckles usually get stuck in balls 14 lbs and lighter and they swim around in the holes drilled for 16 lb ball throwing behemoths. I'd love to use a little pink or orange ball (preferably swirly, if not glittery), but I can't jam my fingers into these lighter balls and my actual hand spread is far too large. So I usually end up with a dull black cannonball with sausagefinger holes and a bunch of scuff marks. This one said "Clarence" and had a little star above it. Clarence was big and heavy and gave me good pin action but the holes were too large and I couldn't take a proper backswing because:

1. The ball was too heavy
2. The ball would slide off my fingers if my backswing cleared 45 degrees.

So I came with a truncated, arm-bent backswing and the results were mediocre:

Game 1: 144
Game 2: 146
Game 3: 159

But at no point could I really control the ball with any degree of accuracy. For a game like bowling, this is bad:

The turning point was the 6th frame of the 2nd game:



I clipped the spare attempt and slid the 2-pin over a few inches, but it did not fall. If I would have made that spare and struck in the seventh, then I would have marked in six out of seven frames....That would have given me 107 after six with a strike going into the eighth, which could have put me close to 200.

But then that would break the precedent of the late-game choke that the Condiment is famous for.

This is a picture of The Condiment bowling by himself at the Shatto 39 in the middle of the afternoon:

Presidential bowling

More Nixon bowling! I always thought that Nixon had a bowling alley installed in the White House and that was where the pictures were taken. Apparently, however, the bowling alley is in the Executive Office Building. This is clearly where the other Nixon photo used as an icon for THE SYNDICATE comes from too. Several sites claim that a private bowling alley exists in the White House, but a Smithsonian site states that the alley that Truman had installed was dismantled. No official sites proclaim the White House alley's existence. There is an obscure reference to the Bush twins ordering sandwiches for the bowling alley when their grand father was president. If that alley is in the Executive Office building, it would make more sense why then First Lady Barbara Bush would have objected to the request.

Ultimately I refuse to believe that a bowling alley is tucked away somewhere in the White House. It is a fine fantasy to hold, but a fantasy at that.

Bowling and Life

People (coaches in particular) are fond of saying their sport is like life. My high-school basketball coach said on many occasions, "Gentlemen, basketball is like life." And we nodded as though this statement represented some great truth. I know people who golf who say golf is like life. Fill in your favorite sport and add the phrase "is like life."

But bowling, bowling is not like life--and this is why we love it. It resists our attempts to draw facile analogies, to make meaning where none is. Bowling is like nothing, and nothing is quite like bowling. Bowling is irreducible. It is lack and its opposite; presence and absence.

Each year, our basketball team would have a bowling contest. I always lost, and by lost I don't simply mean I didn't win, I mean I came in last or near last. The Condiment was always near the top, as I remember. But this somehow didn't matter. We were still friends. Bowling didn't come between us. Neither did it draw us together. It meant nothing, and this is why it mattered.

Bitterness abides

It is odd to see your old gym Coach in the Bowling Hall of Fame (George Sluga) since the bastard never once let us go bowling.

Tinkerbell? Holy Shit!

Who the hell would even think of putting this monstrosity in his/her bag? Ok, yes, I was going to make the obvious sexist joke that it would be some tinkerbell, but I avoided so that I could put it in the second sentence.

"Tinkerbell" is something Nixon probably said frequently. He once describe Renquist as a clown simply because the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice wore a brightly colored tie.

There can be only one!

The Condiment threw down a virtual gauntlet a few posts back, and then just as quickly virtually withdrew the challenge to a erstwhile rival blof "Bowlarama" created by impatient me, Theorris Boonasty. Now being the passive-aggressive son-of-a-bitch that I am (who really likes to hyphenate) I left it up for a few days to see if I could goad The Condiment into some sort of blogging rivalry (something akin to what exists between The Dude's team and The Jesus's team in The Big Lebowski ) but since we're all bowlers here, I decided it was best just to let the issue slide and mark it a zero. There's no room for rivalry in this game!

So Bowlarama is no more. You will be pleased, however, that it has been replaced by Disc-a-rama, a site devoted to Disc Golf and Disc Golf Accesories. I trust that The Condiment will link to the new sister site of a sister sport (both in the throwing nature of it and the fact that you can drink beer while playing them). The stites still share the same look and feel, so you needn't be frightened to go there. It really is safe, even if the odd hippy or two might show up.

Bowlarama, how I loved thee, but The Bowling Syndicate is unstopable. Here, by the way, are all the relevant posts from Bowlarama:


Around 8:30 last nightthe other night, the Late JC announced that he and June Bug (his new girl friend) were going to Sue Rich Lanes down on 39th South here in good old SLC. At this point I was dead tired. I'd been up since 5 after having stayed up way too late the night before (not bowling).

"I'm too tired to bowl," I said passing them on the stairs. I am stunned that such a pathetic phrase ever left my mouth.

Too tired to bowl? That's like being too tired to breath.

-----------------

Ode to Glory:

We were the best damn team
That no one had ever heard of.
The guys who always Never got the girls.

The newspaper regaled our triumph,
Right after the obituaries.

So, after I'm gone, in my memory
Lay a six-pack and a carton of smokes
At the tomb of this unknown bowler.

--J.A. Vanek

-------------------

"One advantage of golf over bowling is that you never lose a bowling ball. " --Don Carter

"I haven't had sex in eight months. To be honest, I now prefer to go bowling. " --Lil' Kim

"Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your head. " --Martin Mull