by Lore Sjöberg

Air Blower Things
This is that little vent on the bowling ball receiving unit where you put your fingers to dry off the sweat that accumulates from the sheer tension of playing such a challenging game in borrowed shoes. For me, these are one of the main pleasures of the game. I like to pretend I went to get a manicure between frames and I'm drying my nails. In fact, I'm so into this part of bowling that I can't use those hand dryers they have in cheapskate public restrooms because it gives me this incredible urge to go bowling, which frightens and alienates my friends. B+

Beer
Beer is one of the main selling points of bowling. Bowling, along with softball and darts, is one of the premier beer sports. It sounds fun, but there's a catch: the beer served at bowling alleys is swill. It's possible that the watery nature of bowling alley beer is due to safety concerns, to keep patrons from getting wasted and loosing 16-pound, four-hole bowling balls at each other's heads, but more likely it's just part of the greater rule that you can't get decent beer anyplace where you find a lot of people with their names on their shirts. D+

Brunswick
For years I referred to that big plank that came down and swept away the seven or so pins I inevitably left standing as a "Brunswick." Because, after all, that's what was written across the front of it. Eventually it dawned on me that everything in a bowling alley has "Brunswick" written on it: balls, ball return units, exceptionally devoted employees, and so on. The Brunswick Corporation apparently has some sort of lock on the bowling industry. That's okay, though, because "Brunswick" is one of the coolest words in the English language or something very like it. I wish it were a swear word so that I'd have more opportunity to use it. "Get your Brunswick the Brunswick out of there, you Brunswick!" A-

Communal Bowling Balls
The problem with professional bowling, of course, is that the scores are too high. A strike is quite an epiphany for me when I make my first one in six or seven games, but the empathetic thrill of watching some guy on TV make a strike wears off after eight or nine in a row. My solution is to make the professionals use randomly selected communal alley balls. These things are great. Not only do the lighter ones come in all sorts of gaudy Eva Gabor hues, but each and every one of them appears to have been questioned under torture. I bowled one of my best games with a ball that seemed to have a large bite taken out of it, with actual teeth marks and everything. A

Shoes
I don't buy this whole disinfectant scam. These shoes have been worn by hundreds of people, from all sorts of cretinous walks of life, and they figure a little spritz of whatever's in those cans is going to restore them to springtime sanitary freshness. Uh-huh. That's like spending three weeks sacking out in a public restroom then being offered a "Tic-Tac." Of course there's the old "let's make them ugly so no one steals them" scheme. Aside from the fact that in today's youth-oriented fashion world butt-ugly shoes are a major coup, do they really think that anyone who's going to make off with battered communal shoes is worried whether they go with his Dockers? C-

Actual Bowling
It's okay. C