Skate America: Epilogue

We made it. Skate America 2008 is now in the books and it was, by most accounts, a success. I understand that it set a record for tickets sold although there did appear to be a lot of people disguised as empty seats. Never would have happened if we were talking about "Bowl America", believe me. Bowling fans would flock to Comcast Arena by the thousands from around the country to take in 3 days of pin pounding action. Well, maybe not. Figure skating is pretty darned popular.

Japanese TV (left) and NBC TV crews hard at work
After a great breakfast at Kate's Greek / American restaurant in North Everett (you've gotta try this place if you get a chance and get one of the dishes with feta cheese) we hit the arena at around 10:30am in plenty of time for the pairs dance long program. I can't remember who won but seem to think that they were from France. Or somewhere close to France.

During the intermission BowlingWidow (does this mean I'm now SkatingWidower?) and I took a lap around the concourse of the arena. It was an amazing logjam of humanity, largely due to the fact that the lineups of women waiting to get into the many restrooms were incredibly long. And clearly, the patience of these full-bladdered ladies was wearing quite thin as they inched toward the promised porcelain land. I can only hope and pray that any incidents were minimal and that they all made it back to their seats on time to enjoy the ladies long free skate program.

Kim Yu-Na puts the finishing touches on gold
While the pairs dance competition was artistic, the ladies free skate was full of daring maneuvers and a lot of risk taking. Some of the skaters, after a challenging jump, ended up back on the ice in a horizontal and not-so-good way. Bad for them but entertaining for a figure skating novice observer such as myself.

When the dust settled, it was South Korean Kim Yu-Na who turned in a brilliant performance to win easily. The next two were Japanese skaters with Americans taking fourth and fifth.

And Tonya Harding was nowhere to be found.

Skate America Comes to Everett!

BowlingWidow has always been a big figure skating fan and months ago I got us tickets for Skate America for this coming Sunday. Skate America is an annual national event and it's actually pretty cool that it's going to be in Everett at The Comcast Arena. NBC is even televising the thing nationwide on Sunday. BowlingJoe has been a fan of skating for a while as well. Only when I go it usually involves hockey sticks, a puck, and the occasional violent episode.

Since this is kind of a departure for me, I've developed a strategy on how I'm going to get through five hours of figure skating. Just in case another male bowler with an unsophisticated approach to life finds himself in a similar situation, I'd like to share a few "Do's and Don'ts" that I intend to adhere to this weekend:

Do's:

First thing: locate the nearest concession stand that sells beer. Visit early and often.

Leave your cowbell at home and save it for Everett Silvertip hockey games. "More cowbell" will not cure anyone's fever during an ice skating competition.

Throw a stuffed teddy bear out on the ice after a particularly good performance. It would be quite touching, and is also traditional and appropriate.

Make points with your wife/girlfriend by learning the difference between a triple axel and a toe loop jump.

Don'ts:

Scream out the word, "FIGHT" during the national anthem when "through the perilous fight" is sung. Again, save it for the hockey game.

Laugh and call a skater a "stumbly-wumbly" when he or she falls.

Point it out to the entire section when a contestant's skirt flies up.

Prior to the end of a female competitor's skate, tell your wife/girlfriend, "She's hot. I'm giving her a 10".


As a man of the people, BowlingJoe is always here to help.

Obama and The Bradley Effect

I was at my book group gathering last weekend and we were talking about the Presidential election. The topic of the Bradley Effect came up. It refers to discrepancies between what samples of people say they will do in polls (or in the case of exit polls what they have done) and the actual outcome of an election. In the 1982 California gubernatorial race, Tom Bradley (an African-American) was the projected winner based upon both pre-election and exit polling. But the newspapers had to stop the presses when George Deukmejian was ultimately declared the winner.

There have been other examples of the effect over the years in various mayoral and Senate races but this is the first time it’ll be put to the test on the level of the highest office in the land. As I write this, the Obama ticket has a composite of around a 5.1 point lead over McCain-Palin.

Will the Bradley Effect eat into this margin (assuming it holds) and make it a closer race than what many expect? Or are there valid counterarguments to Bradley, such as the notion that pollsters are predominately asking questions of people who have only land line phones and ignoring those with only cell phones (assuming that those cell-phoners would be younger voters and more apt to vote for Obama)?

I’m not sure what the answer to that is, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s enough covert racism in this country to make things interesting. I keep going back to a conversation I had with a family member a few weeks ago. This individual stated that some voters might say one thing in a poll but when it came time to actually cast a ballot “they won’t vote for a ni**er”.

Although I’ve grown to despise that particular word with the asterisks in the middle, I think that this person raised a valid (albeit sad) point, as we still have a long way to go in this country in so many respects.

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Any thoughts?

It's Bowling Season, Folks!

You know, this BowlingJoe blog has been going on for months now and it occurred to me that I’ve never really done a piece on bowling. This has to change and change right now, as we’re a good 4 weeks into our league’s 2008-2009 season and a mere three or so weeks from the start of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) season, with each of the tournament finals being aired on ESPN every Sunday morning through April. People just shake their head at BowlingJoe when he tells them he has a standing weekly appointment in front of his flat screen television to watch the greatest hardwood warriors in the world punishing the pins to support their families. But then I remind myself that some of these guys are the same folks who will watch technologically enhanced stock cars drive around an oval track 200 times and yell “git ‘r done” at the television.

My first memories of bowling go back to around age four, actually. My Port Angeles neighbor and longtime friend Kent and his family were avid bowlers and they brought me along one day. Picking up an 8 pound ball proved to be too taxing so I simply squatted down and rolled the ball with both hands right from the floor. Because those were the days before anyone thought about those wretched bumpers, I’m sure most of my shots went straight to the gutter, but after a few times in which the pins actually toppled I was hooked for life.

Kent and Shawn: my friends and bowling buddies for life

I joined a Saturday morning league, and had my neighborhood friends Kent, Rick, Shawn and Mark as teammates. All of them still pick up the ball from time to time except for Mark who is currently in the middle of a twenty year sentence for a triple felony. (Let this be a cautionary tale about how easy it is to slip into a life of crime when you give up bowling completely!). Later on I took some lessons, went to an all-week bowling camp in Issaquah, and actually got to the point where I could control the darned ball. This all went on until college where I averaged around 180-185 (naturally I thought I was better that I really was). Enter reality: marriage, the car, the house, the kid. Disposable income? What’s that? I hung up the bowling shoes from 1983-1997.

My bowling addiction resurfaced in ’97 when my friend John (we coached our kids in soccer and baseball for several years in Marysville) invited me to be on his Wednesday night team at Strawberry Lanes. I’d forgotten how much I missed being out on the hardwoods despite the fact that it was during the pre-smoking ban days and I’d go home smelling like the Marlboro Man.

I left Marysville for a Thursday afternoon league in Everett at Evergreen Lanes a couple of years later that was a better fit with my work schedule. Here's an active link to our stats and standings. It’s a nice little league. Eight three-person teams, scratch bowling (no handicap is used; teams and individuals go head to head). It’s competitive but we all know each other and have a pretty good time during the ten-frame combat. I’ve even had a brief moment of glory at Evergreen in a different Spring League, as I shot my one and only (so far) perfect 300 game in May of 2003. Bowlingwidow (in a very rare league bowling appearance) was even on my team and there to see it.

In the early stages of this season, our team is doing fairly well, sitting in third place out of eight. I’ve clawed my way up to an average of 210 after a not-so-good start. Pretty good, but there are people even in our little league who average in the upper 2-teens and even beyond 220. Of course, the dirty little secret to averaging that high “like a professional” lies in where and how much conditioner (or lane oil) the house puts on the lane. The patterns that the PBA uses are far more difficult and lower-scoring than the conditions we bowl on every week. None of us are quitting our day jobs and heading out on the PBA tour anytime soon.

The great cathedral of bowling in Reno, Nevada
In recent years, with Muffinhead-edboy off in college, I’ve hooked up with Brian and his gaggle of bowlers from the South Sound and tried my chances in the USBC (United States Bowling Congress) National Tournament to compete with 60,000 of my closest friends from around the country. Last year it was in Albuquerque, NM so Bowlingwidow and I made a long road trip out of it. Next year it’ll be a quick trip to Las Vegas, and the year after its back to Reno. I’ve never done well enough to have earned my entry fee back but it’s all about competing and participating in a sport that you really like with people who feel the same way. Not to mention a great regular excuse to take a little vacation.
Brothers Scott (left) and Brian (right) mentally prepare for the big event backstage in Reno