So, aside from being Rain Man smart when it comes to the math necessary to manipulate digital audio, my boss at Regular Work also gets called up to do other projects. A big one last year was to compress the entire New Yorker magazine catalog into a few DVDs. Using math I could not begin to understand, he did just that. Now, we're not talking about just some crappy looking HTML here, you can actually thumb through every page of every New Yorker from 1925 to the present. You can also search by author, image, cartoon, interview, and so on. All that is on eight DVDs for less than a hundred bucks.

As a result, he got two more jobs of the same type. One was for the entire Rolling Stone catalog (an awesome collection in and of itself), the other was this:

That's right, every last page of every Playboy ever produced. Oh, happy day. This is the box for the two DVDs that make up every issue of the 1950's. I'm waiting with baited breath for the full collection to arrive here at work. Then I can relive all of those joyous adolescent memories of inheriting/finding/stealing the odd copy and enjoying the trenchant political commentary, off-color jokes and insightful interviews with important people of the day located therein. Oh, and the nudity, that's also a plus. 

Speaking of off-color:

That's what my ankle looked like the day after dropping my ball into it. In my last entry I alluded to this incident, which happened during my last trip to the Kegel Training Center. I was there for a full day lesson, which I needed to jump-start my (until now) wayward training regimen. About 10:30AM both Jason Couch and Patrick Allen arrived with a boatload of balls to drill up for the upcoming PBA season. They spent most of the day about fifteen feet away from me testing out balls and talking smack. To add to this distraction, Patrick's cute girlfriend was there as well as this sneaky-hot Scandinavian woman who worked the front desk. (Incidentally, I've come to the conclusion that women are 10-15% hotter when bowling. I'm also inclined to have feelings for female operators at bowling supply houses who can talk competently about differentials and pin distances. I know, I'm not well.)

These distractions are partially to blame when, just before lunchtime, I broke my wrist too early and chucked one directly into my right ankle. It hurt to be sure, but I was equally embarrassed to have done so in front of the 2003 Player of the Year and/or the three-time Tounament of Champions winner (I couldn't bear to look over when it happened, but I know at least one of them was over there to see it). And we were videotaping my release point at the time, so I could review the carnage frame-by-frame. Not for the faint of heart, to be sure.

Lucky for me nothing seems broken, just some soreness. It bruised fantastically, however. I normally don't wear flip-flops outside of the house, but in this case the situation warranted it, if nothing else it made grossing people out much easier.

One other note: the guy I call "coach" also works with Patrick and Jason, and after lunch he went over to Jason to talk about his recent knee surgery rehab. "Coach" was suggesting that Jason keep his trailing leg on the floor to take stress off the surgically-repaired knee on the sliding leg. (Jason tends to end up at the release point with his slide leg straight and his trailing leg up in the air, putting a lot of stress on the right knee. Keeping the trailing leg on the floor would force his other knee to bend at the release and lessen the stress at the finish.) Well, Couch was having none of it and the static in the conversation was palpable to me, even though I was four lanes over. You won't find that inside info in BJI, that's for sure.  

Damn. Where to start.

Actually, there's too much to get to all in one go. Suffice it to say that in three months I've been involved in the ownership of the other pro shop in Gainesville, got my PBA card, came within a spare of cashing in a regional on my second attempt, saw Walter Ray throw 290 with his spare ball in a pro-am, had a small skin cancer removed from my face with a LARGE incision (resulting in a week of looking like Frankenstein followed by an amazingly-hard-to-see scar), some unrelated neck muscle spasms that were cured with the aid of my first trips to a chiropractor, became the University of Florida collegiate bowling coach, had some small interest from the ladies, had more than a few beers, and, two days ago, had the opportunity to throw a ball directly into my ankle while standing ten feet away from Patrick Allen.

See? Way too much. My plan is to break it up into small chunks and write it all down in detail. The good news is that I have internet access at home now and will be able to blog away during my free time, not just while pretending to work at the straight job. Frankly, I needed to get back to this. It's good therapy, like trepanation.

So, what's new?

My first experience at Nationals enlightened me on a few subjects, most notably that there are few people in my town who I'd want to drop several hundred dollars on to bowl with out of town on any consistent basis. In fact, the most fun I had in Reno was picking a team at random to bowl with, a bunch of guys who turned out to be more fun than any Gainesvillians there. I have since been approached by the guy who organizes the annual trip, inquiring if I would be interested in participating again next year. I told him I would let him know definitively by the end of July, but that my first thought was no.

Forget about my hometown bowlers penchant for poor performance (in bowling or carousing) on the road - my random alliance with a out-of-town squad led me to a radical new idea. What about a team composed of all Bowlspace members? It couldn't be any worse than this year, unless I eschew thorough backround checks and get stuck with a Bundy-esque personality and end up in several Albuquerque dumpsters. (Hell, even if that happened, it would be a story to tell, though I wouldn't be able to tell it.) I like this idea because of its innate randomness and the chance to meet people I only know through the highly edited blog pages. Never know what you're gonna get from THIS box of chocolates.

I recognize that this is a long shot. Most devotees of the National trip already have long-standing teams and plans in place. I just thought it was worth a shot before telling the rest of Gainesville no-way-in-hell and hoping that I get a call from New Haven. I'll be sending out some feelers to those that I feel would be interesting characters, but if any of you out there have an interest in such a hair-brained scheme, drop me a line. I'm game if you are.

With any luck, Team Bowlspace will rise to cash New Mexico-style.

It is a sad day when I have nothing to prattle on about. Quite frankly, the last two weeks have been that way. Oh I've been busy - working the "straight job", trying to buy the other pro shop in town, working in the one I currently own, some laundry, some beers, attending a wedding, and attending to my cat's sinus infection. Big laughs all around. This lack of free time has severely limited the amount of stupid crap I can entertain and therefore I become less interesting to read. Let's face it, stories make the blog go 'round. And I have no stories. Well, there are a few things worth mentioning:

- In six weeks I've bowled exactly four games on a house shot. I'm aiming for less than ten for an entire summer. It's a damn shame that bowling centers can't put out a challenging shot on a few lanes on a daily basis, not just the Sunday before the PBA Experience league night. I suppose I should be grateful that there are two such leagues in town and centers that will preview the upcoming oil pattern at all.

- I've taken another bit of inspiration from my PBA Regional experience to finally express my bowling scores (which don't matter, generally speaking) the way PBA tournaments do, by using the plus/minus system in relation to 200. That is, subtract 200 from the scores of the games you bowl, then add the remainders together. Thus, a 204, 208, 194 series becomes a "+6" (the sum +4, +8, and -6, respectively). For me, this is a much more elegant and concise way of describing dominance or disgrace on the lanes. Like this:

Last Wednesday on the Shark pattern: +7 (three games)

Yesterday on same pattern, different house : -92 (four games)

See? Isn't that better than a bunch of three-digit numbers strung together? And you can use the extra space to describe the pattern or the type of lane surface or whether you were hung over when you bowled. I'm telling you, the PBA has something right there.

- In an ESPN The Magazine story on Patrick Allen a few years ago, the author described women who hang out around Tour stops looking for some other kinds of pro bowler "action". He said they were referred to by players as "slump-breakers". Well, I didn't have to go to a bowling alley (nor did any money change hands), but consider my slump broken. Not proud of my actions necessarily - but it seemed the right thing to do at the time. I will now shut the hell up about that. Got in trouble the last time I blabbed.

Tom Waits is an all-or-nothing proposition. You either like his delivery and his storytelling or you skip this part of the blog. The song is "Burma Shave", written around the idea that Burma Shave is a real destination and not an ad campaign for shaving cream. The lyric that gets me:

She put her knees up on the glove compartment

And she took out her barrets

And her hair spilled out like root beer

And she popped her gum and arched her back

That's sexier than just about anything.

This is from the movie "Big Time" a strangely romantic dirge called "Shore Leave". (If you're at all interested, you can experience one of the greatest love songs here and one of the saddest ever written here.

So, of course I got my arse handed to me over the weekend. Should it be any other way? My first Regional was the kind of beatdown given to those enlisting in the armed services (appropriate given that the tournament was held at Ft. Gordon army base in Augusta, GA). I saw the next level of the game, I learned was "pair courtesy" was all about, and I finished -260.

And I dug it.

I dug it because there was no B.S.-ing the bad shot - chunk one and you paid. For the first five games I paid handsomely, mostly because I was playing scared. Simply put, I put too much emphasis on the tightness of the shot. In my efforts to be "careful", my release weakened and I had little-to-no reaction. At the end of the fifth game, I let one rip and - surprise! - my reaction came back, along with my accuracy. It was like getting a "get out of jail free" card. Shot 237 the next game, and felt like I could look people in the eye again.

I totally dug the pair courtesy. There's a smoothness and a certainty to it. I think it actually calmed me down, most notably when waiting to make spares (which I did copious amounts of). Strange that it is not part of either PBA Experience league I belong to. Isn't that an essential part of the "experience"? Not to sound bitter, but if I can't drink beer while competing PBA-style, then I should get two lanes worth of clearance when I roll. Seems like a fair trade.

The "stars" of the show (R. Allen and T. Jones) were bowling on the later squad, but by the time I was finished bowling, I wanted a buffet-style lunch and a nap in that order. We got into Augusta at 1:15AM and had to make 7:30AM roll-call. Earl Anthony could have risen from the grave and rolled B squad and I wouldn't have cared. My playing partner BB summed it up best, "I was hoping one of us would make the cut just so I could go back to the hotel and sleep again."

I realized on the drive home that, between this tournament, the two PBA Experience leagues I'm on, and my lack of spare time for practice, I had bowled exactly two games on a house shot in the last month. And you know what? The game is more interesting as a result. I don't know which ball I'm going to use or where I'll stand or what I'll aim at. I do know that I'm going to learn something new, which, ugly as it may be, can never be called boring.

Songs/Movie Dialog Running Through My Head During Regional Competition:

"Take a Letter Maria" - R.B. Reaves

"Copacabana" - Barry Manilow

"Don't think you are, know you are." - Morpheus to Neo during the "fight training simulator" scene in The Matrix

"On My Way To The Cage" - Rollins Band

"September" - Earth, Wind & Fire

How's THAT for a mental game!