Wednesday, February 2, 2005

In two days, I will achieve the unenviable feat of staying more than 15 minutes at a bowling alley. A few of you may actually enjoy the sport, but for me the coordinates of those accursed pins lie somewhere between getting shot in the head repeatedly and golfing.

The venue isn’t to blame. I mean, can you really cast vitriol on a windowless structure cooled to subzero temperatures and warmed by gourmet bar food? The answer, and this may constitute cheating, is no. You might suspect the footwear is at fault. Do they honestly spray each shoe with disinfectant, carefully making sure to eradicate the bacteria of a thousand bowlers, or do they wield their aerosolized bottles simply for show? For all you know, those cans could contain tap water. Parmesan, even. You didn’t hear it from me.

The lulls and the overall lack of return, those are the things that–pun alert!–bowl me over. That will be the only pun I unleash on you this year, so feel free to sit your ass down and swallow the vomit. Unless you’re bowling by yourself, you’ll likely invest much of your visit on sleeping and tinkering with the score terminal, and the amount of time spent glued to your seat only increases as more people participate. Is this even up for debate? Let’s move on to the lack of return.

Now, some people don’t even acknowledge the game as a sport, relegating it instead to a corner with hobbies such as Golden Tee and Antiques Roadshow. Rest assured, alleycats, I will not patronize the sport, at least not to this degree. It will become an Olympic event one day, especially since those online petitions will eventually turn heads. Important heads. 18-pound ones.

That said, I expect moderate physical exertion from my sports. Let’s assume, for a moment, I practiced day and night to keep my ball from rushing to the gutters. There is a respectable amount of fine motor control needed to play the game well, probably on par with playing golf proficiently, and it’s a skill I refuse to acquire.

I went to a driving range once. After two hours of attempting to force my limbs into perfect concert, I decided to spend my time on other things. Say I broke expectations and managed to hit the ball a billion yards. What would I have attained? The right to sink the ball into a hole. A round hole. In the ground.

Likewise, the actual process of bowling doesn’t appeal to me. What could I possibly gain from tossing a 13-pound ball a dozen times, short of a disproportionately gigantic arm? Only the privilege of knocking over three pins, a goal easily realized by running up to those bastards and kicking them in the stripe.

That’s enough bowling talk for today. If I subjected you to any more, you’d go on strike. OH, SNAP! I’ve got puns to spare, that’s for sure. DOUBLE SNAP. I won’t be here all night, folks.