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.