Skankiness & Shoe Spray, With Honors

I got a warning (or a helpful tip, depending on your skankiness) from Jessica that the Sheraton near LAX is loaded with incompetent car parkers. They're also rife with active prostitutionism in the lobby for your business traveling needs. Did I mention the proliferation of drug use conveniently located near the elevators?

Speaking of nonsequitors, I spent every Friday night of my childhood at the bowling alley. Not bowling. From the age of two until long past the seven year age limit (I want to say at least ten) I was relegated to the nursery. My GOD the boredom. I was surrounding by screaming brats in a small room with old broken toys. Bored, bored, bored. After graduating from the nursery, I had the relentless pleasure of sitting on plastic benches for three hours in a smoke fogged alley that reeked of Lysol-ish shoe spray while my brain atrophied watching my parents bowl.

This was the 70s. This was before there were GameBoys or cell phones, or DVD players or anything that would help kill time. I envied other kids who had the quarters to play the pinball machines or Asteroids or Pac-Man. I had to make up games inside my head or mentally add up people's scores before they did, just to prevent The Reaper of Boredom from taking me away.

At fourteen I moved up to the scoring desk where I was paid something like $1.25 to keep score for one of the teams. They kept me in Cokes while they got drunk and I manually added strikes and spares and gutters (again, this was the 70s...before that fancy schmancy auto-scoring they have now.)

On the weekends, my mother watched bowling on TV, which is almost as boring as watching people today play poker on ESPN. She must have had a thing for Earl Anthony, because that's the only guy I remember from the bowling show. Was it called Bowling For Dollars, or was that some game show I'm confusing it with?

I never took to bowling. I guess when you get too much of a good thing - - you know, the kind that scars you for life - - you overcompensate for it later. So now, I'm overwhelmed with activity. I'm involved in too many things. I even live in two cities. I'll probably die of an ulcer.

And I blame the three-holed balls and their endless rolling down waxed lanes searching for ten pins to smack down.

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* * * WARNING: LONG AWARDS CEREMONY COMING * * *

If you're a playa, yo, but you have virtually no pimp handle and your pimp cup looks like this:

...you're not alone. Kirsten from The Soccer Mom Files had the same problem until she got jiggy with it and now you can too, if you check out her post entitled This is off the Chain, Aight!!

Perhaps you're wondering why I keep relentlessly linking to Soccer Mom's blog. Well, the reason starts with her adding Nanny Goats In Panties to her blog roll and ends with her presenting NGIP with the Amy Oops Award. See?

And you bloggers know what's coming next, right? Wrong! You see, the Amy Oops award appears to have hit a saturation point. I feel I can't pass this award on any further without it repeating on itself like goose liver and onions in a bacony, garlicky sauce. However, if I am wrong and you wish to add this award to your trophy case, well then, knock yourself out. This award is free for the taking! In fact, if you want to say you got it from me, I'll say I gave it to you by updating this very blog entry. Hear that folks? All you can eat links for free!

And not to be outdone by The Soccer Mom Files is Wit's Bitch who has also presented me with the Amy Oops award. (See what I mean by saturation? It's like Amway around here. Oh, excuse me - - Quixtar.) For those of you who were asleep during my last discussion of the Amy Oops award, here it is again:

Now Sandy from Wit's Bitch is a bowler who sucks less than she did at the beginning of the season, so you might want to pay a visit and congratulate her for that. Because she got an award for it. She must not have been subjected to the lanes the way I was as a child, because she appears to enjoy it.

And while I'm showing off awards, here's one I got from Scratch Bags: The KickAssBlogger Award which originated on MammaDawg.

And I would also like to brag about my Spread The Love Award that I received from Twenty Four At Heart. Thank you, Suzanne! I'm honored and awarded and bestowed!

So, okay, that's enough showing off for one blog.

As you were.