Writer's Bloc Series: Worse in Real Life

I really dislike St. Patrick's Day for superficial and arbitrary reasons, but this dislike is so polarized I cannot even bring myself to put this dislike into words, so...welcome back for Part II of the Writer's Bloc Series. Things aren't any better with this installment.

It's taken me almost a month to crank out an acidic, hyperbolic, convoluted piece of crap entry for this worthless rag, and all I could come up with was bowling. That's it, and I'm being 100% honest: bowling.

What's worse is that there's really not much to say about bowling that hasn't been covered in Kingpin or The Big Lebowski or The League of Ordinary Gentlemen or hell, even the Disney Channel movie Alley Cats Strike! What might be even worse is that I like bowling and if given the opportunity, free time, and desire to get lung cancer from secondhand smoke by age 28, I would try to join a league to get better at bowling, in hopes of avoiding a gutterball for every eight pins I knock down. So if it's a dead horse, I enjoy it, and ultimately I'm a product of my generation by being better at Wii bowling, what's left?

Still, there is uncharted territory in the bowling alley itself. A certain mysticism about it endures, since while bowling seems to attract every American under the sun, very few of it remain within its prototypically dated tableau. Why is this?

The sound of reactive resin striking pins is typically muted by a schizophrenic playlist that sounds little more that sonic mud seeping through blown speakers. The lighting is typically an amalgamation of black lights and epilepsy-inducing colored lights, moving with reckless abandon, or a phalanx of 33-watt fluorescent lights that feel and look like nothing more that electrified sour milk. Since chances are you're not there for league night, you head to the deaf mute carnival barker at the cash register, who is scurrying about with bowling shoes in his or her hands like a frazzled cobbler. I would characterize the aforementioned person as the "manager" who seems far too busy to help anyone with anything but bowling shoes. Of course, the sideshow always has a portly general manager much more affable than the mute barker, but this fellow is far more concerned with avoiding any sort of labor possible and vanishing into a mist of cigarette smoke and nacho cheese, if nacho cheese has ever had the potential to be gaseous.

I realize that I failed to explain why the manager was a deaf mute; he or she seems positively incapable of any sort of verbal communication with any person or persons that approach the register. Somehow, the duties of bowling alley manager have been condensed down to shoe courier. Shoes, shoes, shoes. We all know the bowling alley never has shoes in your size, so let's not trot (ha) a whole stable of dead horses out here. All of this builds up to the most mysterious part of the bowling alley.

How much does a game of bowling cost, exactly? I've paid twenty-five cents, I've paid close to ten dollars. Prices are about as predictable as the lottery. I have a feeling that alley staff sit inside the break room and watch the parking lot via closed circuit television, making up prices as patrons get out of their cars. Have you ever seen prices on any sort of marquee at the bowling alley? You can sure as hell set up a party at the bowling alley or join a league, but God forbid the casual fan of bowling attempt to make his/her quarterly trip to the local lanes. Groups of friends or families are left with overused footwear and a seemingly Faustian agreement to "pay when they're done bowling." The frustration of the bad lighting, bad music, and bad service coupled with anxiousness to fling a ten pound rock at ten pins is too tempting to consider the fine print of the verbal contract.

Once you get past the veritable drawbridge-free moat around the castle that is the front desk, you run into more variables far, far out of your control. The dudes who think they're the Jesus but aren't good enough to actually compete in a league. The bikers who blow more smoke than their Harleys. The horde of children who try with all their might to push a five-pound ball down a bumper-lined lane. Someone at some point said something about not being able to change people. That's true, but you can probably get some results from heaving your rental bowling bowl in their general direction rather than at the pins.

The games themselves are enough to make a bracketologist vomit. The worst bowler can trump the best bowler any day of the week. Upsets are not uncommon, but the order of the day. I have bowled a 70 in one game and more than doubled it the next week, but I never keep track of my high score, knowing that bragging about it will cause me to look like an absolute ass. More often than not, the most modest bowler will do the best, because he or she has the least to lose. The drunkest person, however, will most likely not care about any of this, because he or she is the drunkest person there.

What is possibly the strangest part of the American sideshow called the bowling alley is that when all is said and done, if you really wanted to , you could toss your shoes on the counter and bounce. Believe me, given the arbitrary nature of game prices, I've been tempted many, many, many times. And why not? Robber barons run free everywhere else in the United States, I don't need to be bled dry in my recreation time. Upstanding citizen that I am, I choose to be bilked, and I make sure everyone else I know does as well. We all need points in Heaven.

Writer's Bloc continues the next time I write something, don't finish it, lose interest, and let it rust as a draft.

Writer's Bloc Series: Beam Me Up, Put Me Down

Writer's Bloc Series Part I: It has been close to two months since I updated, and I realize that while the well is dry, I still have some dusty nuggets left over from a more creative period. These will do little else besides kill time. Chances are they are incomplete, poorly constructed, or just plain crappy. This one was supposed to be released February 20th, 2008. Enjoy?

In my lethargic attempt to provide this blog with the occasional facelift, notice the fun links on the side. If you happened to come to this end of the Internet and want the free publicity, feel free to inquire about getting added. The end.

Just kidding. You would know that though, if you had kept reading. Onward.

War of the Worlds, is a classic work of literature, but, all things considered, not that great of a film. Nothing compared to the bona fide Charlie Sheen classic The Chase anyway, which is currently clogging the cable box. However, I will abuse the plot of War of the Worlds, the film here, rather than The Chase, probably because it is impossible to base a blog on a Kristy Swanson road sex scene. If you can do it, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Prove me wrong.

The most fascinating part of War of the Worlds to me was the concept that extraterrestrials had, at some unknown point in history, burrowed under the surface of the earth, only to emerge at another unknown point in history to wreak havoc upon whatever species happened to be piddling around the planet. In H.G. Wells's case, it was not Dakota Fanning and friends, but Steven Spielberg drew the high card on that one.

I'm of the opinion that the war of the worlds is happening right now as we speak, but in much more passive terms. We see it on TV with commercials featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman (nurrrr who?). We pass by billboards and posters of silhouetted individuals dancing to music from another room (or device), back lit by a bright monochrome facade. They've been here all along, but only in the recent past have they truly begun a surge that seems unstoppable. Apple products.

Before you get excited and/or let down (excited and let down?), this is not meant to be a comparison or analysis of Apple products and non-Apple products. I have had wretched luck with PCs in the past, and my first iPod met an untimely death this past summer, despite my innumerable attempts at resuscitation. Planned obsolescence is a fact of life in the technology industry, but sometimes we don't want to believe it. The future arrives when the powers that be think it's the most marketable. Opining about the speed of the iPhone's network aside, the aliens have landed, and from a smug person, they're pretty fucking smug, America.

Aliens? I thought this was about that Kristy Swanson sex scene in The Chase?

This is the culmination of several years of trips to Apple stores and seeing the same things and receiving the same treatment.

Upon entering the polished, luminescent surroundings of the store, I am immediately enchanted by the rows of people poking, prodding, clicking, pushing, listening, and so on. It's as though they have encountered some sort of hall of wonders, of things magnificent and wondrous, that only recently were but pieces of dreams. Everyone throughout the store is simultaneously mesmerized by all things Apple. Standing amidst the organized retail chaos are the employees of the Apple store, acting as guides through the sea of products whose unifying brand prides them on being intuitive and user-friendly. In actuality, the Apple wares are so user-friendly, the Apple personnel are superfluous and really just get in the way. I see enough smug assholes when I look in the mirror, I don't need them standing around, pontificating their own "awesomeness" while getting in my way in a store.

Yet, somehow, the good people of the world have not caught up with the future and the shiny new toys Apple cranks out on an almost aggravating basis (re: iPod touch hard drive expansion), and march to the tune of Pied Piper Steve Jobs over and over and over, to test out, but seemingly never buy, any Apple product whatsoever. I wonder why this is the case, really. The iPod has been out for seven years, and not much has changed. It's not like the Prius coming out right after the Model T. You can see these developments before they happen.
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Or, like the aliens in War of the Worlds, maybe you could not.

Writer's Bloc continues with its next installment, "Worse in Real Life," soon.