Fear and Bowling in Las Vegas

In 1975 the band Supertramp released an album called “Crisis? What Crisis?”. That particular album title was running through my head as I rode the slow shuttle from McCarren Airport in Las Vegas to my hotel, The Golden Nugget, on Fremont Street in “old” downtown Vegas. The shuttle was not slow due to any severely restricted speed limits. It was slow because of the thousands of vehicles and pedestrians that were clogging Las Vegas Boulevard, a.k.a. The Strip. If there is a nasty recession going on in this country, a large chunk of Vegas doesn’t seem to be participating.

I was in town for the 2009 U.S. Bowling Congress National Tournament. Every year, somewhere in the country, 80,000 of my closest bowling friends will cycle through during a five-month (or so) window hoping to tally some singles, doubles, and team scores that will give us a dose of feel-good bowling ball-tossing pride as well as a few bucks to go along with it. I’ve been going for a few years now as part of a group of 20 combatants who are brilliantly organized by my friend Brian from the South Puget Sound. More on that in a couple of minutes.

After finally arriving at The Nugget, I went to check into my room, only to see somebody else opening the door. He had been there for a couple of days so I was clearly the victim of a check-in desk mistake. No harm, no foul as I got a new room.

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2009 Miss USA Contestants: Sorry ladies, I'm married

I headed to the Sports Book to meet my friend and co-worker Tony (who wasn’t in Vegas to bowl, but could have been here to fit a snitch with a pair of cement shoes). We had beers for $2 a piece as we watched the end of the Masters golf tournament and decided which games to put a few dollars on in the next couple of days.

Much to our surprise, all 51 of the Miss USA pageant contestants (the big show was last Sunday) made an appearance at the pool of the Golden Nugget. Being a married man, however, BowlingJoe had to disappoint all of them by saying 51 times that he couldn’t be their date for the evening.

After a ten dollar prime rib meal it was time to take a cab to Caesar’s where Elton John was headlining. We were in the “cheap” hundred dollar seats in the comfy 4300 seat venue. I really didn’t know what to expect but I’ll say this about Elton John: he can still deliver the music at the age of 62 (although he seemed to get a bit winded whenever he left his piano to walk around the stage). The sound quality was excellent and he had his original drummer and guitarist with him. And the hits, from “Bennie and the Jets” through “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues”, kept on coming. The giant inflatable boobs on stage were a bit weird but, hey, it is Vegas after all.

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BowlingJoe with what could be the worst looking Elvis in Vegas

We caught a cab back to the hotel and watched The Fremont Experience, a huge music and video show displayed on the inside of a two block long canopy. It was time to call it a night at around 12:30am.

I got up at around 7:30am and at around 9 I called Tony, hoping to meet him at the buffet or somewhere for breakfast. There was no answer so I immediately wondered if somehow HE was the one who was “sleeping with the fish”. I had one of the all time best omelettes ever and he finally did show up as I was about to leave.

The team event was that afternoon, Brian and his wife Kim were kind enough to pick me up at the hotel and give me (and my bowling equipment) a lift to the Cashman Center where the tournament was being held. As it turned out, I didn’t bowl particularly well but was surrounded by some awesome teammates who did, and we’ll certainly cash in that event. Sometimes you help carry the team and sometimes you’re the guy riding in the back of the rickshaw, as it’s unusual for all five bowlers to be firing on all cylinders all the time. At any rate my Boys Night Out #2 team of Darrin, John, Conrad, and Jim were talented and a lot of fun to bowl with.

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A fine team....that even has matching red shirts!
After another cheap steak dinner, I looked over at Tony, and his tank was clearly empty after two nights in a row (he got there the day before me) of the Vegas experience. If it were a boxing match I would have given him a standing eight count and stopped the fight. He went off to his room and crashed hard, while I did some souvenir shopping for an hour and did the same.

Tuesday's singles and doubles events were pretty much of a bowling train wreck except for a lone 256 game that I managed to roll and save a semi-respectable three-game set of 550. Nic was a fine doubles partner but both of us struggled in two of our games and we both vowed to make up for it next year.

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BowlingJoe dreaming in color
In singles, well...there are probably some physics and kinetic reasons that I tallied an embarrassing 424 series, but to simply say that I missed a lot of easy spares and generally bowled like doggy-doo pretty much tells it all. It was so bad that I briefly considered renaming this blog to "BlowingJoe".

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At that point it was back to the hotel to meet the recovering Tony and hail a taxi back to the airport. Like many who have tried before me, including Hunter S. Thompson, I went to Las Vegas looking for the Heart of the American Dream and came up empty.

Perhaps I'll find it a few hundred miles north next year when we return for the 2010 tournament in Reno.

BowlingJoe on the approach with much of the "crew of 20" in the background: things went well that day until I released the ball. (Thanks, Kent, for capturing the shot)

Separated At Birth: Revisited

I need to take care of some unfinished business as I contemplate writing about the Las Vegas bowling trip I just returned from. A while back I blogged about myself and comedian Frank Caliendo who, according to some, is actually my (much younger) double.

I opened it up for anyone who has a similar "Separated at Birth" situation and managed to garner one from BowlingWidow's co-worker, Joe , the brains behind the Captain ILL blog.

Once again, you be the judge. Separated at birth? The "Other Joe" as a baby and Winston Churchill?

Yoga Joe

The staff association where BowlingWidow works recently organized a weekly yoga class that they’re holding on Monday afternoons from 5 to 6 pm. My idea of exercise is to put the iPod ear buds in and hit the elliptical machine for 30 minutes at the Boeing Recreation Center. Doing bendy things has never been my forte.

Still, when she asked me whether or not to pick up an extra yoga mat for last Monday, I gave her an emphatic “yes” and told her I was ready for the challenge. Until now, the closest I’d been to a yoga experience was listening to George Harrison albums while burning musk incense in my twenties. These days though, the biggest question I had was, “Will stretching and getting in touch with my inner self translate into more pinfall on the bowling hardwoods?”

We arrived on time in our sweats, unrolled the mats and took our shoes off. We had to sign a waiver agreeing not to hold the workplace liable in the event that something very bad happens. Great, they were expecting me to snap like a pretzel stick .

Being "bendy" is a struggle for some of us
The instructor introduced himself to the class. He was probably in his early 50s and looked to be in great shape, like he’s been doing this for a long time. He was soft-spoken and seemed “enlightened” to me, as though he’d been sniffing some musk incense of his own. His demeanor and phrasing reminded me of the late Bob Ross. You remember him. The frizzy haired artist on public television who liked to paint “happy little clouds” and trees and mountains…..

He started us out by sitting with our legs folded, doing a few sustained movements and poses from that position. Actually it was more than just a few. I looked at the clock and nearly 15 minutes had gone by. He told us to relax and take in the ambiance of our surroundings. I had a hard time with that since I was feeling like two teams of NFL linebackers were having a tug of war contest with banjo string-tight muscles in both my hips. BowlingWidow looked at me and hoped I’d be able to stand up for the next set of exercises. I was thinking the same thing.

Next up were a series of poses in which we were asked to balance on one leg. Everyone in the room seemed to handle that task with ease. Everyone but me, that is. I felt like I was trying to balance on ice skates. If it weren’t for the chairs we were allowed to use “just in case” I would have made America’s Funniest Home Videos. Joe (another Joe, the creator of the fine blog apparently on hiatus, Captain ILL), the only other dude in the class, was a natural at all of this. In fact, I’m sure he attained the highest level of self-actualization.

One CAN attain self-actualization in one's pajamas
We ended the session with a series of exercises in which we were on our hands and feet, or even laying down. My kind of yoga. Again, our instructor told us to close our eyes, relax and float in space for a while. All fine and good but I never did see those “happy little clouds”. I’ll be back next time to see if I can.

Sleep Apnea Study: The Inside Scoop

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to spend the night at “The SleepLab Hotel”, a fine four-star establishment on the water in the Everett Marina Village. Actually, it was a hotel at one time but it’s long since been transformed into a place called The North Puget Sound Center for Sleep Disorders.

The SleepLab Hotel at The Everett Marina
I had no plans to blog about this, but as I told people what I was doing, many of them said that they had symptoms of sleep apnea or had been told by their wives or husbands that they do.

And that’s how I ended up there. Over the last couple of years, BowlingWidow has told me that at times I’ve stopped breathing for 15-30 second intervals during the night. I also snore but, hey, who doesn’t? The breathing thing became enough of a wakeup call though, even for someone like me who would rather bowl ten 140 games in a row than go visit a doctor.

Sleep apnea is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, arrhythmias, and diabetes. It’s not gonna get you that one time but the cumulative effect can sneak up on you and make things miserable during those so called golden years (that seem to be approaching faster than I care to admit).

The bed: did I get the death penalty?
My night started at 7:00pm when I checked into the place. At around 7:30 I met with the technician who described the process. I changed into some pajamas and gave a test run to a CPAP machine. This is a sealed mask connected to a machine that delivers a constant air pressure through the nostrils. It’s designed to keep air passages open throughout the night and is 100% effective in eliminating snoring and sleep apnea. The downside is that it takes some getting used to and will immediately remind you of Darth Vader (although the mask is not nearly as intrusive as Darth’s) or more accurately the character played by Dennis Hopper in the film “Blue Velvet”. Other options to the CPAP include surgery, however it’s widely considered by the medical types to be less than 50% effective.

The CPAP was for demonstration only and was not to be a part of the diagnostic study. At around eight, they began attaching wires to me. Not just a few. There were somewhere around 15 of them. Several were on my head in various locations. These were designed to track localized brain activity during the various stages of sleep up to and including REM sleep (which does not imply that I was dozing and listening to the music of Michael Stipe and Peter Buck).

BowlingJoe as Lab Rat: Doctor, please don't administer the shock
There were wires to track breathing and my heart activity. They even had them attached to my jaw and calves to measure teeth grinding and restless leg syndrome, respectively.

Fully wired up and with a plastic device in my nose to monitor air pressure in and out, I was targeting a “bedtime” of around 9:45. I started reading the book I brought with me hoping it would help facilitate the process. It helped a bit but not much.

Actually focusing on going to sleep when “I had to” was challenging, particularly when combined with dodging wire bundles and making sure the tape holds (in most instances they used a type of glue to bond, but on the face proper it was tape).

I think that it took me around an hour to sleep and I remember waking up several times, including once to get permission to go to the bathroom. Yes, the technician has to come in and disconnect the wire pack so you can go do your business. But getting that to happen is easy, as there is a live intercom system as well as a camera on the ceiling above the bed. They don’t miss much.

At 6:15am the next day, they came in and woke me up; telling me that the data collection they had planned for was a success. I have no idea how that happened because it felt like I got a less than optimal night of sleep. But I’ll trust them. The data has been sent to the sleep disorder specialist for interpretation and recommendation but I have yet to meet with him as I write this.

A typical CPAP mask


My guess is that I’ll be invited for a return visit to The Hotel, find a CPAP mask that’s comfortable (inasmuch as those things are comfortable) and do the test over again only with the mask.

If you’re in a position to do so and have concerns about sleep apnea, I’d encourage you look into it. It doesn’t hurt and only costs you one, maybe two nights in terms of the time investment. Getting used to the mask, however, could be something else entirely.

May the force be with you.

Thanksgiving in March?

The Smoker Hard At Work

Well, not exactly. But we had to do something with the turkey in the freezer to make room for the next wave of frozen food. I won the free range 16 pound bird in a radio station contest a couple of months back and we decided that this was the weekend to put it in the smoker and pick the carcass clean, saving most of the meat for future use in soups, on sandwiches and even to stuff enchiladas.

I’ve smoked plenty of chickens in the propane smoker but never something as large as this. And with the rule of thumb that states a half-hour for every pound at 250-degrees, I was looking at around an 8 hour endeavor. After preparing the rub and basting mixture the night before I started out at 8:30 in the morning.

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The Turkey in the "Tanning Booth"

I like to use a technique in which a ¾-filled beer can is inserted in the cavity of the bird throughout the smoke. This gives it a nice moist texture as well as a bit of extra flavor. And adding thyme and bay leaves to the brew certainly enhanced that.

Just above the flame at the bottom of the smoker is a cast iron bin that contains the wood chips or pellets. I happened to have some apple wood pellets on hand so that’s what I used. And directly above the pellet container sits a large bowl of water that becomes heated and produces a nice “sauna” effect.

Here’s the recipe. And by the way, it turned out great. Nice and moist with a fine smoky flavor.

The End Result: So Tender it Practically Falls Apart

Ingredients:

* 1 whole turkey, about 15 pounds

* 16 oz beer plus 2 tablespoons

* 6 bay leaves

* 2 teaspoons thyme

* 4 tablespoons brown sugar

* 2 tablespoons ketchup

* 2 tablespoons white vinegar

* 2 teaspoons hot sauce

* 2 tablespoons paprika

* 1 tablespoon black pepper

* 1 tablespoon salt

* 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

* 1 24 ounce beer can

Preparation:

Empty the beer can into another container. Cut the top of the can off and pour in 12 ounces of beer. Add bay leaves and thyme.

Set aside. Combine 2 tablespoons brown sugar with the paprika, salt and pepper. This is the rub for the turkey.

In another container combine 2 tablespoons brown sugar, ketchup, vinegar, 2 tablespoons of beer and hot sauce. This is your baste for the turkey while it cooks.

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Prepare smoker for an 8 hour smoke. Rub surface of the turkey with the spice rub. Try to get as much as you can under the skin, particularly over the breast meat. Stand beer can up on the smoker grate and gently set the turkey over the can so that the can is completely inside the cavity of the turkey. Make sure that the turkey stands easily and doesn't sway. The turkey needs to be stable. Once you have the turkey in the smoker let it cook for about 8 hours at a temperature around 250 degrees F. Check for an internal temperature in the thigh of about 165 degrees F. This is when the bird is done. Baste the turkey with the baste mixture every 2 hours.

The iPod: Technological Marvel or Product of Witchcraft?

Although BowlingJoe is "state of the art" when it comes to bowling equipment, he is typically between 5-7 years behind the times when it comes to acquiring music recording and playback technology. I'll latch on to it eventually, but it just takes time.

In high school, my cutting-edge friends had the best and newest cassette decks in their vehicles while my 1971 Datsun 1200 and the 8-track setup mounted under the dashboard limped into the graveyard together. Compact Disc players were available for several years before I decided it was time to set those big beautiful vinyl albums in the closet for good.

And now that I've amassed a collection of somewhere around 600 CDs I figured it was time to leap full bore into the new century and get an iPod. I didn't exactly have to buy it though and likely wouldn't have. It came to me via a rewards and recognition program at work. And since Apple recently came out with a new 120-gigabyte classic model the timing just seemed right.

I've learned that 120 gigs is enough to hold the content of approximately 3,000 music CDs. I think I'm safe and will have plenty of room left over for pictures, podcasts, and movies should I choose to load that stuff on.

Anyone under 30 can't possibly relate to this, but it seems like nothing short of witchcraft that a device not much bigger than a credit card can potentially contain an amount of music equal to FIVE TIMES my entire collection.

Ah, but now comes the "fun" part: loading them on to the iPod via the free iTunes software I downloaded onto the P.C. Although it's fairly fast, they do take time to load individually. I figure it'll be a major project, taking weeks and weeks of picking away at it.

After around a week of going at it alphabetically, I'm proud so say that I'm a little over halfway through the "D"s at this time, having just loaded the five Dire Straits discs that I own. You can bet that the champagne corks will be popping by the time I get to Frank Zappa and Warren Zevon.

The Super Bowl Of Bowling

("Movies With" Maury Eskenazi, Jeff "The Fish" Aaron, Sandi, Karl, BowlingJoe, Ingrid)

I have a confession to make. I didn’t invent the name of this blog, “BowlingJoe”. Jeff “The Fish” Aaron did. He's a professional inventor of nicknames and hosts a pretty entertaining sports talk show on KRKO AM 1380 in Everett during weekday afternoons called, appropriately enough, “3-6 With The Fish”.

We’re not close pals by any stretch. I have a 6am – 3pm job at Boeing, go to bed early and tend to lead a quiet normal life. The Fish, when he’s not on the air, is busy promoting the station and his show, giving away prizes and asking trivia questions at venues that vary from Comcast Arena in Everett to dive bars that are likely on the verge of being closed by the Department of Health. He also hits his stride at about the point that I’m halfway through a good night’s sleep.

But I'm happy to say that we do cross paths occasionally at a concert or a promotional event that he runs when there’s still daylight outside. On Monday January 26th (which happened to be my birthday) I broke that rule of thumb as he and the station sponsored a fun bowling tournament at Lynnwood Bowl and Skate, called The Super Bowl of Bowling.

I’ve been listening to The Fish for lots of years, dating back to the days when HE had to get up early and work the morning shift at KJR 950 with the insufferable and egotistical Mitch Levy (who inexplicably is still employed there). I remember Fish as being one of the only guys in his line of work who actually treated the sport of bowling with some respect and didn’t constantly lampoon it as the rest of them did.

He’s about my age and we have some of the same memories of watching The Pro Bowlers Tour on ABC with Chris Schenkel and Nelson Burton Jr. calling the action. Those were the days when you could always count on Earl Anthony, Mark Roth, or Marshall Holman (or some combination of the three) to be on the show.

The Fish, in addition to being an occasional league bowler with a respectable 180-ish average, even bowled with (and bested as he reminds me) Hall of Famer Parker Bohn III at a radio station exhibition in Bellevue at a mall several years ago.

A few days before the event I got busy rounding up three people from our Thursday night league to complete the team. Enlisted into duty were Karl, Ingrid, and Sandi (who was fighting laryngitis and relied heavily on sign language). At stake were bragging rights, trophies and small prizes for: (1) the best team, (2) the worst team and (3) the team that finished in the middle of the 24-squad pack. I don’t need to tell anyone what trophy our players felt we had the divine right to own.

To make matters more interesting, I made an on-the-air head-to-head bet with The Fish. Best two out of three games in which I would spot him the generous sum of fifty pins per game. If I win, I get a new radio show t-shirt. A loss would require that I buy him a pitcher of cold beer. Before hanging up the phone, I expressed confidence that I would prevail, telling him and his audience that I was wearing my lucky bowling thong. I got the feeling that disgusted him (and any listeners who may have been trying to eat dinner) far more than it sent any degree of psychological fear into his consciousness.

When we arrived at the bowling center, we learned very quickly that the environment was going to be much different than at a league or a tournament. The lights went out, the music started thumping and the mirror ball was twirling, sending random blots of light on to the hardwoods. As a guy who uses the arrows to line up I knew that scoring was going to be a challenge. Not to mention my concerns about the flashing lights sending me reeling into an on-lane seizure. But it was time to go into battle, not to make excuses.

Our team got off to a slow start, adjusting to the conditions. At the end of 4 frames, my score was an unimpressive 50, but I managed to start stringing strikes to finish with a respectable 206 to Fish’s 135 game. Advantage to BowlingJoe after game one.

Strikes were few and far between for the rest of the night. I grinded out a 187 in game two but won by only 40 pins or so and lost the match, forcing us to go to game three. I thought in the back of my mind that Fish had a decent game in him before the night was done, and unfortunately I was right. He rolled a nice 172 to my 180-something game and won the bet.

As for our team, we didn’t have the best night but we somehow managed to take first place, bragging rights, and individual bowling trophies. My first bowling trophy since junior leagues many, many years ago!

Before the night was over, I presented The Fish with his winning pitcher of beer and he was good enough to toss me a consolation t-shirt. It was a great event, especially for a Monday night. We’ll be back next year to defend our Super Bowl of Bowling title, and once again I’ll make an individual bet with The Fish. Only next time, maybe I’ll try and negotiate to spot him 40 pins per game instead of 50. And maybe he'll take me up on my proposal of giving me my own weekly bowling radio segment if I win.....

Check out "3-6 With Fish" Monday through Friday from 3pm to 6pm on AM 1380 locally and on the web at http://www.krko.com/listenlive/ to listen to Jeff Aaron (The Fish), Movies With Maury, the award winning Tom "The Beeper" Lafferty, and a cast of young producers and interns of unpredictable and questionable capability. The Fish also has his own website: http://www.thefishonradio.com/