"Picture this. It’s early March 2020. You’re in a bar petting a dog you don’t know, drinking draft beers..."

Picture this. It’s early March 2020. You’re in a bar petting a dog you don’t know, drinking draft beers, then you follow it up by putting your fingers in some big dirty marbles, wearing used shoes and using a public bathroom pic.twitter.com/qRMnV6rUSc

— caitie delaney (@caitiedelaney) May 17, 2020

Duckpin Bowling was a bit of a mystery to me...

... as I photographed these windows and signs yesterday at the Fountain Square Hotel Building in Indianapolis:







Duckpin bowling originated in Baltimore in 1900:

Ten-pin bowling used to strictly be a winter sport and most alleys closed during the summer except for a few that remained open to play odd bowling games using the smaller balls. Summer bowlers suggested that it might be interesting to trim the standard pins down to match the size of the small ball. Because it was much harder to get strikes and spares, the rules were changed to allow three bowls on each turn but only counted as a score of ten if all ten pins were knocked down with the third ball. Duckpins became so popular that during the 1920’s duckpin bowling spread along the east coast, from New England to Georgia.

Today duckpin houses are still found only in the eastern states with the exception of our two locations here in Fountain Square, the only authentic Duckpin Bowling in the Midwest!

Babe Ruth liked to duckpin bowl.

"Besides being a great ball-fitter, he’s just a great person. He’s a legend in the local bowling community."

From "Milwaukee legend John Megna passing on art, 'feel' of fitting bowling balls" (in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Megna drilled rubber balls back in the day and adapted to plastic, urethane and resin as ball technology advanced. He’s seen many other changes in the bowling industry....

“I think the industry has changed to more of a party atmosphere, which I don’t like,” he said. “I mean, we need that party atmosphere, but some of the centers have gone to open bowling only, no leagues. I didn’t grow up in that kind of environment, and I hate to see the serious league bowler vanish. The internet is killing pro shops... People buy shoes and bags online for less than I can buy them. Fitting is the only benefit we have, but if we don’t sell enough product pretty soon there won’t be any pro shops. Then what are people going to do?”

Philippe Reines is playing the part of Donald Trump in Hillary Clinton's debate preparation sessions.

Or so 2 unnamed sources have told NBC News.

Remember him? He's a longtime Hillary Clinton confidante, most famous for coming up with the "reset" button that Hillary Clinton gave to the Russian Foreign Minister to symbolize our supposed new relationship with Russia in 2009. Reines is responsible for getting the word "reset" wrong and making it say (in Russian) "overcharged."

It's funny to think of that reset button now, with Clinton so critical of Trump for his interest in working with the Russians. According to Hillary's own memoir, the "bright red button on a yellow base... had been pulled off the whirlpool in the hotel" — the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva.

Also from the memoir:

Philippe is passionate, loyal, and shrewd. He usually knows what Washington’s movers and shakers are thinking even before they do.

Reines's name comes up in a few old posts of mine, including "When Phillippe Reines — the man behind Hillary's 'reset' button — said 'fuck off' and 'have a good life' to Michael Hastings — the reporter who died recently in a mysterious car crash."

Hastings was asking questions like "Why didn’t the State Department search the [Benghazi] consulate...?" and "What other potential valuable intelligence [besides Ambassador Stevens's diary] was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds?" Reines became extremely defensive and abusive...

Here's a CNN video from 2014 about Reines's getting testy when Buzzfeed — having heard that Clinton hadn't driven a car since 1996 — wanted to know about whether Clinton had done various other things that ordinary people do (like using an ATM or eating at Chipotle):



It's interesting to hear those commentators talking about how presidential candidates have felt the need to show that they do what ordinary people do — e.g., candidate Obama went bowling (really badly... and made a terrible joke about it) — but we haven't seen much of that sort of thing from either Trump or Clinton. I guess those 2 protect each other from needing to seem like a commoner. But way back before Hillary had that immunity — back in April 2015 — she made a point of eating at Chipotle. And remember the "Scooby Van"? Those were simpler times.

"The first lesson he taught was what to leave out... He was a demon about clutter."

He = William Zinsser, author of "On Writing Well," who has died at the age of 92 dead at 92. 

William Knowlton Zinsser was born in Manhattan on Oct. 7, 1922. He escaped the urgings of his father to join the family’s shellac business but could not escape his mother’s counsel that being cheerful was a Christian obligation.

"I find the use of bowling balls as lawn art to be undeniably quirky. For me, that starts with the premise that bowling itself is whimsical..."

"... an antithesis for the social isolation of our era.... Left without a single alley today, we [the people of Berkeley, California] compensate with bowling balls as lawn decoration. Sometimes it is a single ball, sometimes a cluster. Sometimes black, sometimes bright colors. Sometimes overwhelmed by weeds, sometimes proudly landscaped."

Hmm... I've seen that in Madison. Blogged in a 2009 post titled "What if hippies had money... and good taste?" My photo:

The new you.

Any New Year's changes you've got planned for yourself?

Don't be boring!

ADDED: I found those painted bowling pins in the Cherrywood Coffeehouse in Austin, Texas. Maybe they gave you the idea to take up painting bowling pins in 2015. You can buy old bowling pins at eBay, unsurprisingly. They're only about a dollar or 2. Many of the listings anticipate that you will be using them for target practice. So there's that too. You might want to sharpen your shooting in 2015.

Recommend self-improvements for Althouse in 2015. (Check as many as you want.)

Paint (and photograph) various objects, like bowling pins.

Use eBay for the first time and more than once.

Sharpen your shooting... and blog about it.

Write more posts about current politics.

Write more posts that are not about politics.

Track your steps in the iPhone "Health" app and try to rack up higher and higher numbers.

Write longer, more elegant and thoughtful blog posts.

Write wilder, weirder, more cutting blog posts.

Stop blogging so much and get out in the real world. Report back.

Don't be boring!

 

pollcode.com free polls

The Doctors Without Borders nurse who didn't like the way the U.S. authorities treated her upon arrival at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Kaci Hickox tells the story from her perspective, and it's getting a lot of attention. I'd like to hear the story told from the perspective of the authorities who are said to have treated her with not just an abundance of caution but with disrespect and outright abuse. You should read the whole thing, but I'll quote the part that made me wonder what really happened:

Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101.

The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.

I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset....

Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong....

The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. “Your temperature is 98.6,” they said. “You don't have a fever but we were told you had a fever.”

After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts [sic] my neck and looked at the temperature again. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. “Your face is just flushed.”

Why — before the blood test results — would the doctor feel her neck with his bare hands? What is the protocol? Either we're swinging from one extreme to another on how much to isolate people who've been in the proximity of ebola, or different officials and health-care workers have different ideas about the degree of isolation. Health-care workers have a personal self-interest in remaining free citizens, and they may lean — like Dr. Craig Spencer — toward feeling confident that as long as they don't have a fever they can go about the city — bowling, etc. — like anybody else. Others — those with political accountability/vulnerability — lean toward the crowd-pleasing Theater of Extreme Precaution.

It's April 1st, but this CNN Breaking News email seems intended to be taken absolutely seriously.

This arrived in my inbox at April 1, 2014 6:22:22 AM CDT:

A senior administration official said today that after a surge in sign-ups on enrollment deadline day, Obamacare is on track to hit the White House's original target of 7 million people signing up, CNN's Jim Acosta reports.

More than 4.8 million visits were made to HealthCare.gov and 2 million calls were made to the call center Monday, raising optimism that the goal would be met, the official said.

The administration is awaiting final numbers from the federal and state exchanges, the official said.

So... an unnamed spokesperson says there was "a surge" and that sign-ups are "on track," and that there was a large number of visits to the website and calls to the center. CNN takes dictation and conveys a message that's intended to be read — if readers don't look too hard — as a claim that the original 7 million target was hit. But there are no "final numbers" yet.

No final numbers?! There are no numbers on the sign-ups, only numbers on the traffic to the website and the call center. Do we even have a rough guess of the relationship between the number of visits and calls to the number of sign-ups? Is it 99%? 50%? 10%? We're given no idea! And the target of 7 million... 7 million what? Wasn't it coverage for 7 million of the previously uninsured, who were the point of all this health-insurance upheaval? Many people lost insurance they had, and if these previously insured folk had to go to the website/call center to replace their insurance, they shouldn't count toward meeting the 7 million.

I'm trying to find out exactly what the original 7 million goal was, so I don't have to rely on my memory, but when I try to Google, I'm hit with a barrage of articles like "Obamacare Set To Reach 7 Million Sign-Ups On Deadline Day: Sources" (HuffPo) and — for faux balance — "ObamaCare sign-ups reportedly on track to hit 7 million – but will they pay?" (Fox).

Everyone can remember "7 million," but 7 million what? No one remembers, and all the news sites report the White House PR that goes as far as it can to create the impression that the target is hit.

If you do a Google image search on "7 Million," this is the first image that shows up, and it's about as useful as the unnamed-official-source-quoting news outlets:



(Image explained here.) Just one lady, running for shelter... the nearest shelter... it's a bowling alley, but it's shelter... get inside...



Oh, no!!! He's everywhere! He's trying to make it look good, but it's not working out very well.

The Althouse Amazon portal: fully rounded interior makes shopping easier and more efficient.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want and – while paying nothing extra – make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if Woodward and Bernstein bust your secret wide open will we know it's you.

From the May 13, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

OXO Good Grips 3-Piece Stainless-Steel Mixing Bowl Set

Obama, skeet-shooting last August.

The photographic evidence — responding to skepticism — uploaded at the presidential Flickr page today:



IN THE COMMENTS: mccullough said: "Cool picture. I want a poster of it to put next to my poster of Nixon bowling."



ADDED: White House coins the term "skeeters" to make fun of people don't believe Obama goes skeet shooting all the time at Camp David.

"In order to stay competitive, airlines need to keep pace with the rapidly changing demands of corporate travelers..."

Says Nigel Page, Emirates' vice president of commercial operations.

"That's why we consistently invest in refining and enhancing our first-class product." The Dubai-based carrier delivers on its promise—thus far, it's the only airline to offer showers for first-class passengers aboard its fleet of 21 A380 jets.

Showers. In-flight showers...



What other rapidly changing demands are corporate travelers making? Personally, I'd like to see a bowling alley.

Bowl.

Just an old sign I liked. In New Richmond, Wisconsin.

If you're traveling in the north country...

... where Highway 63 meets Route 2... there is a café... Casablanca Traders...



... where the nice lady kept the place open for an extra 15 minutes so that Meade could have a smoothie and I could have a peppermint tea with a shot of internet. We were the only customers, and Meade said you must do very well in wintertime, and she said that's what she, a transplanted San Diegan, thought when she moved up here and opened the place. But the truth is, no one comes in the winter. The customers come on the sunny warm days (which are few, up north).

In winter, where does everyone go? Don't they want to be somewhere cozy? We drove quite a ways in the Chequamegon Forest. And what we saw were bars, bars, bars. Bars and bowling alleys. The culture up north isn't so much about coffee and WiFi. It's more about beer and bowling. That was my observation, as I drove by....



... with my vision admittedly blurred... by speed, not beer. I was on peppermint tea...



... and to-go chocolate cake, leftover from lunch.

"I can't seem to get a strike to save my soul..."

"... but, fortunately, the salvation of my soul doesn't depend on my getting a strike."



Recognize the artist?

What if hippies had money... and good taste?

A photo-walk around Madison's East Side got me thinking. There's a hippie aesthetic, but it's not well-developed enough, and there isn't enough money to run with it, which could be a disaster if there isn't good taste — and it's hard to have good taste and hippie taste at the same time.

But when it all comes together, it's really cool:





Wouldn't it be fabulous if, taking this house as the exemplar...



...the whole neighborhood could bloom with hippie aesthetic?

(I have no idea whether the people who did this to their house are actually hippies or how they would verbalize their aesthetic, but whoever they are, I salute them.)

I'm now set free...

... by Henry.

Whew! It was getting hard to breathe.

UPDATE: Via Twitter:

You could do eight posts and then go bowling. Because that would be Henry the eight and Ann Bowlin'. Don't lose your head!

"He threw his 300 game with all of his friends, gave each other high-fives and it's like the story ended. He died with a smile on his face."

"Don [Doane] will be a legend. It's something that will never be forgotten as long as people bowl here."

(Via Metafilter.)

ADDED: Bowled. Over.

"Where does the story come from that I don't like beer? Come on, man."

Barack Obama on "60 Minutes," fending off a Steve Kroft crack about how he's gone out of his way to seem like the common man.

ADDED: Here's some transcript (and video):

"You know, I think we really underestimate people in the neighborhood. In the neighborhoods I came from, you came from. I really think we underestimate them," Biden remarked. "People get it. I think they're looking for more than whether or not Joe Biden's from Scranton and she hunts. I think that's you know, 'What ya gonna do about it?'"

"But you tried really hard to reach these people. You went and sipped beer, which I know you don't particularly like - I mean you even…," Kroft remarked.

"Steve, I had a beer last night. I mean, where do these stories come from, man?" Obama asked.

"I'm the one… [that] doesn't drink," Biden pointed out.

"Where does the story come from that…I don't like beer? …C'mon, man," Obama said.

"You even tried bowling," Kroft remarked.

"Time out there," Obama said.

"I've got to defend my bowling honor here," Obama said, laughing. "It is true that my bowling score left something to be desired. The reason I bowled though, wasn't to try to get votes....."

How to snack like Barack Obama.

You'll want 2 things:

1. MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars. (Get some here. Hmmm: "This product contains sugar alcohols, which may cause gastrointestinal discomfort. Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect." Be careful, Barack!)

2. Black Forest Berry Honest Tea.

And if you're thinking of making this into the Barack Obama diet, so you can be as fit as Barack Obama, you might want to get your own personal "body man," and let's hope he has a name like "Mr. Love." Damn it, I want a body man. (Hillary Clinton has a body woman, you know — Huma Abedin.)

Mr. Love said he had been hired with “no job description whatsoever.”

“It was just like, ‘You just go out there and — Take. Care. Of. Stuff,’ ” Mr. Love said, taking his time with each word.

Would you want to be shadowed about by a body man (or woman)? What would your body man do?

When Mr. Obama dropped food on his tie while eating in the car between stops, Mr. Love was ready with a Tide pen. He always carries one, along with ballpoint pens, and has turned himself into a walking dispensary of Sharpies, stationery, protein bars, throat lozenges, water, tea, Advil, Tylenol, Purell and emergency Nicorette, not to mention his ever-present iPhone, BlackBerry and Canon Rebel XT digital camera.

So, one thing is: he basically carries your purse. Your gigantic purse. (Or manly variant of a purse.)

He watches TV with you:

“One cardinal rule of the road is, we don’t watch CNN, the news or MSNBC. We don’t watch any talking heads or any politics. We watch ‘SportsCenter’ and argue about that.”

He says nice things to the media when they are writing puff pieces about you:

“He’s quick and he’s strong,” Mr. Love said of Mr. Obama. “A lot of people still don’t know that he’s left-handed, so he can get to the basket and get his shot off, even though he’s not the most explosive or tallest player on the court.”

The things a lot of people still don't know. How will we ever get up to speed on the candidate by November? Anyway, Barack is left-handed, so hold that MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bar in your left hand as a tribute when you undertake the Barack Obama diet. Get plenty of exercise, too. Play basketball. Don't be bowling. Watch sports. Don't watch the news. Check your BlackBerry and have a sip of that Black Forest Berry Honest Tea. Layer in some Nicorette for balance. Now, relax. Purify your hands. Hope. Dream. Everything is going to be all right.

ADDED: "Are you gonna save me? Can you save me? You gonna make me happy? You gonna make me smile? Can you save me? Tell me, Mr. Love."