Big balling
So yesterday was Valentine's Day. I'm sure that due to all my expert advice over the past year, you all had a lovely day. Right?
Me? Pretty good. We started out the evening with a nice meal at a French restaurant. Had a bottle of wine. Just to make sure the French (and by "the French" I mean our Jamaican waitress) didn't get to full of themselves because I'd decided to grace them with my presence, we ordered a bottle of South African wine. Ahhhh, Shiraz ... the candy of red wine. Appetizer was mussels for the lady and foie gras for the sir. For dinner, the lady said she wasn't so hungry, so she watched while I ate a rack of venison so rare that I swear I heard it calling out to Thumper and Flower a couple of times.
And then we went bowling. Her idea, actually. And a fine idea. Bowling.
At the Port Authority bowling lanes. For those of you unfamiliar with New York City, Port Authority is the bus station and it's the one place left in Manhattan (aside from the front steps of shelters and some of your better media parties) where you are almost guaranteed to see a bum rolling around in his own feces while masturbating and quoting the Bible.
But the bowling alley is nice. It's actually just like a real live bowling alley you'd see in the rest of the world. GF didn't want to go to Bowlmor because it's, in her words, "a scene."
And that's exactly what Bowlmor is. Bowlmor is full of hipsters bowling ironically (and very daintily due to their to-tight jeans). Full of Wall Street types conducting team-building exercises. Bowlmor charges $12 for a Jack on the rocks. Bowlmor is dimly lit and cool. Bowlmor is where Manhattan goes to bowl. (I did consider Chelsea piers as well, but walking through all this slush was a no-no.)
Leisure Time had lots of bright white lighting. The bowlers there looked mostly like working-class folk who'd come in from Harlem or Queens or such. Leisure Time served white zinfandel at reasonable prices.
And while I don't feel a need to reveal our admittedly low scores, I will reveal that I won. GF won the first game handily. I won the second game. And the third? I won by 2 points (and this with the bowling machine GIVING her a false strike). And GF responded like a typical liberal ... all of a sudden a narrow defeat was the same as a victory, like this was Little League or some such and we all deserved a trophy. Actually it reminded me of what happens in the Daily Kososphere, where Democratic loss after Democratic loss is somehow translated into a moral victory of sorts.
In bowling as in politics, there are no moral victories.
(I have to admit, though, that I can't get over the feeling she threw the last game because I would have pouted about losing all night.)
On the way out, we stopped by the arcade and noticed it had a Dance Dance Revolution game. We didn't even go there. Firstly, GF isn't all that competitive. Secondly, she knew from experience--I got her DDR for the Xbox for Christmas--that she didn't stand a chance against my crazy Dance Dance moves.
Me? Pretty good. We started out the evening with a nice meal at a French restaurant. Had a bottle of wine. Just to make sure the French (and by "the French" I mean our Jamaican waitress) didn't get to full of themselves because I'd decided to grace them with my presence, we ordered a bottle of South African wine. Ahhhh, Shiraz ... the candy of red wine. Appetizer was mussels for the lady and foie gras for the sir. For dinner, the lady said she wasn't so hungry, so she watched while I ate a rack of venison so rare that I swear I heard it calling out to Thumper and Flower a couple of times.
And then we went bowling. Her idea, actually. And a fine idea. Bowling.
At the Port Authority bowling lanes. For those of you unfamiliar with New York City, Port Authority is the bus station and it's the one place left in Manhattan (aside from the front steps of shelters and some of your better media parties) where you are almost guaranteed to see a bum rolling around in his own feces while masturbating and quoting the Bible.
But the bowling alley is nice. It's actually just like a real live bowling alley you'd see in the rest of the world. GF didn't want to go to Bowlmor because it's, in her words, "a scene."
And that's exactly what Bowlmor is. Bowlmor is full of hipsters bowling ironically (and very daintily due to their to-tight jeans). Full of Wall Street types conducting team-building exercises. Bowlmor charges $12 for a Jack on the rocks. Bowlmor is dimly lit and cool. Bowlmor is where Manhattan goes to bowl. (I did consider Chelsea piers as well, but walking through all this slush was a no-no.)
Leisure Time had lots of bright white lighting. The bowlers there looked mostly like working-class folk who'd come in from Harlem or Queens or such. Leisure Time served white zinfandel at reasonable prices.
And while I don't feel a need to reveal our admittedly low scores, I will reveal that I won. GF won the first game handily. I won the second game. And the third? I won by 2 points (and this with the bowling machine GIVING her a false strike). And GF responded like a typical liberal ... all of a sudden a narrow defeat was the same as a victory, like this was Little League or some such and we all deserved a trophy. Actually it reminded me of what happens in the Daily Kososphere, where Democratic loss after Democratic loss is somehow translated into a moral victory of sorts.
In bowling as in politics, there are no moral victories.
(I have to admit, though, that I can't get over the feeling she threw the last game because I would have pouted about losing all night.)
On the way out, we stopped by the arcade and noticed it had a Dance Dance Revolution game. We didn't even go there. Firstly, GF isn't all that competitive. Secondly, she knew from experience--I got her DDR for the Xbox for Christmas--that she didn't stand a chance against my crazy Dance Dance moves.
posted by Ken Wheaton at
10:21 AM
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