Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I'll take "Sports that mix well with alcohol" for $1000 Alex...

Friday night B and I went out with our friends Franz and Maria. Having had a blast (against all odds) last time at a bowling alley, we went again. I hope I don't sound too defensive or pretentious when I say that bowling is not on my personal Top 10 (or even Top 100) list of things to do. However, Star Bowl in Heidelberg has truly rare charm.

First of all, Star Bowl is in downtown Heidelberg which, by my estimation, gives it a head start as far as cool is concerned. Next, it literally looks like it was frozen in 1958. The device that records how many games are played in each lane is analog (remember those "roll over" number displays you used to see on control consoles during Apollo launches?). Furthermore, unlike many uncouth modern establishments that automatically keep score for you and display it and other information on a big TV screen, Start Bowl makes overhead projectors available so all players can see the score that is being manually tallied.

Now comes the key ingredients for making bowling fun, especially when no one in the party has any idea what they are doing: ridiculous bowling "handicaps" conceived under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol (preferably consumed as hefeweitzen).

I'm not exactly sure how it started, but at some point I noticed that some of the things we were doing accidentally, like only knocking down one pin or rolling the ball between two pins without touching either, were surely more difficult, statistically speaking, than knocking down a bunch of arbitrary pins. This led me to declare two new rules: knocking down one and only one pin would be worth 4 points (rather than one) and bowling between two pins without knocking either over would be worth 6. If this doesn't make sense to you, you clearly haven't had as many beers as I had.

My innovation in scoring then led to the true stroke of genius: the winning team defining a "handicap" for the next round (sorry if that's not the right bowling terminology). I'm not talking about the type of handicap known to golfers. In our case, a handicap was a specific way that both teams (couples) had to bowl. A few examples:

- left handed
- granny style facing the pins
- American football center style
- behind the back
- with the left foot
- with one hand over both eyes

Judging by the decibel level alone, it was clear that we were having too much fun. That's when we decided to challenge another party of 2 couples to try bowling our way. I didn't know it was possible, but everyone actually had a blast bowling (and I'm talking net, deducting points for the vicious hangover I had on Saturday).

While I’m positive that our style of bowling would be a huge hit internationally, I’m resisting the urge to start an entire league as I’m appalled by the crass commercialism that has so clearly sullied modern professional sport. However, if someone else decides to develop this no-brainer multi-million dollar idea, I expect some reasonable royalties.


No takers? I didn’t think so.

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