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August 11, 2003
Throwing Rocks
The sport of bowling is becoming harder and harder to take part in. This past weekend, it became painfully evident as a group of us set forth on an adventure to include some bowling. The trip out to the alley took more time than expected due to extremely heavy rains, but once there a small wait existed before being granted a lane. We took comfort in the billiards room, enjoying some relaxing games of 8 ball, while taking in the sights of potential purse snatchers.
Things in the bowling alley have changed though since I've been a kid, or maybe it's just the difference between big city bowling and back woods sticks bowling. I remember a fairly plain alley, no bright lights or black lights, and no fancy electronic scoring sheets. Yet the alley found this weekend consisted of 8 giant projection screen TVs located directly above the lanes, constantly spewing forth a series of video snipp-its that became a blur of nonsense. It worked wonderfully for a distraction though to hitting pins of any kind. The use of black lights and rotating colored lights also joined in, but those can generally be tuned out much easier as they are not aimed at the center of your attention. These video screens though were another story. The electronic scoring systems provided little video animation clips of bowling balls and pins in various situations, along with tips and difficulty ratings for how your pins left standing.
I should have known from the start that this was going to be just a bizarre experience. When getting my shoes I had asked for a 13, only to discover they didn't have a pair of 13's only a single shoe. As such I was subjected to a size 14 shoe, which while roomy, wasn't the best shoe to be using when asking for foot control. FInding a ball was difficult as there seemed to be a lack of them on the shelves. We later discovered that the group at the lane next to us was hordeing all the balls like they were going out of style. I've not seen so many little kids dancing on the alley's, or walking down the gutter lanes.
The crowning moment of true bizarreness occurred as Dave was stepping up to let lose some of the fury that is better known as The Dave Bowling Experience, all screens went black and the lights over the alley went dark. The pins were still visible, but not much else on the lane could be seen. Slowly the screens became illuminated with the sights of Michael Jackson in what was called "10 Minute Dance Mix". The sad part about this is that some DJ was able to condense all of the Michael Jackson experience into a 10 minute music video (I guess there's no need to buy his greatest hits album now). This new change in the atmosphere caused a distinct change in game play as you could no longer tell where you are in relation to the line or pin alignment. My own game (I was on a 4 strike roll) was severely hindered by this change (1 or 2 pins at most per roll).
This might have not been so bad if it weren't for the shoddy lanes themselves. There was no slide on the approach, a must for anyone who likes to ease the approach to the line. Another interesting twist added to the game, the 2 or 3 pins on the left side (#4, #7, #8) were better left untouched by a throw. Typically if missed in the first throw, the automatic pin tools would still lose any (or all) of these pins at random. It often gave someone a spare when they hadn't yet earned it. Figuring out the electronic scoring system became much too difficult to correct this, so we just sort of let it slide. Given the amount of money thrown around to make you forget this was a bowling alley, you would hope, or at least expect, that the lane would operate correctly. Oh well..
As a warning to all future outings looking to bowl, if you notice giant TV screens above the pins, just leave. It's for your sake, and the sanity of your game.
Posted by Dan at August 11, 2003 01:44 PM