The Personal Blog

Before I get into how tonight went, I must say that this is the biggest league I've ever bowled in.  It has 38 teams and bowls in a 40 lane house and the 50\50 pot brought in over $700, which means the winner brought home over $350.

With that put aside, I must say that I bowled pretty well tonight.  I pulled the first ball, sending it through the nose and leaving a split.  I quickly learned my mistake and finished out with a 245.  The line didn't go anywhere even though I was expecting it to dry up fairly quickly by watching the other people on my pair.

The 2nd game was filled with single pins.  I left 3 ten pins and 1 seven pin, and missed one of the ten pins.  Again, the line didn't go anywhere.  I put a bit more speed on the ball in the 2nd through 4th frame because i thought it was simply going to hook more.  That didn't happen until the 3rd game.

The ball went a little high a few times, leaving some 4 pins and leaving a split in the 7th frame and scraping the 6 pin.

I ended up with a 695 series, giving me a 231.6 average for 3 games and working with a 216 book average.  I was setting average in that league, so the 231.6 average will be my official average.  It will not, however, be a USBC book average because a bowler must bowl 21 games in a league for it to become a book average.

I didn't do too bad the first two games, but fell off on the 3rd.  I was using my Fired Up, which is supposed to give me a little more length down the lane before it starts to hook.  It was hitting pretty good most of the time, but if I didn't have just the right roll on the ball, it would leave a single pin.

The first game was quite a test with many adjustments.  I started playing straight down the 7 board and found the pocket quickly.  I didn't have a good roll on the 2nd frame, leaving a washout.  The other shots were either 10 pins, 7 pins, or a 10th frame fast 8.

The 2nd game started out quite nice.  The line was perfect for me.  I didn't move from the last game, so I was still playing straight down 7.  The 5th frame was a complete screw-up on my part.  I pulled the ball, it went high and left the 6-10.  The two single pin misses back to back on the same lane were 10 pins.  I didn't get out of the ball exactly how I wanted, so they fell off into the ditch.  The last shot was yet another fast 8.

The 3rd game was a struggle all the way through.  My ball started hooking very early, so I moved just a bit inside and played down 10.  With this came very bad carry.  I can recall a few shots that the 5-7-10 stood before something made two of the pins fall.  I didn't really want to make an adjustment because the ball was hitting very nicely into the pocket, but just not catching everything.  The 10th frame produced my only open in the game with a stubborn 10 pin.

Congrats to my friend Jason Connell on bowling his 300 game Thursday night! Here's a video I took of it.

So I haven't been able to get on here much lately, and I must say that a lot has been going on.

First, I have to let you know that on Monday, February 2nd 2009, I bowled my 4th 300 game and 2nd 800 series in the same night at Imperial Lanes here in Memphis. I had games of 300, 265 and 257 for an 822 series. I rolled the first game with my brothers Black Widow Bite, and switched over to my Storm Fired Up for the 2nd and 3rd as the lanes dried up. I have to say, I was throwing the ball very well and the lanes held up very nicely for me.

I've also been hard at work on the new Elite Wrestling Entertainment website (which can be found at www.elitewrestlingentertainment.com) and have gotten some good reviews on it so far. I've been recording the matches and uploading them to Google Videos, since YouTube will only allow me 10 minutes of record time. Go check out the website and let me know what you think!

Well that's about all I have right now. Check out the EWE website every Sunday for videos and recaps of all the action that happens every Saturday night in Ripley, TN.

It's happened to all of us bowlers. We get upset, we might get a little verbal, or we might even pitch a little fit. It happens from time to time when we don't meet our own expectations on the lanes. But how far is too far when it comes to your team game?
Take tonight for example. My teammate on Wednesday nights has quite the mouth on him, and I feel he let it get away from him, and it almost caused me to leave the team. I have a unique approach which causes me to stop a bit away from the foul line, and he felt that it was the cause for my misfortune in pin carry.

If he'd stop trying to see how far he can throw the damn ball over the approach, he'd f*****g carry more.

He said it more than once, and after the first time I told him that I knew what I was doing, but thanks for the feedback anyway (even though I was still ticked). It got to the point where he was badmouthing me to my other teammates, and it really got to me. It threw my game off so bad that I had the lowest series I've ever had in league play.
I'm seriously on the verge of turning in my notice to the league officers anyway because of the way the league is run, but that's a completely different story. I love bowling on Monday and Thursday nights, and I love bowling in pretty much any league out there, but I can safely say that Wednesday nights next year will be open, if I'm not bowling at another house.
Here is my point in all of this. Know the league you bowl in, and know what you're getting into before the year begins if possible. And have some common courtesy for your fellow bowlers. Offering constructive criticism from time to time is OK in my book, but don't let it get out of hand. If you or your team is having an off night, just keep your head in the game and don't let the score run you over. If you're not on the PBA tour, then bowling isn't your life. It's a game.

Well as you can see, I made a change to the layout slightly here on my blog, and I think it looks pretty nice. Everything is pretty much exactly how I want it now. Let me know what you guys think about it.

I started a podcast and vidcast earlier today, but had to stop because something of great importance came up. I'll be posting when the make-up show will go on here soon.

I haven't talked much about my bowling lately, and for good reason. I've been in quite a slump here lately and haven't quite figured out what is different than before. I've let my averages slip, but I'm slowly gaining ground again. I shot about average tonight, and we barely squeezed 3 games out of the set. One thing that I know will help me is new equipment. I'm a Storm guy all the way, and I know what I want. It's just a matter of getting the money to get it. I'm using a 4 year old Flash Force and a 2 year old Fired Up. Don't get me wrong, they were awesome when I first got them, but they've become worn over time and just don't hit like they used to, especially the Flash Force. I'm really looking forward to the day that I can get my new equipment and get back into contention again. Hopefully it'll be sooner than later.

I'm happy to say that our DirecTV system is working out great. We have yet to have a problem with anything, and the technical support agents have been absolutely wonderful. We found out that the HD DVR we have is the newest box they offer, and has a Media Share option built in, which basically turns it into a media extender. So, we can send movies, pictures and audio from our computers in different rooms over to the box to watch on our big screen. That's one nice feature right there. If anyone out there is trying to decide against Comcast or DirecTV, my personal opinion would be to ditch the cable and get the dish! I mean, we had the dish installed in the rain (the installer guy was awesome) and the sky was heavily overcast, and the installer told us that we might have about a 55 to 60% signal during storms like that. He ran a check on the signal, and we were at 88%. He looked at the screen and said "wow!" So did all of us. It's just a can't miss deal.

That about does it for my ramblings for today. If you have any comments for me, feel free to post them on here or shoot me a message on any IM or social site listed on the right side of the page. Pce!

It's the time of year when the weather starts to turn cooler and begins to affect the one place that you wouldn't think it would, and that's the bowling alley.  Tonight is a prime example of it.  Usually, the lanes are just fine with the wooden approaches just right, but today, because of the cooler temps and the rain that has fallen in the area, the humidity caused some issues on the approaches, as well as on the lanes themselves.  The first sign came in the 2nd game when everyone started to stick on the approaches.  Then the lanes began to dry up extremely fast to the point that I had to move my body 10 boards to the left to compensate.  This isn't that big of a deal to me, but a ton of people had issues with the "sticky" approaches.  It's just one of those things that has to be dealt with on wooden surfaces.  I also need a new ball, which I hope to be getting soon.  I'm not sure on exactly which ball I will be getting, but I do know that it'll be a Storm.  By the time that I get it though, it'll be winter time.  We'll just see how things pan out until then.