Birthday Bowling
It’s bowling season again!
Still smarting from our misadventure with the evil hippopotamuses, we made a pact during the summer that our continuing in our previous league would depend on that team’s absence. (They claimed last spring that they were leaving the league.) We showed up the first night of the new season, and-nobody else was there. Our start had been postponed by two weeks, and for some reason, every team in the league had been notified except us. Incensed, I was ready to quit right there, but agreed to give the officers one more chance.
I drove in on the real first night and saw my teammates huddled in the parking lot. Not good, I thought. The reason soon became apparent: in the doorway, puffing away as if his life depended on it, slouched the most evil of the evil hippos, wreathed in clouds of cigarette smoke. (He has the skinny, sallow look of a lifelong chain smoker who hasn’t actually tasted food since the Carter administration.)
Luckily, we found another league that had an opening and that would let us make up the first week. Our new bowling alley is much closer to our “center of gravity”-my drive is a bit longer, but everyone else’s is much shorter-so we’re already better off, before we even start.
This afternoon we bowled our makeup games. We’d been warned that Saturday afternoon was birthday-party time, but I didn’t think much of it: I grew up bowling in junior leagues full of crazy-ass kids tripping on sugared cereals and Sunday morning cartoons, so as long as we had a couple of empty lanes of buffer, I figured we’d be okay.
I was unprepared for the reality.
The kids themselves were not the problem. They were out there somewhere, but I didn’t notice them. Couldn’t notice them. Because they were bowling in a cheap disco. At the far end of the lanes wes a series of huge TV screens, one right after the other, each three lanes (about 15 feet) wide. They alternated between some football game and fluff-pop music videos. And the music was deafening.1 Have you ever been in a bowling alley with more than half the lanes going and couldn’t hear the pins fall? Fortunately the bass wasn’t pumped as much as usual, else the concussion would have knocked us back into the parking lot.
The house lights were down, and everyone’s white clothing was glowing blue-violet. In two hours, the ubiquitous black lights finally did what two months of Midwest sunshine never could manage: they gave me a suntan on my freshly shaved scalp. Each lane had a ghostly blue runway pattern superimposed upon the wood. That was actually kind of cool, but it made seeing the arrows nearly impossible. (I originally thought the runway was shone on the lanes by UV light shining through a cutout, but on closer inspection it turned out it was painted on the lane with some fluorescent chemical. I’ll be interested to see whether it’s visible when the regular lights are on.)
Here’s what gets me. Two things, really. If you’re going to fork over a huge wad of cash to go bowling, wouldn’t you want to, you know, experience it? The rumble of the ball traveling down the lane, and the crash of a perfect pocket hit? The suspense as the ball teeters at the edge of the gutter as it approaches the 10-pin? Forget about hearing the pins-even watching the pins took incredible effort, what with all the adolescent video going on four feet above in ADHD-TV. How could you even pick out what was happening to the pins against this sensory onslaught?
Or have today’s Americans become so inured to the presence of music and television that they instinctively block it from hearing and view, respectively? And if so, why have it in the first place? Especially at such in-your-face intensity?
Second: An entire generation of people may be learning to expect that this is what bowling is. I certainly hope not, because it’s not the way to get anyone interested in leagues, or real bowling in general. It's bad enough that hardly anyone knows how to score anymore-don't even get me started on that.
Anyway-to my great surprise, I averaged 195 for the series, bowling by radar-well above my average from last year. Perhaps the complete lack of visual and auditory cues made me use the Force. As Obi-wan Kenobi said, “Your senses deceive you-don’t trust them.”
Despite this start, I’m eagerly anticipating the league proper. The sister-in-law assured me that it is written into the league’s contract that the music will be off while we’re bowling. And that makes me happy, cool blue runways notwithstanding.
_________________
1For the first time, I actually heard a Justin Bieber song and realized that’s what it was. I now understand why Auto-Tune is so widely despised (though I had already suspected it, courtesy of Rebecca Black).
Still smarting from our misadventure with the evil hippopotamuses, we made a pact during the summer that our continuing in our previous league would depend on that team’s absence. (They claimed last spring that they were leaving the league.) We showed up the first night of the new season, and-nobody else was there. Our start had been postponed by two weeks, and for some reason, every team in the league had been notified except us. Incensed, I was ready to quit right there, but agreed to give the officers one more chance.
I drove in on the real first night and saw my teammates huddled in the parking lot. Not good, I thought. The reason soon became apparent: in the doorway, puffing away as if his life depended on it, slouched the most evil of the evil hippos, wreathed in clouds of cigarette smoke. (He has the skinny, sallow look of a lifelong chain smoker who hasn’t actually tasted food since the Carter administration.)
Luckily, we found another league that had an opening and that would let us make up the first week. Our new bowling alley is much closer to our “center of gravity”-my drive is a bit longer, but everyone else’s is much shorter-so we’re already better off, before we even start.
This afternoon we bowled our makeup games. We’d been warned that Saturday afternoon was birthday-party time, but I didn’t think much of it: I grew up bowling in junior leagues full of crazy-ass kids tripping on sugared cereals and Sunday morning cartoons, so as long as we had a couple of empty lanes of buffer, I figured we’d be okay.
I was unprepared for the reality.
The kids themselves were not the problem. They were out there somewhere, but I didn’t notice them. Couldn’t notice them. Because they were bowling in a cheap disco. At the far end of the lanes wes a series of huge TV screens, one right after the other, each three lanes (about 15 feet) wide. They alternated between some football game and fluff-pop music videos. And the music was deafening.1 Have you ever been in a bowling alley with more than half the lanes going and couldn’t hear the pins fall? Fortunately the bass wasn’t pumped as much as usual, else the concussion would have knocked us back into the parking lot.
The house lights were down, and everyone’s white clothing was glowing blue-violet. In two hours, the ubiquitous black lights finally did what two months of Midwest sunshine never could manage: they gave me a suntan on my freshly shaved scalp. Each lane had a ghostly blue runway pattern superimposed upon the wood. That was actually kind of cool, but it made seeing the arrows nearly impossible. (I originally thought the runway was shone on the lanes by UV light shining through a cutout, but on closer inspection it turned out it was painted on the lane with some fluorescent chemical. I’ll be interested to see whether it’s visible when the regular lights are on.)
Here’s what gets me. Two things, really. If you’re going to fork over a huge wad of cash to go bowling, wouldn’t you want to, you know, experience it? The rumble of the ball traveling down the lane, and the crash of a perfect pocket hit? The suspense as the ball teeters at the edge of the gutter as it approaches the 10-pin? Forget about hearing the pins-even watching the pins took incredible effort, what with all the adolescent video going on four feet above in ADHD-TV. How could you even pick out what was happening to the pins against this sensory onslaught?
Or have today’s Americans become so inured to the presence of music and television that they instinctively block it from hearing and view, respectively? And if so, why have it in the first place? Especially at such in-your-face intensity?
Second: An entire generation of people may be learning to expect that this is what bowling is. I certainly hope not, because it’s not the way to get anyone interested in leagues, or real bowling in general. It's bad enough that hardly anyone knows how to score anymore-don't even get me started on that.
Anyway-to my great surprise, I averaged 195 for the series, bowling by radar-well above my average from last year. Perhaps the complete lack of visual and auditory cues made me use the Force. As Obi-wan Kenobi said, “Your senses deceive you-don’t trust them.”
Despite this start, I’m eagerly anticipating the league proper. The sister-in-law assured me that it is written into the league’s contract that the music will be off while we’re bowling. And that makes me happy, cool blue runways notwithstanding.
_________________
1For the first time, I actually heard a Justin Bieber song and realized that’s what it was. I now understand why Auto-Tune is so widely despised (though I had already suspected it, courtesy of Rebecca Black).